The War Over How to Fight Al Qaeda Continues

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

The war over how to fight Al Qaeda (search) continues.  That is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo."  If every country in the world would unite against Al Qaeda, those killers would already have been put out of business.  But even here in the USA, there are people who simply will not realize mistakes.  And forget about overseas.  The world is a very frightening place almost everywhere.

Once again, these Al Qaeda savages are threatening to kill an innocent human being.  This time a South Korean kidnapped in Iraq.  The government of South Korea has been soft on terrorism.  Do you think this incident will turn them around? Who knows?

Back here, we still have "The New York Times" pounding the Bush administration for anything and everything.  Today "The Times" questions holding the detainees at Guantanamo (search).  We'll analyze that in a moment.

Then on Saturday, "The Times" lead editorial demanded "show us the truth."  As you may know, The Factor provided the link between Al Qaeda and Iraq last week.  And since that time, "The Times" and other newspapers have been under heavy fire for their misleading headlines, basically saying there was no link between the two.

Governor Thomas Kean (search) says definitely there was a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda.  And he's the 9/11 investigative chief, but that's not enough for "The Times," which continues to deny the Iraq-Al Qaeda association.

This is from their editorial: "Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda...but the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet (search) told the Senate this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the direction of Al Qaeda."

Well, "Talking Points" found that editorial to be very strange,  very strange indeed because in the testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 11, 2003, one month before the start of the Iraq war, Tenet said this: "Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Usama bin Laden."

You can look it up.  Maybe Tenet contradicted himself, but "The New York Times" owes it to the readers to report the terrorism story accurately.  And the paper is simply not doing that.

The result is a division in this country and a lack of resolve in fighting these vicious terrorists.  Many Americans are simply confused. They are hearing so many contradictory claims.

The reason "The New York Times" is misleading us is explained in my column this week, which can be accessed on billoreilly.com.

But make no mistake about it.  The more divided America and the world is over how to combat terrorism, the easier it is for the terrorists to kill us.  The spin must stop.  Our lives depend on it.

And that's "The Memo."

The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day

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

Pop singer Madonna, who now wants to be called "Esther." has lashed out at President Bush who now wants to be called President Bush.  Madonna told ABC News that George Bush is promoting a "lynch mob culture in America," and went on to say that he's no better than Saddam Hussein.  Madonna is currently studying for her Ph.D. in political science at University of Venus.  We will let you know how she matriculates. Ridiculous? No, of course not.