If you watched Countdown last night you were witness to a livid Keith Olbermann, devoid of his usual sense of humor, tearing into Bill O’Reilly for turning the facts on end and accusing American soldiers massacred at Malmedy during World War II of having been the perpetrators of the massacre rather than the victims.
Calling the latest O’Reilly rant the “Worst O‘Reilly mistake ever,” Olbermann played a clip from The O’Reilly Factor:
BILL O‘REILLY, HOST, “THE O‘REILLY FACTOR”: In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down.
And following the clip Olbermann opened both barrels:
OLBERMANN: No, in World War II it was the other way around. Why is O‘Reilly insisting he‘s right? Why has Fox altered the transcripts? Why are they defending Nazi war criminals who killed American servicemen? The real story of Malmedy…
Olbermann continued:
The guilty pleasure offered by the existence of Bill O‘Reilly is simple but understandable, 99 times out of 100, when we belly up to the Bill-O bar of bluster, nearly every time we partake of the movable falafel feast he serves us nothing but comedy, farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation, the Sideshow Bob of commentators forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake. The Sisyphus of morons, if you will. But this is the 100th time out of 100. It is not funny at all. Bill O‘Reilly has, for the second time in under eight months, slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen. He has turned them again from victims of the kind of atrocity our country has always fought against into perpetrators of that kind of atrocity. He has made these Americans into war criminals. They are dead and have been dead for 61 years. They cannot defend themselves against O‘Reilly. We will have to do it for them.
Last October Bill O‘Reilly railed against a ruling that more photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq might be released. His guest on his program was Wesley Clark. Clark is a retired four-star general, was for four years supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe. First in his class at West Point, wounded in Vietnam, earned the Bronze star, the Silver Star and has streets named for him in Alabama and in Kosovo. Therefore, naturally O‘Reilly knows much more about the military than General Clark does. Clark defended the release of the additional Abu Ghraib photos saying we need to know what happened and to correct it. O‘Reilly lectured him and concluded that there had always been atrocities, even by Americans in war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL O‘REILLY, “THE O‘REILLY FACTOR”: General, you need to look at the Malmady Massacre in World War II in the 82nd airborne.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Olbermann: It was a remarkable mistake. The Belgian town of Malmady did lend its name to one of the most appalling battlefield war crimes of the 20th century. But O‘Reilly‘s implication that the Americans committed it was entirely backwards. Americans, most of them, members of the Battery B of the 285th Fuel Artillery Observation Battalion, surrendered to German Panzer troops and were then shot by their captures by the S.S. Yet O‘Reilly had implied that the Americans had massacred these Germans in this one stark moment of the Battler of the Bulge. And he used this Alice through the looking glass view of history to somehow rationalize Abu Ghraib while trying to dress down a four-star American general.
Still it could have been a mistake, we make them. Even historians do. O‘Reilly had not explicitly called the Americans the war criminals of Malmady. Our war troops, too, were accused of crimes against prisoners in the Second World War. It was assumed last year that he had simply made a foolish error and though he got beaten up appropriately in some places, it was all largely dismissed as merely that, a mistake.
Then came this Tuesday night, again O‘Reilly‘s guest was General Wes Clark. This time the topic was the apparent murder of Iraqi civilians at Haditha. That O‘Reilly was dismissive of that event should be no surprise, that he should have described as the real crime of Iraq the events of Abu Ghraib, should be no surprise of those who know of his willingness to jettison his most important beliefs of yesterday for the expediencies and the ratings of today, but that he should have brought up Malmady again, that was a surprise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O‘REILLY: In Malmady, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and they were unarmed and they shot them down. You know that. That‘s on the record. Been documented.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Olbermann: Thus was the full depth of Bill O‘Reilly‘s insult to the American debt of World War II made clear. The mistake of last October was not some innocent slip nor misrembered history. This was the way O‘Reilly understood and thus, this way it had to be. No errors corrected, no apologies offered, no stopping the relentless tide of bull even briefly enough to check one fact…
Olbermann proceeded to explain that what really happened at Malmedy was that Nazi troops had gunned down at least 84 captured American prisoners, not the other way around as O’Reilly had suggested. He went on to chastise O’Reilly further for trying to extricate himself from this mess:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O‘REILLY: Don Caldwell, Fort Worth, TX. Bill, you mentioned that Malmady as the site of an American massacre during World War II. It was the other way around, the S.S. shot down U.S. prisoners.”
