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June 15, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:19
June 15, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #2
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And greetings, welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh.
Great to have you with us.
The uh one and only EIB network rolls on.
From the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
We went back to we've had we've had some time to do a little research uh on Thomas Friedman's writing about Iraq.
We just had a caller suggest to us that Friedman's been a supporter of Iraq all along.
And I mean I couldn't sit here and say I disagree with that.
Plaintatively and affirmatively because there's too much stuff he's written that I haven't read uh since the whole war began, but my memory is that Friedman has not been a supporter of the Iraq War from the get-go.
And in fact, we found uh a piece, an abstract of a piece.
You know, when you go to the website and they want a couple bucks or five bucks for an archive piece, not to the New York Times.
So we will uh it's not that we don't have the five bucks, it's that we we know where not to spend our money.
Uh assuredly, folks, and be confident we have the five bucks, or whatever they charge to go get an archive story.
We just know where to spend our money, and that's not it.
They furnish enough here in the abstract.
This was a piece uh on uh let's see.
Well, I'm not sure the date.
It's May of 2004.
All right.
So this was uh this is all right, so it's about the same time as the previous column uh was uh written that we that we cited from uh now that was Wesley Clark in December of 2003.
All right, anyway, here's the abstract about Friedman's peace.
Thomas Friedman op-ed column questions whether regime change in Iraq will be possible in Bush administration.
Says Bush team considers it more important to defeat liberals at home than Bathists abroad.
Says that is why they spent studying United States polls than Iraqi history, and why they are so slow to change course.
Says confronting their mistakes would involve confronting their own politics, says Bush praises Rumsfeld rather than fire him over Abu Ghrab scandal, because Carl Rov says that uh to hold conservative base, Bush must appear to be strong, decisive, and loyal.
Says winning re-election is more important to him than producing decent outcome in Iraq.
So I wouldn't call this a supportive piece of the Iraq war, and of course questions whether regime change in Iraq will be possible in a Bush administration.
Says Bush team considers it important to defeat liberals at home, more important than to Bathists abroad.
Uh I just I just mentioned this uh folks to give you an idea that that uh not not every piece that Mr. Friedman's written has been totally supportive of the war.
Moving on to other things here, and if you want to keep talking about this uh feel free, key Senate Republicans are considering gradually raising the Social Security retirement age to as high as 69 over several years as they struggle to jumpstart legislation that President Bush has placed atop his second term agenda.
Under current law, the retirement age for full social security benefits is 65 and a half and is uh scheduled to reach 67 for those born in 1960 or later.
The possible increase to 69 over two decades or more was among the suggestions made by Senator Charles Grassley, uh chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and he presented these to fellow Republicans on his committee last week as part of an attempt to give the program greater financial solvency.
Grassley also suggested steps to hold down benefits for upper wage earners of the future.
Uh they spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying the discussions were confidential.
Well, they're not confidential now.
Uh they have been uh discussed.
Now, the uh the disclosures surfaced as Bush campaigned in Pennsylvania for changes in Social Security, including creation of these personal accounts for younger workers.
Uh the rest of the story is boilerplate.
Uh so raise the retirement age to 69, but it's gonna take two decades or more to do that.
Well, that's not gonna make any difference.
I may make some, but it's not gonna, it's not gonna, it's not gonna make a whole big lot of difference.
I got another research Assignment here for our staff, because I know this is true, I just don't know the numbers.
When Social Security was first proposed and enacted by FDR, the age at which you would begin receiving payments was beyond the life expectancy at the time, right?
Well, I want to I want to know what the numbers were.
I want to know what life expectancy was in 1935 when this all started.
Uh, and I want to know uh what the retirement age was at which Social Security benefits would be paid out.
The uh life expectancy now, what is it, 77 for men and uh 54 for women because of all the stress men put them through?
No, it's 77 and 70, but it's closing.
It's 77 and 70 something for women, but it's uh six what what what six sixty-one point seven years for what?
1935.
Okay, 1935, the life expectancy for both sexes was 61.7 years.
61.7 years in 1935.
