Chris Matthews is an Idiot

On Hardball last night Chris Matthews quoted Robert Gates and said that he was "stunned" by the admission that "going into Afghanistan and Iraq was wrong." That constituted, even for Chris Matthews, an astonishing leap from what the man actually said to what the listener heard.

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates quipped.

I added the underline, just to be sure you noticed it, because Chris seemed to have missed it entirely. He ranted at length as if Gates had said "any defense secretary past, present or future." Gates was talking about advice for conditions which exist today, and Chris took it to be his advice for the conditions of a decade past.

It's not that I don't think that the defense secretary who advised sending in the land armies nine and eight years ago doesn't need his head examined, preferably with an electric drill, but Robert Gates didn't say that.