FOX NEWS’ STAR ANCHORMAN IS MORE SKEPTICAL ABOUT BUSH
WASHINGTON, 12 Feb. (IPS) Bill O'Reilly, the star anchorman of the pro-Bush
Fox News Television and one of the American media’s most fervent critics of
France’s refusal to go along with the United States military intervention in
Iraq regretted to have sustained the American intervention in Iraq publicly.
The unexpected U turn from the journalist places President George W. Bush in a more delicate position at a time that Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts leads comfortably in the Democrat’s primaries and is already given by many political analysts as a "real threat" to the incumbent Republican President.
"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this", O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America", adding that he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hoseyn's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.
The Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq while insisting that the country possessed some weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The ex-boss of the group of experts assigned to find the weapons, David Kay, affirmed Tuesday that these weapons "didn't exist".
"O.K, I did it. What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?" asked O'Reilly, whose show on the Fox Television channel had beat most other competitors and his sharp criticism of France had made him more popular among American viewers told the ABC.
"My analysis was wrong and I regret, said the journalist who, at the height of diplomatic raw between Paris and Washington extolled on his internet website a virulent" Boycott the French".
"I’m "much more sceptical about the Bush administration now", he said, blaming the CIA’s Director George Tenet and asking, "I don't know why Tenet still has his job".
"I think every American should be very concerned for themselves that our intelligence is not as good as it should be. I also think that all Americans should worry about everything that happens", he confessed.
In March 2003, shortly before the start of the American-British invasion of Iraq O'Reilly had promised the ABC that he would apologize if no weapons of mass destruction were discovered in Iraq.
O'Reilly anticipated the presidential election would be "a close race", adding he thought Democratic front-runner Senator Kerry would be "a formidable opponent" against Bush. ENDS FOX TV REGRETS 12204