Cosmos Left

O'Reilly to Al Qaeda: "You want to blow up the Coit Tower?

Go ahead."

San Francisco and the rest of humanity to O'Reilly: "Fuck you, asshole."

Just because the people of San Francisco said no to unbridled militarism on Election Day doesn't give this scoundrel the right to wish a terrorist attack on them.

He's just pissed because Republicans and traditionalist culture warriors got their asses kicked on Tuesday.--Nov. 10, 2005

In light of O'Reilly's incendiary remarks.We would be remiss in ignoring the political symmetry between O'Reilly's comments and the Reverend Pat Robertson's warning to the people of Dover, Pennsylvania that God will punish them for rejecting intelligent design in Tuesday's election.

The message is clear from these luminaries of the Christian Right: disagree with us and you'll die, which, if you'll remember, was precisely Cheney's message in the 2004 vice presidential debate.

As weak and battered the Bush administration is these days, they're as dangerous as they've ever been. They're like cornered animals, poised to unleash a devastating attack to save their hold on power. For make no mistake, they still hold the reins of state power. And that's what's all about. That's why US workers have to wake up, smell the flowers, and realize that if we don't organize ourselves as a class to take state power away from the capitalists and reorganize society on socialist foundations, we're fucked. Pardon my French.--Nov. 12, 2005

Nov. 14 Update:

O'Reilly: "What I said isn't controversial. What I said needed to be said"

But it was all a "satirical riff," according to his website and his own remarks on tonight's Factor broadcast. The "It was only a joke" defense was predictable coming from this clown. Wishing for the United Nations building to be flooded by Katrina was a joke. Talking about his posse visiting the homes of Media Matters callers was a joke. So was saying "Off with his head" as one grisly beheading after another was occurring in Iraq.

Except his San Francisco tirade was not a joke, because Iraq and the US war drive, the US war OF terror, are not joking matters. You don't joke about terrorists destroying an American city. You can't hide behind jokes this time, O'Reilly. And it wasn't satire, because you're not smart enough or nuanced enough for satire. It's not about joking, or O'Reilly's First Amendment right to be an asshole. It's about O'Reilly's insensitive, brutish, thuggish character. It's about the consistent pattern of hate- and fear-mongering. It's about his fascist demagoguery.

No, listen to the audio clip. There was no nuance, satire, or joking. There was nothing but sheer bitterness, frustration and resentment in his voice as he urged Al Qaeda to blow up the Coit Tower and vowed as President he would do nothing to stop it. O'Reilly's angry because he's lost the American public on the war. We're not listening to him any more. All the lies about this war have been exposed, and the American people are fed up. O'Reilly looked at San Francisco's vote and saw the rising antiwar sentiment in the country staring him in the face. He saw Bush's plummeting approval numbers and fumed. He read the polls showing most Americans view Bush as a liar; this despite all the spinning O'Reilly did on behalf of Bush that he didn't lie but was misled by faulty intelligence. But the lies Bush and Co. told were too big to suppress forever. And they're out in the open now. And Bill O'Reilly can't handle it, because he knows he himself has been exposed as a liar and a fool.

This political reality is what's causing O'Reilly to become unhinged before our eyes. But he's deadly serious. So are Bush, Cheney, and the ruling class they are waging war and torturing on behalf of.

But let's get back to the San Francisco referendum that so incensed O'Reilly, because as usual he misreported the facts. Proposition I, "College Not Combat," urges city and university officials to exclude military recruiters from public high schools and colleges. But it does NOT ban the military from seeking recruits at city campuses, because that would jeopardize federal funding for the city's schools. Thus O'Reilly's "If I were President Bush, I would say, fine, you don't want to help us with World War III? We're just gonna withhold federal funding, except for children's programs" doesn't even apply to the referendum that was passed! And spare us the pious concern for children's programs, O'Reilly. It's not just his shameless exploitation of child abuse driving his fascistic crusade to enact "Jessica's Laws"--a draconian dagger aimed at the heart of the democratic rights of working people. It's that whenever O'Reilly gets misty eyed about kids, I think of former Attorney General Janet Reno's rationale for ordering the fiery destruction of Koresh's Waco compound: "My only concern is for the kids. Send in the tanks!"

O'Reilly also failed to tell his viewers that Proposition I urges city officials and university administrators to institute scholarship and training programs to reduce the military's appeal to students and counter the aggressive recruiting techniques used by the Pentagon to lure working class youth to be fodder for imperialist wars. Yes, it's a volunteer army, as O'Reilly points out, but it's composed of working class kids who in addition to seeking job skills and education, are motivated by genuine if misguided feelings of patriotism and the desire to defend the country from attack. They did not join to participate in illegal, immoral, and predatory wars of colonial aggression. They did not join to kill and die and commit immoral, depraved acts for the profits of Big oil and big business. They did not sign up so Wall Street can exploit workers around the world and plunder their resources.

We can take the word of Bob Matthews, a leader of the College Not Combat referendum, that he hopes Proposition I's victory eventually leads to the actual ban on campus military recruiting that O'Reilly misreported was the outcome this time. We don't want military recruiters in public schools looking to hustle working class youth into an armed forces that does not serve working people but instead is designed to slaughter our fellow and sister workers around the world for US capitalist profits. An armed forces that dehumanizes our kids to become psycho killers and sadistic torturers.

O'Reilly falsely claims that San Francisco's anti-recruitment measure had nothing to do with Iraq. Of course it did. The sponsors of this referendum saw this electoral tactic as a way of opposing the war in Iraq. The military is aggressively courting working class youth in public schools because it needs warm bodies to serve in Iraq and in future wars of aggression of Washington's agenda. Proposition I's sponsors put the measure on the ballot to give the city's voters a chance to say no to illegal, monstrous wars based on lies. And the "far-left" voters of San Francisco showed they've reached the same conclusion as the rest of the country--that the war in Iraq is not fighting terrorism but causing terrorism; that Iraqis had nothing to do with Sept. 11; that the war is about conquering Iraq to seize its oil and dominate the region; and that it's the warmongers who are disrespecting our soldiers and kids by sending them to barbaric wars based on lies.

Proposition I's sponsors also see their initiative as a way to counter the pernicious effect of the No Child Left Behind law, which requires high schools to turn over lists of students' names, phone numbers and addresses to military recruiters who ask for them. Bush and O'Reilly didn't tell us that No Child Left Behind actually meant they'd all end up fighting and dying in the Middle East.

Of course San Francisco's vote was about Iraq, but you won't hear that in O'Reilly's Spin Zone, where viewers kept hearing during last night's Talking Points memo, "Hurt Feelings in San Francisco" and the follow-up "San Francisco Flap" segment the constant drone of O'Reilly's "It's not about Iraq, it's about disrespecting the military" mantra. He wants to steer the issue away from Iraq not only to spin for Bush but also to cover up his own lies that have been exposed before the public. But when O'Reilly tried to push this spin on Todd Chretien, Proposition I's author, he got shot down like a Black Hawk over Baghdad.

When Chretien challenged O'Reilly to a debate on withdrawing all US troops from Iraq, O'Reilly ran for cover.

"Not about Iraq."

Chretien: "getting the troops home now... and getting the military recruiters out of the school....So you're up for that."

O'Reilly: "No, no, look."

Chretien: "...We won't back down. Will you?"

O'Reilly: "...why should I debate someone like you who keeps deflecting the issue into Iraq? This wasn't about Iraq."

Chretien: "Where do you think they go?"

Ouch. Takedown, Chretien. Knocked out O'Reilly on his own turf.

What the hell does O'Reilly think the military brass is recruiting kids for, a trip to Mars? They're going to Iraq, fool, or Syria, or Iran, or North Korea, or Venezuela. They're going to fight and die and torture for Wall Street's profits. And we say No! It is you, O'Reilly, who is disrespecting our kids and soldiers by helping the government tell the lies that will send them to their graves.

But Chretien knocked O'Reilly out of the No-Spin Zone well before the above exchange.

O'Reilly began the segment with the same sleazy deception he employed in his Talking Points memo in that he tried to pass off his advice to Al Qaeda to "Go ahead, blow up Coit Tower" as a mere satirical riff. Except in both instances, O'Reilly omitted the Coit Tower quote. Chretien, despite his initial nervousness, didn't let him get away with this sleight of hand bit of censoring.

Chretien: "But I heard your -- I noticed that, you know, you're right. You said that if it was -- what you were saying there in that intro piece was that it was satirical what you said."

O'Reilly: "Right, right."

Chretien: "But you actually left out the part at the end of there where you said if al Qaeda came to San Francisco and wanted to blow up Coit Tower."

A knockout blow in the first round!

O'Reilly (staggered): "Yes, we have the whole -- we can't play the whole thing. It's five minutes long. And anybody can hear it on billoreilly.com."

Oh Really O'Reilly? Try one minute and nine seconds long, you miserable, contemptous lying wretch.

O'Reilly: "But it was obviously the satirical reference...."

Chretien: "Well, this is what I would say, Bill. The people of San Francisco do not think that the war in Iraq is a laughing matter. Because when I wrote 'Proposition I' back in March, there were 1,500 dead American soldiers. As we speak today, there's almost 2100....That's not something that we should be laughing about."

O'Reilly: "And you and your ilk have insulted every single military person in this country because, as you know, they're not responsible for the war in Iraq. That's a political decision...."

That's right! The soldiers are not responsible for the war in Iraq. That responsibility lies with the political and military establishment that sent them based on lies that you helped tell, O'Reilly, like the one about Iraq being tied to Sept. 11. Many soldiers believe that because the military brass and O'Reilly and his network drilled that into their brains. So who's disrespecting the troops?

Back over to you, Todd Chretien.

"That's why we think they should come home now to stop..."

O'Reilly: "No, it's not about coming home. [Here we go again. Watch the foot go in his mouth.] Hey, you want coming home, put coming home on the proposition. You put."

Chretien: "It was in the proposition."

O'Reilly: "We don't want."

Chretien: "Did you read it?"

O'Reilly: "Yes I did."

No, you didn't. Because if you had, you would have seen this from Proposition I's legal text: "Whereas, over 1500 American soldiers have died and tens of thousands have been injured physically and psychologically in Iraq;"Whereas, the people of San Francisco voted by 63% to pass Proposition N in November 2004 calling on the Federal government "to bring the troops safely home now";

And this: "Whereas, the Federal government shows no sign of ending the occupation of Iraq or bringing the troops safely home and, in fact, is threatening military action against other nations;"As Chretien lectured O'Reilly: "You should have read the proposition, Bill. Then you would have known what was going on."

O'Reilly: "Yes, I read it."

We've already proven he hadn't. Or if he did, he's a liar. Two to one says it's both.

O'Reilly: "Well, is Mr. Katz [the other guest, a right wing radio personality] illiterate too?"

No, like you, he's just another cheerleading media whore for war forced to defend an unpopular, bankrupt war the only way possible--lying through his teeth.

O'Reilly on right wing SF radio show:

 "...I'm looking at a city that has absolutely no clue about what the world is.  None. You know, if you had been hit on 9/11 instead of New York, believe me, you would not have voted against military recruiting."

Oh Really O'Reilly? He should check his facts before anointing himself spokesperson for New York City. Because a Zogby poll taken in August 2004 showed that fully half of New Yorkers believe the Bush administration had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks!

It looks like the citizens of San Francisco and New York increasingly grasping the world we live in. It is Bill O'Reilly living in the Land of Oz, now known as The No-Spin Zone.

O'Reilly's Fascism Grows Clearer Every Day

"He's making a list/He's checking it twice"

In the spirit of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, O'Reilly is threatening to publish an online enemies list of all Web sites he judges as "smear merchants" and "anti-military." This is another blatant attempt to intimidate and terrorize political dissent in this country on behalf of the US rulers.

On his Nov. 15 show, O'Reilly called Justice Stephen Reinhardt, a liberal member of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, "the most dangerous judge in America." Then we wonder why judges are being attacked and murdered by crazed right wingers across the country, who are reacting to the climate of hate whipped up by fascist demagogues like Bill O'Reilly.

"I am embarrassed that the USA has a vice president for torture."

That didn't come from a "far left loony" or some "smear merchant" Web site. That description of Vice President Dick Cheney  was just made by Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former director of the CIA.

 Turner also told ITV News that "We have crossed the line into dangerous territory."

Yes, and that turf of torture is still being defended by the most dangerous individual in the US corporate media--Bill O'Reilly.--Nov. 18, 2005

"Full-body search on Liz Wiehl right this minute. She asked for it."

You sexist pig. Right down to "She asked for it." This a month after O'Reilly showed his displeasure with a CBS poll result by urging Wiehl to protest the network while wearing a bikini.

For a slimeball who only last year had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by one of his producers, O'Reilly's even dumber than Bill Clinton.--Nov. 10, 2005

Nov. 16, Update:

O'Reilly just can't let go of Radio Factor co-host Liz Wiehl. During a Nov. 10 discussion about an executive who spent $250,000 in one night at a New York strip club, O'Reilly suggested "it might be worth learning how" to dance if she could make a ten grand tip, because "You're a good-looking girl. I mean, if you haven't seen Lis on TV, she's a good looking blonde."

Another O'Reilly Lie Long Exposed by COSMOS LEFT Confirmed by Mainstream Media

Nov. 10, 2005--For more than two years Bill O'Reilly has faithfully parrotted the Bush administration's bogus claim of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. COSMOS LEFT has nailed O'Reilly on this from the outset of his deceitful "reporting." We've recently learned from the Associated Press that a newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document proves that the White House was warned as early as February 2002 that Ibn al-Shakykh al-Libi, the Iraqi source of this claim, "probably misled the interrogators deliberately, and he recanted the statements in January [2004]."

The LA Times also reports that the White House and Pentagon were aware of the document but "it is not clear whether the Senate intelligence panel had access to it." In other words, Bush, Cheney, Powell and others were all using al-Libi as a credible source long after they knew he was a liar--again proving O'Reilly's been wrong all along in insisting Bush didn't lie but was misled by bad intelligence.

And speaking of the Senate intelligence panel's access to "intelligence," O'Reilly has not uttered a word about reports that Vice President Cheney withheld key intelligence documents from that panel. O'Reilly is still defending Bush against ch arges of intelligence fabrication and manipulation by citing three transparently phony government whitewash "investigations": the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, the White House appointed Robb-Silbermann report, and Lord Butler's coverup from the other side of the Atlantic. The Senate panel specifically put off any evaluation of Bush's manipulation of intelligence until a later time, an empty promise that is now haunting panel chairman Pat Roberts.See Gulf of Tonkin, WMD: The Song Remains the Same for more on Bill O'Reilly and the lies he tells to help US imperialism go to war.

O'Reilly: "Americans don't care about the CIA leak case"Oh Really O'Reilly? Guess that's why a new Pew Research poll finds that 79% of Americans think the Libby indictment is "important to the nation." As with Abu Ghraib, O'Reilly is trying to shape public opinion by projecting his reactionary views on the broader population.

This must be another example of O'Reilly serving as the voice of the people. Defending himself against the charge that his agitation sparked a revolt against the Hillsborough County school board decision to remove most mentions of religious holidays from the school calendar, this in reaction to a request by a Muslim family to observe a Muslim holiday. O'Reilly said he didn't start anything; he was merely reflecting the views of the "folks."

He's being too modest. For years this page has chronicled examples of O'Reilly whipping his fascist-minded base into a frenzy and doing his bidding. This is why we consider him one of the most dangerous individuals in this country.

In his November 2 Talking Points memo entitled, "The Assault on Religion in America," O'Reilly gave new meaning to the pot calling the kettle black when he characterized the school board's initial decision as "fascist":"By banishing any mention of religious holidays, the Hillsborough County school board is setting back education and is practicing a kind of fascism. That's what they do in Cuba." [his emphasis]Oh Really O'Reilly? Get your facts straight for a change, moron. Christmas has been celebrated in Cuba for eight years now. It's true that in 1969 the Revolution stopped observing the holiday in deference to a national emergency mobilization to achieve a record sugar harvest--the lifeline of the nation. But the Catholic Church, which, like Judaism, was never banned in Cuba, continued to lobby for the holiday's restoration. And in 1997, Fidel restored the observance of Christmas in honor of Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba. Every year, a huge mass is held in Havana's Revolution Square.While it's true that the democratic principle of the separation of church and state is more respected in Socialist Cuba than in the US, Cubans are free to practice religion in their country. It's just not encouraged and financed by the government. And that's the way it should be.

US Forces Used "Chemical Weapons" in its Criminal Assault on Falluja

And then lied about it. With O'Reilly's help, because he has deliberately censored any mention of these credible reports from his program. An Italian documentary on the subject quotes an American soldier who was in Falluja as saying, "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

What say you, O'Reilly?

Not much, because the truth is he doesn't give a rat's ass about flesh melting down to the bone of Iraqis. This is a depraved lunatic who repeatedly urged Bush to destroy Falluja. And there appears to be few limits on his lust for blood.

Nov. 18 Follow-up:

US Used Napalm in Falluja

"New evidence came to light earlier this month that confirmed reports in Workers World newspaper and elsewhere that the U.S. military had used internationally banned chemical weapons, including white phosphorus and napalm, during its November 2004 attack on Falluja." [emphasis added]

While Workers World and COSMOS LEFT reported in December and March, respectively, that the US military had used white phosphorus and napalm during the assault on Falluja, Bill O'Reilly mained silent in the No-Spin Zone. That's because he's not a serious journalist, or any kind of journalist at all. He's a spinmeister and imperialist hack whose job is to cover up and lie about Washington's atrocities, not engage in a serious discussion about them.

Thus it was socialists, organized and independent, with few resources at their disposal, who functioned as the press that "is supposed to be our eyes and ears," to use O'Reilly's own words (Talking Points, 9/16/05).

Nov. 4-5, 2005--Bill O'Reilly on pro-Media Matters caller: "Anyway, we got another nut on the air....Ninety percent of the callers are good, and then you get nuts. Now, we should go their house. We should all go because I can get their addreses when they call in. We can trace them back, and we should all go over and surprise them."

 This is an irresponsible, dangerous and provocative call for a potentially violent posse that all too glibly dovetails with the alarming, threatening rhetoric coming from hate sites like American Jihad, posted by a fascist thug named George M Weinert V, who threatens a hit list of lefties that includes Kurt Nimmo, Chris Floyd (two COSMOS LEFT favorites) and James Cogan of the World Socialist Web Site with such murderous rhetoric as "CLEAN AND LOAD YOUR GUNS! fIND THE OPERATORS OF...radical left wing web sites who are GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY AND LET T HEM FACE A FIRING SQUAD--EXECUTE THE BASTARDS NOW!"

O'Reilly spends a great deal of time these days whipping up a frenzy of hysteria toward "far left, smear merchant, character assassin" Web sites like Media Matters which dare to tape his shows and dissect his lies in a scholarly manner and on a factual basis. His tirades range from urging the FBI to arrest Air America employees to the above-mentioned call for a posse to visit homes of Media Matters supporters.

Yet we don't hear a word from O'Reilly about the dangers of an obviously psychopathic fanatic capable of murdering his political opponents. Media Matters does not threaten the lives of those they disagree with. They calmly and rationally dissemble O'Reilly's demagoguery with facts. Weinert is openly threatening to murder people yet that fails to garner O'Reilly's attention. Of course, O'Reilly has also openly advocated the killing of Iraqi and Afghanis in their own homes and the assassination of Syrian President Assad.

O'Reilly doesn't challenge Weinert because he essentially shares Weinert's fascist impulse and tendency to hunt down and eliminate politically opponents they genuinely fear. Read their statements again. They're not that far apart, are they? O'Reilly consistently endangers his targets' lives by splashing their faces and phone numbers on his show for his Kool Aid followers, many of them violent and also not that far from Weinert. It is not difficult to imagine O'Reilly and Weinert collaborating further down the road to smash unions and other organizations of workers, particularly immigrant workers, in order to prevent the building of a mass socialist party.

These latest O'Reilly remarks calling on his Pavlovian dogs to visit the homes of political opponents only confirm the point made by Macarena Hernandez and the Denver Post's Cindy Rodriguez that O'Reilly's incendiary rhetoric is contributing to a climate of hatred, and intolerance and violence in this country. That's his job. That's what fascists do. Prey on the insecurities of backward layers of workers and demoralized middle class layers, and whip them into a frenzy against Blacks, immigrants, gays, Muslims, and other persecuted, vulnerable groups that can serve as fodder for fascist organizations looking to divide and conquer the working class on behalf of the capitalist exploiters.

O'Reilly Distorts Youth Rebellion in France to Push his Virulent, anti-Muslim Racism

Exploits French Turmoil to Advance Xenophobic, anti-Immigrant Campaign Against Mexicans

His Goal: Building a Fascist Base Among US Workers

Nov. 9-17, 2005--O'Reilly's verbal pogroms against Muslims are becoming cruder and more obvious every day. As the Iraq occupation slides further into disaster every day for US imperialism (O'Reilly doesn't give a rat's ass about the disaster US imperialism has inflicted on Iraq), he is unable to cover up his visceral racist hatred for the Muslim and Arab world. Listen to a sampling of his comments from a recent segment, "Prince Charles' View of Islam," in which O'Reilly ridiculed the idea that Charles wanted to tell Bush the US has been too intolerant toward Muslims during the Factor host's conversation with Harry Mount of the Daily Telegraph:

"Does he have an affinity for Islam?"

"Now certainly Islam is not a mystical religion. Islam is a hard-core religion that is based on a fervent belief in Allah.....It's into Allah, if Allah wills it, Allah really controls what people do on a daily basis." [emphasis added]

"Now you've got a big problem with Islam in Britain and obviously in France. We're seeing the riots in France, seven days of them." [emphasis added] This is a growing problem for almost every European country, is it not?"

"Was there backlash against Muslims in Britain because of the bombings?"

"I think there's a lot of fear, you know, in the French situation, I think there's a lot of fear because the numbers are so great. You know, you guys have let so many Muslims come into your country, both in Britain, France, and the rest of Western Europe, boy, oh, boy. I mean, and these riots are intense.""There's also an apartheid over in Europe. They all live together and they're not treated well, so they think. And I don't know. I can't really report on that." [emphasis added]

How much racism, disingenuousness, dearth of character, and unprincipled journalism can be crammed into one short paragraph? On the one hand O'Reilly concedes the apartheid conditions endured by Muslims in France and the much of Europe. On the other hand he suggests that this racist discrimination is all a figment of the Muslim imagination. And O'Reilly doesn't know? He can't report on this? Why? Many others have--those who don't have a political agenda and bias that prevents them from reporting on it. What kind of journalist is he if he can't? The answer is he's not a journalist, and this excerpt from proves it. He's admitting he can't report on racism against Muslims because he's not a journalist, he's a media propagandist who spins every issue on behalf of US imperialism and in this case doesn't give a rat's ass about the pain of apartheid and racism inflicted on Muslims in Europe or anywhere else. Once again, the facts and story line do not fit into his pro-imperialist spin, so O'Reilly simply ignores them.

O'Reilly's desperation over Bush's collapse and the defeat facing US imperialism in Iraq is what's fueling his racist, misleading coverage of the French rebellion. Anything to poison US workers with national chauvinism against Latino immigrants, Arabs, and Muslims. In the French rebellion, O'Reilly's found a mother lode from which to mine this reactionary poison: he gets to attack Mexican immigrants by equating them with terrorists; he gets to falsely equate the French upheaval with Al Qaeda and Islamic jihadists; he gets to lambaste France and Chirac on behalf of US capitalists, erroneously blaming Paris for the Iraq war; and he gets to criticize entitlements for working people, also on behalf of the US ruling class.Let's turn to O'Reilly's own words to dissect and expose these lies. His initial comments on the rebellion in the Prince Charles' segment were just a warm up to the Nov. 7 Talking Points memo, "The Muslim Insurrection in France."

O'Reilly: "Well, if you don't believe in karma after this story, what can I say. Let's start at the beginning. If France had demanded that Saddam Hussein allow the U.N. weapons inspectors full access, there would not have been a war in Iraq. But as you know, France was making millions under the table by working with Saddam. And that corrupt bargain hurt us all."

In O'Reilly's warped mind, France deserves this "Muslim insurrection" because it didn't help the US kill Muslims in France. But let's start at the beginning of O'Reilly's lies. And what do we find? Why, he's rewriting history, just like Bush. Saddam Hussein DID allow the UN weapons inspectors full access in Iraq--and they hadn't found any WMD because there were no WMDs left! Whatever WMD that weren't destroyed in the first gulf war were destroyed by the weapons inspectors precisely because they had full access. Hussein was telling the truth; Bush and O'Reilly were lying.

The inspectors' presence in Iraq was getting to be embarrassing to Bush, because they were already undermining Bush's accusations. It was Washington that ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, not Hussein, because the US was about to invade. Bush was going in no matter what France did, because the US ruling class clique around Bush had decided more than a decade earlier they were going to launch a second war against Baghdad to seize its oil and install a US protectorate. They knew there was no Soviet Union to deter them. They just needed another Pearl Harbor, which they received on a silver platter on Sept. 11, 2001.

It's true that French capitalists were making millions under the table with Hussein in the oil for food corruption. So were German, British, Russian and American capitalists, including a Texas oilman. Capitalists from many nations had their snoots in Iraq's trough. The whole oil for food program was a byproduct of the criminal US-led sanctions against Iraq that killed about one million people, mostly children, during the 1990s. And the Spin Zone never talked about the credible reports that Cheney's Halliburton profited handsomely from its own "under the table" dealings with Hussein while the sanctions were in place.

O'Reilly: "Also, let's not forget the Chirac government and the French media have consistently undermined America's War on Terror. That's why we're boycotting France."

"America's War on Terror" is O'Reilly's euphemism for the US invasion of Iraq. The French bourgeoisie opposed that invasion for different reasons than the French workers did. French imperialism is jealous that its American capitalist rivals used their military supremacy to snatch the colonial prize of oil-rich Iraq from the clutches of Paris. French capitalist "opposition" to Washington's aggression is rooted in its own selfish imperialist desires. French workers opposed the war out of proletarian internationalist solidarity. This distinction is beyond the comprehension of a capitalist skunk like O'Reilly. They are written for working people in France, America, and beyond.

As for O'Reilly's boycott of France, its impact is is nowhere near as large as O'Reilly has consistently claimed for years, according to credible investigative digging by Media Matters.

O'Reilly: "Wal-Mart? What's wrong with Wal-Mart? I don't get it."

Nov. 17-20, 2005--We'll enlighten Bill O'Reilly, but he's not as "simple" as he often claims. What's wrong with Wal-Mart? Maybe it's the poverty wages this the world's largest company pays its workers: a full-time worker averages $17,5000 annually--more than a thousand dollars under the poverty level. Or the fact that a Wal-Mart memo admitted that 46 percent of the children of the company's million-plus US employees are uninsured or on Medicaid. Or the fact that the company keeps its labor costs low by deliberately understaffing its stores according to a December 2004 article by Simon Head in the New Y ork Review of Books entitled, "Inside the Leviathan." (thanks to Joseph Kay's World Socialist Web Site Nov. 5 article)

Maybe it's the class-action lawsuit filed by apparel workers from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Nicaragua and Swaziland charging Wal-Mart with violating its phony code of contract by paying them less than the minimum wage, denying them time and a half, beating and locking them in factories. (thanks to the Wal-Mart Free NYC Coalition)

Perhaps it's the fact that in the 15 years since the Americans with Disabilites Act became law, Wal-Mart's been found guilty 15 times of discrimination against disabled workers. Or the fact that a California state civil rights agency ruled that Wal-Mart must pay $188,000 to a manager for refusing to reinstate her after pregnancy leave. (thanks again to the Wal-Mart Free NYC Coalition)

In a Nov. 15th segment scathingly critical of director Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," we discovered that O'Reilly's angry populism regarding price gouging by the oil companies only goes so far.

