ON BUSH: "THERE'S JUST NO CONSCIENCE THERE."

A puppet can't have a conscience.

From Thomas de Zengotita's blog Cindy Sheehan Has a Friend on www.huffingtonpost.com

I haven't seen Bill O'Reilly so flummoxed since Al Franken took him down at that LA book fair last year, though this was much subtler. He had to grin and swallow it all because he was interviewing the mother of a dead soldier. I can only assume he was misled by his booker, or maybe his booker was misled by Dolores Kesterson herself -- who knows? But Bill obviously thought he was going to get this woman to acknowledge that her son died "in a noble cause" in Iraq on tonight’s O'Reilly Factor,around 8:30, NYC time it was.

Dolores was slated to be the anti-Cindy Sheehan.

Oooops. O'Reilly was obliged to blend his most unctuous pretense-of-fairness manner ("I'll give you the last word") with his most over-bearing bullyboy style as he tried to manipulate and finally bludgeon this poor woman into conceding his point with questions like—(rough quote) "You know Michael Moore, you know he hates our country. If you had to choose between him and President Bush, who would you choose?" Answer, a bit fumbled, delivered under huge pressure by a woman with no media experience: (rough quote) "Well, I don't really know everything that Michael Moore stands for, but I know he hasn't caused anybody to be killed for no good reason..."

And so on...

Some of you bloggers out there with all the software need to circulate this interview...


From Eric Boehlert's blog Cindy Sheehan Has a Friend, Cont'd on www.huffingtonpost.com

Agreed. It was must-see TV. And not only because what it revealed about Bill O'Reilly -- he was forced into a four corners delay after he realized the mess he was in with Dolores Kesterson, mother of slain Chief Warrant Officer Erik Kesterson -- but also what the segment revealed about president Bush, who apparently tried to bully the grieving mother when she questioned him about his war of choice.

At one point during the interview O'Reilly asked Kesterson, the Santa Clara mother, about her allotted three-minute meeting with Bush following her only child's death in 2003. But keep in mind what Cindy Sheehan told CNN's Wolf Blitzer this Sunday regarding her brief grief time with Bush in 2004:

Sheehan: "He wouldn't look at the pictures of [my son] Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, 'So who are we honoring here?' He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him 'him' or 'he.' He called him 'your loved one.' Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party."


Now to "The O'Reilly Factor":

Kesterson: So actually, you know, it did come about. They put me into a cubicle by myself, took everything away from me. I also came prepared with a letter to give to the president about how I felt about the war and, you know, the loss of my son, my only child for a cause that I thought, you know, was not worthwhile at that point in time.

And so president Bush came marching in, to make a long story short, came marching in to the room, got right in my face, eyeball-to-eyeball, nose-to-nose this close, toe-to-toe and he said, "I'm George Bush, President of the United States, and I understand you have something to say to me privately." And I said, 'Yes, I do respect the office of the presidency of the United States, but I want to tell you how it feels to lose your only child in a cause that you don't believe in, in an unnecessary war. And, you know, we talked about it from there just like you and I are talking about. [Emphasis added.]

O'Reilly: Was he respectful to you?

Kesterson: Yes, yes was. But he did, you know, come at me a few times with trotting out, 'Delores, do you realize we've been attacked on 9/11?' Who doesn't [realize that]?

O'Reilly: He hugged you at the end, did he not?

Kesterson: Well, yes, he asked if he could hug me and I said, 'Well, that's a human thing, you know, I'm human.' And I agreed to it. But my personal feeling is that he really doesn't have a conscience about all this death and destruction. That was the essence I took away after looking him in the eyes and meeting with him—there's just no conscience there.