'Rewriting History': Famed WWII historian Bill O'Reilly smears yet another Allied hero
By David Neiwert Saturday May 09, 2009 5:30pm
For some time now, Bill O'Reilly has been so desperate to prove that the Bush administration's use of extreme tactics in the "war on terror" -- including torturing detainees and killing civilians -- that he's even been willing to smear the memories of American veterans of World War II to make that point. Last night on his Fox News show, he added Winston Churchill to the list of smear victims.
We all remember the Malmedy smear, for which O'Reilly has never either apologized or corrected the record:
In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead, you know that. That's on the record. And documented."
O'Reilly in fact had it completely reversed: At Malmedy, it was American troops who were massacred by SS guards, not the other way around.
Not only did O'Reilly never correct the insulting gaffe, a year later he repeated it:
In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. 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.
O’Reilly also engages in historical revisionism with his explanation that the small number of Japanese POWs at Iwo Jima and other Pacific battles is proof that U.S. Marines committed systematic murder. According to most historical accounts, the Americans wanted the Japanese soldiers to surrender but they chose to fight to the death.
So last night he wandered into the same waters, claiming that Winston Churchill was likely a war criminal under the standards "the far left" wants to impose on the Bush administration. What started all this was President Obama citing Winston Churchill's views on torture:
O'Reilly: And since then, the Factor has been investigating Winston Churchill's position on waging war and interrogating the enemy. Via Boston University professor Cathal Nolan, we have found out the following:
Churchill actually wanted to use poison gas on the Germans in violation of the Geneva Convention, but was stopped by the British War Cabinet.
The Royal Air Force killed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of civilians by targeting non-military sites.
And the British operated a number of military interrogation centers during and after World War II, including one called the "London Cage," where German prisoners were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with death.
Another center was opened in Bad Nenndorf on German soil after Churchill left power. It was almost like a concentration camp. British government documents detailed terrible torture inflicted on the Germans. Some of the inmates were branded human skeletons.
Well, is O'Reilly right? Er, as you might expect given his track record -- No.
It's not as egregious a smear as the Malmedy/Iwo Jima claims, but close.
Let's run through these:
-- Yes, the RAF targeted civilian areas. So did the United States -- see, most notoriously, not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also the firebombings of Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo, which actually resulted in more civilian casualties. Yet the fact is that this is not a war crime. Is Bill O'Reilly suggesting that it is -- and that American troops, by extension, are also war criminals? Need we even mention the word "Vietnam" in the context of this matter?
-- Was Churchill responsible for the "London Cage" abuses? Probably not. ABC's Political Punch has a reasonably good rundown, duly noting that President Obama's Churchill quote that sparked this O'Reilly rant was probably overdrawn. As for Churchill's war-crimes culpability, there's this:
"We don't know what detail he knew about what was happening in interrogation centers," Cobain said. "Clearly, he would have known there were interrogation centers. There's no evidence that Churchill knew that people were being tortured there. And of course, Churchill was himself a prisoner of war, and during the Boer War, and wrote at length about his horror of war and his horror of imprisonment."
-- What about Bad Nenndorf? Well, first: Churchill had no responsibility for it. Second: It was in fact widely viewed as criminal, and was dealt with as such: "Four of the camp's officers were brought before courts-martial in 1948 and one of the four was convicted on charges of neglect."
Indeed, Churchill after the war penned this observation in response to the Bad Nenndorff scandal:
"The use of instruments of torture can never be regarded by any decent person as synonymous with justice."
In other words, O'Reilly is smearing yet another hero of World War II just so he can claim that it was OK for Bush to create a torture regime because hey, Churchill did it too.
Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens have more.
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Why does Bill O'Reilly hate America?
because he's a scum-sucking maggot who would rather bring other people down to his level than to try to improve the country?
has anyone seen billos birth certificate ?
really, how do we know that he is even human?
He's Irish Catholic.
.
Bill is right there with Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. They are useless hate mongering liars.
I'm not sure why he hates it now but he sure did love it when the torture boys were running things.
the hate coming from these three bastards,
billo, handwipe and beckbrain, is remarkable
since they all used cowardly excuses to avoid
any military service.
I guess Bill want to keep Miss Savage company in being banned from England.
Why is there no government oversight of these stupid liars?
These guys are useless sacks of evil shit.
Whats next for these imbeciles? Proof that Galileo was wrong, and the Ptolemiac system was actually right.
so we should be allowed to do it now defence
but 2 wrongs don't make a right,We got to become civilized one of these days,Why not now?
I got into an argument with my father and he took the same line. What he and O'Reilly forget is that it doesn't matter. Either you follow the law or you don't. But, unfortunately, for neo-cons the ends ALWAYS justify the means. The reason they take this line of "reasoning" is a tell; they know what was done is illegal and they must justify it somehow. The only way to do that is to say that "it's been done before."
I guess that makes everything ok, huh?
should be an argument against tolerating it. If no action is taken this time, this time will be cited in the future as precedent. Federal Bureau of Enhanced Interrogation? States claiming they should have similar rights? Cheney has already talked up that torture may be necessary again. And why not?
