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Friends and enemies

31 comments on Friends and enemies

Friends and enemies
: Bill O’Reilly turns on Bush:

Conservative television news anchor Bill O’Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

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.

While critical of President Bush, O’Reilly said he did not think the president intentionally lied. Rather, O’Reilly blamed CIA Director George Tenet, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton….

Even George Bush is Bill Clinton’s fault. Wow.

31 responses to “Friends and enemies”

  1. Jeremy Avatar
    Jeremy

    Even today’s Mallard Filmore (sp?) attacked Bush.

  2. A.O. Avatar
    A.O.

    I think this is a very interesting development. Is it O’Reilly proving to himself and the world that he’s not a Pravda style apparatchnik? Is it his injured pride over being wrong about WMD? Or is he changing with what he perceives to be a shifting American zeitgeist? Either way, an interesting indicator.

  3. nash Avatar
    nash

    “former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.”
    Um, I thought Kay said there _were_ WMD’s found, just not stockpiles of the stuff? Is there a transcript of the O’Reilly interview somewhere? I suspect there’s some major spin going on here.

  4. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    O’Reilly? Spin?
    Oh, say it ain’t so, Joe.
    KKay said they hadn’t found stockpiles of WMD, but they had found WMD programs just waiting for the go signal.

  5. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    Why the surprise. This is win win for O’Reilly. He is and always will be one smarmy character.

  6. sickles Avatar
    sickles

    Mr. o’Reilly should instead apologize for not listening closely to what the President said which is that Iraq posed a “gathering danger” which is the way I’ve always understood his argument to be.
    I’ve never felt that saddam Hussein was an imminent threat, thought that there were probably WMDs (and can all the naysayers say with absolute 100% certainty that the unaccounted for weapos aren’t in Syrian or Iranian hands?) and that putting off Saddam Hussein any longer would only imperil our own security. I’ve always been comfortable with that argument and I’ve never heard what the other choice to Saddam’s ouster would be other than appeasing France and letting inspections go on indefinitely.
    9/11 showed that terrorists are willing to attack without warning and without notice. Bush understands this. I’m certain the entire Democratic field no longer does. (Joe Lieberman is gone.)

  7. HH Avatar
    HH

    I think there may be some spin of what O’Reilly’s saying, yes. By the way, he’s been saying this stuff for months, it’s just that the news wires watch Good Morning America and apparently don’t watch his show. Also O’Reilly is blaming the CIA and blaming Bush for keeping Tenet there. Noting that he has been there since Clinton was there is pointing out the facts.

  8. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Due credit to O’Reilly for actually following through on his promised apology, even if he didn’t do it on his own show in front of his core audience (which would have shown genuine guts). The temperature in hell must have dropped a few degrees when this happened.
    If even the likes of O’Reilly are facing facts, sort of (though I notice he still buys the “blame it on the CIA” line), it’s not good news for Bush. Tenet, of course, has plenty of resources for fighting the scapegoate-the-CIA approach, especially since the White House repeatedly ignored warnings that its arguments were dubious and overblown. The buck will eventually stop where it should: at the White House.
    Kay said they hadn’t found stockpiles of WMD, but they had found WMD programs just waiting for the go signal.
    Fred Kaplan in Slate describes the spin in Kay’s own remarks quite accurately. Kay basically said that Iraq had no WMDs worthy of the name and nothing even approaching effective programmes after 1998 (and damned little after 1991). This is in fact not as different from what intel agencies told the White House before the war as we’re supposed to think. However, he did provide vague, speculative soundbites that the White House could spin to save face — which is fitting, given that the WMD case was largely made up of vague, speculative soundbites to begin with.
    Mr. o’Reilly should instead apologize for not listening closely to what the President said which is that Iraq posed a “gathering danger” which is the way I’ve always understood his argument to be.
    Still rewriting history, are we?
    Too bad some people remember what the actual case was…

  9. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    Slack, give it a rest. Your whole argument for someone in the administration saying “imminent” is a couple of times the press flacks weren’t sufficiently vehement denying the word when someone else tried to put it in the President’s mouth.
    At heart, it’s a stupid “gotcha” argument. Either they did what they said, and defined a new doctrine of action in the face of a gathering threat that was intractable to diplomatic resolution, or they did what you say they did, and made a convincing argument that what they were seeing was an imminent threat.
    There’s probably a reasonable argument to be made against the Bush Doctrine; this whole business with “imminent” is theological quibbling to no purpose except your perverse desire to count coup.

