Former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill, the star of Fox’s much ballyhooed special on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, visited Happening Now today. The subject of the interview was supposed to be O’Neill’s response to his critics. But, just like the two Fox guests on The Kelly File last night, host Jon Scott repeatedly tried to make Obama the real wrongdoer.
Scott asked one question about the criticism of O’Neill (more here about the issue) before moving on to use O’Neill against Obama.
First, Scott suggested Obama was the one exploiting the SEALs for personal gain:
You guys were still in the hangar taking off your gear, essentially, and the president is marching out into the White House to announce the successful completion of your mission. I always thought that maybe some hours had passed.
Besides the words, you really need to hear the scorn in Scott’s voice to get the full effect.
To his credit, O’Neill didn’t take the bait. He said that hours had actually passed. “I think he just wanted to be very thorough with all of the details,” O’Neill said about the president.
So Scott tried again:
But again, given the criticism that you have come under for talking, the fact that the president released a fair amount of information that night – the vice president released information about SEAL Team Six, the defense secretary at the time released the name of the ground commander of the mission. How do you feel about the political leaders talking and then you taking heat for talking, yourself?
And again, O’Neill turned the effort aside:
Well, you know, I can’t justify my behavior with their behavior. And I think when they did release stuff, it was probably calculcated. And personally, I didn’t have a problem with them saying that American forces did it because I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the bad guys to know that if we want to, we have people in place that will come and get you, no matter where you are.
So Scott gave up on that avenue and went back to the criticisms of O’Neill.
I was predisposed to dislike this man rather intensely, but I find myself warming to him. I agree he should have stayed in the shadows, so there is that. But after watching the Fox 2-hour attempted hagiography of him the other night, I’m not in the least surprised he wouldn’t cooperate with Fox’s baiting of him on the subject of Obama.
If O’Neill is regretting his decision to get into bed with them for his 15 minutes, he’s made his bed. And it’s starting to become easy to believe he’s starting to regret it. And, once again for the trolls and the Dollar Dump, I do have enormous respect for O’Neill’s service, and the accomplishment of him and his team. But the timing of his self-outing is exceptionally poor judgement, and I will never stop thinking that it was stupid of him to do it with the people who outed team members that didn’t want outed.
