The day after John McCain visited a marketplace in Baghdad in order to demonstrate how things have improved in Iraq, 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound, and shot dead. There are two ways to interpret this. In one scenario, the attacks are completely unrelated to McCain’s visit, and are simply a morbidly ironic and coincidental reminder of how wrong McCain is. In the other scenario, the workers were targeted in order to make a point that those who commit the violence are not under control–in which case, John McCain is responsible for getting those 21 people murdered, all because he said something stupid and then decided to go on a campaign-related PR junket to make up for it.

Either way, McCain is an idiot; the difference is a question of how much blood is on his hands. His trip already diverted resources away from controlling the violence he was supposedly pointing out was being quelled, and the trip in itself proved exactly how wrong he was about the safety of Baghdad. There was no point to the trip except to try to score some points with voters after he made a gaffe, and what he did at the very least caused disruption, and at the most, caused a good many deaths.

I’m beginning to wonder exactly how much better than Bush McCain would turn out to be.