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Chris Matthews minced no words introducing the neocon opposition to Hagel the other night:

Let me start with this, the folks who quack for Iraq have a knack for bad ideas. They pushed us into war ten years ago, they made their case with lies and half truths and flimflam. We had to get revenge for 9/11 so let’s attack Iraq even though it was al Qaeda that hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We have to attack Iraq because we’ve got evidence they have weapons of mass destruction, WMD, even if there’s no evidence they have nuclear weapons and it would turn out they didn’t have chemical or biological either. We have to attack Iraq, the hawks, they promised it would bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad it was said. What we’ve got instead is the loss of even a chance for peace in the Middle East. Well, tonight the people who sold America the Iraq war are out selling more warfare in the Middle East. They want military action against Syria, they want war waged against Syria, and they want Chuck Hagel out of the way. Why? because he’s just the kind of guy who will ask, what should we have asked when W took us to war in Iraq? Is this really the smart thing to do for us?

How blunt and refreshing. Matthews interviews Sam Stein, political reporter at the Huffington Post, and reads from Stein’s Hagel article The Combustible Politics Of Obama’s Clearest Break From Bush before asking him what the neocons have in store for us. Note Stein’s last sentence here:

Matthews: [quoting Stein]: “The hardline GOPers and the neocons have unfulfilled plans — plans for Syria, Iran, and the greater Middle East. These plans, which envision almost endless conflict in the region, are in the main opposed by people such as Hagel.” The sense that the vision is for almost an Orwellian war in Oceania as it was in 1984, endless war in the Middle East is that the prospect that the neocons hold for us? Stein: I don’t know if it’s that stated but it certainly is underlining a lot of what we’re hearing about Hagel now. A lot of the media attention has been on some of the past statements involving the Jewish lobby as he called it, involving the gay ambassador to Luxembourg but those are sort of side shows and what this comes down to, and what Hagel’s critics would even admit, is the future of Obama’s foreign policy. Chuck Hagel in many ways represents the clearest break yet by this administration from the George W. Bush era foreign policy. Keep in mind the president continued a lot of these Bush era programs. We haven’t really had a substantive comprehensive conversation about what went wrong in iraq. Chuck Hagel’s nomination represents a clean break and I think that’s scary for a lot of neocons.

A Clean Break happens to be the title of an infamous neocon policy document originally prepared for the Israel government designed for Israel’s security . Given the topic, if Stein’s wording was coincidental, what a slip of the tongue it was. Here’s Wiki’s description as well as a couple of the critiques they listed. It almost seems as if we’re still following the agenda of these bomber boys, as George Bush mockingly called Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.

(Wiki’s bold)

There’s an amusing wrap up at 10:20 as Matthews asks why people listen to Bill Kristol on foreign policy, called him “a charmer, he’s brilliant, a great networker” and played a clip of Kristol on C Span’s Washington Journal practically guaranteeing that the Iraq war would be over in two months. “Dead wrong”:

Kristol: Whatever else you can say about this war, let me make one point, George Bush is not fighting this like Vietnam. We don’t need to — Guest: Saddam may be… Kristol: But it’s not going to happen. Host: Let me take a call — Kristol: This is going to be a two-month war not an eight-year war. [back to Hardball] Matthews: It’s going to be a two-month war in Iraq. A hell of a predictor. Like Dick Morris making his predicts and Karl Rove. Dead wrong. What is the genius of Bill Kristol? I swear he’s got organizations all over the place, he’s everywhere, and yet he’s wrong a lot.

It’s a great clip, worth the watch.

(Hat tip Mondoweiss commenter Kathleen)