Think Progress

O’Reilly: ‘It’s Bull’ That Torture Doesn’t Work»

Last night, in an interview with Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly praised the Bush administration “for doing a good job protecting Americans after 9/11″ and attributed its success to its “aggressive manner” of protection, including “Guantanamo, water boarding three times, and other things.” (Recall, in 2005, O’Reilly declared he would “order the execution” of everyone at Guantanamo if he could.)

O’Reilly then questioned Clinton’s opposition to torture, insisting that if the U.S. had “an al Qaeda big shot” in custody, he would “dunk him into water” — i.e., waterboard him. When told that torture does not produce “high quality” information, O’Reilly cried, “That’s bull!”:

O’REILLY: I believe the Bush administration has done a good job in protecting Americans after 9/11. … And they’ve done so in a very aggressive manner, Guantanamo, water boarding three times, and other things, OK? If we get an Al Qaida big shot who won’t talk, I’ll dunk him into water if there is, we believe — our intelligence agency believes there is an imminent attack. You won’t dunk him in the water, you won’t, I will. […]

CLINTON: But if you actually talked to the people who were in the rooms with these guys, what they will tell me is that you do not get the high quality…

O’REILLY: That’s bull. It’s just bull. Michael Scheuer, who was the head of the bin Laden unit, sat there and said we broke these guys by waterboarding. It’s bull.

Watch it:

O’Reilly has long championed torture. He said that waterboarding isn’t “fatal” and “doesn’t leave a lasting injury,” and that people who oppose torture are “putting us all in danger.” Last October, he claimed that the Abu Ghraib scandal “was blown out of proportion.”

Of course, many experts — O’Reilly’s own opinion notwithstanding — agree that torture is ineffective. In Feburary, FBI Director Robert Mueller said his agency rejected using waterboarding, and Lt. Gen. Michael Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency said torture was unnecessary. Another former FBI agent said the entire idea of a “ticking time bomb scenario” like the one O’Reilly cites is “a red herring” his agency had never encountered.

If those experts aren’t enough, perhaps O’Reilly should simply listen to his hero Gen. David Petraeus, who unequivocally rejected torture last year:

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. That would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone ‘talk;’ however, what the individual says may be of questionable value.

After all, as O’Reilly himself said, “Petraeus is beyond reproach in my eyes.”

O’Reilly: ‘We Didn’t Invade Iraq’»

Yesterday, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly made the incredible claim that the United States never invaded Iraq: “We didn’t invade Iraq.” He added, “It was a declaration of war, it was a declaration to enforce the first Gulf War Treaty.” Watch it:

Despite O’Reilly’s revisionist history, the United States did invade Iraq. The U.S. military forcefully entered the country in order to overthrow that nation’s leader. That’s an invasion. During a 2006 speech, President Bush discussed his administration’s “two major invasions as a part of the war on terror.”

Even O’Reilly himself has, in the past, admitted that the United States invaded Iraq:

– “I’ll submit that most folks still have no idea why the Bush administration invaded Iraq.” [1/28/08]

– “Iraq was invaded to create a friendly country between Iran and Syria, thereby pressuring those nations into a more sensible foreign policy.” [3/6/06]

O’Reilly’s “first Gulf War Treaty” claim is also questionable. During a March 15, 2004 interview, former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix challenged O’Reilly on this exact point:

O’REILLY: [W]e liberate Iraq — liberate Kuwait, all right, and then we have a treaty, and the treaty says U.N. weapons inspectors are allowed to do X, Y, and Z, and 17 times Saddam says — violates those. Now you can understand why the United States government might be a little teed off about that. […]

O’REILLY: But do you understand that when you have 17 violations of a treaty, a war treaty, that you basically have to take action?

BLIX: Well, you’re talking about a war treaty. It was a cease-fire. It was not a war treaty.

O’REILLY: Oh, come on. Now don’t play semantics here, sir.

BLIX: Second — all right. I’m trying to be precise. You are imprecise.

O’Reilly’s claim is almost as unbelievable as Wolfowitz’s statement earlier this week that the U.S. “occupation [of Iraq] ended in June of 2004.”

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Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »

O’Reilly Attacks Moyers For Interviewing Rev. Wright: They Should ‘Take A Long Vacation, Perhaps In Iran’»

On PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal last night, Moyers interviewed Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial remarks created a political storm last month.

Reacting to advance excerpts of the interview, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly attacked Moyers on his show last night, calling him a “far left PBS guy” who is “extreme” and “pathetic.” At the end of his Talking Points Memo segment, O’Reilly suggested that Moyers and Wright should “take a long vacation, perhaps in Iran.”

