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June 15, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:15
June 15, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #1
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And greetings to you thrill seekers, conversationalists, and music lovers all across the fruited plain.
It's the award-winning Rush Limbaugh program, and we are here, bright-eyed and bushy tailed at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the nation's leading radio talk show, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
A thrill to be with you, as always, an honor and a delight.
The telephone number, if you'd like to be on the program, is 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
President Bush, a big fundraiser last night, finally took the gloves off.
Oh, by the way, the ditto cam is on, be on for all three hours.
Finally took the gloves off.
I'm gonna be honest, folks.
I'm uh uh as I always am.
I mean, it it is get it gets laborious around here carrying the water for the Republican Party or the or this administration.
You know, I mean, uh uh on a on a on a daily basis.
I mean, uh, you can sit around all day long and and try to appease people and get along with them, but uh you watch your presidency uh you know whittle away uh by these never-ending attacks and so forth.
Finally, the president shows up last night and unloads, and it was about time, and let's just hope that this is the beginning of something.
Uh the mainstream media more interested with the porn star that showed up at the Republican meeting last night than what the president had to say.
But that's okay.
We have uh three sound bites of what the president had to say.
Did you not know there was a porn star there?
Yeah, yeah, I know.
I that that's I don't get it either.
We've we have we had a porn star in the White House for eight years running a country.
And so we have a porn star that shows up at the Republican Party fundraiser left.
I would think this would make us even more diverse.
I I would think that the secular left would be impressed with this.
Well, nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, well, we'll get to the Bush soundbites here in just a second.
Uh as you know, yesterday, grab the grab the Club Gitmo commercial, uh, Mike, if you can have it, uh, that we we put together yesterday.
Uh as soon as the broadcast engineer finds it in our in our large stack of things there, I'll play it for you because there's already been reaction to it uh from Capitol Hill.
And uh we, ladies and gentlemen, if you have not been to Rush Limbaugh.com, you need to go and look at the brochure that we have published for Club Gitmo.
Uh it's right there at the top.
You cannot miss it.
Did you see it, Mr. Snerdley?
Go go go take a look at this thing.
If I got a funny letter today, I got a funny email today.
There was a there was a uh one of the pictures is of a sailboat, you know, the under the caption and overlooking the bay.
And there's a picture of a sailboat.
You click on each picture, and you either get an enlargement or another picture.
Well, when you click on the sailboat picture, what you get is a picture of a pot-bellied old guy with his swim trunks halfway down his butt uh on top of the mast.
So I get this email today.
Rush, there's something wrong with your club gitmo picture.
Because there's a picture of a guy on a sailboat mast when I click on the sailboat.
So I wrote him back, I said, No, it's the correct picture.
That's Senator Kennedy.
It is Senator Kennedy on the sailboat of overlooking the bay or on the bay, being overlooked by the vacationers at uh at Gitno.
All right, here is the commercial.
By the way, folks, we're up and running on this.
We're already in the process of adding Club Gitmo t-shirts to the uh to the EIB store.
We're gonna have at least one t-shirt with one slogan, maybe two.
I'll I'll find out later today and pass it on to you as soon as I know.
We're also working on pots, depend on prices, because we don't want to charge an arm and a leg for this stuff, but we want to be able to offer Club Gitmo bathrobes and Club Gitmo soap.
And so we're we're seeing if we can find uh, you know, moderately priced suppliers on the wholesale uh wholesale level uh to stock these items in the uh in the uh in the EIB store.
Well, I think I think folks there's already been a response to it this morning in Washington at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Gitmo prison camp.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont had this to say.
This idea of changing, changing the focus, producing props of chicken dinners and such, seeming to argue that this is more a club med a prison.
Let's get real.
These people have been locked up for three years, no end in sight, and no process to lead us out of there.
Guantanamo Bay is causing immeasurable damage to our reputation as a defender of democracy and a beacon of human rights around the world.
I get again am forced to say no.
Uh Senator Leahy, it is you and uh your pals of the Democratic Party that are uh causing immeasurable damage to our reputation as a country.
Uh and you are making us a appear to be a weak paper tiger to our enemies.
