Can John Fund afford internet access ?

Media Matters quotes John Fund claiming "We have the same -- we have almost the same number of troops there [Saudi Arabia] that we had five years ago, about 16,000. Look it up."

Atrios is shocked by his ignorance. From the partial transcript it seems that Fund brought the issue up.

Well I knew that one minor motivation for the invasion of Iraq was the desire to redeploy out of Saudi Arabia, but I wasn't sure we had actually done so.

Let's ask google. First search for US Troops in Saudi Arabia. No need to click the links, the headlines are enough to show that Fund is full of it. Elapsed time 10 seconds (max).

How can anyone go on the air without googling a bit in the green room if necessary ?

Why doesn't Hardball have real time fact checking. There was a disagreement about a very public fact. It took 10 seconds for me to find proof that Green was right and Fund was wrong. Why doesn't Hardball have a staffer or two googling for facts ? I mean the disagreement should have been settled (by Matthews) on the air after a commercial break. In this case no need for a break.