How John McCain and Mike Pence created a high value target

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On Monday, Passport noted that shots were heard ringing out in Baghdad’s Shorja market one day after Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mike Pence visited there. They held the market up as an example of the country’s improved security environment. Pence even went so far as to compare the market to “a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” saying he was able to “mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis.” Pence later claimed he was unaware that the stroll through the market required a security force of 100 soldiers and four helicopter gunships.

Now we learn that yesterday:

21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

McCain and Pence’s comments may be the most irresponsible statements by any U.S. political figure since Colin Powell’s speech before the U.N. Security Council in 2003. It may be true that security in the market had moderately improved since January, but McCain and Pence have now turned it into a high value target. How sad.