O'Reilly's anti-insurgency strategy: "Fallujah should not exist. It should have been leveled a long time ago"

Summary: Bill O'Reilly said that U.S. troops should have "destroyed" the Iraqi city of Fallujah "a long time ago" as a "message" to insurgents.

On his nationally syndicated radio show The Radio Factor, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, responding to news reports that 10 U.S. Marines were killed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, opined that "Fallujah should not exist. It should have been leveled a long time ago. Just leveled. That town should have been made an example of years ago." Stating that this recommended course of action should have been taken when local insurgents publicly mutilated four U.S. contractors in March 2004, he continued: "That town should have been destroyed as a message, and it hadn't been. And it was a huge mistake, ladies and gentlemen. You can't win this war on terror with half-measures. That town -- everybody should have been evacuated and flattened. And now we got 10 more Marines killed in Fallujah."

From the December 2 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: All right, in no-spin news, bad news right off the top. Ten U.S. Marines conducting a foot patrol outside of the Iraqi city of Fallujah were killed in an explosion of an insurgent bomb. OK, now, Fallujah should not exist. It should have been leveled a long time ago. Just leveled. That town should have been made an example of years ago. That's the town were they hung the four U.S. contractors from the bridge. Remember that? They had burned their bodies and then hung them. That town should have been destroyed as a message, and it hadn't been. And it was a huge mistake, ladies and gentlemen. You can't win this war on terror with half-measures. That town -- everybody should have been evacuated and flattened. And now we got 10 more Marines killed in Fallujah. Awful.

—R.S.K.