READER RICK VOGEL EMAILS:

Apparently this slipped under the blogosphere’s radar. Since it’s not the linkable media, I partially understand. On her Oct 9 show Oprah made a strong case for the invasion of Iraq – sooner rather than later. She had the author of the Threatening Storm, Kenneth M. Pollack on to make his case and hawk his book – it climbed to number 3 from the mid 40’s on Amazon within hours. . . .

A lady in the audience made a comment to the effect that there were Iraq problems with Bush 1, then no problems with Clinton, and now Bush again and more problems. OPRAH SAID…”So you think it’s a Bush thing? Don’t you think that the problems were there with Clinton, he just looked the other way?”

This German woman really began tearing up when she spoke of the fact that Germans – and the world — looked the other way while Hitler built his empire and committed genocide. It took a world war to take him out.

She also had on a Hussein survivor, a guy who gave first hand experience with the brutal regime. He said Iraq is the only government in the world who has rapists on their payroll. Saddam pays to have dissident women raped.

This is news to me. There are reports of this on both Free Republic and Democratic Underground, and Oprah’s page indicates the topic, but doesn’t indicate what was said. Anybody out there see this?

UPDATE: Reader Tom Williams emails:

I saw a fair bit of the show yesterday. It seemed quite clear to me that Oprah supported military action against Hussein. In addition to the exchange your other reader mentioned, I was especially impressed by Oprah’s response to an audience member who said that we were just being fed Bush-administration propaganda about Saddam. The look on Oprah’s face was priceless. She paused a bit, and then said, in an almost brutally dismissive tone, “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.” The addition “even though it’s idiotic” was as clear as if she had uttered it aloud.

And reader Eric Kolchinsky emails a transcript. I’ve skimmed it and it’s consistent with the above, right down to the dismissal. I may post an excerpt later.