MSNBC’s breaking news anchor and 11th Hour host Brian Williams is facing criticism from the Twittersphere for comments he made during the network’s live coverage of the missile launch attack on a Syrian air base. The strikes were carried out following a chemical weapon attack supposedly ordered by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 
 
 “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons,’” Williams said during an interview with U.S. intelligence expert Malcolm Nance. “They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield.” 
 
 The comments were made while video provided by the Pentagon of Tomahawk missiles launched by U.S. warships towards the Syrian air base was being shown. 
 
 Some people deemed the comments as insensitive or perhaps as a bit too cavalier given the circumstances. 
 
 Jesus Christ — Brian Williams: “I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons” – You can support airstrike without glamorizing it. https://t.co/77tefLFt9g — Yashar (@yashar) April 7, 2017 
 
 This is truly a surreal segment. Brian Williams: “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.” https://t.co/85TNZxkNa8 — Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) April 7, 2017 
 
 The saddest thing here is Brian Williams is probably not lying this time. He likely thinks missile strikes are beautiful. https://t.co/11XnE4EbjO — jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) April 7, 2017 
 
 Nance, on the other hand, defended Williams’s comments: 
 
 I personally love @BWilliams. He has an extremely calming effect in serious crises. His statement was a quote of poetry which I have adopted https://t.co/M1AYotR1h9 — Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) April 7, 2017 
 
 Comments ||||| Brian Williams has come under fire for his seemingly euphoric reaction to Thursday night’s U.S. missile strike on Syria. 
 
 During his “11th hour” MSNBC show, the anchor began to wax poetic at the sight of the Pentagon-released video that showed three missiles launching into the night sky on their way to a Syrian airfield 
 
 “We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the Mediterranean,” Williams said. 
 
 The veteran newsman said the images tempted him to quote the late singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen. 
 
 And that’s what he did. “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons,” Williams said, a lyric from Cohen’s 1988 song “First We Take Manhattan.” He added, “They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making a brief flight.” 
 
 Watch Williams’ segment below. 
 
 Twitter quickly pounced on his comments, calling them insensitive to the horrors of war. 
 
 “You can support airstrike without glamorizing it,” one critic tweeted. 
 
 Jesus Christ — Brian Williams: "I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons" – You can support airstrike without glamorizing it. https://t.co/77tefLFt9g — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 7, 2017 
 
 Some commented on how Williams seem to enjoy the imagery of war. 
 
 thoroughly unsurprised by brian williams obscene enjoyment of the jouissance of US military technology — Patrick Blanchfield (@PatBlanchfield) April 7, 2017 
 
 Brian Williams opens his wallet and out spill dozens of pictures of missile strikes with hearts drawn on them. — J.D. Altman (@NicCageMatch) April 7, 2017 
 
 Others brought up Williams’ six-month suspension from NBC without pay in 2015 for misrepresenting events that occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003, in addition to other stories. 
 
 Brian Williams is under fire for calling the US strike beautiful. However that story might not be true as it was reported by Brian Williams. — Will Presti (@WillPresti) April 7, 2017 
 
 “It’s time for Brian Williams to get fired again,” another tweeted. 
 
 I think it's time for Brian Williams to get fired again. — Sean Burns (@SeanMBurns) April 7, 2017 
 
 Neither MSNBC or Williams have yet to respond to the criticism. ||||| 'I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake' 
 
 WASHINGTON — NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years. 
 
 Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry. 
 
 The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said. 
 
 “I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.” 
 
 Williams told his Nightly News audience that the erroneous claim was part of a "bungled attempt" to thank soldiers who helped protect him in Iraq in 2003. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. “I want to apologize.” 
 
 Williams made the claim about the incident while presenting NBC coverage of the tribute to the retired command sergeant major at the Rangers game Friday. Fans gave the soldier a standing ovation. 
 
 “The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.” 
 
 Williams and his camera crew were actually aboard a Chinook in a formation that was about an hour behind the three helicopters that came under fire, according to crew member interviews. 
 
 That Chinook took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert, according to Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft that carried the journalists. 
 
 “No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” he said Wednesday. 
 
 The helicopters, along with the NBC crew, remained on the ground at a forward operating base west of Baghdad for two or three days, where they were surrounded by an Army unit with Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams M-1 tanks. 
 
 Miller said he never saw any direct fire on the position from Iraqi forces. 
 
 The claim rankled Miller as well as soldiers aboard the formation of 159th Aviation Regiment Chinooks that were flying far ahead and did come under attack during the March 24, 2003, mission. 
 
 One of the helicopters was hit by two rocket-propelled grenades — one did not detonate but passed through the airframe and rotor blades — as well as small arms fire. 
 
 “It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it,” said Lance Reynolds, who was the flight engineer. “It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.” 
 
 Reynolds said Williams and the NBC cameramen arrived in a helicopter 30 to 60 minutes after his damaged Chinook made a rolling landing at an Iraqi airfield and skidded off the runway into the desert. 
 
 He said Williams approached and took photos of the damage, but Reynolds brushed them off because the crew was assessing damage and he was worried that his wife, who was alone in Germany, might see the news report. 
 
