The Workday Liberal

I am bopping about the internets today and stumble across the column written on May 1, 2006 by Bill O'Reilly. In this column Bill dwells upon the rapidly deteriorating opinion the American public has with this administration. He even goes so low as to say that this administration would soon enter "Jimmy Carter territory" in terms of loss of public confidence. So far this is probably about what you would expect from the mind of O'Reilly. The part that confuses me is when he lays out his recommendations for the President to turn this funk around.

The last bullet point he gives for the turnaround of the administration is this:

Stay the course in Iraq. That country's future is now vital to America's future. Whatever it takes, we have to win there. A loss in Iraq gives Iran major power in the Gulf. G-d help us.

Is it just me, or is the whole stay the course in Iraq rationale one of the, if not THE, major reason the President finds himself in his current situation? In fact the notion, as given by O'Reilly that we should stay the course, followed with "Whatever it takes we have to win there" is confusing of itself. If we have to win there whatever it takes, in the traditional sense of winning a military engagement, we ought to follow the McCain plan and heavily reinforce our presence there. Quite clearly stay the course isn't cutting it one way or the other.

But the truly confusing part of all this is that it appears to be contrary to the express desire of Mr. O'Reilly very recently in favor of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Here is O'Reilly on Feb. 20, 2006.

O'REILLY: Somewhat of a disturbing report out of Iraq, and it's more important than it first appears. The governor of -- or the mayor of Karbala, which is a town in the south part of Iraq, Shiite-controlled, has banned any further government dealings with the American military in his province, saying that they're not behaving well.

Now, it's a small little thing, but I picked up on it, because here is the essential problem in Iraq. There are so many nuts in the country -- so many crazies -- that we can't control them. And I don't -- we're never gonna be able to control them. So the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible. Because we just can't control these crazy people. This is all over the place. And that was the big mistake about America: They didn't -- it was the crazy-people underestimation. We did not know how to deal with them -- still don't. But they're just all over the place.

From Media Matters

Now in case you thought that O'Reilly's decidedly negative opinion of Iraqi's as expressed above, leading to his conclusion that we ought to change course was a momentary bout of pessimism, check out his broadcast on June 17 of 2005.

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.
Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.

From Alternative Press Review.

Quite clearly O'Reilly is of the opinion that the Iraqi people themselves are crazy, unappreciative of our efforts, and that our mission is doomed because of the locals. Yet now he believes the administration should stay the course in order to turn around it's sagging poll numbers.

Is it just me, or is O'Reilly either confused, or confusing?