Fighting His Own Base

John McCain might as well stay in Iraq for all the goodwill he's spent and lost in the United States. After spending all week, when he wasn't skipping Iraq votes to attend fundraisers (it didn't help, he missed his funding targets for the quarter), claiming that anyone can just up and stroll through unspecified "neighborhoods" in Baghdad, he put a capper on it by travelling there himself and "walking the walk."

Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain toured a Baghdad market on Sunday and said afterwards the American people were not being told the "good news" about the war in Iraq.

McCain, a strong supporter of President George W. Bush's plan to send nearly 30,000 more troops as part of his new strategy in Iraq, said the media had a responsibility to report both the positive and the negative in the four-year-old war that is growing increasingly unpopular in the United States [...]

"You read every day about suicide bombings, kidnappings, rocket attacks and other terrible acts. What we don't read about and what is new is a lot of the good news -- the drop in the murders in Baghdad, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city ... the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades to Baghdad," McCain said.

"These and other indicators are reasons for very cautious optimism about the effects of the new strategy," said the 70- year-old senator from Arizona, who has been a vocal critic in the past of the Bush administration's handling of the war.

"Just as we read about all the negative events in Iraq the American people must be aware of the positive developments under this new plan, and the media has a responsibility to report all aspects of what is taking place."

Here's the deal on McCain. His entire constituency is the media. They straight-talk-expressed him to the front of the line in 2008 because he gave good soundbite and stroked their massive egos. But now he's trying to win the Republican nomination. And in order to do that you must pledge fealty to all of the whacked-out wingnut standbys, first and foremost on the list being that the liberal media isn't reporting the good news, whether in Iraq or at home. This is time-honored wingnut theory. And so McCain has to go with it, and in the process bash the media who is really the only thing keeping him at all above water, since they broadcast his manliness and maverickhood on a constant basis.

But he made a mistake. See, the media still gets to report on him. And now they have no reason not to call him out for his obvious foolishness.

Sen. John McCain strolled briefly through an open-air market in Baghdad today in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what’s going on in Iraq.

NBC’s Nightly News provided further details about McCain’s one-hour guided tour. He was accompanied by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” Still photographs provided by the military to NBC News seemed to show McCain wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit.

You can watch the NBC story at the link, it's even worse. McCain responds to a question about his "you can stroll through neighborhoods in Baghdad" nonsense by saying "Yeah, I just came from one" without happening to mention he was covered by basically an entire army. There's more at this Newsweek blog, where the writer makes the obvious point that, as violence dips slightly in Baghdad, it goes up in the provinces, and March was actually a deadlier month for the country overall than February. Also mortars hit the Green Zone within 30 minutes of McCain's pleasant stroll.

John McCain is the weaseliest liar among many weaselly liars in the Republican Party, and he's actually killing soldiers right now to save his fragile ego from cracking. He simply cannot acknowledge the huge foreign policy mistake this country made with his full support, and so he must pretend that he went for a nice Sunday jaunt instead of accompanied by a personal surge of his own. And for him to attack the media shows that he's not only a liar but completely stupid as well. They get the last word, Senator, and they can strip you of your sainthood at any time.

Maybe McCain can rise in the Iraqi Parliament, because after this week, there's no chance he'll ever become President.