WOW . . . JUST, WOW

Bill gets shrill!

Preznit no giv O'Reilly turkee

Remember what Bill O'Reilly said, the day before Operation Re-raq began?

"And I said on my program, if -- if -- the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again."

Well, I can't believe this, even as I am typing right now, but you can stop the clock.

Earlier today on Good Morning America, O'Splotchy said this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.

"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."

"What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?" asked O'Reilly, who had promised rival ABC last year he would publicly apologize if weapons were not found.

O'Reilly said he was "much more skeptical about the Bush administration now" since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.

Sure, he went on to throw in the standard "it's the CIA's fault too" deal afterward, but there it is, in black splotches and white splotches.

I know that he said he would apologize, but did anybody, anybody think he'd actually do it?

And will this be his jump-the-shark moment on Faux News? Well, probably not. Perhaps he will stipulate that he didn't make his comment within the friendly confines of his beloved "no-spin zone". He probably couldn't have anyway, cuz if he did, perhaps he would have told himself to "shut up! SHUT UP!" It would have been a nice real-life Gollum/Smeagol moment.

And this comes just a day after Andrew Sullivan gives Bush a rather stern lecture on the deficit.