Where do these guys come off? Lies, damn lies and the war in Iraq

I’m not a big fan of Chris Matthews. While I think some of the criticism he takes is overblown — he didn’t support the war in Iraq, for instance — he does tend to be a blowhard who is overly concerned with the game of politics and not the policy.

That said, I was lying in bed last night unable to sleep and uninterested in the overnight sitcoms, so I tuned him in just in time to catch his slapdown of Ari Fleischer and the bizarre exchange between Mother Jones’ David Corn (a great journalist) and Frank Gaffney.

Gaffney, a former defense department official, still lives in the neocon fantasy land and apparently believes that facts are pesky little things that are no different than opinions. His argument — and he made it loud and continuously, rarely leaving more than a second of dead air into which Corn could jump — was essentially that the intelligence supported George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, even though it didn’t. It was strange to see him make his case — and Fleischer making his case — for war six years on and well after the public has turned away from the various lies and half-truths pushed to get things started.

I think that any television executive watching last night who still considers Gaffney a useful guest should find another line of work.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet