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June 27, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:09
June 27, 2005, Monday, Hour #2
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You see where uh President Bush is going to campaign or did has or will re uh uh participate raising money for Lincoln Chafee in his re-election bid in Rhode Island.
No, I'm I am not joking.
I'm not joking.
I saw this story while I was gone too, and I I was blown away uh by it like uh many of you are hearing it for the first time.
Bush will actively help Lincoln Chaffee in his re-election fight in Rhode Island greetings, and welcome back.
It's uh broadcast excellence like nowhere else here in the one and only EIB network.
We come to you today from the uh EIB Southern Command, and we've got broadcast excellence with the Ditto Cam on now for those of you who subscribe at Rushlimba.com.
It'll be on for the remaining two hours.
Telephone number 800 282882 and the uh uh email address rush at EIBNet.com.
I'm thinking about the call we got, and I got uh just right before the uh hour previous hour concluded from uh from somebody in Kenosha who thought that the Supreme Court decision in New London, Connecticut on the taking of private property was actually not an ideological thing at all.
It was uh it was just the it was actually good, the uh court sending it back to a local government uh to make up its mind about something.
And I uh read a couple emails today from somebody say, You're over the top on this rush.
You need to read the Wall Street Journal today.
This is all about sending it back to local governments.
I said, Whoa.
It is time for a constitutional lesson.
Every time I hear things like this, it reminds me just how woefully inept our education on the U.S. Constitution is.
Let me tell you what the Constitution is.
First of all, just in in brief summary, the Constitution does two things.
It structures the government and then limits the government's powers.
Specifically the Bill of Rights.
Whole purpose of the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments, is to limit the government's power, not to define our freedoms.
It does not tell us what we can and can't do.
It limits the government's power.
Now, anybody who understands the uh basis uh from which the founders wrote the Constitution and their life experiences leading up to it will understand that they were they were just scared to death of an imperial government being created, and they they saw as students of history the natural tendency of men with power to try to go grasp more and amass more at the expense of private citizens.
Now the Bill of Rights provides specific instances in which the people are to be protected from the government.
It it enumerates them.
Now the Ninth Amendment of the Bill of Rights provides that the rights that are not specifically protected by the Constitution, those that are not mentioned in the Bill of Rights belong to the people.
But so important are private property rights that the founders decided to specifically say so in the Bill of Rights.
It's the taking clause in the Fifth Amendment.
Now most people think the Fifth Amendment's where you can't criminate yourself.
I'm uh I'm gonna plead the fifth, Your Honor.
Uh it's far more uh detailed than that.
The taking clause is in the Fifth Amendment.
Now, for the last 50 years or so, the Bill of Rights has largely been interpreted to also apply to the states, so no level of government is constitutionally permitted to seize private property unless it's for a public use and is justly compensated for a public use.
That's what government means.
Public sector versus private sector.
This case in New London, Connecticut had nothing to do with public use.
This had to do with private sector use of land that is already owned by other private citizens.
The government's interest in it was tax revenue.
Now, in last week's decision, New London, Connecticut decided to take property from citizen A and through a planning scheme deliver it to citizen B simply because citizen B would likely pay more in taxes to the town.
The framers Never authorized any government to have such power.
And the plain language of the Fifth Amendment doesn't do it either.
So what the court did is side with government against individual liberty, as it is doing repeatedly now.
Particularly when the interest of big government, and that when you've got a liberal court like we have, you know, this is what keep trying to make this point.
As I keep running into more and more Democrats, and I keep asking them, well, how in the world can you support some of the wacko fringe kookisms that are coming out of the mouths of Howard Dean and Dick Durbin?
Well, yeah, I know, but you know, the Democrats just always stood for the little guy.
Well, they haven't.
That's another giant myth.
It's been created as a myth.
People believe it as a myth because the Democrats talk that game.
But when you look at powerful liberals and powerful Democrats, you see what they do.
Their interest is always in the growth of the state.
Government, be it local, be it state, be it federal.
And that's what this decision did.
The takings clause of the fifth of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution mentions public use, requires public use, roads, bridges, things to increase or enhance all members of the community and their life experience.
It's not meant to uh for the government to be able to choose private citizen A over private citizen B, which is what happened in the in the New London case.
Uh Dick Durbin received a cordial welcome from the Illinois Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention Saturday, and in return he pledged to fight for benefits for veterans and soldiers.
Durbin spoke to the audience of almost 300 at the Peoria Civic Center, got a standing O from most in the hall, and a standing O at the conclusion.
