to the editor

Bill O'Reilly's piece of July 25 asserting that "Liberals" and "Liberal Web sites" are destroying America and should apologize for accusing the Bush administration of lying its way into Iraq is, simply put, garbage journalism.

First, let me point out that devout "liberals" such as Pat Buchanan and Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul have been steadfast in their opinion that Bush and his neoconservative advisers manipulated the facts on Iraq. While Bill O'Reilly is checking out the wild-eyed leftist Web sites he writes about, he should also check out The American Conservative, Antiwar.com., and Cato Institute sites as well.

Second, I remind O'Reilly that contrary to his claims of U.N. ineptitude, the U.N. and Hans Blix were not just wandering around the desert, blindly seeking Iraqi WMD. In fact, Blix and his UNMOVIC inspectors were corroborating the statements of a number of experts, including former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, stating that Iraq's WMD programs were gutted by the U.N. inspections of the 1990s. Mr. Bush, in his rush to this foolish war, feared the UNMOVIC inspections and their potential for negating his pretext for war, and did his very best to discredit them. Three days into the inspection process and he was already declaring them a failure.

There is ample evidence that the Bush administration and the neocons manipulated and cherry-picked intelligence to tell the story they wanted to tell on Iraq. There is, of course, also the issue of our spineless Congress, taking the politically expedient (and constitutionally illegal) route and giving Bush the unfettered blanket authority to make war.

Americans of all political stripes are angered by these duplicitous actions, and they are speaking out. The next time O'Reilly wants to confront someone who " ... will say and do anything to destroy those with whom they disagree ...," I suggest he take a dose of truth serum and go look in the mirror.

JOHN H. BOHN
YORK TOWNSHIP

// posted by Unknown @ 8:34 PM