Peak Senator McCain--or merely McCain's Pique?

This blog has long concerned itself with Senator McCain's flip-flops and misstatements. It is in the interest of consistency that I note that, for some appalling reason, Senator McCain has decided that the five Taliban (decrepit greybeards with going on a decade-plus of prison-mileage on them) were not merely the worst killers ever (in a world that has boasted Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot, no less) but that these fellows were actually behind 9/11.

Can we just all agree that is nonsense? Would it even make sense that those guys would still be alive today to trade if that were verifiably the case? Because I don't see it. I honestly think if we could connect those guys to 9/11, they would be ashes right now. Here's what has actually been said about them:

Retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who was the former top prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, told MSNBC on Saturday that the prisoners released in exchanged for Bergdahl were so inconsequential that he did not even know who they were.

“My role as chief prosecutor was to review the information we had on the detainees to determine which ones we could potentially bring war crimes charges against,” Davis recalled. “When I saw the names of the five individuals, when they were reported last weekend, my first reaction was, ‘Who are they?’”

“I never saw the names before, which means there was not enough information to even make it on our list of potential prosecution,” he explained. “To trade five of them for a U.S. service member, in my estimation, and I’m often critical of President [Barack] Obama, I think they struck a pretty good deal.”

And their bios, as best as could be obtained by CNN, bears this out. They are just guys. Their operational utility has eroded.  Many of their old contacts by now are dead or captured or won't want anything to do with folks who have been in US custody that long and may still be monitored. As they will. C'mon.

This looks to me like Senator McCain doubling down after his flip-flop regarding whether he ever supported this trade in the first place was exposed. Note that talks about exchanging something very like or exactly like these very five Taliban guys has been in the works not for the 30 days notice some congress folks are grousing about--but a couple of years back!  Are they pissy it happened right now? Or do they feel like they've been "gotcha'd" over the desertion angle? (Which is dumb, because FOX News military correspondent Ralph Peters brought it up straightaway in 2009 right after the guy was captured--this doubt was out there. If I knew about it, they certainly could have. )

Or were they just not paying attention? Because oh, this is a thing that happened. When the White House offered a briefing on what was up with the fierce urgency of get Bergdahl the hell out of captivity now--some of these US Senators accepting US taxpayer money for some kind of job walked out before it was over, including Senator McCain, who whined, "I learned nothing."

Did he intend to? Because it has not escaped my notice that when there was a briefing on Benghazi, McCain and his good buddies decided to blow off a meeting with the White House to go ahead and greet some cameras instead. And when the White House wanted to engage in some straight talk over Syria, some Senator wanted to play video poker.

Seriously--if being a Senator bores the hell out of John McCain and he can't be bothered with facts, he can go ahead and make a full-time job out of mugging for cameras and I wouldn't blame him, because it looks like a good gig. It beats what he's doing right now, which looks like half-assing it.