Did Bill O'Reilly's Words Kill the Abortion Doctor?

                       Was it Beauty that killed the beast?
                                      King Kong, the movie

For years, Bill O'Reilly has been targeting George Tiller, who O'Reilly, on Fox News, characterized as "Tiller the baby killer."

O'Reilly would demonize Tiller for performing late term abortions, and, with the help of guests,  charactized the procedures as murder.

This morning, Tiller, one of a small number of doctors who perform late term abortions,  was assassinated while standing as an usher in his church. 

Brad Friedman,reports in  bradblog.com, that the Fox 'News' host had long charged KS physician with 'operating a death mill', 'executing babies', carrying out slaughter'...

flickr image by Torley

and Friedman reports,

Of course, it's no more O'Reilly's fault when a lunatic takes action to murder someone the Fox host has targeted for years on his popular television show, than it was when another lunatic gunned down church-goers in Tennessee last year claiming in his pre-murder "manifesto" that it was "a symbolic killing", and that he had "wanted to kill...every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." Goldberg is a regular featured guest on O'Reilly's show, and the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).

Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville, TN murderer, also advocated the murder of "liberals" in his manifesto, echoing comments frequently made by O'Reilly that "The Major News outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists."

Those are all merely coincidences, of course. Nobody, other than the murderers themselves, should feel it necessary to take any personal responsibility whatsoever when such events occur.

In March of this year, after Tiller had been acquitted of charges alleging that he'd performed late-term abortions in violation of Kansas state law, O'Reilly continued his series of programs focusing on the Kansas physician, charging him with "operating a death mill", and alleging that he was "executing babies" (video here).

But let's not stop there, with one death. What about the thousands of troops who have died in Iraq, in a war Fox'News' and O'Reilly helped market and sell, pushing bogus claims and fraudulent claims by Dick Cheney, Condeleeza Rice, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, George Tenet and a rubber stamping bipartisan congress, except for six dozen progressive representatives and a handful of senators?  

No jury would convict O'Reilly because there is doubt. But then again, isn't there also a great likelihood that the words of O'Reilly, and the vitriolic words of the most rabid abortion opponents had SOMETHING to do with this murder? Of course, there is no blood on O'Reilly's hands, or Rupert Murdoch's. But check out their lips.