Gabriel Sherman Quote

On the night of September 13, Bill O’Reilly had an exchange with Sam Husseini, a former spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, that characterized Fox’s position as it was developing. Here’s what we’re going to do, and I’ll let you react to it, O’Reilly said. We’re going to take out this Osama bin Laden. Now, whether we go in with air power or whether we go in with a Delta force, he’s a dead man walking. He’s through. He should have been through long before this. He’s been wanted for eight years. Now, they’re going to go in and they’re going to get him. If the Taliban government of Afghanistan does not cooperate, then we will damage that government with air power, probably. All right? We will blast them, because … Husseini told O’Reilly that innocent Afghans would be killed by a protracted air strike. Doesn’t make any difference, O’Reilly huffed. Bill— They—it was an act of war. No, no. It does make a difference, Husseini said. I don’t want more civilians dead. We’ve had civilians dead in New York and now you’re saying maybe it’s okay to have civilians dead in Afghanistan. Mr. Husseini, this is war. Yeah, exactly. And in war you don’t kill civilians. You don’t kill women and children. Those are your words, Bill. Oh, stop it, O’Reilly said. You just made the most absurd statement in the world. That means we wouldn’t have bombed the Nazis or the Japanese. We wouldn’t have done any of that, because you don’t want somebody who has declared war on us to be punished. Come on. Who declared war on us? The terrorist states have declared war, Mr. Husseini! Get them. Get the terrorists, Husseini said. Cut his mic, O’Reilly responded, waving his finger across the screen, the lower third of which was covered with Stars and Stripes graphics and a caption that read: AMERICA UNITES.