O'Reilly falsely claimed he “went on facts and facts alone” in his statements supporting Iraq war


On the April 24 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly denied the assertion by Marvin Kalb, lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a senior fellow at the school's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, that prior to, and during, “the first year or even two after the [Iraq] war got started, Fox and many other people associated with Fox ... said all kinds of things in support of the war, which were not being borne out by the facts.” O'Reilly replied: “No, I didn't. I went on facts and facts alone.” In fact, in the lead-up to, and following, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, O'Reilly made several false claims and misleading suggestions regarding the threat posed by Iraq. Notably, O'Reilly repeatedly suggested a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, despite numerous reports undermining this claim.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

Prior to the invasion, O'Reilly frequently repeated the Bush administration's claim that Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Both claims -- that Zarqawi had prewar connections to Al Qaeda and that Saddam had a relationship with or harbored Zarqawi -- were discredited following the invasion. However, this did not stop O'Reilly from continuing to cite Zarqawi as proof of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

In the lead-up to war, O'Reilly frequently pushed the story that, in 2002, Zarqawi had his leg amputated at a Baghdad hospital operated by Uday Hussein, Saddam's son, as evidence of the Iraqi government's complicity with Al Qaeda. (While O'Reilly repeatedly claimed that Zarqawi's leg was amputated in Baghdad, that particular claim was later debunked. As Newsweek reported in March 2004, Zarqawi may have received medical treatment in Baghdad, but he did not appear to have had his leg amputated.) For instance, during the February 4, 2003, edition of the Factor, he asserted: “If this guy Zarqawi got injured in Afghanistan, had his leg treated in Baghdad, that's an Al Qaeda link right there.”

The following day, Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council and discussed Zarqawi at length, claiming that Zarqawi had helped establish Al Qaeda “affiliates” in Baghdad. That evening on the Factor, O'Reilly praised Powell's mention of Zarqawi, stating: “You know, look, I mean if the guy's getting his leg amputated in Baghdad, you know, Saddam Hussein is going to know about it. He's an Al Qaeda big shot coming off the battlefield of Afghanistan. Yes, maybe he made a stop in Tehran, but who -- does that surprise anybody?”

But as The Christian Science Monitor reported at the time, several of Powell's claims about Zarqawi's connection to Saddam appeared not “to be true.” According to the Monitor, the “International Crisis Group (ICG), a research organization in Brussels whose analysts are very familiar with the region, has cast serious doubt on the US claims" because “when talking about the Zarqawi network, Powell was referring to 'Ansar al-Islam,' a Kurdish Islamic-extremist group,” of which “there is little independent evidence of links between Ansar and Baghdad.” Moreover, as numerous news outlets reported in October 2004, a CIA report released to policymakers in August of that year found no conclusive evidence that Saddam harbored Zarqawi or gave him aid. (The Senate Intelligence Committee would later assert in a September 8, 2006, report that Saddam's “regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.” The report also noted that “postwar information from an al-Qaeda detainee revealed that Saddam's regime 'considered Zarqawi an outlaw,' and blamed his network, operating in Kurdish-controlled northern-Iraq, for two bombings in Baghdad.”)

Further, as Media Matters for America has previously noted, numerous reports published in 2003 and 2004 undermined the idea of any meaningful association between Zarqawi and Al Qaeda prior to the invasion:

  • In a June 22, 2003, article, The Washington Post reported that by the time Bush referred to Zarqawi in an October 2002 speech urging Congress to support a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, “U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member but the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al Qaeda adherents.”
  • Citing interrogations of Zarqawi associate Shadi Abdallah, Newsweek reported in June 2003 that “Zarqawi competed with bin Laden for trainees and members.”
  • Roger Cressey, a former Clinton counterterrorism official at the National Security Council, was quoted in a June 25, 2004, New York Times op-ed as saying that Zarqawi's training camp in Afghanistan operated “as much in competition as it was in cooperation” with Al Qaeda.

