O'Reilly: '[T]he media now have a vested interest in America's failure'...

Bill O'Reilly backing up his opinion by pointing to two facts:

First, The New York Times summed up President Bush's speech on Iraq this way: "There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq." That doesn't leave The Times much wiggle room, does it?

And second, the execution of Saddam. We now know that the Bush administration asked the Iraqi government to postpone the hanging by two weeks, at least. The Iraqis said no and demanded the dictator be handed over. The president complied.

The Iraqis then totally botched the execution, and the long knives came out. The American press pounded the Bush administration for being incompetent once again. NBC's Tom Brokaw called the execution a "Wild West hanging," and flat out said it would lead to more violence in Iraq.

Well, so far, violence levels have not risen, and while Mr. Brokaw is certainly entitled to his opinion on the Wild West front, I can only wonder what the anti-Bush press would have said if the USA had not handed Saddam over to the Iraqis. The likely headline would have been something like: "Bush Insults the Iraqi Justice System." The articles and punditry would have emphasized that America was usurping Iraqi authority.

And Mark Alexander asks... If not Iraq, then where, when and at what cost?:

Shoring up our critical national interest in the Middle East and protecting our homeland from another catastrophic attack must trump rancorous politics. John Stuart Mill wrote, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse." Operation Iraqi Freedom is a bitter pill, to be sure, but one that will become less palatable only if we refuse to take it now.

Take it now.

Grateful Dead - Estimated Prophet, 4/26/77