You know back when people were saying Bush is faking stupidity to appeal to the common man? Call me naive, or at least conspiratorial, I kinda bought that for a while.
Now, I'm wondering if John McCain is faking stupid too. McCain, one of the leading republican contenders for '08, the man who polls show, can beat both Hillary and Obama, the man who has distinguished himself as a foreign policy expert and a maverick, said this today:
McCain noted that by purchasing oil from Iran, the "No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism," America funds both sides of the fight against terrorism. That, according to McCain, is something in which al Qaeda "must revel."
From The Hill, April 23.
First off, "Purchasing oil from Iran?" What year does he think this is 1978?
According to US DOE, the top 5 countries where US purchases crude oil from are: Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. After that the amount of import drops exponentially. Still, the next ten countries in order of the export to the US are: Angola, Algeria, Iraq, Ecuador, Kuwait, UK, Brazil, Chad, Colombia and Libya.
See Iran anywhere? No, it ain't there. We do not purchase Oil from Iran.
Second, Mr. McCain suggests "Al Qaeda must revel" in the (false) fact that we are "purchasing Oil from Iran."
Wrong again. If anything Al Qaeda revels in us bombing Iran, because they are Shiite heretics whom neither Al Qaeda, nor their Saudi countrymen even recognize as legitimately Muslim.
On the right side of the political spectrum, the clerics and Nayef take their stand on the principle of Tawhid, or "monotheism," as defined by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the eponymous founder of Wahhabism. In their view, many people who claim to be monotheists are actually polytheists and idolaters. For the most radical Saudi clerics, these enemies include Christians, Jews, Shi`ites, and even insufficiently devout Sunni Muslims. From the perspective of Tawhid, these groups constitute a grand conspiracy to destroy true Islam.
Al Qaeda has been fighting against the influence of Iran. Their former hosts and ideological brethern, the Taliban, nearly went to war with Iran in 1998. Half the reason there is a civil war in Iraq and increased tensions in Lebanon is because Al Qaeda wants to eliminate shiite influence.
McCain doesn't understand this. McCain doesn't know shit about the middle east.
This is a Silvester Rayes moment. When the incoming House Intelligence committee chair didn't know if Al Qaeda was Sunni or Shiite, he was thoroughly ridiculed by the media and justly so, IMO.
But, Mr. McCain who is running for a position much more influential then Reyes, is allowed to get away with all kinds of crap. His "bomb Iran" moment which could've been his Macaca moment hasn't been taken seriously by either the left or the right. In a country where racist sterotypes made in jest can cause people's jobs, joking about bombing a whole country seems to be "laughed off" by the media. We have to take this demagogue down. We have the power. I'm with Naiman on this one.
How long are we going to sit around and let McCain get away with this?