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June 13, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
June 13, 2005, Monday, Hour #3
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Hi, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you with us.
The EIB Network and the Rush Limbaugh program are on the air, coming to you from the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Telephone number if you would like to join us is 800-282-2882, the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
All right, first of two Supreme Court decisions today.
Nothing on the Ten Commandments or Internet downloading.
Obviously, saving those cases has the big finale.
The Supreme Court refused today to be drawn into a dispute over President Bush's power to detain American terror suspects and deny them traditional legal rights.
It would have been unusual for the court to take the case of dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla, because the Federal Appeals Court's not yet ruled on the issue.
Arguments are scheduled for July 19th at the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.
Now, one year ago the court ruled the Bush administration was out of line by locking up foreign terrorist suspects in the Navy base at Gitmo without access to lawyers and courts, but the justices declined to address a separate issue whether American citizens arrested on U.S. soil can be designated enemy combatants and held without trial.
Now to cut to the chase on this, all this really means is the Supreme Court was not moved enough by the case to take the appeal directly.
So what'll happen, the case will now go back through the usual appellate process.
It'll go back to the Fourth Circuit.
And then whoever loses there will seek the Supreme Court's involvement again, at which time the court can either take or reject the request.
The Fourth Circuit in Richmond, probably the most conservative of all the appellate courts, and that's the reason why Padilla's lawyers wanted to bypass it and go directly to the High Court.
So there really is nothing of substance here.
And you can, in rare cases, you can you can request a direct appeal to the Supreme Court without going for the usual appellate leaps and bounds, but uh in this case the court refused to hear that.
So it just means the normal appellate process on this case will uh will now take place.
The other decision, Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a black death row inmate who said Texas prosecutors unfairly stacked his jury with whites, issuing a harsh rebuke to the state that executes more people than any other.
The 6-3 ruling today ordered a new trial for Thomas Miller L. E.L., Miller-E.L., who challenged his conviction for the 1985 murder of a 25-year-old Dallas motel clerk.
It was the second time justices reviewed the case after a lower court refused to consider the claims of Miller L., The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was wrong to reaffirm the conviction by a state court in light of the strong evidence of prejudice during jury selection, according to the Supreme Court.
The uh pinion uh Bruce uh not Bruce Suter is a pitcher, uh David Suter noted that black jurors were questioned more aggressively about the death penalty, and that the pool was shuffled at least twice by prosecutors, apparently to increase the chances that whites would be selected.
David Suter wrote for the majority.
He was joined by the usual suspects.
Uh John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.
Uh the the uh well, I'd say what this means to me.
This is just a matter of time if this court's constitution doesn't change uh before they just totally outlaw the death penalty.
I mean, that's the direction in which this court is headed.
Souter claims the exclusions were based on race.
Clarence Thomas in the dissent says that that is speculative, and that prosecutors gave sound reasons for excluding certain would-be jurors having nothing to do with race.
Now, this is this is just I mean, these people are human beings, and you gotta remember this, folks, when you start, if you come from the from the belief that the Supreme Court needs to be the final word on everything cultural, social, and legal in this country, which it is.
You have to understand these are just human beings, and here you had a case, and six uh five or Six justices thought that there was clear discrimination here, and the other said, no, there wasn't.
There wasn't any discrimination here.
This is speculative.
You are speculating that there was discrimination.
And Clarence Thomas said that Texas prosecutors had offered enough evidence that exclusions were made for reasons other than race.
So how do you account for this?
I mean, the evidence is what it was.
The arguments came before the court as they came.
And you had a certain number saying that obviously speculated this was race-based.
And you had other justices.
No, the evidence is clear it wasn't.
Now you look at the Supreme Court and you say, well, these are supposed to be the best lawyers in the land.
These are the best judges in the land.
Something as fundamental as this.
Ought to be able to agree.
But they don't.
And so it it continues, uh, folks, just to be mind-numbing here as we stop to consider the role the courts in this country have assumed and play each and every day.
As I mentioned at the top of the program, the nation of Uganda has been celebrated as an example of how a third world nation can successfully combat AIDS.
How that decline occurred has been a subject of great interest to public health officials in the West.
