I watched it and I think it's obvious Moore expresses himself better with his films than he does sitting and chatting. I agree it was a letdown  but I've seen Moore speak before and I was not impressed by him. He's not really eloquent or entertaining as a public speaker and I don't think he makes his points well. I think the same of O'Reilly so I had a bit of a suspicion that a debate between the two would be lousy.

That said I don't think either of them made a decent point or expressed their "side" very well. Moore seemed only to want to make Billy boy say he'd send his kid to war (does he have any kids?) and Bill was using what seems to be a GOP bit about how everyone said Saddam had WMD's.

The small but very key word in the phrase is had because yes we all knew he had them. We, and probably Russia and a few other countries, sold them to him. So when Bill discusses the intelligence reports he's talking about intelligence that is a decade old. The point Moore should have but seemed incapable of making was that more recent intelligence and a variety of reports from weapons inspectors indicated Saddam no longer had anything...which proved to be true. There were a boatload of intelligence people telling the Bush administration that all of the recent intelligence showed Saddam had got rid of his stockpiles as well as weapons inspectors that had been on the ground there that say the same and that there was no evidence he even had facilities to manufacture them. Any reasonable and honest look at how Bushco used and cherry picked intelligence to present to the public shows some intentional dishonesty in an effort to "sell" this war with Iraq. Even people on the GOP side have presented a weak argument that Bush and friends didn't really lie...they just "chose to believe" certain things. That seems a semantic game to me.

I personally believe no president should be able to order our military to attack and bomb anybody unless the evidence is irrefutable. In this case it was not even close to that. It was shaky at best, outright lies and manipulations at worst. 

I don't know what O'Reilly really believes or thinks so I really can't judge if he was being manipulative with what he was saying but I think his argument stinks. So did Moore's side. These guys, in this case, seem to be just adding to the confusion of the public because neither one could articulate an honest and decent argument last night. They both seem masters of the sly manipulation but perhaps they both really believe what they are saying. The problem is what they said was useless and an abomination.