Reading Stupid

by digby

There’s been a lot of chit-chat these last few days about McCain having what Brit Hume called a so-called senior moment when he “accidentally” said repeatedly that Al Qaeda in Iraq was being trained in Iran. George Will said his gaffe was “not damaging at all because people say it’s a given that this man knows what he’s talking about.”

And today we see that George W. Bush “accidentally” said more than once that Iran has said it wants a nuclear bomb to destroy people. Bush’s flacks said he was engaging in shorthand for the fact that Iran is an enemy of Israel.

Both men are given a pass for these ridiculous statements — and in McCain’s case it’s actually assumed that he is some sort of “expert.” Here’s another example of McCain’s foreign policy expertise:

In a small, mirror-paneled room guarded by a Secret Service agent and packed with some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential political donors, Mr. McCain got right to the point.

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,'” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

That’s deep. And reminiscent of his president who famously told Tony Blair during the Israeli Lebanon war:

“What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.”

It’s tempting to simply say they are both dumb as posts, and believe they can move nations and people around like chess pieces, which they are. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that their uninformed worldview is always tilted toward confrontation.

In their comments of the last few days about Al Qaeda and Iran wanting to build nukes to threaten nations, it all leads in one direction: war with Iran. The only question is whether it would happen before Bush leaves office or after McCain takes office. Either way, you can tell by their “gaffes” that they both believe that Iran is a threat to the US. And there is no doubt that they both believe the US has the right under the Bush Doctrine to preempt Iran.

Anyone who votes for McCain in November is voting for war with Iran. It’s that simple.

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