The liberal press likes to congratulate itself for being anti-Iraq war these days, but it doesn’t really have the credentials. In an attack on Dick Cheney on Monday night’s Hardball, Chris Matthews laid the Iraq war at Cheney’s neoconservative doorstep– thereby excusing the Democratic Party supporters of the war, as if they were all just good people hornswoggled by lies.

The segment culminated with Howard Fineman’s statement of the true understanding that exists between Democratic interventionists and Republican hawks: by grabbing Hagel’s ankles, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is merely enforcing Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s “behind the scenes” deal with Chuck Hagel.

As you will see below, that deal was all about Israel. Schumer was of course a big supporter of the Iraq war; and my point here is that Democrats, including Matthews and Fineman themselves, were a party to this militant theory of remaking the Middle East they now condemn.

Some of the back-and-forth:

Matthews: Howard, where do you learn to be that evil? I mean, that guy [Cheney] sat there and brilliantly conspired. He had Judy Miller writing the stories for the week, with Scooter feeding her the stuff, get to (INAUDIBLE) they get on “MEET THE PRESS,” does the alley-oop play, acts so avuncular, so sure of himself in his presentation that a lot of middle-of-the-road people bought it.

Does it matter to Chris Matthews that The New York Times published Miller’s stuff? That she comes out of the liberal establishment? That the liberal establishment lay down for that war? But Fineman is enraged at Cheney, too:

FINEMAN: Just watching that again [Cheney appearance about Iraq on Meet the Press], Chris, was both infuriating and upsetting. We lived through that time. We were lied to, flat-out lied to in that way… MATTHEWS: … I know the trick he — it was almost criminal…Anything that would get that war started, they were willing to say, including sending out General Powell out there with his mission at the U.N.

Right; you were lied to. But you did not oppose the war, because you chose to believe the underlying neoconservative theory. In this other video interview, apparently from 2012, Howard Fineman says that the Iraq War may turn out to have been a wise decision if a democracy emerges in Iraq.

And Chris Matthews also often supported the Iraq war, buying the crazy neoconservative theory that it could remake the Middle East. Now he’s covering his tracks.

At the end of the segment Fineman makes the transition to the Hagel hearing. He says the Republicans need to do some soul-searching (as if he doesn’t share in the Cheney theory of the world) then describes the understanding between Graham and Schumer:

FINEMAN: What`s missing here is that Dick Cheney is the former vice president, is the guy who propounded his theory of the world, and–and his Republican allies on the Hill are not having a serious discussion about foreign policy in defense during these nomination hearings, whether it`s Hagel or Brennan or whatever. They`re just taking cheap shots all over the place, and they`re not having a serious discussion…. I think that Lindsey Graham is there to be the last annoying guy to make sure that Hagel keeps whatever promises he made behind the

scenes to Carl Levin and Chuck Schumer and everybody else.

Here is Schumer’s “behind the scenes” deal with Chuck Hagel. You will see it is all about Israel. I am saying that Fineman and Matthews ought to openly address the degree to which the special relationship is driving our foreign policy, on both sides of the aisle.

Schumer statement of Jan. 15: