The Unbearable Rightness of Bearing

From The O'Reilly Factor

O'REILLY: But it's been recast I think because -- the perception is and maybe this isn't a reality but again I have to tell you that our Fox News military analysts disagree with you. They say there are a lot of things going wrong in Iraq right now that shouldn't be going wrong. The commanders on the ground don't have a lot of respect for the secretary of defense. Did you know that?

COULTER: I don't believe it.

O'REILLY: Well, that's what the -- see, this is the problem. I don't know that either, whether it's true or not but that's what our military guys are getting from the commanders, and I believe them because they're really good. They were absolutely right on right up through Saddam (search) being deposed, our Fox News military analysts were right on, but then there were mistakes made and, of course, there are going to be mistakes made in every war.

COULTER: In every human endeavor and, you know, I can't argue with these people because they're not here, they're anonymous, I mean, you're telling me about them, but I would like to know what they think has gone wrong.

O'REILLY: I'll tell you. Here's what he thinks has gone wrong. Not enough troops on the ground, number one.

COULTER: Yeah, but that's not a problem. That's something that can cause a problem.

O'REILLY: Well, it's a problem in the sense we can't provide the security that we need to provide for the country to be free.

COULTER: But it's pretty darn safe over there.

O'REILLY: Our Fox correspondents in Baghdad won't go out of the hotel. That's not a good sign, Ann.

COULTER: I wouldn't go out of the hotel in Washington, D.C. This is the Middle East. This is a country that's been under a brutal dictator for 30 years, and on top of that, now they see ...

O'REILLY: Let me answer a couple of other things. They said there's not enough boots on the ground, number one. We don't have enough people providing security. This is the military people, not me. Number two...

COULTER: Not my military people. My military people are [Defense Secretary Donald]Rumsfeld.

O'REILLY: The weapons of mass destruction fiasco when they couldn't find them.

COULTER: Wait. We have found weapons of mass destruction...

O'REILLY: No we didn't, not to any great extent.

COULTER: That is an important point. We have found weapons of mass destruction. That is something the media is repeatedly lying about. We have not found stockpiles. We found the plants for manufacturing, we found the experiments, we found the room for human experimentation labs. We found lots of weapons of mass destruction.

O'REILLY: But not enough to justify what [Secretary of State Colin] Powell said at the U.N.

COULTER: He's the only one, by the way, it's enough to justify what Cheney, Rumsfeld, and President Bush said. The one guy in this administration who made the case that turns out to have been not completely correct, I don't think it was a lie, lie, Bush lied...

O'REILLY: No, but he took what the CIA gave him and he took it to the U.N. and it didn't work out.

COULTER: It's one guy and I note the one that the liberals like the most.

O'REILLY: Well, whatever. I just think that for you to say that the war has been going magnificently well, you're really going against the tides -- which you're absolutely can do.

COULTER: No, but that is precisely my point. This is the new Tet Offensive (search). Tet was also a victory, and ABC, NBC, CBS, "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," they all said it was a horrible defeat, Walter Cronkite (search) went on TV and said we're in a stalemate, it's a quagmire while meanwhile...

O'REILLY: I agree with you in a sense that the military certainly is performing magnificently, but I do think that the administration underestimated the difficulty of this campaign.

COULTER: No.