  10. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Either they did what they said, and defined a new doctrine of action in the face of a gathering threat that was intractable to diplomatic resolution, or they did what you say they did, and made a convincing argument that what they were seeing was an imminent threat.
    The relevant quotes are linked right there. The context of the White House’s attempts to overridge cautions from their own intel service is well-known (though they’re trying to revise that out of existence too). You can dance and parse and split hairs all you like, but as you discovered last time we went around this particular Ferris wheel, it simply doesn’t change what was actually said — either in informal public discourse or in the more legalistic terminology of the NSS.
    I’ve no interest in “counting coup,” but blatant revisionism cuts no ice with me, especially when it’s an attempt to distort or squirm out of recent and extensively-documented public events. If don’t like being called on those kinds of distortions, don’t issue them.

  11. Politically Incorrect Avatar
    Politically Incorrect

    The real issue here seems to be that both sides have an agenda. Neither side proposes to follow the Constitution very well. Both sides are pushing their “judges” into the courts. The Democrats seem to have the more creative judges who discover all manner of things never seen before in the Constitution.
    Both sides pander to their interest groups with legislation and spending.
    It is “us”, the citizens, against politicians and bureaucrats of any party affiliation.

  12. Kashei Avatar
    Kashei

    Anyone who thinks O’Reilly is a conservative hasn’t read his books. He goes where the popularity is. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

  13. SM Avatar
    SM

    Anyone who thinks O’Reilly is conservative ignores O’Reilly’s own statements to the contrary. And is likely to consider Howard Stern’s politics noteworthy.

  14. Robert McClelland Avatar
    Robert McClelland

    >Your whole argument for someone in the administration saying “imminent”
    It doesn’t matter whether they actually said imminent or not since they implied it and used synonyms of the word numerous times.
    From Merriam Webster Thesaurus.
    related words–imminent: gathering
    http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/thesaurus?book=Thesaurus&va=imminent&x=9&y=14

  15. Richard Aubrey Avatar
    Richard Aubrey

    Robert M.
    You are really not all that clear on how you look, are you?
    When trying to figure out what somebody said, we use a dictionary, not a thesaurus.
    The latter is a ploy for you to claim that which is manifestly false.
    Do you think nobody sees through you as if you were a chunk of pure air?

  16. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    When trying to figure out what somebody said, we use a dictionary, not a thesaurus.
    Actually, when trying to figure out what somebody is saying, we use context. When trying to obscure what someone has said, we split hairs about whether “gathering” is really synonymous with “imminent” (or, for that matter, “urgent,” “grave,” “immediate” et cetera, all terms used heavily by the White House along with “imminent,” which of course appears in the National Security Strategy). The ultimate purpose of all of which was really to support claims that the “smoking gun” could easily be a “mushroom cloud” on any given day. Perhaps you don’t now think of that possibility as an “imminent” threat?
    *cue bobbing and weaving*

  17. linden Avatar
    linden

    But it does matter when they specifically state that the threat is not imminent while others claim they did the opposite.
    THe whole point of pre-emptive war is that the threat is not imminent. That’s the policy. Stop inventing policy.

  18. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    But it does matter when they specifically state that the threat is not imminent while others claim they did the opposite.
    I’m sorry, this is simply false. The National Security Strategy is very clear on this point: its preemptive policy is based on considering threats “imminent” that hitherto didn’t have that status. It redefines rather than rejecting the term “imminent” for a very simple reason — specifically so that Administration figures could claim Iraq was on the verge of launching a deadly attack on American soil or on his neighbours (without, of course, mentioning their eccentric definition of “imminent,” “urgent,” “grave” and “immediate” threats).
    At best, as Charlie established earlier, you can claim that Bush occasionally contradicted or confused this rationale. But the NSS is the Administration’s official position on the matter, and the vast majority of their comments were clearly about attempts to portray Iraq as an immediate threat.

  19. kkl Avatar
    kkl

    I thought the President was the “official position” on the matter. Aren’t they a part of the Executive Branch?

  20. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Come on, are you playing games? The National Security Strategy is a written manifesto signed by the President.

