C'mon, Jonah, Have Another Cup of Coffee!

Goldberg on the AP and McCain's worrying about a "Tet"-style offensive in Iraq:

John McCain plausibly worries we might have another Tet on our hands. Amazingly, the AP plays its part by characterizing Tet — albeit subtly — as a military victory for the enemy, which is surely not McCain's point. From the AP:

Tet, a massive invasion in 1968 of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnamese, inflicted enormous losses on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and is regarded as a point where public sentiment turned sharply against the war.

This version even made it into the scrawl (or is that scroll?) at the bottom of the screen on Brit Hume's Special Report last night. Of course, in a sense, Tet was a military victory for the North Vietnamese because it achieved — or helped achieve — the aim of forcing America out of the war. But it was a psychological victory, a propaganda victory. On the battlefield alone the Tet Offensive was a bust for the North. If you read what McCain says it's this sort of operation he's worried about, some showy morale crushing spectacle that "proves" there's no hope. He's not worried about a major military victory for the enemy. It's amazing the AP can't capture the nuance there.

Emphasis added. "Can't"? How about "won't"? And why this should be so amazing is a mystery to me.