It took almost a full year, but Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is finally willing to state the obvious and follow through on an earlier promise.
Eleven months ago, on March 18, 2003, O’Reilly was on Good Morning America pledging to apologize to the nation if we don’t find WMD in Iraq.
Here’s, here’s the bottom line on this for every American and everybody in the world: nobody knows for sure, all right? We don’t know what [Hussein] has. We think he has 8,500 liters of anthrax. But let’s see. But there’s a doubt on both sides. And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right? But I’m giving my government the benefit of the doubt.
[If Hussein] has 8,500 liters of anthrax that he’s not going to give up, even though the United Nations demanded that he do that, we are doing the right thing. If he doesn’t have any weapons, then we are doing the wrong thing.”
A month later, on April 22, on his own FNC program, O’Reilly once again insisted, “[I]f weapons of mass destruction aren’t found…I will have to apologize because I bought into it.” He pledged to revisit the issue “a month from today.”
I wrote way back in May that O’Reilly didn’t exactly keep his word about apologizing a month later.
However, I want to give credit where credit is due. O’Reilly returned to Good Morning America yesterday and admitted that he is far more “skeptical” about the Bush administration than he was a year ago. It wasn’t a full-throated apology to the nation, but it’s about as much as anyone could expect from a Fox News host.
From the San Diego Union Tribune:
The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.
“I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this,” O’Reilly said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?” asked O’Reilly, who had promised rival ABC last year he would publicly apologize if weapons were not found.
O’Reilly said he was “much more skeptical about the Bush administration now” since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.