This is uh this the this is no different than trying to appease Adolf Hitler, if you ask me.
It is exactly the same thing that's going on here.
So uh uh we also have a couple of other stories about this.
First off, I mean this this is just this is the uh idiotic Senator McCain, who wants to be president, says there's no doubt that the U.S. has an image problem because of allegations of abuse and torture at Gitmo.
He says that the key is to try the individuals held at Gitmo for any crime that they are accused of rather than keeping them at the prison in perpetuity.
The military prison will be needed for years to come, Rumsfeld said yesterday there's no alternative location to hold and interrogate the suspected terrorists held there.
He said, I don't know any place where we uh have infrastructure that's appropriate for that sizable group of people.
McCain said there's no doubt the U.S. has an image problem because of allegations of abuse.
However, he added the key to this is to move the uh judicial process forward so that these individuals will be brought to trial for any crime that they are accused of rather than residing in the Guantanamo facility in perpetuity.
So bring them to try it.
They should they should be brought to U.S. courts and tried with U.S. lawyers, ACLU lawyers, and so forth.
It's just idiotic.
And to add to it, uh Senator Spector says he's gonna hold a hearings on Gitmo prisoners' rights, as lawmakers of both parties continue to question whether the government should close the U.S. military uh detention center at Gitmo.
Uh Arlan Spector, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, has called hearings today to clarify the legal rights of those prisoners.
Legal scholars have argued for months over whether detainees at the Gitmo base should receive the protections afforded to prisoners of war or be classified as enemy combatants, as the Bush administration has argued, which drastically limits their rights.
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Gitmo prisoners can challenge their detainment in uh in U.S. courts.
So McCain wants trials, and Spectre wants hearings.
For these people at Guantanamo Bay.
So you can see the odds uh as they uh as they stack up against reason here.
Gotta take a break.
We'll be back and uh continue the Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB network back after this.
Rich Galen uh in his Mullings weblog today says we we we have to be the dumbest superpower in the history of the planet.
The latest example of liberal intellectual rigor mortis is uh is this business about closing down the prison at Gitmo because of allegations of abuse.
Oh, by the way, uh I was just told that we're having some uh uh problems with the website and the Ditto Cam.
Uh speed problems, probably bandwidth problems.
I don't know what they are.
We're tracking them down, we're working on them.
Be cool, be patient, we are aware of it.
Mullings continues.
Senator Biden, who wants to ride the Gitmo train all the way to the White House, is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He said on ABC's Sunday show, I think we should uh just end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners.
In this case, I agree with Senator Biden.
We should shut down the prison at Gitmo.
Then we should move the terrorist to the Delaware Correction Center near beautiful downtown Smyrna, Delaware, 15 miles from the capital of Delaware.
According to the State of Delaware's webpage, aptly titled Death Row Fact Sheet, there are 15 inmates who were on death row at the uh Delaware Correctional Center.
We could put the Gitmo guys in with them and see who's left standing after lunch, which is served on insulated dishware made of polypropylene in the inmate cell and is eaten with a plastic utensil called a spork.
I gotta tell you, I don't think forcing inmates to use a utensil called a spork is gonna pass muster with the ACLU.
One of those unintentional Irony is the death row fact sheet lists first executed inmate, John Turk, October 19, 1662.
Delaware's slogan, celebrating the fact that it was the first state to adopt the Constitution is included in the logo at the top of the page.
It's good being first.
So nevertheless, the point here is we could really put these guys in a rotten place.
For for us to be told that these people are being abused, uh, and then to listen to how prisoners at the Delaware Correctional Center are being treated and how their meals are served is uh, I mean, pretty good contrast.
Senator McCain yesterday, press conference on Capitol Hill.
He was uh joined by uh Bill Frist, an unidentified reporter says one of the uh challenging issues the U.N. ambassador will have to deal with is the U.S. image around the world.
Can I get both of you to comment on whether you think Git Mos should be shut down?
Here's McCain.
There's no doubt that there's a problem there that exists as far as America's image is concerned.
But I believe that the issue is more related to disposition of the prisoners than Guantanamo Bay itself.
I was there two years ago in 2003.
