1115.org

Or handling him. Whatever he’s got, it’s contagious.

First, we had McCain repeatedly making the confused statement that Shi’ite Iran was in cahoots with Sunni al Qaeda in Iraq. Last time around, his devoted handler Joe Lieberman was whispering into his ear, to set him straight. But now Lieberman himself has succumbed to al Qaeda/Iran/Iraq confusion:

LIEBERMAN: Well, I think that - let me say generally that Sen. Obama doesn’t come to this debate with a lot of credibility. Basically on the question of Iraq, John McCain has had the guts to stand out on his own arguing for what he thought was right. And it turned out that he was right about the surge working to improve conditions in Iraq.

If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized.

Evidently some things can be spread by handling or brown-nosing.

The funniest part is that even if you change “Al-Qaeda in Iran” to “Al-Qaeda in Iraq”, Lieberman’s statement still doesn’t make any sense. It is by now well established that, despite its ability to pull off suicide bombings from time to time, al-Qaeda in Iraq is a minor player in the control-of-Iraq game. Even Lieberman ought to know there’s no bloody chance of al-Qaeda in Iraq ever getting control of Iraq, or Iraqi oil, or anything.