Nepal. Tibet. Whatever.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What is it with these Republican foreign policy "experts" and their repeated stumbles?

John McCain claims to be the candidate with the most experience and expertise, and yet can't even get the whole Sunni-Shiite thing straight.

And yesterday, on ABC's This Week, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley mixed up Nepal and Tibet -- or, rather, talked about Nepal when what he really mean was Tibet. And this happened over and over again -- Think Progress has the video and part of the transcript.

Now, sure, Hadley knows better, and, sure, it can be easy enough to make such mistakes, and, sure, he may have been thinking about Nepal after hearing the previous guest, Jimmy Carter, talk about the historic elections in that country, but I'm not sure such excuses suffice.

Hadley's the NSA, after all, and This Week is an important show on a national network, and the situation in Tibet is rather pressing at the moment -- not to take anything away from the pressing situation in Nepal -- what with China's brutal crackdown and the upcoming Olympics and all (which Carter also talked about). It's one thing to get it wrong once or twice. But repeatedly -- as many as eight times?

You think he'd have done better -- that is, gotten it right. Or is that too much to ask?