Obama vs O'reilly part 1

On Thursday September 4th, 2008, america's favorite news journalist, Bill O'Reilly interviewed Barack Obama. Let me first say, beyond whatever your (or my) disdain for Mr. O'reilly may be, this is a good thing for Obama to do. First, because no one, probably not even McCain, can challenge Obama on his knowledge of the current political issues and press Obama for answers the way Bill-O can. Secondly, just the mere fact that "The O'Reilly Factor" rating shall bolster for a week then dwindle back down to the regular right-wing extremist audience of old - HA-HA! SO, In order to further boost his ratings, O'Reilly made this 30 minute interview into a series of four 6-7 minute segments to be aired on seperate days. I'm going to disect this 1st segment, which consisted of the issue of the "War on Terror" - or better put National Security.

Now in short, this segment was nothing more than a quiz on weather Obama poses the basic knowledge of americas' national security threats. This bit can be summed up to two issues: what is you plan for Iran and na-na-na-na-na "the surge" did work.

In short on the subject of Iran, O'Reilly questions, "how threatening (do) you feel Iran is?"

Obama responds, "Iran is a major threat" - now this is just the nuts and bolts.

From my perspective, O'Reilly seemingly wants to conjure up a "gong-ho" response from Obama and get him to say we're(america) is going to take Iran out - or either a military strategy.

O'Reilly's real focus was this, "...the next president of the United States is going to have to make a decision about Iran, whether to stop them militarily... a lot of people are saying, look, Barack Obama's not going to attack Iran."

First "a lot of people" is really "a lot of republicans" - I mean...

Do we really need another war raging president at this point in history?

Obama put it best, "Look, it is not appropriate for somebody, who is one of two people who could be the president of the United States, to start tipping their hand in terms of what their plans might be with respect to Iran. It's sufficient to say I would not take the military option off the table and that I will never hesitate to use our military force in order to protect the homeland and United States interests."

Y'kown what I say about this national security subject? I say its quite simple...

WE NEED A LEADER WHO IS RESPECTED BY ALL (OR MOST) COUNTRIES!!!

And Barack Obama is that Leader, we have already seen the respect he gets here, in the USA, as well as in Europe. We need to reestablish the ties that our current president (and fellow republicans) severed and get the support from foreign nations that we once had.

As for The Surge, O' Reilly looked to make Obama, and I quote...

"...admit it to the nation that now we have defeated the terrorists in Iraq, and the Al Qaeda came there after we invaded, as you know. We defeated them."

OR

"...say, I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge?"

Now Obama did admit the success of the surge and stated, "I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated... including President Bush and the other supporters."

Of course, there was no admission of being wrong and my interpretation is that - Its not about being against the surge (which we can call "successful") but, moreso, about being against the war and its exorbitant budget (which can be deemed unnecessary, as well as other things).

Enjoy interview below

Part 2 Coming soon