October 20, 2006 10:18AM # O’Reilly Interviews Bush By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) --- SHARE Bill O’Reilly got an [exclusive interview](http://www.billoreilly.com/) with President Bush recently. The second and third segments were the most interesting to me. In the second segment, O’Reilly asks some pretty good questions about torture, such as: How can anyone make a judgment about your policy when it’s all kept secret? Bush repeats his point that the terrorists can’t be told. O’Reilly could have followed up with: [“But it’s out there already, isn’t it?”](http://a.abcnews.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866) During the same segment, Bush says when his agents pick up people from the battlefield, he wants to know what they know. O’Reilly should have followed up with: “But to be clear, sir, when you say “battlefield,” you mean [any person picked up anywhere, right?](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071901023.html) So if an American citizen is arrested in Chicago, you are saying that you can employ [“tough tactics”](https://www.cato.org/2006/10/12/enemy-combatants/) against him just on [your own say-so, right?](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6330) The third segment of the interview is about Iraq. Here Bush restates his case, as you would expect. Still interesting. He seems to believe that having a clearly stated goal is the key to victory. He has established the objective and he believes the finest military in the world can find a way to achieve it. But later Bush says something like “ultimately, it is up the Iraqi people.” O’Reilly could have followed that up by saying something like: “Yeah, but that means the Iraqi people might opt for an endless civil war instead of a peaceful political process, right? If they go that route, we get out, right?” ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).