Watch it:

Later in the show, when O’Reilly asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich if he could “figure” Moyers out, Gingrich called Moyers “a hard left sympathizer for anybody who dislikes America”:

O’REILLY: Can you figure this guy out, Moyers?

GINGRICH: Sure. Bill Moyers is a hard left sympathizer for anybody who dislikes America. And Reverend Wright’s sort of his perfect interview. He doesn’t lay — from what I’ve seen so far and the things that I’ve read tonight from the interview tonight, he doesn’t lay a glove on him.

Closing his discussion of Moyers with Gingrich, O’Reilly previewed a segment with Bernard Goldberg on his Monday show, saying “we’re going to wait and see the whole interview before we really hang Moyers, but Bernie’s warming up.”

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O’Reilly Disgusted By Transgender Couple: ‘Imagine A Poor Kid Getting Born Into That Family’»

The media have been fixated on the story of Thomas Beatie, a man who “used to be a woman before undergoing gender reassignment surgery.” Beatie married a woman and is now six months pregnant.

Yesterday on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly — clearly disgusted — railed against the media’s coverage of Beatie, exclaiming, “[D]o you want a 13-year-old watching this kind of stuff and you’ve got to explain all this crazy stuff?” From his exchange with right-wing pundit Bernard Goldberg:

O’REILLY: Yes. It’s hard to keep track, Bernie. It is. Imagine a poor kid getting born into that family, going, hey –

GOLDBERG: That’s — that’s the real tragedy.

O’REILLY: Of course.

Watch it:

There’s no evidence that the child born to Beatie and his wife will be psychologically damaged, as O’Reilly claims. According to a fact sheet by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry:

Current research shows that children with gay and lesbian parents do not differ from children with heterosexual parents in their emotional development or in their relationships with peers and adults. It is the quality of the parent/child relationship and not the parent’s sexual orientation that has an effect on a child’s development. Contrary to popular belief, children of lesbian, gay, or transgender parents:

* Are not more likely to be gay than children with heterosexual parents.
* Are not more likely to be sexually abused.
* Do not show differences in whether they think of themselves as male or female (gender identity).
* Do not show differences in their male and female behaviors (gender role behavior).

Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »

Tony Snow Returns Home To Fox News, Will Host O’Reilly Factor Tonight»

UPDATE: A Fox source disputes our report and says Bill O’Reilly will be hosting. Freepers, however, think Tony Snow is.

UPDATE II: Tony Snow did not host The O’Reilly Factor. Instead, he appeared as a guest.

ThinkProgress has been told Tony Snow will be guest hosting The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News tonight.

Prior to serving as White House Press Secretary, Snow was a political analyst for Fox News Channel, which he joined in 1996. For seven years, he served as the host of “FOX News Sunday.” He then hosted “The Tony Snow Show” on FOX News Radio, and “Weekend Live with Tony Snow” on the Fox News Channel.

Tony Snow last appeared on The O’Reilly Factor as a guest in October. O’Reilly asked whether Snow would consider returning to Fox, and Snow suggested that could be a possibility. O’Reilly warned Snow:

But you can’t go over to CNN. I mean, that’s the devil over there. You can’t. You know. You’re a religious guy. You can’t go into the pagan throne over there.

Watch it:

At the time, O’Reilly warned Snow that if he left Fox to become his competitor, “it’s going to get bloody.”

Washington Talk Radio Station Drops Bill O’Reilly»

Washington DC FM talk radio station 106.7 WJFK yesterday announced it was dropping Bill O’Reilly’s nationally syndicated show, and replacing it with a sports-talk program. The Washington Post reports today that O’Reilly’s cancellation is a “case in point” of how poorly conservative radio programs have fared in DC:

With the exception of Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk-radio hosts have struggled for years to find a wide audience on the local dial. While Limbaugh’s afternoon program remains popular on WMAL (630 AM), not many other conservatives’ programs have.

Yet despite their underwhelming performance, numerous right-wing radio hosts have been given repeated opportunities to succeed in DC. “Such radio stars of the right as Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage at times have literally had no ratings in Washington, as measured by Arbitron.”

In its diagnosis of conservative talk’s failures in the DC region, the Post points to a host of factors including the weak signals of some stations, weak programming, and the unique culture of the area that is resistant to political talk radio. One factor that went unmentioned, however, is the impact media consolidation has had on the local market.

In the Center for American Progress’s recent report on the “structural imbalance of political talk radio,” it noted that Washington DC had 65 percent conservative content and only 35 percent progressive. In this region, the market is dominated by only five owners:

This pattern of ownership homogeneity is reflected in radio markets throughout the nation. CAP’s report calls for increasing the ownership diversity in the talk radio market, allowing more local participation in determining the content communities want to listen to.

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