He's Going For It

Looks like Bombs Away John McCain is going to go ahead and try to lie his way to the White House.

But while the McCain campaign is backing away from the specific claims about Iranian training of Al Qaeda, it is asserting that Iran collaborates with Osama bin Laden's organization.

Mr. McCain's national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, told The New York Sun, "There is ample documentation that Iran has provided many different forms of support to Sunni extremists, including Al Qaeda as well as Shi'ia extremists in Iraq. It would require a willing suspension of disbelief to deny Iran supports Al Qaeda in Iraq."

Responding to Mr. Scheunemann's remarks, a senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama, Susan Rice, yesterday told the Sun, "It's very bizarre." She noted that Mr. McCain had "made the same statement three times in as many days. Surely he must know, as Senator Lieberman reminded him, that Iran is not engaged with Al Qaeda in Iraq. I don't know if he is confused, or is he cynically trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iran as Cheney and Bush did Al Qaeda and Iraq in 2002 and 2003?"

The far-right New York Sun has skin in this game, because their article about AQI/Iran ties is being used by the wingnutosphere, sometimes multiple times with the statement "multiple sources have confirmed" attached, to "prove" the claim. However, the fact that both Raymond Odierno and David Petraeus disagree with any mention of a Shiite Iran/Sunni Al Qaeda link isn't enough for Bombs Away John.

This is no different than Preznit Gimme 'Nother War blustering on about Iran being a continued "nuclear threat" 4 years after they curtailed their nuclear program, and explicitly claiming they want to "destroy another nation" based on a badly translated quote by the Iranian President, who has no power over military affairs. The idea is to knowingly deceive as a pretext for war.