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| 7/15 |
| 2006/6/2-8 [Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia] UID:43261 Activity:low |
6/2 "O'REILLY: And in Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S.
forces, who had their hands in the air. And they were unarmed. And they
shot them down. You know that. That's on the record. Been documented."
... unfortunately, the Malmedy massacre was SS forces murdering 70+
U.S. soldiers told to stand in a field:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malm%C3%A9dy_massacre
Clips of O'Reilly making this claim 8 months ago and again last week,
and his despicable response to a Fox viewer pointing out the error:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Countdown-OReilly-Malmedy.wmv
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Countdown-OReill.mov
Fox News rewrites the transcript (search for "documented"):
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197635,00.html
\_ You can't blame O'Reilly for that. Sometimes he just forgets
which side he was on.
\_ So O'Reilly is a knuckle head. What about it?
\_ It's the solidness of the case. Basically he repeated something
verifiably wrong that had U.S. soldiers herding unarmed German
soldiers into a field and executing 70+ of them with automatic
fire, his response to the correction was disgraceful, and you
have black-and-white evidence http://foxnews.com is covering it up.
\_ Ok, so O'Reilly was wrong and covered it up although the
person below says it is uncovered now. Again, so what?
O'Reilly is a commentor and rabble rouser, not a news
reporter. He has no obligation to tell the truth or get
anything right. He is an entertainer. Were you equally
upset at Dan Rather's "false but accurate" statement or
was Dan ok because you wanted to believe the report despite
actively falsified evidence? I don't get where you're trying
to go with all this.
\_ Another conservative with disdain for the
"reality-based community." -tom
\_ Rush Limbaugh is the one who said he's an entertainer
\_ "I don't get where you're trying to go with all this."
Man, if that doesn't sum up willful ignorance, I don't
know what does. Nice attempt to work in a "Fair and
Balanced" attack tactic by bringing up Rather. Still,
no cookie.
\_ I'm not being willfully ignorant. You haven't addresed
anything I've said. The guy is an entertainer. He's a
clown, just like at Ringling. His job is to entertain
and collect advertising dollars. Why do you care if he
makes boneheaded or out right factually incorrect
statements? He isn't anyone of any importance. He is
nobody. A nothing. Zip. Nil. Nada. Clown. Zero.
\- should we take away the press passes of anybody
associated with oreily/fox news? should we remove
their right to have their sources protected?
[this is more food for thought than a reply ...
i think it's an interestign question why a "serious
blogger" might have less journalistic protection/
rights than a "journalist" from an "celebrity
tracking" show.
\_ O'Reilly? Sure take away the press pass. Fox?
No. They have a slant like all news orgs but
they're still a news org, like it or not.
\_ Look, O'Reilly is broadcast on FOX News.
If he is intended to be entertainment,
they shouldn't broadcast him on a news
station. Jon Stewart isn't on CNN. As
long as they present his program as a news
show, on a news network, he has a
responsibility. And even if he's only
entertainment, he has a human, moral
responsibility. -tom
\_ When Rupert Murdock started Fox News he
said he would revolutionize the format of
broadcast-- it was unnecessary to make a
clear distinction between news and
commentary.
\_ Small point, there is no journalistic shield law.
\- small point: there are by-state Journalist
Shield Laws. More than half the states have
something. Including CA. Clearly it's not an
absolute thing, like if testimony is needed
in somebody elses criminal trial etc.
in somebody elses criminal trial etc. BTW,
worth looking at the recent WENHOLEE case.
\_ Right. I should have said "federal JSL"
There is no "right" to protection of sources.
There is a tradition of journalists protecting
sources by facing the brunt of punishment
themselves
\_ I care because he's being packaged as news instead
of entertainment. The entertainment version of BOR
is Stephen Colbert.
\_ No sane person thinks hes a new guy. His show
isn't packaged like a news show. What about him
is packaged as news and not talking head?
\_ Hint: You don't have to be insane to be
uninformed.
