On MSNBC's Hardball Tuesday, host Chris Matthews grilled former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell on the Bush administration's "sales pitch" to the American people after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, his connection to al Qaeda, and the subsequent war with Iraq.

What was supposed to be a segment on Hillary Clinton's 2003 vote for the Iraq war -- which she now says was a "mistake" -- turned into a rabid argument between Matthews and Morell. Armed with video clips from 2002 and 2003, Matthews, barely letting Morell speak, charged onward about the "lies" of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

A short clip of the conversation was posted to Hardball's Facebook page:

Morell told Matthews that what the Bush administration was telling the public was not exactly what was coming from the intelligence community, specifically regarding the link between al Qaeda and Iraq. Matthews asked directly if Cheney was lying on Meet the Press in 2003 when he said that Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted" a nuclear weapon. Morell indicated that it was indeed a lie.

What the Bush administration was hearing from the CIA, according to Morell, was that Hussein "has chemical weapons," "biological weapons production capability" and is "reconstituting his nuclear program." Matthews charged that Bush and Cheney, to their own ends, were taking that information and twisting it so that they could justify the war with Iraq. He indicated that chemical weapons, though bad, is something that can be dealt with on a smaller scale, whereas the American public would be more supportive of an all out war if they believed the weapon to be nuclear.

Under intense scrutiny by Matthews, Morell maintained that it was not his job to correct what the president or vice president was telling the media, but to provide the best intelligence his team could.

See the entire interview below: