Bill O'Reilly At Guantanamo
Reported by Deborah - June 12, 2006
Bill O'Reilly returned from a tour of the prison in Guantanamo claiming that everyone is treated well gaining an average of 18 lbs on the wonderful Gitmo food and there was no proof of torture. Tonight on The Factor viewers saw clips of two clean cells and heard the rants of an angry prisoner from the hallway outside his cell perhaps to remind viewers that these guys in Gitmo are mean. As promised, O'Reilly "interrogated the interrogators" and discussed the recent suicides actually finding a way to put some blame for the deaths on the International Red Cross. 6/12/06
Of course, BOR claimed that only the Left is calling for Gitmo to be closed naming Nancy Pelosi and the NYT especially after the 3 recent suicides. He commented that the International Red Cross' request that curtains be put on the windows to the cells for privacy might have been partly responsible for the deaths. Then he interviewed Admiral Harry Harris who was criticized by the New York Times for his reaction to the suicides. Harris said the suicides were acts of "asymmetric warfare" and suicide is an encouraged weapon insisting that the suicides were not caused by despair.
Then O'Reilly talked with two interrogators. The first soldier said that some of the detainees need to be restrained during the 3 to 4 hour interrogations. He made it clear that his main objective was to get someone to slip up and forget a lie told previously which happens after 3 or 4 years. O'Reilly asked if bribes were ever used and the soldier claimed that ice cream and pizza were effective. Once again, O'Reilly asked if 4 years in prison made a difference in getting information and of course, the answer was yes. That seemed to be a point that BOR wanted to get across.
O'Reilly wanted to know if anyone there was innocent asking if " a lot of these guys are barbers who made a wrong turn at Kandahar?" The interrogators told him what he wanted to hear so he added," Innocent bell boys, a bunch of garbage."
The segment at Gitmo was followed with an interview with Katherine Newell-Beerman; former Air Force Captain & Counter-Terrorism Counsel for Human Rights Watch. She confronted BOR immediately with:
" If these people are as bad as you say, they should be brought to justice. These people should be prosecuted."
She forced O'Reilly to address the fact that the detainees have not been charged or brought to trial.
At that point O'Reilly was forced to confront the fact that they detainees are not considered POWs to avoid following the Geneva Convention laws. He shifted attention by going after Newell-Beerman saying:
" You don't trust your government to treat these people fairly."
When Newell-Beerman brought up the conflicting information concerning torture, some coming from FBI agents, O'Reilly got testy claiming that the Church report found only 8 cases of relatively minor torture. That was a far as he was going to take the discussion and he ended the segment claiming time restraints.
In a later segment Michelle Malkin came on to discuss Coulter and congratulated Bill on his Guantanamo coverage.
She made this delightful comment about the suicides at Gitmo.
" The reactions to the suicides should be boo frickin hoo."
Malkin's segment is another story and another post.
