Discussing the Bush legacy yesterday, Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball came up with a good metaphor:
Matthews: I found it interesting that the president, who admitted he was wrong about WMDs as a justification for war, called it a "disappointment." If a police officer in the line of duty in the middle of the night shoots a fellow because he thinks he's got a gun, it turns out he's got a wallet, your reaction if you're a police officer is not that you're disappointed he didn't have a gun, it's shame that even if it was a technical mistake that you've made, that you've killed a guy without reason. Why does the president use the word "disappointment" when he says they didn't have the WMD to justify us going in? I think it's an odd use of the word.
It was fun watching Tony Blankley squirm as he mostly sought to evade Matthews' point. Tom Andrews of Win Without War, also on the program, clearly made him squirm even more, as he shot down Blankley's GOP talking points like Annie Oakley in a penny arcade. You could almost see him thinking: "Hey! This usually works on Fox!"
Later, in the segment following, Salon's Joan Walsh backed up Matthews' metaphor:
Walsh: And finally ... the point that you made earlier, about a cop who shoots an unarmed man, does not then regret that the guy did not have a gun. He regrets that he killed an innocent man. And he regrets that he didn't take the extra 30 seconds maybe to ascertain whether the guy was armed.
Yeah, but George the Frog Killer Bush is not your ordinary cop.
