O'Reilly The Historian??

Vanity | 5/30/06 | Blau993

[blau993]

Sorry about the vanity. It is my first and hopefully my last, but this has me pretty well boiling.

I did a real double take this evening during Bill O'Reilly's conversation with General Wesley Clark. Talking about past incidents of wartime atrocities, O'Reilly twice mentioned Malmedy. The first time I merely thought it was out of place in what otherwise seemed to be a listing of atrocities committed against American troops. However, when Clark pushed him a little, O'Reilly spouted on about Malmedy being a massacre of SS Troops by Americans. It was, of course, precisely the opposite, but the learned Mr. O'Reilly seemed not to know that, nor did General Clark correct him. How dumb are we getting? Doesn't O'Reilly claim to have once taught history?

[RDTF]

sounds like dumb and dumber (Clark being the latter)

[dfwgator]

Did he also mention that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

[LukeL]

[Donald Meaker]

Now you know how he got his job as a pundit: Too dumb to be a publik skool teesher.

[SunkenCiv]

No surprise there. O'Reilly is a great big sloppy mess.

Malmedy's surviving culprits were prosecuted and punished, and were SS or Waffen SS (I forget). The quintessential fanatical Nazi (his purported last words, when he didn't in Franco's Spain, were "long live Adolf Hitler!") Otto Skorzeny predictably enough defended the officer who had the massacre carried out.

[SunkenCiv]

"when he didn't"

s/b

"when he died"

[PzLdr]

Tell Bill that the Malmedy massacre was carried out by the 9th SS Pioneers [Engineers] of Kampfgruppe Peiper [SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Jochen Peiper], of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler". Somewhere between 130 and 170 American artillerymen who had been taken prisoner near the Malmedy crossroads were murdered. The man who fired the first shot was an SS Sturmmann named Georg Phleps. Convicted along with Peiper at Nuremberg were SS Oberstgruppenfuhrer Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, CG, 6th SS Panzer Army, Hermann Priess, SS Brigadefuhrer and 6th SS pz. Army C/S, and the divisional commander. If Bill has questions, have him call me. I'll invite him into my "No BS/Bloviation Zone"

[CentralMass]

I don't know about Bill O'Reilly's background but Clark (4-Star General retired) graduated at the top of his class at West Point and was a Rhodes Scholar. He also had an impressive military career that spanned 40 years and is one of the most highly decorated miltary men in the country. He has been awarded the Silver Star, five Defense Distinguished Service Medals, four Legion of Merit Awards, two Army Distinguished Service Medals, two Bronze Star Medals and the Purple Heart.

[blau993]

All of which made it even more astonishing that he let the Malmedy remarks pass by without a correction.

[ishabibble]

His once and future boss, Hillary Clinton, does not allow her minions to tell the truth if it might portray the U.S. in a favourable light. Wes is nothing more than a bookmark these days, waiting for his appointment to Secretary of Neutering for the American military. By POTUS Geena Davis...

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

Glad someone else saw this too. He not only seemed very unprofessional but seemed overly eager to convict the military, while simultaneously trying to hide his intentions. He almost sounded like he was trying to promote truth and honesty of the MSM, which of course, there is none...

[CentralMass]

Clark did correct O'Reilly. Althogh Bill did his best to talk over him.

excerpt from the transcript:

Bill O'Reilly: But I, in, in Mal-, in, in Malmedy, as you know, US forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down. You know that. That's on the record, been documented. In Iwo Jima, the same thing occurred. Japanese attempted to surrender, and they were burned in their caves.

General Wesley Clark: Bill, that's a lot different than this.

Bill O'Reilly: Okay. Listen-

General Wesley Clark: These are no forces.

Bill O'Reilly: What I'm trying to say to you is neither of those things, in the Battle of the Bulge or on Iwo Jima, reflected negatively on our military as far as its total performance was concerned. It was men under stress snapping. That's what this is. This isn't Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was cowardice, in my opinion, off the chart, irresponsible cowardice to do that. Here, I think we have to-

General Wesley Clark: I think we have, we have to see this investigations unfold, Bill, really, because-

Bill O'Reilly: Right, and but Murtha isn't doing that, General.

General Wesley Clark: There's a big difference between-

Bill O'Reilly: But Murtha isn't doing that.

General Wesley Clark: -being in a fire fight and some guy who suddenly, after he's been shooting at you, throws up his hand and says, 'Woop! Now you can't shoot me, because I've put down my weapon.' That's one thing. It's another thing, if it's true as reported, that they broke into homes and shot-

Bill O'Reilly: Okay, but whoa, whoa.

