Where is the transcript? Without a full transcript to establish context it is impossible to tell if these remarks were just ambiguous and clumsy, or were as offensive as many here seem to believe.
I included the closed-caption transcript in the original post.
I'll post what I posted on the other thread:
Yes, I heard it; and I didn't take it this way at all.
It was in reply to a question Matthews asked after the two of them had been discussing today's terror plot; Williams was saying that we, Americans, had to come to terms with this being the way it is now, with our "enemy" not coming over the nearest ridge with helments on, but are "our enemies" come toward us in "slender tubes at 39,000 feet.
They were discussing this in the context of them versus the west; Matthews asked him how he thought we could ever defeat an enemy who was born in Britain, lived in Britain, and still was willing to die for his religion, ie., these ARE Westerners.
Williams said he wasn't sure how we'd ever manage that -- and that's when he got ahead of himself.
I didn't think a thing about it, other than the fact that he didn't realize how he PHRASED the answer.
***And you have to understand that Matthews started off this segment by saying that John Edwards had been on at the 5 p.m. show and said that if the Muslims could just MEET us and TALK to us, they'd love us.