On last night's Hardball on MSNBC, Chris Matthews did his best to keep morale down here on the home front when he brought on anti-war parents of a fallen soldier and asserted American lives were being "wasted" on Iraq like "pouring water into a sand hole." The following is just some of the exchange. Read on for more.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Mr. Schroeder, why do you think we`re in this war? What do you think is the real reason for this war in Iraq?
PAUL SCHROEDER: Well I really don`t know why. I could guess, which might be unfair. But I would guess it has to do with oil. It has to do with deposing a dictator that we used to love and came to hate.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
A little later in the conversation Matthews wondered if our soldier's lives were being wasted on a hopeless cause:
MATTHEWS: Rosemary, let me ask you about the, what is your feelings about this war and the goal of trying to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people? And do you think that was a smart thing for us to try to do?
PALMER: It was a very naive thing for us to do. You don`t go to another culture and try to impose yours and expect it to work. You know we`re not Iraqis. We don`t have the same culture. And while I understand that we`re a multi-cultural nation, we don`t act like it sometimes. We act like the whole world thinks exactly the way we do.
MATTHEWS: Do you think that the war is going to get any better now that your son, I mean, you’ve paid the ultimate price? And, by the way, thank you. I don`t know what it means to say thank you for your service, except I mean it. The courage of these young guys and some women over there is unbelievable. And I guess everybody wonders about the conduct of the war, whether they`re being, these lives are being wasted or these lives are being put to good purpose. What is your feeling about that now?
PALMER: Well, I personally believe that, since it is not working, then we have to make a change, that it is not worth the sacrifice if it is just more bodies on to the heap. You know like the President Bush said, he wanted to stay the course and honor the memory of the ones who died by continuing to fight. If it didn`t work before, why does fighting more, you know, you do the same thing over and over, that`s, expecting a different result is, I think, the explanation of insanity.
MATTHEWS: Yeah. Well, the way you describe it, it is like pouring water into a sand hole on the beach and having it drain right through and start over again. It seems like a repetitive process that doesn`t seem to be getting anywhere.
PALMER: Exactly.