I agree with RexHunter and Harry that "they did it then so we can do it now" is not a legitimate argument. However, in this case, and in all cases of US wars before the GWOT, you are giving up too much in the argument if you concede that "they did it then". I'm sure that some US soldiers tortured some Nazis. However that is not at all the same as having torture as an accepted policy. Despite the brutality of enemies such as the Japanese and Nazis and civil and revolutionary wars, the US has never accepted torture as a sanctioned way of treating prisoners before Bush. The closest we came before that was Vietnam where the CIA and Operation Phoenix committed quite a bit of it. But even then it was never accepted policy and that's a crucial distinction.
only an illiterate retard would think americans killed germans at malmedy. he's obviously illiterate.
Not only illiterate but ignorant. I have no respect for the blowhard or for anyone that supports him.
He's trying to get himself added to the British PNG list that The Savage Weiner got himself put on.
Billo has always been in his own little world. Writing its history and oblivious of anything else. Not sure why anyone listens to anything he says. Obviously loves the sound of his own voice. Poor Billo.
he makes. He would had fit right in.
Has anyone asked Cathal Nolan what he actually said/wrote?
WWII is an easy one to hit up on torture. It goes something like this: If the US did it, neither Germany nor Japan were brought on war crimes for that action. If someone defected to the US, they were free and clear.
My reccolection is that Churchill did want to gas people, just not sure if it was Germans? May well have been Arabs that he wanted gassed?
The bringing up of WW2 and comparing it to a few radical Arabs boggles my mind. There is no comparison between the two events.
I have learned that Americans are cowards by and large. 20 Arabs fly a couple planes into buildings and American almost falls apart.
Home of the brave my arse!
we stumbled. we did *not* almost fall apart. as a nation we're in good company in that regard.
to paint us all as cowards based on that is asinine. you are an idiot.
Cheers asshole.
..called "burpster" call me a coward? Oh yeah, sure!
And yes, 20 people who happened to be from the Middle East and were so brave, they took over planes full of warriors and armed m..oh wait, they took over planes full of civilians. When they fight, they fight behind women's skirts and children's games so that when brave men and women come to fight them, they have human shields.
Yeah, listening to someone named burpster..phht!
I mean Really!
This coming from an anonymous member of the 101st Keyboard fighting brigade.
Tell me something? Are you always this ignorant and offensive?
Or did you make a special effort just for us.
You don't know jackshit.
burpster: you're drooling again.
All of the radio, TV and newspaper hate-mongering maggots who pander to the remnants of the Repugnant Party of "No" have adopted that party's treasonous agenda which advocates for the failure of Obama administration's agenda which is designed and intended to bring the United States through the dire economic catastrophe foisted upon it by the Bush Administration's corrupt policies - treasonous - anything but "conservative" policies that have actually enabled the mugging of our republic and the destruction of the ability of our country to claim moral superiority.
With only about twenty percent of the American public still willing to admit to being Republican at present it's obvious that what remains of the Repugnant Party is their ultra-"conservative", fanatic base of faithful zealots and its misguided, unpatriotic few in leadership - Bush rubber stampers - who were and still remain intent on instrumenting the destruction of all that was good about the United States - everything the United States stood for by turning our country into a fascist regime, one totally contemptuous of the Constitution, one promoting hatred against the gay and transgendered community and one intent on waging unprovoked, preemptive war using the excuse of the tragedy that occurred on 9/11 to accomplish their agenda.
Unbelievably, what is still absent is the public's hue and cry - screaming from the rooftops, denouncing the damage that is still being foisted on our country by these traitors and demanding an end to Repugnantican obstructionism. Where is our major media? Why is our Democratic Party still so "respectful" (spelled WEAK) of current Republican ridiculous demands? Why are we not screaming from the rooftops to address the Republican insistence of trying to force the continuation of their morally vacant, failed agenda which has proven so disastrous to our country for the last eight years?
I know two people who had fathers admitting to mass kilings in Europe at the end of World War 2. Machine gunning German soldiers who gave up. One of them gave a death bed confession and lived. Funny
What's not funny is someone like Mr Neiwert, who fancies himself a liberal,not recognizing the criminality of incinerating millions of cowering men women and children from the air. Unbelievable.
..does WAR mean "play nice"? No, I pretty much think it means doing bad pshht to the other side before they do bad pshht to you. And you know, it's usually brutal and ugly and a thing to be avoided at all costs. But if you engage, you engage!
After all the Axis powers were known for their pious rationality....
In any case, the total between Dresden and Tokyo fire raids were no where near the "millions." It does not make the actions any better, but we should put them in their correct context.
The "criminality of incinerating millions of cowering men women and children from the air" from the safety of your home. In reality the issue was a lot more complex. There were military strategists who honestly believed that strategic bombing would bring a country to its knees and bring the war to a quick conclusion. There was also incredible pressure for the allies to "do something" while the Russians died by the millions on the eastern front. What I find amazing is that in spite of the fact that the Nazis clearly initiated the hostility and also were clearly the first ones to bomb civilian targets, there were military men in the US (Admiral Spruance in the Pacific for example) who were still against the practice. In retrospect its pretty clear now that strategic bombing didn't work and almost never does. However it wasn't an easy black and white decision when you are fighting an enemy like the Nazis.
