O’Reilly: ‘We Didn’t Invade Iraq’
Yesterday, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly made the incredible claim that the United States never invaded Iraq: “We didn’t invade Iraq.” He added, “It was a declaration of war, it was a declaration to enforce the first Gulf War Treaty.” Watch it:
Despite O’Reilly’s revisionist history, the United States did invade Iraq. The U.S. military forcefully entered the country in order to overthrow that nation’s leader. That’s an invasion. During a 2006 speech, President Bush discussed his administration’s “two major invasions as a part of the war on terror.”
Even O’Reilly himself has, in the past, admitted that the United States invaded Iraq:
– “I’ll submit that most folks still have no idea why the Bush administration invaded Iraq.” [1/28/08]
– “Iraq was invaded to create a friendly country between Iran and Syria, thereby pressuring those nations into a more sensible foreign policy.” [3/6/06]
O’Reilly’s “first Gulf War Treaty” claim is also questionable. During a March 15, 2004 interview, former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix challenged O’Reilly on this exact point:
O’REILLY: [W]e liberate Iraq — liberate Kuwait, all right, and then we have a treaty, and the treaty says U.N. weapons inspectors are allowed to do X, Y, and Z, and 17 times Saddam says — violates those. Now you can understand why the United States government might be a little teed off about that. […]
O’REILLY: But do you understand that when you have 17 violations of a treaty, a war treaty, that you basically have to take action?
BLIX: Well, you’re talking about a war treaty. It was a cease-fire. It was not a war treaty.
O’REILLY: Oh, come on. Now don’t play semantics here, sir.
BLIX: Second — all right. I’m trying to be precise. You are imprecise.
O’Reilly’s claim is almost as unbelievable as Wolfowitz’s statement earlier this week that the U.S. “occupation [of Iraq] ended in June of 2004.”
Transcript:
BALLENTINE: We are invading Iraq.
O’REILLY: No, we’re not. We didn’t invade Iraq.
BALLENTINE: Did we go through Congress to invade, to go to war?
O’REILLY: Yes, there was a vote in Congress.
BALLENTINE: It was a declaration of war.
O’REILLY: It was a declaration of war, it was a declaration to enforce the first Gulf War Treaty, which you don’t know anything about, Mr. Ballentine.
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O’Reilly: ‘We Didn’t Invade Iraq………….But a loofah did invade my bunghole”
April 30th, 2008 at 2:44 pmWTF???
And over 4,000 soldiers are just napping?
FU(K YOU O’BILEY!
April 30th, 2008 at 2:45 pmWhat? You mean it was all a dream?
Oh, thank friggin goodness.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:46 pm“Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”
The sad part is… there are those who are going to swallow this with the rest of the kool-aid.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:46 pmThis is the type of misinformation that should get people thrown in jail.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pmWhen they see that the ‘cookie is crumbling’ desperation stets in… D. Feith blaming everybody else, Wolfowitz denial, more LIES from Chenney and Bush, and this idiotic TV presenetr believing in his own reality.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pmTechnically speaking, he’s correct.
He and his chickenhawk buddies didn’t “invade Iraq”. They just pushed for some other unlucky schmoes to do so, and then cheered the carnage and devastation from the sidelines like drunken frat boys at a college football game.
Cheers,
April 30th, 2008 at 2:50 pmO’Rielly is technically correct - we did NOT invade Iraq.
We’ve been there since the Garden of Eden was tilled.
We invaded ourselves and are killing our relatives and ancestors.
Just ask Jeebus.
And BTW, how come the religious wingnuts aren’t up in arms about the depleted uranium we’re leaving in that Garden?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
April 30th, 2008 at 2:52 pmO’Reilly: ‘We Didn’t Invade Iraq’
Yeah
We just went in without being asked and destroyed the whole damn place ; that isn’t the same thing , is it ?
April 30th, 2008 at 2:52 pmNever knew Hans Blix was interviewed by O’Lielly. Cant think of a stronger contrast in integrity and intellectual honesty than that match-up
April 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pmSee? Zuch agrees!
Sorry about the bold insanity in #8. Rough day.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:54 pmUm, there wasn’t a declaration of war but there was an invasion. Maybe he had it backwards
April 30th, 2008 at 2:55 pmBill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, Fox News and their listener’s prove the adage. Never under estimate the power of stupid people, especially when in large groups.
