As an update to this post, here’s the exchange where Chris Matthews continued with his ridiculous Russia-is-going-to-nuke-the-US-theory of the President’s World War III comments:

MATTHEWS: Give me the scenario whereby Russia would engage in a nuclear exchange in the Middle East. OPPENHEIM: I don‘t know that—MATTHEWS: He said that. He said that. OPPENHEIM: He said we want to avoid World War III. World War III is an imaginary war of the future and clearly Putin is trying to position himself as a counter balance to the United States on the world stage. He‘s not going anywhere, as you discussed earlier on the show. The guy plans to stick around. He wants to be at the head of a Russian world power for a long time to come. MATTHEWS: Right.OPPENHEIM: And if Iran does cross the nuclear threshold, if god forbid Iran uses a nuclear weapon, obviously the entire world would be thrust into some sort of military conflict. Now, whether Putin ends up on our side of that or on the opposite side, you could say it‘s likely to be some sort of world conflict that could be called World War III. MATTHEWS: You really see an intercontinental missile exchange between the United States and Russia? You see that as a—the president brought it up. I know what World War III looks like, Noah. I grew up with the prospect of it. It‘s a war between the United States and the Soviet Union using intercontinental ballistic missiles back and forth, dumping our silos. This is serious business. Is that what we should be talking about? OPPENHEIM: I think that‘s obviously some what far-fetched in terms of where this could lead. The point is that people have—Norman Podhoretz said World War III was the Cold War and World War IV is the war against Islamic fascism. These terms have been kind of been perpetually redefined. I think what President Bush would argue he was trying to say is that the stakes of this are global and that there could be epic repercussions if this line is crossed. MATTHEWS: Richard Wolffe, what do you think? What is this going to say in Russia when they hear us and they read their papers and they see Bush, our guy, talking about nuclear war, basically, between us and the Soviet Union. That‘s all that World War III means to anybody. Podhoretz can have his own vocabulary. Most people in the world know what World War III looks like. We thought we avoided it. WOLFFE: I‘m not sure he had an exchange with Russia in his head when the president was saying that. I think what he has in his mind is that there would be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, that you would have an exchange of fire across different ethnic and religious lines there. Did he mean that Russia would be part of the opposition in this war? I don‘t think so. He‘s been saying forever that the Cold War is over. A consequence, though, is that the Russians will see this as just what you said already, that it‘s reviving the whole Cold War dynamic, that they‘re on the other side of the fault line. And that actually feeds into Putin‘s power play here, that he is the grand protector and the reviver of the Russian empire. That‘s the danger of this kind of talk, is that it feeds into the conspiracy theories of these other weakened leaders.

He did get Joan Walsh of Salon to agree with him:

MATTHEWS: Here‘s the dangerous thing. If he‘s suggesting that Putin might respond to an attack by his new ally, Iran, against Israel and an Israeli counter-attack, which we all would expect is a natural response to an attack on Israel with nuclear weaponry, that he would then respond in a third round to go after Israel. What is the point of suggesting all that now? Noah, who ever wants to answer. Joan, your turn? WALSH: Chris, I think it‘s really dangerous what he‘s suggesting. The other thing is he refused to talk or comment in any way about Israel‘s alleged strike or confirmed strike on the Syrian nuclear facility. I think he‘s really empowering Israel to go ahead and be as aggressive as it wants to. He‘s definitely, as you say, putting Putin and Russia on the other side of World War III, which is a fantastically irresponsible thing to do.