I bet that some time in your life, you've done a favor for somebody and suffered because of it. Well, that's what's happening to the USA right now. We did a favor for the world by removing a brutal dictator and giving millions of people a chance for freedom in Iraq (search). And now we're paying a huge price.
Take a look at these Iraqi morons, celebrating the murders of 13 people, an American, eight Iraqis and four others. A terrorist bomb killed those poor souls. And the disgusting people you are looking at in Baghdad think it's just great.
Now, that kind of image is tough to take, because even though I believe most Iraqis are decent people, there are far too many bad Iraqis. And America's losing fine soldiers trying to bring freedom to that country.
There's no question that we are the good guys in Iraq, just as we were in South Vietnam, Korea, and during World War II. All of those conflicts were fought to keep people free. But many ignorant people think we're the bad guys.
The truth is that waging aggressive war against terrorism is a must. We have to do it. Maybe Iraq is the wrong battlefield, but our intentions there are honorable.
Saddam was a terrorist and a mass murderer. There's no question about that. While the Bush administration was embarrassingly wrong about WMDs, and that hurt the moral clarity of the war, captured Iraqi documents are now proving that Saddam did indeed have ties to Al Qaeda and bin Laden.
Just today, the war criminal Abu al-Zarqawi, an Al Qaeda leader, claimed responsibility for killing the 13 human beings you saw when they died yesterday in Iraq. Zarqawi fled to Iraq after he was wounded in Afghanistan and was given safe harbor and medical treatment by Saddam.
So somebody alert Al Gore to that connection. The perception that America is somehow the villain in Iraq comes from America's enemies abroad, and that includes France, and from anti-Bush partisans here in the USA. Certainly Abu Ghraib was horrendous, but those soldiers don't represent this country. They committed crimes and they'll pay for those crimes.
And any government official or military brass that aided those crimes should also be punished.
Talking Points is angry that so many people abroad simply will not unite to fight terrorism and evil, and that millions of Americans don't understand the country's at war. And it has to be. Sticking your head in the proverbial sand, hoping you won't be harmed by terrorists is not going to cut it anymore. We're fighting for our lives here. How we fight is, of course, a legitimate debate, but portraying America as the bad guy is simply dangerous, dishonest and pathetic.
And that's The Memo.
The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day
Well, you guys made me do it, by voting to have Michael Moore (search) on “The Factor,” I had to go see his movie last night.
It started 40 minutes late so I had to leave after an hour, I didn't see the whole thing, but I saw most of. The film is pretty much what you would expect, President Bush and his administration are a satanic cult and we live in a police state. The movie was a little slow for me, fairly predictable.
As I was leaving I ran into Moore in the lobby. He told me he was coming on “The Factor.” We will see. Ridiculous? We will see.
--You can watch Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" and "Most Ridiculous Item" weeknights at 8 & 11p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel. Send your comments to: oreilly@foxnews.com
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