Merely a gaffe?

As many now know, during a trip to the Middle East, "100 years" falsely linked Iran to Al Qaeda in Iraq. He made the connection repeatedly before his pal Joe Lieberman leaned forward to correct him. First of all, it's worth taking a minute to read the item on Media Matters about the repeated mistakes McCain has made in his apparent area of expertise -- foreign policy. Here's a key passage:

But it wasn't the first time McCain made the same false statement. During an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt just one day earlier on March 17, McCain had said, "As you know, there are Al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq."

And how have the media responded? Has there been wall-to-wall coverage on this major foreign policy gaffe by a politician that claims to be "ready from day one," according to his campaign website? Hardly. As NBC News political director Chuck Todd observed, "[H]ad Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over." Some reports even offered possible excuses for McCain. In a post on his Political Punch blog, ABC News' Jake Tapper wondered, "Jet lag?" after noting Lieberman's correction of McCain.

MSNBC's First Read now points out that McCain has made another "gaffe." From the report:

In Israel yesterday, NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

McCain made the incorrect statement during a press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak after touring the Israeli city of Sderot to view buildings damaged by Hamas rocket fire. McCain was discussing the numerous rock attacks on the city. "Nine hundred rocket attacks in less than three months, an average of one every one to two hours. Obviously this puts an enormous and hard to understand strain on the people here, especially the children. As they celebrate their version of Halloween here, they are somewhere close to a 15-second warning, which is the amount of time they have from the time the rocket is launched to get to safety. That's not a way for people to live obviously."

Purim is not the equivalent of an Israeli Halloween, Appelbaum notes. The holiday -- although a joyous one -- commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."