Last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews gave LA congresswoman Jane Harman political cover by allowing her to sound off against the Bush Administration on Iraq. She blamed it for “enormous mistakes” in the conduct of the war and for taking its “eye off the ball.”
That’s shabby. Matthews, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Swaziland who has attacked the Iraq war plans, sometimes with courage, knows that Harman was one of the leading “liberal hawks” in the House who supported this war, though lately she has been running away from her record. He shouldn’t let her off the air without a good spanking: What mistakes of judgment did she make? What does she regret? How much did concern for Israel’s security figure in the Dem-hawks’ support for the war?
Harman is in a Liebermanlike primary with an antiwar candidate in California: former teacher Marcy Winograd. Shouldn’t Winograd get equal time?
P.S. The claim that the Bush Administration made huge mistakes in this war is the favored burrow of the liberal hawks. The mistake was the idea they bought with such enthusiasm of invading a country that did not attack us. 500,000 troops wouldn’t have made a difference. Why don’t they blame the military while they’re at it?