Nonetheless, in 2004 and 2005, O'Reilly continued to claim that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq proved complicity between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, as Media Matters repeatedly noted. For instance:

  • On the May 25, 2004, edition of the Factor, O'Reilly stated: “He [Zarqawi] has direct ties to Al Qaeda.” Earlier that day on his radio show, O'Reilly had claimed that “after [Zarqawi] was wounded in Afghanistan, [he] went to Baghdad. This is the second Al Qaeda big shot.”
  • On the June 3, 2004, edition of the Factor, O'Reilly said that “Zarqawi is what, second or third in command of Al Qaeda.” The next day on his radio program, O'Reilly asserted: “They've [Europeans who opposed the Iraq war] never heard about Zarqawi, the third in command in Al Qaeda getting his leg amputated in Baghdad.”
  • In his September 16, 2004, nationally syndicated column, O'Reilly wrote: “I mean, this guy [Zarqawi] is one of the most vicious Al Qaeda thugs in the world. ... In early 2000, Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to assume a leadership position in an al Qaeda training camp.”
  • On the September 27, 2004, edition of the Factor, O'Reilly asserted: “I'm just going on what U.S. intelligence told my researcher face-to-face, that Zarqawi was a major Al Qaeda trainer in Afghanistan, was wounded on the Afghan battlefield, went then for treatment in Baghdad, where he remains, in Fallujah, beheading people. ... I want to make this clear. Zarqawi, according to U.S. intelligence -- and we spoke to them directly, this isn't taken from The New York Times or anything like that -- trained Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That's where he trained them from the year 2002-up, until the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces. He was wounded on the battlefield, then he went to Iraq, where he was treated in a hospital run by Uday Hussein.”
  • On the October 5, 2004, edition of the Factor, O'Reilly dismissed the CIA's failure to find conclusive evidence that Saddam harbored Zarqawi as “a bunch of nonsense. ...There's no question he was in deep with Al Qaeda.” That same day on his radio show, O'Reilly was confused by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's admission that he had seen “no strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam to Al Qaeda because “the Factor did its own independent investigation and the smoking gun is this guy, Al-Zarqawi.”
  • During the August 16, 2005, edition of his radio show, O'Reilly again claimed that Saddam had “allowed Ansar Al-Islam, an Al Qaeda affiliate, to exist in Northern Iraq,” when, in fact, Saddam had no control over the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Other claims

O'Reilly has also made numerous other false claims relating to the Iraq war, as Media Matters has documented:

  • On the April 27, 2004, edition of the Factor, O'Reilly falsely claimed that the Paris Business Review had documented the success of O'Reilly's boycott against France for not sufficiently supporting the United States in its fight against terrorism and in Iraq. According to O'Reilly, “they've lost billions of dollars in France according to 'The Paris Business Review.' ” As Media Matters noted, a Media Matters search found no evidence of a publication called the Paris Business Review at the time. Also, contrary to O'Reilly's claim, U.S. imports from France actually appeared to have increased during the time in which O'Reilly conducted his boycott.
  • On the September 27, 2004, edition of the Factor, in response to Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) criticism of Bush's use of the phrase “Mission Accomplished,” O'Reilly falsely claimed that Bush didn't say “mission accomplished” during his May 1, 2003, speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, in which Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. In fact, during his speech, Bush said: “America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.”
  • On the July 12, 2004, edition of the Factor, O'Reilly falsely claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence on Iraq “says he [Bush] didn't lie” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, the report did not address the accuracy of Bush's public statements regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities.

From the April 24 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

KALB: What was true was that, when the war was being set up, and in the first year or even two after the war got started, Fox and many other people associated with Fox or the Fox point of view -- let's put it that way -- said all kinds of things in support of the war, which were not being borne out by the facts that the two of us --

O'REILLY: No, I didn't. I went on facts and facts alone.