Video: McCain, incredibly, flubs Sunni/Shia distinction again

Via Steve Benen at Salon’s War Room blog, John McCain slipped up yet again on the pesky Sunni/Shia distinction earlier today — this time while questioning Gen. David Petraeus in a Senate hearing on the war.

“Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?” McCain asks Petraeus.

“It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago,” the general replies.

“Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi’ites overall?” McCain follows up. Petraeus says “No” as McCain stumbles his way to adding, “Or Sunnis or anybody else.”

It isn’t the first time — or even the first time this week — that McCain has made major misstatements on the Iraq situation. Yesterday we posted video of McCain’s Sunday claim on Fox News that the Basra ceasefire was initiated by Moqtada al-Sadr (it wasn’t) along with earlier clips of McCain apparently confusing the question of Sunni vs. Shia groups (and thus, too, the tactical situation on the ground). Over at the Carpetbagger Report, Benen summarizes the multiple occasions on which McCain claimed that Shia-dominated Iran was training and sheltering Sunni al Qaeda members.

Senate hearing 04/08/08: McCain questions Petraeus

The original Iran/al Qaeda remarks, made over a period of weeks, were disturbing enough. The repetition of fundamental errors like these seems almost inexplicable. It appears that either a) McCain is not listening to his advisers, b) McCain’s advisers are not listening to McCain, c) McCain is not listening to the words coming out of his own mouth, or d) McCain has cognitive difficulties absorbing and integrating new information.