Download Download

To his credit, Chris Matthews has been pretty consistently anti-Iraq War since the beginning (a fact that makes his embarassingly overt man-crush on George Bush and Fred Thompson all that much more puzzling). So it should be no surprise that Matthews wanted to discuss the fact that none of the top tier Democrat presidential contenders would promise to have troops removed from Iraq by the end of his or her first term.

So Matthews brings on Jim Moran (D-VA) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) to discuss the possibility of pulling the troops out of Iraq. Guess which one came equipped with knowledge of the situation on the ground and the geo-political forces at work and which one came equipped with talking points? Even Matthews got fed up at one point when it became obvious that the only thing Trent "Nuclear IEDs HERE!" Franks knew was the word "freedom" and had no concept of Sunni vs. Shia.

The question that he quoted at the beginning is from Drew Westen at The New Republic:

The question Democrats have never asked Republicans since the war began is the only one that really matters: Would you send your own child to die in Iraq? And if so, have you done everything you can to convince your children that, if this is truly the war you say it is--for our freedom, for our very way of life, to keep the terrorists "over there" so that we don't fight them "over here"--they should drop their lucrative investment banking careers and be all they can be in Baghdad?

As Jim Moran said, spot on.