 “I wanted to tell her myself everything was all right before she got news of this happening,” Reynolds said. 
 
 The NBC crew stayed only for about 10 minutes and then went to see the Army armored units that had been guarding the nearby Forward Operating Base Rams and came out to provide a security perimeter around the aircraft. Tim Terpak, the command sergeant major who accompanied Williams to the Rangers game, was among those soldiers, and the two struck up a friendship. 
 
 Miller, Reynolds and Mike O’Keeffe, who was a door gunner on the damaged Chinook, said they all recall NBC reporting that Williams was aboard the aircraft that was attacked, despite it being false. The NBC online archive shows the network broadcast a news story on March 26, 2003, with the headline, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.” 
 
 Williams disputed Wednesday claims the initial reports were inaccurate, saying he originally reported he was in another helicopter but later confused the events. In a 2008 NBC blog post with his byline, he wrote that the “Chinook helicopter flying in front of ours (from the 101st Airborne) took an RPG to the rear rotor.” 
 
 O’Keeffe said the incident has bothered him since he and others first saw the original report after returning to Kuwait. 
 
 “Over the years it faded,” he said, “and then to see it last week it was — I can’t believe he is still telling this false narrative.” 
 
 tritten.travis@stripes.com 
 
 Twitter: @Travis_Tritten ||||| "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams apologized Wednesday for falsely claiming that he had been aboard a helicopter that was shot down during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Stars and Stripes reports. 
 
 On Friday night's broadcast, Williams cited "a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG. Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.” 
 
 One crew member responded to the story on Facebook the following day, writing to Williams, "Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened." 
 
 This week, crew members of 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook helicopter also told Stars and Stripes that Williams had not been in the shot-down helicopter but had arrived an hour later. 
 
 On Wednesday, Williams conceded that he was not onboard the shot-down helicopter, but he told Stars and Stripes he did not intentionally make the mistake. 
 
 “I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.” 
 
 On Facebook, Williams also apologized to the members of the crew: 
 
 To Joseph, Lance, Jonathan, Pate, Michael and all those who have posted: You are absolutely right and I was wrong. In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp. Because I have no desire to fictionalize my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatize events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area — and the fog of memory over 12 years — made me conflate the two, and I apologize. I certainly remember the armored mech platoon, meeting Capt. Eric Nye and of course Tim Terpak. Shortly after they arrived, so did the Orange Crush sandstorm, making virtually all outdoor functions impossible. I honestly don't remember which of the three choppers Gen. Downing and I slept in, but we spent two nights on the stowable web bench seats in one of the three birds. Later in the invasion when Gen. Downing and I reached Baghdad, I remember searching the parade grounds for Tim's Bradley to no avail. My attempt to pay tribute to CSM Terpak was to honor his 23+ years in service to our nation, and it had been 12 years since I saw him. The ultimate irony is: In writing up the synopsis of the 2 nights and 3 days I spent with him in the desert, I managed to switch aircraft. Nobody's trying to steal anyone's valor. Quite the contrary: I was and remain a civilian journalist covering the stories of those who volunteered for duty. This was simply an attempt to thank Tim, our military and Veterans everywhere — those who have served while I did not. 
 
 Williams has told the story several times, including during a 2013 appearance on "The Late Show" with David Letterman. 
 
 "Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47... we were only at 100 feet doing 100 forward knots," he told Letterman. "We landed very quickly and hard, and we were stuck, four birds in the middle of the desert. And we were north out ahead of the other Americans." 
 
 UPDATE 7 p.m.: Williams followed up with an apology on Wednesday's broadcast: 
 
 On this broadcast last week, in an effort to honor and thank a veteran who had protected me and so many others after a ground fire incident in the desert during the Iraq invasion, I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago. It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women and the aircrews who were also in that desert. I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft. We all landed after the ground fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert. This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension our brave military men and women veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not. I hope they know they have my greatest respect and also now my apology. 
 
 Read more about: Iraq, NBC, Brian Williams ||||| UPDATE: Fox News announced Thursday that it had signed Juan Williams to a new, multi-year contract, which the Los Angeles Times reported was worth $2 million. Among other things, Williams will now write columns for FoxNews.com, the first of which appeared on Thursday afternoon. 
 
 In the column, Williams excoriated NPR and its leadership for the decision to fire him. He said he was let go for "telling the truth" about his feelings of nervousness when he sees people he thinks are clearly Muslim on airplanes. He called his debate with Bill O'Reilly -- where he also told the Fox News host to be careful about painting all Muslims as extremists -- an "honest, sensitive" one "in the best American tradition of a fair, full-throated and honest discourse about the issues of the day." 
 
 Williams said that NPR's move to fire him was a "a chilling assault on free speech" that came about due to "political correctness and ideological orthodoxy" by the "self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR." He also recounted the years of tension between him and his bosses at NPR that resulted from his association with Fox. 
 
 Williams concluded by comparing himself to Daniel Schorr, the longtime NPR contributor who found himself on Richard Nixon's enemies list. 
 
 "I can only imagine Dan's revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed," he wrote. 
 
