John McCain's April Fool's Joke

Last week on CNN, GOP Presidential candidate John McCain claimed irritably that Americans "weren't getting the full picture" when it came to Iraq, weren't being told how much the violence was decreasing, weren't being told how stable the capitol city had become.

"There are areas in Baghdad where you can walk around freely," McCain asserted, drawing an incredulous and flabbergasted retort from a CNN reporter living in the besieged city.

Sunday, when confronted about the claim at a press conference in the Green Zone, McCain reiterated his statement, saying he’d just come from such a trip through an open-air market.

What McCain failed to mention is that, in Baghdad, walking around freely means donning a flak jacket to stroll through the same market where a car bomber killed over 80 people just months ago, situated just three minutes from the security of the heavily guarded American sector, with a contingent of more than one-hundred, heavily armed U.S. Army soldiers, and three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships hovering overhead. Just a walk in the park.

An April Fool's joke? Or just a fool?