[In progress]

"In the end, Harriet Miers will be voted onto the Supreme Court, there's no doubt in my mind."--Bill O'Reilly, Oct. 5, 2005

Brought to you by the same genius who predicted that the US invasion of Iraq would bring peace to the Middle East and the CIA leak scandal would go nowhere.--Oct. 27, 2005

O'Reilly: "Duh, why would Libby lie to the grand jury?"--Oct. 28, 2005

To cover up Cheney's lies, you moron. You know, O'Reilly, the same lies you told the American public to terrorize them into supporting this criminal war. Don't pull that "who, me?" bullshit in these quarters, you cowardly punk. You're going down, too. You, who are so quick to throw everyone else behind bars, will end up there for your role in enabling the slaughter of many thousands of Iraqis and Americans. This Web site will devote the rest of our days toward that objective.--Oct. 29, 2005

Oct. 30, 2005:

One of Bush's lies that O'Reilly enthusiastically echoed was that Saddam Hussein gave a wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi safe haven in a Baghdad hospital before the US invasion in March 2003; a "fact" that allegedly established a nexus between Hussein and al-Qaeda which Bush supporters use as a justification for invading Iraq. Readers of this page know that COSMOS LEFT has consistently debunked this O'Reilly falsehood and distortion every time the blowhard repeated it. [See below, "London's Blood is on O'Reilly's Hands, Too"; "O'Reilly Owes Viewers Apology and Retraction Regarding Alleged al Qaeda Ricin Terror Plot"; "And if that takes more troops, then send more troops"--Bill O'Reilly, 6/29/05; "O'Reilly Echoes White House Fiction on Zarqawi"; see also on Oh Really O'Reilly, Page 2: "O'Reilly Whines: 'Why Won't Iraqis Give Americans a Break?' Calls Iraqis Ungrateful for US Invasion!"]

It's nice to see the capitalist media finally reporting what bloggers have been saying for more than two years.

Last month, a CIA report on the subject "found no conclusive evidence that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to an MSNBC article. "ABC quoted an unnamed senior U.S. senior U.S. official as saying that the document raises 'serious questions' about Bush administration assertions that Zarqawi found sanctuary in pre-war Baghdad."

ABC also reported that this official "says there is no clear cut evidence that Hussein even knew Zarqawi was in Baghdad." MSNBC wrote that "The CIA report concludes Zarqawi was in and out of Baghdad, but cast doubt on reports that Zarqawi had been given official approval for medical treatment there as President Bush said this summer."--Oct. 30, 2005Another persistent O'Reilly lie that we have just as persistently debunked is that the United States is a "Judeo-Christian country" that was "founded on Judeo-Christian values." He lied again on theOct. 27th O'Reilly Factor when he called the idea of schools honoring a Muslim holiday "absurd in a Christian country. I mean we can't be having Hindu and Buddha....I mean this country is founded on Judeo-Christian traditions."Not only is O'Reilly lying about America's heritage, he's doing so for the vile purpose of generating racist xenophobia against Muslims. It was gratifying to see Mike Rivero from What Really Happened.com expose O'Reilly's falsification the same way COSMOS LEFT did a July 12, 2004 essay, "1797 Treaty with Tripoli Proves O'Reilly Wrong: US Is NOT a Christian Nation"--cite the text of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which explicity states the US is not "founded on the Christian religion"; followed by the text of Article VI, Clause 2 of the US Constitution, which explicity states all Treaties made by the US Government are the supreme law of the land.--Oct. 30, 2005Nov 1, 2005:

Spinning the Plamegate scandal much, O'Reilly? On the day we learned that it was Cheney who told Libby that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA in the WMD division, O'Reilly never said a word about this tidbit of news. We've also yet to hear a single comment from O'Reilly about the explosive story coming out of Italy and now the American Conservative magazine that the Italian intelligency agency SIMSI played a role in forging the Niger uranium documents, and that a month before they showed up in Rome, SIMSI chief Nicolo Pollari met with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley on Sept. 9, 2002, suggested the forged documents had a direct line to the White House. O'Reilly is also mum about the likely connection between the forgeries and Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, neoconservative kingpin Michael Ledeen, and Larry Franklin, the Pentagon's leading Iran analyst who pled guilty to handing over classified information to Israeli diplomats and the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

More soon on what O'Reilly's not telling his viewers about the war crimes that he is partly responsible for.

Oct. 22-31, 2005--One more example of the training US forces are receiving to wage psychological warfare against Muslims by humiliating and desecrating their faith

Care to defend these animals, O'Reilly? Lust like you crusaded for the Marine who cold-bloodedly executed a wounded, unarmed Iraqi? Just like your colleagues at FOX like Sean Hannity are already doing?:

"It may not have happened [despite the video's existence]"; "it's being blown out of proportion by a hostile press, 'just like Abu Ghraib'"; "it may have been justified for hygienic reasons"; "the jihadists are barbaric too, so we have to match them," claptrap like that.

Don't those images of Americans standing over the burned corpses make you feel proud, O'Reilly? Think cremation is one of those "coercive interrogative techniques" needed to fight the war on terror? Think it's another case of a "few bad apples" that is totally unrelated to the training and atmosphere permeating today's military that is turning America's working class youth into sadistic, psychotic killers?

Think we're going to take this bullshit forever? That we're not going to throw the class struggle into the ranks of the military and politically fight to win them over to the Revolution, to build a Red Army that will embody an entirely new set of values--those secular, humanist, proletarian, egalitarian values you love so much, O'Reilly?

Oct. 23-31, 2005--Photojournalist Stephen Dupont was embedded with the 173rd Airborne Brigade when he recorded the latest US atrocity under the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld command. His footage of the US soldiers burning the corpses recently aired on the Australian network, SBS. It is already igniting a firestorm of outrage throughout the Muslim world that may dwarf the reaction to Newsweek's Koran desecration report, which, despite O'Reilly's continued lies, was accurate. The only discrepancy was related to the precise document the report was discussed, not the veracity of the story.

While the US soldiers are standing next to the charred corpses, members of a US psychological operations outfit are taunting residents of the nearby village, "Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down West and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be." [Here this punk must be pathetically emulating Arnold the Terminator. What a tough guy he is. Hope his family is proud.]Another soldier is heard shouting, "Your time in Afghanistan is short. You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talib, but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

For many months O'Reilly has accused the ACLU of aiding terrorists and endangering US forces in its effort to publish additional Abu Ghraib torture photos that are even more sickening than what's come to light already. He also blames Newsweek and other media messengers of Washington's torture policy of putting American soldiers in danger by reporting provocative stories like Guantanamo's Koran desecration that will incite Muslims to violence. Further, O'Reilly has pushed the "few bad apples" theory to explain the abuses that were captured on film and deflect the spotlight away from the source of these atrocities--the US imperialist high command, including the White House and the Pentagon.

But Dupont's videotape and reporting of the corpse burning is just the latest confirmation that "war crimes are endemic to the American occupations in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and are directly in line with the policies of the Bush administration," as Tom Carter put it in his October 22 World Socialist Web Site article.

It's not the messenger that's the problem--it's the torture, stupid. O'Reilly objects to further disclosures of abuse because he claims it will cause retaliatory violence by Muslims against US soldiers who happen to illegally be in Muslim nations killing and defiling Muslims. But it's the torture itself that is endangering US troops, and that cannot be suppressed, no matter how hard FOX tries. Suppressing the photos only makes FOX and the government look worse. The whole world knows about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the photos of US soldiers posing with Iraqi corpses being used as currency for porn sites, and now the burning of these Afghan corpses. And the whole world knows who is responsible for these atrocities.

O'Reilly argues that it's all overkill now; that there's nothing new in the photos that isn't already known; that releasing them needlessly endangers US troops. But the troops are endangered because they were put in harm's way by Washington which sent them into Iraq as an occupying army facing a hostile population. The troops are endangered by those who sent them there and ordered the torture to take place.

But O'Reilly's wrong for another reason, too. Every Abu Ghraib photo must be released because those responsible for the torture have thus far escaped accountability.

It's not the messenger that's the problem--it's the torture, stupid. O'Reilly objects to further disclosures of abuse because he claims it will cause retaliatory violence by Muslims against US soldiers who happen to illegally be in Muslim nations killing and defiling Muslims. But it's the torture itself that is endangering US troops, and that cannot be suppressed, no matter how hard FOX tries. Suppressing the photos only makes FOX and the government look worse. The whole world knows about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the photos of US soldiers posing with Iraqi corpses being used as currency for porn sites, and now the burning of these Afghan corpses. And the whole world knows who is responsible for these atrocities.

O'Reilly argues that it's all overkill now; that there's nothing new in the photos that isn't already known; that releasing them needlessly endangers US troops. But the troops are endangered because they were put in harm's way by Washington which sent them into Iraq as an occupying army facing a hostile population. The troops are endangered by those who sent them there and ordered the torture to take place.

But O'Reilly's wrong for another reason, too. Every Abu Ghraib photo must be released because those responsible for the torture have thus far escaped accountability--with O'Reilly's help. He is well aware that his spinning for Bush is a big reason why significant layers of US workers are not outraged by Abu Ghraib. The more photos released, the more evidence unveiled that shows the torture is too widespread, too pervasive, too systematized to be the work of a few bad apples, the harder it will be to cover up US imperialism's war crimes. Every photo must be released because every American worker must come to grips with what is being done in our name. Every photo must be released until Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, O'Reilly, and the rest are behind bars.

That is the story that has yet to be told, O'Reilly.

And this latest atrocity in Afghanistan will help tell it. O'Reilly claims that the ACLU is provoking attacks on US soldiers by suing to release all Abu Ghraib images. But it's the US imperialist military and cheerleaders like O'Reilly who are provoking Islamic workers and peasants by desecrating Afghan corpses, sadistically torturing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and defiling the Koran at Guantanamo. The barbaric act of burning the dead bodies, the humiliation and taunts ridiculing the villagers' manhood, the mocking of the Islamic tradition of facing Mecca during prayers, were done to provoke and intimidate the local Afghan population. All of these acts by US forces were also violations of the Geneva Convention.

These are all acts of an imperialist army fighting an unwinnable colonial war. As Carter wrote, "In the American military, every form of backwardness is encouraged. The most violent and base instincts are promoted. The video indicates that the soldiers do not seem to be the least bit unnerved by the grotesque bonfire they have created, and show total disregard for the humanity of their victims. 'Wow, look at the blood coming out of the mouth on that one', says one soldier, 'fucking straight death metal.'"

O'Reilly and other imperialist war propagandists often speak misty-eyed of "our military," or "our troops." The truth is it is not "our" military or "our troops," if by "our" we mean the US working class. Oh yes, the rank and file soldiers are largely working class in composition. Some volunteer for economic and job training factors; others join motivated by a genuine patriotic desire to serve one's country. But when they join as individual workers, they enter a military that is not run by the working class. It is not a "Red Army." Workers join a capitalist military whose job is to police, subjugate, and conquer oil and gas rich countries that Wall Street so desperately needs to maintain its world empire. The values and training workers receive in this imperial army are the values of the US ruling rich--the captains of industry and finance capital who harbor nothing but contempt for those semi-colonial savages they must conquer. Thus the US rulers make sure their servants in the Pentagon carry out these predatory, colonial wars with the terror and barbarism befitting an empire in decline. So our working class kids are trained to torture, trained to look at Iraqis or Vietnamese as ragheads and slope eyes, the better to dehumanize them, the better to slaughter them. Many are drawn from backward, rural areas of the US that serve as breeding grounds for the fascist mindset the Pentagon is looking for. Torturing ragheads is second nature to them. It's fucking fun. Just look at the sickening gleefulness in those Abu Ghraib photos. They embrace the dehumanizing training of an imperialist military that orders them to chant, "Kill! Kill! Kill" Many of these low-lifes are too far gone to be won over to the Revolution. They've internalized the barbaric values taught by their masters and revel in being the psychotic killers they're trained to be.

But not all of us react this way. Sooner or later, the class struggle has a way of making its way into the ranks of this imperialist military. Resistance is real and it's growing, thought not on a mass scale yet. If it were, all of politics in this country would be different. Some soldiers desert; some go AWOL. Some with names like Benderman and Mejia go to jail and come out even better revolutionaries than before. Many join antiwar Vet organizations and speak out against this monstrous aggression. Many don't have access to political or support group outlets and suffer mental breakdowns.

It is the duty of communists to conduct political agitation among rank and file soldiers--drafted or volunteers--to win them over to the Revolution. To explain that they are not serving their country--working class America--but are instead fighting and dying for capitalist America. Our of the titanic class battles further on down the road the US working class will forge a Red Guard and Red Army--revolutionary military formations that will toss torture and all other barbaric practices of imperialist rule into the trashcan where they belong.

Nov. 16, Update:

O'Reilly talks out of both sides of his mouth on the subject of US-inflicted torture. One night he piously claimed to oppose torture as immoral, while endorsing "coercive interrogative techniques" such as sensory deprivation, dogs and psychological humiliation to extract information from "terrorists" that will save lives. Immediately after, in response to a caller who argued that torture doesn't work, O'Reilly replied that military intelligence officers told him that torture does work.

Which is it, O'Reilly?

We know the answer. O'Reilly's for torture. He has consistently defended the Bush administration's rationale for torture and redefinition of torture. He sees no problem with the CIA's Soviet-style gulag of torture centers known as "black sites." O'Reilly is one of those who have proudly defended and promoted the hideous abuse of detainees from Guantanamo to Iraq to Afghanistan. He has exposed himself as a war criminal in front of the entire world.

O'Reilly: "Who? Me? Preach hate and encourage murder? Never! I love Mexican immigrants!"

Oct. 18-26, 2005: That's how Bill O'Reilly reacted last night (10/18/05) to Macarena Hernandez's column in the Dallas Morning News suggesting that O'Reilly's nightly tirades against Mexican undocumented workers are feeding an anti-immigrant frenzy that's led to the murders of Mexican farm workers in Georgia and elsewhere.

"Waa! That columnist is saying mean things about me! Make her stop!"

This is essentially what this bully, who, like all bullies, is really a pussy who can't withstand criticism, is saying to his viewers. O'Reilly ripped a paragraph that appeared toward the end of the column out of context before distorting what it actually said. Before quoting the paragraph, O'Reilly gave this background:

"A few weeks ago, six Mexican farm workers were murdered in Georgia. They mayor of Tifton, Georgia, where the killings took place, responded by flying the Mexican flag at city hall in sympathy. Now apparently some residents complained about that."

Then O'Reilly supposedly read the paragraph in question by Hernandez:

"Were the complainers angrier about the red, white and green Mexican flag fluttering in the Georgia air than they were about the horrific murders. Do they watch FOX's 'The O'Reilly Factor,' where the anchor and the callers constantly point to the souther border as the birth of all America's ills? It is one thing to want to secure the borders and another to preach hate. [??] Taken literally, such rhetoric gives criminals like those in southern Georgia license to kill."

O'Reilly then said: "So what Ms. Hernandez is telling her readers is that this program preaches hate and encourages murder. That's what this dishonest woman is doing."

Oh Really O'Reilly?And just who is being dishonest? Because O'Reilly left out a key statement by Hernandez. The bracketed question marks in the above quoted paragraph by Hernandez refers to the following statement that was consciously and deceitfully omitted from the excerpt: "(Sample comment: "Each one of those people is a biological weapon.") Hernandez is accurately referring to the April 15 Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly segment in which the host agreed with a caller that each illegal immigrant was a "biological weapon" and that the 11 million Mexican workers in the US represent an equal threat to Americans as 9/11, because the Mexicans have caused the deaths of 3,000 just by being here illegally.

THIS is the "such rhetoric" that Hernandez was referring to and which O'Reilly quoted but left out. So O'Reilly consciously deleted the core of Hernandez's argument. And he's got the balls to say she's dishonest.

O'Reilly then tried to discredit Hernandez by correcting her minor, irrelevant inaccuracy that there are callers on the Factor program.

"Now first of all, we have no callers on the 'The O'Reilly Factor' as anybody who'd watch the program knows. So Hernandez doesn't know what she's talking about. I suspect she got her information from some smear Web site." [i.e., Media Matters, which factually debunks his lies regularly]

So Hernandez was referring to "The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly," and the segment mentioned above in which O'Reilly and a caller called Mexican immigrants biological weapons who threatened Americans as much as Sept. 11. Wow, what a gotcha executed by O'Reilly. She said the TV Factor instead of the Radio Factor. This from the individual who repeatedly confused the Peabody and Polk awards for so long.

So far, Hernandez was right and O'Reilly's been not only wrong, but he's been caught once again lying through his teeth and engaging in the most egregious example of unprincipled journalism, if you can call it that. What respect he has for his base that adores him.

O'Reilly then claimed Hernandez was a liar because he is "on record time and again as sympathizing with Mexican workers." He ran a video clip of a past program in which he says if he were a poor Mexican, he'd try to cross the border and earn money to send back to his family, too. He has nothing against the Mexican workers, you understand; it's the fault of the US and Mexican governments for not controlling the border. "I have nothing, you know, [almost choking on his words] they're hardworking, most of them [translation: their cheap labor makes them easily exploitable and an all around good deal]. They're good people."

Sure they are. That's why it's not nice to call them biological weapons who represent chaos, instability and a menace to the security of the country.

O'Reilly's professed sympathy for Mexican workers is as perfunctory and meaningless as his alleged deference for the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Night after night O'Reilly convicts people from Professor Al-Arian to Michael Jackson in the court of public opinion even as he extols the virtute of innocent until proven guilty. Similarly, night after night O'Reilly stirs up hatred against Mexicans by depicting them as invading hordes of disease carrying criminals and terrorists, all the while saying he's got nothing against them.

O'Reilly sympathy for Mexicans is nothing but empty words; a fraud probably concocted by his lawyers. He thinks that by mouthing this rhetoric no one will notice the nonstop frenzy of hate he builds against our brothers and sisters south of the border. But Macarena Hernandez noticed. And she nailed Bill O'Reilly on it. Called him out and the pussy can't take it.--Oct. 20, 2005

Oct. 26, 2005--If O'Reilly truly had nothing against Mexican immigrants, if he "didn't blame them," he would stand up and speak out for the rights of undocumented workers instead of incessantly characterizing them as "11 million people running around unaccounted for" and threatening America's national security by invading in hordes and causing chaos and instability. He wouldn't agree that they were the equivalent of biological weapons [O'Reilly continues to shamelessly deny this, leaving the inescapable conclusion that he's a pathological liar]. He wouldn't call the murder of a New York woman by a man who had overstayed his visa "a micro 9/11." He wouldn't say "nobody knows how many of them are violent." He wouldn't stigmatize all Mexican immigrants as brutal murderers. He wouldn't say we need protection from the invading hordes of illegal aliens or else blood will flow in the streets from another 9/11. He wouldn't associated undocumented workers with "brutal crimes, gangs running wild, social chaos caused by certain cities not enforcing immigration laws. Will anything be done abou these sanctuary cities?" He wouldn't refer to Mexican immigrants in the same breath as "living in dangerous times...hostile forces overseas want to kill us. Hostile forces within the USA want drastic changes in this country, including open borders." He wouldn't talk about border states that "will face bankruptcy from providing services to thousands of non-citizens, and some very bad people will enter this country unsupervised."

Indeed, if O'Reilly were as down with Mexican immigrants as he claims, he wouldn't have spitefully spewed this resentful tirade: "In the past few months at least 12 articles have appeared about students in this country illegally who have done very academically. The articles appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, and other mainly progressive papers....So, what's goin' on?"

Not much of a vindictive bastard, is the host of The O'Reilly Factor?

Macarena Hernandez's column was absolutely on point. O'Reilly's hate-mongering frenzy of national chauvinism against Mexican workers has contributed to an atmosphere of violence and intolerance that has resulted in an alarming number of murders of Mexican workers. That is a fact. It is not deceitful.

What is deceitful is O'Reilly's selective, misleading use of quotes from Hernandez's column:

"Ms. Hernandez fails to report the alleged killers of the six Mexicans in Georgia are criminal thugs who wanted money. Immigration had nothing to do with it."

Ms. Hernandez had this covered commendably in three paragraphs that appeared earlier in the column. But Factor viewers never saw her explanation, because O'Reilly, who is quick to criticize others for "ripping quotes out of context", did precisely that here. A quick sampling of what O'Reilly denied his audience that was essential to understanding Hernandez's column:

"Across the country, assaults on immigrants are common and happen at a much h igher rate than reported. Two years ago in Grand Prairie, a p ushcart ice cream vendor was shot to death and robbed. Seven months later, another one met the same fate in west Oak Cliff. In March, at a Far North Dallas apartment complex, two thieves raped and killed a 20-year-old woman. They slit her husband's throat.

"In Dallas, attacks against immigrants are one reason individual robberies have gone up in the last five years. Authorities call undocumented immigrants 'ready-made victims.' Without proper documentation to open bank accounts, many resort to stashing their sweat-soaked earnings under mattresses, in kitchen cabinets, in their socks or boots. If they are robbed, many don't call police for fear of deportation or because, back home, cops aren't trusted, anyway. [Good instincts, those Mexicans.]

"Some solutions are simple and concrete, such as making it easier for immigrants to establish bank accounts. Wells Fargo and Bank of America are among the banks that require only a Mexican consulate-issued ID card to open an account; others require documentation many immigrants lack. If there was ever a reason for adopting the more lenient policy, this is it."

Which brings us back to Bill O'Reilly, who favors the strictest, most onerous documentation requirements because, well, that's how strong he feels about the rights of undocumented Mexican workers.

O'Reilly's a pussy who can't handle legitimate criticism of his unprincipled, fraudulent, demagogic, hate-filled brand of "reporting." Those who call him out on this are labeled "smear merchants." When you hear him use this term, he's come up against someone else he knows he cannot debate on the facts.

O'Reilly thought he could spew his racist filth forever and get away with it. But true journalists like Macarena Hernandez and a Denver Post colleague who has admirably jumped to the former's defense are confronting O'Reilly and exposing his chauvinistic venom. And he can't handle it.

O'Reilly: "'Talking Points realizes American journalism is disintegrating quickly. [And you're the number one reason and the most illuminating example, O'Reilly.] There are few standards anymore. [Just watch the Factor to get a feel for this.] Left wing ideologues like Ms. Hernandez, who has a master's degree from California Berkeley, are running wild with hateful invectives on an almost daily basis." [Note the Berkeley baiting: red meat for O'Reilly's Kool Aid fascist legions; "hateful invectives" means fact-based arguments that O'Reilly can't answer]

Left wing ideologue? Ms. Hernandez sounds like a committed liberal who's a far more competent, principled journalist than O'Reilly can ever dream to be. COSMOS LEFT is a left wing ideologue who's been destroying this blowhard facist for three years on this site, and without the benefit of FOX's budget or Soros's billions. Compare what we've been saying about Iraq, WMD, Plamegate since 2003 with O'Reilly's "opining." History will have the final say on who stood for journalistic integrity and who was a pimp for war criminals.

O'Reilly Defames WWII American Soldiers

While Defending Abu Ghraib Torture, O'Reilly Accuses 82nd Airborne of Nazi War Crime

New Orleans cops doing their part in the war on terror

Watch O'Reilly apologize tonight for this latest example of cop terror: New Orleans cops savagely beating 64-year-old Robert Davis for alleged public intoxication. US capitalists can count on O'Reilly to put the most positive spin on the most horrific, bestial violence committed by all levels of the capitalist state's repressive apparatus--from cops to Marines.

Watch, we'll be encouraged to feel sorry for the New Orleans Police Department because of all the stress they've been under lately. Bullshit. Aside from the fact that half of them ran like the rats they are as Katrina closed in, the cops beating Davis are just doing what cops do in every city and community in this country--with or without hurricanes. These thugs in uniform are doing their job: meting out capitalist justice to working people in the streets.

New Orleans police are also being investigated for allegedly breaking into a car dealership on the eve of Hurricane Katrina and stealing nearly 200 cars, including 41 Cadillacs.--Oct. 10, 2005

OCTOBER 11, 2005 UPDATE:

On tonight's show, O'Reilly interviewed Robert Davis and his attorney. True to form, O'Reilly tried to lay the foundation for turning the victim into the criminal by peppering Davis with a series of leading questions. 

"Did you say anything to the police?

 "Did you do something?

"Did you curse at them?

"Were you aggressive?

"Why would they do this to you?"

And on it went. Then O'Reilly insinuated that Davis was a golddigger.

"I understand that you're suing the city for $500,000?"

Davis's attorney stopped O'Reilly in his tracks immediately, saying it was about the people of New Orleans, the police department, not about a numerical amount. O'Reilly did not challenge him on this.

Tomorrow night, O'Reilly promised we would hear from "the other side" in this incident: the cops and their attorney. Because that's what The Factor does--present both sides objectively and fairly, so we can decide.

Let's watch O'Reilly continue his fair and balanced approach to this latest act of sadism and barbarism by America's thugs in uniform.

O'Reilly Tries to Blunt Delay's "Bad Day" by Ignoring Abramhoff, Safavian, and Frist Scandals

Delay's indictment forced O'Reilly to issue his perfunctory criticism of Delay's "fund-raising practices," but not a word was uttered about the interrelated scandals involving lobbyist Jack Abramhoff and Bush's former Office of Management and Budget director David Safavian, as well as the unfolding SEC and Justice Department investigations of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for selling HCA stock right before its fall.

They Just Can't Stop Themselves...

...From making idiotic statements that reveal their innate racism. Barbara Bush, Rick Santorum, Bill O'Reilly, Wolf Blitzer, Richard Baker (R-La), right-wing bloggers, Greenville Technical College administrator Renee Holcombe, and now, William Bennett.

OCTOBER 6, 2005:

"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them." –Barbara Bush talking about Katrina's evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 5, 2005.

That is racism.

Is this woman begging history to attach "Antoinette" to her name? If so, she should contact Bill O'Reilly, who has exhibited a proclivity toward guillotines.

 "I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving." –Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005

That is racism.

"...many of the poor in New Orleans" failed to leave the city before Katrina because "they were drug-addicted" who "weren't going to get turned off from their source. They were thugs."

That is racism. So were O'Reilly's tirades about rampant looting and heavily armed "thugs" shooting at helicopters. And given the fact that most of these lurid stories turned out to be fabrications or hype, O'Reilly owes the "folks" of New Orleans a public apology.

"You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals...many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold." --CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Sept. 1, 2005, weighing in on Katrina's evacuees.

That is so racist, Wolf.

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." --Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) speaking to to lobbyists (Wall Street Journal)

That is racism. "Public housing" means African Americans. God did the ethnic cleansing for American capitalists, Baker is saying. Washed the niggers right out of there and paved the way for gentrification, tax incentives, slave wages, and guaranteed profits.

In the essay below, "O'Reilly: 'Katrina Has Wiped Out Cindy Sheehan'" we began analyzing O'Reilly's criticism of Jimmy Breslin and rapper Kanye West for attributing racism to the government's criminal neglect of the hurricane's victims. O'Reilly dismissed this with such sophisticated formulations as "nutty" and "garbage." Bush's response was too small, but racism had nothing to do with the fact that New Orlean's poor Black residents were left to die. It was all due to class, not race, according to the national socialist O'Reilly. And how can Bush be a racist? He appointed Rice, Powell, and many other Blacks.

O'Reilly's diatribe against West came to mind when I discovered "Midwest by DC," the creation of a right wing blogger and Bush loyalist named Tyler Patrick, whose masthead quoting P.J. O'Rourke tells it all: "I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck."

Midwest joined O'Reilly in taking issue with West's opinion that Bush doesn't care about Black people.

"Kanye West Can Lick My Balls"

This was Patrick's way of expressing his view that West's standards of intellectual discourse do not measure up to this free market champion. Patrick writes that he writes to "debunk the growing--and moronic--claim that there is some kind of 'race dimension' to those stranded in New Orleans. That the President or the federal government was somehow indifferent --or worse, purposeful-- in it's 'slow' response time."

The claim is growing because the evidence is growing. Washington turned back aid from Germany. It refused aid from Cuba and Venezuela. It burned aid from  Britain. It prevented the Red Cross from entering the city. New Orleans cops prevented residents from leaving. Several civilian organizations reported that their attempts to help rescue those trapped on their roofs or in their attacks were halted by FEMA, cops, and the military. The military cut all communication lines of churches, hospitals and community groups when they arrived to help to out. Persistent and credible reports suggested that the 17th Street Canal levee was intentionally breeched to flood the Ninth Ward in order to clear out its Black residents, In other words, Congressman Baker, it may not have been God cleaning out the public housing. It may have been a man-made phenomenon after all. The evidence is overwhelming that Bush held up aid to New Orleans until a large enough military force was assembled to occupy the city. Indeed, Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told Pentagon reporters, "We waited until we had enough force in place to do an overwhelming force." Blum admitted that the National Guard did not enough until that Friday because "We took the time to build the right force."

