Topic: Horowitz
In a July 3 FrontPageMag article, Ben Johnson writes: "I missed Chris Matthews' comments on the Scooter Libby pardon, but I'm told it sounded as if half his face were paralyzed." Johnson also asserts that Matthews "bellows for much of the Left, which wants to see a lynching."
In fact, Matthews was not hosting "Hardball" last night, though he did call in with his reaction to the Libby verdict, a fact Johnson doesn't mention -- and really, everyone sounds "as if half his face were paralyzed" over the phone. What Matthews said was hardly "bellowing" for a "lynching":
He was President Bush's political ally, so I certainly understand that he sympathizes with Scooter Libby and his family. The human aspects of this are totally understandable. And it may well be that Libby has suffered enough already and will suffer in the future... you could argue that the punishment has been exacted without Libby going to prison.
[...]
The misinformation in this country [that "that 40 percent still think that Iraq attacked us on 9/11"] remains after all these years -- because of the propaganda before we went to war. The results are still in effect. We’re still under a misunderstanding of the nature of why we went to war. That’s the tragedy here.
And the idea that Matthews "bellows for much of the Left" isn't true, either.
Additionally, Johnson references Plame's alleged "potentially perjurous testimony before Congress," linking to Byron York's May 25 article asserting that a recently released memo shows that Plame lied when she said that she didn't "recommend" or "suggest" her husband, Joseph Wilson, for a CIA misson to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq was trying to buy uranium. But as we've demonstrated, the memo actually backs up Plame's assertions; the idea for sending Wilson to Niger came from CIA officials, not Plame.
