A Question Bush Can't Answer

"Secondly, the courts. Yeah, I believe it is necessary to have military tribunals because I ultimately want these people to be tried. And it took a while to get these tribunals in place. The Supreme Court ruled that the president didn't have the authority to set up these courts on his own, that he needed to work with Congress to do so, and we did.

"What's interesting about these votes that took place in the Congress is the number of Democrats that opposed questioning people we picked up on the battlefield. And I think that's an issue that they will have to explain to the American people."

So apparently that's his answer to O'Reilly's excellent and important question: Democrats are pro-terrorist.

(And let's not even get into the fact that he misrepresented the views of Democrats, all of whom to the best of my knowledge favor questioning suspects -- just not necessarily torturing them.)

O'Reilly unfortunately let the matter drop; and most of the other exchanges were predictably sycophantic. He certainly didn't challenge Bush's straw-man arguments. Here's one typical exchange:

O'Reilly: "Your administration has been accused of being fascist, violating human rights. . . . "

Bush chuckles

O'Reilly: " . . . ignoring the Geneva conventions. And it's been a fierce campaign against this policy. Why has it been so fierce?"

Bush: " . . . Look, after 9/11 I vowed to protect this country. . . . Now maybe there are some in this country who say, well, they are not coming again and therefore, all this is unnecessary. I believe they are coming again and I believe it is the responsibility of the federal government to protect our people."

And O'Reilly even got Bush to use a term the president has recently avoided because it's so inflammatory.

O'Reilly: "I think the bottom line is this crazy insurgency on the Islamofascists, as I call them, is never going to end in our lifetime."

Bush: "That's an interesting question, an interesting point. The question is how do you marginalize them?"