In the early 90s, Uganda had one of the worst AIDS problems in the world, 30% of its population infected.
Since that time, Uganda's AIDS infection rate has fallen to a current 10% level.
According to Dr. Edward Green, anthropologist and senior research scientist in the School of Public Health at Harvard, the remarkable turnaround in Uganda was based on what was called the ABC approach.
Since the early 1990s, government and health officials have been encouraging their people to abstain, be faithful to their spouse or partner, and use condoms if A and B fail.
Teenagers were actively encouraged to wait until marriage before having sex.
Government officials in Uganda claim that the more traditional approach, rather than relying on condoms, was the major reason for the decline in AIDS.
Janet Moussevini, the nation's first lady, gave credit at a World AIDS Day event to the time-tested message of abstinence from premarital sex and faithfulness in marriage.
Now, one might think that health experts would embrace such good news, but uh Green said nothing, as Edward Green from Harvard said nothing could be further from the truth.
He said that he and his fellow researchers presented their studies to officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal agency in the U.S. responsible for dispensing government monies to combat AIDS in Africa.
Green told him the key factor in the decline was less casual sex, more fidelity, more abstinence among youth.
However, he added, U.S. aid officials and others were evidently horrified by what we said.
Why were they horrified?
Well, according to a senior advisor at the United Nations Global Fund, U.S. aid officials reject the evidence because the studies were not showing that the condoms were the only things that worked.
Moreover, an investigative article in Citizen Magazine charged that U.S. aid may be attempting to cover up research like Greens at Harvard.
The agency has shelved scientific evidence showing that the ABC strategy is much more effective at reducing AIDS than simply handing out condoms.
So once again, you got good news, and it is not appreciated because it's not the news that a bunch of liberals wanted.
Abstinence.
This is such common sense that you wonder how in the world anybody could argue with it.
Abstinence, the spread of any STD, AIDS or anything else.
Abstinence works every time it's tried.
There's no more logical and simple statement about something that can be made.
And here we've got evidence in Uganda that it worked, obviously.
Of course it would.
And that's greeted with dismay and anger because the condoms are not getting the credit.
I mean, you want to say, was the U.S. Agency for International Development in a condom business?
I'm sorry.
Somebody getting a take on all the condoms made and sold and given away around the world?
What is this?
Sometimes you just have to throw up your hands.
This is this is why for you libs out there, this is why so many people just cannot understand your continually rejecting pure logic to explain the solution to a host of problems.
At any rate, George Lackoff continues to be in the news.
He was down at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and made a speech, and I'll share details when we come back.
Don't go away.
Want to grab a quick phone call here.
We have three uh soundbites from Vice President Cheney went to the National Press Club today to uh to talk about the press attacks at Guantanamo Bay.
I want to share those with you.
But first, here's Russ in San Angelo, Texas.
You gotta be going there to get there.
Welcome, Russ.
Nice to have you with us.
Thank you.
Proud Marine Corps dad did us to you, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Uh, Rush of uh the the press, it seems like a month ago was writing articles about uh was Bush right.
And uh nothing new about Guantanamo Bay Bay or Abu Grab has changed in the last year or two, and yet all of a sudden they seem like um they've turned up the volume two or three decibels on this issue.
And it seems to me that they smell blood in the water, and it started at the point where the the uh moderate senators cut this deal up to that point which seemed like you know the Republican Party was united marching forward, and I I don't know what's changed, but I wanted to run that by and see what's going on.
Well I I I you I don't think that the Republican moderates and the deal on the judges, I assume it's what you're talking about.
I don't think that that was the instigation of the uh of the change.
And it was a little let me put it this way you're right in in the first thing he said six months ago, three months ago, we were regaling you with all these columns.
They were not news stories, they were columns from liberal opinion leaders, and they were we may have to face uh fact that Bush might have been right about Iraq.
This was after was after the elections in Iraq were so successful, and that evidence is continuing to grow.
And I pointed out that when those columns are written, they should have been said uh in a different way, should have been written in a different way.
We were wrong.
But you see, the whole the the the whole context is gee, uh Bush must have been right.
