In his August 24 New York Times column, "The Vietnam Passion," Times columnist and Weekly Standard senior editor David Brooks misrepresented Senator John Kerry's (D-MA) statements about the war in Iraq to support his contention that Kerry doesn't have “a view about whether this Iraq war is worthwhile or a big mistake.” Brooks claimed that Kerry has “both called himself an antiwar candidate and said he would even today vote for the war resolution.”

Brooks's comments distorted remarks Kerry made on the January 6 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and he echoed mischaracterizations that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and RNC chairman Ed Gillespie have issued about those remarks.

As Media Matters for America has noted, when Matthews asked Kerry on January 6, “Are you one of the anti-war candidates?” Kerry responded by saying: “I am. Yes. In the sense that I don't believe the president took to us war as he should have, yes. ... Was there a way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable? You bet there was and we should have done it right.” This statement is entirely consistent with Kerry's August 9 assertion that he did not regret voting to give Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq.

On the August 16 edition of Hardball, Matthews took Bush-Cheney '04 chief campaign strategist Matthew Dowd to task for the campaign's misrepresentation of Kerry's statement, declaring: “You say what he [Kerry] said on my show and he didn't say that.”

From Brooks's August 24 column:

Almost every American has a view about whether this Iraq war is worthwhile or a big mistake -- except John Kerry. He's both called himself an antiwar candidate and said he would even today vote for the war resolution. He's either lost the ability to make a clear decision on this central issue, or he thinks it would be imprudent to express a view.