Is it against the law to advocate mass slaughter so that Americans can have access to Middle Eastern oil? I doubt it, but America's most popular television news analyst says that the U.S. may have to bomb Iran into oblivion if that's what it takes to get the oil we need. As transcribed by Media Matters:

On the December 5 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly asserted that "we may have to" "level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people," which, he explained, the United States has "already done in Germany and Japan." O'Reilly then argued that such a move would be necessary, for example, "[i]f Iran takes over Iraq and then fosters a revolution inside Saudi Arabia ... and gets control of all the oil and says we're not selling to the USA, we are going to level that country, because you ... need gasoline to live."

If you want to know why a solid 30 percent of the American people still support President Bush no matter what, you should read the above excerpt and understand that many, many people cheer on this kind of rhetoric.America is tough, ain't no one gonna push us around! We can win Iraq with more torture. Hey, things are wonderful in Iraq!

Let's talk turkey here. This rhetoric would never work against non-Muslim and non-Arab countries. Mega-death policies can be sold where the victims don't look like us. It's easy to fan the flames of discontent by pointing the finger at the Arabs and Muslims. But God-forbid any foreign leader challenges the United States.