See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

Every time John McCain gives and interview or a speech these days, one gets the feeling that he’s either been heavily sedated or that he would rather be somewhere else. Last week, he was busy washing the egg of his face after Michael Ware put a serious dampener on his buoyant analysis of the success of the surge thus far.Bu they don’t call his campaign the Straight Talk Express for nothing. Determined to show the press how it’s done, McCain cleaned himself up and flew to Baghdad.

As it turned out, that too turned into a farce.

It’s already been well reported that it McCain’s stroll through a Baghdad market was accompanied by 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships that accompanied his entourage.

And there was more:

The delegation traveled in a convoy of armored military vehicles and was accompanied by a large contingent of heavily armed soldiers. The politicians wore body armor while they shopped.

I hope those rugs that Lindsay Graham picked up were worth it.

What was not reported however, was the measures that were taken prior to McCain’s outing.

”¦.but did you hear about the soldiers who swept the area before the American legislators and their security team showed up? Who cares about those mooks? They are expendable.

That’s one seriously expensive photo op.

As soon as McCain left, reality set returned with a bang. Mortars allegedly landed in that very market.

UPDATE 1: The Pappa Bear of the right wing bloggosphere has got it wrong again, when he accused Michael Ware of laughing and heckling McCain during his Baghdad press conference.

When Ware appeared on CNN, he was able to set the record straight.

“This is a report that was leaked by an unnamed official of some kind to a blog, to somewhere on the internet,” Ware told Soledad O’Brien this morning on CNN, according to an unofficial transcript posted at the conservative blog Power Line. “No one has gone and put their name forward. We certainly haven’t heard Senator McCain say anything about it or any of his staff have come forward to say anything about it.”

Ware instead accused the officials running the press conference of preventing the CNN correspondent from even asking a question.…  One can only imagine why?

“Indeed, I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even ask a question,” Ware added. “In fact, when I raised my hand to ask a question, the press conference abruptly ended, so what I would suggest is that anyone who has any queries about whether I heckled, watch the videotape of the press conference.”

You can see the unedited press conference here to check Ware’s story out for yourself. …  Ware is certainly making a name for himself as a BS detector.…  He makes you proud to be an Ozzie.

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