  21. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    Tis you whos playing games doc slack. You want to know what was said by the President read the State of the Union address. The rest is just opinion and spin. After 9/11 and Afghanistan Iraq was a threat. The longer we would have waited the more imminent it would have become. Screw on you wide angle lens and tell me where these items are “3.9 tons of VX gas, 8,500 litres of anthrax, 550 artillery shells containing mustard gas, and 25 missile warheads bearing germ agents. Remember – this was the Iraqi inventory, not the West’s. Those who opposed the war and are thrilled that no WMD have yet been found in Iraq should be asking the more worrying question: what, exactly, happened to this deadly arsenal?” (Matthew d’Anconca in the telegraph)
    http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/02/08/do0801.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/02/08/ixopinion.html
    Our national safety is much more important then spin and hating GWB. Especially with articles like this ……. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/opinion/11SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fWilliam%20Safire
    So play the word game if you will but it will come at a cost you might not be willing to pay.

  22. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    The rest is just opinion and spin.
    The NSS is “just opinion and spin”? Virtually everything the Admin said on the subject in the runup to war is “just opinion and spin”? All of it should be obliterated from our memories by that crappy SOTU?
    On the first two points: well, yes they were, but you’re foolish to imagine that’s a defense. On the third point: guess what? Life doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to revise your official reasons for going to war after you’ve already gone, and you don’t get to revise the historical record to unsay the lies (or “misstatements”) of the Administration.
    After 9/11 and Afghanistan Iraq was a threat. The longer we would have waited the more imminent it would have become.
    No, what Kay’s report tells us is that there was no threat from Iraqi WMD, because there were none. Blindly quoting your favorite Dubya phrase cannot and will not change that. Containment worked, inspections worked, the conceit that war is the only way to counter proliferation was false, and no invasion was needed to “preempt” a nonexistent arsenal and nonexistent weapons programs.
    What remains to Bush and Blair, possibly, is vindication on sort-of humanitarian grounds (as in: “at least the war and occupation is less bad than Saddam and sanctions were”). That argument isn’t anywhere near as simple as its adherents often seem to think it is, but frankly it’s a damned sight better than clinging to the tattered shreds of the WMD case. Yammering about “threats” and whether or not they were becoming “more imminent” is simply past its sell-by date.
    Screw on you wide angle lens and tell me where these items are
    The “items unaccounted for” line ignores and has always ignored the laws of physics: VX, germ agents, and weaponized anthrax all degrade over time. Unless Iraq was producing more of these things — and Kay has lain that possibility to rest — any “unaccounted for” stockpiles of these things are useless sludge. (Source.) So spare me the Chicken Little rhetoric.
    The WMD debacle in Iraq is not an idle word game. It’s a deadly serious question of messed-up priorities. This is finally a step in the right direction — if the rhetoric is backed up with anything — but why has Bush just noticed holes in the global enforcement of non-proliferation treaties? Why are Pakistan and North Korea and the global arms market only priorities now, after Bush’s Admin has trashed its credibility and relationships with allies with the Iraq adventure? Why has Bush shown so little interest in shoring up non-proliferation treaties with Russia? Why don’t we hear more about attacks on American soil with germ agents by domestic terrorists, and what’s being done about it?
    When you show some interest in those questions instead of duckspeaking for Bush, then I’ll believe you’re serious about the WMD threat. See, that’s a threat I did and do take very seriously. And I take irresponsible clowning and partisan kneejerking about it pretty seriously too.

  23. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Oh, since it came up: a good article on the “Dear Osama” letter with a link to a reply to Safire’s column.

  24. John in Tokyo Avatar
    John in Tokyo

    Dr. Slack,
    How did you arrive at the conclusion that Bush’s recent nonproliferation moves are a belated “step in the right direction,” unconnected to Iraq?
    I suppose you wouldn’t buy it if I suggested that deposing Saddam has been an essential step in the cause of non-proliferation. All revelations and progress made with Libya and Pakistan have come in the wake of an attack on the regime that defied America the most (and the International community too, although the international community seemed unconcerned about it). But I guess you regard that as a coincidence – in spite of Iraq, not because of it. Any forthcoming compliance or cooperation from Iran, N. Korea, and Syria is more likely now than before. But you probably believe the opposite – these people don’t like to be threatened, they just want to play nice.
    The situation remains dire but this is no argument in favor of dithering another 12 years containing Saddam, unless you believe that we should have lifted sanctions and left him alone.

