Matthews on Russert and the Iraq War

This is the video segment from Keith Olberman's Countdown of 06/13/08 in which Chris Matthews made at least an oblique criticism of Tim Russert's handling of the buildup to the Iraq War. I say "oblique", because I think he was trying to praise Russert. But what he actually says is that Russert got conned by the administration's phony pitch on the most phony part of their case for war, the scare talk about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear weapons.



Bob Somerby (Daily Howler 06/17/08) notices that this segment seems to have at least momentarily disappeared from MSNBC transcripts as well as Lexus/Nexis, although the MSNBC video feed embedded here is still active as of this writing. I did my own transcript of that portion of this video. This is Matthews speaking, beginning at about 1:08:

One other thing. And it may be tricky to say this and I- I'll say it.

When we went to war with Iraq, he and I had a little discussion about that. And this is where he is Everyman. This is where Tim is Mr. or Miss America, or Mrs. America. He is Us as a country.

I said, "Why are you c-, why-, how can you believe this war is justified?"

And he said, "The nuclear thing. If they have a bomb that they can use, we gotta deal with it. We can't walk away from that."

And that to me was the essence of the- what was wrong with the whole case for the war. The- they used, they knew the argument that would sell with Mr. America, with the regular guy, with the true American patriot. They used the argument that would sell, that would get us into that war.

Tim was right on the nail. He was Us, the American people. And that to me is just something that's been comin' into my head the last couple of hours. When Tim and I had that conversation.

That that was the thing that sold America, and the guys who wanted the war used that one thing that would sell the patriot in Tim Russert. And as a journalist, he was also an American. I think we gotta always remember that.

'Cause when people watch Meet the Press and they watch nightly news and they watch us, you and me, Keith, they expect us to look up to the country and to look out for it in terms of finding the truth.

"Find the truth for us." There's a purpose to finding the truth. It's for the good of us all. And Tim never forgot that th-, the purpose of truth and getting at it was for the good of us all. We needed the truth. And, boy, did I look up to him.

Tags: chris matthews, iraq war, tim russert