Why he may have been right.
Whoa, no, no, no.
You were wrong all along.
Bush was never wrong and then all of a sudden was right.
You guys have been wrong all along.
I think what has happened here, if you look at the New York Times, the New York Times has had an Abu Grab story every day in the newspaper for months, folks.
Weeks.
I don't know how long it's but it's incredible.
I think today's the first day they don't have one.
It is why I suggested a couple weeks ago that the New York Times actually must have decided that their competition was Al Jazeera, because they were running their all the news that's fit to print terrorist edition.
And it featured Abu Ghrab, and then came this Koran business.
When somebody unleashed this business about the Koran at Gitmo, that just fueled them.
But I'll tell you what really fueled this, if you ask me, was Dan Rather and the forged documents.
Because after that, the press circle the wagons.
You know, in a normal business circumstance, like if I'm at ABC or NBC and CBS screws up that way, I exploit it.
I try to capitalize on it, and I try to run those guys out of business.
Um, but that's not how the news business works.
These people are all on the same page.
They're all fellow travelers, they're all in some useful idiots, however, you want to look at them.
But when one of those guys gets attacked, they circle the wagons.
And it wasn't long after Dan Rather got a peabody award for the Abu Grab story.
He and Mary Mapes got an got a Peabody award for releasing those pictures from Abu Grab.
And so the the press, you got to remember the template, Watergate.
They've been looking for anything to get rid of Bush.
The the National Guard story blew up on them, and they had to save face.
And to save face, they have to prove that Bush is a louse, is a creep, is totally different than the guy he presents himself as being.
Which is laughable because Bush is the most genuine human being as president we've ever had, and the most here I am and take me or leave me kind of guy we've ever had.
He doesn't do polling to figure out what to say.
He doesn't do Polling to figure out what to think.
He doesn't do polling to figure out his policy.
He does what he thinks he has to do and what he thinks is right.
Come what may.
That's what the Democrats ought to be doing, but can't.
They're the ones that use polling and all that.
So they have to go after and get Bush somehow.
Abu Grab uh became the rallying point once again, because it had died out, but it became the rallying point after this this this Bill Burkett thing and the forged uh National Guard documents blew up in their face.
And then a Newsweek thing.
The second thing that turned this was when Newsweek botched it big time.
If I were time or U.S. news, I would have been on Newsweek as you can't trust them by our magazine.
But no, everybody surrounded the uh circled the wagons once again and started writing stories.
Well, Newsweek might have gotten it wrong, but we know it still happened.
And he set out to prove it, and I told you it was going to happen.
I told you you're gonna get stories about detainee abuse to prove that Newsweek was right, even though they were wrong.
And that is the most recent thing that's ginned up all this stuff at Gitmo, because that was about the Koran.
There have since been stories about all this abuse of the Koran, uh, you know, urination on the Koran, all of this, and it's just naturally flowed into the whole general topic of abuse at Gitmo.
And then you had Thomas Friedman of the New York Times write a piece one Sunday saying, close it down, Mr. President.
Just close it down.
And you had David Broder, incidentally writing a piece in the Washington Post, you know, we need to make a deal here to stop these filibusters and to stop this nuclear option.
Bam o Democrats made a deal.
We need to, and then they came along with this uh freedman piece need to close Gitmo, and guess what?
They all pick up with it and run it, and then start asking Bush, should we close Gitmo?
It's that that's why I've always said if you if you if you miss CBS's news one night, don't sweat it, watch NBC.
If you miss that, don't sweat it, watch ABC.
If you did if you miss that, watch CNN.
No big deal.
If you miss that, watch MSNBC.
You've got if you miss that, read the New York Times.
If you missed that, read the Washington Post.
Miss that, read Time.
Miss that, read Newsweek.
Miss that, read U.S. News.
Miss that, read the LA Times.
You can miss 99% of what the mainstream press offers go to the other one percent, and you'll find out what the other 99% did anyway.
Because it's all the same.
It is identical.
Same story, same lead stories, same take.
Same points, same focus.
Remember, news is a product that is packaged just like everything in a grocery store.
I'm sorry, the Walmart shelves.
