Lunaville<\/a> has been chronicling O’Reilly’s rhetoric on this issue for a while and has found some interesting details.<\/p>\nFor example, O’Reilly was on Good Morning America on March 18 saying that he’d apologize to the nation if we don’t find WMD in Iraq. Here’s the exact quote, with the best parts bolded for emphasis:<\/p>\n
“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 he 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<\/b>, all right? But I’m giving my government the benefit of the doubt,” O’Reilly said. <\/p>\n
O’Reilly added, “[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.”<\/p>\n
That’s pretty clear, right? No WMD means an apology and eternal distrust of the Bush administration as far as O’Reilly is concerned. A WMD arsenal is the difference between a justified war and an unjustified war. Fair enough.<\/p>\n
On the April 22 episode of his Fox News Channel program — one month ago yesterday — O’Reilly was interviewing Retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a vocal supporter of Bush’s plans for war. Just as he had said on Good Morning America, O’Reilly once again reiterated, “[I]f weapons of mass destruction aren’t found…I will have to apologize because I bought into it.”<\/p>\n
At the end of the April 22 segment with Maginnis, O’Reilly asked the retired Army official “when something is going to happen,” to which Maginnis said, “within a month.”<\/p>\n
This led O’Reilly to conclude, “All right, a month from today, we’ll do this story again, and then we have it on tape.”<\/p>\n
You know what this means — last night was O’Reilly’s chance to keep his word and “do this story again” one month later. Would he apologize as he had promised? Would he disavow ever trusting Bush again?<\/p>\n
Not exactly. To be fair, O’Reilly did bring the issue up on his program last night. He said, “The U.S. has captured enough scientists like Dr. Germ and Ms. Anthrax, or whomever, to get a picture of what Saddam Hussein had or didn’t have. The Bush administration needs to begin explaining the situation.” He added, “The American people must have honest, accurate intelligence in a world this dangerous. This is a vital issue that we hope will be candidly addressed by the president and soon.”<\/p>\n
For Fox News, this may be a strong condemnation of a fellow Republican, but you’ll forgive me if I find it unsatisfactory. In March, O’Reilly didn’t equivocate. If we can’t find the WMD upon which the war was predicated, O’Reilly promised, “I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again.” Last night he urged the Bush White House to “begin explaining the situation” and urged the president to “candidly address” the problem. The pre-war promises obviously don’t meet the post-war rhetoric.<\/p>\n
Of course, there is no accountability. This isn’t a legitimate news organization with professional standards, it’s Fox News Channel. No one can call O’Reilly on his mistaken propaganda because he just turns off the microphones of his guests when they fight back.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, it’s just one more example of why the network and its “journalists” have no credibility and no shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaking of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (see below), Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly joined many in the conservative chorus before the war began saying that Hussein’s WMD program was grounds for an invasion. A good blogger named Lunaville has been chronicling O’Reilly’s rhetoric on this issue for a while and has found some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}