Hearing what you want to hear, or?....

On Thursday night, I saw a good part of an interview of Condoleeza Rice conducted by MSNBC's :Lawrence O'Donnell.

I thoroughly enjoyed the interview and I was impressed that Ms Rice did not allow Mr O'Donnell to bully her as he attempted to do. She did her best to remind him of what the Bush White House was going through at the time.

I was somewhat surprised at the reactions of Mr O'Donnell and Rachel Meadows, the anchor of the show that follows his. They were acting like he won some kind of victory with that interview.

And it makes me wonder about a couple of things. Did their reaction show an example of the disconnect that is going on between the political parties right now and how extremely differently can two or more people perceive what they are watching?

My perception of the interview was that Mr O'Donnell want Ms Rice to admit she knew what the Bush administration was doing in 2002 about Saddam Hussein was wrong then.  What I believe Ms Rice did effectively was to point out how things were then and how the Bush administration relied on what turned out to be faulty intelligence, but they did not know that at the time.

I think this goes right to the heart of why President Bush gets too much criticism for his actions against Hussein/Iraq. It seems to me that liberals somehow think that we can apply what we know now to what happened then. I doubt that it is President Bush's fault that he got bad intelligence, so why does he get all the blame?

Mr O'Donnell asked Ms Rice a couple of times about some pipes that  the Iraqi's had that was thought to be used for nuclear purposes but as it turns out it was not capable of being used that way.  Mr. O'Donnell had to ask about it a couple of times because at one point he interrupted Ms Rice as she was answering he question. At this point, Ms Rice stopped and said, "If we are going to continue this interview you will allow me to answer the question instead of interrupting me like I have noticed you have a tendency to do with your guests." He only paused for a second and continued to ask about the piping,  Her answer was that they did not know at that time that the pipes could not be used for nuclear purposes.

This segment of the interview was enjoyable to me because Ms Rice did what I have been waiting for a guest to do to a host for a long time. There are three hosts who are very bad at allowing a guest to answer questions without interruptions: O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly and the worst is Chris Matthews. If there was ever a reason for me to go on Chris Matthews show I would make sure to get a written agreement that he would not interrupt while I was answering his question. Without an agreement I would just say no.

But my favorite part of the interview was when Mr O'Donnell flatly stated that there was "no international coalition" against Iraq. Ms Rice pointed out that there were several United Nations resolutions against Iraq and that England, Canada and two other countries (sorry, I can't remember which I am thinking Italy) in the military actions again Iraq. And then she asked, "if that isn't a coalition what is?" to which Mr O'Donnell did not have the integrity to say he was wrong or at least say he misspoke.

At the end of the interview I felt that he did a good job of asking questions that needed to be asked and that she did a really good job of answering  the questions to the best of her ability.

I was almost shocked when Mr O'Donnell and Ms Meadows were practically laughing with glee that Miss Rice didn't answer the questions and verbally danced around things.    ????

I was going to write this post about it that night, but something told me to think about it for a  day  or so first.

I understand that Mr O'Donnell and Ms Meadow pretty much had to react this way, part of their job is to make themselves, their network and by extension, although they would never admit it, the Democrat party look good.  But I wonder how much of their reaction was for show and how much was their own personal true reaction?

I have heard it several times that if you ask a number of people who have seen a car accident happen that you would get as many different observations as you would people asked. And after seeing this interview I wonder if that axiom is any part of the political divide  in this country.

Now that I have a little more understanding (I think) of the mindset of liberals how can that help me?

Food for thought