On the same screen where a young John McCain, recently freed from captivity in Vietnam, salutes smartly, Kevin Drum details McCain "shoveling the bullshit once again." Drum details McCain's contortionist act Friday, a failed attempt to extract himself from his claim that the Iraq War was in essence fought for oil:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) clarified his comments Friday after suggesting the Iraq war was motivated by U.S. reliance on foreign oil. His explanation: He was talking about the 1991 Persian Gulf War, not the current conflict.

...."No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons," McCain told reporters.

Of course, this wasn't a helpful week for John McCain when it came to his pronouncements on Iraq. On Thursday, McCain marked the five year anniversary of President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq by claiming, "I thought it was wrong at the time." Unfortunately, McCain's gambit was interrupted in the form of a June 2003 interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, in which McCain responded to Cavuto's assertion that "many argue the conflict isn't over" by firing back, "Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?"

All in all, McCain's Iraq troubles this week were probably unavoidable, given his staunch commitment to a permanent American presence there and his unbroken reign of error about the war itself. But advertising on one of the most widely-read liberal blogs is one misstep the McCain camp could have spared itself. McCain idiocy watch, indeed.

(Note: The image above was slightly modified so that the McCain ad itself and Drum's "McCain Idiocy Watch" piece could be displayed in a single crseen shot. When I originally viewed it, the McCain ad started at about the half-way point of Drum's blog entry.)