They were successful in bringing you George W. Bush for two terms.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pmThe intersection of O’Reilly’s World and Reality is the Null Set.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pmCan you think what Faux News would do if Obama or Hillary said “We didn’t invade Iraq”. They’d for 7×24 on it.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:58 pmAllI can say is O’Liely must have gotten some stronger drugs from his dealer this time around.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pmThis will be the latest talking point from reich-wingers. Wanna bet?
April 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pmBillo always comments that the other person “doesn’t know what he is talking about.” Fox must be hard up to allow Billo to continue to embarrass them. Such a blowhard idiot !
April 30th, 2008 at 3:02 pmAt least limbaugh admits he talks for money and says whatever to get ratings while billo actually thinks he is newsworthy.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pmLet’s give the reich-wingers some assistance:
in·va·sion
- noun
1. an act or instance of invading or entering as an enemy, esp. by an army.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm2. the entrance or advent of anything troublesome or harmful, as disease.
3. entrance as if to take possession or overrun: the annual invasion of the resort by tourists.
4. infringement by intrusion.
One more creepy fact about the Reich wing… when they fail miserably, they just re-write history.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:04 pm“We didn’t invade Iraq”
yeah, right. and the Japanese did not attack Pearl Harbor either.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:04 pmThis is what “life” is like as a reich-winger:
*We didn’t invade Iraq
April 30th, 2008 at 3:07 pm*There are WMD in Iraq
*Saddam attacked us on 9/11
*The economy is great
*herr dubyah = Lincoln
*Faux is credible
He’s trying for one of those “America is not a democracy–it’s a republic” type of stupid sixth-grader distinctions. In this case, however, there’s not even that justification. If you send troops into a country, you invade it. There may e justification or there may not: We invaded Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:07 pm(And America is a democracy AND a republic. There’s no rule that a democracy has to be a state which decides issues by direct vote–only where the people rule. I’ve heard tthis one since the sixth grade and I’m sick of it, especially since it’s always delivered with smugness.)
What I would like Think Progress to check on is to see if BO has ever referred to Mexican immigrants as an ‘invasion.’ That would be good to see if he did.
.
The Authorization to Use Military Force Against Iraq
Some of it had roots to the first Gulf War, the rest had it’s roots firmly planted in a steaming bed of lies.
WHAT WMD’S?
WHAT TIES TO AL-CIA-DUH?
WHAT YELLOW CAKE URANIUM FROM NIGER?
WHAT ALUMINUM TUBES?
WHAT SUITCASE NUKES?
WHAT IMMINENT THREAT?
WHAT MUSHROOM CLOUDS?
.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:08 pmWAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Any questions?
April 30th, 2008 at 3:08 pmO’Reilly’s comments fits perfectly well with this criminal administration’s mind set, or set of lies… Invading and occupying a country means ’spreading democracy’, imprisioning inocents and torturing them means ‘they are enjoying our Freedom’, invading and occupying and stealing Iraq’s resources means ‘war on terror’, spying and using military propaganda on its own people means ‘we are secure’, recession because the absurd amount of money spent on this war means ‘we are not in recession’, waterboarding (drowning torture, its former name) ‘is interrogation’, secret meetings of top US official discussing torture means ‘the US does not torture’, and 9/11 means ‘ terrorists with box cutters managed to overpass a 14 billion defense system’ , freedom fighters fighting the occupiers means ‘insurgency’, over 4000 dead amarican servicemen for a lie, means ‘the insurgency is on its last throes’, 70% of American people against this criminal foringner policies, means “SO?”…
April 30th, 2008 at 3:09 pmMy first thought on reading this was; I GIVE UP!
And my second ( and MUCH BETTER thought) IS;
I WILL NOT GIVE UP!!!
April 30th, 2008 at 3:13 pmThey do such interesting work with robots now. They are programmable, they sit on chairs in studios, they have big heads and they are not really there at all.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:13 pmI think it is cool how they can change the programming almost daily and not cause their audience to notice it. Can anyone tell us what is in the water these days?
I’m thinkin’ that that hellacious whopper’ll earn him Keith’s Worst Person award tonight fer shure.
Jebus. That’s just flarking NUTS - even for that lying sack of krep Billo.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:14 pmHmmmmmm, let us look at one definition of “invasion”, shall we?
an attack that penetrates into enemy territory
So, technically, since we found no WMD that Bush and Co. repeatedly tried to sell, and since there was no connection to 9/11, it is plausible that Iraq was not the “enemy”, therefore O’Reilly may be on to something.
