Good judgment
To be fair* to John McCain, his staff
says the he's not sure if the reports that he met with a rebel kidnapper during his Syria trip are accurate:
Senator John McCain’s office is pushing back against reports that while visiting Syria this week he posed in a photo with rebels who kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims.
The photo, released by McCain’s office, shows McCain with a group of rebels. Among them are two men identified in the Lebanese press as Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, two of the kidnappers of the group from Lebanon.
A McCain spokesman said that no one who met with McCain identified themselves by either of those names.
And if those reports are accurate, they say it was totally an accident:
[McCain spokesman Brian] Rogers said that if the man in the photo turns out to actually be Mohamed Nour, that is “regrettable.”
McCain's office suggests that maybe Assad is trying to frame him, but on the other hand says that maybe the story is correct, in which case McCain never intended for it to happen.
I guess the bottom line here is that John McCain just isn't sure with whom he met. But he is sure of one thing: President Obama needs to listen to whoever they were and get America militarily involved in Syria by by enforcing a no-fly zone and supplying weapons:
The rebels told McCain, a prominent critic of what he calls the Obama administration’s inaction on Syria, they wanted the United States to being supplying weapons and enforcing a no-fly zone in the country.
“Their message was, to be frank with you: they do not understand,” he said. “They do not understand why we won’t help them.”
Well that makes total sense. McCain meets with some strangers, isn't able to vouch for their identity, but says the U.S. military should take on the responsibility of grounding the Syrian air force while we ship weapons to a bunch of people he clearly doesn't know.
What could possibly go wrong?
*Also, to be fair to McCain, he didn't know Sarah Palin was a joke before tapping her as his VP nominee.