Senator Graham and Senator Cantwell and I were there, and on our return, we wrote a letter to Rumsfeld saying, try him or release them.
I think the key to this is to move the judicial process forward so that these individuals will uh be tried, brought to trial for any crime that they're accused of rather than residing in Guantanamo facility in perpetuity.
Uh now, who was it that got all this started?
You remember who got all this started, Mr. Sturdley?
It was the New York Times.
Thomas Friedman, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times.
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times got all this started.
Close Gitmo.
Just shut it down, Mr. President.
And that that gave everybody up on Capitol Hill uh the cover.
They didn't have to be first, in other words.
They didn't have to be first.
I have no idea somebody, you know, shuffle the idea on to Friedman.
Tom, write this and we'll we'll we'll make you look like you know what you're doing and leading us here.
Uh well, I'm not I'm you know, I'm not naive to know how these things work.
You can't tell me that a bunch of guys on Capitol Hill are sitting around, you know, playing marbles and playing chess and all of a sudden read a New York Times piece, say, you know, that's a good idea.
That's not how this happens.
There are people trying to shut Bush down.
There are people trying to shut the White House down, is what's going on here.
There are people who are trying to get the president of the United States to face some kind of tribunal, uh, and they want him tried, impeachment or otherwise.
So, you know, you have a little conversation back and forth with some journalists, go maybe to Tom Friedman, say, Tom, you know, what do you think about Gitmo being shut down?
And you make the case to Friedman.
Friedman says, Yeah, yeah, makes sense to me.
Tom, you write that, we'll provide you cover.
Benny writes it.
Everybody else says, ah, somebody's come up with a good idea here.
Nobody on Capitol Hill probably wanted to have the, you know, the uh had the guts to want to be first to suggest this.
So when it shows up in the New York Times, oh, there's our cover.
Same thing with David Broder in the Washington Post when it came to this deal on ending the judicial filibuster of the Democrats regarding the president's judicial nominees.
I think the same process takes place there.
I don't believe this stuff originates on the editorial pages of these papers.
And I mean this is no insult to these writers, don't misunderstand.
I just I just know there's a symbiotic relationship between Democrats and the press.
The mainstream press, the Washington Press Corps.
I know this to be true.
You'd have to be an idiot to deny it.
My point in braising all this is get get this.
Freedman's column today suggests that we double the boots on the ground in Iraq.
That Iraq is still winnable despite all that's happening.
We've m we've we've we've we've got too much of an investment there, but we need to do this right.
We need to double the troops on the ground.
We need more boots on the ground, more troops underground because the Iraqi forces are training is not going fast enough.
Now, have you heard this before?
Have we when when did you hear that before, Mr. Sturdley?
I want to know.
When did you first hear we need to double or massively increase the number of troops on the ground?
It was what was it was well, it was before John Kerry.
Kerry certainly picked up the refrain.
It was about 2004 sometime, less than a year after we were in there and during the uh campaign year, but it might have been Kerry, but sometime I think it was I think it preceded Kerry saying, and Kerry was one of the Amen chorus members on this.
But we can do some research and find out when it was first stated.
But apparently, whoever said it didn't carry enough weight.
But it was the it was Biden.
Well, I know it was a Democrat that said it.
It was the Democrats.
We needed, and we need to double the troops, and a lot of people double the troops.
You guys don't even want us to be there.
Remember this?
I never forget this whole this whole process.
You know, the Democrats didn't want us to go there in the first place, and they were talking about the unnecessary loss of life and the unnecessary loss of national treasure and all this.
And then all of a sudden, one day some of them comes, you know, we need to double the troops.
We're not doing this right.
Rosefeld doesn't know what he's doing.
He didn't plan for the aftermath.
He didn't plan for the peace.
We need to double the troops on the ground.
I know Kerry did say it.
So now here it is brought back as an original idea once again by Mr. Friedman on the op-head page of the New York Times, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
I don't know if it was Wesley Clark.
I don't remember who it was.
I just it was a chorus.
Somebody, I don't know who said it first, but it really, I guess it really doesn't matter.
But it was a chorus then after that.
