UPDATE: Video here.

Following his piece here on Monday, Pete was on MSNBC this morning. Very rough transcript:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: welcome back. we got jim cramer to stay because he’s mad. he’s mad for life and he’s number one. let’s bring in pete weaner from the ethics and public policy [center]. thanks for being with us. you have written and we’re a little shocked and deeply saddened because the guy who loves jesus, mike huckabee was on our show earlier. we’re friends with mike. he’s got all the bases covered. you have gone after him in a national review article and you say that his foreign affairs article where he attacked president bush for being arrogant, having a bunker mentality was misguided and said it was stunningly silly and deeply revealing. in what way? PETER WEHNER: it was revealing because the criticisms that he made were with the kind of jimmy carter and al gore would make not usually conservative republicans would make. he said that the president was at war with the world which is not true. he spoke about the arrogant bunker mentality. he said the president should deal with iran like you deal with miscommunications with parents between friends. that’s not how you deal with iran. not that he criticized the president. i criticized our policy on iraq. but the ground of his criticism, i thought were wrong and silly and i think for a republican running in a republican primary you don’t want to sound like jimmy carter or al gore or –
SCARBOROUGH: do you think a lot of republicans are concerned with let’s say what paul bremer did, or what donald rumsfeld did by not giving the generals all the troops they wanted. republicans, i know you’ve heard from other republicans. there are similar concerns about missteps after we got into baghdad.
WEHNER: i acknowledge those. i accept them, actually. i’ve got some of the same complaints. clearly the post-war situation wasn’t handled well. we didn’t have enough troops. we didn’t have the right counter njts enginecy insurgency strategy. it was criticisms as they related to this arrogant bunker mentality that we really weren’t, we were having a problem in communications with dictators in the world. well, sometimes it’s actually the nature of the regimes that cause the problems, eu not that you’re not being nice enough to them. he was making the argument that if you dominate the world you’re going to get position. we’re not dominating. we’re trying to liberate some countries. sometimes that elicits opposition.
JIM CRAMER: seems huckabee is implying we’re a stinky nation that doesn’t do a lot around the world. isn’t it true that we’re the most generous nation in the world towards both friends and foe?
WEHNER: yeah. that was another criticism that bothered me. the implicit in his argument it wasn’t a generous nation. if we were generous we would be real loved. the reality is we’re very generous. we give a huge amount in world aid. we’re one of the greatest foreign policies ever. we liberated more than 50 million people from two of the most cruel regimes in modern history and that was an act of again near roit is. it’s come at a lot of cost to us in term of human lives and in terms of money. it’s government more in lives and money than it should have. but the reality is that the impulse was generous and when all is said and done we’ll look back in history as having done the right thing and the generous thing.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: peter, pertaining to the foreign affairs article written by governor huckabee and the words that he used, isn’t it also true that we’re dealing with an administration that led us into war on faulty intelligence and an administration that brought up the possibility of world war iii which afears be on intelligence that is still sort of hard to decipher at this point. isn’t there something to be said for the arrogant bunker mentality and why can’t republican candidates say that? is there some rule against it?
WEHNER: no, there’s no rule against it. he said it. but there’s no rule for criticizing him for saying it. in term of faulty intelligence it. don’t dispute that. of course we went in with faulty glenn. it was a huge, huge failure. the rest of the world had faulty intelligence. countries that even opposed our actions in iraq had faulty glenn. they believed saddam had weapons of mass destruction. i would say, that it would be nice if once in a while people pointed out there was a burden of proof that saddam meet what he was supposed to. he didn’t. he kept the inspectors out. basted on history we drew conclusions. they were the wrong ones. i don’t dispute the idea that the bush administration can be criticized or end should be criticized. in eight years you will make mistakes. this administration has made some. we’ve made some big once. my objection is the nature of the criticisms. i just think governor huckabee who is a very smooth and talented fellow, you saw that in your interview with him he’s the best debater in the field. he’s a terrific speaker. on foreign policy his views are wrong and he’s pretty inexperienced and it’s showing.
SCARBOROUGH: pete, thank you so much. pete wehner. you can read his peace in “”the national review”” and see governor huckabee’s article on foreign affairs.