Putting Americans in Danger...

Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly.  Thanks for watching us tonight.

Putting Americans in danger by reporting controversial stories, that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points" memo."  As you may know, CBS News (search) [on its program "60 Minutes II] ran pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured by American soldiers.  Big story, press had to report it.  But by using those graphic images of the torture, CBS has given the enemies of America a powerful weapon.  And that's disturbing.

We are not going to use the pictures tonight, but we will tell you they portray naked Iraqis in humiliating positions with some soldiers posing immaturely, some say sadistically, beside them.

Now 17 U.S. soldiers are in big trouble over this.  And we believe most of them will be harshly punished. But you'd never know that by monitoring many of the dispatches from the foreign press.

Al Jazeera (search) played the story big, pointing out the atrocities, but somehow failing to mention that arrests have been made.  We expect that kind of reporting from that network, which is so hateful towards the U.S.A.

However, the same kind of thing is going on in the so-called friendly countries. London's "Daily Mail" (search) ran this headline "Tortured, Abused, and Humiliated:  Shocking Pictures Show How Soldiers Treated Iraqi prisoners in Saddam's Jail."  "The Mail" went on to say that now the Americans are in charge and that torture of Saddam's regime continues.  Nice.

The Italian "Daily La Republica" (search) editorialized that the United States was practicing "classic and irrefutable torture."  "The Arab News" opined "U.S. military power will be seen for what it is, a behemoth with the response speed of a muscle-bound ox and the limited understanding of a mouse."

So 17 fools exposed by CBS News have damaged America's reputation worldwide.  17 out of 200,000 military people in the theater.  What a shame.

Now what would you do if you were running CBS News?  No question it's a big story.  And you have exclusive shocking pictures.  But you know your country will be hurt when those pictures get out.  You also know somebody else will most likely get the story and the pictures.  So what would you do?

I would run the story but not the pictures.  I'd describe them using vivid words.  But I could not put my fellow countrymen, I should say, in even more danger than they are now by running the photographs. I'm not condemning CBS News. I'm just telling you what I'd do.

It's true the people abroad who hate us would hate us with or without the story.  The foreign press has been generally disgraceful on its coverage of America.  But this Iraq situation is deadly, deadly serious.  And you can expect even more crazy jihadists to enlist because of this exposition.

The end zone here is that the American media have to be very careful about what we give our enemies. Lives are at stake

And that's "The Memo."

The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day

Time now for "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day"...

The media dishonesty continues.  As you know, The Factor is very concerned that Canada may grant safe harbor to two American Army deserters, thereby undermining our war on terror here.  We can't have that.  And we posted this poll question on billoreilly.com.  Will you support a boycott of Canadian goods and services if that country does not return the American deserters?  Now we will give you the results of that poll, entertainment poll, not scientific, on Monday.  Tens of thousands of you have already voted.

Now, as you might expect, the Canadian media, some of whom have glorified the deserters, are not happy about my criticism. Today the Canadian Press, a newswire service, ran an article which said the following, that many consider me, your humble correspondent a, "ultra-conservative shark, millions of sharks were immediately offended." That I called all Canadians "pinheads." That is flat out untrue. And that I urged Americans to write letters to a columnist from "The Toronto Globe & Mail," another falsehood, it simply didn't happen.

So I called Scott White (ph), who runs that news service, and I had a nice conversation with the guy.  I pointed out to him the story was read by millions of Canadians who now have an erroneous impression of me and The Factor.  Mr. White said the record would be corrected on Monday.  We will let you know what happens and if it is ridiculous or not. -- I think we lead the league now in corrections from the print press.

--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