My only point is that everybody's under the impression the New York Times got this close gitmo movement going.
Now there's this effort to double the troops on the ground.
And make no mistake, I think, I think that the left would love to force the president to do this, because that that would be a tandem out admission things aren't working.
And it would also subject more troops to uh harm's way, and that would open up the opportunity for the Democrats to belly ache and moan about that.
So I'm not sure if it's a trap or not.
Uh and I don't think anybody in the White House would be fooled by it if it is.
Uh, but I just I just I find the way all this stuff uh makes its way into the um uh the marketplace of ideas, if you will, to be a little screwy, just a little suspicious.
Let me grab a phone call or two here.
I don't want to start a new segment here, particularly the president last night at the fundraiser until we get back from the break at the bottom of the hour.
So, David in Crofton, Maryland.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Mr. Limbaugh.
Yes.
It's a pleasure to speak with you, sir.
Um as you often say, you were born to host, and I was born to listen to you.
Thank you, sir.
Um, hopefully I'm one of those lucky callers that makes you look smart.
But uh I just wanted to comment on uh Senator Sessions uh today at the Guantanamo hearings that uh Senator Spector is holding.
Yeah, you know what?
I have to admit, I didn't get to see it because we don't have C-SPAN 3 here.
And it was on C-SPAN 3, so uh you are more informed than I. What's sessions say?
I have about a minute here, if we could get to the point.
Basically, he was just talking about the fact that the whole tone of the session of the hearings is just ridiculous.
And that it's putting um our uh military at risk around the world, inflaming uh the extremists in the Arab world and uh and just really putting them all at risk.
And that uh the the whole tone that that somehow Guantanamo is the gulag, as Amnesty International said, the gulag of uh of our day is just absolutely absurd.
And uh I just really really appreciated what he had to say because some of the Democrats were uh were really making some of those.
Well, he's exactly right.
He's exactly right, and I I must say that I made this point yesterday, and you can go if you don't believe it, you go to the website, it's one of the lead quotes.
It's uh it's one of the lead quotes.
This is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
All this, all this self-criticism, all this, all this uh self-analysis here and beating ourselves up and talking about how mean and rotten we are, is doing nothing but giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
And I guarantee Mullah Omar sent a guy out to say bin Laden's still alive and well.
If that's true, Mala Omar Bin Laden sitting over there in some cave in Pakistan somewhere laughing themselves silly over the likes of Patrick Leahy and Senator McCain and a whole bunch who are who are worried about this.
It's Mogadishu all over.
Yes, yes, yes, we are back.
Quick research.
It was Wesley Clark.
Ashley Wilkes.
Here's the quote.
However, Clark states in his newly published book, Winning Modern Wars, Iraq Terrorism in the American Empire, that his solution to bringing peace to Iraq would be to double the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to nearly 300,000 men.
This from the website military.com, November 19, 2003.
November 19, 2003.
This this is less than uh less than six months after we went in there.
Wesley Clark says we need to double the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to nearly 300,000 men.
Now, keep in mind Wesley Clark was running for president at this time, as were a whole bunch of other Democrats, and the move was on to be all patriotic.
You know, we just went into war, and the Democrats don't want to be seen on the wrong side of that because the country's all raved up and ready to go and so forth.
The weapons of mass destruction is still a front page item.
And so the Democrats are trying to outdo Bush.
The Democrats are trying to say, well, we need we would even do it better.
Why we would even be more militaristic, why we would even be more hawkish.
Why we need a double the number of troops in it?
That started the chorus, because all the other Democratic candidates, except Dean, uh Dean probably didn't go along with us.
Who knows if he did?
Uh my guess is he didn't.
But you know, Kerry did.
Kerry picked up on this.
It was a central part of his uh uh his campaign.
And I remember talking about it because the Democrats were so opposed to this.
Remember, they were the friends with the French.
They were they were opposed to the United States, the Democrats were, along with all of their allies, France and Germany and the others at the United Nations Security Council.
And so when this when the war finally starts, they do a 180 and start demanding more troops.
I'm only making a point of this because that's on the that's Thomas Friedman's solution today on the uh op ed pages of the New York Times, and what Friedman suggests eventually becomes Democrat policy.