It is, folks, somebody decides what the news is going to be every day.
And isn't it interesting that all of these different editors and all of these reporters and all these producers seem to look at the day's events and see the exact same thing.
In the same degree of importance.
Now there is a starting point for this.
Do you know what it is?
The New York Times front page.
The New York Times front page dictates to Peter Jennings what his news is going to be that night.
Same thing at CBS, same thing at NBC, same thing everywhere else on daily newscasts.
In fact, I'll never forget.
When I went out to Sacramento to do my radio show when I started in 1984 out there, the uh the news director of the radio station was appalled when he found out that uh there was no subscription to the New York Times.
Radio station took the Sacramento B, took the uh took the uh San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal, and uh the news director is a new guy.
I can't believe you are actually putting together news every day without the New York Times.
And he demanded to be the only paper they look at.
Didn't register with me then, I said, because I wasn't out there, I went in the news department, I didn't much care, but uh, you know, my education continues as I live and breathe each day, my friends.
And so this is this is how it goes.
So, you know, once the press twice humiliated with uh Dan Rather and the forged documents and then Newsweek, it's it's circle the wagon times.
We got to protect ourselves and our buddies.
Because if one of them goes down, we all go down, they think.
If CBS loses credibility, the guys at ABC and CBS think they do too.
And they're probably right since they're the same thing.
Uh and if Newsweek goes down, then you know, time probably oh, we're in big trouble.
Well, if Newsweek goes down, we're gonna go down.
We're the same thing.
So they circle the wagons.
And what happens now is that the template of getting Bush out of Office via scandal or discrediting discrediting him so his agenda can't move forward has become a press fixation, and they're willing allies and accomplices happen to be the Democrats.
And so you've got you've got quite a uh uh an organization there.
And I don't believe that in the news media per se in the reporter or the news side of the media that they were ever admitting Bush might have been right.
You had a couple of columnists at local newspapers or magazines worried about their individual credibility.
Bush, you know, might have been right, but in at large in the mainstream media, they will never think Bush was right about anything.
Never ever.
He's always wrong, and he's dangerous, he's incompetent, he's illegitimate.
But Jim is uh on the line from Nova Scotia.
Hi, Jim, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh programs.
Great to have you with us.
Uh, it's great to be talking with you, Rush.
This moment has been a long time in coming.
Thank you, sir.
Great to have you.
I believe I might have been your first Canadian listener.
Really?
Well, I wish I had something to give you as an honor.
Well, are you a subscriber uh to my website by any chance?
Uh no, I've never actually been to your website yet.
Well, I'm gonna make since your first Canadian caller ever, uh not today, I mean you were, uh, because we've had others from Canada, but but I I'll I'll trust you on it.
Uh we'll give you a free subscription to the uh website, Rush Limbaugh.com, which will also give you uh freebie access to our daily podcasts.
Okay.
So at the end of the call, just hang on, and uh a nice young man will come on and tell you what we need to make this happen.
Well, I've been listening since 1990.
Yeah, well, that would that qualify you, uh first caller from Canada, yes.
And uh I remember that you were on crossfire on CNN.
That's where I and you know heard about you first, and I then I thought you radio show.
Youthful mistakes I made many in the early part of my mistake to go on crossfire, was it?
Pardon me?
It was a mistake to go on crossfire.
Oh, by all means, yes.
It might have it might have been useful at the time, but uh I got sandbagged.
I mean, I was I was during the pre-interview, uh we were told we were gonna be talking about this, this, and this, and we didn't talk about this, this, and this.
They uh it was basically an attack on talk radio, uh, where I was told they wanted my comments on issues.
There was another talk show host whose name I forget, and he and I ended up agreeing and bashing Mike Kensley for the that would have been fun, yeah.
Yeah.
No, but I mean talk radio was in its infancy basically then anyway, so a lot of a lot of arguments against talk radio, you know, we're still to come, right?
So that's absolutely right.
But anyway, uh the reason I called was uh uh I'd like to take take you back to the last hour a little bit if I could and and just basically make the point that I'm not afraid of Iran, I'm very afraid of Saudi Arabia.