"I know two people who had fathers admitting to mass kilings in Europe at the end of World War 2. Machine gunning German soldiers who gave up. One of them gave a death bed confession and lived"
It would be amazing if this were not the case. For one thing you had the Germans who clearly massacred prisoners at times as a matter of policy. How could you expect that Americans would not some times take revenge? For another there were times when the Americans were moving so fast (or were dropped behind enemy lines) that taking prisoners would have been virtually impossible. What is really amazing is how morally the majority of US troops acted and the fact that it was never SANCTIONED POLICY to do these things for the US when it was for the Germans and Russians. The benefit of that is shown by the fact that the Germans would surrender to the US but would fight to the death against the Russians.
Whether it be the Germans or the Japanese or the Koreans or the Vietnamese and Cambodians. The suffering of others just doesn't compare to the suffering of your kind and that's a big fuckin problem. You know what I mean. Again unbelievable
He sounds drunk. I know he's an alcoholic, but he seems to be losing control. Whose gonna get this drunken slut off the air??
When you get caught by the teacher, is the fact that Billy might have been cheating a good defense?
Are we to say, "oh, in that case its alright."?
Don't guess there's anything to add. Except, what a total asshole.
I don't get it. I thought Bill O was the one who always gets his boxers in a bunch when anybody says ANYTHING bad about our troops or our country and now he's saying our troops killed innocent people? AND he's even WRONG???
Just about anything Fox News covers, is analyzed in the context of the GOP/neocon/new world order agenda. The result - propaganda.
I've always felt that the biggest threat to our freedoms come not from the left, socialism or communism, but from the right, namely fascism. (And, I'm not talking about the latest Fox News redefinition of fascism which is restricting lazaire-faire capitalism).
Achtung baby, Achtung.
those women took BillO to the woodshed and kicked his ass.
Because he provides so much humor as a talking (pointy) head, we sometimes forget that he taught school. Can you imagine what it was like having this bully as a teacher? ("Fuck it! We'll do it live!!!") Not to mention his tenuous grasp of facts and history.
It's always interesting to hear what 'War Hero' Mr O'Realy has to say on the Military...........
Mr. Irrelevance
from the right about torture is amazing to me. Torture is illegal. Yet the right is admitting illegal actions. IF (and that's a big IF) any are charged with a crime, can't their words be used in court? Are they really that arrogant? hmmmmmm....Dick Cheney....yep they're that arrogant.
As far as Riley goes and the other talking right MSM, they might want to rethink their promoting of these illegal acts. I don't think they are helping the criminals. And all this talk could end up backfiring in their faces especially if they continue. Someone is going to call their bluff if they don't shut up. And I for one am ready for some bluff calling.
So ok.....talk amongst yourselves.
Really? Documented. By whom? Revionists? Delusionists? Schizoids?
Heh. Documented by O'Reilly's arse, no doubt.
to the neo-Nazi movement anyway?
...that he uses as an example of why it's okay for Bush to have done them, so what?? These aren't things we should look at and say, "Oh, well that makes it okay." These are things we should look at and say, "How terrible... we must make sure we never do anything like that again."
Did pointing at your siblings and saying "He/she did it too!" ever keep you from getting in trouble for something you've done as a child, Billy?
Back in the late 90's on the "History Channel" when they were really radicalizing the American public they showed war video's of things even worse than what O'Reilly says.Such as US submarines torpedoing Japanese civilian ships and machine guning the survivors etc.
But that don't make it right today,I hope we are becoming more civilized today because now we know these things
Read http://fufor.twoday.net/stories/5691053/
Nobody can ever expect the truth from a High School dropout that works for Faux Noise.
Here, let me fix this:
O'Reilly: And since then, the Factor has been investigating.
There. Much better.
And, this is all you need to know in order for the alarm to go off.
Sure, if you go back _far_ enough you will find barbarism. The British rounding up the wives and children of Afrikaner rebels for concentration camps wasn't exactly Geneva convention at the turn of the 20th century. And God didn't really "give" America to the white invaders, you know.
But the atrocity of the holocaust really did require people to rethink government and morality. Obviously, Bill O'Reilly wishes that reflection had never occurred in the second half of the 20th century and wishes we could return to those happier, blood-soaked days of unthinking genocide.
http://thetorturer.com
Churchill indeed is a war criminal, there's no doubt about that, anyone who claims other wise is giving the people now committing war crimes cover.
google "operation keelhaul".
http://thetorturer.com
Coming Fall 2009
OMG! Someone needs to tell 'Roger Dodger Ailes' and 'Murdoch the Malefactor". They will be so upset with this breach of journalistic ethics! (lol)
I'm surprised that C&L is so quick to defend Churchill, who played a vital role in propping up fascism in Spain because he was wetting his knickers at the thought of anarchists actually succeeding. Churchill is many things, but "hero" is not one of them.
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