Baldwin rips into Bush

Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin has courted controversy by branding US President George W Bush a "non-entity" who relies on his team to make all of his decisions.

Staunch Democrat Baldwin had quietened his politically outspoken ways in recent years, but has now decided it's time to speak out again, after appearing on conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly's O'Reilly Factor on Monday.

After labelling US Vice President Dick Cheney a "troubled man", Baldwin continued: "Most of the people that I work with now in whatever issue-related or candidacy-related thing that I'm involved with, they have one problem and they have one problem only. That is that Bush has to go.

"We believe that the president should be a really smart guy with his own ideas.

"I think that Bush is a non-entity in his administration. He's like (late US President Ronald) Reagan.

"He's a figurehead. He's the host of the show. All of the strings are pulled by other people behind his back. He's a frontman."

During Baldwin's rant, host O'Reilly repeatedly warned him he was "making a mistake" with his strong comments, but the actor was quick to insist he's very much a proud American.

He said: "I think that if there's one thing that's really troubling to me about this political climate and this kind of dialogue with people who come from where I come from is that they think that people who are progressive, liberal, Democratic - anybody that's not aligned with this (Republican) administration - that they're not patriotic and they don't care about what's happening to the troops overseas.

"They're wrong."