 ORIGINAL POST: Juan Williams appeared on Fox News' "Happening Now" Thursday morning to discuss his firing from NPR over his comments about Muslims on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor." (h/t Johnny Dollar.) 
 
 Williams said that he received a message from Ellen Weiss, NPR's senior vice president for news, telling him to call her. When he did, he said, she asked him to clarify his comments that he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on an airplane. 
 
 "I said, 'I said what I meant to say,'" Williams told Fox News, "which is that it is an honest experience that when I'm in an airport and I see people in Muslim garb who identify themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I do a double take. I have a moment of anxiety or fear given what happened on 9/11. That's just a reality." 
 
 Weiss, he said, told him that he had crossed the line. When he asked what line that was, she said that his statement had been bigoted. Williams said he had pointed out that he had gone on to tell O'Reilly that America had "an obligation to protect the constitutional rights of everyone in the country" and to prevent bigotry, but that "you cannot ignore what happened on 9/11 and you cannot ignore the connection to Islamic radicalism." 
 
 In response, Williams said, Weiss told him that the decision to fire him had already been taken. 
 
 "I said, 'I don't even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball to eyeball, person to person?'" he continued. "She said, 'there's nothing you can say that will change my mind, this has been decided above me and we're terminating your contract.'" 
 
 NPR President Vivian Schiller also spoke out about the firing on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Schiller appeared at the Atlanta Press Club, where she defended the decision, saying that Williams had violated NPR's guidelines barring its analysts from making personal or controversial statements. She also said that he should keep his feelings about Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist or his publicist." (UPDATE: Schiller apologized for that comment on Thursday afternoon, saying in a statement that "I spoke hastily and I apologize to Juan and others for my thoughtless remark.") 
 
 In addition, Schiller released a statement about the firing to NPR member stations on Thursday. In it, she wrote that "this isn't the first time we have had serious concerns about some of Juan's public comments. Despite many conversations and warnings over the years, Juan has continued to violate this principle." Schiller also wrote that Williams had violated NPR's code of ethics by expressing views that he would not have expressed on NPR. 
 
 "Unfortunately, Juan's comments on Fox violated our standards as well as our values and offended many in doing so," she said. 
 
 Williams will appear on "The O'Reilly Factor" Thursday night to discuss the firing as well. ||||| "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams has come under heavy criticism after admitting on Wednesday that his story of being aboard a helicopter that came under fire during the Iraq war isn't true. 
 
 On social media, the controversy has taken on several comic dimensions, one of which is Williams' image being added "Forrest Gump"-style to famous paintings depicting key moments in history. 
 
 One meme that is making the rounds on Twitter shows Williams in Leonardo Da Vinci's fresco "The Last Supper." Cultural journalist Ed Fuentes tweeted the image, adding: "After he said more about remembrance, he passed the bread as I recall." 
 
 After he said more about remembrance, he passed the bread as I recall. #BrianWilliamsMemories pic.twitter.com/PDlQOZKg6J — Ed Fuentes (@viewfromaloft) February 5, 2015 
 
 Other memes show Williams' face superimposed on George Washington's head in the painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and on the body of a warrior in the Steuben painting "Battle of Poitiers," which depicts the medieval battle between Frankish and Moorish forces. 
 
 The last two images were tweeted by writer Andrew Klavan, who wrote: "I thought something looked fishy about Steuben's 'Battle of Poitiers'." 
 
 I thought something looked fishy about Steuben's "Battle of Poitiers"... #BrianWilliamsWarStories pic.twitter.com/3QIwJdN2bK — Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) February 5, 2015 
 
 The art-related memes are being tweeted with the hashtags #BrianWilliamsMemories and #BrianWilliamsWarStories. 
 
 Williams read a statement of apology on Wednesday's broadcast of "NBC Nightly News" in which he said he wasn't in a helicopter that came under fire during the Iraq war, as he previously claimed. 
 
 "I was instead in a following aircraft," Williams said. "This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran." 
 
 In addition to art-related memes, Williams' face has been superimposed on images of famous events in American history, such as the landing on the moon and Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington. 
 
 Twitter: @DavidNgLAT
– It's been awhile since "Brian Williams" and "controversy" have been uttered in the same sentence, but might as well take a crack at it again now that we're solidly in 2017. The MSNBC newscaster was among those providing commentary Thursday night after the US launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield, and while responses to the strike ran the gamut from "decisive" to "unlawful," Williams used a descriptor that few (if any others) did, per Adweek. "I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: 'I am guided by the beauty of our weapons,'" Williams waxed poetic (Variety notes it's a line from Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan"), as a video in the background showed the missiles hurtling from the US warships toward land. "They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield," he continued. But instead of swooning over his lyrical analysis, most of the internet came down on Williams for what appeared to be a glamorization of a wartime maneuver. One commenter called it "obscene enjoyment," while Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times called the segment "surreal." Others called Williams a "dope" or said he should be fired again. One person who didn't seem to mind Williams' take: Malcolm Nance, the intel expert who was on air with Williams during his soliloquy-like sermon. "He has an extremely calming effect in serious crises," tweeted Nance. (Congress members are split on how they feel about the strike.)