Posted on 09/09/2002 12:47:51 AM PDT by Bella_Bru
In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of “word for the day”. Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the “word of the day”; in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-) Practice makes perfect.....post on....
interlocutor\in-t&r-'lä-ky&-t&r \, n:
1 : one who takes part in dialogue or conversation
2 : a man in the middle of the line in a minstrel show who questions the end men and acts as leader
Etymology: Latin interloqui to speak between, issue an interlocutory decree, from inter- + loqui to speak Date: 1514
Good Morning and welcome!
This environmental wacko's interlocution makes me want to hurl.
How's that? lol !
You and Bella are hurling for different reasons . . .
You have FReepmail, Missy!
It's going to be a Long Hard day....
Poor baby!
That's the worm that is trying to avoid us early birds !
EGO FACTOR
The Blowhard Zone
Did Bill O'Reilly collude with the Saudis? We report, you decide.
BY WILLIAM MCGURN
Monday, September 9, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
It's not every day that one finds oneself on a nationally televised talk show, two feet from a host who is completely unhinged and shrieking, "I want to tell the audience, this man is telling you a lie, a bold face lie." Then again, it's not every day one is on "The O'Reilly Factor."
I didn't ask to be on the "Factor." The show called me last Wednesday, to ask what I had thought of the previous night's coverage. That one centered on a controversial interview in London, which Mr. O'Reilly had arranged with the Saudi embassy, featuring two American women who had been kidnapped to Saudi Arabia at ages seven and four; predictably the women denounced their mother. Thereupon Mr. O'Reilly declared these women "brainwashed," and told their mother, Pat Roush--whose microphone he cut off, saying she was "too emotional"--that her daughters had their chance to "make a run for freedom" and didn't.
When asked, I told Mr. O'Reilly's producer that I thought he had stabbed this mother in the back; that he'd cut off another guest, Dria Davis, who could speak more credibly on this than any of us; and, worst of all, that in arranging this interview he had colluded with a foreign government to sabotage the efforts of a group of congressmen then inside Saudi Arabia trying to negotiate the Roush case. Mr. O'Reilly's producer told me she hoped I would say that on the air. And I did. Since Mr. O'Reilly has made it an issue, let me go through the charges one by one.
• Stabbing an American mother in the back. Mr. O'Reilly admits he did not tell Pat Roush that her daughters--and her granddaughter--were in London. He arranged that secretly with Saudis. He further admits that he did this because he knew the Saudis would not go for a deal that included the mother.
• Dria Davis. All Mr. O'Reilly seemed to know about her was that she was an American girl who escaped from Saudi Arabia. More pertinent, though, was that she too had been interviewed by a State Department representative who concluded that her father "is clearly fond of his daughter"; this at a time, as we know now, when her father was threatening to kill her. "If he [O'Reilly] had just shut up for a moment and listened," Miss Davis told me, "he would have known why Pat's daughters could not be speaking freely."
• Colluded with the Saudis. Mr. O'Reilly originally proposed to Rep. Dan Burton (R., Ind.) that the delegation meet the Roush sisters inside Saudi Arabia before a Fox camera; the Burton people responded that such a meeting was unwise. Burton staffers say they were stunned to learn, upon their arrival in Riyadh, that the Saudis had spirited Ms. Roush's daughters out of the country on the precise day the delegation was there to press demands the women be brought to America.
Mr. O'Reilly admits that he set the whole thing up with Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudis' point man. As he said, "We convinced the Saudis to fly the women, now ages 19 and 24, to London, where our producer interviewed them." In other words, the deal was: The Saudis supplied the women, he supplied the interview.
In a statement issued on his return, Rep. Burton scored the Saudis for their "bad faith" in removing the Roush sisters out of the country, saying, "It is clear that they [the Saudis] purposefully were involved in an effort to undermine" his visit. If we are to believe Mr. O'Reilly's own words, it all happened at his instigation. My contention is not that Mr. O'Reilly deliberately set out to do Mr. al-Jubeir's dirty work. The point--as I stated on the show--is that Mr. al-Jubeir and Co. were looking for a sucker and they found him.
I did not come at this as an O'Reilly hater. I regard Fox News as a national treasure, and even wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal a few years back about Mr. O'Reilly's rise at a time when he was whining that the New York Times would not even mention his name. But the freedom of American women and children in Saudi Arabia is an extremely sensitive issue, not to be entrusted to a man whose ego and naiveté lead him to believe that in one TV show he can settle what other people have been working years to do. That same ego still leads Mr. O'Reilly to claim that simply getting the women to London is a victory, when all he did was bring them out of one controlled environment into another.
We know from history not to trust these kinds of arrangements. In 1985, a Soviet sailor jumped ship in the Mississippi River, and was sent back after a U.S. government interview determined he wanted to go home. Last year this sailor turned up in the office of Sen. Jesse Helms--one of the few to make a stink at the time--as an ordained Catholic priest. He recounted that his earlier statement, about wanting to return to the USSR, was made because of KGB intimidation.
More recently, the Dominican nun and friend of Janet Reno's who originally supported sending Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba courageously changed her mind when she met with Elian's grandmothers in America and reported seeing fear and manipulation. And then there's Miss Davis, who State concluded was happy in Saudi Arabia while she was screaming on the phone to her mom that she feared for her life. Mr. O'Reilly admitted on air too that he let a minder hired by the Saudis sit in on the interview, taking notes and making head signals to the Roush daughters.
Mr. O'Reilly, it seems, cannot understand that this is not about him or even his intentions but the consequences of his actions. When I tried to raise those consequences, he became unglued and screeched "liar!" Now he's shifted the issue again, asking what we owe Americans who are "brainwashed."
The short answer is that we surely do not want to send the perverse message that if you victimize Americans enough, you're home free. More than that, the question misses the gut of the issue. This is not solely about helping Pat Roush or any of the other families. It's about ensuring respect for U.S. citizenship and U.S. law. In a dangerous world, nations need to know that there will always be consequences for messing with Americans.
Notwithstanding Mr. O'Reilly's London debacle, and his claims that no one could do any better than he did, Rep. Burton has made some progress. Prince Saud went on record promising that American women who want to leave will be allowed to. Amjad Radwan, the 19-year-old American we wrote about, got a passport with a visa that, in theory, allows her to leave the kingdom. And we now have the promise of the U.S. ambassador that no American who seeks refuge will be turned away from the embassy--a promise that Congress, State and the administration need to see enforced.
The Saudis should not get the final word on writing off kidnapped and victimized Americans. And neither should Bill O'Reilly.
Mr. McGurn is The Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer. A transcript of his appearance on Mr. O'Reilly's show appears here.
Canada is no instigator
Manly plays the interlocutor
We want more proof
Before he goes poof
Bring in the UN's Weapons Inspector!
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