Got that O'Reilly and Tyler Patrick?

The only "moronic" position is to defend Bush and deny Katrina was another example of the oppressed African American nationality getting shafted by the bipartisan capitalist government at the federal, state and local levels.

Patrick continued: "If it's President Bush that doesn't like black people, why was New Orleans' black mayor sitting on what looks like dozens and dozens of school buses that could have otherwise been used to get poor black people out of the path of the hurricane? 'Don't have a ride? Don't have a car? We'll ship your ass out on a bus.' Does he not care about black people too?"

Notice how Patrick is deflecting the racist charge against Bush by pointing at Nagin. Patrick doesn't deny that Bush's racism; he merely throws dust in his readers' eyes by noting New Orleans' Black mayor didn't evacuate the city's Black residents, either.

No, he didn't. That's because Mayor Nagin is a capitalist politician sworn to defend the interests of New Orlean's financial elite. Unlike Patrick's liberal opponents, we don't get sucked into the "blame game" trap so prevalent in bourgeois circles. We condemn the entire capitalist political structure--Democrats and Republicans--for the criminal neglect surrounding Katrina. Nagin, like Bush, doesn't care about New Orlean's working people. His actions--like Bush's--prove this. While Nagin just laid off half of the city's workforce, his "Bring New Orleans Back" commission is stocked with New Orleans' bankers, multimillionaires, captains of industry and real estate moguls.

A Black capitalist politician ripping off Black people is nothing new. Papa Doc Duvalier and his son Baby Doc did it in Haiti for decades with massive US assistance. The butcher Mobutu did the same in Zaire for decades, also with Washington's active help. It's the class, stupid.

Mayor Nagin was a executive for Cox Communications, a cable conglomerate. He is a member of the "7 and a half percent," the Black petty bourgeoisie who identifies with the capitalist class and looks to the "free market" as the only answer for society's ills. HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson, who recently predicted that a rebuilt New Orleans will have far fewer Blacks, was the president of  American Electric Power-Texas. Like Nagin, he is a Black capitalist who has the same contempt for working people that all elements of the ruling class does--Black and white.

Then there's Greenville Technical College administrator Renee Holcombe, who in a staff meeting referred to Hurricane Katrina evacuees as "yard apes." She is not alone. Mississippi sheriffs blocked evacuees from New Orleans on a bridge, firing shots over their heads. They weren't going to let those niggers from New Orleans into their all-white towns. White supremacist outfits tied to the Republicans, like the Council of Conservative  Citizens, wrote on their web site that whites "had to band together to protect themselves from racial attacks."

None of the above would admit to their racism, even the CCC, which says they're only protecting whites against Black racists. We are told that Barbara Bush, Santorum, O'Reilly, Blitzer, Baker, Patrick, and Holcombe are not racists. But they are. To paraphrase the scorpion's last words to the frog in Aesop's fable, "It's in my nature." From their various perspectives, all of these cretins use racism as a weapon on behalf of the US ruling class facing a deepening crisis of its rule.

Sept. 24-Oct. 9, 2005--Flawed as his liberal politics are, Phil Donahue didn't so much kick O'Reilly's ass on the merits of the debate. Rather, O'Reilly hit the canvas in his own No-Factor Zone because an aggressive Donahue walked into the studio with hubris and a swagger and called O'Reilly a coward on his own turf. Donahue proved once again what we all learned about bullies in a schoolyard--they're not so tough when someone stands up to them and calls them out. The best part was Donahue repeatedly calling O'Reilly, "Billy," a choice that accurately describes O'Reilly's juvenile, immature behavior.

But aside from the satisfaction of watching Donahue call O'Reilly both a coward and Billy there was little substance in their exchange on Iraq. Donahue didn't even mention the lies about WMD, the lies about ties to 9/11 and Bin Laden, and the lie that the Jan. elections was a democratic one that ushered in an era of democracy. Donahue preferred to repeat the "you wouldn't send your kids to die" which only gave O'Reilly the chance to scream that his nephew was proud to serve his country. Donahue replied that he wasn't his son, but even if he was, O'Reilly could have given the same answer. The point is Donahue's argument accomplishes nothing politically, although it did cause O'Reilly to lose control on camera.

What matters most about this exchange is that Donahue's mention of former guest Jeremy Glick--which caught O'Reilly by surprise-- it was like holding up garlic to a vampire. O'Reilly melted down like the Wicked Witch of the West.

And when O'Reilly unravels, he's even more prone to lie, because he has absolutely no idea what to do. It's tough defending a declining Empire night after night when you realize your demagoguery, bullying and spin are not working any more.

After O'Reilly screamed at Donahue that his nephew "made a decision to serve his country!!! Do not denigrate him or you're outta here!!!"

Uh, oh.  Sounds like a Jeremy Glick moment is looming.

Donahue: "I'm not Jeremy Glick, Billy."

O'Reilly: "That's right!!"

Donahue: "You can't intimidate me!!"

O'Reilly: "You're a little more intelligent than he is!!"

Oh Really O'Reilly? Actually, Glick did a better job than Donahue in articulating facts to support his argument against the Factor host.

Donahue: "I'm not somebody you can come in and just spew all your....How many more young men and women are you gonna send to have their arms and legs blown off...?

O'Reilly: "Hey, this is a war on terror."

Donahue: "So  you can be tough and point at people in a kind of cowardly way..."

O'Reilly: "Oh  yeah."

Donahue: "Take people like Jeremy Glick, who comes on to, in memory of his parents..."

O'Reilly: "Oh bull."

Donahue: "... and you go off on him."

O'Reilly: "Jeremy Glick accu ..."

Donahue: "... like a big bully."

"In the past Miss [Cindy] Sheehan has criticized Israel, saying it is occupying Palestine, has called Iraqi insurgents 'freedom fighters,' has accused Americans of killing people ever since we stepped on this continent, has threatened Hillary Clinton with the loss her job unless she calls for a pullout of US troops from Iraq and has called the US action against Afghanistan a failure."

Cindy's not alone in criticizing Israel, which IS occupying Palestine. Most of the world has criticized the Zionist regime for stealing the land from the indigenous Palestinians using terrorist methods and maintaining that theft for 57 years with state terrorism that includes shelling and bombing civilian neighboods, assassinations, dynamiting entire blocks, torture, attacking refugee camps, illegally occupying Palestinian territory, defying UN resolutions. The only "radical" position is die-hard Zionists like you still defending the butcher Sharon and the racist, apartheid-like state of Israel as this beacon of democracy while the Palestinians are animals, savages, and bloodthirsty terrorists with no respect for life. Cindy's criticism of Israel is refreshing if not revolutionary in the mass media, which has previously presented a thoroughly one-sided, slanted, pro-Israeli perspective.

Sept. 26, 2005:

When O'Reilly speaks of "Iraqi insurgents" he means those responsible for terrorist atrocities against mostly Shiites, and he equates the entire Resistance with these terrorist acts. But the Resistance that co mmands the s upport of most Iraqis targets US occupiers and their Iraqi collaborators. This Resistance is c omposed of former Baathists, nationalists, and a myriad of Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Those slaughtering Shiites are either Sunni/Al Qaeda fanatics or American, Israeli, or British provocateurs, as we've just apparently witnessed in Basra.

When Cindy defends "Iraqi insurgents" as freedom fighters she's referring to the Resistance that enjoys the backing of the vast majority of Iraqis. She's referring to those Iraqis who have taken up arms to defend their nation's sovereignty and dignity from a foreign occupying army. This is a fundamental right of all peoples, just as it was the r ight of the American colonists to defend t heir newly claimed nation against a hostile foreign army of a hated king.

As for O'Reilly's interpretation of Cindy's comment about Americans killing people since we stepped on this continent, here Cindy was merely referring to a fact in US history: the violent expansion westward by the European colonial settlers that included a genocidal war against the indigenous Native American. This was central to the evolution of the US capitalist class and economy. Cindy's words were another way of saying what Dick Gregory told college students during his 1969 lecture tour: "Man, your white history books tell me that from the time you landed on Plymouth Rock, you shot and murdered your way clear across to the west coast. And then you've not nerve enough to call a nigger a hoodlum!"

Or, as Malcom X once put it: "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us!"

"Sheehan...has threatened Hillary Clinton with the loss her job unless she calls for a pullout of US troops from Iraq."

O'Reilly made it sound like Sheehan's threat against Hillary Clinton involved calling someone from the Soprano family. It was perjorative and it was spin, designed to make Sheehan sound like some kind of Mafia capo. The truth is Sheehan was only reminding everyone of the basic lessons in representative democracy we all learned in school: when the people's representatives violate the people's trust, the people throw the bums out. That's all Cindy is telling Clinton: the  majority of your constituents want this war ended now. If  you continue to slavishly back this brutal, predatory war, then we'll exercise our sovereign right as a free people and replace you with someone else.

Remember that one from school, O'Reilly?

"...and has called the US action against Afghanistan a failure."

Well, from the point of view of the US imperialists, which is all O'Reilly cares about, Afghanistan has been a qualified success. Invading it has established a secure foothold for Washington in the energy-rich Central Asian region, established  reliable puppet in Karzai, procured the coveted natural gas pipeline deal, restored the rule of the warlords, on which the US relies to enforce law and order, and brought back the gargantuan profits from the opium smuggling industry.

But from the point of view of Afghanistan's workers and peasants, the US aggression has been a catastrophe. Many tens of thousands were killed and maimed. A nation already impoverished from centuries of colonial domination is even poorer. Basic social services are severely lacking. Health care is a catastrophe. The elections were as fraudulent as Iraq's and designed for the same purpose--installing US puppets to facilitate the plunder of the country's resources.

Donahue went in there like a well-prepared challenger who knew exactly how to knock out the champion, although I use that word reluctantly and loosely here. He demolished O'Reilly not so much on substance as on style, for he went into enemy territory, O'Reilly's home turf, and aggressively put the host on the defensive.

Donahue: "First of all, Cindy  Sheehan is one tough mother and nothing you say or anyone else is gonna slow her down."

O'Reilly: "That's fine. She has a right to ..."

Donahue: "You can't hurt her. She's already taken the biggest punch in the nose that a woman can take."

O'Reilly: "How?"

Donahue: "She lost a son."

O'Reilly: "Oh. OK."

Right, you stupid moron.

And it went like that.

O'Reilly blathered on about Iraq becoming a terrorist state. Donahue calmly replied that Iraq was not a terrorist state under Saddam.

O'Reilly: "Oh, no!...Saddam was a swell guy!!"

The fact that he was a bastard proves nothing about Iraq being a terrorist state. Iraq was a secular Arab state under Hussein. The fact that some Iraqis may have desired revenge against the US for killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens during the first gulf war, including burying hundreds of Iraqis alive in ditches, does not mean Iraq was a terrorist state. Bin Laden and Hussein were bitter foes. If followers of bin Laden are in Iraq fighting the Americans today, it's because Washington illegally invaded that country on the basis of lies in order to seize control of its oil and dominate the entire region.

Donahue: "Saddam was a bastard, but he was our bastard!" [Here Phil is paraphrasing FDR's description of the 1930s Nicaraguan dictator, Somoza.'

O'Reilly: "He wasn't anybody's...

Donahue: "Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in the 80s."

O'Reilly: "Alright. Well that's great."

Takedown, Donahue. O'Reilly is speechless because it doesn't look good for his side that Rumsfeld was so chummy with Hussein in 1984, particularly since this meeting was after Baghdad's use of chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war, which Washington had encouraged for its own hegemonic objectives.

But Donahue did not challenge O'Reilly's lie that Jeremy Glick accused Bush of orchestrating Sept. 11. All he could manage was a weak, "Oh, and you had to..." which gave false credence to O'Reilly's charge.

When Donahue gave the liberal arguments that the war is not fair to American troops and is unconstitutional, O'Reilly asked, "Why isn't the Democratic Party speaking that way?"

Donahue could only say he was sorry that it isn't. The truth is the Democratic Party leadership supports Iraq war for the same reason the Republicans do--it is waged on behalf of the US capitalist class which both parties represent and defend.

Toward the end of the exchange, Donahue mentioned how American fatalities and Halliburton's stock has doubled in the last year.

O'Reilly, obviously flustered, could only manage, "Alright."

Donahue: From $33 to $66. That doesn't shame you? That doesn't make you wonder?"

O'Reilly: "I'm not upset by Halliburton stock."

Of course he's not. He's probably sitting on a slew of shares.

O'Reilly: "Pray their numbers don't grow." But they are growing, despite his futile prayers. We're the majority. O'Reilly's lost.

"Give Peace a Chance": O'Reilly Tries But Fails to Reverse the Antiwar Tide

Sept. 27-Oct. 1, 2005--When Bill O'Reilly told Phil Donahue last week that "we'll cover" the upcoming Sept. 24 antiwar demonstration in Washington, he must have meant The Factor would cover it, because his network sure didn't, obviously unable to tear itself away from Hurricane Rita and how wonderful Bush had responded this time. So we'll have to be content with O'Reilly's Sept. 26 Talking Points memo, "Give Peace a Chance" to get The Factor's spin on the 300,000-strong mobilization that repudiated everything Bill O'Reilly stands for--war, barbarism, lies.

"Big peace rally over the weekend in D.C, the usual suspects chanting the usual anti-Iraq slogans."

"The usual suspects"--as if demonstrators seeking an end to a horrible war are criminals.

"The usual anti-Iraq slogans"--Actually, "Stop the Hurricane of Poverty and War" and "Make Levees, Not War" are quite clever and original.

"Speakers included Cindy Sheehan, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and actress Jessica Lange, that noted political scientist."

Jessica Lange has as much a right to voice her political opinions as Ronald Reagan, Ron Silver, every other actor, and every working person ont his planet. Who the hell is O'Reilly to scarcastically denigrate Ms. Lange's political credentials? Oh yes, Mr. Font of Political Wisdom, please enlighten us with your insights and intellect. He who predicted the invasion of Iraq would bring peace to the Middle East.

"Now, I have but one very simple question because I am a simple man. [True enough.] Would you want any of those folks to be foreign policy advisers? Any of them? I submit the vast majority of Americans would cringe if Ms. Sheehan, Reverend Jackson, or Mr. Nader were ever given an advisory role in U.S. overseas affairs, and there's a good reason for that. These people have no idea what they're talking about."

I submit a growing majority of Americans are cringing right now because geniuses like Cheney, Rice, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, and Bolton "advised" Bush to plunge Iraq into hell because of WMD they had long ago destroyed.

"Let's walk through it. The first accusation from the cut-and-run crowd is that the Iraq war is illegal. Not true. Saddam signed a cease-fire after being defeated in the first Gulf war and then violated said cease-fire. In the fall of 2002, Congress voted overwhelmingly to take military action against Saddam if he continued to defy U.N. mandates, which he did."

"The cut-and-run crowd constitutes the vast majority of humanity, who warned in their prewar marches that the looming US invasion of Iraq would immoral, illegal, and would cause a catastrophe. It's true Hussein signed a bogus cease-fire to end the first illegal, immoral Gulf war, but it's not true that he violated it. In fact, he complied with it because events proved that he did disarm his stockpiles. Hussein was right; Bush was wrong. Hussein did not defy U.N. mandates; he complied with them. The WMDS were gone.  Bush lied. Thousands died.

The fact that Congress voted to authorize Bush's invasion of Iraq does nothing to bolster the legality of the war. It merely proves the bipartisan character of US imperialist wars and convicts Congress of being a willing accomplice to Bush's war crimes and violations of international law. The Nuremberg Trials rejected the no tion of preemptive war as a defense for a war of aggression. It is a violation of the United Nations Charter for one nation to attack another that poses no threat to it. It is a violation of international law to order the indiscriminate shelling of civilians neighborhoods. It is a violation of the U.S. Constitution to lie to the people in order to win support for an illegal war. It is a violation of the Constitution and international law to order assassinations, kidnapping, summary executions and torture of prisoners.

"Second, many cut-and-runners accuse anyone who disagrees with them of cowardice and sending American kids to die. This kind of 4th grade argument is insulting and the personal animus behind it unacceptable. The USA has an all-volunteer professional military, which  no one is forced to  join."

First, the only "cut-and-runners" will be the US imperialists when they are forced to withdraw from Iraq by the insurgency as well as American and international public opinion. Second, O'Reilly doesn't identify the "many cut and runners" accusing those who disagree with them of cowardice. Presumably, O'Reilly is targeting the majority of Americans and vast majority of humanity who oppose this unjust, barbaric, deceitful, and predatory war. But we don't accuse other citizens with different opinions on Iraq of cowardice and sending American kids to die. We accuse those in power who are responsible for sending those kids to die for oil, for capitalist profits and imperialist hegemony in the Middle East of being cowards, particularly those chicken shit chickenhawks like Bush and O'Reilly who made sure they avoided combat but are quick to send others to their deaths.

Washington has lied to every generation of working class youth who've been lied to and stampeded into imperialist wars--whether they volunteered or were drafted. No, today's soldiers weren't coerced into uniform by a draft. But economic pressures and incentives played a major role in their enlistment. And as antiwar soldier Camilo Mejia recently said in an interview published by Counterpunch.org, "many people don't have an understanding that signing a contract and wearing a uniform doesn't mean that we can't make our own decisions or that we can't, based on our political and moral beliefs, make the decision to refuse a particular war, or to refuse war, period."

O'Reilly: "Third, many of the cut-and-runners believe that the Bush administration has caused--caused--the war on terror."

It's not just the legions of antiwar forces. Growing numbers of bourgeois fo rces, including military and intelligence figures like CIA director Porter Goss, who told Congress that Iraq had become a training ground for Islamic terrorists and a recruiting vehicle for "new anti-US jihadists."

O'Reilly: "...They believe the USA is intrinsically a bad country led by an evil man: the president."

No, we don't believe the USA is intrinsically a bad country. In fact, those of us opposed to this war who are Marxists believe there are two Americas: capitalist America and working class America. We think the historical record clearly shows that capitalist governments, representing a class of exploiting rich, are bad for humanity. Two world wars, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, countless colonial, predatory wars, worldwide depressions, starvation, disease, poverty, all of this doesn't add up to a vibrant, healthy social order.

Yes, Bush is an evil man; a despicable, ignorant, tyrant drunk with the power to launch brutal aggression and condemn hundreds of thousands to their death and misery. But, unlike many of Bush's opponents, Marxists don't believe Bush is an aberration, a madman whose removal from power will restore sanity to the stewardship of imperialism. The rise to power of the criminal, gangster elite personified by Bush is itself a reflection and product of the deepening crisis of US capitalism and world imperialism.

O'Reilly: "And finally, the cut-and-runners basically have no strategy to defeat Islamo-fascism because they don't believe the USA has a unilateral right to do so."

Most of the world does not believe the US has a unilateral right to invade a defenseless nation based on lies. The preemptive war defense was rejected at the Nuremberg Trials. "Islamo-fascism" is an ahistorical, nonscientific term that explains nothing, even if it's given intellectual "weight" by charlatans like Christopher Hitchens. Iraq's was transformed from a secular Arab state into a hotbed of Islamic extremism because of Washington's illegal invasion. Islamic fundamentalism is a reactionary, antiworking class i deology that serves to strengthen US imperialism, but it is not the principal threat to world peace. That dishonor belongs to Washington and its rapacious, murderous war drive.

O'Reilly: "So it's very important that you understand the mentality of those who want to pull out of Iraq right now. [Yes, coitus interruptus now! Stop fucking that country just because it sits atop the second biggest oil supply in the world.] That mentality would put all of us in grave danger. A cut-and-run retreat in Iraq would lead to a tremendous resurgence in worldwide terrorism."

No, O'Reilly's mentality of defending war and torture with lies, fear-mongering, national chauvinism, and everything else capitalism uses to perpetuate the profit system that has made O'Reilly rich, is putting all of us in grave danger. Washington's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has led to a tremendous resurgence in worldwide terrorism. The withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq would be a huge defeat for US capitalism but a tremendous victory for working people everywhere.

O'Reilly: "For example, the jihadists currently in Iraq would transit through Iran into Afghanistan and begin an insurgency there almost immediately."

Earth to O'Reilly: The "jihadists" in Iraq were brought there courtesy of the US invasion O'Reilly has always backed. Earth to O'Reilly: The "insurgency"has been fighting the US and its Afghan puppets in varying degrees of intensity for years--although it didn't kill Pat Tillman. That was accomplished by "friendly fire" in what was apparently either negligent homicide or conscious murder by the Army Rangers.

"Iran itself would accelerate her nuclear activities, believing the USA weakened."

Iran was developing her nuclear power program long before Washington's invasion of Iraq. And like any other sovereign country, Iran has the right to develop nuclear power. Though it hasn't done so, Iran even has the sovereign right to build nuclear weapons as long as the only country in the world that's actually used them on fellow humans--the US--is the one most belligerent to Iran.

"And the civil war that would erupt inside Iraq once America and Britain pulled out would allow Iran to send forces into that country to fight on the side of the Shiia, thereby Iran would dominate Iraq."

It is the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by America and  Britain that is stirring up sectarian divisions between Shiites and Sunnis. This is consciously being done by US and UK imperialism to weaken and divide Iraqis in order to subjugate and conquer them. It is US imperialism's attempt to dominate Iraq and the entire region that has destabilized and terrorized the people living there. It was  Washington that backed Iraq's war against Iran in an attempt to drown the Iranian Revolution in blood. It wasn't Iran that overthrew the elected government in Washington in 1953 in an attempt to control  America's resources.

O'Reilly: "All in all, the world would become a much more dangerous place if the USA cuts and runs from Iraq."

All in all, the world has become a much more dangerous place since Bush launched his war of aggression and plunder against the people of Iraq. America's withdrawal would be a blow to US capitalism's brutal war drive. That would be a victory for the working class worldwide.

"If Iran dominates the Gulf, get ready for a war that'll make Iraq look like 'Sesame Street.'"

Listen to what O'Reilly's saying here. On behalf of Washington's war maniacs and Wall Street's rapacious plunderers, O'Reilly is threatening the world with a war far more destructive than what Washington has already inflicted on Iraq--military aggression that has killed up to 100,000 Iraqis this time--on top of the several hundred thousand killed in the first gulf war. All if Iran dominates the Gulf. As if O'Reilly co uld stop the laws of capitalist development. When Iranian capitalism reached a certain level of development, its bourgeoisie inevitably flexes its muscle to become a regional power.  This is how it works, O'Reilly. But something else is at work as well. The working class has also grown and become stronger as capitalism developed in Iran. And the Iranian working class will flex its muscles, too. And when it overthrows the Iranian capitalists and establishes a workers and peasants government, that will be a revolutionary impetus for Iraq's proletariat and peasantry to do the exact same thing.

"Americans will never be able to live in peace and security knowing that Iran has nuclear capability which they could funnel to jihadists."

Americans will never be able to live in peace and security knowing that the war crimes and military aggression committed by US capitalist regimes have turned this country into a bloody death trap through its military aggression and war crimes. The world can never live in peace and security because the only government to actually incinerate two cities with atomic bombs not only refuses to disarm nor renounce a first strike, but it is now threatening to unleash nuclear fires against non-nuclear nations. Washington is building new bunker buster nukes specifically designed for use against Iran.

Iran's "nuclear capability" consists of a modest  nuclear power program. It has the right to build nuclear weapons as an act of self defense. Bill O'Reilly may not get this, but more and more Americans do.

O'Reilly: "We have to tolerate these loopy cut-and-run people--their dissent is protected--but they are not looking out for your or even their own country. They are foolish people. Pray their numbers don't grow."

Praying won't help your side, O'Reilly. Our numbers are growing. The polls and the huge demonstration in DC on Sept. 24 prove this. Your lies are not working as much any more. People are listening to you less and Cindy Sheehan more. One day they will be listening to revolutionary socialists as well.

O'Reilly says these people are crazy to expect help

"The American press made the victims look like criminals."--Malcolm X, 1964, on how the US press covered up the CIA's murderous machinations in the Congo

Sept./Oct. 10, 2005--Bill O'Reilly made it quite clear this week. The people begging for rescue in this photograph have no one to blame for their predicament but themselves. They put themselves there because they were too poor and stupid to get out of nature's wrath. They're poor, they're ignorant, they refused to work hard, they're addicted, they're gangstas. Tonight he said they were "crazy" to expect the government would help them.

"They" of course, are African Americans, who constituted the overwhelming majority of New Orleans residents left to die from Katrina's fury. "They" were the ones in the photographs that reminded everyone of apartheid, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Third World, etc.

O'Reilly spewed this racist filth while denying that race has anything to do with the fact that Katrina hurt Black folks the most. He shows contempt for those suffering most by blaming them for being there while urging looters be shot and prosecuted. O'Reilly's racist card serves three purposes: 1) deflects heat from and covers up for Bush's criminal neglect and conscious racism; 2) stirs up racist sentiments among white workers; and 3) absolves the capitalist system of any responsibility for the poverty wracking the US and the world by falsely claiming it's all on the individual's personal choice. The truth is the extreme enrichment and accumulation of wealth and privilege by a tiny clique of exploiting rich is predicated on the impoverishment of the masses.

O'Reilly smugly lectures Blacks that the government is incapable of providing basic human needs, you'd better chart your own course because you're on your own. Of course, when that same government comes calling on you to defend "your" country by fighting and dying in Iraq to seize its oil and enslave its people, you'd better do you patriotic duty and fight for the freedom to be so poor you'll be stranded on your rooftop with the waters rising all around you.

O'Reilly hasn't been the only demoralized right winger fueling the class polarization around this diaster by hurling vicious venom at Katrina's predominantly Black victims. It seems like Katrina has summoned all the right wing bile to the surface to expose themselves for the wretched, sorry cretins they are, as they shed all politically correct inhibitions to spew racist filth at African Americans, fueled by a desire for revenge that this oppressed national minority they hate anyway has exposed capitalism's failings.

Clear Channel radio host Glenn Beck called the New Orleans victims "scumbags" and said he hates them as much as he does the 9/11 families who pressed for an investigation.

O'Reilly's latest attempt to get US capitalism and Bush off the hook for the New Orleans debacle involved writing off ten percent of society as drug-addicted, catatonic zombies so far gone that any relief for them is a waste of money.
No matter how much money you pour in, they're always going to be in that condition. It's not massive neglect; it's not; it's human nature...." 

Then he directly links these folks to the thousands of desperate African Americans stranded on rooftops or literally trying to keep their heads above the rising waters.

"Many, many, many of the poor in New Orleans are in that condition. They were going to leave no matter what you did. They were drug-addicted. They weren't going to get turned off from their source. They were thugs, whatever."

So much for O'Reilly's Christian upbringing. These are the words of a racist scoundrel. They fit right in with Glenn Beck  and all the other racist scum rising to the surface from the capitalist bile, including this proud representative of the fascist right still defending Bush:

"F--k this niggerer dickhead. Not only does GW hate blacks, but SO DO I. I hope a plane full of Muslims crashes into his f---ing house. Kanye West is the single most racist asshole on the planet. "Oh, the poor blacks, whitey always keepin' them down, the CIA invented Crack Cocaine and planted it in the inner cities.. Kanye has said all of this ridiculous shit. Maybe some white talk show host should call for the assassination of Nigger Kanye West."

It's getting to the point where demented individuals like the author of the above hate mail to Crooksandliars.com are the only allies Bush, O'Reilly, and the profit system they send others to die for have left.

We'll get back to the growing racial and political polarization that was propelled by Katrina and is illuminated in the racist reaction to Kanye West's remarks. But first we have a Sept. 18 O'Reilly Update:

O'Reilly on UN: "I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out. And I wouldn't have rescued them."

I believe it's safe to say that as capitalism's crisis is deepening, and the people's confidence in the institutions of class rule is eroding, the more Bill O'Reilly is unraveling before our eyes. George W. Bush and O'Reilly, as representatives of US imperialism in its death agony, are the two biggest reasons for the rising tide of anti-Americanism in the world today. That sentiment will lessen on September 24, when the world is reminded again that there's more to America than Bush and O'Reilly. That anti-American sentiment would decline further if the world witnessed an aroused US population impeaching Bush and handing him over to an international war crimes tribunal. And when the US working class breaks from the capitalist two-party shell game and sets out on the road to socialism, celebrations will erupt all over the planet.

