Matthews the Non-Liberal Says Surge Goal Is 'Ethnic Cleansing' [Video]

January 15th, 2007 8:03 PM

As everyone knows and Andrea Mitchell has confirmed, Chris Matthews is no liberal. Don't let the fact that he describes the goal of the impending Iraq surge as "ethnic cleansing" fool you.

Matthews discussed the impending surge into Baghdad on this evening's Hardball with David Ignatius of the Washington Post and Gary Berntsen, the former CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora.

Said Matthews, speaking of the role of US troops:

"If they are forced to do patrol duty in the streets of the Sunni areas where they are expected to basically be part of the ethnic cleansing because they will be shooting at Sunnis, they are going to get shot back at."

See video here.

Ethnic cleansing of Sunnis? The essence of the surge strategy is that the joint US/Iraqi force will be going into all neighborhoods, specifically including Shia neighborhoods such as Sadr City controlled by the eponymous Moktada.

But "ethnic cleansing" has such a nice ring to it. For non-liberals like Chris, that is.

Mark was in Iraq in November. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net