And by the way, little observation about that.
The life expectancy has gone up 16 years while we've polluted the planet, while we're eating all this rotten grub, while we're exit of more filth and pollution that you can imagine out there, and yet the life expectancy has continued to skyrocket and up to 77.
It's going to be even higher than that.
My point is that we're really serious about this, and the Democrats, you know, want to always hold to the original intention of Social Security.
Let's make the retirement age higher than the life expectancy.
Ah, I know it'll never happen.
Whoever proposed that uh seriously would be probably burned at the stake or some such thing.
But raising the retirement age to 69, if it's already going to go to 67, raising it to 69 over 20 years, uh that's going to make, you know, maybe some difference in the big, big, big out years, but it's not going to have much to do uh much much effect on what is um what is happening now uh with the program.
So anyway, this is being secretly discussed, but it's no longer secret because it has uh it has been it has been leaked.
Now we also have other uh exciting uh items in the news.
Uh and I have two stories here about Governor Schwarzenegger, one from the San Francisco Chronicle, the other from the Los Angeles Times.
Let's look at the chronicle piece first.
Governor shifts ground in initiative fight.
Angry Democrats say he's trying to scare voters to the polls.
Governor Schwarzenegger's special election campaign suddenly became all about the landmark Prop 13 property tax initiative Tuesday when he warned elderly homeowners they could lose their houses to taxes if Democrats and union leaders got their way in the fall.
They want to back us into a corner so eventually they can force us to raise taxes.
Schwarzenegger told about 25 people in a backyard get-together uh in Santee, which is in San Diego County.
He accused Democratic legislators of sneaking around with backdoor efforts to tweak Prop 13, the 1978 initiative that put tight caps on property taxes in the state.
And Schwarzenegger said, I tell them don't you dare touch Prop 13 because the people of California voted to protect their homes.
He talked about knowing people in the 1970s who had to sell their homes because the government robbed them blind with property taxes.
The attack enraged Democrat leaders who accused the governor of campaigning on issues that aren't even on the November 8th ballot.
Changing Prop 13 to boost taxes on homeowners isn't on the ballot.
It isn't even on anybody's radar screen, said a spokesman for the assembly speaker, Fabian Nunes, Democrat Los Angeles.
Governor's trying to scare people to the polls, and that is shameful.
Yeah, right.
I wonder who who also tries this tactic.
What what have we heard this tactic used before?
Republicans are going to cut Social Security.
You're going to lose your house.
I remember Alan Cranston, Democrat Senator California making that argument shortly after what was in the uh it was in the 84 campaign.
The uh the Reagan Mondo campaign of 1984.
And from the Los Angeles Times, the Democrats who control the legislature have abandoned their effort to add billions of dollars in programs to the governor's proposed state budget and are preparing to vote for a spending plan with no new taxes and no extra Money for schools.
Shifting their focus to the coming special election fight.
The lawmakers are surrendering to Governor Schwarzenegger on the major spending issues that have separated the two sides for months.
For the first time in years, they are rushing to meet their constitutional deadline for passing a budget today with a viable plan.
Democrats fear that holding up the budget would hurt them.
November 8th, drive voters to approve spending controls.
The governor helped place on the ballot.
They said they would try to secure the money by other means.
Now, what has happened?
This is quite this is this is listen to this again.
Surrendering to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the face of the coming special election fight.
Democrats who control the legislature abandoned their effort to add billions of dollars to the governor's proposed state budget and prepared to vote for a spending plan with no new taxes and no extra money for schools.
Well, you know what this is called for this is called leadership.
Schwarzenegger stared him down.
Schwarzenegger looked in the eye and said, This is what we're gonna do, and if we don't do it, we're gonna send it out to a vote of the people.
And the Democrats surrendered because they know what the vote of the people would be.
We got a timeout.
Be back after this.
Stay with us.
Okay, back to the phone.
So Newport Beach, California.
Hi, welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Great to have you.
Rust, pleasure.
Um, three quick points.
Number one, I want to thank you for the impact you've had on politics and American life since you've been uh been on the radio.
