Right.

It's like playing golf. Even Tiger Woods gets a triple bogey but still goes on to win the U.S. Open. Clearly, everyone's going to have their moments, but by and large do I think -- to me the more relevant question -- and you probably won't print this -- but the more relevant question is when millions of people are suffering and millions are being murdered, do we as a nation have a moral obligation?

A lot of my friends in Hollywood have actually said things like "Let's melt their hearts with hugs and love." It honestly doesn't work. So I respect people's sweetness for believing that you can melt the heart of Osama bin Laden with a hug, but you can't. The only solution to Osama bin Laden is a fucking 88-millimeter shell through his forehead.

Right, well, we've just made a switch from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden.

No, you assume that because the press says that. What makes you think we've made a switch from that? What makes you think ...?

No. You just did.

No, I'm giving you an example. You can line 'em up and put an 88-millimeter shell through both their foreheads as far as I'm concerned. And I'd be happy to pull the trigger. Who wouldn't?

Would you if you had an opportunity to kill Hitler do it? Of course you would; that's the morally sound response. If you could turn back time in 1938 and put a bullet through Hitler's head, would you do it? What morally responsible person would not?

Look, you live in New York and I live in Los Angeles, but I drive cross-country. I did it four times last year. I do it to meet people, to see how they think. You in your wildest imagination would not believe how different the country is between the George Washington Bridge and San Bernardino, Calif. If you don't live in New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles, the way people think, voters, they just look at us and they marvel like we're animals in a zoo or something. They always say to me, "What's wrong with all the press and the media and the film people? Why don't they have any common sense?" ... I'm telling you they don't care whether we have weapons of mass destruction.

Should they?

That's a different issue. But let me just tell you, when I did the movie "Nixon," Oliver [Stone] wrote a great line in the script. The Nixon character was talking to John Mitchell's character and Nixon said, "You know, I'm gonna end up being sacrificed."

And John said, "No, you can fight." And Nixon said, "No, we lost Vietnam, and when we lost Vietnam, somebody had to pay. People need retribution. Moral retribution, a balancing of moral scales in their lives. We lost, we've got to win somewhere or we have to punish the guilty."

When those heinous savages flew those planes into those buildings killing children, women and men, who did nothing but just live their lives in America, in our fundamental human hearts, most people fundamentally needed that, in a very simple way, balanced. And I believe that the war in Iraq as it's appealed to the general voter, appeals on a level of we did something to get rid of some bad guy somewhere that kind of atones for that.

Even if it wasn't the same bad guy.

Well, it's not a very sophisticated response, because your argument will of course be that Saddam Hussein didn't have any connection to that, so far as we know. But you have to understand that sometimes people emotionally think in very simplistic ways.

But is that a good argument for going to war?

I'm not judging it. I'm just answering your question. You ask me whether it's going to be relevant, it's not.

OK.

Now, should it be or not? I don't know. I have to know more about it, and the jury's still out as to whether [the weapons of mass destruction] are there or not, and even if they're not, OK, I'm not so happy about the fact of maybe being misinformed, whether willfully or accidentally or through sloppy intelligence through the CIA or whatever.

And see, I can actually admit it. I've never met a liberal who can ever admit being wrong to anything.

For someone who's just said he's a liberal in some ways and a conservative in others, you sound pretty down on liberals.

Well, you know, I'm still a registered Democrat.

That's surprising.

I've fallen away from the party because there is a certain degree of accountability and the behavior of people during the last years of the Clinton administration where they would forgive anything. I mean, those pardons were just embarrassing. You just never hear people say, "You know what? That was just plain wrong on every level." They never do.

And when somebody lies in a sexual-harassment case about a relevant issue in that case, that is a felony, and it's not something becoming of the president of the United States. It is a high crime and/or misdemeanor and I've never heard a liberal say, "You know what? You're right. Lying is not a good thing. I don't care what it's about, it's against the law. The guy's a criminal." They never say it. They won't say it. And you won't say it. I guarantee it.

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