Jordan would be safer if Saddam still in power - Matthews' guests agree.

Just caught this on MSNBC, Chris Matthews' program Hardball, covering the breaking story of the triple hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan.

I could hardly believe my ears! Matthews is often braver than many in the MSM and asks questions others wouldn't, but this time he surprised me even so when he asked at least two (and maybe it was three) of his expert guests if not only Jordan but many other places and people in the world would be safer from terrorist activities if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq.

Both guests I heard clearly answered this question with stuff like: "Oh without a doubt." I'm pretty sure these guests were foreign affairs specialists and/or security experts of some sort; sorry for not being better aware of their names or titles but they sure sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

One said that Saddam had been one of "our best allies" when it came to fighting terrorists, in fact! The other pointed out that the terrorist bombers in Australia who were caught SAID OUTRIGHT that they were outraged because of the occupation of IRAQ -- NOT Palestine but Iraq specifically.

Anyone else hearing any of this?

I'm really proud of Chris Matthews for playing some "hardball" with the bitter truth about this....

Besides, GENBC makes tons of money off of the Iraq War.

sound the least bit "good" because of the prevailing attitude at DU that's so fervently against the corporate mainstream media. *sigh*

I do remember very well that Chris Matthews was quite strongly against the war in Iraq all during the run-up to it while everyone else in the MSM was just buying the Bush line without any serious questioning of it. I thought Chris took a pretty damn courageous stand about it, sounding a bit like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness against the madness that he saw building, and it seems to me that he really hasn't changed his tune about that since then, either.

I don't have a particular fondness OR TRUST for ANY of the MSM anchors or reporters, and I know better than to count on them maintaining the spine to say negative things about the Bush administration. Yet many of them are doing so anyway nowadays, and surely we should respond positively when they DO, right?

Again ... *sigh* ... I just don't know yet how to couch things properly to say them here I guess....

exact opposite of what is happening now.

yes, i listened. It was great.

I'm shocked, (really), they'd carry this story; it's such a rebuke.

but they aren't likely to win many friends around the world by just "offering our condolences," IMO!

I have to say, the very first thing I thought when I heard the breaking news of the Jordan hotel bombings and how many were killed and injured was, "Oh man ... this is gonna hit the Bush administration hard."

Some of the reasons I reacted that way are obvious (at least to DUers ;)), but I want to spell out one of them anyway.

I'm beginning to think that the world at large may be looking at ANY terrorist bombings in their own communities that are related to the Islamist causes and carried out by jihadists as at least indirectly the fault of the Bush administration.

Sixty-seven dead so far in Amman, Jordan, a country that had before now done such a good job of interrupting planned terrorist attacks that they had not suffered such a serious blow before today. Australia recently enduring a major terrorist attack of this type for what is I think the first time on their soil (though Bali came extremely close to them and killed many Australians).

It sounds to me like Zarqawi or others in leadership roles in the Al Qaeda "movement" are listening to the instructions Osama bin Laden sent out in his recently published letter -- to be careful about bombing the devout Muslims in Iraq or they risked turning mainstream Muslims against their cause.

I think OBL knows that Iraq works great for them as a training ground, but then they need to "fan out" and launch major attacks successfully damaging countries that were not the object of their wrath before Bush invaded Iraq. Hit the allies who have helped the U.S. in Iraq, making it clear to the whole world that the ONLY reason the jihadists are now targeting THEM is because of Boosh.

And I have a sense that somehow just as the tone and tenor of the public mood in the United States is now turning perceptibly against GWB and profoundly against the Iraq occupation/war, so will the mood throughout other nations' populations be shifting inexorably to the point where BUSH will be blamed for terrorist attacks in their homelands every bit as much as the bombers themselves! They will know, of course, that he didn't instigate and order the suicide bomber attacks himself, but that they are occurring because of his actions nonetheless.

And if that perception shift happens, then Bush&Co have only just BEGUN to feel what it can be like to be hated and despised around the world and increasingly an unwanted pariah everywhere he turns....

just wanted to repeat that line for my own pleasure. :)

Not that he did a great job before it of speaking out, but intellectually he knows it was a fucked up policy. And I don't even blame him for a lot of the sensationalist bullshit that comes out of his mouth. He is trying to get ratings for his show. But he does need to put more serious stuff out there, maybe in a blog like Olberman has, and advertise it during his show. Its going to take more work to get the sheeple interested in hard facts again.

and that's because he's been all over the CIA Leak investigation case. So I must have missed the "sensationalist" programs you're talking about (thank goodness). ;)

But my memory of his behavior during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq is a bit different from yours. I recall Chris Matthews virtually beating a drum of CAUTION against going to war in Iraq. Seemed like every day he pressed his guests hard about the very items that are being examined so closely today but that so many swallowed unquestioningly at the time: the "slam dunk" case for WMD's in Iraq, the Niger yellowcake story, the aluminum tubes debacle, and others. Every piece of B.S. the Bush admin put out there to boost its case for invasion, he would question loud and long.

It was obvious and persistent enough to my ears that I wondered at the time why he was going so against the flow of the MSM. I was surprised the GE execs were allowing him to march to a different drummer and drill guests about the veracity of Bush's claims about WMD's.

I'm new enough here I don't know why some of you call him "Tweety," but frankly I think he was so clearly anti-war BEFORE the invasion of Iraq as well as after it that he might be considered a bit less harshly by DU standards.

I'm sure someone will set me straight on this :) but I know what I heard and saw on Hardball back before the war when I was watching and listening to Chris Matthews every day.