McCain Minimizes His al-Qaeda Endorsement and Argues for a Vicious Double Standard

Early this morning I linked a WaPo story on al-Qaeda's endorsement of John McCain. Apparently, the McCain campaign is falling all over itself to gain separation and to twist the endorsement as a criticism of Barack Obama. According to Think Progress:

The McCain campaign swiftly disavowed the statements, arranging a conference call with top national security advisers Randy Scheunemann and James Woolsey. Woolsey declared that the post was not an endorsement but was in fact clearly intended to boost McCain’s opponent, by providing a “kiss of death” to McCain’s campaign:

WOOLSEY: This individual knows that the endorsement of people like him is a kiss of death, figuratively and literally. So it seems to me it’s pretty clear that, by making this statement, that he wants — it would be a good thing for McCain to be president, he’s clearly trying to damage John McCain, not speaking from his heart.

However, just minutes earlier in the call, Scheunemann went through a laundry list of “bad guys” who support of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), cited dubious quotes from Hamas, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, and Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya. In fact, the McCain campaign pounced on Hamas’s endorsement of Obama in March. “If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly,” McCain declared ominously.

When a reporter pointed out the contradiction, Woolsey replied that the difference was that McCain’s endorsement came from “simply an individual blogger,” saying that this extremist’s true concern about a McCain presidency “seems very clear to me, frankly.” So when a terrorist supports McCain, it’s a head fake, but when one supports Obama it’s a legitimate issue voters should “make judgments” on?

Keep in mind that Woolsey attended Yale Law School, so he's fairly adept at twisting messages to mean the opposite of what they seem to intend.