Editorial: Walking through Baghdad

Thursday, April 5, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

Sporting heavy body armor, flanked by more than 100 soldiers and with U.S. combat helicopters patrolling overhead, Sen. John McCain strolled through Baghdad's central market last weekend in an effort to show that the Bush administration's security plan is working.

Iraqi citizens who work or shop in the Shorja marketplace criticized the Sunday stroll by the Arizona Republican and presidential candidate, calling it nothing more than a publicity stunt.

After the event, McCain characterized the sprawling marketplace as safe. Rep. Mike Pense, R-Ind., strolling with McCain, likened it to "a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

An Iraqi merchant's reaction was caught by The New York Times. "What are they talking about?" Ali Jassim Faiyad said. "The security procedures were abnormal! They paralyzed the market when they came. This was only for the media."

Other Iraqi citizens told the Times that insurgents' attacks on Baghdad marketplaces such as Shorja have forced people out of business and dramatically altered the way people shop. One February attack on Shorja involving three bombs left more than 61 people dead and even more wounded.

McCain's visit came two days before President Bush, in a Rose Garden news conference, renewed his threat to veto any war funding legislation that called for a timetable to withdraw American troops. Both the House and Senate have approved measures that fund the war effort, but also call for an eventual troop withdrawal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., criticized the president for his stubborn refusal to see that congressional members who support troop withdrawals "represent the American people's views on this failed war."

And it is, indeed, failing. McCain's farcical market stroll with what amounted to an entire company of U.S. soldiers showed that to the world. The Iraqi people who are struggling to hang on in the face of almost daily attacks by insurgents know it, as do the Americans who are paying for Bush's folly with their lives and taxes. War supporters such as McCain, however, remain astoundingly ignorant - even when walking through the heart of a bombed-out, war-torn city.