What a moron. I know 14 year old who have a better understanding of Al Qaeda than this guy.

His continuing problem with this particular construct could be because he can't seem to look at the conflict without inserting the US as an active combatant. Anybody who has worked with "Us" must be a Sunni and anybody who's against us must be a Shia. Therefore, AQI must be Shia, right?

(Nevermind that the vast majority of sunnis and shia are nonviolent and would just like to see the conflict end, but that's a different conversation.)

The "US" vs. "Them" lens is  VERY dangerous when applied to a situation as complicated as Iraq. It immediately makes us a target from all sides.

You'd think that he'd have learned something from Viet Nam, in which we also inserted ourselves into a civil war and where we ended up acting like an independent occupying force that was above the law. In the end we were seen as a big part of the problem rather than as the solution.

Do we get banned if we call McCain an idiot?

I mean, how often does he have to get corrected on this? I kept looking for the Lieberfairy to float down and whisper into his ear again.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, a disgraced race horse with a broken leg and several lizard-borne skin viruses would not only defeat McCain in a landslide, but provide meaningful coattails in most red states.

Luckily it's just Obama and Clinton, who at their most irksome can at least answer which one-out-of-two possible religious orders our most mortal sworn enemy organization is. That should at least be a baseline qualification before shredding the constitution, gutting the treasury and killing our children to, ostensibly, fight them.

Put together a video clip of all the times he's made that mistake? I honestly have a hard time believing that he doesn't know that Al Queda is Sunni, but a clip showing him making the same mistake over and over and over could be really effective.

What truly frightens me is if you look at how he time and time again links Al Qaeda and Iran together and remember how successful the administration was in linking Al Qaeda and Iraq after 9/11 it's really chilling. Why this guy continues to get a pass on this issue is beyond me. People talk about pro-Obama media bias, heck, he's got nothing on the McCain media bias.

Everyone who wants to vote for McCain, whether Democrat or Republican, needs to understand that the guy is a relic of the Cold War who still thinks of our modern conflicts in terms of a monolithic enemy group that can be fought with just troop strength, instead of a nuanced guerilla organization whose very lifeblood is solely based on their ability to sell us as ignorant foreign tyrants to impressionable volunteers.

Seriously, he wants to push stereotypes that have been in play since the Crusades.

Without more context, I can't really say for certain, but I can't agree with your statement.  

He is talking about Al'Qaida and discussing that, while it is not as big a threat as it was, it's still not an "obscure sect fo Shi'a overall."

Again, I'd need more context to believe otherwise.

The more I'm coming around to thinking that either of our Democratic contenders would beat McCain in November. Both Hillary and Obama are much stronger campaigners, and both would clearly outshine him in a debate about any topic that matters to the American voters this year.

So the good news is, I think, that unless there's some fake terrorist threat or attack that is manufactured by Bush or the RNC, we're going to have a Democratic President in the White House, come next January.

If John McCain still doesn't understand that Al Qaeda is a Sunni group largely opposed to Shiites (as well as Americans and others) -- not a Shiite group aligned with Iran -- does he really have the national security acumen and understanding to be commander-in-chief?

This is a trick question, right?

He said "overall". Indicating that they were not an obscure sect of the Shi'ite population overall. How the hell else would that make sense? Besides that, what he said after was clearly a correction. Why don't you just call it what it was, a slip of the tongue, instead of trying to pretend it was a deliberate statement?

How many years has it been since FBI Director Mueller said he didn't really know the difference between Sunni and Shi'a?

At the time, it fit pretty well with overall societal ignorance.  But it's been YEARS, and a man RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT doesn't really get that there's a difference.  

Initially, I just thought McCain was ignorant.  But I'm starting to believe he just thinks of them as two sides of one, big, problematic, Muslim coin.  It's a good deal more frightening, when you think about it.  If he sees all Muslims as the same, somehow, then which country is in line after Iran?  Syria?  Pakistan?  

stated that the violence had abated significantly, since the surge.

I wonder, when was the last time the ambassador poked his head out from his fortified bunker in the Green Zone?