Reply #11: Tweety was extremely anti-war in 2002 [View All]

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

These articles that he published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002 prove it. In them, Matthews spoke out against the coming war and the need to stop it. He was highly critical of the neocons and what he called the "oil-patch veterans", Bush and Cheney. But about five months later, Phil Donohue was fired and Tweety suddenly flip-flopped completely:


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/01/IN133269.DTL

"...So I'll say it: I hate this war that's coming in Iraq. I don't think we'll be proud of it. Oppose this war because it will create a millennium of hatred and the suicidal terrorism that comes with it. You talk about Bush trying to avenge his father. What about the tens of millions of Arab sons who will want to finish a fight we start next spring in Baghdad?

Well, that's it for now. You know where I stand. ..."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/24/IN164155.DTL

"...A U.S.-Iraqi war has advanced well beyond the "contingency" phase. The last barrier of restraint, Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been broken by the will of a Bush administration partnership of ideology and oil that is now set on war. I wonder if anything can prevent this military move against Baghdad on which so many who hold power have set their hearts.

Start with the neo-conservative faction. Op-ed pages are full of anti- Hussein war drums. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol has made a crusade of getting U.S. troops onto the streets of Baghdad. He and fellow Iraq hawk Robert Kagan write a regular column in the Washington Post pushing war, as does fellow neo-conservative Frank Gaffney Jr. for the Washington Times. Also on an Iraq jag is William Safire of the New York Times. When the neo-conservatives cannot blame Hussein for Sept. 11, they try tagging him with the anthrax letters. When that doesn't work, they again try to connect him to the World Trade Center and Pentagon horrors.

(...)

The neo-cons casually compare Iraq to the Third Reich, Israel to forsaken Czechoslovakia and skeptics to Neville Chamberlain, but their evidence for attacking Iraq doesn't hold up. The anthrax letters came from a source far nearer to our shores than Baghdad. And CIA chief George Tenet testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the "jury's still out" on whether Hussein had anything to do with Sept. 11.

Oil is a much more powerful motive for an Iraq attack.

Iraq is the Mideast's No. 2 supplier of oil, behind Saudi Arabia. The United States, swallowing a quarter of the world's production, is the world's No. 1 consumer. This country is led by a pair of oil-patch veterans who share a sense of entitlement about the world's oil reserves regardless of what flag flies above them. Bush and Cheney see Hussein's chief weapon of mass destruction as his threatened grip on the Persian Gulf oil tap.

This confluence of interest between ideology and oil has put us on the road to Baghdad. It's time for us to realize that American principles have precious little to do with this costly prospective military campaign. ..."