\_ fyi, http://foxnews.com changed the transcript back as recently as an
hour ago, but I can tell you that the site most definitely had
the fake transcript up at noon. -op
\_ for completeness, U.S. soldiers did execute about 22-23 SS prisoners
in Belgium and not in Normandy, although the "hands in the air"
description is most often used for Malmedy. the person interviewed
described it as a matter of necessity, a stealthy night withdrawal
with three panzer divisions nearby.
http://www.feldgrau.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=82142
here's a longer description of Malmedy, where it's also suggested
that killing the U.S. soldiers was a matter of necessity:
http://www.historynet.com/wwii/blmassacreatmalmedy
Unfortunately, I don't see how shooting kids in their PJs, etc.
was a matter of necessity. -op
\_ There's a massive difference between the massacre of POWs
("matter of necessity" is pretty fucking rich, "matter of
convenience" would be much more accurate here) by the
Waffen-SS at Malmedy and the execution of the German
captives of Operation Greif as spies (they were wearing U.S.
uniforms.) -John
\_ So, do you think we should be able to summarily execute
any Iraqi "insurgents" who dress up as police or
military? What about dressing as civilians?
\_ I'm not John, but yes. If they are out of uniform then
the Geneva Convention should not apply.
\_ http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/06/bill_oreilly_sc.html |
| 7/15 |
|
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malm%C3%A9dy_massacre prisoners of war were disarmed and sent to stand in a field near the crossroads. Peiper and his leading armoured units then continued their advance. A single SS soldier pulled out a pistol and shot a medical officer standing in the front row, and then shot the man standing next to the medical officer. Enlarge The memorial of the Malmedy massacre at Baugnez Many prisoners escaped into the nearby woods. Some 72-84 of the prisoners were killed, their bodies left on the field where they fell. It attracted great attention because of the nature of the crime and the later disputes about the conduct of the trial, and is repeatedly brought up by the German extreme right-wing. |
| www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197635,00.html SHOW INFO This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 30, 2006, that has been edited for clarity. Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 pm and 11 pm ET and listen to the "Radio Factor!" BILL O'REILLY, HOST: For the top story tonight, another view of this. Joining us from Washington, FOX News military analyst General Wesley Clark. Congressman Murtha, you know, don't stick up for the military, Charlie, you know, and really bomb throwing, agitating in my opinion, what would you think about that? WESLEY CLARK, FOX NEWS MILITARY ANALYST: Well, I don't think I'd interpret it that way, not quite like you put it, Bill. I think that what Congressman Murtha is doing is a legitimate function of the legislative branch. He obviously has had a lot of people who have talk to him about this. Pentagon indicate that, in fact, something like this incident did happen, it was murder, people were covered up. But people who have -- are familiar with the facts are reporting these things. And when it happens like that, it's an indicator that you are on the edge of feasibility of your policy. It's an indicator that the stress on the units is such that standards of discipline and performance are breaking down at the margin. Malmedy, all these things, and you're a military historian. And the breakdown has to be dealt with by the military extremely quickly, effectively. O'REILLY: Murderers, if they're deemed guilty in a military court of justice, have to be punished. But to draw a wider implication, general, when 95 percent, and I think you'd agree with that figure, of American forces overseas under tremendous stress, are performing heroically every day, to draw a wider implication at this juncture brutally unfair, both to our forces and to our country. CLARK: I say that, first of all, you'll have to show me and prove to me that there were ever any American soldiers in Belgium, and Normandy, or in Iwo Jima, who murdered civilians. Secondly, I think you're too low when you say 95 percent of the forces are performing effectively. But when you have incidents like this, and you have chains of command under enormous stress, that is an indicator that things aren't going right. O'REILLY: And in Malmedy, as you know, US forces captured SS forces, who had their hands in the air. The Japanese attempted to surrender, and they were burned in their caves. O'REILLY: Listen, what I'm trying to say to you is neither of those things, in the Battle of the Bulge or in Iwo Jima reflected negatively on our military, as far as its total performance was concerned. CLARK: I think we have to see this investigation unfold. a fire fight and some guy who suddenly, after he has been shooting at you, throws up his hands, says oh, now you can't shoot me because I've put down my weapon. It's another thing, if it's true as reported, that they broke into homes... O'REILLY: The Marines came to me and said, hey, Mr O'Reilly, would you do us a favor and wait until we release our report? Because I had