General Wesley Clark: -men, women and children

Bill O'Reilly: I don't wanna, I don't wanna judi- Listen-

General Wesley Clark: That, that's not, that's not the same thing.

[MortMan]

he quintessential fanatical Nazi (his purported last words, when he didn't in Franco's Spain, were "long live Adolf Hitler!") Otto Skorzeny predictably enough defended the officer who had the massacre carried out.

I figured you meant he "didn't long live"! ;-P

[CentralMass]

What would have made the U.S. look good is if the House Armed Services Committee had listened to Clark pre-war testimony in 2002 advising not to rush into this war.

http://securingamerica.com/articles/washingtonpost/2005-04-07

If opinions from General Shinseki, Zinni and a plan on how to conduct an invasion of Iraq and it's after math that had been around since some time after Gulf War I had been followed we may have looked good.

Calls from senior military and the Army War College that invading Iraq would not be a "cake-walk" and that we would need several hundred thousand troops to do the job went unheeded. The guy in charge claimed we would be greeted with roses and the job could be dome with 75k troops.

Guy's like Clark argued taking Bagdhad and removing Hussein would be the easy part and that restoring order in the cities, securing the borders an reconstituting as many non hardcore Sunni military as possible to give them a stake in the new country instead of becoming insurgents had to be down immediatley. He said that it would be too late a year or two after.

You don't have to did too deep to see that this war was a pipedream of a few civilian neocons that promised we would be greeted as liberators and that this action would sweep democracy across the entire mideast. This was not the prevailing military opinon. This was not the opinion from numerous think tanks like that Cato Institute would had position papers on the likelyhood of democracy succeeding in Iraq. Through it some rabid supporter from the media labelling anyone who diagreed with the plan as an America hater or evil-doer and it give you this mess.

Had we listened to the expert military opinions and secured the borders and cities from the start, we might have looked good. If we had secured the cities to prevent looting and chaos after Hussein fell as these experts suggest, we may have looked good. Instead we go witty quotes like "free people can do what ever they want".

As thousand of our troops had their appendages blown off or recieved serious head wounds we got more witicisms like "sometimes you go to war with the army you have, not the one you want"

If we had conducting this war the way the experts wanted to we maynot have had to put our troops in aposition where they were fighting in the streets going door to door in a nightmare of a political war.

[CentralMass]

repost w/proof reading

What would have made the U.S. look good is if the House Armed Services Committee had listened to Clark’s pre-war testimony in 2002 advising not to rush into this war.

http://securingamerica.com/articles/washingtonpost/2005-04-07

If opinions from Generala Shinseki, Zinni and others and plan on how to conduct an invasion of Iraq and it's after math that had been around since some time after Gulf War I had been followed we may have looked good.

Calls from senior military and the Army War College that invading Iraq would not be a "cake-walk" and that we would need several hundred thousand troops to do the job went unheeded. The guy in charge claimed we would be greeted with roses and that the job could be done with 75k troops.

Guy's like Clark argued that taking Baghdad and removing Hussein would be the easy part and that restoring order in the cities, securing the borders an reconstituting as many non hardcore Sunni military as possible to give them a stake in the new country instead of becoming insurgents had to be down immediately. He said that it would be too late a year or two after.

You don't have to dig too deep to see that this war was a pipedream of a few civilian neocons that promised we would be greeted as liberators and that this action would sweep democracy across the entire Mideast. This was not the prevailing military opinion. This was not the opinion from numerous think tanks like that Cato Institute who had position papers on the unlikelihood of democracy succeeding in Iraq. Throw in some rabid supporters from the media labeling anyone who disagreed with the plan as America haters or evil-doers and you end up with a mess.

Had we listened to the expert military opinions and secured the borders and cities from the start, we might have looked good. If we had secured the cities to prevent looting and chaos after Hussein fell as these experts had suggested, we may have looked good. Instead we go witty quotes like "free people can do what ever they want".

As thousand of our troops had their appendages blown off or received serious head wounds we got more witticisms like "sometimes you go to war with the army you have, not the one you want"

If we had conducted this war the way the experts wanted to we may not have had to put our troops in a position where they were fighting in the streets going door to door in a nightmare of a political war.

[blau993]

I remember that exchange quite well. Sorry, but Clark neither corrected or questioned El Bill on the assertion that US forces had murdered SS men at Malmedy. It was one of the most shocking moments of the interview.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1640952/posts?page=7#7

[MortMan]

I know you corrected it, but I wanted to let you know I understood it, and found it a little humorous.

Have a great day.

[cbkaty]

It was, of course, precisely the opposite, but the learned Mr. O'Reilly seemed not to know that, nor did General Clark correct him.

.......Seems logical that they leave the truth detection to FREEREPUBLIC.....