Let's return to the intensifying political polarization in the US in the wake of Katrina, as illustrated by blogger Michael Calderon's vision of life in the US after the next major terrorist attack:

"Expect heavily armed and infuriated conservatives to launch a cleansing war against the traitors. The armed will mow down the mostly unarmed segments, especially those elements that devoted 40-plus years to anti-American hatred to destroy this country. Should the likes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, Dennis Raimondo [sic], et al. act out their sedition ... expect their bodies to be found shot full of holes ... Leftist professors will be strung up. It will be every man, woman, and child for themselves."[From ultrarightist David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine web site]

This is why communists have always opposed gun control and any repeal of the Second Amendment. We would be idiots to disarm ourselves in the face of the armed capitalist state AND the reality that many Calderons are out there more than willing to serve in fascist gangs and other paramilitary outfits.

One of the principal lessons we learned from the Russian Revolution is that the stronger the revolutionary party, that is, the more successful it is in organizing the working class, the less violent the revolution will be. Given this fact, we'd better get started building a mass socialist party in the United States, because the nasty polarization evidenced by the lunatic rantings of Calderon suggests that without a strong Bolshevik party, the coming American Socialist Revolution will make the Civil War look like a tea party.

"Come out with your hands up! We're rescuing you!"

From Baghdad to New Orleans, the song remains the same: US imperialism wages war against working people, who it views as the enemy.

When US workers view US capitalists as the enemy and workers in Iraq as our allies, the international proletariat will applaud and join in. And capitalism will be finished. And we will begin to build a new world--a socialist world.

And who will pick up the garbage in this new society?

I vote for FBI agents and Bill O'Reilly. I'm sure all of his Kool Aid followers cheered when their hero showed a clip of a big tough cop tackling an elderly lady who was resisting her eviction.

Every day the massive military mobilization and occupation of New Orleans looks like "a dress rehearsal for martial law," as Bill Van Auken put it in his Sept. 8 World Socialist Web Site article.

Van Auken wrote:

"Nearly 65,000 US military personnel are now deployed in the disaster area, transforming the devastated city into a war zone.... Squads of combat-equipped troops toting assault rifles and columns of humvees with gunners at the ready crisscross its flooded streets.  Soldiers with bayonets mounted have begun house-to-house canvassing of the city to enforce the complete removal of its civilian population."

And it a socialist perspective is too biased for you, consider this Sept. 7 dispatch from NBC's Brian Williams:

"...[T]he city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States. At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads... There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look." [Thanks to http://www.legitgov.org]

Now we learn that New Orleans is crawling with armed private security guards from Blackwater USA, the same outfit whose meddling, marauding ways got four of their mercenaries burned and hung last March in Falluja.

Bush and the criminals that constitute this capitalist regime are sharpening the swords and preparing to use their military to repress the uprising that is coming.--Sept. 9, 2005

Sept. 16-20, 2005--This militarization of New Orleans was designed to take back control of the city, restore law and order, defend private property and evacuate those residents who didn't flee Katrina. This will pave the way for the remaking of New Orleans in capitalism's interests, not those of the city's working people. Already a gold rush of sordid speculation and greed is descending upon the city. Bush's political hacks in the Department of Homeland Security are already handing out no-bid contracts to Bush-connected companies like Halliburton--big surprise. All the capitalist swine are lining up to stick their snoots in the trough: the Shaw Group, Bechtel, Kellogg Brown & Root, Boh Brothers Construction, and many more.

When you hear talk in the bourgeois press about how t hings are picking up, looking better, silver linings, etc., they mean it's looking better for the capitalists--not the workers and poor who were neglected, displaced, and sent around the country, at times feeling they are being incarcerated in detention camps.

We are all Iraqis now. Even bourgeois journalists are noticing the striking similarities between New Orleans and Baghdad: US forces armed with assault rifles pointed at civilians patrolling corpse-strewn streets in humvees; soldiers conducting house to house sweeps, terrorizing families, forcibly dragging them from their houses, many sent to detention camps; soldiers harassing and censoring journalists; soldiers monitoring checkpoints; terrified, angry citizens labeled "insurgents" and "criminals" suffer without water, electricity, medical services, food, and dignity.

This is what US imperialism has in store for working people from Iraq to the US. What the arrogant, imperious, modern day Caesars do not count on, however, is that the oppressed will organize and fight back.

Admits Capitalist Government Is Incapable of Protecting Citizens or Meeting Social Needs

"Talking Points [Sept. 5, 2005] wants to reinforce two things: First, the huge, bureaucratic government will never be able to protect you. If you rely on the government for anything, anything, you're going to be disappointed, no matter who the president is."

Sept. 7-11, 2005--Exactly right! This capitalist government will never be able to protect us. It's in business to protect the profits and privilege of the capitalists and their media lackeys, including Bill O'Reilly. That's why we need a workers and farmers government that uses technology for human and social needs--not for the expansion of private profit.

O'Reilly: "For example, engineers knew for decades the levee system in Louisiana could not withstand a Category 5 hurricane, but nobody wanted to pony up the $20 billion to shore it up. That kind of decision happens all day, every day."

Right again, clueless one! Engineers and the entire capitalist government--federal, state, and local--have known for decades this disaster would happen unless the levees were strengthened to endure a Category 5. But capitalist politicians didn't want to "pony up" that $20 billion because they were too busy spending it to destroy Iraq with weapons of mass destruction in order to seize its oil and bolster US hegemony in the Middle East.

It's precisely because "that kind of decision happens all day, every day" that we need a government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks--a revolutionary socialist government of workers and farmers that would use part of the wealth we produce to protect us from Katrinas instead of slaughtering our fellow and sister workers around the world for capitalist profits. We need a government like the Cuban government--which evacuated 2 million people when Hurricane Ivan pounded the island in 2004--without a single fatality.

O'Reilly: "Second point, New Orleans is not about race. It's about class. If you're poor, you're powerless, not only in America, but everywhere on earth."

New Orleans is about race and class. African Americans are exploited as workers, like white, Asian, and Latino workers are all exploited by capital. But Blacks in the US are doubly oppressed, as workers and as members of an oppressed national minority that has faced centuries of racist discrimination. African Americans are overwhelmingly working class, but they are disproportionately poor due to the combination of class exploitation and national oppression. That's why African Americans fare worse than whites in jobs, housing, education, health care, longevity, and every other quality of life measurement that exists. That's why African Americans bore the brunt of Katrina's suffering. That's why the horrorshow in New Orleans looked like a scene out of Rwanda, Liberia, or Sierra Leone. Katrina revealed the semi-apartheid conditions and poverty still ravaging capitalist America.

That makes O'Reilly squirm, but it exposes the lie he regularly pushes that racism is extinct in the US.

"If you don't have enough money to protect ourself from danger, danger's going to find you.  And all the political gibberish in the world is not going to change that."

That's right. We need a socialist revolution for that.  Don't tell me that's utopian or not practical. It's the only realistic path open to the working class internationally. "Staying the course" is not just utopian--it's suicidal.

"The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should be taught in every American school. If you don't get educated, if you don't develop a skill, and force yourself to work hard, you're most likely be poor. And sooner or later, you'll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help."

It is tempting to dismiss such drivel as callous, reactionary and further confirmation of O'Reilly's bankrupt political perspective. But there's more going on here than meets the eye. First, O'Reilly is demarcating workers from the "poor," ignoring the fact that the working class is not homogenous but stratified from the better off workers, or the labor aristocracy as Lenin called them, and the poorest layers of the working class, which includes the unemployed and the so-called "underclass" of habitually unemployed.

Second, O'Reilly here is talking to workers, particularly white workers, warning them if they don't learn a skill, obedience and conformity, if they don't work hard and accept their exploitation, than white workers will end up side by side with Black workers stranded on rooftops.

We can't leave "Keeping the Record Straight on the Katrina Story," without taking it from the top, because we came in at the middle of the segment. He began what's becoming a nauseating trait--using gratuitously inflammatory language that can only emotional injure victims of tragedies--including Sept. 11.

He began with these words:

"Ground zero for the hate Bush movement is The New York Times Company, but its behavior in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina is so over top..."

To use "ground zero" in this context insults 9/11 victims and their families. To associate opposition to Bush with the site where 3,000 died in New York City almost qualifies as hate speech; it certainly shows the insensitivity and ignorance so central to this cretin's persona. It's of a piece with saying "Off with his head!" in the middle of the rash of beheadings last year in Iraq.

Further, it is simply inaccurate to claim that The Times is a bastion of the hate Bush movement. In truth, The Times has been quite friendly and helpful to Bush, from Iraq to Katrina. Media Matters reminds us that a Sept. 2 article titled, "Government Saw Flood Risk but Not Levee Failure," the Times printed without challenge Bush's lie that " I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." Earlier, the Times repeated  Bush's false claim that that FEMA was "better prepared" to manage a hurricane crisis than before Sept. 11.

The truth is, The New York Times is a procapitalist, proimperialist, prowar newspaper that has helped Bush deceive the US public into savage colonial wars of aggression. For O'Reilly to call the NYTimes the epicenter of a "hate Bush" movement" only reveals how right wing O'Reilly is. 

O'Reilly then gave "examples" of personal attacks by NY Times far left bombthrowers on poor, besieged George W. Bush.

"Far-left Globe columnist James Carroll: 'The bystander-in-chief, of course, is George W. Bush, whose whining self obsession perfectly embodies what America has done to itself.'

"Far-left Times columnist Bob Herbert: "What we witnessed...was the dangerous incompetence and staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.'

"Far-left Times Columnist Paul  Krugman: "The federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good.'"

COSMOS LEFT knows far left. And believe me, Carroll, Herbert, and Krugman are not far left. O'Reilly's problem is that Bush's crimes, neglect, and aloofness were so egregious that he's being condemned by not just liberals and genuine far leftists but many conservatives, Republicans and other voices within ruling class circles as well as soldiers, newspaper reporters and editors, parish presidents, students and working people.

"So what these Bush haters are saying is that the president doesn't care if people suffer and die, and  has geared the U.S. government toward putting Americans in jeopardy."

That's exactly what many of us are saying, although "Bush haters" is a loaded, perjorative term implying his opponents suffer from some kind of psychological affliction. Our hatred of Bush stems from his policies, callousness, arrogance, greed, smirk, and deceit, among other traits. The evidence he doesn't care if people suffer and die was in the photos from this past week; in the fact that he doesn't appear to be losing sleep over the death and suffering of Iraqis caused by the murderous invasion of their country; and in the fact he joked about a woman on Death Row begging for her life.

Bush has not only "geared the US government toward putting Americans in jeopardy"--he has turned this country into a bloody death trap because he has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents around the world and he's not finished by a long shot.

"...The truth is this. Governor Blanco of Louisiana did not have a disaster plan in place, did not have enough state police and National Guard to secure a city the size of New Orleans, and did not push for federal help soon enough...."

The first and third statements are lies; the middle statement is intentionally misleading by placing primary blame for inadequate Guard presence on Blanco. Before proceeding with dissecting O'Reilly's lies, we caution against getting sucked into this finger-pointing game between the feds and state officials that's being fueled by Bush backers to deflect the heat from their leader. Responsibility for the man-made disaster lies with the capitalist class and their entire state apparatus--federal, state and local. But Katrina was a national disaster--not a local one. And the primary responsibility lies with the administration of George Bush and the capitalist class he represents. So let's expose O'Reilly's lying spin designed to cut Bush's losses and deflect his culpability by placing the lion's share of the blame on Governor Blanco.

Blanco's August 27 letter to Bush requesting "supplementary federal assistance" codified that the State Emergency Plan was in place on August 26. And an August 26 White House statement said that FEMA was authorized to provide all assistance "to alleviate the impact of this emergency."

Further, Media Matters reminds us that Gen. Russel  Honore, commander of the  Department of  Defense's Joint Task Force Katrina, said in a Sept. 1 briefing that the governors of Louisian and Mississippi had asked for additional federal assistance "as the hurricane was approaching" and that on the  Sunday before Katrina hit, "a collaboration between the [states' National Guard adjutant general and the National Guard Bureau to flow additional capabilities to Louisiana and to Mississippi. That flow started approximately around Sunday."

O'Reilly also forgot to mention the AP report that Blanco had accepted an offer of more Guardsmen from New Mexico, but that the paperwork was held up in Washington. Then there's the little matter of the 3,000 Guardsmen from Louisiana and 3,000 from Mississippi who are serving in Washington's illegal and murderous occupation of Iraq, along with a substantial amount of emergency equipment that was sorely needed in the Gulf Coast.

O'Reilly's "did not push for federal help soon enough" is of a piece with a false report in the Washington Post [later retracted] that Blanco had not declared a state of emergency as late as Sept. 3.

"President Bush was 24 hours too slow in reacting to the disaster. Why? I don't know. And the head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, seemed clueless for days."

24 hours? Oh Really O'Reilly? Katrina hit on Monday, August 29th. Bush knew as early as the 27th that Blanco had declared a state of emergency. Federal troops didn't arrive in New Orleans until Friday, Sept. 2nd. And consider this testimony by Lt. Commander Sean Kelly of the U.S. Northern Command in a Sept. 3 interview with the BBC:

"NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast. So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you'll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it's search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready. The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission. [emphasis added]

As for Michael Chertoff, or as he will be known in some quarters throughout history as Michael Jerkoff, what can one expect from the author of the Patriot Act responsible for the illegal detention of thousands of Muslims after 9/11 as well as the torture and frameup of John Walker Lindh? Chertoff has emerged as one of O'Reilly's diversionary scapegoats for Bush; an easy target given he still wasn't aware of the suffering at the Superdome days after it began. O'Reilly's hoping his audience doesn't notice that the president he's covering up for is responsible for the likes of Chertoff and FEMA chief Michael Brown, just as  he's responsible for all the criminals and scoundrels he has appointed to powerful positions, like Elliott Abrams, Henry Kissinger, and Bernard Kerik.

While O'Reilly has criticized Brown, who still sits atop the agency that prevented through incompetence or out and out sabotage badly needed aid from reaching its desperate recipients, he failed to mention the telling exchange between Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Bush following her suggestion he fire Brown:

Bush: "Why would I do that?"

Pelosi: "I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said, 'What didn't go right?'"

O'Reilly's discovering that covering up for Bush is like trying to plug up a dike in the way of a hurricane. And the American people are learning that Bush's deer-in-headlights expression while reading The Pet Goat on 9/11 was no aberration. Human beings' leadership qualities are exposed in crises. Bush has definitively revealed he possesses  none. And no amount of Bill O'Reilly's spin can reverse that truth. Pictures are indeed worth a thousand words. The iconic photo from Abu Ghraib and the multitude of pictures from New Orleans have forever defined George W. Bush's legacy. He will go down as one of the most despised figures in world history.

So will Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly's advice to working people to expect nothing from this capitalist government drew a strong rebuke from Newt Gingrich, who said it was not just wrong but un-American! Gingrich was upset with O'Reilly's candor because it threatened the long-term interests of US capitalism admitting to workers they have no stake in this system. Gingrich is telling O'Reilly: Whoa, hold on there, if you tell workers to expect no help from the government, then what's to stop them from Uncle Sam to go to hell when he comes calling for military service? There are risks involved, Gingrich is warning O'Reilly, when you rip up the veneer of a "social contract" and shove it in the face of the people. When Gingrich calls O'Reilly's view "un-American," he's referring to capitalist America.

The fact that a rightist bourgeois politician like Gingrich scolds O'Reilly for going too far shows just how far right on the spectrum The Factor host really is. It also exposes O'Reilly's claim that he's this independent, nonpartisan, pragmatic problem solver without a trace of ideology.

Sept. 3-18, 2005--Wrong, fool. Katrina is wiping out George W. Bush. In fact, it'll be his Waterloo, as evidenced in remarks by a Buloxi auto mechanic who survived Katrina, "President Bush shouldn't be the president no more....President Bush ain't doing his job."

Given the sheer magnitude of the suffering caused by Katrina, O'Reilly's choice of words to attack a woman he fears was cruel, insensitive, idiotic, and a slap in the face to all those who died and others still in pain. It is one more reason he should resign or be removed from the airwaves.

Yes, there is a connection between Katrina, Cindy Sheehan, and Iraq, but not in the way O'Reilly's spinning it. Cindy understands that the resources that could have saved thousands of lives victimized by Katrina were criminally diverted to the illegal, immoral and m urderous occupation of Iraq. Cindy also grasps how New Orleans and Baghdad are two sides of the same policy--US imperialism's war on working people at home and abroad:

"The unnecessary tragedy in New Orleans is directly related to the unnecessary tragedy in Iraq: Unnecessary being the operative word." [Cindy Sheehan, "Dangerous Incompetence," Sept. 3, 2005]

Or as the WSWS article put it, "The plundering of Iraq has gone hand-in-hand with the looting of the American treasury at home by means of unending cuts in social spending together with massive tax cuts for the top income brackets. These policies are carried out by a government and a two-party political system that is dedicated to serving the interests of a financial oligarchy and is as indifferent to the lives of the poor and working class in New Orleans as it is to the people of Iraq."

For anyone who doubts this connection, consider this excerpt from the Sept. 2 Army Times: "While some fight the insurgency in the city, others carry on with rescue and evacuation operations...." [emphasis added]

O'Reilly's crude comment reflects his hope that the 24/7 coverage of Katrina has permanently erased Sheehan and the antiwar movement she has resuscitated from the headlines. We will see how much this hurricane "wiped out" Cindy Sheehan on Sept. 24, when millions of Americans mobilize against this war in DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. 

O'Reilly's lost no time doing what Murdoch pays him millions to do--defending and covering up the crimes against humanity committed by US imperialism from Baghdad to New Orleans. But the crisis emerging in the aftermath of Katrina is so deep, that is, it may spark a  mass working class radicalization that could threaten capitalism's existence, it is forcing O'Reilly to not just act as Bush's apologist but to reveal his fascist alternative as well.

O'Reilly's approach to covering up for Bush was three-fold. First, O'Reilly put most of the blame for the government's ill-preparedness and slow relief response on state and local officials, with heavy emphasis on Governor Kathleen Blanco, who, big surprise, happens to be a Democrat. Once or twice he threw in a perfunctory "and federal officials," but whenever anyone mentioned Bush by name O'Reilly was quick to interrupt and change the subject.

While there's enough blame to go around to include state and local capitalist officials, the primary responsibility for protecting citizens in a national disaster is the federal government. To O'Reilly and all his supporters like right wing blogger Bill Hobbs who are trying to pin all the blame on Mayor Nagin, when a killer hurricane is bearing down on three states in the Gulf Coast region containing vital ports and oil refineries--it is a national problem requiring an emergency mobilization of the nation's resources immediately.

The Gulf Coast has been neglected for decades by both capitalist parties. But it was the Bush administration that diverted funds for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) to the Iraq war. Paul Craig Roberts reports in Counterpunch that during the last two y ears the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran nine stories on this diversion of resources to Iraq. It was Bush who left the Army  Corps of Engineers with just 20% of funding to protect New Orleans from flooding.

Not a word from O'Reilly on this.

It was Bush who slashed flood control and hurricane protection funding.

Not a word from O'Reilly on this.

It was Bush who downgraded and privatized FEMA, sourcing out hurricane disaster recovering planning for New Orleans and Southeastern Louisiana to big Republican contributors.

Not a word from O'Reilly on this.

It was the federal government that knew the levees could only withstand a Category 3 storm and that a Category 4 or 5 was inevitable.

It was the federal government that knew tens of thousands of New Orleans' most impoverished citizens would be unable to leave and refused to organize an emergency relief effort.

It was the federal government that rejected offers of emergency, medical and technical aid from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on the day before the storm.

It was Bush who relaxed on his Crawford ranch as Katrina gathered strength in the Caribbean and approached the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi, just as he didn't let news that Bin Laden was seeking to strike on US soil interrupt his August vacation four years ago.

It was Bush who was warned by FEMA at the beginning of his presidency that a hurricane destroying New Orleans was the deadliest of the three biggest catastrophes on the horizon. The other two were a San Francisco earthquake and a terrorist attack on New York. Two out of three is pretty bad. Bush's leadership has failed miserably in both cases. Much more than impeachment is needed, because our survival requires that the entire US capitalist regime be replaced with a revolutionary workers and farmers government. However, we can't wait for a socialist revolution. Bush should be impeached immediately and tried for war crimes, torture, and criminal neglect regarding the destruction of New Orleans.

Upon hearing that New Orleans was facing an inevitable catastrophe, Bush should have put the government on a war footing to strengthen the levees, protect the wetlands, fully fund hurricane and flood projects, and prepare an emergency evacuation plan. But he had other priorities, like invading Iraq to seize its oil. And Bill O'Reilly agrees with those priorities, so he helped Bush deceive Americans into this foul and predatory war. Like Bush, O'Reilly's hands are soaked with blood from Iraq to the Gulf Coast. Because he's still aiding and abetting George Bush's lies and covering up the federal government's criminal neglect in New Orleans, as we see from an Aug. 31 interview segment entitled , "Can New Orleans Come Back?"O'Reilly asked Stephen Leatherman, PhD, Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University, about a prediction he made three years ago that New Orleans would not survive any hurricane higher than Grade 3.

Leatherman: "Because here's a city below sea level, surrounded by levees that were undersized to handle anything above a Category 3 hurricane. And the city continues to sink. And so, we had a recipe for disaster."

O'Reilly: "Now everybodyknows that, though, right? Everybody knows that the levees are patch quilt, but I don't think that anybody thought they were going to breach [echoing Bush's lie word for word]. You seem to be, you know, almost a lone wolf crying in the wind." [Oh Really O'Reilly?]

Leatherman: "No. There were a number of us who said --professionals who said it was underdesigned, and there was not enough money to put into them to shore them up." [Because Bush and his accomplices spent that money on destroying Iraq instead.]

Leatherman then added that we should have learned from the Dutch, who built three levees after their 1953 disaster.

O'Reilly then turned to his other guest, Lt. Gen. Bob Flower, Former  Commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers for some help.

"General, why did we not learn from the Dutch?  The Army Corps of Engineers is overall responsible for this safety situation and why did this not improve?"

Flower should have answered because Bush cut the Corps' funding for hurricane protection projects, but he chose a different tack:

"Well, you are protecting the city from two things. One is the flood waters of the Mississippi River. And the other is erecting levees for hurricane protection....And what you had is a nasty combination of storm surge, high water, which overtopped the levees and caused them to breach. Those levees were designed for a Category 3. We had above a Category 3 event. And..."

O'Reilly: "But see, I've got to stop you. I'm not understanding this. [No, you're not. There's a lot you don't understand. That's why you should lose remove yourself from the airwaves and people should stop listening to you, especially working people.] If you know there could be a Category 5 or 4 hurricane, if the federal government and Louisiana knows it, they're saying, well if we have one, everybody dies. Is that what they're saying?"

That's right, O'Reilly. They rolled the dice, banking that the storm they knew was inevitable would never arrive, because it was more important to spend that money on killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in order to control their oil. Flower denied this, but then contradicted his denial and proved our point.

Flower: "No, not at all. The opportunity to construct levees that would protect against a Category 5 hurricane have been investigated for quite some time. And I think people now would look back and say we wish we would have invested the money to erect those [levees that could withstand a Category 5 storm]."

O'Reilly: "Well, obviously." Well, it was obvious before Katrina, but because we don't have a government and media that looks out for the folks, the obvious wasn't done.

Later in the segment, after Flower stated we need to ensure this never happens again, O'Reilly offered this astute observation: "...because our technology now, we shouldn't be looking at this kind of thing."

No, we shouldn't, but that technology is shackled by the profit motive and imperialist wars. Or, as the Statement of the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board put it, "The central lesson of New Orleans is that the elementary requirements of mass society are incompatible with a system that subordinates everything to the enrichment of a financial oligarchy."

You know, that system, O'Reilly. Capitalism--the one parasites you get paid millions to lie to ensure its perpetuation.

O'Reilly: "...I mean, I understand the money problems that we have here. We're taxed up to our eyebrows in this country..."

No, it's working people, the "folks" you allegedly care so much about, who are taxed up to our eyebrows in this country. Rich fucks like O'Reilly are reaping the benefits of Bush's massive tax cuts--a big reason why those levees weren't strengthened to withstand a Category 5 storm.

O'Reilly is leading the stampede at FOX News to make the looting the main story rather than the capitalist government's criminal neglect and its looting of the US Treasury. The vast majority of the "looting" was done by the most impoverished layers of New Orleans' population faced with a life and death emergency--a fact O'Reilly recognized when he drew a distinction those people who took food and the true "looters" who made off with television sets. But O'Reilly's obsession with tracking down and prosecuting those who took electronic products and jewelry shows he's more concerned with property rights than the inhuman suffering endured by the impoverished Black masses of New Orleans and the responsibility of the Bush administration for this man-made catrastrophe.

While it's true that there was some amount of criminal activity by lumpen elements at the Convention Center and elsewhere, this is not the major story taking place here. It is a symptom, a byproduct of the total breakdown in the social fabric caused by the government's criminal neglect and abandonment of tens of thousands of  New Orleans' residents to die. It is another example of the bankruptcy of capitalist rule; an illustration that the capitalist class is unfit to govern this society. This would never happen in Cuba, where the revolutionary government organizes emergency evacuations of millions of people in the face of killer hurricanes every year with minimum fatalities.

O'Reilly and FOX News made looting the story in order to deflect blame from Bush and demonize the largely African American victims of Katrina, whipping up racism to divide Black and white workers. O'Reilly reveled in hyping and sensationalizing the looting and gang activity. Take a listen to a sampling of how O'Reilly did his best to maximize fear and terror while talking to a 53-year-old businessman "surrounded by looters" in the Sept. 1 segment "Desperation in New Orleans": "But what's the looter factor there? How many of them are there and what are they doing?.... All right, so they're roving bands of between five and seven people right?  And they have no fear, right? They're doing this with impunity, correct?....Now, have you seen any National Guard out there in the Quarter? [All together now, "They're in Iraq and you want them there, you moron!"] ....The  New Orleans police are on the job, though. They're around, correct?" [No, many cops couldn't handle the crisis and deserted; some looted; two committed suicide.] .... Now,  you're locked in your apartment building. Now are you going to leave? Are you going to stay?"

Shelnut replied he couldn't leave. O'Reilly asked, "Are you afraid to leave?

Shelnut explained he couldn't leave because the National Guard had confiscated 10 buses. That seems like strange behavior for the "calvary" and meritorious of a follow-up question, but all we heard from O'Reilly was, "Right, commandeer."

FOX's Shepard Smith showed up later in the segment, obviously shaken from the corpses rotting around  him. Smith could not hide his anger at all levels of government for allowing the misery that he was witnessing first-hand. "You sound bitter," O'Reilly remarked at one point with a hint of indignation. Smith denied it, but one sensed he was fed up with O'Reilly's smug, know-it-all, tough guy posture while sitting thousands of miles away in the comfort of FOX's studios.

Here's an excerpt of the revealing exchange between Smith and O'Reilly. Note the underlying but palpable tension permeating the discussion.

O'Reilly: "Are you seeing any improvement at all, Shepard, from your vantage point?"

Smith: "I hear a lot more noise overhead. I see a lot more supplies going into the Superdome. I see more evacuating the Superdome. That's about it."

O'Reilly then asked if he thought the Louisiana and federal authorities were behind the curve--with the emphasis on Louisiana.

Smith: "I wouldn't pass judgment, Bill, on whether they were ready. I can tell you, this city slipped almost immediately into chaos. And when you thought chaos cou ldn't get worse, it got worse. The people who -- the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated either immediately before or immediately after the storm. And immediately afer that, those criminals went in and looted everything in the entire city." [emphasis added]

Here Smith departed from the usual mainstream media script and injected a dose of class warfare rhetoric. While there's been no shortage of O'Reilly's phony populist demagoguery during the Katrina dialogues, which we'll get to shortly, he gets visibly uncomfortable when talk about haves and have nots infiltrates the No-Spin Zone. So he steered the conversation back to looters, enlightening us with his theory that a certain criminal element stayed behind in anticipation of an abandoned city ripe for plundering.

Smith continued to express his anger, to the point of rationalizing some of the "looting" taking place.