confronted Donald Rumsfeld on this very issue and used the Mai Lai massacre as a starting point. I will let you put out your report before I start to advance a story. Murtha, a US congressman, goes on and indicts the entire military on a national program. And Murtha doesn't have the stones to come on this program and back up what he says. CLARK: I think Murtha has every right to say what he's saying. That's the legitimate function of the legislative branch of government, just like it could have been your function. Look, when another commander in chief was under investigation, the news media had no problems talking about it. Now when our soldiers are under investigation, there have always been cases where people have pushed for that. O'REILLY: I think you have to be tempered in your remarks, general. CLARK: I think he is tempered in the sense that he has expressed a great deal of respect for the men and women in uniform. John Murtha is a long-time supporter of our armed forces. CLARK: And there's no one in the military who's going to condone that conduct. O'REILLY: I'm going to give you the last word, general, but this is about Murtha saying I told you so, it's a bad war. It's a failure by the way the president defined the mission. The problem is how do we move gracefully from this position? What we've said is we need to turn this over to the Iraqi government... But we've got to protect the men and women in uniform and the integrity of our institutions. CLARK: John Murtha is worried about that and so am I O'REILLY: And I don't... O'REILLY: You're bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt Maybe I'm wrong. I'd like to talk to the man face to face like we're talking here. Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2006 FOX News Network, LLC. |
| www.feldgrau.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=82142 Reply with quote Another excerpt from the book "Beyond Valor" by Patrick O''Donnell. Veteran from the 82nd Airborne 505th PIR, talks about a massacre of German POWs. You cannot make a night withdrawal with enemies in a bitter cold snow and bring these people back; I won't go on record and say it was another Malmedy massacre. But it was in fact another massacre that took place that you can't read about, you won't hear about. No roads to speak of and you're coming back through the damn woods, so the name of the game was, you don't bring prisoners back. One of the German prisoners who was very well educated-an officer that went to school in the United States and spoke English very well - couldn't understand the rationale. If the shoe had been on the other foot, you'd have said the same thing. To be just a statistic, that's just some of the fate of being a wartime situation. Ironically, the 505th PIR was facing 1st SS troops of Kampfgruppe Peiper. I wonder if news of the Malmedy incident had filtered down to these front line troopers and that made it easier for them kill the prisoners. Reply with quote I've frequently encountered stories/recollections of POWs being murdered after capture - by both sides. I've read a book several years ago (I'm sure the title and author will come to me much later - perhaps one by John Keegan) that devoted a chapter to the psychology of both capturing and surrendering. Let's say you're a defender in a hopeless situation - if you decide to surrender, you lose all control over your fate. Will you be executed after you lay down your arms or will you be escorted to a rear area and treated well? If you know you'll be killed by your captors, you might be more inclined to go down fighting - and the news of these massacres seems to travel fast. You'd much rather take your objective without firing a shot. And if the enemy knows he can safely surrender, they might be even more inclined to do so. But suppose you now have prisoners to guard, care for, and escort to the rear while you also your next objective to achieve. Do you stop what you're doing to take care of your prisoners or do you execute them and move on? Something else to complicate matters - did the men you just capture also happen to kill your own mates just a few moments ago? These are all difficult decisions and I've read where men have decided either way. I personally find the execution of POWs appalling, but I've never been in the situation where I've had to make that kind of decision so I can't really second-guess those who do. One thing I've gathered is this: if you're going to surrender, do it before the shooting starts. Many POW killings I've read about take place following a fierce firefight in which one side runs out of ammo and then raises a white flag. Those guys end up getting killed and the attitude is "Sorry, old boy, too late now." Cheers, Patrick I was with my mom watching the news about a woman who drowned her kids in a bathtub. Reply with quote Quote: 505th faced Kampfgruppe Knittel at that time, not Peiper. Heavily locked in combat against the 120th and 117th Inf Rgts West of Stavelot, Knittel couldn't spare any forces at all to cover the Salm line. The Prisoners were taken more upstream, to the South it seems thus there is a strong possibility they were even from 9 SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen". Reply with quote The veteran was in command of the 505th Regimental Intelligence