Matthews Attacks Conservatives for Criticizing Obama Moments Before He Bashes Bush

November 5th, 2010 8:51 PM

If you needed any more proof of liberal media bias, you got a perfect example on Friday's "Hardball."

A few minutes after host Chris Matthews excoriated conservatives for criticizing Barack Obama for spending so much money on his upcoming trip to India, the MSNBCer, with a big smile on his face, launched into a two-minute attack on former President George W. Bush (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with George W. Bush. You know, years ago, a member of the British cabinet got caught in an embarrassment and, of course, denied it, to which his accuser said, well, he would, wouldn`t he? Denial is the norm of political life, especially of the awful.

President Bush says the Iraq War was justified because it prevented another 9/11. Well, 9/11 was a network operation involving cells in Germany, heavy recruitment in Saudi Arabia and, of course, flight training down in Florida. The one country not involved in 9/11 was Iraq. The attack of 9/11 was conspired among a web of jihadists, religion fanatics without loyalty to a particular state.

Saddam Hussein of Iraq, on the other hand, was a Baathist, a secular leader of a country.

So, how would a war with Iraq prevent another attack from worldwide elements of al Qaeda? Or is Bush arguing something that cannot logically be denied for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with logic with discernible cause and effect, with anything tangible.

Is he saying that the war which caused 77,000 lives was justified because he thought it would prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11? In other words, if the connection between 9/11 and Iraq, which no one else has ever been able to substantiate, was in his own mental wiring, he`s guiltless before history.

Well, there`s a reason that Bush lives in this solipsistic world, a world you built not of sheer human knowledge of cause and effect or of tangible fact even, but of what George W. Bush sees out there.

He describes the sickening feeling that came to him when the arriving coalition forces in Iraq couldn`t find any of the biological, chemical, or nuclear materials that he said were the reason for our going to war there. But if the weapons weren`t there, how did the Iraq War prevent another 9/11? Is Bush really arguing that the motive of that war was, by itself, would stop us from getting hit again? That we got protection from terrorism by fighting a war that turned out to kill tens of thousands of people that we stopped the use of terrorist weapons even though we didn`t find them?

Does he really live in this world or this "house of mirrors" where what he intends to be the truth is the truth?   

Bear in mind that this came a few minutes after Matthews attacked conservatives for criticizing Obama. Here are some highlights as reported by Ken Shepherd earlier:

You know, this just proves that right-wing journalism is an oxymoron. [...]

First of all, I consider this whole thing disgustingly ad hominem. It's an attack on our president, and sometimes I do think there's an ethnic aspect. [...]

I don`t know, but I do think there`s a personal aspect to this, and I mean personal about this president, this attack on him. And they were going to keep doing it, and I`m telling you, this is what it`s about now. It`s about personal destruction of the president, regardless of his policies. [...]

You don't have to check facts anymore, you just run anything you want as long as it's disparaging of our president. And he is our president.

Minutes later, Matthews called our former president solipsistic and illogical while accusing him of not living in this world.

I guess the "Hardball" host only considers someone "our president" if there's a "D" next to his name.

As for who's being solipsistic and illogical, if Bush believed the point of invading Iraq was to prevent another 9/11, and we are now over nine years without another such devastating attack on this nation, wasn't Bush right and it is Matthews that is living in his own house of mirrors?