rssMcCain Eats French Fry Sandwich, Jokes About Killing Iranians
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 at 7:24 pm
- 4 Comments
PITTSBURGH — As I sat at the bar at Primanti Brothers, the iconic Steeltown eatery, sipping a 23-oz. Yuengling and trying to wrap my hands around a giant, greasy, french-fry laden behemoth of a sandwich, my phone vibrated with news from the latest pool report. It seems Sen. John McCain, and his wife, Cindy, visited the flagship Primanti Bros. store on Carson Street — I was at the Market Square location — where the two mingled with the crowd and took questions from the press before dining on french-fry stuffed cheese steaks.
This, in and of itself, is unremarkable. However, McCain managed to turn a pedestrian local campaign appearance into a newsworthy event. After he dismissed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s latest call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from his country, a reporter from The Associated Press asked McCain about increasing American cigarette exports to Iran. McCain replied, “Maybe that’s a way of killing them,” after which he quickly added, “I meant that as a joke.”
Funny, right? With Sy Hersh’s recent piece in The New Yorker about possible American covert military activity in Iran and an administration with short time, a short fuse and maybe a score to settle, joking about killing civilians in a hostile country is probably not the most reassuring thing a presidential candidate could be doing right now. Maybe I’m overreacting, but if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a similar joke about killing Americans, something tells me McCain would not find it so funny. I guess he didn’t learn anything from the infamous “Bomb Iran” incident after all.
4 Comments
Comment posted July 9, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
This is exactly what America must avoid, bellicose statements like, “wiping Israel off the map.” Where do you draw the line between (poor taste in) humor or insidious empty threats?
Saber rattling only increases the belligerence of Iran’s hardliners and undermines America’s credibility among our allies.
Mr. McCain should offer a formal apology to the Iranian people, the most pro-America Muslim nation, and America’s greatest ally in Iran against Islamic fundamentalism.
Comment posted July 9, 2008 @ 7:34 am
This is exactly what America must avoid, bellicose statements like, “wiping Israel off the map.” Where do you draw the line between (poor taste in) humor or insidious empty threats?
Saber rattling only increases the belligerence of Iran's hardliners and undermines America's credibility among our allies.
Mr. McCain should offer a formal apology to the Iranian people, the most pro-America Muslim nation, and America's greatest ally in Iran against Islamic fundamentalism.
Comment posted September 12, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
Maybe you are over reacting? I would say Definitely. Killing them with cigarettes?
Maybe he should have said he would let the air of his tires and kill them with global warming.
Comment posted September 12, 2008 @ 9:21 pm
Maybe you are over reacting? I would say Definitely. Killing them with cigarettes?
Maybe he should have said he would let the air of his tires and kill them with global warming.
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