(From the Huffington Post)


Late Wednesday night, news made its way from the other side of the Atlantic that John McCain, in an interview with a Spanish outlet, had made a series of bizarre responses to a question regarding that country's prime minister.

"Would you be willing to meet with the head of our government, Mr. Zapatero?" the questioner asked, in an exchange now being reported by several Spanish outlets.

McCain proceeded to launch into what appeared to be a boilerplate declaration about Mexico and Latin America -- but not Spain -- pressing the need to stand up to world leaders who want to harm America.

"I will meet with those leaders who are our friends and who want to work with us cooperatively," according to one translation. The reporter repeated the question two more times, apparently trying to clarify, but McCain referred again to Latin America.

Finally, the questioner said, "Okay, but I'm talking about Europe - the president of Spain, would you meet with him?" The Senator offered only a slight variance to his initial comment. "I will reunite with any leader that has the same principles and philosophy that we do: human rights, democracy, and liberty. And I will confront those that don't [have them]."

The implication seemed fairly clear: McCain was refusing to commit to meet with Zapatero, the "socialist" party leader, whose country is a member of NATO and intricately involved in many of America's global financial and national security objectives.

Already, several explanations are being offered to explain McCain's statements. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo opined: "The great majority [of those who have weighed in] appear to think the McCain was simply confused and didn't know who Zapatero was -- something you might bone up on if you were about to do an interview with the Spanish press. The assumption seems to be that since he'd already been asked about Castro and Chavez that McCain assumed Zapatero must be some other Latin American bad guy. A small minority though think that McCain is simply committed to an anti-Spanish foreign policy since he's still angry about Spain pulling it's troops out of Iraq."

whole story : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/18/bizarre-mccain-remarks-ap_n_127346.html

Hmm. Well, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm just going to assume that McCain's odd response was due to him not knowing who the guy is. :p

Even people as important as McCain, Obama, and even good old GW don't know everything and everyone. They are human too.

Even people as important as McCain, Obama, and even good old GW don't know everything and everyone. They are human too.

Riiiiiiiight.

Except that had it been Obama or some candidate other than the sainted Republican who did not --after being asked three times- know the difference between Latin American leaders and the leader of Spain, it would as we speak be all over the news outlets and the e-mails what an idiot Obama was/how he is not qualified/look-look-they-said-Palin-didn't-know-anything-well-Obama-doesn't-either.

Face it; it's a bit troubling that ANY of the presidential candidates would not know at least on SOME superficial level a bit about Europe and its countries/leaders and what significance there is to their relationship to the U.S. .

Hmm. Well, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm just going to assume that McCain's odd response was due to him not knowing who the guy is.

Even scarier would be that he may have known one defining word about the leader of Spain (i.e., -- socialist) and signaled a refusal to meet with him on those grounds.

McCain --when you begin to study the guy and many of his statements-- seems to be fairly ignorant in the area of foreign relations that have nothing to do with military confrontation. I would not want a wizened, dishonest putz like him as dogcatcher, much less president.