A little foresight...
At the end of yesterday's devastating NYT article on John McCain's "market stroll" in Baghdad, Kirk Semple wrote:
Several merchants said Monday that the Americans’ visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents.
“Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,” said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety.
Sure enough, via a diarist named oznick at Daily Kos, the London Times is reporting that:
21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.
And just to make the whole thing extra special:
More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in the past week despite a US-Iraqi security plan to quell violence in the capital. Most of the killings have been the result of truck bombs outside Baghdad.
Mr McCain said that the situation was showing signs of improvement and blamed waning support in the United States for the war on the media, which were portraying an overly negative image of the crisis.
Sorry, but McCain has proved once and for all that he doesn't have either the sense or the decency to be president. If he really believes the media is making the situation worse by portraying everything in a negative light, why tempt them to do more of the same with a giant, expensive, obviously manufactured photo op? Most likely because McCain doesn't really believe his own evil-liberal-media rhetoric. He expected reporters to put their affinity for Straight Talk above their purported anti-Iraq War liberal bias and write up his Baghdad stunt straight. Nice how that works, when it works.
But more to the point, how didn't his campaign see the reprisals coming? Attacking the market workers who might have met McCain was an obvious response from insurgents out to give their atrocities the widest possible audience and get them on the U.S. news. McCain and his team were either too dumb -- not to mention out of touch with Iraqis -- to grasp this idea, or too callous to care, again just expecting the pro-McCain press to downplay any violence. Or maybe it was some of both. Either way, let's hope McCain is toast.
Several merchants said Monday that the Americans’ visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents.
“Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,” said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety.
Sure enough, via a diarist named oznick at Daily Kos, the London Times is reporting that:
21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.
And just to make the whole thing extra special:
More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in the past week despite a US-Iraqi security plan to quell violence in the capital. Most of the killings have been the result of truck bombs outside Baghdad.
Mr McCain said that the situation was showing signs of improvement and blamed waning support in the United States for the war on the media, which were portraying an overly negative image of the crisis.
Sorry, but McCain has proved once and for all that he doesn't have either the sense or the decency to be president. If he really believes the media is making the situation worse by portraying everything in a negative light, why tempt them to do more of the same with a giant, expensive, obviously manufactured photo op? Most likely because McCain doesn't really believe his own evil-liberal-media rhetoric. He expected reporters to put their affinity for Straight Talk above their purported anti-Iraq War liberal bias and write up his Baghdad stunt straight. Nice how that works, when it works.
But more to the point, how didn't his campaign see the reprisals coming? Attacking the market workers who might have met McCain was an obvious response from insurgents out to give their atrocities the widest possible audience and get them on the U.S. news. McCain and his team were either too dumb -- not to mention out of touch with Iraqis -- to grasp this idea, or too callous to care, again just expecting the pro-McCain press to downplay any violence. Or maybe it was some of both. Either way, let's hope McCain is toast.
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