Univ. of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill Speaks

This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," Feb. 1, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Continuing now with our "Top Story," the controversy over anti-American Professor Ward Churchill (search).

As we mentioned, Governor Owens of Colorado wants him fired from the university and the Board of Regents there meets Thursday night on this matter.

FOX News Correspondent Carol McKinley caught up with Churchill in Boulder. Here's some of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARD CHURCHILL, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: It's been said that I've justified and advocated what happened on 9/11. I considered it an inevitability.You do not justify inevitability. It is its own justification. You don't advocate it either. Advocate the inevitable? Pointless. Utterly misrepresenting what it was I was engaged in.

I'll grant you this was a harsh piece. It was intended to be because the reality that's being imposed on the people who responded is extraordinarily harsh, far beyond anything that's been experienced by Americans on 9/11 or in the entire course of American history so far as I can tell.

Bush, at least in symbolic terms, is the world's leading terrorist. He absolutely thumbs his nose at the rule of law. He's the head of a rogue state by definition, and it's a rogue state that dispenses carnage on people presumed to be inferior in some set of terms, whether they be racial or national or religious or otherwise, on the one hand, and of no particular utility to the empire, on the other.

Try to have a little empathy and respect for other people and that will carry a long way, just in and of itself, towards alleviating the dynamic that produces 9/11, and, if things continue, undoubtedly and inevitably, we'll produce another one.

CAROL MCKINLEY, FOX CORRESPONDENT: So -- and you -- OK. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

CHURCHILL: No.

MCKINLEY: So you're predicting other 9/11s.

CHURCHILL: Unless there is some fundamental change. But things have gone in the opposite direction, much to my dismay. So, you know, I've sort of taken my best shot at saying, hey, stop, think about this, and I'm paying the price of that, you see. It's to be purged in a way. There is this delighted political opportunism that goes into shooting the messenger here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Now we've invited Churchill on "The Factor.” He says he's thinking about it. The problem with this guy is that he sees the USA as a country that persecutes people, a bad country. You just heard him say it.

No matter what kind of evidence that you present, whether it be millions of people worldwide who have freedom because of the sacrifice of Americans, whether it be the billions of dollars in aid and trade exemptions we send abroad, whether it be the fact that very poor Americans have become rich Americans because of free enterprise, Ward Churchill would just shrug it off.

He wants us to empathize with Al Qaeda (search). Yet he has little empathy for his fellow countrymen who died on 9/11. He sees the USA as a racist country run by human rights violators. So, of course, any attack on America is justified in his mind.

Churchill's view is beyond extreme, but there is sympathy for him in the far left and the far right precincts in this country, both of which would like a new America, either socialist or fascist, depending on which group you analyze.

Again, Churchill's entitled to his opinion, and we are entitled to shun him.

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