  25. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    I suppose you wouldn’t buy it if I suggested that deposing Saddam has been an essential step in the cause of non-proliferation.
    No, not particularly. For example:
    All revelations and progress made with Libya
    … have apparently little or nothing to do with Iraq, since that process has been in the works for years and was, if anything, delayed by rather than hastened by the Iraq crisis. The progress came after the conflict was de-militarized and sanctions lifted in 1999 — the kind of thing that isn’t supposed to work with madman dictators, remember? The sort of thing that’s supposed to indicate weakness in the face of evil, right? And yet… multilateral conflict resolution, no victor-vanquished paradigm, no interventions, and backing off of proclaimed intents to assassinate Qadafi. And in the end, it worked.
    Doesn’t it strike you as a little perverse, maybe even desperate, to try to tie that cart to the Iraq horse?
    and Pakistan. . .
    Pakistan, an American ally, is supposed to have been intimidated by the invasion of Iraq? There was no other way to get this ally to cooperate more on the WMD question than by declaring war on a separate country entirely — a war which fanned the flames of Pakistan’s own extremist element?
    *Snort.*
    Any forthcoming compliance or cooperation from Iran, N. Korea, and Syria is more likely now than before.
    Actually, any forthcoming compliance from those countries is a lot more likely now that it looks like the neocons who conceived the whole adventure have stalled out. But never mind.
    unless you believe that we should have lifted sanctions and left him alone
    You’re right, lifting sanctions could never have worked. Just look at Libya!
    I’m being facetious, of course; Libya isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. But given that we now know the “inspections and containment are dithering” line to be poppycock — the whole foundation of that argument was supposed to be that they had failed to keep WMDs out of Saddam’s hands — it’s high time to lay that particular line of bullshit to rest.
    Wouldn’t Saddam have been in power and feeding people into plastic shredders in perpetuity if Bush hadn’t come swooping to the rescue right then? Not bloody likely: totalitarianism is fragile, as Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, and the temptation for factions within a totalitarian hierarchy to turn on the leadership and reinvent themselves as moderates is high. Didn’t containment mean destructive sanctions? Not all sanctions are created equal — the sanctions regime didn’t have to amount to a campaign to starve Iraq’s people in order to starve Saddam of his weapons.
    So yeah, there’s a sliver of humanitarian justification remaining to the Iraq venture, but at this point that’s about it.

  26. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    Chicken little? Duckspeak? Do you have a fowl fetish or are you incapable of holding a proper conversation.
    Lets clear the fog for a moment. I am not a republican. You and I have had the Iraq talk already and I think I made it pretty clear Humanitarianly speaking I was for Saddams removal. On that issue alone the war was justifiable to me.
    Your argument of a sell by date being stamped on his WMD’s is bologna. His original stockpile may have been less effective because of age but not ineffective and you won’t find a credible chemist on earth to say otherwise. Once you have the recipe and the compound virus your in business. He had both. He also has show willingness to use them. I don’t think selling them was such a stretch. Lifting sanctions was never an option as far as I’m concerned as he was never fully contained nor compliant. Your use or understanding of “imminent” is the word game I was referring to. The WMD question’s have not been answered. I have some very obvious question’s I think everyone should be considering, what was in the caravan exodus to Syria, why did our troops find chemical suits and antidotes all over Iraq, where are the virus compounds, are we to believe Saddam was compliant yet put his country through 12 years of sanctions and inspections just to be difficult. Don’t tell me sanctions starved Iraqi people. There was plenty of money for palaces and suicide bombers he and the Bath party lived a very lavish lifestyle while they were starving the rest of Iraq. “Totalitarianism is fragile” tell that to the people of Iran. The only reason Libia et al are willing to come to the table is because we are in Iraq. You can’t sell or link me otherwise. I still have too many questions regarding Iraq’s WMD’s to close the book on it right now. You have your opinion and I respect it, respect mine and leave the insulting comments out as it does nothing to further the conversation.

