McCain violates basic security precautions on Obama Iraq trip

The blogosphere is about to erupt with outrage over John McCain appearing to violate basic security precautions when he told a campaign fundraising luncheon that his opponent, Barack Obama, would probably be in Iraq this weekend with a small group of US senators.

Reuters explains:

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator's trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials' visits to Iraq in advance.

McCain may have really stepped into it this time.

He has centered his campaign around his purported expertise in national security matters -- but he continued to make a series of small and large blunders and factual errors when discussing Iraq and the middle east (including insisting on several occasions that Iran was working directly with their own sworn enemies, Al Qaeda -- who consider the Iranian Shi'ia to be "less than dogs" and worse than infidels -- because they are apostates in the eyes of the Sunni-dominated Wahabists in Al Qaeda).

Now, he will be seen as having either inadvertantly violated basic security -- in the benign view -- or, worse, will be seen as drawing a big target on Obama and the other senators.

More soon. No doubt.