It has to be true that if someone digs around deep enough they will find people on John McCain‘s campaign staff whose sole job it is to help McCain piss in the pot, so that he doesn’t walk around with piss-stained trouser cuffs all the time. (And you never wondered all this time what exactly it is that “handlers” handle?)

He has shown us several times before that he’s thoroughly confused about the reality on the ground in Iraq, but his performance in Amman on Tuesday was still a new low for him.

Let’s remember that McCain is on a Middle East trip to showcase his so-called experience and expertise in international affairs and national security matters. He has presumably been briefed and rehearsed within an inch of losing his famous temper, just so that he would manage to remember his basic facts. And he still blew the most basic distinction that anyone talking about Iraq has to be able to make:

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

Yes, that’s right, Senator. The Iranians are Shi’ites, and they are aiding and abetting Shi’ite militias. And al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is a Sunni group. That’s why they are aided and abetted by Saudi Arabia, instead of Iran.

Bush thought — and Cheney still thinks — there was a nexus between Iraq and al-Qaeda. John McCain goes one better and thinks there’s a nexus between Iran and al-Qaeda. Can’t we please put one more blundering idiot in the White House?

(By the way, it’s interesting, isn’t it, how Joe Lieberman seems to be one of McCain’s handlers?)

*** Update, 6:56 am ***

I hadn’t realized that McCain had also made this exact same mis-statement on Monday night on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.

It not only makes McCain look even more idiotic than he did before, but it makes the McCain campaign’s attempt to explain away McCain’s gaffe in Amman doubly dishonest:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers: “In a press conference today, John McCain misspoke and immediately corrected himself by stating that Iran is in fact supporting radical Islamic extremists in Iraq, not Al Qaeda…

He didn’t misspeak and immediately correct himself. He carried this piece of untrue “common knowledge” around in his head for an extended period of time. He said it on Hewitt’s radio show Monday night, and did not correct himself at all, not immediately, not later. He corrected himself in Amman only after Lieberman whispered into his ear. Misspoke and immediately corrected himself? Only in Bush-Cheney-McCain’s inside out universe.