On Thursday's Hardball, Chris Matthews interviewed NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams, who seemed to equate the actions of terrorists who are willing to die in the act of killing innocent civilians with those of Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, US special forces, and first responders -- people who risk their lives in order to attack an armed enemy, or who may do so in order to save the lives of others.

It was, to say the least, a curious formulation.

Here's the relevant transcript:

MATTHEWS: You know, in our first edition of HARDBALL tonight, we had a senator on, former Senator John Edwards on, who said that once these people in the east and the Islamic world get to know us personally, understand our good character, as he said, they wouldn‘t hate us so much, they wouldn‘t want to commit suicide to hurt us. But here we have maybe 25, 24 people who have lived in London and England and the free world for all these years, that become citizens, subjects of the crown, and, yet, after having gotten to know us, they want to kill themselves to hurt us. Isn‘t that an even deeper conundrum here than the chemicals being used in these attacks?

WILLIAMS: And that, Chris, that last aspect, the willingness to take one‘s own life, I always tell people, you know, there are guys on our team like that, too. They‘re called Army Rangers and Navy Seals and the special forces folks and the first responders on 9/11 who went into those buildings knowing, by the way, they weren‘t going to come out. So we have players like that on our team.

"There are guys on our team like that too"?

What a stupid comparison...

Update: Williams clarifies his remarks on his blog, saying he was "aggressively misunderstood."

It was a poor comparison. I'm glad he at least partly acknowledged it.