And I'll elaborate on that however you want.
Well, now I know what you mean.
Uh the the hijackers, uh the majority of them for Saudi Arabia, uh uh a number of uh terrorist acts around the world uh are being committed by uh uh people that that are born and raised and may perhaps still live in Saudi Arabia, but the uh the the and I think I think to us to a certain extent there's no question that there's a problem with Saudi Arabia as well as a problem of the whole problem of the whole Middle East.
Uh there's there's no question about it.
Uh problem is that Saudi Arabia happens to be a large supplier of oil, so we have to, you know, walk over hot calls there.
Uh but when it comes to terrorism, Iran has always been, and it's not new.
Iran has always been the real hotbed of terrorist activity.
Uh they have they have uh sponsored it, they have uh trained people for it, they have paid for it, they have done uh uh a number of things.
They got they were they were in action long before Al Qaeda came along.
Uh if Iran hadn't been doing what it had done, the guidance for bin Laden and others to come along uh would have had to have come from somewhere else.
Uh not that it wouldn't have happened, but uh Iran and and Syria as it relates to our current battle in Iraq happened to be furnishing the vast majority of uh the so-called insurgents that are doing battle with us.
And I really I want to stress again, it can't call them insurgents if they're foreign fighters.
Insurgents implies that we've got Iraqis fighting Americans who hate us and don't want us there.
And that's not what is happening.
It's the exact opposite.
Now, some of the uh insurgent flow or terrorist flow from Iran, no doubt, is being populated by Saudis.
Uh I I'm not I'm not trying to disagree with Saudi Arabia is not uh a major player in problems that we have.
It'd be foolish to deny that.
But if you're gonna say you're not afraid of Iran, you ought to be.
Iran is uh is is the major state sponsor of terrorism.
It has been for 20 years.
And the the Syrians are their allies, and they have other allies like China.
This is a really, really, really dangerous situation that's brewing over there, particularly with Iran and nuclear weapons.
And and you've got an Iranian population which is um, you know, not totally in sync with its leadership.
Uh in fact, this story from the New York Sun today, and and this story I've not seen it anywhere else.
Iranian women defy authorities, demand freedom.
Hundreds of women of all ages gastered gathered yesterday at Tehran University to demand freedom and an end to gender discrimination in Iran.
This is days before Iranians head to the polls Friday to cast their ballots in a national election.
The protesters who lacked official permission to demonstrate defied the police to make historic pleas for equal rights.
This week's presidential election, widely expected to bring victory to uh uh cleric and former president hardliner Ali Akbar Hashimi Rufson Johnny.
And of course, why do you think this is happening?
Why do you think this is why are women in Iran risking jail?
They're seeing Iraq women.
They're seeing Iraq and Afghanistan women get civil rights.
This is the whole, this is one of the points of the plan.
Uh this is this is just further evidence that what we're doing in Iraq is working.
Uh from Kuwait, there's a there's a we've got the first head of what is she, a governor or something?
Yeah, we got the first cabinet member, female cabinet member in Kuwait, uh, just 30 days after this process was legalized.
I mean, these things are are you you talk about turning the tables on people.
These are huge developments in Iran and Iraq and in Afghanistan and now Kuwait.
And there's it there's no putting this genie back in the bottle unless we pull out.
If we pull out, we throw up our hands and say, you know what?
These Republicans and these Democrats are right.
We don't have any reason to be there.
We need to get out of there.
Uh then there will be violent, violent civil wars and overthrows of these protesters, and the people that have gained these new freedoms will go right back into the slavery and bondage they lived in before we got there, and it will have created again the powder keg of hatred uh that is the education system in all these countries that allows for more terrorists to be born and bred and raised as anti-American and willing to even die for their cause, whatever.
This is there's major progress.
So you can't take Iran nor Syria out of the um out of the equation.
Dan in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Yeah, but I just wanted to make a comment.
Earlier you said that all these forms of media, well, you just have to listen to one of them, you get the same story.
Well, you get the same story on talk radio too from everyone you listen to.
They all have the same comments, and if they say so, it must be true.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, oh, oh, oh, oh.
What did I get a question?
