Thanks to all of the tipsters who let us know about this segment -- keep 'em coming!
Tonight, on Hardball, Chris Matthews unboxed another round of dispute over the remarks made on yesterday's show by former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. At issue was one of Fleischer's closing remarks:
Fleischer: "After September 11th having been hit once how could we take a chance that Saddam might strike again? And that's the threat that has been removed and I think we are all safer with that threat removed."
Since then, Fleischer's apparently been trying to extricate himself from the obvious thing one is supposed to infer - that the antecedent to Saddam striking "again" was 9/11. This was the sort of thing you'd have hoped Matthews would have leapt all over yesterday, as it was unfolding. Instead, we got Frank Gaffney and David Corn yelling at each other, and Matthews declaring, "I want to see more history written about this." GREAT.
That remark of Fleischer's was galling, but hardly extraordinary. That a Bush White House factotum linked 9/11 to Iraq is about as noteworthy as the sun coming up at dawn. In a perfect world, I'd have preferred to see some dispute thrown on this remark from yesterday:
FLEISCHER: Chris, I repeatedly said from the podium -- and you can find the tape and roll it for your audience -- that Saddam does not have nuclear. We said he would try to obtain nuclear and that's what we believed. We do know he was trying to obtain biological and chemical. As for your argument of Ahmadinejad, there are some people who believe in dictator versus dictator and that's how to have a balance of power. I can't dispute that's one strain of foreign policy. But on balance I'd much rather not have Saddam in the world, much have Libya without nuclear weapons and syria without the nuclear weapons it was developing. Three nations, two of which were trying to develop nuclear no longer have done so under George Bush's watch. I believe that's made for a much more safe and secure Middle East. Iran is the last remaining big problem.
To suggest that a "much more safe and secure Middle East" has been left to us, circa 2009, is ABSURD. And it's similarly inane to capture Iran as the last remaining problem. At the moment, there are extant problems of staggering complexity in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurdistan, and Palestine/Israel. The Taliban have resurged on the Afghan/Pakistan border. Al Qaeda is hiding out in safe havens in the same regions. Hezbollah has improved its hand. Hamas has recently sparred with Israel. Israel's political identity has shifted away from being amenable to the two-state solution. And Iraq has ended up a client state of Iran. That's the end result of Bush Middle East policy.
Anyway, two days of Matthews-Fleischer followed by Matthews-Two Guys Talking About Fleischer have made for some great pyrotechnics. But rarely is it asked: IS OUR PUNDITS LEARNING?
[WATCH.]
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