How Long Before Bill O'Reilly Apologizes to the Nation?

In the build up to the war with Iraq, Bill O'Reilly was on television every night backing up Bush's whoppers. Like the White House team, O'Reilly assured us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. On March 18, 2003, O'Reilly was on ABC's "Good Morning America." He made the following promise about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction:

"If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?"

It's time for Bill O'Reilly to apologize to the nation and tell us that he no longer trusts the Bush Administration. How long must we wait?

... So how genuine is former Vermont Governor Howard Dean's newly expressed Christian faith? Jesus, he reportedly recently told editors at the Boston Globe newspaper, was "an important influence" in his life.

"Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind," Dean told the Globe editors. "He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything.... He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it."

The Jesus embraced by Howard Dean is a mere liberal social activist, a do-gooder whose "extraordinary example" of helping the poor and downtrodden is "pretty inspiring when you think about it."

What is missing from Dean's picture? To devout Christians, Jesus Christ is infinitely more than a social worker or political activist.

Published the day before 2004 by Random House, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror bears the signature of two of Washington's most influential ideologues. Richard Perle, known as the "Prince of Darkness", helped put together the now-famous 1999 neocon manifesto (signed by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, among others) calling for war on Iraq. David Frum is Dubya's former speechwriter, the man who coined "axis of evil" and put it in the president's mouth.

The book proposes harsh action against France--which Perle and Frum say should be treated as an "enemy"--and thunders that "We should force European governments to choose between Paris and Washington."

The book's knee-jerk frog-baiting is mild compared to its call for a military blockade of North Korea, combined with overt preparations for war. The North Koreans, of course, have just accepted an extensive visit by a non-governmental U.S. nuclear inspection team headed by the former director of the Los Alamos labs.

The dangerous duo says that Syria, too, should be put into economic quarantine, its oil supplies cut off and its territory invaded in the search for terrorists.

In Iran, nothing less than a U.S.-sponsored regime change will satisfy Perle and Frum. In their nostalgic fantasy, the United States will finance dissidents to overthrow the current Tehran regime (shades of the CIA coup that overthrew the Mossadegh government a half century ago).

Perle, Frum and their ilk have freon where their blood ought to be: what's more, their chilling willingness to use U.S. military force anytime and anywhere Washington feels like it has now been enshrined in the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive first strikes" (read: aggressive war). And damn the consequences to the innocents, who are chalked up in a dehumanizing way as so much "collateral damage."

If Bush is re-elected, the Freon Neocons - from their power bases in the Pentagon and Dick Cheney's office - stand an excellent chance of seeing their reckless cowboy imperialisms, codified for all to see in Perle and Frums's book, become reality.

And if I were an Iranian, a Syrian or a North Korean, I'd start building myself a very deep bomb shelter.