He insists he wasn’t referring to a soldier. Here’s the clip from this morning’s Andrew Wilkow Show, cut and posted by Wilkow’s producer, Nick Rizzuto. Still a jerky thing to say of a foreign contractor, as McHenry’s office acknowledges, but if he’s telling the truth, what he was trying to do is describe the ironic flash of pique he felt when the guard denied him access to the gym. Why ironic? Because the building was hit by a mortar minutes later. (Watch this video of McHenry, shot on the scene as the gym burns in the background.) Your call, then. Either he was speaking semi-facetiously about a guy who ended up saving his life by doing his job or else he’s still pissed after the fact that he wasn’t allowed in to use the treadmill and get blown to pieces.

Update: How’d lefty bloggers come to the conclusion that McHenry was talking about a soldier and not a, ahem, “mercenary,” in their charming parlance? They wanted it to be true so they read it the way they needed to. Tom Maguire explains.

Update: Fearless prediction at 7:47, thirteen minutes before “Countdown” airs on MSNBC: McHenry will be the “worst person in the world” tonight and the lie that he was referring to a soldier will be gleefully repeated.