Any time, sir, yes.
Uh happy to help.
Number two, I want to comment and remind people that the very people that are that are Freedmen and Kerry, uh Kennedy, all these people that are suggesting, you know, more troops for uh Iraq are the very same people that when it was time for them to put their lives on the line were out protesting uh Richard Nixon doing the same thing back in in the early 70s, and I would suggest these people again are proving that that it's you know, do as I say, not as I do.
They're willing to put American troops into harm's way now, more of them, as you said.
Well, when it was I'm sorry to interrupt you.
I know what you're thinking, but but you need to take one more step because they're being totally consistent, not inconsistent.
The template is Vietnam.
What failed in Vietnam?
We kept sending troops and we kept losing.
And when nothing worked, and they got Nixon out of office.
So calling for more troops.
Now, this is why I'm raising this, calling doubling the troops after it was first mentioned in 2003, is an attempt to do two things.
It's an attempt to make it look like all's going to hell in a handbasket.
We got Gitmo falling apart, we need to shut that down.
We got Abu Grab.
It's a total embarrassment, and now our rock's falling apart.
Nothing there's going right.
We need to do something.
We need to double the troops.
So Democrats can make themselves look like they care about Iraq, but in fact, they're actually trying to cement the notion it's a total failure, an abject failure that needs more troops.
Uh the more troops.
Should I say this?
I may as well, because I'm on record already has said you, Brian, for the encouragement.
Uh, Brian nodding his head in agreement that I should say it.
The more troops, the more troops at risk.
And we know that the um the Democrats would take any bit of news uh and run with it uh to gin up anti-war support among the American people.
Uh now, I'm not going so far as to say that Thomas Friedman wants us to lose in Iraq.
So don't anybody make that assumption.
But I'm I am I'm suggesting to you here that it is not inconsistent for Democrats who at one time back in the 60s and 70s bemoaned the constant expansion of troops to Vietnam now to be supporting it, because they can look back at what happened to Vietnam and they can suggest that all that never worked anyway, and it just created more anti-war opposition uh in the American people.
And that's what they want.
They want opposition to Bush on every front.
They want opposition to Bush on social security.
They want opposition to Bush on private accounts, they want opposition to Bush on the energy plan, opposition to Bush on Gitmo, Abu Ghrab, Iraq, war on terror, and uh, I'm sure they're thinking that this uh this might do it.
Nobody's gonna blame Tom Friedman if we double troop levels in Iraq.
Nobody can blame him.
Uh if if it happens, they'll blame the people that do it.
So Mr. Snerdley's just asked, do they want us to win?
I don't think that's in their vote.
I don't think they think we can.
I I don't I'm I'm gonna be charitable here.
I'm not going to accuse the Democrats of wanting us to lose.
I think their mindset is we can't.
U.S. military is not good enough.
We we we can't win.
We we can't win because of the way we're fighting the war.
We can't win because of the enemy.
Uh we're creating more enemies around the world.
Everything we're doing is creating more enemies or making ourselves look horrible.
We can't win it.
Now, whether in the back of their minds they say we don't deserve to win, uh, then that's that's uh uh you know I wouldn't be surprised if well I know some of the wacko kooks that make up the Democratic Party want us to lose.
Uh I'm not saying that about about Freedman Mike in Lakeland, Florida.
Hello, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hey, pleasure rush.
Yeah, the the president is is preaching to the choir.
Uh he needs to get out in the overall office and do an overall office address and tell it to the American people.
He's the leader of the party, and he's right.
But he needs to tell it to the American people from the Oval Office, from the bully puppet.
Well, I I don't think that's the way to do it.
Uh that wouldn't get covered.
Uh, but he can do it uh outside of Republican fundraisers.
He could do it when he goes out to make speech on social security.
He could do it when he goes out to drum up support for his energy plan.
He could do it that way, but I don't think if he did it from the Oval Office, that wouldn't uh uh that's not the place to do it.
What I'm saying is that he needs to tell it to the American people, though, not just the party faithful.
I I hear you, I hear you, and I and I totally agree.