Did you say liberal talk radio?
No, I'm not talking about liberal talk radio.
I'm talking about this station, which all day long key playing the same thing over and over.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, you say all conservatives are the same.
It's just the same pitch, you know.
You can't disagree with them because they they said it's right.
You know, I get the sick of it.
And I'm not necessarily completely liberal, but I just I hear things like yesterday.
I I I I listened to the Sunday morning TV shows, and I heard the uh comments by the representative that he was really in pain about that voting for the uh uh war because he's called every one of those uh Well, now wait a minute, you're missing a lot of people.
You're you're missing a fundamental point, though.
I'm talking about journalists.
I'm talking what But your media too.
Well as I'm concerned.
Yes, but hang on just a second.
I do not deceive anybody that I'm something I'm not.
Nor does any other conservative.
The point is we conservatives are honest about well, what you can laugh out there, but let me finish.
We're honest about who we are.
We're honest about our agenda, and we honest about what we believe.
And if you hear the same thing from conservatives, it's because conservatives do believe the same things.
You know, we have core values out there.
And we don't make things up just to impress people or get ratings.
Now, when it comes to the news media, the objective mainstream media, they will deny till the sun is up and down that they're liberal.
They will deny that they have an agenda.
They will deny they're trying to affect the outcome of events.
They will deny all of these things, and yet they are monolithic.
I don't think that they're all telling lies and hiding behind all this and that and everything else.
They're not telling lies, huh?
Forged documents at CBS and the other news media circle the wagons to support them.
A lying story out of Guantanamo Bay about the Koran and the media circles the wagons to help them out.
And you'll never admit that the Bush war is wrong, that he made a mistake.
No one will ever admit that.
I do all the time.
I do all the time, you dunce.
I criticize the president for lack of attention to immigration.
I do all the time.
I've opposed this president's domestic policy and spending from the get-go of his administration.
But when it comes to certain elements of our national security, I think he's dead on right, and I say so.
But I'm not monolithic where Bush is concerned.
I do not say whatever I say just to make sure Bush looks good.
And if you were a steady listener that you you would you would know this.
But once again, I, ladies and gentlemen, with a liberal, how long did it take?
Ten seconds have become the issue.
So uh what are we to do?
We're we're we're dealing with a level of of dunceaucity out there, ladies and gentlemen, that I that I think is un I did I call him a dunce.
Yeah, I did call him a dunce.
He's a dunce.
He needs to go sit in a corner.
He needs to not get dinner until he learns to be able to follow these events on his own and figure them out independently.
To try to compare what I'm doing or any of my cohorts with CBS, NBC, or ABC.
One of the reasons we're succeed I I don't even want to waste time.
I've got too much left to do here.
Thanks for the call.
Nice try.
Once again, we skunk them back after this.
Ha, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
I must apologize to you.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm not gonna apologize for calling him a dunce.
It was a dunce.
I apologize for wasting valuable program time.
I misread the I uh I thought the line said Lib Talk Radio, but I thought he was going to talk about everything's the same on Lib Talk Radio 2.
And I I misread that.
It noise a lib.
Um, as you can hear, I was confused when he when he first called.
But nevertheless, we still have uh time I can make up for the uh for the error.
But I do I do find it funny, you know the the liberals think that uh we conservatives, you know, we all say the same thing.
Why wouldn't we?
We're conservatives.
You know, but but but regardless of that, the liberals demand that we embrace part of their agenda in order to show how independent we are.
You never you never do anything but pay the Bush.
You know, I I'm I'm sick and tired of this too.
This is this is the wrong context.
You liberals to show your even moderately able to think need to adopt our agenda or parts of ours.
This business, we got to have Republicans who are mavericks, we've got to have Republicans who are reasonable because that means they disagree with their own party.
Uh I don't accept that template anymore.
I don't accept the context anymore.
Because I don't believe you people are superior to me in any way.
And I don't care if you think I have something to prove to you.
I don't.
As far as I'm concerned, you libs have a lot to prove to the rest of us in this country.
And you're failing miserably at it.
And I promise some Cheney sound bites, and let me get to them.
He went to the National Press Club today.
