PolitiFact joins media disinformation campaign against McCain

We're not trying to pile on to Sen. John McCain over his misstatement on the link between Iran and al-Qaida.
(PolitiFact)

clipped from www.politifact.com

That claim doesn't pass the sniff test, so I use PolitiFact's own cheesy icon against them.

Most experts do not believe Iran is helping al-Qaida because their respective religious affiliations are at odds with each other. Both sides are Muslim, but the Iranian government is Shiite while al-Qaida is Sunni. And al-Qaida adheres to a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam that considers Shiites to be apostate. It's not likely the two groups would work together, certainly not "common knowledge."

Looks like we're safe from the mention of any specific experts as well as any reference supporting the claim. This is PolitiFact, after all.

Though it supposedly isn't "likely" according to the anonymous majority of experts that Iran would support the activities of Sunni extremists, it does happen. Eli Lake documented some of the evidence in the New York Sun today.

Here's more, via ABC News (not that the news from ABC is common knowledge or anything):

NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces, in what the officials say is a dramatic escalation of Iran's proxy war against the United States and Great Britain.

But that's not really possible considering how unlikely it is, I suppose.

Then PolitiFact gives us seven more paragraphs explaining the difference between Sunni and Shiite as if that was truly relevant to what McCain stated ("McCain is not the first elected official to get these differences wrong").

The last paragraph is a parting shot at McCain as well as a spin on the facts:

McCain recovered quickly, but we still rate his statement False for saying everyone knows Iran and al-Qaida are working together.

McCain did not say that "everyone knows" or else PolitiFact's ignorance all by itself would disprove his statement. He said it was "common knowledge" and that claim is supported by stories in the mass media.

Well, it's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that, uh, that al Qaida is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That's well known.
(Sublovious transcript of McCain's statement)

Interesting that the attempts to call this a McCain gaffe have completely de-emphasized his reference to media reports, isn't it?

McCain probably trusted Lieberman enough to believe that he misspoke, but the facts back up McCain regardless of the anonymous experts (and assuming that PolitiFact could actually find experts willing to back up their claims about what "most experts" say, I would expect that experts with real knowledge of Iranian activities in the region would disagree with their experts).

If PolitiFlack (Maybe PolitiPantsOnFire would be a yet more apt nickname for this outfit) was serious about getting to the facts they would have spent their time giving us some quotation from real experts (representative of the alleged majority) instead of running off on the red herring of the Sunni-Shia distinction.

The fact that they went there suggests that they took a bit of a cue from the Obama campaign.

"Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shia, Iran and Al Qaeda," Obama said.
(LA Times)

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Media on board with Obama against McCain--and ignoring history (Updated)

This story isn't burning up the blogosphere yet, but it shouldn't be long. The media wrongly accused John McCain of a flub, Obama appropriated it and now other media outlets are chiming in on Obama's side. And there wouldn't be anything wrong with that if if weren't for the fact that McCain is right and Obama wrong.

Joe Klein (Time/CNN "Swampland")

I was going to give John McCain a break on his Al Qaeda-Iran gaffe yesterday. After all, it wasn't a Kinsleyian gaffe--the inadvertant blurting of an unacceptable truth--it was just a plain old slip of the tongue, a brain fart. Surely, McCain knows that Iran is Shi'ite and Al Qaeda is Sunni...

Klein is too smart to confuse Sunni and Shiite like that. A very smart man.
Apparently "Swampland" is located in the fever swamp of the left.

Agence France-Presse:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain touts his foreign policy expertise at every turn, but he has given Democrats ammunition against his experience by wrongly saying Iran trains Al-Qaeda members.

The Telegraph (UK):

Democrats have seized on a slip-up by John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, in which he appeared to be confused between Sunni and Shi'ite groups in Iraq by suggesting that Iran was backing al-Qa'eda.

Hilariously, the Telegraph is one of the papers that reported the news that McCain conveyed. I guess using one's own archives to check the accuracy of a story is no longer standard practice. O-ba-ma. O-ba-ma.

The press is gaining momentum with this error. I wonder if any mainstream media sources will pick up on their mistake?


Update:
Eli Lake and the New York Sun are on the case (hat tip to Power Line). My post, though dated March 19, wasn't posted until the 20th because of some minor computer problems.

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Obama takes advantage of press malpractice

Reporting by dingbat Caren Bohan:

FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Wednesday for misidentifying Iraqi extremists, saying he fails to understand the war has emboldened U.S. enemies.
(Reuters)

That's the lead. You don't get the details until page two of the Web version.

At a news conference in Amman, McCain said Iran supported the Sunni group al Qaeda in Iraq, until he was corrected by a colleague. U.S. officials believe predominantly Shi'ite Iran has been backing Shi'ite extremists in Iraq, not al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group.

It was the first stumble of note that McCain has made since clinching the Republican presidential nomination early this month, and Obama quickly pounced on it.

"Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shi'ite, Iran and al Qaeda," Obama said.

Here's the video. The "colleague" is Independent (Democrat) Joe Lieberman.



Thanks for nothing, Lieberman.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are training hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters to carry out attacks against coalition forces throughout the Middle East.

The Iranian government has been providing a safe haven for fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror group since they were forced to flee Afghanistan in late 2001.

But Western intelligence agencies now report that the Iranians are training Al Qaeda fighters at centers that were previously used by other Islamic militant groups, such as the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
(The New York Sun)

This was a Reuters story. Aren't they supposed to know what's going on in the world? McCain was exactly right and they apparently didn't bother to check the facts.

Iran is seeking to take control of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terror network by encouraging it to promote officials known to be friendly to Teheran, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
(The Daily Telegraph)

Shhhhhh! Don't tell Reuters or Obama.

The official said US commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies, that Iran hoped would trigger a political mutiny in Washington and a US retreat. "We expect that al-Qaida and Iran will both attempt to increase the propaganda and increase the violence prior to Petraeus's report in September [when the US commander General David Petraeus will report to Congress on President George Bush's controversial, six-month security "surge" of 30,000 troop reinforcements]," the official said.
(The Guardian)

Some might wonder why the Shiite regime in Tehran would assist the Al Qaeda insurgency. Apparently they find it difficult to imagine that Tehran would like to see the U.S. move out of Iraq so that they can expand their sphere of influence into weakened Iraq.

Why that would be a mysterious or difficult to conceive motivation is a mystery to me.

Is it any wonder that people do not trust journalists?

This is a faux pas by Obama, not McCain, unless we count McCain correcting himself at Lieberman's prompting. Either way, the Obama attack on McCain is unfounded. Another mistake for the rookie, though the press is thus far covering for him.

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