And that's one of the reasons why the mainstream press is not covering this is that it was a fundraiser.
Uh and he was speaking to the uh to the party faithful.
And it's actually it's a good point whether whether he would go beyond the uh the party faithful to say something like this.
Uh only uh only time will tell.
I think they and the White House rely on an echo chamber to get what they say out.
Uh and and uh so uh but it would help.
Uh there's no question it would help, and you're right if they would uh uh move on and say this outside of these uh these fundraisers.
Interesting piece today in the Los Angeles Times is this uh it's an op-ed piece.
Andres Martinez.
Who apologized for the filibuster?
The Senate should be ashamed of the tactic that killed anti-lynching legislation.
Well uh you know, I'm uh I'm interested in this because uh I did a morning update on this very, very subject.
I mean, the the Democrats are leading this notion that the Senate we need to apologize for um uh anti for the for for the filibustering anti-lynching legislation.
It was a Democrats that led that filibuster.
It was the segregationist Democrats way back when that led the filibuster against anti-lynching legislation.
Do you realize that in as recently as 1967 it was legal to lynch?
As recently as six.
When were you born, Dawn?
Were you born you weren't even you were so so you were one year old, and it was still legal to in your lifetime.
It's still been legal to lynch people.
In 67 there was anti-lynching legislation that was prepared.
The Democrats, the segregationists, the same guys that fought the Civil Rights Act in 1964, refused for that legislation.
They filibustered it, and that's what this piece about.
Who knew is about?
Who knew the Senate was so cheeky on Monday, a mere three weeks after the centrist bipartisan gang of fourteen agreed ever so proudly to save the institution's fabled filibuster, senators passed a resolution apologizing for the chamber's failure to enact anti-lynching legislation.
Astonishingly, Senate Resolution 39 makes no mention of the F-word, the filibuster, which denotes the mechanism that allows a minority of legislators to block votes.
The resolution duly notes that at least 4,742 people, mostly African Americans, were lynched in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968.
That nearly 200 anti-lynching bills backed by seven presidents were induced introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century, that the House did pass three strong anti-lynching measures, but that the Senate never did, thus failing its minimum and most basic of federal responsibilities to those who were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.
As Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat who sponsored a resolution, said, the Senate was uniquely culpable for Washington's failure to protect U.S. citizens from a type of domestic terrorism often orchestrated by local authorities.
The apology in effect covers up just how self-interested the Senate's actions really were and how indefensible the filibuster remains.
It distorts history by suggesting a majority of senators were on the same moral plane with the anti-civil rights posse made up by the likes of Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, Richard Russell of Georgia.
It's uh goes on, but that's pretty much the summation.
And we're back.
Great to have you with us, El Rushbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
We have some uh audio sound bites from the anti-lynching bill yesterday.
Uh and it'd be interesting to hear some of these, and we're gonna go back and listen to Senator Byrd from 1968.
But first, Mary Landry, the co-sponsor of the lynching apology, calls lynching domestic terrorism.
Here's a portion of her remarks.
It's not only that your eyes are drawn to the victims of the lynching, but you're also drawn to the faces of the spectators, and realize that these were more than crimes.
This was in some measure domestic terrorism, American against Americans, citizens against citizens.
And it's a story that must be told.
Well, but you're not gonna tell it all, are you?
It was a Democrat-led filibuster that stopped anti-lynching legislation.
Democrat-led filibuster.
Not that it relates to Democrats today.
I'm just saying it's awfully strange that this is all coming up now, this official apology.
Um here's John Kerry, and he uses the word torture in this.
Lynchings were not just lynchings as we think of them.
They weren't just hanging somebody.
They were in most cases torture on American soil.
They were the brutal middle of the night, knocking a door in denial of rights to people in their homes.
They were the willful dispersion of fear into a community.
And the torture was torture, which when you read some of it, uh it's just stunning to believe that law enforcement at sometimes didn't just stand aside, it was complicitous.
And uh you hear the word torture as he is using it there.
Let's listen more to Senator Kerry.
Here we are, standing here.
And it is important because the journey is unfinished.
