John McCain, NBC, and Iraqi Insurgents All Make a Fool of John McCain

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John McCain got so much flack and ridicule for his “white Americans could stroll through some parts of Baghdad” comment/gaff that he took to the streets to Baghdad to prove his statment true and save his credibility. He ended up doing more damage.

McCain took a walk through a bazaar and followed the event with a press conference, but NBC used its coverage to point out what McCain was trying to hide: his “stroll” came with the aid of 100 American soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships. The blogosphere had a field day with this.

And now people are just piling on. The NBC reporter who put out the report of McCain’s massive protection entourage went on Imus this morning and noted that with the security force McCain had “even Paris Hilton could ride a bicycle in a bikini through Anbar province.” And to make things worse, the terrorists are laughing at McCain too. They just unleashed the largest single attack since the Iraq War began in 2003, killing 152 in a single suicide truck bombing in Tal Afar.

Oh, and that bazaar McCain walked through, with his heavily armed white American friends? It got lit up by snipers right after they all left.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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