In the heat of the debate with General Clark, my statement wasn‘t clear enough, Mr. Caldwell. After Malmady, some were executed by American troops.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Olbermann: Wrong answer. When you are that wrong, when you are defending Nazi war criminals and pinning their crimes on Americans and you get caught doing so twice, you‘re supposed to say I‘m sorry, I was wrong, and then you‘re supposed to shut up for a long time. Instead, FOX washed its transcript of O‘Reilly‘s remarks Tuesday. Its Web site claims O‘Reilly said in Normandy, when, as you heard, in fact, he said in Malmedy.
The rewriting of past reporting worthy of George Orwell has now carried over into such online transcription services as Burell‘s and Factiva. Whatever did or did not happen later in supposed or actual retribution, the victims at Malmedy were Americans, gunned down while surrendering by Nazis in 1944 and again Tuesday night and Wednesday night by a false patriot who would rather be loud than right.
In Malmedy, as you know, Bill O‘Reilly said on the air Tuesday night in some indecipherable attempt to defend the events of Haditha, “U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead. You know that, that‘s on the record and documented.” The victims in Malmedy in December 1944 were Americans, Americans with their hands in the air, Americans who were unarmed. That‘s on the record and documented, and their memory deserves better than Bill O‘Reilly. We all do.
See the clip at Crooks and Liars.
So just how did O’Reilly get this story so wrong? How indeed, because when he wrote about Malmedy a year ago in Human Events, he got it right:
The Limits of Dissent
by Bill O’Reilly Posted Jun 27, 2005
…After German SS troops massacred 86 American soldiers at Malmedy in Belgium on Dec. 17, 1944, some units like the U.S. 11th Armored Division took revenge on captured German soldiers.
It appears O’Reilly was thinking about another incident, one that occured a week after Malmady when members of the 82nd Airborne did indeed murder captured German SS troops. I found this excerpt from a book entitled “Beyond Valor” in a Google search:
Veteran from the 82nd Airborne 505th PIR, talks about a massacre of German POWs.
Quote:
“I think one of the most memorable things [in Belgium] was Christmas eve [1944] along the Salm River line. We had some twenty-some-odd German prisoners that we’d taken and on Christmas eve, the 505th, in their deployment, stuck out in the overall [line] of the German advance. So the name of the game was to withdraw. You cannot make a night withdrawal with enemies in a bitter cold snow and bring these people back; I won’t go on record and say it was another Malmedy massacre. But it was in fact another massacre that took place that you can’t read about, you won’t hear about.
It was a matter of not being able to comply with the order to withdraw and do it without losing your own people and bring back a bunch of enemy people….No roads to speak of and you’re coming back through the damn woods, so the name of the game was, you don’t bring prisoners back. It’s a sad commentary, and this was on Christmas Eve, and we had to withdraw, and we had twenty-two to twenty-three [SS] prisoners. One of the German prisoners who was very well educated-an officer that went to school in the United States and spoke English very well – couldn’t understand the rationale. If the shoe had been on the other foot, you’d have said the same thing. To be just a statistic, that’s just some of the fate of being a wartime situation. It was right there and then, a matter of elimination. There were about eight or ten [Americans soldiers]. It was just doing a job and it was over.”
Ironically, the 505th PIR was facing 1st SS troops of Kampfgruppe Peiper. I wonder if news of the Malmedy incident had filtered down to these front line troopers and that made it easier for them kill the prisoners…
So does the fact that O’Reilly was apparently referring to a real, but different, incident in which members of the 82nd Airborne (which was not present at Malmady) did massacre German SS troops in any way excuse his misstatements about the American victims at Malmedy? The answer is of course not.
O’Reilly clearly has a difficult time recalling facts so he just mouths off. That is bad enough whenever it occurs, but this time he maligned dead victims of a massacre in the process, besmirching their memory by implicitly branding them war criminals on national television. Worse yet he refused, as usual, to fess up or apologize while FOX News tried to bury the evidence by altering the transcript.
And just what was his point anyway? Was he suggesting that the murder of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers is somehow justified because American troops also murdered German SS troops during WW II?
Bill O’Reilly is in need of some serious help. Kudos to Keith Olbermann for his very justified anger, and for continuing to hold O’Reilly’s feet to the fire.
Note: Olbermann closed tonight’s program by promising more on Bill O’Reilly and Malmedy on Monday. Stay tuned.