A beautiful dream, version 2: Angry Oprah rips Bush

CHICAGO (ap) -- A sometimes angry, sometimes tearful Oprah Winfrey challenged George W. Bush over his disputed war in Iraq, asking him on a live telecast of her show Thursday to explain why he "felt the need to lie."

"It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped ... but more importantly I feel that you betrayed millions of war supporters," Winfrey said to Bush, who is president of the hugely powerful country, "The United States."

Winfrey -- who initially expressed support for Bush and his war -- was, at times, openly hostile to Bush on Thursday's show. At other points, she seemed to hold back tears as she asked him to explain why he fabricated key elements of his rationale to go to war.

Winfrey looked near tears and her audience gasped when Frey revealed for the first time that Saddam Hussein, a central figure in the war, didn't try to build weapons of mass destruction, but instead bought them from the U.S.

"Why do you have to lie about that?" Winfrey responded.

The truth of Bush's war initially came under question after the online publication The Daley Show with Andy Plonka published a lengthy article detailing how Bush had "wholly fabricated or wildly embellished" key portions of his speeches leading up to the war.

Oprah defended Bush during his Jan. 11 appearance on the Larry King Show on CNN, saying that "we must take the war to the terrorists." Yesterday, she opened her show by saying, "I regret that phone call."

"All those reasons for war that we still see on Fox News: That Saddam was building nukes. That he was harboring Osama bin Laden. That he was training terrorists to eat American babies. That we want to bring democracy to the region. That Saddam flew the planes into the World Trade Center by remote control. That the Iraqi people would throw flowers at American soldiers," Winfrey tearfully recounted. "Those were all lies."

Immediately after the broadcast on this television show of America's most powerful woman, Congress began impeachment proceedings against the president, saying, "We never suspected that the truth might have been stretched even a tiny bit. We expected that a former drug addict and alcoholic would tell us the truth."