O’Reilly on Malmedy, Myers on Counterinsurgency

Patrick Lang

19 years ago

by Col. W. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

The godlike reference by Bill O’Reilly to the supposed massacre by the 82nd Airborne Division of German prisoners at Malmedy during the Bulge is on this page.

Crooks & Liars:

Fox News Trancript:

O’REILLY: General, you need to look at the Malmady (ph) massacre in World War II and the 82nd Airborne.

Crooks and Liars Transcript:

Clark: And let me explain something. You go all the way up the chain of command —

O’Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

C&L asks: Was this an attempt to remove O’Reilly’s assertion that US troops were at fault?

………………………………..

More from the October 4, 2005 Fox transcript:

O’REILLY: General, with al respect, there were atrocities in Vietnam.

CLARK: Yes. And they were trials and they were punished.

O’REILLY: And World War II and World War I and the Civil War and the Revolutionary War.

CLARK: They were not by the chain of command.

O’REILLY: Yes, they were.

CLARK: No, they weren’t. No they weren’t.

O’REILLY: Lieutenant Callie and Medina in Vietnam?

CLARK: They were not condoned by the chain of command. Those guys were court martialed.

O’REILLY: With al due respect…

CLARK: … all the way up the chain of command.

O’REILLY: General, you need to look at the Malmady (ph) massacre in World War II and the 82nd Airborne.

CLARK: You’re looking at World War II. I’m looking at a volunteer army fighting a war against terror and if you’re going to win, you’ve got to have a higher standard.

O’REILLY: You want those picture pictures out? You want these pictures?

CLARK: I want our Army to live up to American values.

O’REILLY: So everybody does. You want the pictures out?

CLARK: We don’t torture people. So I think we need a complete investigation to see where this goes all the way up to the top level with the chain of command and up to the White House.

O’REILLY: Fine, no problem. Yes or no, general? Do you agree? Do you agree…

CLARK: I would like to see the pictures, Bill.

O’REILLY: You want to see the pictures.

CLARK: I want to see.

O’REILLY: Even if would put Americans in danger, you want to see them?

CLARK: I’ll tell you what’s put Americans in danger, is not having the Geneva Convention in force.

O’REILLY: All right. That’s theory, General. We’ve got guys over there now. That’s theory; we’ve got guys over there. Just rethink it. I disagree with you on that.

CLARK: No…

O’REILLY: I appreciate you coming on.

CLARK: Well, I want to hear you come back on my ground. I want to see what we can do to really clean this up. We can’t win this war on terror by torturing people.

In fact it was soldiers of the 1st SS Panzer Divsion, specifically the Regiment Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler who massacred AMERICAN prisoners at Malmedy. Their commander (Jochen Peiper) was tried for this crime after the war and acquitted largely because of the testimony of an American officer prisoner held at Peiper’s headquarters who said that Peiper never knew about it. Amusing.

As Clark said in this exchange, O’Reilly should apologise to the 82nd. Either that or they should go visit him.

But the “real deal” here is the segment on TDS (with VIDEO) in which Myers tells McCain that people who served in the VN war don’t understand Iraq. McCain was annoyed. Now I am sure that it is true that Myers served in VN and that he does not understand Iraq. Myers was a fighter jock or some such flying creature in VN. The fighter guys’ life consisted of getting up in the morning, having a nice breakfast, getting briefed, taking off, flying to the target, doing “whatever,” landing at the base, having a nice dinner, watching a Filipino floor show complete with watching nice looking girls perform “Country Roads,” and then going to bed early to get enough “crew rest.” The next day – the same thing. You don’t learn much about counterinsurgency that way.

Now, before the cards and letter start I would like to stipulate a couple of things:

– I owe my life to the USAF on any number of occasions.

– I always enjoyed the floor show whenever I got the chance to go visit one of their bases.

Nevertheless, I can only hope that General Pace will have more common sense than this.

For the record and always:

“Counterinsurgency = Political Action + Civic Action + Counterguerrilla Operations”

“Revolutionary War = Political Action + Civic Action + Guerilla War (Guerillas + sabotage + terrorism)”

I learned that from several Frenchmen including Bernard Fall who taught me at Ft. Bragg.

Pat Lang

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