Yesterday, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly made the incredible claim that the United States never invaded Iraq: “We didn’t invade Iraq.” He added, “It was a declaration of war, it was a declaration to enforce the first Gulf War Treaty.”

Despite O’Reilly’s revisionist history, the United States did invade Iraq. The U.S. military forcefully entered the country in order to overthrow that nation’s leader. That’s an invasion. During a 2006 speech, President Bush discussed his administration’s “two major invasions as a part of the war on terror.”

Even O’Reilly himself has, in the past, admitted that the United States invaded Iraq:

– “I’ll submit that most folks still have no idea why the Bush administration invaded Iraq.” [1/28/08]

– “Iraq was invaded to create a friendly country between Iran and Syria, thereby pressuring those nations into a more sensible foreign policy.” [3/6/06]

O’Reilly’s “first Gulf War Treaty” claim is also questionable. During a March 15, 2004 interview, former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix challenged O’Reilly on this exact point:

O’REILLY: [W]e liberate Iraq — liberate Kuwait, all right, and then we have a treaty, and the treaty says U.N. weapons inspectors are allowed to do X, Y, and Z, and 17 times Saddam says — violates those. Now you can understand why the United States government might be a little teed off about that. […]

O’REILLY: But do you understand that when you have 17 violations of a treaty, a war treaty, that you basically have to take action?

BLIX: Well, you’re talking about a war treaty. It was a cease-fire. It was not a war treaty.

O’REILLY: Oh, come on. Now don’t play semantics here, sir.

BLIX: Second — all right. I’m trying to be precise. You are imprecise.

O’Reilly’s claim is almost as unbelievable as Wolfowitz’s statement earlier this week that the U.S. “occupation [of Iraq] ended in June of 2004.”

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Transcript:

BALLENTINE: We are invading Iraq.

O’REILLY: No, we’re not. We didn’t invade Iraq.

BALLENTINE: Did we go through Congress to invade, to go to war?

O’REILLY: Yes, there was a vote in Congress.

BALLENTINE: It was a declaration of war.

O’REILLY: It was a declaration of war, it was a declaration to enforce the first Gulf War Treaty, which you don’t know anything about, Mr. Ballentine.