Yesterday, after Sen. John McCain embarrassed himself by falsely claiming on multiple occasions that Iranian operatives are “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back,” right-wing bloggers argued that “he shouldn’t have taken his statement back.” Abandoning his “straight talk” and trying to please everyone, McCain made a variation of the claim in his statement on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war today:

By structuring his sentence as such, McCain is trying to have it both ways. To the critics of his gaffe, he can say the aside about Iran is referring to “Shia extremists,” but he can also tell his right-wing critics that it refers to “al Qaeda.”