After news of McCain’s statement in Jordan today became public, the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) jumped on it as if it was a horrible mistake that wipes away his foreign policy experience.

Well, earlier today I linked a NY Sun story backing up McCain’s original claim that Iran is arming Al Qaeda. The story is from November 2006 and reports on U.S. intelligence showing Iran training not only extremist groups, but Osama’s group itself.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are training hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters to carry out attacks against coalition forces throughout the Middle East…

Many of those trained in Iran then travel to countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where they use their new skills to carry out attacks on coalition troops.

Now the Weekly Standard has more on this.

So now a bunch of bloggers, and even some of the networks, are pouncing on McCain. They point to the fact that Iran is Shiite and al Qaeda is Sunni, so they could not possibly cooperate. Because Senator McCain doesn’t know this “fact,” he is supposedly ignorant of what is going on in Iraq and in general.

Of course, they’re so eager to jump on McCain to take the pressure off of Obama and Rev. Hate Whitey, they didn’t care to fact check whether or not McCain was originally accurate. Joscelyn writes:

More generally, the theological differences between Iran and al Qaeda have never been a serious impediment to cooperation. For example, I wrote a lengthy essay on the topic of Iran’s cooperation with al Qaeda going back to the early 1990’s. And in a recent piece, I detailed the evidence cooperation between Iran’s chief terrorist, the late Imad Mugniyah, and al Qaeda…

The 9-11 Commission found extensive evidence of collaboration between Iran and al Qaeda. For example, the Commission concluded (p. 61): “The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations.”

He also points out that not only did the Clinton Administration note a relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda, The Washington ComPost itself even reported on it.

Bottom line: McCain shouldn’t have taken his statement back. The media and Left were wrong, he was right.