OK, I'm starting to feel a little bad for the guy. As reported in [URL="http://www.mercuryserver.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57582"]this thread[/URL], McCain incorrectly stated in an interview with Katie Couric that the surge helped usher in the Anbar Awakening, when in fact, the Anbar Awakening took place well before the surge was even conceived.
In response, McCain spokesman [URL="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/23/mccain-charged-with-making-iraq-gaffe/"]Tucker Bounds asserted[/URL], "If Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda."
Unfortunately and obviously unbeknownst to the McCain camp, that actually happened:
[QUOTE]WASHINGTON, Sept 16 [2007] (Reuters) - When U.S. Army Col. Sean MacFarland, working in his Pentagon office last Thursday, heard that a tribal leader had been killed in Iraq's Anbar province, his first reaction was: "Please don't let it be Sattar."
His fears proved well-founded. A bomb had killed Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the founder of a movement of Sunni leaders who turned against al Qaeda in Iraq, who are also Sunnis, and transformed Anbar from one of Iraq's deadliest areas into one of its safest.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKN1519972020070916[/url]
As a credit to McCain, however, I have no idea how the guy is still standing. If Obama were making these types of mistakes, this regularly, it's all we'd be hearing about.