(i.e. Iraq: an attack by the United States that penetrated into “friendly” territory)
Stay tuned next week when I dissect the definition of “Occupation”, and conclude how it doesn’t apply to the United States!
April 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pmHey it worked for bush, getting him elected once, just tell the same lie over and over and those whith Stepford eyes will follow.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:17 pmCongress never declared war, alright, so there was no declaration of war. Now, we sent our military into Iraq and conquered territory and sent their leader and military on the run, OK, so that’s a invasion, alright. No semantic games here in the “No Spin Zone”, sir. The U.S. invaded Iraq, alright. If you don’t get that, alright, then you’re not going to get anything else. The folks know it, alright, and you would know it too, OK, if you were not deluded by your right wing, warmongering ideology.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pmwell, lest we let everyone in Congress that allowed this travesty to occur, the authorization to use force was a substitute for a declaration of war and has, essentially, been treated as such by Congress — why else would it consistently cave to every insane whim of the current administration in all things Iraq.
We must give Bush et al their due . . . they have been damn good at blurring traditional definitions of how government in the USofA works. And that, my friends, is not to be taken as a good thing.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pmMy guess is that O’Lielly’s just laying the groudnwork for his “October surprise” announcement that we don’t even have troops in Iraq.
I guess he decided that blaming the Democrats for the invasion wasn’t going to work, so the only alternative was to deny that Bush had invaded at all.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:27 pmDoes billo still pull in ratings ? I thought I heard Keith O was beating him out. But as long as there are Jerry Springer watchers there will be Billo watchers.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:33 pmNope, Billdo, and you didn’t sexually harass Andrea Mackris, either.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:34 pmBS with 4,058 DEAD American soldiers, thousands and thousands maimed for life with horrible wounds, and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. We are now an Army Of Occupation and that 104 acre American Embassy built by us under the guidance of President Bush serves as a daily reminder to the Iraqi population that our country intends to control them indefinitely. Reality is FACT…which some do not understand and our President is one…………
April 30th, 2008 at 3:36 pmBe interesting to hear billo’s explanation of the loss of life for our troops since we didn’t invade and occupy a foreign country. Of course Repubs equate troops with policemen who know they can be killed if the enlist. Yes, I actually got this comment from a diehard Repub. Of course he had never put on a uniform per norm for a Repub.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:38 pmTo carry on the Pearl Harbor meme, the Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor, they were trying to insure the flow of oil and scrap metal from the United States.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:41 pmAll the world is just a game of semantics for the RW. Words are just tools, the past is whatever you need it to be today.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:48 pmThis means that we have to rewrite American History textbooks, to remove mention of D-Day’s Normandy Invasion.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:59 pmWow, Bill O’Reilly is providing a stupid distraction so people don’t talk about real issues? That NEVER happens!
April 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pmSometimes Slappy a diversion is needed to rest our minds from real issues that are beyond control.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:06 pmI believe it.
I believe everything BillOrielly says.
I believe in GWB.
signed,
April 30th, 2008 at 4:08 pmThe 21% Club.
formerly known as Nixon’s “silent majority”
Words have no meaning with moral relativists like Bill O’Reilly. Didn’t he also say that he’d admit the war was a fraud if we didn’t find WMD? Obviously, Bill has no integrity. This guy is simply a mouthpiece for Republican administrations. Whatever principles he may have once had are long since buried with the apologist rhetoric required to support this criminal administration.
This is just too easy for KO.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:09 pmI hear O’Loofah Lie-ly is in contention for the Grand Poobah Spinmeister award this year. He’s got tough competititon though although I think in terms of faux-news, he definitely gets the nod.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pmWould the body snatchers please invade Bill O’Biley??? Please!
April 30th, 2008 at 4:14 pmJust like his revisionist cadre of criminals he supports, they’re trying to change the meaning of language. Fortunately for the people, they’re not having any of it.
Liars & Frauds, Smoke, Mirrors and Total Disinformation Spinmeisters - every last one of them.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:14 pmAnd this profound newscaster’s previous experience was…
A CURRENT AFFAIR
Wow! That ’splains it…how could anyone not believe a guy who hosted a…
GOSSIP SHOW!
You ‘da Man, Billdo
April 30th, 2008 at 4:30 pmAs I was going up the stair,
April 30th, 2008 at 4:31 pmI met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish to God he’d go away
I wonder if Hillary will agree with him on this tonight?
