Bill O'Reilly Accuses U.S. Army of Nazi War Crime

[Sportsdude]

 [DIV class=intro] [BLOCKQUOTE]  [DIV class=article] [DIV class=generaltitle] [DIV class=title] [H3]Bill O'Reilly Accuses U.S. Army of Nazi War Crime [/H3][/DIV]

[DIV class=details]posted by [A href=""][FONT color=#660000]Jamie[/FONT][/A] on Tuesday October 04, @11:28AM   [A href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/print.pl?sid=05/10/04/1523242"][img height=11 alt=Printer-friendly src="vny!://mccarthy.vg:8080/images.mccarthy.vg/print.gif" width=15][/A]
from the words-fail-me dept.

[DIV class=body] [DIV class=topic][A href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/search.pl?tid=1"][img title=News height=44 alt=News src="vny!://mccarthy.vg:8080/images.mccarthy.vg/topics/topicnews.gif" width=34][FONT color=#660000] [/FONT][/A]

[DIV class=intro] [BLOCKQUOTE]  O'Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

[/DIV][/BLOCKQUOTE] I'm still trying to mentally process this, and I can't get my head around it. How did we get from there to here?

 Sixty-one years ago, in December 1944, the Allies were holding a front line against the German army. Thinking the Americans were poor soldiers, Hitler ordered a last-ditch surprise attack. On December 16, German tanks and soldiers launched what would later be called the [A title=vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_bulge href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/relocate.pl?id=b748325f87c51b09c5accc9395fbcd5b"][FONT color=#660000]Battle of the Bulge[/FONT][/A].

 On December 17, Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Peiper ran across Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion near the town of Malmedy. The Americans surrendered after a brief battle. The Germans disarmed them and moved the 140 or so Americans into an empty field nearby. A short time later, other German forces showed up and -- nobody knows exactly why -- began shooting the unarmed American POWs, first with pistols, then, moments later, with machine guns.

 Some of the POWs made a break for the forest; others feigned death. The Germans moved into the field of bodies and -- as autopsies later showed -- shot anyone showing signs of life, or beat them to death with rifle butts. Of the over 100 men (numbers vary), at least 72 were killed (numbers vary).

 The [A title=vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/relocate.pl?id=d755e9d2731144bc12bf5632aee9e8fd"][FONT color=#660000]Massacre at Malmedy[/FONT][/A] was the bloodiest infraction of the rules of war perpetrated by the German army against American soldiers. It shocked the conscience of the civilized world -- a shock that echoed louder and louder, in the months that followed, as the extent of the Nazi death camps was revealed.

 The massacre is remembered to this day as one of the most awful atrocities perpetrated against the United States Army.

 Which is why I can't figure out why Bill O'Reilly yesterday accused the United States Army of perpetrating the massacre.

 What has our public discourse come to? I'm not even surprised anymore when tragic events from World War Two are [A href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/article.pl?sid=04/06/05/1457231&tid=1"][FONT color=#660000]cruelly manipulated[/FONT][/A] by modern conservatives to make a point. But here is a prominent conservative commentator who not only treats a tragedy of war as a club to beat up a guest, but knows so little about it that he accuses the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division (ten miles away, by the way) of committing a Nazi war crime.

 Has the gotcha politics of our yelling-heads shows really sunk this far? Is our only goal to beat up the other side? Is the idea of hearing out another's point of view just a sick joke? How far into the weeds does journalism go, before we start to ask, what is the point of these shows?

 Here's an excerpt of the video (fuller clip available at [A title=vny!://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/10/03.html#a5214 href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/relocate.pl?id=43e4c2b33e90076600109a22447e25bb"][FONT color=#660000]Crooks and Liars[/FONT][/A]). But before you watch, please, take a moment to place yourself there -- sixty one years ago, shivering, your weapon gone, boots crunching in the snow of that Belgian field, quietly trying to gauge the distance to the trees, as the first German unholsters his pistol.

 [BLOCKQUOTE]  [A href="vny!://mccarthy.vg:8080/images.mccarthy.vg/200510/oreilly-malmedy.mov"][img height=120 alt="Screenshot: O'Reilly on Malmedy" src="vny!://mccarthy.vg:8080/images.mccarthy.vg/200510/oreilly-malmedy-screenshot.jpg" width=160][FONT color=#660000] [/FONT][/A]
(1 MB QT)

[/DIV][/BLOCKQUOTE] Transcript follows...



[DIV class=full] Gen. Wesley Clark: Because in the United States Army that I served in proudly for 34 years, we did not beat up and torture prisoners. Just a second, Bill ---

 Bill O'Reilly: Yeah, but with all due respect, there were atrocities in Vietnam, there were atrocities in World War Two --

 Clark: Yes, and they were found, and they were punished.

 O'Reilly: -- in World War One, in the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War.

 Clark: They were not condoned by the chain of command.

 O'Reilly: Yes they were!

 Clark: No they weren't.

 O'Reilly: Lt. Calley, and Medina in Vietnam.

 Clark: They were not condoned by the chain of command, those guys were court-martialed.

 O'Reilly: You know -- listen, with all due respect --

 Clark: And let me explain something. You go all the way up the chain of command --

 O'Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

     

 Update: 10/04 22:03 GMT: As [A href="vny!://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/10/04.html#a5224"][FONT color=#660000]C&L[/FONT][/A] points out, the [A title=vny!://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171190,00.html href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/relocate.pl?id=3602caa0ecd73ebf01c56aa0eed4dca4"][FONT color=#660000]Fox News Transcript[/FONT][/A] of the show omits the final three words of O'Reilly's sentence:

 [BLOCKQUOTE]  O'REILLY: General, you need to look at the Malmady (ph) massacre in World War II and the 82nd Airborne.