"But these people  have sat on bridges and interstates for days and days and days on end with no food, no instructions, no hope of any kind, with dead people around them, with babies. There was frustration and mounting chaos. Bill, it's been crazy here beyond description."

After O'Reilly tried to place most of the blame on the state, as we covered above, Smith continued his unintentional indictment of US capitalism, right there in the No-Spin Zone. This wasn't  Jeremy Glick, so O'Reilly couldn't cut off his mike.

"It's very disturbing in the  United States of America to see a corpse on the side of an interstate highway. It's not -- it's the interstate. It's not a bridge. It's just an elevated highway lying there. Police passing....Now--and you can't fault them. They have to go try to save the saveable. But corpses are all over this city. In the water. They're floating in the open  around the Convention Center. They're everywhere."

After going back and forth whether New Orleans will be rebuilt (Smith was pessimistic; O'Reilly optimistic), O'Reilly returned to what's most important to him: "Is martial law in effect there? I don't know what that isn't in effect. You know, martial law, shooting looters on site."

And O'Reilly wonders why rapper Kanye West was angry that US soldiers and Guardsmen were given "shoot to kill" orders in New Orleans. Those in the line of fire were African Americans. Kanye's a young African American. He doesn't like seeing corpses of other African Americans rotting in the flooded streets of New Orleans. He's sick of African Americans being murdered in cold blood by racist, trigger happy cops who are rightly viewed as an occupation army in African American communities.

It's become clear that New Orleans is under a military occupation that ominously resembles the occupation of Iraq. As one of the leading media cheerleaders for the invasion and occupation, O'Reilly's the perfect spokesperson for the war zone being imposed in New Orleans. Because it's clear that the thrust of the federal "relief", the so-called "calvary" that finally arrived, is enforcing martial law, restoring law and order, protecting property, all to pave the way for the reconstruction of New Orleans as a tax-free enterprise zone, not to help the suffering victims of Katrina. This is the true exploitation of the tragedy that's taking place, not antiwar demonstrators making the connection between the diversion of hurricane protection funding to the illegal, murderous, predatory and colonial war in Iraq.

Let's review some of what's been happening on the ground, most of which O'Reilly has ignored, and what he has mentioned he's distorted and spun shamelessly.

1) On Sept. 1,New Orleans Indymedia reported that aid was sitting in Baton Rouge because the National Guard was not allowing aid into New Orleans.

2) AFP reported that a New Orleans cop said that National Guard troops were playing cardw while people were dying in New Orleans.

3) The military frisked small children before rescuing them.

4) Homeland Security refused to allow the American Red Cross to deliver food to the convention center.

5) Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force told the Army Times that "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. As his hundreds of armed soldiers prepared for a citywide sweep, Jones said they were "going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."

6) US Customs workers were ordered to stop volunteering for hurricane relief duty so they can help New Orleans police instead.

7) Washington rebuffed an offer by Chicago's Mayor Daley of emergency, medical and technical aid to Katrina victims, saying they only could use one tank truck.

8) Bush has thus far rejected an offer from Cuba to send over 1500 disaster-trained doctors to help victims of Katrina. A prominent US medical organization is urging  Washington to immediately accept the offer to prevent a "second wave of sickness and death."

9) My personal favorite: a search-and rescue-team from one of O'Reilly's leading whipping posts, "socialist" Canada,  reached a flooded New Orleans community and rescued its residents five days before the US military made it there.

10) Two paramedics report that cops from the predominantly white suburban town of Gretna prevented evacuees from leaving New Orleans, telling them Gretna didn't want to become another New Orleans and end up looted, burned and pillaged and that they had no Superdomes available.

11) A German military plane with 15 tons of supplies was turned back by Washington because it "lacked authorization."

12) Aaron Broussard, the Jefferson Parish chief who broke down in tears on an MSNBC Sept. 4 broadcast while condemning Washington's inaction, charged that FEMA had turned back truckloads of water sent by Wal-Mart and had "cut all of our emergency communication lines" with no warning.

13) Senator Mary Landrieu's spokesperson reported that FEMA delayed assistance from public and private sources, prevented the US Forest Service from using water tanker aircraft, and heldp up the arrival of Amtrak trains to help with evacuation.

This is just a partial list of examples of the federal government's sabotaging of aid into New Orleans. The evidence grows that, like 9/11, the problem was deeper than mere incompetence and indifference. Indeed, the cumulative evidence strongly suggests a conscious decision to hold up aid from entering the city until a large enough military force could be assembled.

This was confirmed by Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, who heads the  National Guard Bureau, who told Pentagon reporters that "We waited until we had enough force in place to do an overwhelming force." When a journalist asked if the buildup explained why the National Guard didn't arrive until Friday with meaningful supplies, Blum replied, "That is not only fair, it is accurate. You've concisely stated exactly what was need, and I told you why. We took the time to build the right force."

Third, O'Reilly blamed Katrina's poorest victims for not evacuating New Orleans on their own, oblivious to the fact they lacked the resources to leave. For someone allegedly looking out for the folks, O'Reilly obviously is clueless as to what life is really like for America's poor who are most vulnerable to capitalism's instability and anarchy, particularly impoverished African Americans. The fact that O'Reilly feigned shock and indignation when someone suggested race was behind the government's snail-like response was another manifestation of the racism permeating O'Reilly's coverage of the disaster.

The truth is tens of thousands were left to die, treated like animals and the enemy because they were Black and poor. Those with the means were able to evacuate New Orleans, while the overwhelmingly African American poor were left to endure Katrina and a lack of food, water, and medicine. This crisis has illuminated the class and national divisions that are tearing this country apart. O'Reilly adopts this "Race? What do you mean race?" posture precisely because his bogus defense of the existing social order is based on the premise that racism no longer exists institutionally in the US, that if any Blacks are not succeeding in capitalism today it's because they are lazy, ignorant, promiscuous, and undisciplined.

While O'Reilly is spouting this racist garbage aimed at dividing white workers from Black workers, he simultaneously smears anyone who has the audacity to sense that racism was at work in New Orleans as a "race baiter." From hid Sept. 5 Talking Points memo, "Keeping the Record Straight on the Katrina Story":

"...They would have you believe reaction was slow because most of those stranded were black. Ultra liberal columnist Jimmy Breslin said, 'If whites were in trouble in New Orleans, I trust that this government would have been there early.'"

First, "ultra-liberal" Breslin is a lot more working class than O'Reilly will ever be. Second, his observation is obvious to the vast majority of the world. Only the most die-hard conservative ideologues are saying otherwise:

"That is despicable nonsense. Newsday should be embarrassed for printing that kind of garbage. And NBC was embarrassed when rapper Kanye  West said this.

"'The way America is set up to help the poor the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible, they've given them permission to go down and shoot us. George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Since O'Reilly's video editors took an axe to West's remarks, permit me to print the fuller context of what West had to say on that Katrina telethon:

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family and they say we are looting, you see a white family and they say they are looking for food. And, you know, its been five days because most of the people ARE black. And even for me to complain, I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right to see what is the biggest amount I can give. And just to imagine, if I was down there and those are my people down there. If there is anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help about the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well off as slow as possible. Red cross is doing as much as they can. We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way. And now they've given them permission to go down and shoot us. George Bush does not care about Black people."

Everything this articulate Black man said is factually true. Since O'Reilly is incapable of refuting West's comments factually, he resorts to what he does best--name calling. West's views are "nutty" according to the prestigious Harvard scholar.  But there was a news segment that described Blacks as "looting" and whites as "looking for food." And there were people languishing in misery for five days while America watched in horror; Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned. West expressed his desire to donate aid to Katrina victims before appealing to viewers to help out since the system is obviously set up to help the poorest citizens as slowly as possible. All irrefutable sentiments.

West concluded by correctly noting that there were many forces and equipment which could help in New Orleans but were instead deployed in Iraq. Another truth that's been expressed by many military figures as well. Then West hit the high note. He recognizes that the US imperialist forces sent from Iraq to New Orleans had the same shoot to kill orders at home as they did in Iraq. West correctly senses that Blacks in the US are being targeted as the enemy in their own country.

**********************

We mentioned at the beginning of this essay that the capitalist crisis illuminated by Katrina is so acutet that O'Reilly's been forced to reveal his fascist tendencies, including his scapegoating of Mexicans and all foreigners, Muslims, gays, and above all African Americans; his stirring up the basest instincts to keep white and Black workers and divided, etc. But the other fascist leaning employed by O'Reilly is his demagogic tirades against Big Capital, in this case, Big Oil and the extortionate price gouging at the pump that has only skyrocketed after Katrina.

This is what fascists do--lure backward, confused, reactionary, declassed and demoralized layers of the working and middle classes with anticapitalist rhetoric, then recruit them as the shock troops and mass base of a fascist movement aimed at smashing the working class and its most concentrated expression--the labor movement. Just as Hitler incorporated the word "Socialist" into the full name of his Nazi party (National Socialist German Workers Party), Bill O'Reilly--conscious of US workers' growing anger over skyrocketing gas prices-- today slams the oil companies for price gouging and profiteering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

O'Reilly on looting in New Orleans: "Where's the National Guard?"

Sept. 3-18, 2005--They're in Iraq, you moron. Where you want them to be. Three thousand from Louisiana; three thousand from Mississippi.

O'Reilly's devoted two entire programs to Hurricane Katrina without mentioning one word about Bush cutting federal funding for levee fortification and hurricane and flood protection.

All he seems concerned about is the adverse effects on the capitalist economy and calling for a crackdown on the looters in New Orleans and elsewhere, or, as he described them, "the criminal elements looking to exploit this tragedy"--wordage that more accurately describes the Bush gang's use of Sept. 11 to carry out long-planned wars of colonial conquest.

O'Reilly's just embarrassed that Hurricane Katrina has revealed the Third World underbelly that exists in the most advanced capitalist nation on earth. Poverty and racism are blemishes on capitalism, and that upsets Bill O'Reilly, who has profited greatly from a "free market" that pays demagogic thugs like him millions to lie to and manipulate the masses. He's an unabashed capitalist ideologue who spins for that system of private profit that's made him so rich for just being himself--an asshole.

His job as defender of the existing capitalist order compels him to put it all on the individual. If you're not doing well, if you can't pay the bills, if you can't hold or find a job, if you can't provide health insurance for your kids, that's your problem, not the government's, and not his, so don't come looking to take money out of his pocket. You better hold on to your money, O'Reilly. Comes the Revolution, ilk like yourself are going to be expropriated down to the buckles of your shoes.

Katrina's revelation that widespread poverty exists under US capitalism has unhinged O'Reilly to the point of desperation, so he does what all conservative Republican ideologues do at that juncture--blame Bill Clinton. Under the category of "figures don't lie but liars can figure," O'Reilly recently defended Bush against charges that the latter has neglected poor Americans by falsely claiming poverty was higher under Clinton. Now normally COSMOS LEFT would advise workers not to get entangled in meaningless debates over which capitalist politican did more about poverty, but this is an O'Reilly Watch page that exists to expose his lies and spin.

O'Reilly's methodology was to compare the 1996 poverty rate under Clinton--13.7%--with the 2004 rate of 12.7%. What O'Reilly leaves out is the fact that the poverty rate declined every year under Clinton and has risen every year under Bush. This is because it was 15.1% when Clinton took office after 12 years under Reagan and Bush.

The main point here is not that once again O'Reilly's been caught lying to defend Bush, it's that workers go to the wall no matter which capitalist party occupies the White House.

Distorts Meaning of Able Danger and "The Wall"

Then Gets Told Off by FBI Whistleblower Colleen Rowley

August-September 2005--With support for George Bush and the Iraq war plummeting, with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney and Bush facing indictments for Plamegate, with gas prices at record highs, and bombshell revelations that this White House and the 9/11 commission suppressed information about a military intelligence unit that tracked Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the attacks, Bill O'Reilly knows exactly what to do--pin most of the blame for 9/11 on Bill Clinton.

In his Aug. 17 Talking Points memo, "Dereliction of Duty?" O'Reilly talks about recently released classified intelligence memos unearthed in a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch. The July and August 1996 documents warned Clinton that "[bin Laden] can retain the capability to support individuals and groups who have the motive and wherewithal to attack U.S. interests almost worldwide."

O'Reilly then cited the 1996 bombing of Saudi Arabia's Khobar Towers that killed 19 American soldiers, the two bombings of US embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, as evidence that Clinton and his secretary of state Warren Christopher "knew that  Usama bin Laden was on the attack, yet the USA allowed him to operate in Afghanistan without sanction."

O'Reilly reported that Christopher had no comment and Clinton's NY office had yet to respond. He then urged Congress to subpoena Christopher to make him testify.

O'Reilly doesn't realize that every time he tries to deflect criticism of Bush by whining that "the Democrats did it too," he's only confirming what we socialists have said all along--that both parties represent the capitalist class, not working people; that both parties are owned by Wall Street, the citadel of monopoly capital; that this government is a capitalist government beholden to the exploiting rich no matter which party is in power; and that the war against working people at home and abroad is a bipartisan war. 

Similarly, when O'Reilly criticizes Cindy Sheehan for not protesting outside the homes of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry since they support the Iraq war, he's only confirming the bipartisan character of this predatory colonial war.

Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset no matter which capitalist party had state power in the US. We don't know for sure if and when that relationship ended, but we do it began at the end of the Carter administration and blossomed during the Reagan years when Bill Casey ran the CIA and the US helped bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists kill as many Russians as they could. This relationship between the US and bin Laden's followers continued in the '90s as Washington needed the Islamic extremists they'd armed and financed at Afghanistan's camps to help US imperialism subjugate the Balkans.

It's also true that different presidents have different relationships and different levels of coziness with the intelligence and military, which causes things like the JFK assassination, Watergate, Iran/Contragate, and Plamegate.

O'Reilly is wrong when he claims Clinton did nothing about bin Laden. He leaves out the fact that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden in Afghanistan with a cruise missile, but reportedly missed him by an hour. A relatively feeble, half-hearted attempt, granted, but then, 9/11--the "Pearl Harbor" that Bush's think tank wished for in their documents and which Bush wrote in his diary that very day--had not yet occurred during the Clinton years.

Sept. 11 happened on Bush's watch, but "Dereliction of Duty?" and subsequent O'Reilly opinions puts the lion's share of the blame on Clinton, Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick. There's little evidence of a fair and balanced approach here. He'll occasionally be forced to give lip service to Bush's accountability, but the su bstance and tone of O'Reilly's thesis is that Clinton and Reno's "wall" allowed 9/11 to happen.

COSMOS LEFT is no defender or friend of Clinton. He is a loyal servant of US capitalism and an enemy of working people, including African Americans. Clinton paved the way for everything Bush is doing, just as Jimmy Carter paved the way for Reagan's murderous meddling in Afghanistan, which spawned "Al Qaeda" and the latest variant of Islamic extremism.

But it was Bush and his family who've profited from extensive business relationships for decades with the bin Ladens. 

 It was Bush who ignored Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger's warning that bin Laden should be at the top of his agenda.

It was Bush who brushed aside similar advice from his own counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke and the Hart/Rudman commission.

It was Bush's attorney general Ashcroft who didn't want to hear anything about Al Qaeda or bin Laden.

It was Bush who ordered the FBI's bin Laden task force to leave Osama alone before 9/11.

It was  Bush who ignored specific and multiple warnings from both American and foreign intelligence about a pending attack.

It was Bush who had CIA boss George Tenet's hair on fire in frustration during the summer of 2001.

It was Bush who never told Americans about the presidential daily briefing he received on Aug. 6, 2001, saying that bin Laden was "determined to strike within the U.S."

It was Bush's national security adviser Rice who lied that they never imagined a plot to hijack commercial jets and crash them into buildings, when they fully knew about such a plot from Project Belinka in the Philippines to a report by the Library of Congress. 

It was Bush that tried to keep secret the news that the Federal Aviation Administration had dozens of intelligence warnings of suicide airline hijackings in the months preceding the attacks.

It was Bush who is responsible for the stand-down in US air defenses and the complete lack of airport security that existed on the morning of Sept. 11.

It was Bush who blocked an independent investigation of the attacks for as long as he could.

It was Bush who ensured that the 9/11 commission would be a whitewash.

It was 9/11 Commission chairman Philip Zelikow, the Bush flunky who publicly stated Iraq was invaded in part to protect Israel and is now a senior adviser to Secretary of State Rice, who helped suppress the explosive revelation that a secret military intelligence unit had identified four of the 9/11 hijackers a year before the attacks.

It was Bush who sabotaged the commission's attempt to get information.

Given this record, the attempt to put most of the blame on Clinton in order to deflect attention away from Bush's culpability is sheer Republican spin, which is what FOX boss Rupert Murdoch pays O'Reilly millions to articulate every night.

Which brings us to Able Danger and the wall. In the second half of "Dereliction of Duty?" O'Reilly acknowledges "that Army intelligence had identified Mohamed Atta as a dangerous terrorist more than a year before Atta led the 9/11 attack. An Army group called Able Danger got the information, but did not pass it along to the FBI and tell the bureau that Atta was actually inside the USA."

O'Reilly refuses to consider the possibility that a section of the US political, military and intelligence apparatus allowed the attacks to occur in order to build the political climate needed to invade oil-rich Middle East and Central Asian countries.

Instead, the Army was prevented from telling the FBI because of a "policy instituted by Attorney General Janet Reno and her deputy Jamie Gorelick. The women erroneously believed that potential criminal activity could not be pinpointed by any U.S. military intelligence operation. That's insane."

No, what's insane is to fall hook, line, and sinker for the "picture presented of miitary and intelligence officials hamstrung by lawyers and legalisms"--as Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site put it in his Aug. 19 article, "9/11 Commission Told of Atta cover-up." Martin continued: "The $40 billion US intelligence apparatus is the most ruthless and aggressive in the world, engaged in illegal surveillance, killing, torture and murder. If American intelligence kept quiet about Mohammed Atta, it was because higher interests of state required it, not because of any scruples about civil liberties."

In order to bolster his spin, O'Reilly says nothing nothing about the context and origins of this so-called "wall," preferring to leave his viewers with the impression that the entire US intelligence community was paralyzed by this memo from Jamie Gorelick's brain in 1995. O'Reilly fails to tell his audience that this largely symbolic "wall" between intelligence gathering and law enforcement resulted from the Church Committee's 1970s' investigation of the pervasive spying, assassinations, dirty tricks, and political harassment carried out by the CIA and FBI. It was in essence a public relations stunt designed to give the impression the government was reining in the "excesses"--including murder--uncovered by Senator Church's probe.

9/11 Commission testimony showed that the wall was essentially mythical because information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement continued. Any "black" or psy-ops job could always remain a secret to maintain official deniability.

Media Matters reports that a  joint congressional intelligence committees' report into Sept. 11 intelligence "failures" stated that the "wall" was "constructed over 60 years," and that a 2002 ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review declared that the wall began "at some point during the 1980s." That's a long time before Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick. O'Reilly adds to his deceit by leaving out the fact that the "wall's" guidelines were reauthorized by Bush's Attorney General Ashcroft and continued until after Sept. 11.

When O'Reilly tried to tell 9/11 commissioner and former Republican senator Slade Gorton that the "culture" of the wall began with Janet Reno, Gorton sternly replied, "No....There was a policy established by Congress and by judges that you couldn't use intelligence information gotten through one kind of -- you know-- of subpoena or wiretap in criminal prosecutions. It had nothing to do with sharing among agencies."

Then Gorton lectured O'Reilly "that the wall was created by laws sponsored by the Church Committee back in the 1970s. And they went all the way through until after 9/11 was over. And that nothing Jamie Gorelick wrote had the slightest impact on the Department of Defense or its willingness or ability to share intelligence information with other intelligence agencies."

Indeed, Gorelick's 1995 memo was aimed at clarifying decades long u nwritten limitations on information sharing between the FBI and the Department of Justice. It had zero to do with the military's capacity to share information with other intelligence agencies. Gorelick was out to clarify the guidelines in order to "go over the wall" and ensure a  maximum  number of convictions.

O'Reilly: "Call me crazy, but I can't exactly see Jesus calling for the murder of Chavez. And if Jesus did feel that strongly about it, I believe he could make it happen without the encouragement of Reverend Robertson."

He is crazy, because Jesus would take exception to comparing the murderous invasion of Iraq with his driving the moneylenders from the Temple, which is what O'Reilly has done on a number of occasions. And O'Reilly is in no position to ridicule anyone about loose lips, given the fact that in the middle of last year's spate of beheadings in Iraq he teased Fox anchor John Gibson's slap on the wrist from the BBC by saying, "Off with his head!" and in 2005 said that the LA Times wouldn't understand O'Reilly's support of Guantanamo until terrorists cut off Michael Kinsley's head.

O'Reilly's lighthearted dismissal of Robertson's call for assassinating Chavez was indicative of the entire bourgeois media's attempt to marginalize the Christian leader as a fringe wacko who in no way represents the thinking in Washington. But Robertson is in trouble with the US political establishment because he said publicly what the rulers prefer to plot behind closed doors under conditions of absolute secrecy.

Robertson is not some fringe lunatic on the periphery of US politics, and he's not just another "private citizen" as Rumsfeld declared. He's a major player in the Republican Party, a former presidential candidate who won a primary in 1988, a powerful influence in the Bush administration regarding "cultural war" issues like abortion and gay rights. His "700 Club" television empire reaches millions of followers daily. Yes, Robertson is an ultrarightist politician with fascist-leaning tendencies; sure he's a deranged religious fanatic who said Sept. 11 was God's way of punishing us for our Sodom and Gomorra-like acceptance of homosexuality. But the fact this birdbrain is so close to power is only a reflection bourgeois democracy's decay in this period of capitalism's decline.

Robertson just blurted out what the US rulers are planning. That's why in June Chavez announced that his government had "a lot of evidence, not just rumors, that there are people who think the only solution is to kill Hugo Chavez. We've increased our security and intelligence a lot. If that madness happens, they will regret it."

Now where would Chavez get an idea like that? Perhaps he'd review the history, which shows that assassinations have been at the center of US foreign policy for decades. The Congo's Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s; Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh in the '50s; the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo; Chile's Salvador Allende; Libya's Muammar Q'addafi in 1986; Lebanese Shiite leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in the '80s; South Vietnam's Diem in 1963; Cuba's Che Guevara; multiple attempts on the life of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, to cite just a few international leaders who made the CIA's hit list for standing in the way of US imperialism's dictates. This Murder Inc. characteristic of Washington's foreign policy got so out of hand Gerald Ford was forced to issue in executive order prohibiting assassinations ordered by the US government.

Closer to home, Chavez sees a continent littered with US organized assassinations, US military interventions, US-backed violent coups, and US overthrows of democratically elected governments. And in his own country, this twice democratically elected socialist president defeated a US-supported 2002 coup attempt with the help of Venezuela's workers and peasants, who literally rescued him from the clutches of the coup plotters and returned him to the presidency. Bush was no doubt seething at his Venezuelan puppets for not "taking Chavez out," to use the jargon of the evangelical Robertson. When Bush kidnapped Jean Baptiste Aristede in Haiti and illegally installed a puppet regime of murderous thugs, he moved fast enough to prevent the Haitian masses from intervening. The division of labor was clear: Bush took care of Aristede's kidnapping; his vicious Haitian puppets slaughtered Aristede's supporters. Such a relationship of forces did not exist in Venezuela--and still doesn't.

Then after several US-instigated attempts to remove Chavez from power through a referendum, Chavez was overwhelmingly reelected in a 2004 election that was certified as fair and free by former president Jimmy Carter and other international inspectors. Typically, O'Reilly was wrong on the facts here, twice stating that Carter had criticized the elections as fraudulent.

NY's Union Square, Aug. 15: the prairie fire spreads

Aug. 18, 2005--New York's Union Square was the setting for Monday's Solidarity With Cindy Sheehan Day. Wednesday evening saw 1600 candlelight vigils across the United States, as well as Paris and New Zealand. All examples of what O'Reilly called "Cindy's tottering crusade." Wishful thinking, O'Reilly. You haven't seen anything yet. Except it's not one woman's "crusade." It's an international mass movement of which Cindy Sheehan has emerged as a central leader, or, "a political player," as O'Reilly put it in his Aug. 15 Talking Points memo, "The Truth About the Cindy Sheehan Situation." But contrary to another O'Reilly assertion in that memo, her primary concern is not "embarrassing the president"--Bush does that every time he opens his mouth--but ending the death and destruction his policies are inflicting in Iraq and the US.

Sheehan asks Bush: "Why do you have time for donors and not for me?"

August 15-26, 2005--Bill O'Reilly says "the crusade of Cindy Sheehan is tottering." We'll see how much the antiwar movement is tottering on September 24, when masses of people take to the streets in Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and hundreds of other cities.

Bush and O'Reilly are shrinking next to this giant of a lady.

O'Reilly told Democratic strategist Joe Trippi last night that Sheehan was a liar for saying complementary things about Bush following their June 24, 2004 meeting ("I now know [Bush is] sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss"), while today she's calling him a war criminal who deserves jail.

Notice the contrast. He calls a grieving mother a liar for changing her views on the man whose lies killed her son and a hundred thousand others and destroyed the nation that is the cradle of civilization. Yet O'Reilly refuses to concede what the whole world and now most Americans know--Bush lied. And O'Reilly intentionally helped him. Which means O'Reilly's hands are stained with American and Iraqi blood as well. O'Reilly fears Cindy Sheehan because she's exposing his lies as well as Bush's.

Trippi, to his credit, dressed down O'Reilly for calling Sheehan a liar, correctly stating that kind of rhetoric from powerful people inspires the venomous hatred we're seeing from rightist warmongers, flag-waving bigots and brainless Bushite idiots, like desecrating the crosses of fallen American soldiers.

Far from lying, Sheehan's been honest all along. Her son Casey was killed during the Sadr rebellion in April 2004. When she met Bush two months later, she was still in a daze and shock over her loss. While she already  harbored strong feelings against the war, Cindy and her husband decided that out of deference to their son and the office of the presidency, she would hold back from letting Bush have it. This framework establishes that Sheehan had mixed feelings about the exchange and explains the motivation for her complementary words. It also confirms that there was a context to her statements, a context which O'Reilly ignored to facilitate his derogatory spin.

The context is further explained in the NY Times report that "By Ms. Sheehan's account, Mr. Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Ms. Sheehan said she broke in and told Mr. Bush that Casey was her son, and that he could imagine what it would be like since he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war."

"I said, 'Trust me, you don't want to go there,'" the Times reports. "He said, 'You're right, I don't. I said, 'Well, thanks for putting me there.'"

Having said all this, it's undeniable that Cindy Sheehan's politics have evolved over the past year and a half. She had moved to further to the left in response to the lies and crimes of her government--like tens of millions of others have throughout history and as we speak. She is radicalizing--as she has every right to do, no matter what Bill O'Reilly says. When Trippi reminded O'Reilly of this fact, the Factor host lamely responded that her views could change regarding policy, but not Bush the man.

Why not? Maybe as time went on Cindy's opinion of Bush plummeted. Maybe she saw the video of Bush joking about the failure to find WMD and got sick to her stomach thinking of Casey. Maybe she got tired of the rising toll of death and destruction in Iraq. Maybe she was revolted by the sickening torture inflicted by US forces at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo on Bush's direct orders. Maybe the revelations from the Downing Street memo proving that Bush manipulated the intelligence and consciously lied about WMD was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The point is Cindy has a right to evolve politically and draw whatever conclusions that flow from that. Bill O'Reilly, whose lies helped send Casey to his grave, has no standing to say anything to Cindy, let alone suggest she's the liar.

O'Reilly's small mind filled with bourgeois prejudices is not capable of understanding a fundamental law of history--working people radicalize from the blows of the class struggle. In 1932 Farrell Dobbs was an unemployed worker who voted for Republican Herbert Hoover over the so-called friend of labor Franklin Roosevelt. Many people today would have glibly written Farrell off as a hopeless reactionary. Two years later, Dobbs was a central leader in the fight to unionize Minneapolis truck drivers in one of the country's most important labor battles that helped forge the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). Dobbs went on to become the Socialist Workers Party national secretary and presidential candidate.

That's what happens to many workers when capitalism's crisis becomes so acute it cannot hide its barbarism. We radicalize. We move to the left; sometimes even the "far left"--and not O'Reilly's far left like the NY Times, but revolutionary socialists who think working people should run the country.

