actually, first i need to give a little background. last week, senator john mccain claimed that the violence in iraq was being exaggerated, saying that there are neighborhoods in baghdad that were safe enough to go for a walk in. (earlier he claimed that general petraeus goes out everyday "in an unarmed humvee", something that petraeus' people immediately denied, noting that he is always heavily armed when he travels around iraq).
so to prove his point, mccain showed up in iraq and went for a stroll through a baghdad market with the media in tow. except that the media also noticed that mccain wore a bulletproof vest, was surrounded and guarded by over 100 american soldiers, 3 blackhawks and 2 apache gunships. and there was a mortar attack in the green zone that same day, and a sniper attack in the same market where mccain visited just after he left. thus mccain's attempt to highlight how safe iraq is, instead underscored how dangerous it is.
one of the reporters who pointed this out was CNN's michael ware, who was in iraq with mccain. this morning matt drudge claimed that ware heckled mccain during a live press conference. right blogistan sprang into
one problem though: the press conference was filmed and the video contains no sign of any heckling. at one point ware had his hand up, but the press conference ends before he is called on.
but IMHO the funniest thing about the story is how the right hyped something that not only didn't matter all that much (who cares if mccain was "heckled" at a press conference?), but is utterly irrelevant to the far more serious issue that mccain lied when he said baghdad was safe and that his attempt to demonstrate the safety of baghdad completely backfired. unlike the alleged heckling, the safety of baghdad two months into the "surge" is a real issue relating to bush's iraq policy. and a presidential candidate trying to fool the public into believing baghdad is safer than it really is, is also a real issue.
just like real heckling would be, the heckling hype was just a distraction. did the bloggers on the right who hyped this not see that? did they really think the heckling story was important for some reason? or did they know it wasn't as important as the real state of iraq, but did it anyway in a cynical ploy to distract from something they found to be embarrassing?
