By Arlen Parsa on 5-TDB Blog

On Saturday, John McCain proved he had no idea what he’s talking about. It wouldn’t be the first time– remember that time when he said he said he didn’t know if condoms helped prevent the spread of STDs?

This time however it was regard to a fellow 2008 presidential hopeful. McCain criticized Barack Obama for saying he would never nuke anyone– which was not what the Democratic Senator said at all.

Talking to reporters after the meeting, McCain took a jab at one of his rivals for the White House on the Democratic side, calling comments by Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., about the use of nuclear weapons against al Qaeda, the “height of foolishness.”

“I think it’s naïve to think that if somehow we declared to the world that we would never use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, it wouldn’t have any effect but to place American security in greater jeopardy,” McCain said.

What Obama actually said was that he wouldn’t use nuclear bombs to fight terrorism in Afghanistan or Pakistan– something that experts agree is a perfectly reaosnable stance (Obama’s campaign later said “Frankly we’re surprised that others would disagree”). Reported the Washington Post after Obama said he wouldn’t try to use nuclear weapons to attack al Qaeda:

U.S. officials rarely rule out nuclear attacks as a matter of diplomacy, preferring to keep the threat as a deterrent. Yet several foreign policy experts said Obama was essentially right: It would be unwise to target an individual or a small group with nuclear weapons that could kill civilians and worsen the United States’ image around the world.

Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar, said Obama “clearly gave the right answer.”

“He’s certainly right to say you would never use a nuclear weapon to get Osama bin Laden,” he said. He said that if intelligence officials were able to locate bin Laden with the precision required for a nuclear attack, they would also be able to catch or kill him by more conventional means that would not signal to the world that using nuclear force is acceptable.

Did McCain even read Obama’s actual remarks?