Uh is uh is the point.
Well, we'll just we'll keep our eyes on this.
President Bush last night ripped the Democratic Party as a pack of do-nothing obstructionists bent on derailing his agenda of reform, telling Democrat leaders in Congress that on issue after issue they stand for nothing except obstruction, and that's not leadership.
It was an evening congressional gala at the Washington Convention Center.
Twenty-three million dollars was raised for House and Senate Republicans.
This amounted to the kickoff of the 2006 political campaign season.
The uh president drew standing oaths from GOP Faithful as he hammered Democrats for offering no solutions to the nation's most pressing problems.
We have three sound bites on this.
And we'll start with number five, Mr. Broadcast Engineer.
And as I say, I it's about time.
It really is about time we heard this.
This is, I mean, this is not politics.
This is the president reacting intellectually honestly to what the Democratic Party is doing.
I'm proud to be the head of a party that has a positive and hopeful and optimistic vision for every single person who lives in this country.
And I'm proud to be a head of a party that is driving the debate on all the key domestic and foreign policy issues.
Thank you.
Because of our achievements, the American people see us as the party of reform and optimism and results.
The party that is moving this nation forward.
All of us in Washington have a duty to the people who sent us here.
Political parties can take one of two approaches.
One approach is to lead, to focus on the people's business, to take on the tough problems.
And that is exactly what our party's doing.
Okay, so he starts having uh reciting the optimistic things and the positive things the Republican Party is doing, and next he starts in on the Democrats.
Simply do not to delay solutions, obstruct progress, refuse to take responsibility.
Members of the other party have worked with us to achieve important reforms on some issues.
Yet too often, their leadership prefers to block the ideas of others.
We hear no to making tax relief permanent.
We hear no to social security reform.
We hear no to confirming federal judges.
We hear no to a highly qualified UN ambassador.
We hear no to medical liability reform on issue after issue.
They stand for nothing except obstruction, and this is not leadership.
And the next bite, the uh yes, let's hear it.
About time.
By the way, folks, I don't know, Mr. Schnerdley, I know watches the news every morning here.
Do you see anything about this on the news?
Yeah, very little.
There has there has just been very little about this uh on the news.
This is what am I hearing in the background here?
This is essentially a big black hole.
Wait a second.
Whether it's federal or state cannot say what's the thing.
You hear so have I got something on back here?
Oh, okay.
We got we got something on the mix minus.
Never mind, folks.
I got something in my IFB.
I don't know if you can hear it or not.
But nevertheless, we haven't heard much about this at all in the mainstream.
And this, you you would think that the media would be all over this because Bush is accusing a Democrats of being obstructed as it being mean, and yet they're ignoring it.
Why?
Why is this not all over cable news today?
Why and it may not be on the news tonight.
The evening newscast tonight will have to wait and see.
Well, I know why.
I know why.
They don't want to show that.
They don't want to have to run to the Democrats and ask, what do you think about this?
They don't want to have to run to the Democrats, say, okay, Senator Leahy, Senator Kennedy, what do you think about what the president said?
They don't.
This is Bush.
This is Bush as the leader of the Republican Party, not just the President of the United States.
This is Bush as a leader of the Republican Party, and they don't want that side of him seen.
You got one more sound bite, and in this one, Bush calls the Democrat approach the philosophy of the stop sign.
It is the philosophy of the stop sign.
The agenda of the roadblock.
And our country and our children deserve better.
Political parties that choose the path of obstruction will not gain the trust of the American people.
If leaders of the other party have innovative ideas, let's hear them.
But if they have no ideas or policies except obstruction, they should step aside and let others leave.
You hear how this crowd loves that?
You hear that, folks?
Crowds eating this stuff up.
People have been wanting to hear this for months out of this white house.
I don't know if it's gonna last, but it's it's a new new tone.
And I it's about time.
I I can't tell you, folks.
I mean a lot of people.
Why doesn't Bush say this?
Why doesn't Bush say that?
So um we'll see if this continues.
It did this morning.
Uh he spoke at the annual energy efficiency forum industry.
The officials from public and private sectors were there, and here's a portion of the president's remark.