Section (S-2). It doesn't get into to detail which company he may have been hanging out with or where he was on the line except... were directed to withdraw from their positions in front of the Salm River and pull back to high ground between Trois-Ponts and Hotton. From the report I think it is clear that they got rid of the POWs before they set out. This was before they could have met KG Peiper, at their starting positions near the Salm, Rochelinval-Grand Halleux sector. Reply with quote Ok, that does make sense now that I re-read it. So it seems like these troops were most likely from the 9th SS. Now I won't pretend to be an expert, but what type of unit was the 9th? Reply with quote Patrick wrote: These are all difficult decisions and I've read where men have decided either way. I personally find the execution of POWs appalling, but I've never been in the situation where I've had to make that kind of decision so I can't really second-guess those who do. Patrick that's the honest answer, and a far more realistic one than some of the self righteous nonsense I've read on this board in my short time here. In fact those same pious pricks are the very ones who as I have observed, become the worst offenders regarding their close-minded view and treatment of "the enemy" as their personalities reduce to the primal, as men do, under combat stress. One never knows quite how one will behave under stress until placed in, or having been in, that situation. The soldier's job in combat is to achieve the objective. This might range from taking an position to simply causing the enemy maximum attiritional pain. Rendering the enemy ineffective so he can't do same to you is the primary objective in both cases. In the case of taking an positional objective, there simply isn't the luxury of either surplus manpower or time let alone will to play act the Hollywood PR nonsense for home audience consumption which is about as representative of the reality of war as a John Wayne movie. As you sweep through the objective, everyone (enemy) gets "rendered ineffective" by the assault wave irrespective. Then the killing party comes through and ensures the completeness of the job. Anyone taken prisoner might consider themselves exceptionally lucky, and probably only because they're acting under orders to collect same because HQ wants prisoners for intel. And even where not, when someone has been firing at you, the blood is all fired up and you're more than just a little cranky. Allied D-Day assault wave orders were "take no prisoners". The discreetly suggestive scene left to your "did he or didn't he? no, we didn't do that" imagination of Speers machine gunning the German prisoners in "Band of Brothers" was a norm, as was the depiction of the execution of those surrendering in SPR. Much worse and more prevalent in the east (Soviet Union) of course, and the infamous cultural difference to death of the Japanese and cruelty of Korean troops in the Pacific. Things were unquestionably more comfortable and civilised for the Japs when, if, they reached our rear, but in the line, they could generally expect short shrift. I know many an Aussie soldier who still hate them so much they won't buy a Jap car or anything "Made in Japan". And trust me when I say that's real twist a knife in their gut if given the opportunity hatred showing in their eyes. The ones who have since truly forgiven, and there are quite a few, are the exception IME If you want to witness a good photographic represention (evidence) of this, there's an infamous piece of film always shown as either an edit or reproduced as stills of an Aussie attack in the North African desert as Australian infantry run past a German PzKpfw III. In it you will see one of the crew notably unarmed and unharmed with his hands raised in surrender exiting from the tank's turret side hatch. In the next instant, which can clearly be recognised as an few frames and an cut (edit) later, you will see him slumped over dead in the same hatch. Of course, how they might have behaved when placed in a totally different set of circumstances might be with complete compassion. We are all capable of the best of things and the worst of things. Killing of surrendering or surrrendered enemy happened regularly on both sides. Its just that you don't read about it happening on the "our" side any more than the murder of an 11 year old schoolgirl sitting in her classroom by a Israeli 'soldier' rates other than a page 23 misrepresentation in the syndicated Zio-press, and only then because it can't be avoided in this visual media driven day and age. Reply with quote Holmer wrote: what type of unit was the 9th? Hohenstaufen is one of the two SS-divisions present at Arnhem (the oth... |
