Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/moveon-org-defends-anti-iraq-war-ads Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Liberal and conservative organizations have launched multi-million dollar advertising campaigns to pressure members of Congress to support their positions on the Iraq war. Representatives from both camps present their views. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: We are delighted that we now can go to Tom Matzzie. He is the leader of the coalition running the ads against the war in Iraq. He's Washington director of MoveOn.org.Tom Matzzie, thank you for being with us. And, again, our apologizes to you for the holdup and to the audience.We had just been talking with Brad Blakeman of Freedom's Watch. We asked him to look at one of the ads being run by the groups in your coalition arguing that the war should stop. He called this ad a scare tactic. He said you say things in there that are not true, such as pointing out — claiming that there's going to be a draft. How do you answer him? TOM MATZZIE, MoveOn.org Washington Director: Those were the words of President Bush's own war czar, General Lute. Those were not our words. We merely took the audio of General Lute and put it on the ad.One thing I'll say very specifically right now, Brad Blakeman, you know, should be held to account for not coming in public and debating the war. And I'll challenge him to a debate right now. I'm a taxpaying citizen. The 3.4 million members of MoveOn.org are taxpayers and citizens of this country. And there should be an open, public debate about the war in Iraq. JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me also just come back to the point about what you say in your ad about the draft. There's a nonprofit, nonpartisan group called FactCheck.org. They also concluded, in their words, that it was "misleading," that you were twisting the words of a general when you talk about a draft in your ad. How do you comment? What do you say to that? TOM MATZZIE: Well, the general's words stand on their own. I don't think we need to, you know, interpret them for anybody.I'll say, regarding scare tactics, this new group of Mr. Blakeman's has a picture an airplane flying into the 9/11 — on 9/11 into the Twin Towers. And to talk about that in the context of the Iraq debate is outrageous. Iraq did not attack us on 9/11. There were no Iraqis who were hijacking those airplanes on 9/11. And, you know, we've gone through this debate before in this country, and those sorts of scare tactics should not be on the table.