Farrell once said that the Russian Revolution was made by the "men and women from nowhere." Workers long hidden and suppressed by the oppressiveness of class rule seem to come out of nowhere to put their stamp on history. That's what Cindy Sheehan represents, and that's what is driving Bill O'Reilly to desperation.

O'Reilly reads the polls. He fears Sheehan because he knows she represents the majority of Americans who now oppose this brutal occupation. He can't comprehend that an ordinary person, a working class mother, is humiliating the president of the United States and the most powerful voice on cable news. He's beside himself that one of the "folks" he supposedly is looking out for is becoming a major player on the national stage--even overshadowing Bill O'Reilly. People are listening to Cindy and not him. And it's not supposed to be that way in the eyes of arrogant and pompous O'Reilly Factor host.

Sheehan is speaking for all those Americans who share her passionate anger against the war but have had no way to express it because due to the bipartisan support for the war there exists no mass outlet for dissent. She speaks too for those Americans who oppose the war but have felt too intimidated to say so openly. Sheehan's courage has inspired others to join her in Crawford, hook up with antiwar organizations in their communities, and join the Sept. 24 national protests demanding the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

The demand for immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq is a working class position. It has a proleterian, internationalist character. It is a clear class message from working people directed at the US capitalist class: we have no interest in conquering Iraq for American capitalists. To those liberals and conservatives who argue that immediately withdrawing would cause chaos, disaster, and a bloodbath, Cindy correctly counters that the US occupation is the crime that has brought nothing but chaos, disaster, and a bloodbath to Iraq. The only way to stop fucking the Iraqi people is coitus interruptus--an immediate withdrawal.

And thanks to Cindy, this proletarian stance on Iraq has been injected into the national debate for the first time. In so doing, Cindy has taken on and humiliated the politicians and journalists who deceived the American people on Iraq. That's why they hate her, too.

In his Aug. 15  Talking Points, "The Truth About the Cindy Sheehan Situation," O'Reilly tried to discredit Cindy by inferring she was just another Democratic partisan hack: "If Cindy Sheehan is really about getting the troops out of Iraq, why isn't she traveling to Washington to stand outside Hillary Clinton's home? The senator supports the war. Will Ms. Sheehan go to Nantucket and stand out side John Kerry's beach house? He isn't a cut and run club member."

Cindy Sheehan will be attending the Sept. 24 antiwar protest in Washington, DC. The demonstration's demands to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home now are directed at the White House, Congress, Republicans, and Democrats. Sheehan and the vast majority of the Sept. 24 protesters are well aware that the Iraq war is a bipartisan war.

Further, in her Aug. 25 tract missive from Camp Casey, Sheehan wrote, "During the Clinton regime the US-UN led sanctions against Iraq and the weekly bombing raids killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq. Many of them were children, but since one of her ch ildren didn't have to be sacrificed to the homicidal war machine, Madame Albright thinks the slaughter during the "halcyon Clinton years was 'worth it.' More lies."

Cindy Sheehan doesn't need Bill O'Reilly to lecture her on the bipartisan character of this and all imperialist wars.

Bush on way to fundraiser: "It's also important for me to get on with my life, to keep a balanced life"

August 15-18, 2005--Part of getting on with Bush's balanced life is getting to that barbecue fundraiser expected to rake in at least $2 million for the Republican Party.

O'Reilly attacked a NY Times article in which the correspondent wrote that in a discussion with Michelle Malkin, O'Reilly had called Sheehan treasonous. No, no, not me, he whined. My reporting was accurate and fair, and Michelle and I were respectful. But the transcript from the August 9 O'Reilly Factor tells a different story: "Well, I have to say that she obviously does because she's the lead story on Michael Moore's Web site on an almost daily basis. And she knows--I mean, Michael Moore isn't a subtle guy....

"So I mean, I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous." [emphasis added]

The NY Times may have interpreted O'Reilly's comments to mean he was directly accusing Sheehan of treason, but the title of the COSMOS LEFT essay below put it this way: "O'Reilly: Cindy Sheehan's Protest Flirts With Treason." [emphasis added] Which proves that a revolutionary socialist Web site is more accurate than a pro-capitalist, pro-war, establishment media conglomerate--and more qualified to take down Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly's parsing would make Clinton blush. Just look at how this coward operates. He doesn't directly say Sheehan's protest is treasonous--he hides behind the right-wing, flag-waving militarists and Christian fundamentalists he has whipped into jingoistic frenzy who are directly accusing Sheehan of treason. O'Reilly's clearly aligning himself with these elements and does not hide his sympathy for their views: "So, I mean, I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this [posting on Michael Moore's web site] and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous."

But he lacks the guts and journalistic integrity to say what he means directly, preferring to stir his legions of right wing followers into a nationalistic, militaristic hysteria, so he can turn around and say it's them, not me. I'm just a fair and balanced correspondent reporting the facts.

Contrast O'Reilly's cowardice with the courage Sheehan displays every day in taking on the entire political and media establishment, exposing them as the war criminals and accomplices they are, and risking her life in the process.

O'Reilly: Cindy Sheehan's Protest Flirts With Treason

Bill O'Reilly held off accusing Cindy Sheehan of treason in his Talking Points memo, "The Fascinating Saga of Cindy Sheehan." Here he limited himself to laying the foundation for that smear by arguing that Sheehan is this naive grieving mother being used by "radicals" like Michael Moore and Sam Husseini. O'Reilly waited for "another point of view" from his follow-up guest, the repulsive Michelle Malkin, before he raised the treason charge.

Better be careful here, O'Reilly. Because you're real close to calling a majority of Americans treasonous. And that would reveal how isolated you truly are. Millions of Americans are inspired by Sheenan's courage in challenging Bush to see her while she camps outside his Crawford ranch. Many antiwar activists, including military families and Iraq veterans against the war are heading to Crawford to show their solidarity with Sheehan. Reports surfaced today that Cindy will be arrested on Thursday.

More soon on O'Reilly's "The Fascinating Saga of Cindy Sheehan," and what should be a "fascinating" exchange with Ms. Sheehan on tonight's show.--August 10, 2005

August 10, 2005 Update:

Sheehan comes to her senses; cancels Factor appearance

Back-up guest Dolores Kesterson demolishes O'Reilly

"You're putting words in Michael Moore's mouth..."

"Moore hasn't killed anyone; Bush has"

"I believe Bush is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people"

"No one tells Cindy Sheehan what to say. She speaks from the heart...So do I"

Aug. 11-23, 2005--Yes, Cindy Sheehan was scheduled to appear on The Factor last night. But after listening to O'Reilly and guest Michelle Malkin distort her June 2004 comments about her first meeting with Bush and accuse her of bordering on treason, Sheehan correctly decided it was beneath her dignity to sit in the gutter with Bill O'Reilly. Cindy is quoted as saying "at first she thought she would, but after hearing what O'Reilly said about her she told the s how she would go on only if he apologized for lying about her. My second reaction was no...no, I'm not going on it.  I'm not going to dignify his show by my presence because I believe his show is an obscenity, it's an obscenity to the truth and it's an obscenity to humanity..."

In the essay below entitled, "O'Reilly Applauds Brits' Murder of Innocent Man," we wrote that O'Reilly is "the biggest profanity on the airwaves." The fact that Cindy Sheehan is using the same language as a revolutionary Marxist is the problem facing the US ruling class and mouthpieces like Bill O'Reilly, who cannot hide his concern, even panic, that antiwar moms like Sheehan are hooking up with "radicals."

In his Aug. 10 Talking Points, "The Saga of Cindy Sheehan Deepens," O'Reilly, offered his best "who me?"poker face while disputing the charge he had lied about Sheehan and asserted his reporting was "supported by multiple facts."

Oh Really O'Reilly?

We will see just how much O'Reilly's reporting was "supported by multiple facts" when we dissect his two Talking Points memos in detail. But it's a good bet Sheehan thought O'Reilly's treatment of her encampment outside Bush's  Crawford ranch constituted a lie because 1) he ripped her June 2004 comments about her meeting with Bush out of context to falsely imply she'd changed her mind due to the influence of Michael Moore; 2) O'Reilly implied she was not capable of thinking for herself and was letting herself be manipulated by far leftists; and 3) he accused Sheehan's behavior of bordering on treason.

O'Reilly said he had asked "the people who are running her exactly what t hose facts were. We're still awaiting an answer."

No, Cindy Sheehan, representing the majority of Americans, is the one awaiting an answer from George Bush, like why did her son Casey and 1800 other American troops die, why did about 100,000 innocent Iraqis die, when every reason Bush gave for the war has been proven wrong. Factually wrong, O'Reilly.

"There's no question that far left ideologues are controlling access to Cindy Sheehan...Sheehan is also using Michael Moore's Web site to ger her anti-Bush message out."

So what if Sheehan's articles are appearing on Moore's Web site? Maybe she agrees with Moore on the Iraq war and views his site as an appropriate vehicle to disseminate her views.

O'Reilly: "Well, now we continue to support her right to say whatever she wants to say. [Well, bully for O'Reilly.] After all, she did lose a son in Iraq. [How magnanimous of him.] But certainly it's our responsibility to tell you exactly who Cindy Sheehan's associating with."

What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson? Joe McCarthy's M.O. was guilt by association?

"But other media don't see it that way. New York Times pundit Maureen Dowd glorified Mrs. Sheehan, but made no mention of Mr. Moore or other radicals involved with her."

That's because Dowd does not practice the sleazy McCarthyite tactics of guilt by association that O'Reilly revels in. She admires Sheehan's courage in standing up to Bush, O'Reilly, and the entire corporate, military and media establishment, calling them out on their lies and war crimes.

O'Reilly: "The Baltimore Sun also praised Ms. Sheehan and chastised President Bush. 'A small first step--but only a first step--would be to sit down with Mrs. Sheehan and listen to her, really listen...Take time to talk with her. Have the courtesy.'

"Well, there's one problem with that editorial. President Bush has already met with Cindy Sheehan and her husband, Pat. He took the time, he had the courtesy."

Not according to Sheehan, who says Bush didn't know her son Casey's name, kept calling her "Mom" in an excessively lighthearted manner that irritated her, and paraded around like he was at a party.

Besides, after seeing Bush joke about the nonexistent WMD at a high rollers dinner, and after reading the Downing Street memo, and seeing the daily hell unfolding in Iraq from Bush's policies, Sheehan has a right to another meeting with George W. Bush to ask him why her son and so many more sons and daughters are dying with no end in sight. Why is O'Reilly defending Bush's decision not to see Sheehan? If Bush was any kind of a leader, if Bush was a man, if Bush had the native intelligence to handle an unscripted dialogue with an opponent of his war who lost her son, he would meet with her. The truth is he's a gutless, callous, semi-illiterate, puny coward who knows he could completely unravel in Sheehan's presence. And that's what any person of conscience wants. We want this scoundrel to go down hard, to be humiliated before history by a grieving but courageous mother.

But that wasn't to be. Sheehan decided not to dignify O'Reilly's program, which is nothing but a vehicle for lies, bullying, and reaction, with her  presence. In her place, O'Reilly found a substitute guest--one Dolores Kesterson, another antiwar mother whose son died in Iraq. Now Kesterson has been a vocal opponent of the war for some time, but O'Reilly initially acted like he'd found the answer to Cindy Sheehan: a military mother who believes her son died in the noble cause of freeing an oppressed people. 

What unfolded became television history and the mother of all "Hackworth moments." Readers of this page know that a Hackworth moment [named after the late Col. David Hackworth] is when a guest whom O'Reilly thinks agrees with him ends up making a fool out of him by saying the exact opposite. Opponents of O'Reilly will long savor the night Dolores Kesterson knocked him out so hard he missed the next night and hasn't been heard from since.

He began by reciting the war apologists' laundry list of positives allegedly produced by the invasion of Iraq: deposing a brutal dictator and his brutal sons; "they had an election there"; "the people overwhelmingly want to be free" [yes, of the US occupation].

O'Reilly knew he was in trouble when Kesterson interrupted him right there.

"It would have been nice to do that AFTER taking care of Al Qaeda."

Ooh, a left jab from the challenger stunned the overconfident O'Reilly.

"Yeah, all right, but I'm trying to...let's take it one step at a time," he stammered.

Trying to recover, O'Reilly stated, "I believe your son died in a noble cause. I believe your son died to give other people freedom. And if you're a Christian, there is no greater sacrifice than to give your life for someone else." [Forget WMD, Al Qaeda, 9/11; this is the new desperate refrain of pro-war morons--Bush invaded Iraq as a Christian crusader to free Iraqis from the dictator Washington imposed on them!]

"I believe you're son died for a noble cause. Do you believe that?"

The unflappable Kesterson was not buying O'Reilly's bullshit about Christian sacrifice.

"He was willing to do that. I don't believe that we're freeing these people when we're building all kinds of military bases."

A right cross delivered with a breath of fresh air and truth never heard on The O'Reilly Factor.

O'Reilly: "You don't believe we're freeing anyone in Iraq."

"No, I don't."

O'Reilly: "You believe they were better under Saddam than they are now."

"No."

O'Reilly: "But we're not freeing anybody."

"There was a time for that after we took care of the real business of getting the real terrorists and the real killers from  9/11."

Dolores may not have attended Harvard like the cerebral O'Reilly, but she knows enough to understand that you don't free a people when you invade their country, kill tens of thousands of people, contaminate their soil with depleted uranium, and build dozens of military bases. And most importantly, Dolores had let him know immediately that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

Since he's convinced that Sheehan changed her opinion of Bush since their first meeting, O'Reilly decided to go down that road with Kesterson. Bad move.

"Now, you met with President Bush for a short time..."

There's a break in the video clip at this point. Kesterson said she'd asked for time alone with Bush, and was granted all of three minutes in a tiny cubicle. She said that Bush marched in and "was in my face" and said: "I'm George Bush, President of the United States, and I understand that you have something to say to me in private."

Kesterson: "And I said, 'Yes, I do respect the office of the presidency of the United States, and I want to tell you h ow it feels to lose your on ly ch ild in a cause that you don't believe in, in an unnecessary war...."

O'Reilly: "And was he respectful to you?"

Kesterson: "Yes, yes he was. Bud he did, you know, co me at me a few times with trotting out, 'Dolores, do you realize we've been attacked on 9/11?' Who doesn't [realize that]?"

O'Reilly: "He hugged you at the end, did he not?" [Give it up, O'Reilly. You're digging a bigger hole by the minute.]

Kesterson: "Well, yes, he asked if he could hug me and I said, 'Well, that's a human thing, you know, I'm human.' [Dolores wasn't falling for Bush's phony, lovey-dovey Christian bullshit, just as she didn't fall for O'Reilly's phony reference to the virtues of Christian sacrifice. And I agreed to it. But my personal feeling is that he really doesn't have a conscience about all this death and destruction. That was the essence I took away after looking him in the eyes and meeting with him—there's just no conscience there."

Kesterson's words pierced the airtight citadel of deceit that permeates FOX News, bringing an air of surrealism to The Factor studio. This inexperienced, slightly nervous, middle class mom had just sliced the belly of the beast.

Kesterson's words made me recall the grieving Iraqi mother in Fahrenheit 9/11, who, having lost most of her family during a US bombing, wailed that Bush had no conscience. From one mother in America to another in Iraq, the same words are uttered--those responsible for this senseless, illegal, immoral war have no conscience. And neither does Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly then returned to that sickening, condescending, know-it-all posture laced with a phony deference that was not going over with his guest. After reiterating that he respected her opinion and believed her son was a patriot, O'Reilly started to say he didn't want Kesterson to be used by the "far left" like Cindy Sheehan was.

Again this profile in courage had the temerity to interrupt her imperious and demagogic host.

"I have a question about that," Kesterson told O'Reilly.

Again obviously flustered, O'Reilly graciously replied he'd let her ask that question after he made his point. "I think she's being used by far left elements in this country who not only object to the Iraq war but our way of life, America as we know it." [Sheehan's not being used by the far left--the war is radicalizing this middle class mom and she's moving toward the far left. And remember, "far left" includes the NY Times in O'Reilly's ultrarightist eyes. Cindy's moving toward the true "far left"--political tendencies like COSMOS LEFT and the World Socialist Web Site. And yes, we want to change the "way of life" whereby working class youth are sent to kill, torture and die in brutal colonial wars for capitalist profits, and deceitful, fascist-minded thugs like O'Reilly get paid millions to lie to working people]

O'Reilly: "Everyone knows, Hillary Clinton knows, that if we cut and run from Iraq, it will make the war on terror twice as dangerous as it is now. That's just a fact. Now, I'll be happy to answer your question." [Again, the false characterization of Hillary Clinton as a representative of the far left: even she knows. Except "she" is a prowar capitalist politician. Kesterson and Sheehan understand that the criminal invasion of Iraq has increased terrorism and the immediate cessation of that crime will decrease terrorism.]

Kesterson: "I don't believe what you're saying that there are forces behind her. Because I know there's nobody behind me."

O'Reilly: "But you're a different story. And if you don't believe me, all you have to do is go to Michael  Moore's web site or call the Fenton Group, which is a left-wing group in Washington that puts out her press releases. And here I have an Internet thing where she told ... I mean these people are off the chart left...Cindy Sheehan says Bill O'Reilly is an obscenity to humanity.... I mean, if you don't want to believe me, you don't have to believe me. All I can do is report what we know to be true. And if  you don't accept it, you don't accept it. But we have Michael Moore involved...you know Michael Moore. We have the most far left elements in the country involved with telling the woman what to say and how to say it, and monitoring what she goes on and what she doesn't go on.You know, there's nothing else I can tell you."

Kesterson: "Nobody tells her what to say. Nobody tells me what to say. She speaks from the heart. As I speak from the heart. I mean, she lost the most precious thing in the world..."

O'Reilly was painfully flummoxed, because he doesn't have a heart, and thus could not even comprehend what his guest was talking about. Well aware he was way behind on points, O'Reilly resorted to desperation: "Would you go on the Michael Moore web site, madam?"

Kesterson: "Probably, I mean I will now. I mean, I don't do that voluntarily."

O'Reilly: "But I mean do you respect Michael Moore, do you believe in the things Mchael Moore believes in, that we're a bad country, that we're an evil country, that we brought this war on ourselves..."

Kesterson: "Now see you're putting words in his mouth is the way I look at it."

O'Reilly interrupted, "Okay, but..."

Kesterson: "He has made a documentary..."

O'Reilly: "Do you respect Michael Moore's view of the United States?"

Kesterson: "I don't know his entire views of the United States. But, there are a lot of things that Michael Moore has brought up that I think needed to be brought up and I do believe him. I can't say because I don't know what he has said across the board."

Now O'Reilly's really getting desperate: "If you had to throw in with one person, President Bush or Michael Moore, if you had to make a decision, who I'm going to back here, who would it be?"

Kesterson: "Michael Moore, if he has lied or not, has not killed thousands of people, possibly hundreds of thousands."

O'Reilly senses that this time it's him who's being backed into a corner: "So you believe Bush has killed hundreds of thousands of people. So you believe that the president is an evil man."

Without backing down, without flinching or batting an eye, the wily Kesterson refused to fall for O'Reilly's trap: " I believe he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, our soldiers included."

It's now officially a Hackworth moment.

O'Reilly: "And, no justification, self defense isn't a justification, war on terror isn't a justification..."

But Kesterson wouldn't let O'Reilly spin's go unanswered.

"It wasn't self defense in my eyes," she said with great indignation.

O'Reilly: "You would have been okay with letting Saddam..."

Kesterson: "We weren't attacked by Iraq."

O'Reilly: "That's right, we weren't attacked but Kuwait was. And he signed a treaty that said he would abide by the UN sanctions and he violated them 17 times, and you either enforce the treaty or you don't. And that's what it came to."

Forget WMD, 9/11, freeing Iraqis. Now we're going back to 1990 to justify Bush's 2003 invasion, and O'Reilly's still wrong. Hussein did abide by the UN sanctions because he did destroy all WMD stockpiles. That's why none were found. O'Reilly  helped Bush deceive Americans that Iraq still had WMD. Sons like Casey Sheehan and Erik Kesterson are dead as a result. Their mothers want the lies to stop so other mothers won't have to grieve the loss of their sons.

To say that the plain speaking, middle-American mom took O'Reilly down a few notches would be an understatement. She destroyed him. During the segment it seemed as if O'Reilly was playing for time, winding down the clock, wondering how in hell this articulate mom was mopping up the studio with him. It's amazing that he even allowed the segment to be broadcasted without editing, as he's done in the past when things were going wrong. What's even more amazing is that O'Reilly's staff actually booked her on the show. Two to one someone got fired.

Kesterson, like Sheehan, stayed cool under fire while bringing down Bill O'Reilly, George Bush, and the entire political and media establishment with nothing but the truth. O'Reilly, like Limbaugh, Malkin, Hannity, Malkin and the rest of the rightist scum polluting the airwaves, was reduced to pitiful name-calling as he crumbled before the Kesterson's steady recitation of the truth: they lied, and her son died.

Kesterson was more than an able replacement for Cindy Sheehan. It was like Steve Young subbing for Joe Montana, or Mickey Mantle coming in for Joe DiMaggio in center field. We will forever be indebted to Dolores Kesterson. Her son Erik would be every bit as proud of his Mom as she is of him. But the leader of the reinvigorated antiwar movement is Cindy Sheehan, who defiantly showed up Emperor Bush by camping out in Crawford until His Highness comes down from his throne to meet with her. Either way, Bush was going to lose this one. He may be able to get away with softball interviews with Tim Russert and  Bill O'Reilly, but  he knows his bob and weave wouldn't cut it with Cindy.

Now let's analyze how O'Reilly smeared Cindy Sheehan in his two imaginatively titled Talking Points memos, "The Fascinating Saga of Cindy Sheehan," followed by the highly anticipated sequel, "The Saga of Cindy Sheehan Deepens," and in his discussion with Michelle Malkin.

O'Reilly began Smear Part 1 by stating no one had the right to intrude on her grief, that she was entitled to her opinion on a situation that has impacted her, and that she was angry at Bush. We shouldn't be surprised at his initial uncharacteristic civility toward a mother. O'Reilly's too good a patriot to violate the national creed that mothers are as American as apple pie.

O'Reilly then showed a video clip of Sheehan: "Because Joe Hagin, the deputy chief of staff said that I can tell you the president really cares. And I said you can't tell me that because I met him and I know that he doesn't care. And I told them that I feel that my son didn't die for a noble cause."

Deputy Chief of Staff Hagin and national security adviser Stephen Hadley are the two flunkies Bush dispatched to Camp Casey to mollify the grieving, an gry mother. Cindy sent them packing; she wants a meeting with the commander in chief, not some errand boys. Bush's selection of Hadley to meet Sheehan is a measure of the contempt this gang has for Cindy and all Americans. In September or October 2001, then-deputy national security adviser Hadley was one of the White House officials informed by Congressman Curt Weldon that a military intelligence unit named Able Danger had been tracking Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers-to-be for one year before 9/11. Hadley suppressed this information from all investigations, including the 9/11 commission, and thus from the American people.

You wouldn't know this from watching The Factor, because O'Reilly has yet to mention Able Danger and its explosive implications.

No, O'Reilly's focusing on more important matters in his mind, like how to take Drudge's smear of Sheehan and run with it.

"Well, here's something very strange. Two months after her son died, Cindy and her husband Patrick did meet with President Bush, as she said. After that meeting, Cindy was quoted by a California newspaper as saying, 'I now know [President Bush] is sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss.'

"So Mrs. Sheehan has apparently changed her mind about the president. How did that happen?  Well, for some reason she's teamed up with Michael Moore and a man named Sam Husseini, both antiwar radicals. Husseini said this on 'The Factor' just two days after  9/11:

[Video clip]

 "'What sickened me was the act of what happened and that people would kill so many innocent people. But now I hear a drumbeat of having our soldiers  kill women and children. Colin Powell advocated, apparently, during the build-up of the Gulf War of flooding Baghdad and killing possibly four million people." [End Video Clip]

O'Reilly:  "Now that kind of lunacy is what Sheehan is associating with. You wuld think the media would be cautious here with obvious inconsistencies and radicalism in play, but no."

One would think it would be O'Reilly who would be cautious here given how wrong he was about WMD, 9/11, Hussein, Zarqawi and the nonexistent ricin factory, etc, but no.

Exactly where was the lunacy in Husseini's comments about 9/11 and Colin Powell? Husseini was sickened by the murders of innocent people on  9/11. And he was concerned about the drumbeat for war that would result in the deaths of innocent civilians. That's exactly what happened. Tens of thousands of Afghans and as many as 100,000 Iraqis who had nothing to do with 9/11 were killed on Bush's orders.

Powell is the author of the military doctrine known as "overwhelming force," which says you don't go to war unless you're prepared to completely destroy the enemy. We haven't yet verified that Powell advocated flooding Baghdad in 1991, but given the fact he was responsible for the cold blooded and cowardly execution of retreating Iraqis on the road  out of Basra, and the fact that he once said he really didn't care about how many Iraqi civilians died, it's a good bet this bloodthirsty war criminal didn't care if 4 million Iraqis perished in the flooding of Baghdad.

After criticizing the NY Times for doubting that Bush comforted Sheehan at their meeting, O'Reilly stated: "Cindy Sheehan is quoted as saying, 'that was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together.' It sounds like comfort to me..."

Except that the "gift" Cindy was referring to was not the meeting with Bush. As The Reporter's Tom Hall wrote in his Aug. 9 reply to Drudge, "Sheehan also said the trip to Seattle helped connect her family to others that had lost  a son or daughter in Iraq. Sheehan said sharing their story was rewarding, as was the time she got to spend with her own family."

O'Reilly: "Finally, honest people could disagree about the Iraq War. Most Americans now oppose it. That could turn around with some progress. And 'Talking Points' hopes it does."

Here O'Reilly is grudgingly conceding that the majority of Americans oppose the war. Bush has lost them on the war, which means Americans are tuning out O'Reilly as well. That's how bad things are in Iraq now. Bush's noble cause has become a hellish nightmare. All the lies have been exposed, including new ones by the day. Things are bad for O'Reilly when he has to admit "honest people could disagree about the Iraq War."  That's his way of acknowledging that 55% of the respondents to his Iraq poll favor withdrawing from Iraq either now or within a year. That's a bad result for O'Reilly because they usually go his way. Most of those who vote in his polls are the most motivated, hard-core O'Reilly fanatics, which usually gives him just the outcome he desired. He was not at all pleased with this poll's numbers, which may explain why he brushed past them without commenting.

A few nights later O'Reilly pointed to the anti-Iraq war results as an example of the independence of Factor viewers. Actually it's just an illustration of just how widespread the opposition to this war has become. The results of another poll pointed to the usual success O'Reilly has in the orchestration and  manipulation of his rightist base. 79% did not respect what Cindy Sheehan is doing, against 21% who did. Gee, big surprise, given the innuendo, villification, and smears that have been thrown Sheehan's way by O'Reilly: She borders on treason; she's thrown in with the most radical elements; she's a radical leftist. That's going to fire up the pro-war, anti-feminist sections of O'Reilly's constituency. Frankly, I think it's encouraging that 21% took the trouble to say they respected Cindy.

O'Reilly hopes that support for the war will rebound "with some progress. And 'Talking Points' hopes it does."

How? What progress? Killing another 100,000 Iraqi insurgents and Muslim brothers from abroad? Dropping more depleted uranium on Iraqis? What progress? The progress US imperialism makes in successfully installing a puppet government that do Washington's bidding and ensure control of Iraqi oil is transferred to American oil companies?

Sure, O'Reilly hopes the war makes some progress toward the US conquering Iraq and strengthening Washington and Israel in the region. He hopes the war makes progress so that the Arab Revolution is ruthlessly crushed. He hopes the war makes progress so that the system that pays him so handsomely for his demagoguery and deceit continues to prosper. And if it takes more US troops to "do the job," then O'Reilly's for sending them to face death and commit more atrocities as soon as possible. Just win, baby, in the words of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis.

O'Reilly ended by counterposing Sergeant Leroy Scott's pride in serving his country in an attempt to blunt Sheehan's credibility as an antiwar mother.