| www.historynet.com/wwii/blmassacreatmalmedy -> www.historynet.com/wwii/blmassacreatmalmedy/ Article from World War II Magazine World War II: Massacre At Malmedy During the Battle of the Bulge By carefully separating fact from fiction, a clearer picture emerges of the events surrounding the infamous execution of American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge. By Michael Reynolds The delightful Belgian town of Malmedy will forever be associated with the most infamous massacre of American troops in World War II. And yet, but for the presence of an Associated Press correspondent there in early January 1945, it is doubtful that this terrible incident would have ever achieved international notoriety. "Nazis Turned Machine Guns on GI POWs" wrote Hal Boyle in his January 1945 Stars and Stripes article, and from that first graphic account sprung a plethora of books and articles about the so-called Malmedy Massacre. Few of these accounts are based on fact, and most are embellished and inaccurate. It is unlikely that we shall ever know the precise sequence of events at the Baugnez crossroads, near Malmedy, on December 17, 1944, or the reasons for them. Nevertheless, many corroborated facts are known and a careful analysis of these facts can bring us closer to the truth of what happened. On December 16, 1944, the day Adolf Hitler's great Ardennes offensive began, Captain Leon Scarborough, the officer commanding Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, was told that his battery was being transferred from VII Corps to VIII Corps at 0600 hours the following day and that he was to report to his new headquarters at St. Before leaving Schevenhutte, near Aachen, Germany, Scarborough instructed Lieutenant Ksidzek, his executive officer, to move the unit to the new area on the 17th. A route-marking truck commanded by Lieutenant Gier was to precede the battery by about two hours with another five men. On reaching the VIII Corps artillery headquarters at 0900 on the 17th, Scarborough was told to check in with the 16th Field Artillery Observation Battalion for a survey and other data relating to his new area of operations. He was then to report to the 4th Infantry Division artillery headquarters in Luxembourg. He left instructions for his battery to be redirected to join him. The convoy consisted of 30 jeeps, weapons carriers and two-and-a-half-ton trucks, and was divided into two serials--the first led by Lieutenant Virgil Lary and the second by Lieutenant Perry Reardon. For reasons unknown, the battalion's executive officer, Captain Roger Mills, accompanied the battery and traveled in the lead jeep with Lary. Two other members of Headquarters Battery, a technical sergeant and a medical corporal, were also attached to Battery B Why Lary and not Lieutenant Ksidzek led the convoy is a mystery. Ksidzek traveled in one of the trucks at the rear of the column. The initial part of the journey lay through Eynatten and Eupen, and then, just to the north of Malmedy, the battery passed through the Baraque Michel, a high moorland area that was the designated drop zone for a German parachute operation designed to disrupt American reinforcements from the north. This operation, known as Greif, was commanded by the famous Colonel Friedrich von der Heydte. It is sadly ironic that had the paratroopers landed as planned and not been dispersed over a wide area, Battery B would have been forced to take a different route and the massacre would never have happened. As it was, the battery reached Malmedy without incident at about 1215 and found various serials of Combat Command R of the 7th Armored Division crossing the town from north to south on their way to St. The Battery B route-marking truck had already passed through. Vith road, the leading jeep was stopped by an engineer, Lt. His 291st Engineer Combat Battalion had been stationed in the area since early November, and while most of the troops in Malmedy had "bugged out" to the west in the face of the German offensive, Pergrin had decided to stay and defend the vital road center until reinforcements could arrive. The rest of his battalion was scattered throughout the northern Ardennes on various winterization duties. Pergrin had no idea of the extent of the enemy's strength, but one of his own jeep patrols had warned him that a German armored column was approaching the area to the southeast of Malmedy. He therefore warned Captain Mills and Lieutenant Lary not to proceed in that direction, and advised them to turn around and go to St. They had their orders, their place on a designated route and, perhaps most important of all, they knew that two of the men with the route-marker truck were farther down that route and that they were due to pick them up. Ignoring Pergrin's warning, the battery proceeded on its way. However, four vehicles at the rear of the convoy did not follow immediately. Owing to the sickness of a corporal who appeared to have food poisoning, Ksidzek in the battery commander's car, the battery maintenance and wire trucks and the route markers' pickup truck diverted to the 44th Evacuation Hospital in Malmedy to obtain medical treatment. Preceding the Battery B convoy on the N-23 was an ambulance of the 575th Ambulance Company, returning to its base in Waimes after a visit to the 44th Evacuation Hospital. Following it were four more ambulances, three from the 575th and one from the 546th Company. The junction of the N-23 and N-32, less than two miles southeast of Malmedy, was known locally as the Baugnez crossroads. Since it was the junction of five roads, the Americans called it "Five Points." Standing at the crossroads at about midday on December 17 was a Battery B route marker and a military policeman whose job was to direct the remaining serials of the 7th Armored Division. The only buildings near the crossroads in those days were