It's not enough just to acknowledge this today and walk out of here because there's a different kind of lynching that occurs when children don't get the full measure of citizenship today in communities.
There's a different kind of lynching that occurs when people are denied access to health care and denied the opportunity to be full citizens in the United States of America.
And let's go back now to 1968, shall we?
Senator Byrd talking about Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King fled the scene.
He took to his heels and disappeared, leaving it to others to cope with the destructive forces he had helped to unleash.
And I hope that well-meaning Negro leaders and individuals in the Negro community in Washington will now take a new look at this man who gets other people into trouble and then takes off like a scared rabbit.
There you have it, the dean of the Senate today of the Democratic Party, Sheets Byrd, former grand Kluger or whatever they call them of the Ku Klux Klan, basically insulting Robert Byrd in 1968, which was the uh last year that lynchings took place in the United States of America.
He's now one of the leaders.
The Democratic Party.
He was don't know that he was in on the filibuster.
Don't know, but I know it was a Democrat filibuster that stopped uh the passage of anti-lyching lynching legislation.
And I'm I'm just bringing this up because you know the Democrats in the Senate did this.
They led this apology.
Uh and and they use the filibuster to do it.
You know, and they so it's uh it's just it's just information to put in your head out there to let it uh let it roll around.
Dane in Carson City, Nevada.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, what an honor for you and I to finally get a chance to speak after all these years.
Thank you, sir.
I just wanted to bring up this third point to this.
And the you know the Democrats are now or the liberals now saying, yeah, we need to double the troops, put them in Iraq, and your first two points are right on target.
But there's a third.
Once they bring that up, the military doesn't have the resources now to double our troops over there and keep ourselves where we need to be.
So they're gonna start talking about the draft.
Once that's brought up, they're gonna start jumping out of their chairs and going, yeah, see, see, we see the this administration has planned on the draft all along.
Yeah, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Wouldn't be a bit surprised because we are getting news every day that uh recruitment levels are down, that they're uh like the fourth straight month or whatever.
So where are we going to get the troops from is a good point.
Somebody say, well, we're gonna have to draft them, but we've got to do this, and then bamboo, they get I the administration's not gonna fall for this.
I'm just telling you, it's gonna become the next chorus.
You you have any doubt that it will be?
No, I don't.
I mean, I I agree with you completely on that.
Well, we are gonna get hammered by this.
I'm not sure yet.
I'm not sure yet.
Uh but it's gonna take some time.
I'm just I just want to say that I will not be surprised if doubling troop levels in Vietnam in Iraq uh becomes uh the the next big item that is discussed.
You don't think so, Mr. Snurdley?
You don't think so?
Uh I don't think uh I I don't know if Snurdley thinks too many of them are scared because of all their anti-war rhetoric to now come up and uh suggest this.
They got they still got people that could do it.
Um I'm not predicting it, but uh when you see a trend, you know, it's just important to note the trend and note the possibility, and that's that's what this is.
Franz in New Orleans, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello.
How are you doing, Russ?
Good, sir.
Um I hear today that they uh Douglas Wood was released, the engineer who was held hostage in Iraq.
I'm just very curious.
Uh, do you think that we'll be seeing uh any uh news stories on just how terrible his uh his conditions were?
Well, no, we might get a report on what happened to him, but there won't be any criticism because we expect that of scum.
We expect that of our enemies, but we we expect that.
So there won't be any criticism.
There may be an accounting of just uh, you know, how how horribly we don't even need it.
We know that we're like he's lucky still have his head.
A lot of prisoners end up beheaded, a lot of prisoners end up tortured and humiliated.
You can't imagine.
Uh but we we don't have any other expectations of these people.
I mean, that's what they do.
But we we we uh we can't we're we're not and and of course I'm not suggesting that we do what they do.
I'm suggesting that it's being said we do what they do.
I'm suggesting that all this criticism of Gitmo and Abu Ghrab is designed by the left to make the American people think that we're no different than Al Qaeda or the Bathists or whoever else in the terrorist world is uh running prisons.
