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You’d have to give Chris Matthews sodium pentathol to find out why we invaded Iraq

This is mind-numbing. Last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews interviewed Joseph Wilson, Michael Isikoff, David Corn and Thomas DeFrank about Bush’s memoir. They harped on a lie in the book: Bush’s claim that he was upset when he learned that there were no WMDs in Iraq. As if he were surprised.

But as Matthews pointed out, and the guests agreed, that’s not why we went to war. WMD was merely how the project was sold. And for 15 minutes or so Matthews railed about wanting to know the reasons that we went to war. He walked up to the edge. He mentioned neoconservatives, and he mentioned all the Middle East experts who surrounded Bush when he himself knew nothing about the Middle East. But as to the reasons why, he left a complete blank, and it was left to Joseph Wilson to offer his own estimate of why: because we wanted to change the politics of the Middle East, we wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East. The neoconservative lines. Yes and why did they undertake this project?

At the end of the segment Matthews said he wants to give Bush sodium pentathol to learn the real reason we went in there.

This is self-imposed ignorance. You will never learn why from a leader, particularly one who wouldn’t know an idea if it peed on his leg. Analysts have to do their digging and offer their insights. Matthews is a man of insight; and the answers are all around him, in Tom Friedman’s statement to Haaretz that it was 25 neocons who started the war, in Joe Klein’s statement that it was Jewish neocons who came up with a benign domino theory of the Middle East, in the neocons’ own pronouncement that the road to Jerusalem lay through Baghdad, in Clean Break in which Perle, Feith, and Wurmser say that removing Saddam will help Israel to “secure the realm,” in Phil Zelikow’s statement that the unnamed reason was the threat to Israel, in Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper and book, in Glenn Kessler’s revelation that Condoleezza Rice regarded the war as a “way to bring democracy to the region and help Israel”, and on and on. And yes, Doug Feith’s father lost all his family in the Holocaust and Feith is a Zionist.

Chris Matthews knows these reasons darn well why, he just can’t say them.

And what about this from Justin Elliott at Salon, reading Bush’s book:

“He was grateful to Elie Wiesel: For the famous Holocaust survivor’s strong support for the invasion of Iraq war. Bush writes:”

 

One of the most fascinating people I met with was Elie Wiesel, the author, Holocaust survivor, and deserving Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Elie is a sober and gentle man. But there was passion in his seventy-four-year-old eyes when he compared Saddam Hussein’s brutality to the Nazi genocide. “Mr. President,” he said, “you have a moral obligation to act against evil.” The force of his conviction affected me deeply. Here was a man who had devoted his life to peace urging me to intervene in Iraq. As he later explained in an op-ed: “Though I oppose war, I am in favor of intervention when, as in this case because of Hussein’s equivocations and procrastinations, no other option remains.”

Was this important? Obviously. And how different from Tom Lantos, Holocaust survivor in the House, comparing Saddam to Hitler? Did Zionism play any role in these men’s thinking? Does a bear spit in the woods?

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