"For every Cindy Sheehan, there's a Sergeant Leroy Scott who's recovering from the terrible wounds he received, attempting to save a soldier's life while serving as a medic in Iraq. Sergeant Scott is  proud of his service, proud of his country. I talked with him today. I sense no bitterness at all."

The inverse of O'Reilly's first mathematical equation is precisely his dilemma. For every Leroy Scott who still doesn't see through the lies, there's a Cindy Sheehan, or another soldier, or another so ldier's mother, who is trying to stop this brutal war for profits and big business hegemony and prevent more Casey Sheehans from dying for the profits of the superrich.

O'Reilly: "I don't know what is driving Mrs. Sheehan, but I do know she's being used. And maybe she knows it as well."

O'Reilly's insensitivity prevents him from knowing what drives Cindy Sheehan. For most of us it's no mystery--what's driving her is to stop this criminal war so that other mothers won't experience the horror of losing your son or daughter in an illegal war of aggression.

Pentagon Tracked Four 9/11 Hijackers One Year Before Attacks!

White House, Military, 9/11 Commission Kept This From Public!

Who doesn't O'Reilly leave Cindy Sheehan alone and cover this story?

London's Blood Is on O'Reilly's Hands, Too

Just like it's on Col. David Hunt's, Steve Emerson's, and all those who by instantly blaming Islamic extremists and supporting Washington's criminal occupation of Iraq are giving cover to the source of all the terrorism and horrors engulfing the planet--world imperialism, led by the true Axis of Evil: Washington, London, and Tel Aviv.

 "Tomorrow Al-Jazeera is gonna say something really stupid about the London attacks"--Bill O'Reilly, July 7, 2005

"Put his head on a stake"--O'Reilly referring to Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Islamic extremist who, like Osama bin Laden, began his bloody career as a CIA asset fighting the jihad against the Soviet-backed Afghanistan regime in the 1980s. This comment from an individual who minutes earlier had called  Zarqawi a bloodthirsty terrorist who beheads individuals. Zarqawi and bin Laden are both very likely dead.

"Hey Israel, have some fun"--O'Reilly guest Col. David Hunt, on July 7, 2005, adding that Israel had "great intelligence," neglecting to add that Israel was warned about today's terrorist attacks after earlier informing London that an attack was pending. A key part of Israel's "great intelligence" is their propensity for staging terrorist attacks and blaming Arabs for them, as in the 1954 Lavon affair; or establishing a phony Al Qaeda cell in the West Bank; or planting a Trojan Horse electronic device that framed Libya for the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco. Israel's intelligence was so great that the Israeli embassy in London was told of the coming attacks in time for Finance Minister Binyamin Netaynahyu to stay in his hotel instead of traveling to the hotel where the first bomb exploded. As Gore Vidal likes to say, "there's no conspiracies--only coincidences."

"Bin Laden cannot be allowed to live."--Col. Hunt. Hey moron, he's dead several years already.

"I'm talking about Biblical justice"--Col. David Hunt, urging a "Kill 'em all, let God sort it out" response to London's attacks. By "all," Hunt is unambiguous that he means Muslims.

"Any backlash opportunities against Muslims gonna happen in London?"--Bill O'Reilly (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), July 7, 2005

"There's gonna be a big backlash against Muslims in London. Wait and see."--O'Reilly, July 7, 2005

July 7-31, 2005--London's tubes were still soaked with victims' blood and Bill O'Reilly was already blaming Islamic fundamentalists and Al Qaeda without a shred of evidence more substantial than the word of congenital liar Tony Blair and a suspicious claim by a shadowy, previously unknown group called the "Secret Organisation Group of Al Qaeda of Jihad Group in Europe," which, according to a MSNBC TV translator, stated that the groups claim of responsibility contained an error in the Koran verses. Translation: Made in Israel by Mossad, whose motto is "when in war, thou shalt wage deception."

O'Reilly announced he'll  have more this week on why the London attacks should be used to bolster the US war drive in Iraq and elsewhere that he calls the "war on terror," but is really a war of terror by the world's strongest military power.

Helping O'Reilly in his sordid task of demonizing Muslims was the usual cast of supporting actors--so-called terrorism "expert" Steve Emerson and Heritage  Foundation's Nile Gardiner, and Col. David Hunt. The choice of Emerson is a revealing glimpse of O'Reilly's capacity to lack judgment. Emerson is one of the most discredited "experts" to ever disgrace the television screams. He should be ashamed to show his face before a camera with his track record, which includes falsely accusing Islamic militants of responsibility for Oklahoma City immediate after it occurred.

Gardiner is a two-bit pseudo intellectual from the Heritage Foundation, the right wing think tank regularly called upon by O'Reilly when he needs "intellectual" cover for his rightist views.

Col. Hunt is one of O'Reilly's favorite military "experts." In truth, he's nothing but a military hack, enthusiastically willing to parrot any Pentagon lie, no matter how crude the deception. Hunt is the buffoon who defended the Army's fairy tale about Jessica Lynch even after the harsh truth of the Pentagon's sordid manipulation of this soldier was an established fact. He also lied that the "Army brass" didn't know former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman had been killed by US fire for "about a month"when in truth they knew within a week.

O'Reilly wanted to know what possible benefit could Al Qaeda derive from the London attack? None whatsoever. Which leads us to the next question: just who does benefit from the bombings? So far, it's Bush and Blair who've wasted no time in exploiting the attacks to justify and deepen their agenda of wars without end and savage colonial occupations. Ditto Israel.

O'Reilly should have asked his brilliant FOX colleague, Brian Kilmeade, for some clarification on exactly who benefits from these type of terrorist acts. As the story broke Thursday morning, Kilmeade had this to say: "And that was the first time since 9/11 when they [people of London] should know and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened."

At least Kilmeade is closer to reality than in O'Reilly in the fact t hat, while he may be clueless doing it, he's pinpointing who really gains from these kind of terrorist attacks--Washington, London, Tel Aviv. CIA, MI5, Mossad. Now we're getting warmer.

O'Reilly could use another lesson from the comments of another esteemed FOX colleague--Britt Hume--whose immediate response to the news of the attacks was to calculate how he could profit in the futures market:

"I mean, my first thought when I heard--just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, 'Hmmm, time to buy.'" As Bill O'Reilly always says, "Hey, that's capitalism."

You see, FOX employees don't ALWAYS lie. Sometimes they're so brutally honest they reveal the true depths of their depraved character, the byproduct of their complete internalization of bourgeois values.  Speaking of which, let's not forget the contribution of FOX News host John Gibson, who remarked the day before the attacks that that International Olympic Committee had "missed a golden opportunity"when it picked London instead of Paris to host the 2012 Olympics, because if it had been the latter, terrorists would "blow up Paris, and who cares?"

That Gibson's quite the prophet. Been talking to Mossad recently, John?

After the London attacks, Gibson only dug a deeper hole to crawl in, saying the IEC should have chosen Paris so the British could "let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."

Gibson is every bit the vile national chauvinist as is O'Reilly, but he's nowhere near as engaging, and with that shock of aristocratic blonde hair could never pose as a working class spokesman as does the overseer of the No-Spin Zone.

As for Hume's repulsive speculation on how to profit from London's attack, it should be noted that this rightist pundit was merely articulating the cold-blooded calculations of the capitalist class. Listen to what Andrea Williams, the top gun of Royal London Asset Management's European equities division had to say: "Unfortunately, we expected it to come. It came and it doesn't really affect economic growth. This is something you have to price into the markets."

Business as usual.

But let's get back to the blood on O'Reilly's hands. Above all, the London attacks prove that Bush's "war on terror"--enthusiastically endorsed by O'Reilly--is a complete and utter fraudulent failure. The world is NOT better off as a result of the invasion of Iraq. The world is more dangerous. Bush's war on terror is fueling terrorism. His doctrine of fighting the terrorists overseas so they won't have to be fought at home was shattered on London's streets and underground. The exact opposite is true. When US and UK imperialism bomb and slaughter Muslims, they ensure the favor will be returned. Washington and London have turned America and England into death traps for their citizens as a result of the state terrorism they are inflicting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

America's invasion and occupation of Iraq--unflinchingly backed by O'Reilly--has destablized the entire Middle East and turned a relatively secular Iraq into a hotbed of Islamic extremism and recruiting ground for terrorists. O'Reilly's lies in this endeavor played a key role in winning Bush whatever public support he had for the invasion. His public calls for the slaughter of Muslims from Iraq to Afghanistan, his incessant anti-Islamic tirades, and his callous dismissal of the deaths and wounds of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis caused by the illegal US invasion, have all played an instrumental role in forging the prevailing poisonous atmosphere confronting Muslims in the US today.

We are not going to let O'Reilly claim a monopoly on opposition to terrorism and sympathy for the victims of the cowardly, despicable and reactionary terrorist attacks that occurred in London. Marxists have always condemned terrorist methods not only because they slaughter innocent working people but because they strengthen the forces of reaction. Terrorism gives war criminals like Bush and Blair--purveyors of state terrorism that dwarfs whatever IRA or  Al Qaeda cells produce--pretexts to perpetuate their military aggression and further restrict democratic rights with increased repression.

And this is all O'Reilly seemed to care about in the wake of London's bombings. In his first two Talking Points memos, "Failure to Deal With the Enemy" and "Media Coverage of the London Bombings," O'Reilly could not bring himself to utter one word of sympathy for the victims.  Instead, he revealed himself to be a contemptible opportunist bent on spinning the tragedy to silence all opponents of the Iraq war. In fact, O'Reilly made no effort to conceal his satisfaction that the attacks might make it easier for Washington to wage its global war of terror:

"My first thought was al Qaeda was trying to disrupt the G-8 summit in Scotland. My second thought was now maybe Europe will wise up. The terrorists are the evil doers, not the USA."

Now why would "al Qaeda" try to disrupt the Scotland summit, when Britain had just downgraded the terror threat level and sent thousands of London's cops to Gleneagles to help protect eight heads of state from several hundred anarchists? When London was guarded by a relative handful of Keystone Cops left with malfunctioning cameras? (Just as  9/11's airport cameras were inoperable, and US air defenses were out to a lunch after a similar lowering of a threat level.)

Europe has already wised up; that's what's enfuriating O'Reilly. Most of Europe--and the world--knew from the beginning that Bush was lying through his teeth about WMD and Iraq's alleged ties to  9/11. Most of the world grasped that Bush, aided by O'Reilly, capitalized on Americans' fear, shock and disorientation and cynically manipulated these emotions to win public backing for colonial wars of conquest for natural resources that were long planned. Most of the world has an inkling that Bush's wars are acts of state terrorism that only increase terrorism and instability in the world.

Indeed, O'Reilly senses the futility of his hopes. "That is probably wishful thinking. Generally speaking, the European press is viciously anti-American when it comes to the war on terror."

On one level, the European press, reflecting the views of a faction of the capitalist class, is envious that Washington is getting a leg up on its European rivals by using its military supremacy to control the resource-rich Middle East and Central Asia, which is what Bush's war on terror really is. On another level, the Europeans are worried that Bush's reckless, adventurist course will cause long-term damage to the world party of exploitation called capitalism.

O'Reilly: "The garbage these people are throwing out to a largely clueless public is astounding."

What garbage would that be, O'Reilly? The documentation from the P entagon and White House lawyers proving the torture and abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were ordered by Bush and Rumsfeld? The evidence provided by the Downing Street Memo that Bush manipulated the intelligence and lied his way into this war? The fact that bin Laden, Zarqawi, and their cohorts learned to hone their terrorist skills in their services as paid assets of the CIA while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan? The intimate business entanglements between the Bushes and bin Ladens?

O'Reilly's got some pair calling Europe's public clueless, when most Americans thought WMD were found in Iraq and 70% believed Hussein was behind Sept. 11. Polls have confirmed that this cluelessness on the part of the Americans was largely due to the Big Lie techniques practiced daily on FOX News, led by the biggest mouth in cable news, Bill O'Reilly.

Failed leaders like Chirac in France and Schroeder in Germany also pound home the anti-American theme to divert attention away from their own disastrous administrations.

Chirac and Schroeder are failed politicians--as are most capitalist stooges--though it must be noted that when they fail, they are failing the class they are representing--the bourgeoisie. Some politicians recognized by many as failures, like Carter, Reagan, and Bush, actually did a good job for the capitalist exploiters they're in business to represent.

O'Reilly leaves out that Chirac and Schroeder "pound home" the anti US imperialist theme primarily in response to the mass pressure being exerted on them by the French and German workers, although it's certain these leaders have their own views that  Bush's reckless adventurism threatens to end the capitalist party worldwide. But O'Reilly's real problem is not with Chirac and Schroeder, but with the tens of millions of French and German proletarians who hate Bush and his brutal imperialist wars and think Karl Marx was onto something.

"But now the terrorists have struck again. 9/11, Madrid, today London."

Yes, terrorists have struck again in London, and like 9/11 and Madrid, a foul stench permeates the circumstances of all three attacks smacks of an inside job, like the kind the British used to implicate the IRA, or the kind suggested by Operation Northwoods, or the false flag operations like the Lavon Affair that the Zionists frequently employ to frame Arabs. But does O'Reilly ask the hard questions screaming to be asked that a truly independent journalist would? No. As usual, O'Reilly parrots whatever the government feeds him to regurgitate back to the masses. No matter how many governmental lies are exposed, from the Gulf of Tonkin to Grenada to Panama to both Iraq wars and the nonexistent WMD, O'Reilly urges the people to give "their" government the benefit of the doubt and swallow more.

Just as O'Reilly uncritically accepted the absurd official version of 9/11 while branding as psychotic all those who question it, he's now cramming London's suspicious version of 7/7 down his viewers' throats, branding anyone a lunatic who dares connect the bombings to the state-sponsored terrorism being inflicted on innocent civilians in Iraq.

Yes, the London bombings were despicable, and the world wants answers. But don't look to O'Reilly to ask the hard questions staring us in the face. One doesn't have to be a conspiracist to feel that London's version does not ring true. You don't even have to be to detect eery parallels between 9/11 and 7/7 and consider the possibility that both were inside jobs executed by rogue intelligence agencies out to frame Muslims for the terrorist attacks.

Not a hint of skepticism from O'Reilly about the bizarre evolution of London's story that began with a claim of responsibility on an Islamic website (whose host is probably from Texas) from a previously unheard of group, the Secret Organisation Group of Al Qaeda of Hihad Organization in Europe. Then it was supposedly another Al Qaeda group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri brigade. Next all eyes were on a Moroccan national, Mohammaed al-Gerbouzi. 

First we were told the bombings occurred over a period of time. Then they exploded within seconds of each other. First it was highly sophisticated, military-type explosives detonated remotely with sophisticated timing devices. Next it was the work of suicide bombers using much cruder equipment. Then, just as with Sept. 11, voila! From nothing, we have everything: Four perpetrators, all young Muslim men, caught on tape, home grown British citizens, their personal documents found amidst the rubble, just as a 9/11 hijacker's passport was miraculously found intact in the ruins of the World Trade Center.

O'Reilly was untroubled by the initial reports that the Israeli embassy received warnings of the attacks minutes before they occurred, saving the life of Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on his way to a corporate conference at a hotel next to Liverpool's subway station. Not surprisingly, the No-Spin Zone never mentioned that the US intelligence and military think tank known as Stratfor reported on July 7 that Israel had warned London that a terrorist attack was on the way. Just as Israeli intelligence warned Washington before  9/11 that a terrorist skyjacking plot on the horizon.

It's awe-inspiring how prescient Israeli intelligence seems to be.

It gets better. Just as on the morning of Sept. 11 the CIA was conducting a terror drill involving planes crashing into tall buildings, so on the morning of 7/7 a crisis management company led by a former Scotland Yard official (who worked with the Anti-Terrorist Branch) was conducting a terror drill based on bombs going off precisely at the subway stations that were destroyed.

What was that, Gore Vidal, about there being no conspiracies, only coincidences?

But we'll never hear any of this from Bill O'Reilly. Nor the fact that just as Bush opposed any investigation of 9/11, so his poodle Blair is objecting to an independent investigation of 7/7/.

No, all we're hearing from O'Reilly is that 7/7 gives Bush carte blanche to kill and torture even more Muslims in Iraq and anywhere else.

We'll explore how O'Reilly does this by wrapping up our analysis of "Failure to Deal With the Deadly Enemy" and dissecting "Media Coverage of the London Bombings" and "Anti-American Danger."

 "If all of the anti-U.S. bitterness were redirected into anti-terror bitterness, the world  might defeat these savages. We all know which major countries allow terrorists to operate. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent, Pakistan and Indonesia."

O'Reilly's angry that most of the world has figured out that all terrorism flows directly or indirectly from the far more lethal state terrorism emanating from Washington. If the international working class, including our Islamic brother and sisters, were led by the now sleeping giant American proletariat, our bitterness could be redirected into building a  mass socialist movement that might defeat these savages in the White House and Pentagon and Wall Street.

Yes, we all know which countries allow terrorists to operate. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest ally in the Middle East. That fact no doubt helped process the special visas for the hijackers they received in Saudi Arabia.  Two were from United Arab Emirates, another US client regime, one was from Lebanon and one was from Egypt, another close Washington ally always ready to torture Al Qaeda suspects on behalf of Bush.

Most terrorist suspects hail from US-backed governments, like Indonesia and especially Pakistan, where the four alleged London bombers originated. Could be because the level of anger, humiliation and resentment is qualititatively greater in these nations where the leaders are particularly reviled for their craven capitulation to the US imperialists.

"Why isn't the European press condemning those countries? Why doesn't Europe admit Saddam's regime helped terrorists all day long? Why won't the world help the struggling democracy in Iraq?"

Because t hose countries aren't threatening the planet with murderous aggression advancing colonialist designs. Because all the countries O'Reilly mentioned are semi-colonial countries, or nations oppressed politically, economically and militarily by the advanced capitalist countries.

Europe won't admit Hussein helped terrorists all day long because it's not true. Saddam's Iraq was relatively secular. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda loathed Hussein as a secular socialist. Iraq wasn't a breeding ground for terrorism until Bush invaded. Why won't O'Reilly admit that  Bush has helped terrorists multiply all day long from Iraq to Morocco to Indonesia to Britain.

Then O'Reilly got all bent out of shape over NY Times reporter Edward Wong's description of Abu al Zarqawi as a "Jordanian fighter."

"Can you believe an American newspaper would print that? Al Zarqawi is a vicious Al Qaeda killer, a man who beheads civilians and orders the murders of women and children. And the NY Times call this guy a Jordanian fighter. That kind of sanitizing terrorism must stop!  The American people, you, must demand that it stop."

Not much is known about the sh adowy al Zarqawi, but we do know that he was a Jordanian born Palestinian who fought in Afghanistan along with other CIA-backed Islamic fundamentalists against the pro-Soviet regime there. O'Reilly has frequently repreated Colin Powell's story that Zarqawi's wounded leg was operated on in Baghdad, proving Hussein's ties with Al Qaeda (which Zarqawi was not even associated with, at least Bin Laden's branch). Of course, we all know how reliable Powell's word is given that his February 2003 United N ations appearance was proven to be a concoction of lies.

Further doubt was cast on the Zarqawi amputated leg theory when the executioner in one of the beheading videos alleged to be Zarqawi showed no signs of an amputated or severely wounded leg. Even the CIA backed down on that assertion after that evidence. But not O'Reilly. As we've often said, he's not one to let facts get in the way of spin.

One can more accurately say that  Bush is a vicious imperialist killer, a man who orders the targeting of civilian populations and the murders of women and children. And Bill O'Reilly calls this guy a good guy trying to do a good job? That kind of sanitizing terrorism must stop! The American people, we, must demand that it stop.

And slowly, albeit too slowly, we are.

O'Reilly: "The anti-American press both here and in  Europe is actually helping the terrorists by diminishing their threat. 'Talking Points' urges you to begin holding people accountable for their position on the terror war. Walk away from media that excuses or sanitizes these brutal acts."

Fade to Orwell. "The pro-imperialist press both here (FOX) and in Europe (Sky) is actually helping the state terrorists in Washington by diminishing their threat. COSMOS LEFT urges you to begin holding people accountable for their position on Bush's war of terror. Walk away from media that excuses or sanitizes these brutal acts."

But don't just walk away. Join the growing international chorus demanding war crimes indictments for O'Reilly and his ilk for the integral role they've played in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

US imperialism IS the problem in the world. It is the source of most of the terrorism in the world. It is humanity's greatest enemy, as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas  used to say when they were revolutionaries. And if you don't agree with that, if you're still giving political cover to Bush after all the evidence that  he's a lying weasel and war criminal, then you are helping killers like Bush. Enough's enough. Pull your head that's now up your ass or in the ground, admit you were wrong, and join the side of the people.

O'Reilly began his July 8 Talking Points memo, "Media Coverage of the London Bombings," by ridiculing The New York Times for referring to the executioners of an Egyptian diplomat in Iraq as the "insurgent group Al Qaeda."

O'Reilly: "So I guess The New York Times is now a terrorist-free zone....The Washington Post also playing this game, today described Al Qaeda in Iraq as an 'insurgent group' as well."

Once again, facts are subordinated to spin on The O'Reilly Factor. "Al Qaeda  in Iraq" is the name of a shadowy Islamic insurgent group fighting the US occupation that has claimed responsibility for several kidnappings, assassinations and bombings. If it indeed exists, it is part of the Islamic fundamentalist component of the Iraqi Resistance, which is an umbrella group of all those taking up arms to defend Iraq from the invaders. This includes Baathists, Hussein loyalists, Iraqi nationalists young and old, Sunni militants, a small minority of Islamic jihadists from other countries, and lest we forget the Shiite fighters in Sadr's Mehdi Army, which bravely fought pitched battles against US forces in Najaf and elsewhere last year. They may not be fighting now, but they did not obey Bush's orders to disarm, and they will be heard from again.

Groups like "Al Qaeda in Iraq" do not appear to have as much support in Iraq as the other components of the Resistance that are more nationalist oriented enjoy. Among unemployed Islamic youth from Indonesia to Pakistan to Morocco to Leeds, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been popular because of the perception that they are at least fighting back, exacting revenge from the infidels for slaughtering Muslim men, women and children by making their citizens feel the pain of losing loved ones too.

But in Iraq, there's not much empathy for those blowing up Iraq civilians and children, which explains why "Al Qaeda in Iraq" remains a shadowy, mysterious outfit lacking public support.

Which is why some believe "Al Qaeda in Iraq" may not be a bona fide element of the Iraqi Resistance, or an "insurgent group." It may instead be one of the US and Israeli psy-ops death squads roaming Iraq. In which case, O'Reilly may be right in disparaging Al Qaeda in Iraq as an insurgent group, though not for the reason  he thinks he is. Al Qaeda in Iraq may in fact be a terrorist group that was hatched by US or Israeli intelligence.

By the way, O'Reilly has a few more left-wing loonies to attack for their characterization of Al Qaeda in Iraq as an insurgent group. A July 14 article in the India Daily began this way: "U.S.-led coalition forces have captured two alleged leaders of the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq, including a man suspected in the death of an Egyptian envoy, an American military spokesman said Thursday." [emphasis added]

O'Reilly: "But the absolute worst appeared in  The Boston Globe. An op-ed written by Derrick Jackson compared the dead in London to those killed in Iraq by coalition forces.

"Jackson writes, 'Yet ever invoking of the innocents (in London) also reminds us of our despicable, cowardly killing of innocent Iraqi civilians.'"

O'Reilly continued, "The Boston Globe must be very proud. Even in a liberal state like Massachusetts, that kind of moral equivalency is simply unacceptable to decent people."

Translation: US forces killing hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians is moral, while the deaths of dozens of Western civilians killed in a terrorist attack is immoral. O'Reilly's can't hide his national chauvinism, arrogance and racism. American and Western lives mean more than Islamic lives. He doesn't report about IRaqi civilians killed by US forces because he doesn't care about Iraqis as human beings.

Yes, the London attacks were cowardly acts of terrorism. But we don't see O'Reilly shedding tears over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians slaughtered in Iraq on orders from George Bush. That is also terrorism--state terrorism--which is on a scale so vast and barbaric it dwarfs the London bombings. Bill O'Reilly's the last person in the world to condemn terrorist violence when he has urged its indiscriminate use against civilians from Afghanistan to Iraq.

One of O'Reilly's themes over the past weeks is his refusal to recognize that London's bombings are in any way related to the bloody, savage, murderous invasion and occupation of Iraq. For O'Reilly to do so, of course, would concede the veracity of this essay's title and his own responsibility for the massive death toll in Iraq. Thus O'Reilly attempts to glibly dismiss this causality and ridicule those like London mayor Ken Livingston who dare to affirm it. He does this by inaccurately stating that the only people saying 7/7 is a response to the horrific violence inflicted on Iraqis by imperialist soldiers are loony leftists like Livingston,George Galloway, the BBC and their co-thinkers in the US.

It's true there's no shortage of leftists and Marxists who accurately predicted that a US invasion of Iraq would transform that nation into a hotbed of Islamic radicalism that would fuel the worldwide recruitment of young men and women seeking revenge against those who slaughter their people. Mike Whitney wrote an excellent piece in  Counterpunch.org called, "The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station: Bush and Blair's Orgy of Carnage."

Whitney also makes an equally chilling prediction: just as the straight line exists between Falluja and King's Cross Station, so it will between  Abu Ghraib and the terror attacks in  America's future. We discuss O'Reilly's key role in erecting that line in the essay below, "O'Reilly: If Carter were president today, we'd all be speaking Arabic."

But you don't have to be a Marxist or leftist like Mike Whitney to grasp the causality, directly or in directly, between the state terrorism inflicted on Iraq by the occupying forces and the terrorism manifested in London on 7/7.

The Economist, a respected, authoritative mouthpiece of capitalism, gave this take on why London was hit in July:

"As soon as the atrocities of New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania took place on September 11, 2001, London was assumed to be at risk of attack. That was so both because of its status as an international financial centre, an epitome of the West and its capitalist ways, and because Britain has long been a close ally of the  United States, enemy number one for al-Qaeda and its terrorist associates. That likelihood only grew following Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and then the terrible bombing in Madrid 11th, 2004. In recent years every senior British policeman, intelligence chief or h ome secretary you cared to ask about the probability of a terrorist attack gave a similar answer: 100 percent."

You see, one d oesn't have to be a Marxist to understand what is obvious here. You just need clear-thinking individuals possessing a trace of honesty and integrity, which excludes O'Reilly and many of his Kool Aid fanatics.

But let's not stop with the loony left Economist. Next we'll examine what the loony leftists over at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as the Chatham House, concluded in a report written one month before the 7/7 bombings that Britain's support of America's invasion of Iraq and the resulting perception that London  was "a pillion [second seat on a bicycle] passenger" of US foreign policy had made Britain vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The Chatham report added that this policy "has proved costly in terms of British and  U.S. military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign."

Days after the release of the Chatham analysis, we learned of a June terror threat assessment by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center, a collection of Britain's leading law enforcement and intelligence officials, which stated the violence and state terrorism in Iraq was directly responsible for terrorist attacks in Britain:

"Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.," the report bluntly stated in terms so simple even the admittedly simple O'Reilly should grasp them. Ironically, this same report also recommended that the terror threat level be lowered because  "at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the U.K."

Similiar opinions have emerged from military and in elligence circles on this side of the Atlantic as well. The Washington Post reported in January 2005 that "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank....According to the NIC report, Iraq has joined the list of conflict--including the Israeli-Palestinian stalement, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand--that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology."

On the other side of the spectrum, Mike Whitney's Counterpunch article, "The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station: Bush and Blair's Orgy of Carnage" came to the same conclusion reached by US and British military and intelligence:

"Baghdad has morphed into an assembly-line for extremists, churning out enough fanatics to produce 1,000 London-type bombings. This is the real effect of Bush's war. The people who were killed in the London subway died for the crimes of their government, not because some young Muslim studied under a fiery cleric in South Leeds. The bloodshed is as much Bush and Blair's responsibility as if they had detonated the bombs themselves."

Whitney may be ceding too much when he so uncritically accepts the official line that young Muslim fanatics perpetrated these crimes. We don't know for sure who carried out the recent terrorist attacks, but the stench surrounding them strongly suggests 9/11's method of operation--an inside job by US/UK intelligence agencies designed to frame Muslims, build a climate of hatred and fear, and whip up jingoistic support for imperialist wars.