Summer's here, temperatures are rising, and tempers will really rise if Congress doesn't pass an energy bill.
The American people know that an energy bill will not change the price of gas immediately.
But they're not going to tolerate an action in Washington as they watch the underlying problems grow worse.
You know what's holding up the energy bill is the same old thing and war.
They just don't want the Democrats, don't want to go along with anything that will create our own sources of uh of oil.
OPEC announced today they're gonna raise production, trying to halt the increase in the per barrel price that didn't slow down the increase uh very much, uh if anything at all.
But there's something about this, and I've I've made this point on many prior occasions, but over the course of my long and uh star-studded career as your host behind the golden EIB microphone, whenever whenever gasoline prices have gone up, at whatever stage they were, uh you always hear from the left.
Well, you know, it's about time.
Look at what they're paying over in Europe.
I mean, they're paying twice what we pay.
We're we're getting away with too much here.
We ought to be paying more.
We ought to be paying more for gasoline.
I've heard this 20 years.
Even when gasoline prices are not going up.
Uh some liberals, some environmentalists, wackos still, you know, get upset how little we're paying for gas.
Now all of a sudden the gasoline price is going up.
And who's leading the charge here to do something about it?
Very people who think that it ought to be going up.
Why?
Because they're not intellectually honest.
They're for anything that they think is going to hurt the president right now.
And if they think high gas prices will do it and harping on it, then of course they'll jump on the case.
It's just more evidence that you can't trust what comes out of their mouths is what they honestly and truly believe about things, and that's why it'd be really dangerous to elect these people.
Because you don't know, despite what they say.
Well, we do know what they believe.
That's the thing.
That's why we know that so much that come out comes out of their mouths is uh BS.
Now the New York Times today did have a story, does have a story on the uh on the president's speech last night, their headline, Bush denounces Democrats as focusing on obstruction.
Uh they didn't assign one of their top drawer reporters to it.
It's not a very long story.
They do quote him accurately in it, though.
I just I haven't seen a whole lot of it out there.
And you know, this is uh fire and brimstone stuff that's uh that's being ignored, and I think understandably so.
Uh little political note here before we go to the uh break, the uh primary yesterday in Ohio, and it resulted as many people thought, Pat DeWine, the uh the son of Senator Mike DeWine, Ohio, lost his Republican primary last night.
He's a former front runner for the seat, and uh and he's the son of Senator Mike De uh DeWine.
He faded worse than Giacomo down the stretch.
This is uh Shannon Coffin at National Review Online.
He finished fourth with 12% of the vote.
He was a frontrunner at one time.
Then his dad goes and participates with the gang of 14 in this deal.
And the people of Ohio, I understand this because I'm a student of this stuff.
The people of Ohio are fed up with judicial activism long before DeWine makes the deal with the Democrats, and they called us.
They told us that it was gonna happen.
We had calls from Ohio, and we were told by voters in Ohio uh that this was a likely result, that the effect DeWine would primarily have would be uh causing his son to not do as well as thought, and perhaps even lose and finishing in fourth place is losing.
Uh now Shannon Coffin says there are often multiple factors at work here, but it's hard to believe that Senator DeWine's opposition to filibuster reform, otherwise known as the McCain Mutiny, didn't do his son in.
Uh conservatives turned on a dime against DeWine, and they nominated Gene Schmidt.
Uh so there's obviously been some fallout here, and Senator DeWine is left now to face that.
Quick timeout, we'll be back and continue in mere moments.
Hey, we're back.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, Gary in Springfield, Missouri.
Welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Thank you, Rush.
Uh listen, I just want to say I think you're being totally unfair to Thomas Friedman.
Um suggesting that he's uh just a mouthpiece for the Democrats.
Um in fact I've annoyed more than one Democratic liberal friend by emailing his columns for the last couple of years when he's uh defending Bush's war in Iraq.
Um, Friedman has he but these are two separate things.
He, I mean, he he is I'm not denying that Friedman has not uh uh been supportive on occasion.
On occasion, consistently.
No, there were times he wasn't.
He did a he did a Maya culpa uh after after the thing started.
