Glass houses? O'Reilly derided "talk show nuts" who believe U.S. will "nuke Iran"

On the May 18 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, while discussing May 17 Senate negotiations on a comprehensive immigration bill, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly asserted: "Now, the far right, the hard right, somehow believes that, in the United States of America, the federal government at some point is gonna form federal squads to go in and grab people where they live or where they work and throw them out of the country. These are the talk show nuts who are telling you that they're gonna nuke Tehran." In fact, as Media Matters for America has documented, O'Reilly is among those who have predicted that the United States will eventually bomb Iran. O'Reilly's statements include:

• On the December 5, 2006, broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, O'Reilly asserted that "we may have to" "level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people," which, he explained, the United States has "already done in Germany and Japan." O'Reilly then offered a hypothetical scenario that, he argued, would result in such an attack: "If Iran takes over Iraq and then fosters a revolution inside Saudi Arabia ... and gets control of all the oil and says we're not selling to the USA, we are going to level that country, because you ... need gasoline to live."

• On the January 10, 2006, broadcast of his syndicated radio show, O'Reilly declared: "[I]t's a matter of time before the United States of America and Great Britain will have to bomb the country of Iran. Get set. Get set. 'Cause they're not gonna leave it to Israel to do it this time, because you can't allow that country to get nuclear weapons." O'Reilly's remark came during a discussion about Iran's removal of seals on equipment and materials related to uranium enrichment at a plant in Natanz, after more than two years of suspending enrichment-related activities.

From the May 18 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor:

O'REILLY: Now, the far right, the hard right, somehow believes that, in the United States of America, the federal government at some point is gonna form federal squads to go in and grab people where they live or where they work and throw them out of the country. These are the talk show nuts who are telling you that they're gonna nuke Tehran or, you know -- I don't know why anybody would listen to these people, but the far right, some on the far right, actually believe that this might happen. It will never happen in this country, ever. And according to a new Gallup poll, only 24 percent of Americans want to see it happen. So 76 percent of Americans don't want flying federal squads running around grabbing these people and throwing them out.

— A.I.

Posted to the web on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 02:47 PM ET