[/DIV][/BLOCKQUOTE] While there was crosstalk, those three words are quite clear. For those of you who might enjoy listening to Bill O'Reilly's voice over, and over, and over, I've made a [A title=//mccarthy.vg:8080/images.mccarthy.vg/200510/oreilly-malmedy-82nd.mp3 href="vny!://mccarthy.vg/relocate.pl?id=34db23efa88fd43865b07efa3cabbc82"][FONT color=#660000]small, six-second MP3[/FONT][/A].

[/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/BLOCKQUOTE]

 

[tenkani]

Ok, I haven't listened to the entire thing because I don't have speakers here at work, but I'm assuming that Bill's larger point is that the atrocities in Iraq are nothing to be concerned with, as they are just the way things work in a war.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

If that IS his larger point, I think that's even more disgusting than his historical blunder.
 

[Sportsdude]

Nope the full audio clearly shows he said the Americans were responsible for Malmedy and again tells Gen. Clark a Vietnam vet who was wounded and eventually became supreme allied commander in Kosovo that he's wrong. This wasn't just a slip of the tongue, he said the exact same thing before when Clark was on a couple of months ago.  Then a viewer wrote him an email the next day and he still didn't back down from his statement and said "Its on the record, its on documents, that the u.s. committed war crimes in Malmedy".  Then Fox News fixed the transcripts to say Normandy instead of Malmedy.

I became aware of this when Keith Olbermann took up entire segment about O'Reilly's biggest factual error of all time.

[tenkani]

Hmm, I guess what I'm wondering about is what is the larger context of Bill's point?

I mean, he's a conservative. Generally speaking, they support our war efforts and Bill is no exception. So why is he pointing out the various atrocities our troops have comitted throughout history? What is the larger point that he was trying to make by bringing up these events?
 

[Sportsdude]

It was about the Haditha massacre.  But in his I'm going to shout louder then you to make a point he's again made an ass out of him and disgraced the eighty some american soldiers that were executed in Malmedy. But then again I'm not suprised he told Sen. McCain (Vietnam war prisoner who was a prisoner for years) once that "he knew nothing" about torture.

[tenkani]

O'Reily's a walking turd.
The fact that he's risen to the top of the sewer that is American "debate" TV says a lot.
You are correct. In the current environment facts are subordinate to lung-power.
 

[Dissident]

 Well, you know what Goebbels' operating method was:  to continue to repeat the same lie over and over until it became "truth" (or "truthiness", thanks to Mr Colbert).

It's up there with the "women who don't marry before 25 have a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than ever marrying" bullshit that was popularised in the 80s.

Or "we don't torture".

The media have been cramming this bullshit down out throats for so long--and we have for the most part bought it--that do you blame them when they try to rewrite history?

You big strong men may think it's trivial for me to bring up an example of the 80s feminist backlash as part of this argument, but as far as I'm concerned it's part of the same picture.  The Right proved that it could alter social discourse with the anti-woman propaganda and the Willie Horton racist scaremongering that they used so successfully in the Reagan/Bush I years.  That they moved into the international political arena is no surprise.  It's just like the atrocity stories that fueled WWI and WWII.
   

[weird al]

tenkani wrote:
"Hmm, I guess what I'm wondering about is what is the larger context of Bill's point?

 So why is he pointing out the various atrocities our troops have comitted throughout history? "    He was downplaying the seriousness of the Haditha massacre by saying that this sort of atrocity was nothing new, that it's part of war (all's fair?), blah, blah, and that  the 82nd Airborne gunned down surrendering German soldiers at Malmedy in WWII. Only he got it completely backwards. Twice, as it turns out, several months apart. And he seems to have confused the 82nd Airborne with the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. Keith Olbermann (the Anti-Bill) fairly smolders with indignation:

  [A href="vny!://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=858"]vny!://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=858[/A]  

[Sportsdude]

Wow todays clip is already on the internet.. I thought I was the only one who watched his show, guess not.

[tenkani]

That's what I thought, weird al.
That's why I was saying the fact that he misrepresented history pales in comparison to the disgust I feel for his larger point. Whenever I hear hawks, especially armchair warriors like O'Reily, shrug off the deaths, torture or degradation of civilians so casually it makes me want to commit a little massacre of my own in the Fox News studios.

*sigh*  Not really. Sometimes it sucks to be a pacifist.
 

[weird al]

"Sometimes it sucks to be a pacifist."

  Quite so. But it's not really necessary to dirty one's fists or feet on the like of Bill-o or his ilk, especially when you can watch Olbermann make such excellent fun of him day in and day out. KO does such a good job of applying the needle that I wouldn't be surprised if one day O'Reilly doesn't spontaneously combust. If that doesn't happen, there's a good chance he might just drop dead in the street, poisoned by himself like a scorpion. (I stole that last line.)

[tenkani]

 Who's Olbermann??
[div style="text-align: right;"]  [/div]

[weird al]

This dude, Keith Olbermann:

    [A href="vny!://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=858"][FONT color=#323232]vny!://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=858[/FONT][/A][/DIV]

[tenkani]

I can't stream video here at work, but I'll check it out when I get home.
Thanks!!