McCain's Trips to Iraq Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

It's important to remember a few things when looking at McCain's latest condescending challenge to travel to Iraq with Obama.

1. This is a political stunt because there is no way the secret service would ever ever let this happen.
2. As Michael Ware pointed out on CNN, you don't get a very genuine picture of Iraq from spending two days in the Green zone. 
3. The last time John McCain was in Iraq, he confused Shi'a and Sunni and on numerous times claimed that Iran was training and Al Qaeda in Iraq forces, which makes one wonder about the value of this education.
4. The time before that McCain embarrassed himself by traveling to a Baghdad market with 100 troops, 3 Blackhawk helicopters, and 2 Apache gunships to try and make a political point that he could freely walk around parts of Baghdad.
5. If McCain is so concerned with talking to General Petraeus then maybe he shouldn't have missed his last two confirmation hearings and walked out pretty early from the Petraeus Crocker hearings last month.

It's also worth pointing out that the Democratic primary clearly played role in Obama's inability to leave.  If the primaries had ended after March 4 in Texas and Ohio, he probably would have taken a trip very similar to the one McCain took at the time.