He was he was not he was not uh he was he was of the I can remember, I think we'll have to look it up.
Uh I might be confusing him with somebody else.
I have to offer this as a caveat, but I distinctly remember him being one of the uh people that didn't think this was worth it and wasn't gonna make it.
Uh and but he's also written pieces that were supportive of the effort, particularly after the elections in uh in January.
And I noticed a distinct turnaround in his, but but that's looking, I'm I'm not here to be critical of Friedman.
I'm just that the I notice a pattern, that's all, and I'm simply telling you how I interpret the pattern.
I could be wrong.
And why is Tom Friedman, by the way, untouchable?
You know, that's like me saying, I I I think people ought it's rather unfair of people being critical of me out there.
It's part of the game.
You know, this is the league we're all in here.
But there's a pattern out here.
The New York Times uh editorial op-ed page suggests we get out of Gitmo.
Bam, what are we talking about?
We're talking about getting out of ghetto.
I never heard anybody else talk about it till it came up.
And then David Broder talks about there needs to be a deal to stop the triggering of the nuclear opt.
Bamboa, what do we end up talking about?
What do we end up getting?
And I'm just suggesting to you that that I don't think that journalists are the only people who have these ideas, and then they write them down, and a bunch of uh politicians in Washington who are otherwise occupied, all of a sudden see go, ooh, good idea.
I know there's collaboration between politicians and journalists, both sides, both parties.
Don't be naive and suggest that that doesn't happen.
We know it does.
But with a newspaper story going first, what it provides everybody else cover.
One of the things we know about Washington is nobody wants to be first to do something.
In case it backfires.
There's no fallback position if it backfires.
But if some journalists suggest it and it doesn't go anywhere, so what?
Journalist writes another column the next day, no big deal.
And and now all of a sudden, double the troops as it's though it's a new idea when it's not.
In fact, I actually think, and we'll have to look this up.
I think the guy who might have mentioned doubling troops first was the uh ex-Secretary of Defense, or the uh uh uh not Secretary of Defense, but he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, John Shali Kashvili.
He might have been the first to suggest it, and then Wesley Clark.
I think Joe Biden, a bunch of people dumped on it.
Biden and McCain tried to claim it as their original idea uh when it when it all happened.
But all of a sudden now it's back.
And all I'm saying is let's let's see now uh what what happens uh if if this becomes the new clamor in Washington to fix what's wrong with Iraq, because you have to understand there's a foundation for this claim.
The foundation for this suggestion we need to double the troops is we are losing.
We're not gaining ground.
We are in terrible trouble.
And of course, that's a template that is right out of the mainstream press that Iraq's going horribly, we're not accomplishing anything, we're losing lives.
There weren't any weapons of mass destruction, we gotta get out of there.
Bam, okay, here comes the let's double the troops.
Uh let's let's just see.
We'll we'll be patient here, see how long it takes, if if it happens at all, uh, for this to uh become part of the daily rhetoric uh inside of Beltway.
Thanks for the call out there, Gare.
Back in just a second, folks.
Okay, back to the phones.
Uh quickly, Boston and James, welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us on the EIB network.
Yeah, Rush.
If anybody looks what happened to uh DeWine and DeWine's son in Ohio, let that be a lesson to anybody that thinks McCain has any chance whatsoever of getting the Republican nomination.
I mean, he's dead in the water.
Look what happened at DeWine and the sun.
Yeah, um, it it's interesting too.
Let me read uh to you here a uh a brief from the Cincinnati Inquirer today.
One thing was clear from Tuesday's primary.
Whether they voted for Schmidt or McEwan or Tom Brinkman Jr., the party's most fervently conservative voters dominated the Republican primary, and they're clearly sunk DeWine's candidacy.
They did.
The one point about McCain that you all have to understand, though, he doesn't care about the conservative base.
He wrote that off in the primary of 2000, and he's not trying for the Republican conservative base.
So he's he doesn't see anything that he's done here as dooming himself because he's gonna go about this without appealing and in his mind without winning the majority of votes from the Republican conservative base.
We must take our top of the hour break, my friends.
We will do so because we must.
We will be right back.
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