Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
March 23, 2008

For the corporate media, it does not matter if John McCain can’t tell the difference between a Shiite and Sunni. After all, John McCain is just a bit actor in the parlor trick known as “free and democratic elections,” a confidence game trotted out every four years.

You’d think McCain “gaffe,” as it is politely recalled by the script-reading corporate media, would be grist for the news cycle mill.

But, alas, it wasn’t.

Taking the old warmongering geezer to the woodshed over such an egregiously boneheaded comment – remarkably from a would-be president — is not on the schedule, as Media Matters explains.

“On the March 23 edition of his NBC-syndicated television show, Chris Matthews introduced a segment on whether Sen. John McCain is ‘smart to make national security the centerpiece of his campaign,’ by saying that McCain was recently in the Middle East ‘showing off his foreign policy credentials.’ But at no point during the segment — indeed, during the entire show — did Matthews, or any of his guests, point out that, during his trip, McCain repeatedly claimed Iran is training Al Qaeda.”

Or did Mr. Softball mention McCain’s inability to recognize the players on at least one other occasion. On March 17, during an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, McCain said “there are Al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they’re moving back into Iraq.”

Here is the larger context, as posted on Hewitt’s blog:

HEWITT: Now, Senator, yesterday in Iran, President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s parliamentary party won. His hand is strengthened.

McCAIN: Yeah.

HEWITT: What’s the — what’s the concern you have about Iran and about, in particular, Ahmadinejad? Some people want to meet with him. He’s not on your agenda this trip.

McCAIN: The day I meet with the president of Iran will be the day after he announces his country no longer is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel, the day after they stop exporting these most explosive — most lethal explosives into Iraq. Just yesterday, up in the Mosul area, they uncovered a cache of weapons, and a lot of it was these Iranian copper, high — most lethal explosives. As you know, there are Al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they’re moving back into Iraq. I think Americans should be very angry when we know that Iran is exporting weapons into Iraq that kill Americans. And so all I can say is that I think they continue to be a threat.

Heavy corporate media hitters sat in attendance when Matthews’ memory failed him — Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller, MSNBC chief Washington correspondent Norah O’Donnell, and New York Magazine contributing editor John Heilemann — and not a one cared to discuss McCain’s absurd al-Qaeda claim.

But then McCain is little more than a sideshow distraction on the way to the inaugural parade. It is a choreographed stunt, even with an occasional flub or two. It really does not matter if he knows who or what al-Qaeda is or the sharp religious difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Chris Matthews knows John McCain — the former POW with no shortage of shady dealings — is nothing but a daub of rogue on a doomed race horse, scripted to fail so the neolib faction might “win” the election and control the horizontal and vertical of the political landscape for the next 4 to 8 years.

Mind you, not that the neocons will be on the out, as a glance at a current CFR roster reveals more than a handful of neocon names mingled in with their neolib cousins.

McCain does not have the supposedly required “foreign policy credentials” we are told he has — that is unless bombing Vietnam and getting shot down in the process makes for credential. But then it hardly matters. John McCain, like Bush the Lesser before him, is run by a shrewd set of neocon ideologues. He is cardboard and flaking tempera paint.

And the forever compliant corporate media will smooth things over for McCain the next time he inserts shoe in mouth.

Guaranteed.

Because McCain — who may actually believe the election is his — is marching, stumbling toward a November concession speech.

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