This seems like a technicality (McCain’s campaign said he “misspoke” and immediately corrected himself). Watch this, though. Joe Lieberman (Lieberman!) had to correct him in front of cameras because he kept making the same mistake in all the interviews while in Jordan. It wasn’t just one instance of mis-speaking. He has made this fundamental error repeatedly, and the political aspects of defeating terrorism are as important (or more important) than the military aspects of the campaign.

I’m with Kevin Drum, btw. Hillary has a golden opportunity to say that McCain isn’t qualified to answer the 3 A.M. call.

AW sends me this screen grab of Fox News, which is the headline on FoxNews.com right now.

The irony is that the military won’t comment without a unit designation and time frame, and Fox News spoke to the Captain that Obama cited and he confirms he told Obama’s campaign the story being referenced. Not only that, but other folks have looked into this and found out that this is a more common occurrence than people like to talk about. I give you Phil Carter, who’s actually served in our current mission, and he relates other anecdotes as well. ABC News also confirmed the story, though I was reluctant to link to them without other confirmation.

Update: I corrected one detail above, that the captain spoke to the campaign, not Obama himself, about this. As Obama himself said, he heard from a captain, but didn’t speak to him.

Via Kevin Drum, we find this posting by a college professor:

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11.

The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

The biggest single defining event of our time and people don’t know who was behind this. These are college students. The Bush administration has, I guess, done their job by confusing the world.

Do you know anyone who believes Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks? Please tell me this is a limited phenomenon…

I don’t have time to do this justice, so consider this an extended “wire” post. Basically, violence is trending downward, but it’s unclear whether this is a result of U.S. strategy or other events on the ground, namely ethnic cleansing being mostly complete or pacts between competing Shiite factions. So, we’ve got good news and reassuring trends. This could mean good things or it could mean nothing. I’m hoping for the best.

Without any more commentary, here are the links:

• Obsidian Wings: Clearer signs of success, plenty of clouds in the forecast
• Balloon Juice: And If My Aunt Grows Balls
• TPMMuckraker: U.S. Reconciliation Chief Says Sunnis Could Return to Insurgency

Good reading, and all full of good links to even more.

So, watch the video, and then if you’re Iran, or any other country, imagine how you would interpret the stupidity involved. It’s a minor point, and I’m not claiming Iran is benevolent, but we should be accurate about our criticisms. Credibility matters.