Categorical Aperitif

You may have already seen "The Iraq Follies," Greg Mitchell's review of "eighteen things you've already forgotten about the media's flawed coverage of Iraq," but be sure to check it out if you haven't. The first item on his list remains one of my personal favorites:

The day before the invasion, Bill O'Reilly said, "If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation; I will not trust the Bush administration again, all right?"

The mystery isn't why you didn't follow through on that promise, Bill; the mystery is why anybody continues to watch a pompous lying jackass like you. But this is the one that Democrats had better not forget come this summer and fall:

On March 27, 2007, John McCain, referring to the supposed calm settling on Baghdad, said, "General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee." This turned out to be pure bunk, but McCain quickly visited Iraq to try to prove his overall point. There, the Arizona senator went from the ridiculous to the maligned, touring a Baghdad market and claiming all was safe—while troops surrounded him and helicopters twirled overhead. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) likened the scene to "a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Either John McCain actually thinks that it's normal to take half a Marine battalion and air support along with you when you go shopping, or he's a dirty stinking liar who should have this shameful anecdote hung around his neck like a dead albatross. Straight talk!