And that's the thing that I resent.
Uh but I mean, no, the opportunity to do stories on uh uh prison conditions for U.S. POWs is there every day, and that report, those stories are not done.
This is why I said on Monday, if I may go back in time, a mere two days.
It's why I said on Monday, we need to go back and look at this for the template of World War II.
You know, the liberals are out there celebrating the greatest generation.
Well, if they were so great, why aren't we emulating what they did to win wars, like in World War II?
We don't even talk about it.
We look at the template of Vietnam, and we look at uh uh at the presidency through the template of of Watergate, at least the Democrats and the mainstream media do.
And uh, and as such, uh it would be instructive to find out just what kind of prisoner of war techniques and tactics there were uh back in World War II.
But of course, we can't go back and do that because we won that war.
And by showing what happened when we won that war, uh it would maybe give us uh uh guidance on what to do here.
And part of the frustration here is that uh we're we're being totally governed by political correctness and uh in the in the in the prosecution of a war.
Speaking of that, speaking of political correctness, get this.
This is from the Seattle Post Intelligence or newspaper.
Dozens of agents and analysts gathered at FBI headquarters in Seattle yesterday to question a local Muslim man, but not to build a case, but to build a bridge between the law enforcement agency and an often misunderstood group of Americans.
Jafar Jeff Sidicki of American Muslims of Puget Sound was at the Bureau, the FBI's bureau, to dispel common myths about Islam and its adherents.
Asked by one agent about the cultural and religious taboos.
Investigators should keep in mind when approaching a Muslim.
Sidikki questioned and cautioned the agents not to lump all Muslims together.
So there's no single profile.
Our Muslim personality, Islam's very diverse.
The practice of Islam in Malaysia is completely different from the practice of Islam in Saudi Arabia.
And with that warning, he gave the agents a quick class and cultural sensitivity with a list of things to avoid when talking with Muslims.
Don't disrespect the holy book, the Quran.
Do not be too friendly to the women.
Do not go into holy places like mosques wearing shoes.
And Sideki told the agents not to read too much into it if a Muslim does not make eye contact.
Most Muslims in the U.S. are first generation.
They come from a despotic regime and tyranny, and you guys are the feds.
Often people from such a background approach authority figures with intense caution.
He said you might not get the answers you want, and that is why.
Near the end of the session, one bureau member asked Siddiqui why the common Muslim man doesn't stand up and say this is unacceptable and bring terrorists to justice.
He responded, we have held Muslims hostage to that question.
The common man in Islam is no different than a common man here.
Common man cannot bring terrorists to justice anywhere.
So the FBI undergoing sensitivity training in order to deal with American Muslims.
And people are worried about Patriot Act.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
This this is funny.
Our old buddies at Newsmack, uh, Carl at Newsmack's Carl Limbacher called uh Byrd's spokesman to ask them if Byrd had ever participated in any lynchings.
And a spokesman for Senator Byrd told protesters, uh protesters this week that he wasn't sure whether his boss had helped lynch any African Americans when the top Senate Democrat was a member of the Klan in the 1940s.
Members of the African American Republican Leadership Council in the Washington, D.C. chapter of Free Republic.com staged the sit-in in Bird's Heart Building, Heart Senate Office Building, uh on Tuesday, where Bird's press Secretary Tom Gavin fielded questions for about 20 minutes.
We asked Gavin, does he know what uh Senator Byrd did while he was in the Klan?
He didn't know.
He said he he he hadn't talked to Byrd about it.
We asked Gavin if he knew uh what the Klan was doing in West Virginia in the forties when Senator Byrd was a member.
Byrd's spokesman pleaded ignorance again.
Uh next question were they lynching black people?
Again, Gavin didn't know.
Then the protesters wanted to know did Bird's clan chapter burn crosses on black people's lawns or run them out of town?
He said he didn't know.
He said he had no idea.
So uh Bird spokesman uh drew a blank on uh on all of the uh all the questions.
I think it's funny.
Show up and ask spoken your boss participate in any lynchings.
I don't know.
