The candidates go to war: the three main players in the race for president--especially Republican hopeful John McCain--really do not seem to understand the intricacies of the war in Iraq.

• Author: Howell, Llewellyn D.
• Position: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

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IT IS ASTOUNDING and disheartening to watch the presidential candidates wander through the increasingly desolate Iraqi landscape over the period of this extended campaign. With all the information that is available and the now-long history of the war, it would seem like they and their advisory staffs would have learned something substantive. Yet, that certainly does not appear to be the case.

Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) has stumbled continuously through the simple facts of the war. His mistaken portrayal of an Al Qaeda-Iran alliance during interviews in his Middle East trip was far more than a slip of the tongue. He did it twice, both recorded, stating that Iran had been training Al Qaeda insurgents. He was corrected the second time by Sen. Joe Lieberman (the self-described Independent-Democrat from Connecticut), and only then did he correct himself.

Critics, including Sen. Barack Obama (D.Ill.), were quick to point out that this was a fundamental misunderstanding of more than just the differences between Sunni (these include Osama bin Laden; Al Qaeda itself; the offshoot Al Qaeda-in-Iraq; most Arabs; the Wahhabi fundamentalist Islamic sect that is sponsoring much of extremist Islam; and Saudi Arabia, the longtime enemy of the Iranian-Persian historical empire) and Shia (the huge majority in Arab Iraq as well as the larger majority in Persian Iran, but a minority in the Middle East and the Islamic world generally). It reflects a lack of personal knowledge of the dynamics of ethnic rivalries in the region and perhaps beyond.

In questioning Commanding Gen. David Petraeus before the Senate Armed Services weeks later, McCain again confused Shi'ite and Sunni in identifying A1 Qaeda in Iraq. He clearly does not understand the difference between them. Any candidate for the presidency of the U.S. should be able to make this distinction by now. McCain also confused the facts about who called a halt to the fighting in Basra, letting his prejudices get a hold of him in claiming that it was Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who backed down. Actually, the ceasefire was negotiated by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki through Iranian mediators. McCain claims that his many trips to Iraq make it "ludicrous" that he would not understand the situation there. His perpetual fumbles demonstrate otherwise. Can he, at age 71, with a long lifetime of thinking only about Cold War military solutions, still learn?

The Bush Administration...