O'Reilly Profiteer, more detail

The recent award of a posthumous Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael Murphy has brought several questions to mind. They deal with the status of the war on terror in Afghanistan, the impact on that effort from the war in Iraq and the lengths to which the media will go to profit from military sacrifice.

The account of the situation that led to the death of Lt. Murphy and his men, by the sole survivor, is very revealing. They were in the mountains of Hindu Kush, in northeastern Afghanistan. The four-man team was attacked by about 40 locals and, or, foreign fighters. The attack was well coordinated, the insurgents attacking from three sides and taking the high ground. The Navy Seals, the world’s elite fighting force, were pushed into a ravine, running out of ammo and unable to radio for help due to the terrain. Murphy moved from man to man, putting himself under fire to reassure them. He then exposed himself to get through on the radio, getting hit several times.

Also in the battle, a Chinook helicopter with reinforcements was shot down killing eight more SEALs and eight Army special ops soldiers. For the SEALs, it was the most killed since World War II.

At the White House ceremony President Bush said, “Our nation is blessed to have volunteers like Michael who risk their lives for our freedom.” One has to wonder, if their leaders had been doing a better job, would a hero like Murphy have to have been cut down at such a young age?

The incident was in June 2005, more than three years after the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance. The media should be asking hard questions about how the situation could have been that bad at the time. They should be asking how Lt. Murphy and his unit were put into this situation without the availability of immediate air support and reinforcements. They should be asking how a unit like that is equipped with radios that cannot work unless the operator exposes himself to enemy fire. Surely we have enough aircraft that one orbiting above them could receive their signals, but perhaps not. Has the distraction that has become a disastrous quagmire in Iraq stretched military so thin that these guys were left hanging? It seems logical that supporting the troops, SEALs, troopers, airmen and their colleagues means asking these questions. But what do we get in this situation?

We get Bill O’Reilly celebrating the situation as a victory. In a very good and thorough report about the incident, FOX News looked at the situation in detail, with quotes from the sole survivor of the SEALs. While watching, the questions above came to mind. Perhaps this was not the right time to ask them, in respect for the family. But neither FOX, nor any other media will. The next night however was the most revealing about the media coverage of this award.

In O’Reilly’s “Talking Points” with which he opens every show, he accused the other cable media of not reporting the award in prime time. He went on to say that they, specifically CNN and MSNBC, do not want to report anything positive about the Bush administration. His next comments absolutely disgusted me. According to his transcripts, he said, “And it is ideology that is driving these people , not which stories are worthy or an effective business plan. Here is the proof. Over the first three weeks of October, this month, the FOX News Channel has doubled CNN and tripled MSNBC in the ratings at 8:00 p.m. “The Factor” beats those two combined with about a million viewers to spare. Nobody wins that big in television.”

I have to pause here for a sec and look at that couple of more times. This was not spontaneous. It was scripted. Someone decided that he was going to admit this on the air. No Guilt. No Shame. FOX’s choice to focus so heavily on the tragic and unnecessary death of this great American hero, whose leadership in the U.S. Navy was cut short, was based, at least in part, on a “business plan?”

Wake up those of you who are fans of his and who buy his books. Bill O’Reilly, a chicken hawk who never served, is a profiteer on the blood of our military personnel, he admits it and he has no shame for doing it.

O'Reilly profiteering from heroes

Bill O’Reilly, Monday and Tuesday nights, used the death of an American hero to boost his ratings. He also used the death to mock his competition, on the air. Tuesday, he was referring to his report the night before about the posthumous honor given to Navy Seal Lieutenant Michael Murphy. He said that CNN and MSNBC did not report on the award in prime time. He said that is because they do not want to report anything positive about the Bush administration and the war on terror. How on earth does reporting on the death of a hero who is put into a situation where his elite unit is pinned down by tribal fighters in a remote province of Afghanistan, three years after the fall of Kabul, support the Bush administration and the troops? Yes he was a hero. But that mission and the entire campaign in Afghanistan are miserable failures. O’Reilly is blind to the fact that his reports, including Tuesday’s talking points, firstly are profiteering from the death of this great hero and secondly they are putting the military and the Bush administration’s execution of the war on terror in a very negative light.
O’Reilly said, on the air, that CNN and MSNBC’s ratings have fallen because they do not report such things. He is clearly using such stories to boost ratings. He said it himself. Again, Shame on Bill O’Reilly, his producers, John Moody and Roger Ailes. Whether the story should be reported is not the issue. The reason they report it, as pointed out by O’Reilly, for profit, is reprehensible.

Chickens Come Home to Roost

When a nation is attacked by terrorists who are given safe haven by another nation, what are they supposed to do? Should they negotiate to get that other nation to put a stop to the activity? Should they go into that country and try to eradicate the terrorists? It depends on whom you ask. If you are asking leaders of a country who have done the latter, the United States for example, and have supported it for its allies, as in the case of Israel invading Lebanon, then they probably would recommend incursion. It gets a little sticky when the country currently being attacked is Turkey and the country they want to invade is Iraq, which the U.S. is now occupying. Everyone who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, must get behind the Turkish parliament’s call for military action in northern Iraq. Remember your phrases like, “better to fight them over there than here.” The chickens have come home to roost.