O'Reilly: Iraqi people are "primitive," "prehistoric group"

Radio host and FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly told listeners that he has "no respect for" the Iraqi people; that he thinks "they're a prehistoric group"; that they are "primitive"; and that the lesson from the Iraq war is that "we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them." His remarks on the June 17 broadcast of The Radio Factor came during a discussion of a recent poll -- commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority and obtained by the Associated Press -- that found that only 2 percent of Iraqis view U.S. troops as liberators and 55 percent would feel safer if U.S. troops left the country immediately.

From the June 17 broadcast of The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.

Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.

[...]

They're just people who are primitive.

—G.W.