But even if you assume that responsibility for the London attacks lies beyond the pale of imperialist intelligence agencies, that they were executed by terrorist cells composed of fanatical Muslim men seeking revenge for the carnage and suffering inflicted on their people by America, London, and Israel, the same conclusion stares us in the face: the blood spilled in London runs parallel with that flooding Iraq.

The only people denying this fact are imperialist mouthpieces like O'Reilly who still defend this brutal war, because to admit it would be like holding up their blood-drenched hands for all the world to see--and judge.

London's Blood Is on O'Reilly's Hands, Too

Just like it's on Col. David Hunt's, Steve Emerson's, and all those who by instantly blaming Islamic extremists and supporting Washington's criminal occupation of Iraq are giving cover to the source of all the terrorism and horrors engulfing the planet--world imperialism, led by the true Axis of Evil: Washington, London, and Tel Aviv.

 "Tomorrow Al-Jazeera is gonna say something really stupid about the London attacks"--Bill O'Reilly, July 7, 2005

"Put his head on a stake"--O'Reilly referring to Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Islamic extremist who, like Osama bin Laden, began his bloody career as a CIA asset fighting the jihad against the Soviet-backed Afghanistan regime in the 1980s. This comment from an individual who minutes earlier had called  Zarqawi a bloodthirsty terrorist who beheads individuals. Zarqawi and bin Laden are both very likely dead.

"Hey Israel, have some fun"--O'Reilly guest Col. David Hunt, on July 7, 2005, adding that Israel had "great intelligence," neglecting to add that Israel was warned about today's terrorist attacks after earlier informing London that an attack was pending. A key part of Israel's "great intelligence" is their propensity for staging terrorist attacks and blaming Arabs for them, as in the 1954 Lavon affair; or establishing a phony Al Qaeda cell in the West Bank; or planting a Trojan Horse electronic device that framed Libya for the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco. Israel's intelligence was so great that the Israeli embassy in London was told of the coming attacks in time for Finance Minister Binyamin Netaynahyu to stay in his hotel instead of traveling to the hotel where the first bomb exploded. As Gore Vidal likes to say, "there's no conspiracies--only coincidences."

"Bin Laden cannot be allowed to live."--Col. Hunt. Hey moron, he's dead several years already.

"I'm talking about Biblical justice"--Col. David Hunt, urging a "Kill 'em all, let God sort it out" response to London's attacks. By "all," Hunt is unambiguous that he means Muslims.

"Any backlash opportunities against Muslims gonna happen in London?"--Bill O'Reilly (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), July 7, 2005

"There's gonna be a big backlash against Muslims in London. Wait and see."--O'Reilly, July 7, 2005

July 7-31, 2005--London's tubes were still soaked with victims' blood and Bill O'Reilly was already blaming Islamic fundamentalists and Al Qaeda without a shred of evidence more substantial than the word of congenital liar Tony Blair and a suspicious claim by a shadowy, previously unknown group called the "Secret Organisation Group of Al Qaeda of Jihad Group in Europe," which, according to a MSNBC TV translator, stated that the groups claim of responsibility contained an error in the Koran verses. Translation: Made in Israel by Mossad, whose motto is "when in war, thou shalt wage deception."

O'Reilly announced he'll  have more this week on why the London attacks should be used to bolster the US war drive in Iraq and elsewhere that he calls the "war on terror," but is really a war of terror by the world's strongest military power.

Helping O'Reilly in his sordid task of demonizing Muslims was the usual cast of supporting actors--so-called terrorism "expert" Steve Emerson and Heritage  Foundation's Nile Gardiner, and Col. David Hunt. The choice of Emerson is a revealing glimpse of O'Reilly's capacity to lack judgment. Emerson is one of the most discredited "experts" to ever disgrace the television screams. He should be ashamed to show his face before a camera with his track record, which includes falsely accusing Islamic militants of responsibility for Oklahoma City immediate after it occurred.

Gardiner is a two-bit pseudo intellectual from the Heritage Foundation, the right wing think tank regularly called upon by O'Reilly when he needs "intellectual" cover for his rightist views.

Col. Hunt is one of O'Reilly's favorite military "experts." In truth, he's nothing but a military hack, enthusiastically willing to parrot any Pentagon lie, no matter how crude the deception. Hunt is the buffoon who defended the Army's fairy tale about Jessica Lynch even after the harsh truth of the Pentagon's sordid manipulation of this soldier was an established fact. He also lied that the "Army brass" didn't know former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman had been killed by US fire for "about a month"when in truth they knew within a week.

O'Reilly wanted to know what possible benefit could Al Qaeda derive from the London attack? None whatsoever. Which leads us to the next question: just who does benefit from the bombings? So far, it's Bush and Blair who've wasted no time in exploiting the attacks to justify and deepen their agenda of wars without end and savage colonial occupations. Ditto Israel.

O'Reilly should have asked his brilliant FOX colleague, Brian Kilmeade, for some clarification on exactly who benefits from these type of terrorist acts. As the story broke Thursday morning, Kilmeade had this to say: "And that was the first time since 9/11 when they [people of London] should know and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened."

At least Kilmeade is closer to reality than in O'Reilly in the fact t hat, while he may be clueless doing it, he's pinpointing who really gains from these kind of terrorist attacks--Washington, London, Tel Aviv. CIA, MI5, Mossad. Now we're getting warmer.

O'Reilly could use another lesson from the comments of another esteemed FOX colleague--Britt Hume--whose immediate response to the news of the attacks was to calculate how he could profit in the futures market:

"I mean, my first thought when I heard--just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, 'Hmmm, time to buy.'" As Bill O'Reilly always says, "Hey, that's capitalism."

You see, FOX employees don't ALWAYS lie. Sometimes they're so brutally honest they reveal the true depths of their depraved character, the byproduct of their complete internalization of bourgeois values.  Speaking of which, let's not forget the contribution of FOX News host John Gibson, who remarked the day before the attacks that that International Olympic Committee had "missed a golden opportunity"when it picked London instead of Paris to host the 2012 Olympics, because if it had been the latter, terrorists would "blow up Paris, and who cares?"

That Gibson's quite the prophet. Been talking to Mossad recently, John?

After the London attacks, Gibson only dug a deeper hole to crawl in, saying the IEC should have chosen Paris so the British could "let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."

Gibson is every bit the vile national chauvinist as is O'Reilly, but he's nowhere near as engaging, and with that shock of aristocratic blonde hair could never pose as a working class spokesman as does the overseer of the No-Spin Zone.

As for Hume's repulsive speculation on how to profit from London's attack, it should be noted that this rightist pundit was merely articulating the cold-blooded calculations of the capitalist class. Listen to what Andrea Williams, the top gun of Royal London Asset Management's European equities division had to say: "Unfortunately, we expected it to come. It came and it doesn't really affect economic growth. This is something you have to price into the markets."

Business as usual.

But let's get back to the blood on O'Reilly's hands. Above all, the London attacks prove that Bush's "war on terror"--enthusiastically endorsed by O'Reilly--is a complete and utter fraudulent failure. The world is NOT better off as a result of the invasion of Iraq. The world is more dangerous. Bush's war on terror is fueling terrorism. His doctrine of fighting the terrorists overseas so they won't have to be fought at home was shattered on London's streets and underground. The exact opposite is true. When US and UK imperialism bomb and slaughter Muslims, they ensure the favor will be returned. Washington and London have turned America and England into death traps for their citizens as a result of the state terrorism they are inflicting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

America's invasion and occupation of Iraq--unflinchingly backed by O'Reilly--has destablized the entire Middle East and turned a relatively secular Iraq into a hotbed of Islamic extremism and recruiting ground for terrorists. O'Reilly's lies in this endeavor played a key role in winning Bush whatever public support he had for the invasion. His public calls for the slaughter of Muslims from Iraq to Afghanistan, his incessant anti-Islamic tirades, and his callous dismissal of the deaths and wounds of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis caused by the illegal US invasion, have all played an instrumental role in forging the prevailing poisonous atmosphere confronting Muslims in the US today.

We are not going to let O'Reilly claim a monopoly on opposition to terrorism and sympathy for the victims of the cowardly, despicable and reactionary terrorist attacks that occurred in London. Marxists have always condemned terrorist methods not only because they slaughter innocent working people but because they strengthen the forces of reaction. Terrorism gives war criminals like Bush and Blair--purveyors of state terrorism that dwarfs whatever IRA or  Al Qaeda cells produce--pretexts to perpetuate their military aggression and further restrict democratic rights with increased repression.

And this is all O'Reilly seemed to care about in the wake of London's bombings. In his first two Talking Points memos, "Failure to Deal With the Enemy" and "Media Coverage of the London Bombings," O'Reilly could not bring himself to utter one word of sympathy for the victims.  Instead, he revealed himself to be a contemptible opportunist bent on spinning the tragedy to silence all opponents of the Iraq war. In fact, O'Reilly made no effort to conceal his satisfaction that the attacks might make it easier for Washington to wage its global war of terror:

"My first thought was al Qaeda was trying to disrupt the G-8 summit in Scotland. My second thought was now maybe Europe will wise up. The terrorists are the evil doers, not the USA."

Now why would "al Qaeda" try to disrupt the Scotland summit, when Britain had just downgraded the terror threat level and sent thousands of London's cops to Gleneagles to help protect eight heads of state from several hundred anarchists? When London was guarded by a relative handful of Keystone Cops left with malfunctioning cameras? (Just as  9/11's airport cameras were inoperable, and US air defenses were out to a lunch after a similar lowering of a threat level.)

Europe has already wised up; that's what's enfuriating O'Reilly. Most of Europe--and the world--knew from the beginning that Bush was lying through his teeth about WMD and Iraq's alleged ties to  9/11. Most of the world grasped that Bush, aided by O'Reilly, capitalized on Americans' fear, shock and disorientation and cynically manipulated these emotions to win public backing for colonial wars of conquest for natural resources that were long planned. Most of the world has an inkling that Bush's wars are acts of state terrorism that only increase terrorism and instability in the world.

Indeed, O'Reilly senses the futility of his hopes. "That is probably wishful thinking. Generally speaking, the European press is viciously anti-American when it comes to the war on terror."

On one level, the European press, reflecting the views of a faction of the capitalist class, is envious that Washington is getting a leg up on its European rivals by using its military supremacy to control the resource-rich Middle East and Central Asia, which is what Bush's war on terror really is. On another level, the Europeans are worried that Bush's reckless, adventurist course will cause long-term damage to the world party of exploitation called capitalism.

O'Reilly: "The garbage these people are throwing out to a largely clueless public is astounding."

What garbage would that be, O'Reilly? The documentation from the P entagon and White House lawyers proving the torture and abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were ordered by Bush and Rumsfeld? The evidence provided by the Downing Street Memo that Bush manipulated the intelligence and lied his way into this war? The fact that bin Laden, Zarqawi, and their cohorts learned to hone their terrorist skills in their services as paid assets of the CIA while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan? The intimate business entanglements between the Bushes and bin Ladens?

O'Reilly's got some pair calling Europe's public clueless, when most Americans thought WMD were found in Iraq and 70% believed Hussein was behind Sept. 11. Polls have confirmed that this cluelessness on the part of the Americans was largely due to the Big Lie techniques practiced daily on FOX News, led by the biggest mouth in cable news, Bill O'Reilly.

Failed leaders like Chirac in France and Schroeder in Germany also pound home the anti-American theme to divert attention away from their own disastrous administrations.

Chirac and Schroeder are failed politicians--as are most capitalist stooges--though it must be noted that when they fail, they are failing the class they are representing--the bourgeoisie. Some politicians recognized by many as failures, like Carter, Reagan, and Bush, actually did a good job for the capitalist exploiters they're in business to represent.

O'Reilly leaves out that Chirac and Schroeder "pound home" the anti US imperialist theme primarily in response to the mass pressure being exerted on them by the French and German workers, although it's certain these leaders have their own views that  Bush's reckless adventurism threatens to end the capitalist party worldwide. But O'Reilly's real problem is not with Chirac and Schroeder, but with the tens of millions of French and German proletarians who hate Bush and his brutal imperialist wars and think Karl Marx was onto something.

"But now the terrorists have struck again. 9/11, Madrid, today London."

Yes, terrorists have struck again in London, and like 9/11 and Madrid, a foul stench permeates the circumstances of all three attacks smacks of an inside job, like the kind the British used to implicate the IRA, or the kind suggested by Operation Northwoods, or the false flag operations like the Lavon Affair that the Zionists frequently employ to frame Arabs. But does O'Reilly ask the hard questions screaming to be asked that a truly independent journalist would? No. As usual, O'Reilly parrots whatever the government feeds him to regurgitate back to the masses. No matter how many governmental lies are exposed, from the Gulf of Tonkin to Grenada to Panama to both Iraq wars and the nonexistent WMD, O'Reilly urges the people to give "their" government the benefit of the doubt and swallow more.

Just as O'Reilly uncritically accepted the absurd official version of 9/11 while branding as psychotic all those who question it, he's now cramming London's suspicious version of 7/7 down his viewers' throats, branding anyone a lunatic who dares connect the bombings to the state-sponsored terrorism being inflicted on innocent civilians in Iraq.

Yes, the London bombings were despicable, and the world wants answers. But don't look to O'Reilly to ask the hard questions staring us in the face. One doesn't have to be a conspiracist to feel that London's version does not ring true. You don't even have to be to detect eery parallels between 9/11 and 7/7 and consider the possibility that both were inside jobs executed by rogue intelligence agencies out to frame Muslims for the terrorist attacks.

Not a hint of skepticism from O'Reilly about the bizarre evolution of London's story that began with a claim of responsibility on an Islamic website (whose host is probably from Texas) from a previously unheard of group, the Secret Organisation Group of Al Qaeda of Hihad Organization in Europe. Then it was supposedly another Al Qaeda group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri brigade. Next all eyes were on a Moroccan national, Mohammaed al-Gerbouzi. 

First we were told the bombings occurred over a period of time. Then they exploded within seconds of each other. First it was highly sophisticated, military-type explosives detonated remotely with sophisticated timing devices. Next it was the work of suicide bombers using much cruder equipment. Then, just as with Sept. 11, voila! From nothing, we have everything: Four perpetrators, all young Muslim men, caught on tape, home grown British citizens, their personal documents found amidst the rubble, just as a 9/11 hijacker's passport was miraculously found intact in the ruins of the World Trade Center.

O'Reilly was untroubled by the initial reports that the Israeli embassy received warnings of the attacks minutes before they occurred, saving the life of Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on his way to a corporate conference at a hotel next to Liverpool's subway station. Not surprisingly, the No-Spin Zone never mentioned that the US intelligence and military think tank known as Stratfor reported on July 7 that Israel had warned London that a terrorist attack was on the way. Just as Israeli intelligence warned Washington before  9/11 that a terrorist skyjacking plot on the horizon.

It's awe-inspiring how prescient Israeli intelligence seems to be.

It gets better. Just as on the morning of Sept. 11 the CIA was conducting a terror drill involving planes crashing into tall buildings, so on the morning of 7/7 a crisis management company led by a former Scotland Yard official (who worked with the Anti-Terrorist Branch) was conducting a terror drill based on bombs going off precisely at the subway stations that were destroyed.

What was that, Gore Vidal, about there being no conspiracies, only coincidences?

But we'll never hear any of this from Bill O'Reilly. Nor the fact that just as Bush opposed any investigation of 9/11, so his poodle Blair is objecting to an independent investigation of 7/7/.

No, all we're hearing from O'Reilly is that 7/7 gives Bush carte blanche to kill and torture even more Muslims in Iraq and anywhere else.

We'll explore how O'Reilly does this by wrapping up our analysis of "Failure to Deal With the Deadly Enemy" and dissecting "Media Coverage of the London Bombings" and "Anti-American Danger."

 "If all of the anti-U.S. bitterness were redirected into anti-terror bitterness, the world  might defeat these savages. We all know which major countries allow terrorists to operate. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent, Pakistan and Indonesia."

O'Reilly's angry that most of the world has figured out that all terrorism flows directly or indirectly from the far more lethal state terrorism emanating from Washington. If the international working class, including our Islamic brother and sisters, were led by the now sleeping giant American proletariat, our bitterness could be redirected into building a  mass socialist movement that might defeat these savages in the White House and Pentagon and Wall Street.

Yes, we all know which countries allow terrorists to operate. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest ally in the Middle East. That fact no doubt helped process the special visas for the hijackers they received in Saudi Arabia.  Two were from United Arab Emirates, another US client regime, one was from Lebanon and one was from Egypt, another close Washington ally always ready to torture Al Qaeda suspects on behalf of Bush.

Most terrorist suspects hail from US-backed governments, like Indonesia and especially Pakistan, where the four alleged London bombers originated. Could be because the level of anger, humiliation and resentment is qualititatively greater in these nations where the leaders are particularly reviled for their craven capitulation to the US imperialists.

"Why isn't the European press condemning those countries? Why doesn't Europe admit Saddam's regime helped terrorists all day long? Why won't the world help the struggling democracy in Iraq?"

Because t hose countries aren't threatening the planet with murderous aggression advancing colonialist designs. Because all the countries O'Reilly mentioned are semi-colonial countries, or nations oppressed politically, economically and militarily by the advanced capitalist countries.

Europe won't admit Hussein helped terrorists all day long because it's not true. Saddam's Iraq was relatively secular. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda loathed Hussein as a secular socialist. Iraq wasn't a breeding ground for terrorism until Bush invaded. Why won't O'Reilly admit that  Bush has helped terrorists multiply all day long from Iraq to Morocco to Indonesia to Britain.

Then O'Reilly got all bent out of shape over NY Times reporter Edward Wong's description of Abu al Zarqawi as a "Jordanian fighter."

"Can you believe an American newspaper would print that? Al Zarqawi is a vicious Al Qaeda killer, a man who beheads civilians and orders the murders of women and children. And the NY Times call this guy a Jordanian fighter. That kind of sanitizing terrorism must stop!  The American people, you, must demand that it stop."

Not much is known about the sh adowy al Zarqawi, but we do know that he was a Jordanian born Palestinian who fought in Afghanistan along with other CIA-backed Islamic fundamentalists against the pro-Soviet regime there. O'Reilly has frequently repreated Colin Powell's story that Zarqawi's wounded leg was operated on in Baghdad, proving Hussein's ties with Al Qaeda (which Zarqawi was not even associated with, at least Bin Laden's branch). Of course, we all know how reliable Powell's word is given that his February 2003 United N ations appearance was proven to be a concoction of lies.

Further doubt was cast on the Zarqawi amputated leg theory when the executioner in one of the beheading videos alleged to be Zarqawi showed no signs of an amputated or severely wounded leg. Even the CIA backed down on that assertion after that evidence. But not O'Reilly. As we've often said, he's not one to let facts get in the way of spin.

One can more accurately say that  Bush is a vicious imperialist killer, a man who orders the targeting of civilian populations and the murders of women and children. And Bill O'Reilly calls this guy a good guy trying to do a good job? That kind of sanitizing terrorism must stop! The American people, we, must demand that it stop.

And slowly, albeit too slowly, we are.

O'Reilly: "The anti-American press both here and in  Europe is actually helping the terrorists by diminishing their threat. 'Talking Points' urges you to begin holding people accountable for their position on the terror war. Walk away from media that excuses or sanitizes these brutal acts."

Fade to Orwell. "The pro-imperialist press both here (FOX) and in Europe (Sky) is actually helping the state terrorists in Washington by diminishing their threat. COSMOS LEFT urges you to begin holding people accountable for their position on Bush's war of terror. Walk away from media that excuses or sanitizes these brutal acts."

But don't just walk away. Join the growing international chorus demanding war crimes indictments for O'Reilly and his ilk for the integral role they've played in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

US imperialism IS the problem in the world. It is the source of most of the terrorism in the world. It is humanity's greatest enemy, as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas  used to say when they were revolutionaries. And if you don't agree with that, if you're still giving political cover to Bush after all the evidence that  he's a lying weasel and war criminal, then you are helping killers like Bush. Enough's enough. Pull your head that's now up your ass or in the ground, admit you were wrong, and join the side of the people.

O'Reilly began his July 8 Talking Points memo, "Media Coverage of the London Bombings," by ridiculing The New York Times for referring to the executioners of an Egyptian diplomat in Iraq as the "insurgent group Al Qaeda."

O'Reilly: "So I guess The New York Times is now a terrorist-free zone....The Washington Post also playing this game, today described Al Qaeda in Iraq as an 'insurgent group' as well."

Once again, facts are subordinated to spin on The O'Reilly Factor. "Al Qaeda  in Iraq" is the name of a shadowy Islamic insurgent group fighting the US occupation that has claimed responsibility for several kidnappings, assassinations and bombings. If it indeed exists, it is part of the Islamic fundamentalist component of the Iraqi Resistance, which is an umbrella group of all those taking up arms to defend Iraq from the invaders. This includes Baathists, Hussein loyalists, Iraqi nationalists young and old, Sunni militants, a small minority of Islamic jihadists from other countries, and lest we forget the Shiite fighters in Sadr's Mehdi Army, which bravely fought pitched battles against US forces in Najaf and elsewhere last year. They may not be fighting now, but they did not obey Bush's orders to disarm, and they will be heard from again.

Groups like "Al Qaeda in Iraq" do not appear to have as much support in Iraq as the other components of the Resistance that are more nationalist oriented enjoy. Among unemployed Islamic youth from Indonesia to Pakistan to Morocco to Leeds, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been popular because of the perception that they are at least fighting back, exacting revenge from the infidels for slaughtering Muslim men, women and children by making their citizens feel the pain of losing loved ones too.

But in Iraq, there's not much empathy for those blowing up Iraq civilians and children, which explains why "Al Qaeda in Iraq" remains a shadowy, mysterious outfit lacking public support.

Which is why some believe "Al Qaeda in Iraq" may not be a bona fide element of the Iraqi Resistance, or an "insurgent group." It may instead be one of the US and Israeli psy-ops death squads roaming Iraq. In which case, O'Reilly may be right in disparaging Al Qaeda in Iraq as an insurgent group, though not for the reason  he thinks he is. Al Qaeda in Iraq may in fact be a terrorist group that was hatched by US or Israeli intelligence.

By the way, O'Reilly has a few more left-wing loonies to attack for their characterization of Al Qaeda in Iraq as an insurgent group. A July 14 article in the India Daily began this way: "U.S.-led coalition forces have captured two alleged leaders of the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq, including a man suspected in the death of an Egyptian envoy, an American military spokesman said Thursday." [emphasis added]

O'Reilly: "But the absolute worst appeared in  The Boston Globe. An op-ed written by Derrick Jackson compared the dead in London to those killed in Iraq by coalition forces.

"Jackson writes, 'Yet ever invoking of the innocents (in London) also reminds us of our despicable, cowardly killing of innocent Iraqi civilians.'"

O'Reilly continued, "The Boston Globe must be very proud. Even in a liberal state like Massachusetts, that kind of moral equivalency is simply unacceptable to decent people."

Translation: US forces killing hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians is moral, while the deaths of dozens of Western civilians killed in a terrorist attack is immoral. O'Reilly's can't hide his national chauvinism, arrogance and racism. American and Western lives mean more than Islamic lives. He doesn't report about IRaqi civilians killed by US forces because he doesn't care about Iraqis as human beings.

Yes, the London attacks were cowardly acts of terrorism. But we don't see O'Reilly shedding tears over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians slaughtered in Iraq on orders from George Bush. That is also terrorism--state terrorism--which is on a scale so vast and barbaric it dwarfs the London bombings. Bill O'Reilly's the last person in the world to condemn terrorist violence when he has urged its indiscriminate use against civilians from Afghanistan to Iraq.

One of O'Reilly's themes over the past weeks is his refusal to recognize that London's bombings are in any way related to the bloody, savage, murderous invasion and occupation of Iraq. For O'Reilly to do so, of course, would concede the veracity of this essay's title and his own responsibility for the massive death toll in Iraq. Thus O'Reilly attempts to glibly dismiss this causality and ridicule those like London mayor Ken Livingston who dare to affirm it. He does this by inaccurately stating that the only people saying 7/7 is a response to the horrific violence inflicted on Iraqis by imperialist soldiers are loony leftists like Livingston,George Galloway, the BBC and their co-thinkers in the US.

It's true there's no shortage of leftists and Marxists who accurately predicted that a US invasion of Iraq would transform that nation into a hotbed of Islamic radicalism that would fuel the worldwide recruitment of young men and women seeking revenge against those who slaughter their people. Mike Whitney wrote an excellent piece in  Counterpunch.org called, "The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station: Bush and Blair's Orgy of Carnage."

Whitney also makes an equally chilling prediction: just as the straight line exists between Falluja and King's Cross Station, so it will between  Abu Ghraib and the terror attacks in  America's future. We discuss O'Reilly's key role in erecting that line in the essay below, "O'Reilly: If Carter were president today, we'd all be speaking Arabic."

But you don't have to be a Marxist or leftist like Mike Whitney to grasp the causality, directly or in directly, between the state terrorism inflicted on Iraq by the occupying forces and the terrorism manifested in London on 7/7.

The Economist, a respected, authoritative mouthpiece of capitalism, gave this take on why London was hit in July:

"As soon as the atrocities of New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania took place on September 11, 2001, London was assumed to be at risk of attack. That was so both because of its status as an international financial centre, an epitome of the West and its capitalist ways, and because Britain has long been a close ally of the  United States, enemy number one for al-Qaeda and its terrorist associates. That likelihood only grew following Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and then the terrible bombing in Madrid 11th, 2004. In recent years every senior British policeman, intelligence chief or h ome secretary you cared to ask about the probability of a terrorist attack gave a similar answer: 100 percent."

You see, one d oesn't have to be a Marxist to understand what is obvious here. You just need clear-thinking individuals possessing a trace of honesty and integrity, which excludes O'Reilly and many of his Kool Aid fanatics.

But let's not stop with the loony left Economist. Next we'll examine what the loony leftists over at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as the Chatham House, concluded in a report written one month before the 7/7 bombings that Britain's support of America's invasion of Iraq and the resulting perception that London  was "a pillion [second seat on a bicycle] passenger" of US foreign policy had made Britain vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The Chatham report added that this policy "has proved costly in terms of British and  U.S. military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign."

Days after the release of the Chatham analysis, we learned of a June terror threat assessment by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center, a collection of Britain's leading law enforcement and intelligence officials, which stated the violence and state terrorism in Iraq was directly responsible for terrorist attacks in Britain:

"Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.," the report bluntly stated in terms so simple even the admittedly simple O'Reilly should grasp them. Ironically, this same report also recommended that the terror threat level be lowered because  "at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the U.K."

Similiar opinions have emerged from military and in elligence circles on this side of the Atlantic as well. The Washington Post reported in January 2005 that "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank....According to the NIC report, Iraq has joined the list of conflict--including the Israeli-Palestinian stalement, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand--that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology."

On the other side of the spectrum, Mike Whitney's Counterpunch article, "The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station: Bush and Blair's Orgy of Carnage" came to the same conclusion reached by US and British military and intelligence:

"Baghdad has morphed into an assembly-line for extremists, churning out enough fanatics to produce 1,000 London-type bombings. This is the real effect of Bush's war. The people who were killed in the London subway died for the crimes of their government, not because some young Muslim studied under a fiery cleric in South Leeds. The bloodshed is as much Bush and Blair's responsibility as if they had detonated the bombs themselves."

Whitney may be ceding too much when he so uncritically accepts the official line that young Muslim fanatics perpetrated these crimes. We don't know for sure who carried out the recent terrorist attacks, but the stench surrounding them strongly suggests 9/11's method of operation--an inside job by US/UK intelligence agencies designed to frame Muslims, build a climate of hatred and fear, and whip up jingoistic support for imperialist wars.

But even if you assume that responsibility for the London attacks lies beyond the pale of imperialist intelligence agencies, that they were executed by terrorist cells composed of fanatical Muslim men seeking revenge for the carnage and suffering inflicted on their people by America, London, and Israel, the same conclusion stares us in the face: the blood spilled in London runs parallel with that flooding Iraq.

The only people denying this fact are imperialist mouthpieces like O'Reilly who still defend this brutal war, because to admit it would be like holding up their blood-drenched hands for all the world to see--and judge.