Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 1:05 AM Pacific

WaPo: Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska

This race is about Obama vs. McCain, but some comments by Sarah Palin are so ignorant they cannot be ignored. Ignorance is not strength. We cannot afford four more years of stupid, dishonest foreign policy.

Update and bump (9/12, 1:05AM): The McCain campaign is freaking out over the WaPo article, no doubt partly inspired by the desire to distract attention from Palin's monumentally ignorant Bush Doctrine gaffe.

As a reminder, Sarah Palin yesterday said the goal of the war in in Iraq is to:

"defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

Based on that comment, Anne Kornblut of the WaPo noted:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

That's utterly uncontroversial, right?

Nonethless, in a fit of 2:31AM irony, McCain-land deputy communications director Michael Goldfarb declared Kornblut's observation a "lie." His complaint:

Nevermind that her son's unit will, per the Post's report, be deployed to Northern Iraq, one of the last refuges of al Qaeda in Iraq. It seems we are to assume that this group, despite sharing a name and leadership with the group responsible for the 9/11 attacks, has nothing at all to do with those who "planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

Can somebody please tell me what in the hell Goldfarb is trying to say? The way I read his post, he's saying the exact same thing that Palin said which is the exact same thing that Kornblut said.

So WTF is up with him? Maybe he stayed up too late and just stopped making sense. This is after all only the second time I've ever seen a post from Goldfarb later than 1AM East coast time.

Anyway, to recap, here's what I think is going on:

Palin said the war in Iraq was about defeating "the enemies who planned and carried out" 9/11.
Anne Kornblut said Palin had linked 9/11 and Iraq, an idea that even George W. Bush has abandoned.
Michael Goldfarb agrees that Palin had linked Iraq and 9/11, but decided to call Kornblut a liar anyway.

Man, these guys are just lying too much. They can't even keep their head straight on.