Here he is responding to the press attacks at Gitmo.
Since we began using Guantanamo, over 200 people that were held there have subsequently been released or returned to their home countries.
So there has been a process in place for reviewing and screening the individuals held And making judgments with respect to those that we believe no longer have intelligence value or no longer constitute a threat to the United States.
Of those who have been released, at least ten have gotten back into the battle on the other side.
And uh were subsequently uh captured or encountered uh in the ongoing conflict.
Now, this is what needs to happen.
You know, the the the the administration needs to have Cheney out or somebody like this responding to this garbage uh each and every day uh that it is leveled, and I'm glad he's doing this.
How about that little bit of news?
Of those who'd been released, at least ten have gotten back into the battle on the other side.
Here he is talking about what Americans are doing.
We're putting a lot of bad guys back on the street to do exactly what they started to do in the first place.
And uh, from the standpoint of uh safety and security of Americans and American troops in combat, it seems to me we have an obligation to uh treat these individuals uh as uh we have been treating them, and that is as enemy combatants.
They are well cared for at Guantanamo, they are properly housed and properly fed, they've got the medical care treatment they need, uh, their religious needs are uh are uh met with, and uh in fact, I think say if we didn't have that facility at Guantanamo to undertake this activity, we'd have to have it someplace else.
Yes, exactly right, and one more.
Cheney says that the critics of Guantanamo are critics of the United States in the war on terror, period.
My own personal view of it is that those who are most uh urgently advocating that we shut down Guantanamo probably don't agree with our policies anyway, and that uh from the perspective of uh uh uh how we proceed there.
Um, I think uh these people have been treated far better than they could be expect to have been treated by virtually any other government on the face of the earth.
And uh from that standpoint, I think uh I think our policy is the correct one.
As the president said the other day, we uh continually review these matters.
Uh these individuals at Guantanamo have their cases reviewed on an annual basis to see if their status is changed so that uh we couldn't that fact alter their uh circumstances, and uh that is a continuing, continuing proposition for us.
I know I know Cheney a little bit, and believe me, this is Cheney mad.
This is Dick Cheney angry.
Uh, as he has every right to be.
His own personal view of it is that those who are most urgently advocating we shut down Guantanamo probably don't agree with our policies anyway.
He's exactly right.
And this is the I'm glad he's out there saying this.
He's also talking about how these people have been treated far better than they could be expected to be treated by virtually any other government on the face of the earth.
I remember that press conference that McClellan gave, Scott McClellan at the White House.
And uh, who was it?
Uh Elizabeth Bumiller.
They go, well, you suggest this after the newsweek flipper.
You say we write stories about how good the American military is, and I remember so what would be wrong with that?
Is there nothing good the U.S. military does, Elizabeth?
Is there not one thing they do you can be proud of?
Is it not one thing the U.S. military does that you can be proud of or say good things about?
Same thing at Gitmo.
Let's look at how we treat these POWs compared to the way we're treated or any other government treats POWs.
And let's use that as the comparison.
Let's use that as the context.
As I said earlier, let's go back to World War II.
Let's see how it was done then.
Let's use the template of a war we won and examine how we're prosecuting this one.
But oh no, we have to find the evil.
And the and the absolute horrors of what Americans do to people.
We don't get stories about what goes on in prisons where Americans are held, unless the bad guys release a video.
The U.S. media doesn't care to find out.
Quick time out.
We'll be back in just a moment.
Stay with us.
George Lakoff was uh went down to uh uh where was it?
Uh, Fort Bragg.
More than 750 people crowded into the Fort Bragg High gym on May 27th to see the political phenomenon who has re-energized Democrats nationally.
He has uh why Lakhoff is so popular with progressives wasn't immediately apparent.
The bottom line is I have more on this for you tomorrow, but he said liberals must speak from the heart, not polls.
He says Democrats sought too much guidance from polls rather than their own moral values.
I wonder why that would be, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
Uh liberals must speak from the heart, not polls.
Understand it's great advice.
But my contention is they can't.
Nobody would accept what liberals really are and believe if they were honest about what they wanted to do.
That's why they're in the trouble they're in.
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