the Cafe Bodarwe, on the southwest side of the junction with two farms beyond it, another farm on the north side and two small houses on the east side of the N-23--one 150 yards and the other just over half a mile south of Five Points. At about 1245 the military policeman and route marker waved Mills and Lary's jeep through Five Points in the direction of Ligneuville and St. The visibility was good, the temperature just above zero and there was no snow on the ground except for a light covering in places untouched by the sun. Shortly after this, with the lead jeep about half a mile south of the crossroads and the last vehicle of the battery just short of the Cafe Bodarwe, the column came under fire from two German tanks some 800 to 1,000 yards to its east. This division, the premier in the Waffen SS, together with its twin, the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, had been given the honor of spearheading the Sixth Panzer Army's attack toward the Meuse River. They were the only formations in the Wehrmacht to bear the Fuehrer's name, and they enjoyed a fearsome reputation--both had already been accused of various war crimes and of killing prisoners in cold blood. Joachim Peiper, a former adjutant to Heinrich Himmler and holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves. Through his service in France and on the Eastern Front he was renowned as a brilliant soldier and commander, but on this particular day he was tired and frustrated. Due to tougher than expected opposition by the US 99th Infantry Division against the formations ordered to create a gap for his 117 tanks, 149 armored personnel carriers, 24 artillery pieces and some 40 anti-aircraft guns, he was already more than 12 hours behind schedule. As Sternebeck moved north on the road from Thirimont to Bagatelle on the N-32, he saw the Battery B convoy moving south on the N-23 to his left. It was an inviting target, and he immediately opened fire with his own 75mm gun and ordered his accompanying tank to do the same. Each tank fired about five or six rounds and then, on Peiper's order, moved as fast as possible to Bagatelle, where they turned left and proceeded to Five Points, then turned left again onto the N-23. There they were confronted by the abandoned vehicles of the American convoy--some burning, some shot up, others in the ditch or crashed into each other. The exact number of vehicles along the ro... |
| onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/06/bill_oreilly_sc.html Links With Your Coffee - Friday >> Bill O'Reilly Scumbag He's done it now. Keith Olbermann has taken off the gloves, and he lands one squarely on the one they call Bill O'Reilly. Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth, Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceberg, and Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. Keith Olbermann OLBERMANN: Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. These are facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. But not, as the third story on the COUNTDOWN prove yet again, not to Bill-O. Bill OReilly has, for the second time in under eight months, slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen. He has turned them again from victims of the kind of atrocity our country has always fought against into perpetrators of that kind of atrocity. Last October Bill OReilly railed against a ruling that more photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq might be released. Clark is a retired four-star general, was for four years supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe. First in his class at West Point, wounded in Vietnam, earned the Bronze star, the Silver Star and has streets named for him in Alabama and in Kosovo. Therefore, naturally OReilly knows much more about the military than General Clark does. Clark defended the release of the additional Abu Ghraib photos saying we need to know what happened and to correct it. OReilly lectured him and concluded that there had always been atrocities, even by Americans in war. The Belgian town of Malmady did lend its name to one of the most appalling battlefield war crimes of the 20th century. But OReillys implication that the Americans committed it was entirely backwards. Americans, most of them, members of the Battery B of the 285th Fuel Artillery Observation Battalion, surrendered to German Panzer troops and were then shot by their captures by the SS Yet OReilly had implied that the Americans had massacred these Germans in this one stark moment of the Battler of the Bulge. And he used this Alice through the looking glass view of history to somehow rationalize Abu Ghraib while trying to dress down a four-star American general. OReilly had not explicitly called the Americans the war criminals of Malmady. Our war troops, too, were accused of crimes against prisoners in the Second World War. It was assumed last year that he had simply made a foolish error and though he got beaten up appropriately in some places, it was all largely dismissed as merely that, a mistake. Then came this Tuesday night, again OReillys guest was General Wes Clark. This time the topic was the apparent murder of Iraqi civilians at Haditha. That OReilly was dismissive of that event should be no surprise, that he should have described as the