O’Reilly: Taliban Resurgence In Afghanistan Is A ‘Myth’

Yesterday on Fox News, host Bill O’Reilly tried to argue that Afghanistan has been “successful” and that “there’s no danger at all of the Taliban reclaiming that country.” At the worst, he said, the Taliban will be “annoying.” When his guest, Harvard University professor Sarah Sewall, pointed out that people on the ground disagree, O’Reilly dismissed her, stating, “I talked to everybody.” Watch what he said.

Supreme NATO commander Gen. James Jones recently stated that Afghanistan is close to becoming a “narco state,” whose $3 billion dollars in annual drug profits are financing the Taliban. Council on Foreign Relations Afghanistan expert Dr. Barnett Rubin said that Afghanistan Afghanistan is at a “tipping point” and that the Afghan people believe “trends are going in the Taliban’s favor.” Gen. David Richards, a British officer who commands NATO’s 32,000 troops, warned that unless coalition forces begin stepping up reconstruction efforts, 70 percent of the country could decide to back the Taliban.

Note: Counterterrorism officials [also] say Iraq is “drawing fewer foreign fighters as Muslim extremists, aspiring to battle the West, turn their attention back to the symbolically important and increasingly violent turf of Afghanistan.” So it doesn’t sound like O’Reilly talked to everybody.

Full transcript