O'Reilly apology watch...

Don't hold your breath. The buck is brilliantly being passed to the CIA. Professor Balkin sighs.
Always worth remembering, though, the prescient lines:

"Here's, here's the bottom line on this for every American and everybody in the world, nobody knows for sure, all right? We don't know what he has. We think he has 8,500 liters of anthrax. But let's see. But there's a doubt on both sides. And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right? But I'm giving my government the benefit of the doubt."

Now- here's an important point: Complaining about O'Reilly or the larger Fox News is not what this is all about. What is significant is that this type of "promise" from March 18, 2003 reveals WHY we went to war.

It seems to me that O'Reilly echoes a popular perception amongst supporter of te war; to wit, despite differences of opinion as to exactly what Hussein retains in weapons--it is most likely something beyond conventional weapons. Thus, we should invade because it maybe alot, and the risk that he has alot of WMD is greater than the risk that we will have invaded a country with no WMDs. This is the line of reasoning in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, where he lists all the various weapons he had and could offer no record of destroying.
As O'Reilly's March 2003 comment makes clear- the weapons were CENTRAL to our invading logic. Despite the administration's play with rhetoric, refiguring the meaning of threat, and redifining WMDs- the weapons were central to the popular logic.
Of course, this is where we objectors objected. If WMDs are central to our logic for invasion- why not carry on inspections? Hussein can't do anything aweful under the world's combined lenses....so let's inspect the *#% out of the country and get a clear understanding of where we are. Indeed- the desire for more inspection was an aknowledgment that our Intel might be incomplete; which...ding ding ding...IT WAS.
Lastly. Everytime I hear an administration figure going on about public support for the Iraq war not resting on WMDs I figure we could figure this out empirically.
Do a poll with the following questions:

1) did you support the war?

2) If so, in your own words, why?

3) If: a) prolonged and trustworthy weapons inspections had conclusively shown that Hussein possessed no WMDs; and b) was no greater threat to the U.S. than Cuba, would you have supported the war?

4) If so, why?