Meantime, the McCain campaign is not campaigning. The senator from Arizona wants to be clear that, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, he’s merely visiting the Middle East to take a lay of the land. It’s a good thing, too, because McCain has repeatedly confused Shia and Sunni Iraqis and Iranian militants with Al Qaeda— which is no small thing given our propensity as a nation to invade countries we have associated, rightly or wrongly, with the Bin Laden band. At a press conference Tuesday in Jordan, it took Sen. Joe Lieberman leaning into McCain’s ear to get him to stop repeating the words “Iran” and “Al Qaeda” in the same breath. McCain finally comes out with an… “um… Iran is training extremists, not Qaeda members,” as if it were a simple oversight or vocabulary choice, the whole incident signaling that to McCain on some level it’s pretty much all the same.

Will this kind of repeated bungling dilute impressions, particularly among the press, that McCain is “The Man” when it comes to matters of national security? It should. McCain has based his entire candidacy around his expertise on our military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. While Obama and Clinton are talking about Pastor Wright, McCain is taking the opportunity to be photographed seriously treading the stubby desert ground of the Middle East, making important-sounding pronouncements— their being confused pronouncements only perhaps making them seem more familiarly presidential— because it’s the setting and the seeming concern you convey that has mattered for these past five years and not the grasp you have of the related realities!

Reporter to McCain in embattled Sderot, Israel, yesterday: “Do you agree with President Bush’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?”

McCain: “If I come back here as a candidate, I will articulate my plans… Very frankly, I’m just here assessing the situation.”

Let’s hope Lieberman accompanies McCain on any planned fact-finding missions he might be forced to take to Wall Street. Lieberman can lean into his ear there too and explain what the hell is a Bear Stearns and how a deregulated loan market brought out “extremist groups” in strip-mall offices in every town in the country— attacking our way of life and our American dreams!

Click into the image to watch Keith Olbermann dissect the McCain comments at MSNBC.