real crime of Iraq the events of Abu Ghraib, should be no surprise of those who know of his willingness to jettison his most important beliefs of yesterday for the expediencies and the ratings of today, but that he should have brought up Malmady again, that was a surprise. The mistake of last October was not some innocent slip nor misrembered history. This was the way OReilly understood and thus, this way it had to be. No errors corrected, no apologies offered, no stopping the relentless tide of bull even briefly enough to check one fact. The facts of Malmady are terrifying as described by Michael Reynolds in his painstakingly detailed article from a 2003 issue of "World War II" magazine. One week before Christmas, 1944, 139 US soldiers, most of them from the 285th Field Artillery, encountered the German comf (ph) group, Piper, the leading formation of the German first SS Panzer Division, one of only two German units in the entire war which actually carried Adolf Hitlers name. The 11 of the 139 soldiers were killed in the very short battle of Malmady, two more were killed as they tried to flee, seven escaped, six became prisoners of war. The other 113 Americans, nearly all of whom had surrendered outright, were ordered to assemble in an open field next to a restaurant, the Cafe Bodarue (ph). What happened next has been attributed to many things, a cold-blooded decision by that unit Panzer commander, Colonel Joachim Piper, that he could not handle the prisoners, or an unjustifiable overreaction to some kind of escape attempt or simply horrible mass murder. Within 15 minutes the SS Colonel or someone directly under him had ordered his men to shoot the unarmed American POWs. The bodies at Malmedy were not found until a month later. There were 84 of them, all American soldiers, more than half shotgun wounds to their heads. Six had received fatal blows to the head, nine were found with their arms still raised above their heads. The fact that OReilly got these horrible facts completely backwards twice offended even his usually compliant viewers. From his program Wednesday night: (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OREILLY: Don Caldwell, Fort Worth, TX. Bill, you mentioned that Malmady as the site of an American massacre during World War II. It was the other way around, the SS shot down US prisoners." In the heat of the debate with General Clark, my statement wasnt clear enough, Mr Caldwell. When you are that wrong, when you are defending Nazi war criminals and pinning their crimes on Americans and you get caught doing so twice, youre supposed to say Im sorry, I was wrong, and then youre supposed to shut up for a long time. Instead, FOX washed its transcript of OReillys remarks Tuesday. Its Web site claims OReilly said in Normandy, when, as you heard, in fact, he said in Malmedy. The rewriting of past reporting worthy of George Orwell has now carried over into such online transcription services as Burells and Factiva. Whatever did or did not happen later in supposed or actual retribution, the victims at Malmedy were Americans, gunned down while surrendering by Nazis in 1944 and again Tuesday night and Wednesday night by a false patriot who would rather be loud than right. In Malmedy, as you know, Bill OReilly said on the air Tuesday night in some indecipherable attempt to defend the events of Haditha, "US forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead. The victims in Malmedy in December 1944 were Americans, Americans with their hands in the air, Americans who were unarmed. Thats on the record and documented, and their memory deserves better than Bill OReilly. However in light of the fact that the average viewer of O'R factor is mentally retarded, it hardly seems worth the effort. Who cares is some asshole is spouting bulshit, people like O'R have been around forever, the worst we can do is pay attention to idiots like him, which gives them some auro of legitimacy. Same goes for the intelligent design croud, especially as everyone knows that the world was really created by the Flying Spagetti Monster. June 2, 2006 12:54 AM Like the ideologues who control the White House, like all ideologues, Bill O'Reilly is incapable of being wrong or changing course, no matter what the objective situation. It's why the Germans and Japanese could not stop what they started before it destroyed them. It is why Bush and the neo-con traitors will not stop until the nation is destroyed. They are in the grip of an ideological madness, as we all are as long as they have control. June 2, 2006 05:52 AM Thank you for posting this clip, I wish we could get the whole country to see this. Clark's response was to BO when he pressed him on Malmady... June 2, 2006 06:12 AM The FOX website changes the transcript to read Normandy instead of Malmedy. But then O'Reilly discusses the Malmedy bit on his response to the viewer's email. It seems that the FOX viewers are not very discerning if FOX feels that they can get away with this farce. June 2, 2006 06:47 AM "Sisyphus of morons": enough said. I think he will need surgery to remove the foot from his mouth although it may be beyond the ability of modern medicine. And as for Fox altering the transcript, the disgust Olbermann's face r... |
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