By Philip Klein on 7.9.08 @ 10:22AM
John McCain makes another unfortunate Iran joke, the
Washington Post's "The Trail" blog reports:
Responding to a question about a survey that shows
increased exports to Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said,
"Maybe thats a way of killing them."
He quickly caught himself, saying "I meant that as a joke" as
his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.
In response, liberal blogger Matt Yglesias
writes:
John McCain once again "jokes" about his desire to
kill Iranians. This time, the joke is a little bit more of a real
joke, but the targets of his lust for killing foreigners are
clearly ordinary Iranian civilians. If a major Iranian political
leader were to repeatedly joke about bombing the United States and
killing Americans, you can just imagine the s&6%-storm about
how Iran isn't a normal country with normal interests, that it's
run by irrational fanatics, appeasement won't work, etc.
As it turns out, we don't have to imagine Iranian political leaders
talking about such things, in fact they do it all the time. The
Iranian legislature opens sessions with
chants of "Death to America" and President Ahmadinejad
declared, "I say accomplishment of a world without
America and Israel is both possible and feasible." The only
difference is that they aren't joking. They actually want to kill
Americans, as they are doing in Iraq.
topics:
John McCain, Iraq, Iran, Israel