In a major speech on the war in Iraq today, presumptive GOP nominee John McCain said that the Iraqis have split into two factions, Shiites and Sunnis, with a sinister goal in mind.

“My friends, the Iraqis have divided themselves into these two groups for one reason and one reason only,” Sen. McCain told an audience in a retirement village in Scottsdale, Arizona. “They are trying to confuse me.”

Sen. McCain said that although the two groups of Iraqis are “well-nigh impossible” to tell apart, he vowed to commit U.S. troops to Iraq “for as long as it takes for me to figure out just what the difference between Sunnis and Shiites is.”

“If it takes 100 years, 1,000 years, or a billion zillion years, we will stay there until I can tell Sunnis and Shiites apart,” the Arizona senator said.

Sen. McCain reserved his harshest words for the Shiites, who he said were trying to confuse him by sometimes referring to themselves as “Shiites” and other times as “Shia.”

“What’s that all about, anyway?” he asked. “Stop clowning around and call yourself one thing.”

Sen. McCain seemed alarmed when a reporter asked him whether he believed that the Kurds, the third major group in Iraq, were trying to confuse him as well.

“The Kurds?” he said. “Who the heck are they?”

Elsewhere, a carjacker in Los Angeles stole a tank of gas but left the Mercedes.