April 30th, 2008 at 4:36 pmPoor Bill O. He just can’t handle the truth can he? Bless his little heart.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:49 pmIt’s always funny and sad when someone loses their grasp on their sanity, but no one will sign the commitment papers to put the guy in the padded cell with their invisible roommates. Billo needs some gardening therapy, the sleepy pills at 8 p.m. and no access to a computer or Blackberry so he can see his “peek ‘a boo” pictures of 15 year old teenage girls so he can “confer” with himself and Rosie Palm and her sisters. The man clearly has anger and some chemical dependency issues that are now getting on-air and making him nuttier than usual. What’s next…that the real “terrorists” are all in the Bay Area and that we should “Shock & Awe” downtown SF until they surrender the granola, then march on Berkley just to add the “Battle of Strawberry Hill” to the military verbiage?
April 30th, 2008 at 6:07 pmThese remarks show that O’Reilly is either demented, or he is a despicable liar. If he really believes his own words, he needs help, quickly. Even his own listeners must wonder about this one– not only did the U.S. invade Iraq, they bombed it (shock & awe) occupied it, and killed many of Iraq’s innocent citizens, while the rest of the world demanded that they hold off. And as has been proven, there was absolutely no reason for that callous, pre-emptive strike. O’Reilly is really deluded/mentally ill, or he just plain lies. Neither is befitting of someone on the air, not even a buffoon like he is.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:24 pm“O’Reilly: ‘We Didn’t Invade Iraq’”
Captain Blowhard Falafel King is full of it. Always polluting the airwaves and the truth.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:27 pmIt seems that, somehow, O’Reilly thinks ‘invasion’ is a bad word, so he is trying to avoid using it.
Too bad for O’Reilly an invasion is an invasion, regardless of the legal niceties exchanged before opening fire (such as a declaration of war).
April 30th, 2008 at 7:35 pmThis was totally predictable. Expect O’Reilly to delve deep into revisionist history as we near the election.
-AF
April 30th, 2008 at 7:55 pmAndrew Sullivan Is A Fraud
Some Neocon on the web - ” we create our own reality”
April 30th, 2008 at 10:47 pmtexaslady Says:
Sometimes Slappy a diversion is needed to rest our minds from real issues that are beyond control.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
__________
Except these things aren’t necessarily beyond our control. We’ve been taught to be complacent, content in the belief that if we’re unhappy with our leadership, well then, if something could be done, it would be done, and since it’s not been done, there’s nothing to do. And it’s bull. Sometimes the wheel of justice turns slowly but it should never stop turning. When O’Reilly says stupid horseshittery like this, yeah, we should collectively roll our eyes, spin a finger around one of our ears and whisper “CUH-COO!” And that’s about all the time we should spend on it. To waste more time than we have is to give his words more credence than they deserve. I’m not saying ignore the bastard - that’s also a form of complacency that’s allowed him to become far more popular than he should be. I’m saying call him a clown, point and giggle at him in public…and move on to the bigger fish we’ve yet to fry.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:31 pmBlatant lies and deception…What are we going to do about this? Is there a law about spreading misinformation?
May 1st, 2008 at 3:49 pmAlright, I understand now why Keith Olbermann keeps calling Bill O … Bill Orally … at this point, I think Bill O’Reilly has lost his grip on reality … only a propaganda network like Fox News would keep a shock jockey like him on the air after his credibility was long since blown … makes me wish that Congress would pass a Federal Felony Law stating that anyone who repeatedly uses the press to blatantly and remorselessly lie to the people would be jailed for 1 year per caught offense, sentence negated if speaking the truth before a criminal trial begins, with a statute of limitations of 12 years … if the corporate news media won’t self-regulate and take blatant liars off the air after they’ve lost all sense of credibility, it may be up to the Federal Government to restore the dignity of our free press …
May 1st, 2008 at 3:51 pmO’Reilly gives media hacks a bad name.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:24 pmI once saw the bush on the telly, my goodness, me o my, he sure did sound silly! He opened his arms wide and said with his weird smile: “Americans have jobs!, Americans are working!”
May 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pmIt gave me great joy at the time, working seventy hours a week graveyard, just enough to keep a roof over my head, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pay my child support, buy cigarettes and beer. The joy he communicated made me want to pee my pants the excitement was just unbearable, tee hee, tee hee.
Glad I had a union job and made seven dollars more than I made in 1970.
http://www.youtube.com/user/badattitude77769