Maddow Doubts Her Abilities Too Much

Fairly recently, NBC News' Rachel Maddow had this to say about studying terrorism (note 1):

But all of these little tweaks — all of these little changes that we made — had the effect of letting a president wage war without political restraint and letting us wage war in a way where we didn't necessarily notice or know the names of all of those who were deployed in our name. Because a lot of them were working for companies that didn't have any obligation to report to us when their people were killed. We ended up doing stuff in a way that insulated the American public from what our military was doing to the point where we don't feel much friction when Americans go downrange."

In this interview she also observed (I'm paraphrasing, there is no record of this online anymore) that she cannot imagine stepping into the shoes of a terrorist. But she gets all hot around the collar at the thought of interviewing Dick Cheney. Let me interview you is literally her plea in her book and in the interview.

What's odd is that she is perfectly capable of understanding most of the logic of terrorism, in fact, she assumes everyone understands it already. For a benchmark, here's Bin Laden arguing for why his friends should be acquiring WMD's:

"It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims." -- Bin Laden 

Here is Maddow wondering why the US didn't attack soft targets in Libya (via FAIR.. qhttp://www.fair.org/blog/2011/04/05/maddow-wonders-why-libyan-journalists-arent-being-targeted/ quote grabbed from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42377921/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#.UE-eobJlQ-0:

MADDOW: One of the things that people have questioned is if the U.S. has this high level of electronic capability, why is Libyan state TV still on the air? Is that not one of the things they would want to shut down?

From NATO's website on bombing Libyan journalists via WSJ:

‎"Striking specifically these critical satellite dishes will reduce the regime's ability to oppress civilians while [preserving] television broadcast infrastructure that will be needed after the conflict" -- NATO

Her chirpy rebuttals are therefore false, Here's Maddow mockingly interprets Republicans "Terrorism isn't the big battle. It's the battle between us and the liberals." It's okay to say the truth, just do it in a funny voice. 

Note: I've since contacted NPR about this quote. It appears that either the interview is clipped or I'm mixing them up.