Here's Ray in Crestwin, Illinois.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Uh Megalodir's Rush.
I've been a long time listener, about 15 years here.
Thank you, sir.
Yes.
Um, you know how Duncan Hunter came out in defense of Gitmo with the description of the menu items.
Yes.
I would love to see John McCain, Senator McCain come out and compare the Hanoi Hilton treatment.
Well, it happened.
Ab, sorry, it's not going to happen.
Have you heard McCain wants trials for all these guys?
That's what's baffling to me.
I don't know.
Why is it baffling to you?
He's supposed to be a Republican.
And he he should be defending the troops and defending uh the military actions.
Hey, wait, you gotta you gotta under McCain's running for president.
He's got some strategy, obviously, for getting there, and this is part of it.
I'm like you, I don't quite understand it yet, other than it is to slap the conservative base uh, you know, now and then an appeal to uh moderates.
Uh that's you know, McCain wants to be a maverick to the moderates.
He thinks the moderates are the biggest voting block out there, and that's who he's trying to appeal to, I guess.
But uh I I've a lot of people have suggested this that McCain could uh describe, and he has, by the way, in his book, uh we all know what the torture he went through was.
He was there, he was there for five years, and we all know that it was very heroic, and we all know that because he was the son of a Navy Admiral, he was offered a chance to get out of there early, and he refused to go unless all of his buddies were released, and they weren't, so he stayed.
Uh and uh we you know, we we know all this, so why he doesn't come up and remind everybody about it and uh and and defend our practices today you know your guess is good as mine but I'm not surprised that he doesn't and I'm no longer surprised when he comes out and says he needs trials for these would you tell me how many people are getting all right now how many people get by eight 500 some I thought it was 800 or something okay five to eight hundred whatever it is how are we going to have trials for all these people and where are we going to do it and who's gonna pay for it we know the U.S. taxpayer will pay for it because these guys don't
have any money.
I mean it's it's absurd.
Just the idea that they should all get trials and everybody seems to forget that you know Rumsfeld is saying you know that we we've we've let a bunch of guys go out of there and 12 of them came back we caught them on the battlefield people also forget where we got these guys.
Where do you think these prisoners from uh Gitmo or in Gitmo were were were were procured you think we just ran around with a net in the Middle East and anything we caught we brought to Gitmo?
These guys are caught on the battlefield folks these I I that's why they're called uh they're called enemy uh combatants so I you know I I just I look at this and it's patently absurd to have trials for all these people as I say uh ladies and gentlemen we are moving forward though on our plans uh uh here to acknowledge uh club gitmo which is what it appears to be if you have not been to rushlimbaught.com
You've got to go there because we put together a quite comical brochure for Club Gitmo, complete with pictures of the rooms there and amenities, the view overlooking the bay from the resort.
We're in the process of preparing T-shirts to the EIB store, Club Gitmo T-shirts.
And we're also looking to see if we can find bathrobes and soap, Club Gitmo bathrobes and soap, if we can find these things at a reasonable wholesale price in order to allow you the opportunity to purchase them without going into huge debt.
We understand some debt, but not huge.
And we're continuing to explore this just to continue to make the point.
You know, we love to illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
And let's go back to audio soundbite number one, because we yesterday started this Club Gitmo business.
And Senator Leahy, do you have cut one handy?
Senator Leahy today, he was not only upset with Duncan Hunter showing the great menu items available down there, but he was obviously upset about something else that's going around.
This idea of changing, changing the focus, producing props of chicken dinners and such, seeming to argue this is more a Club Med than a prison.
Let's get real.
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.
You go back to World War II, McCain was held for five years, for crying out loud.
Vietnam War.
Go back to World War II, Vietnam.
Prisoners of war are oftentimes held for the duration.
Some Japanese guys just surrendered the other day.
They just learned that the war was over.
Forty years later.
Or 80 or whatever.
But three years, no end in some prison.
prisoners of war for crying out loud it's uh it's a it's a scary thought to understand or to realize that these guys do not yet understand the mettle and the nature of the enemy that we face even after 9-11.
How do you take that out of the equation?
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