McCain Stumbles by Mixing Up Iraqi Groups Aided by Iran

McCain's campaign asserts that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the candidate best equipped to lead the country in a time of international peril, and he has staked his bid in particular on his deep knowledge of the military and political situation in Iraq.

This makes his stumble worrisome. The mistake was big -- not as bad as President Ford saying Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination -- but certainly not insignificant. According to Keith Olbermann, he made the mistake some five times before being corrected by Sen. Joe Lieberman, and thus it would not appear to be just an oversight.

This would seem to leave one of two possibilities. McCain was ignorance of a major matter involving Iraq and Iran, or McCain is slipping.

From The Washington Post:

Sen. John McCain, in the midst of a trip to the Middle East that he hoped would help burnish his foreign policy expertise, incorrectly asserted Tuesday that Iran is training and supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq, confusing the Sunni insurgent group with the Shiite extremists who U.S. officials believe are supported by their religious brethren in the neighboring country.

The United States has long asserted that elements of Iran's security forces have been training and supplying weapons to Iraq's Shiite militias. Iran is an overwhelmingly Shiite country whose government has applauded the emergence of a Shiite-led government in Iraq but has denied supporting Shiite militias inside Iraq.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a predominantly Sunni militant group that has been blamed for deadly mass killings of Shiites and attacks on U.S. forces.
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This is a link to McCain's statement.