Warhawk and Middle East expert Kenneth Pollack on McCain’s frequent references to the insurgents in Iraq as “al-Qaida”: “A perfectly reasonable catchall phrase” because campaigning “does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing.”

And it’s not like calling the insurgents “al-Qaida” or saying that Iran is financing “al-Qaida” is going to confuse anyone, is it? It’s not like the question of whether Iran and the masterminds of 9/11 are working together (they’re not, actually—their branches of Islam consider each other heretical) is important? It’s not as if calling the insurgents “al-Qaida” would excuse our staying in Iraq instead of pulling out and going after the real al-Qaida on the Pakistani border, is it?

No, I can’t imagine why the American public would want long-winded explanations of the difference.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 6:38 am and is filed under Politics, Terrorism, War/military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.