Elanso

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) distanced himself from chief strategist Charlie Black’s comments that a terrorist attack would be a “big advantage” to the McCain campaign. “If he said that, and I do not know the context, I strenuously disagree,” McCain told reporters.

Later in the day on MSNBC, former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke told Keith Olbermann that if McCain was serious in his outrage, he should fire Black immediately. He also criticized Black for basically encouraging terrorists such as Osama bin Laden to manipulate American politics:

CLARKE: Well, Charlie Black knows a lot about politics but he doesn’t know much about terrorism. If he did, he would know that Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and all the al Qaeda leadership, watch U.S. politics very closely. We’ve even had cases where in interviews, bin Laden quoted opinion polls from European public opinion polls.

So, yes, they understand that they can manipulate politics as they tried to in the Spanish election with the attacks there. And to say, “Yes, you can manipulate our politics, come and do it,” is an invitation that the McCain campaign shouldn’t be anywhere near.

Watch it:

Unfortunately, conservatives are often putting out such invitations. Last week, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton said that if Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is elected president, the United States would “simply have more embassy bombings, more bombings of our warships like the Cole, more World Trade Center attacks.” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) claimed that such a result would lead to terrorists declaring “victory in this war on terror.”

Transcript: (more…)