It’s a pity that, as a past winner, Jimmy Carter can’t be in the running for this year’s Idiotarian of the Year award—because this mind-bending interview with Chris Matthews would make him a shoo-in: ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’ for Oct. 18. (Hat tip: johnCV.)

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about—this is going to cause some trouble with people—but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force, do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we’ve fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.

Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial’s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely, and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way.

The real problem was that Washington had no plan to win the peace. (Jimmah’s been spending way too much time at the Burger King with Michael Moore.)

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