MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this question: Did John McCain boot it by not really being clear about who our guys and women are fighting and dying for to fight over there?
E. STEVEN COLLINS (radio talk show host): You know, Chris, it's so interesting to me to see him stand there and have to have a United States senator in Lieberman remind him that it's the Shiites, and to just see him not know that at this critical stage in the campaign, because the whole Middle East trip was really about him showing to be presidential. I mean, you look at that and you say, this looked great, and he doesn't know what is essentially an important fact about that part of the Middle East.
MATTHEWS: You're wincing?
CARLSON: Well, look, I've spent a lot of time with McCain talking about foreign policy. I don't agree with McCain's foreign policy, by and large. I don't. I think it's utopian. But the guy knows a lot. This is ridiculous. He misspoke.
MATTHEWS: OK. Second alternative. Second assessment. Did he do it on purpose? Did he conflate on purpose, like the terrorists with 9-11 and Iraq? Did he purposely say we're facing a threat --
PAGE: No, no.
CARLSON: Boy, no. I actually don't give McCain credit for that level of guile. I just don't -- I don't think that's him.
MATTHEWS: So it's a verbal error, that's all?
CARLSON: Absolutely.
PAGE: I think it's a verbal error. And, you know, most Americans can't tell you the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, either, so I'm not sure --
MATTHEWS: Well, they're not leading the campaign for war either.
PAGE: True. But there's no question he actually knows a lot about this area, and I think, you know, he travels a lot, he campaigns --
COLLINS: Yeah, but he made this mistake more than once.
MATTHEWS: I don't know how you can say that Al Qaeda is being trained in Iran. Go ahead, E. Steven.
COLLINS: No, no, no. He made this mistake more than once. And I don't know. It's like, first of all, fundamentally, I'm curious as to how he can be so sure that most of America wants us to remain for 10 or 20 or 100 years in Iraq, and run on that, and to be to so close to the Bush administration. It's amazing to me.