  27. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Lets clear the fog for a moment. I am not a republican. You and I have had the Iraq talk already and I think I made it pretty clear Humanitarianly speaking I was for Saddams removal. On that issue alone the war was justifiable to me.
    I understand that. And as I said, that’s the best argument remaining for the war. Which doesn’t mean I’m convinced by it, yet. My point is: don’t waste your energy on trying to defend what’s left of the WMD angle. It’s smoke. It was always smoke.
    His original stockpile may have been less effective because of age but not ineffective and you won’t find a credible chemist on earth to say otherwise.
    What’s your source for that claim? Be specific.
    Lifting sanctions was never an option as far as I’m concerned as he was never fully contained nor compliant.
    Kay’s testimony indicates he was never willingly compliant, but was in fact more fully contained than even the CIA realized when they were cautioning the Bush White House about its extravagant claims.
    Lifting sanctions was never an option as far as I’m concerned
    Good for you. How is that relevant to anything I’ve said?
    The WMD question’s have not been answered.
    So you disagree with Kay’s testimony and see a reason to question it? On what grounds? AFAICS Kay has provided a perfectly adequate explanation — in fact the best I’ve seen — for the bizarre aspects of Saddam’s behaviour. Where are the virus compounds? There weren’t any. What about the chemical suits? Well, what about them? Canada has plenty of chemical suits, does that mean it has an active WMD program? This stuff is simply clowning at this point; I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but there it is.
    Don’t tell me sanctions starved Iraqi people.
    I’m afraid I feel constrained to do so. The end of sanctions was supposed to be one of the points in favour of the humanitarian argument for the war, remember? There’s a reason for that.
    “Totalitarianism is fragile” tell that to the people of Iran.
    The people of Iran have put together the most successful reform movement in modern Middle Eastern history and successfully put the ayatollahs on the ropes without military help from pretty much anyone. That’s your counterexample?
    The only reason Libia et al are willing to come to the table is because we are in Iraq. You can’t sell or link me otherwise.
    IOW you’ve made up your mind, damn the facts and damn the context, and even if I persuade you I won’t persuade you. Which of course is precisely the attitude that led to the WMD embarrassment in the first place. Maybe you need to reconsider it.
    You have your opinion and I respect it
    Then act like it. You don’t want me to get harsh with you? Don’t go spewing sanctimonious crap at me about how “our national security is more important than spin and hating Bush.” It’s that simple.

  28. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    My opinion is now spewing sanctimonious crap. Your words are aren’t harsh they are derogatory and you have no respect for anyone else’s opinion. Were you standing in front of me having this type of a conversation I would walk away.

  29. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    My opinion is now spewing sanctimonious crap.
    Sorry to see you can’t back up any of your previous post. Don’t like being called on questioning the patriotism of others? Don’t do it. If we were face-to-face I would frankly have walked away from you at that point… but ahhh, the beauty of the Internet.

  30. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    You are such a pompous *ss.
    The only reason I’m responding to you is because your spreading misinformation. That’s what happens when you rely on traprockpeace.org for chemical research. I have a friend who is a member of JASON. He consults to the Defense Department. His field is biological warfare. He’s been published in American Scientist many times. According to him Anthrax spores can remains viable for 100 years if kept dry and out of sunlight. He pointed me to this web page. http://www.bioterrorism-uab.ahrq.gov/EIPBA/Anthrax/history.html
    Did you know there is a difference between wet and dry chemical agents. Iraq retained 255 containers of CW (chemical weapons) 230 dry with no expiration date and 25 liquid which will deteriorate over time. http://www.CSiS.org/mideast/reports/iraq_bios.pdf (page 18). Finally he concluded, Iraq announced in 1990 that it had Binary Chemical weapons. Binary fills would help extend the shelf life of all Baghdad’s CW stocks wet and dry.
    I took the time (and my friends, he is very busy right now) to explain this not to one up you but show you the threat is very real. The question still remains where are the WMD’s. Finding them remains imminent on my to do list.

  31. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    You are such a pompous *ss.
    There you go sweet-talking me again.
    That’s what happens when you rely on traprockpeace.org for chemical research.
    Dude, from what I’ve seen here you’re not in a position to be questioning Glen Rangwalla’s credentials. Let’s just try to look at the claims themselves, shall we?
    According to him Anthrax spores can remains viable for 100 years if kept dry and out of sunlight.
    “If kept dry” is the million-dollar qualifier there. I notice your general anthrax source there is CSIS, so let’s have a little peek at what Prof. Anthony J. Cordesman had to say on the topic of Iraq’s use of same back in ’98 (in fact, that’s the same document you quote later — you might want to read the whole thing):
    “Anthrax spores are extremely hardy and can achieve 65% to 80% lethality against untreated patients for years. Fortunately, Iraq does not seem to have produced dry, storable agents and only seems to have deployed wet Anthrax agents, which have a relatively limited life.”
    All subsequent assessments appear to back up his conclusion.
    Iraq retained 255 containers of CW (chemical weapons) 230 dry with no expiration date
    Let’s have a look at the direct quote from Cordesman’s report:
    At least one Iraqi defector — General Wafic al-Sammaral, a former senior officer in Iraqi military intelligence has claimed that Iraq,