His talk was interrupted three times by applause.
There were no hecklers, nor were there any protesters.
His recent remarks uh at uh about Guantanamo Bay, he addressed this way.
He said, Well, I picked exactly the wrong words.
Uh my words hurt some people.
I sincerely apologize for that.
He didn't say he's sorry for saying what he said.
He's he said he's sorry that people were hurt by his words.
And then he went on to say that his um his remarks were misinterpreted.
He said, What I'm really upset about with what happened with the words I said is that I'm angry with people who misinterpreted the words.
The folks that tried to argue I didn't have respect for the troops and didn't care about veterans, nothing could be farther from the truth.
In his 30-minute address, Durbin talked about specific legislation to benefit veterans of the troops, explaining how he and others have fought for better equipment for soldiers in Iraq and more funding for veteran benefits and health care.
Along the uh the same lines uh in a in a related story, progress, and this is uh CBS News, and this is from a couple days ago, progress has been made to improve conditions and protect detainees' rights at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay for suspected terrorists, according to House Republicans and Democrats.
U.S. lawmakers witnessed interrogations, toured cell blocks, and ate the same lunch given to detainees on the first congressional visit to the prison, since criticism of it intensified in the spring.
A Senate delegation also was visiting this weekend, but guess who wasn't there?
Senator Durbin.
Senator Dick Durbin was not there.
He was in Peoria, and he was telling the VFW in Peoria that he didn't do anything wrong except hurt people's feelings, and that his words were misinterpreted, and it's really those people's fault.
Lawmakers from both parties agree that some uh still must still be done to ensure an adequate legal process is in place to handle detainee cases.
Uh but Republican Representative Joe Schwartz said, I think they're doing the best they can to define due process uh down there.
Republicans and Democrats alike fear the prison is hurting our image.
*Sigh*
This is just getting so frustrated.
You know, we talk about Zarkawe, Abu Mousab Zarkawi.
Now, theoretically, ladies and gentlemen, Zarkawi is operating in Iraq, right?
Zarkawi is running his terrorist insurgents, and they're launching uh suicide Bombing missions and they're blowing up people and so forth.
And those attacks are assumed to be taking place in Iraq.
But you know where you know where Zarkawi's attacks are really succeeding?
And that's right here in Washington, D.C. Every time a member of the U.S. Congress stands up and belittles our effort in Iraq, claims we're losing, claims we're in a quagmire, Zarkawi has hit gold.
Zarkawi has his own useful idiots in the United States of America, and his attacks in Iraq are doing more damage in the United States than his attacks in Iraq are doing in Iraq.
And that's the dirty little secret.
We've got some sound bites of what Rumsfeld went through last week regarding all this.
We come back.
Don't go away, folks.
Mr. Sturdley says he's surprised by my take on the peer-to-peer list.
There really is no decision.
Yeah, they're just going to be sent down to a lower court where uh uh the trial can go on.
The the peer-to-peer people can be sued.
Uh uh the the file transfer people can be sued now.
That then that's what's going to happen.
The entertainment industry is going to sue them because uh the stuff that they're allowing to be transferred is stuff like Star Wars.
This latest Star Wars movie is all over some of these FTP sites.
Uh, and you know this is being done uh to spread it around to people uh so they can beat the cost and this kind of thing.
And I if it were my property, I wouldn't want it to be given away that way.
I would I I wouldn't I well, but but but well, no, but they're actually uh Sturdly says, What's the difference in a peer-to-peer, the file transfer people on the internet a phone company?
Uh is just a different form of transmission.
It's the uh I don't get what you're asking about a phone company.
How can how can I watch Star Wars on the phone?
How can I get a copy of Star Wars on the phone or anything else that's out there that is owned by somebody else and you have to pay to get it, own it, see it.
How can I get it on the phone?
What am I missing here?
I don't use the phone, Mr. Snow.
I hate the telephone.
I despise it because there's always somebody on the other end.
Mm-hmm.
No, but that's that's that's the point.
That's why I can't put music on the iPods on our podcasts.
I'm not stealing, I I'm not stealing any music.
You know, I have a license to play it once here on the program and that sort of thing, but to put it on our podcasts and to distribute it free means I'm giving it away.
I am the one giving it away when I send it down over the internet.
Um that's you know, I respect those uh property rights, intellectual and and other uh screw the public, it's not for the public good.
We're too we're we're we're not talking about you know sending out a warning that the that the Chinese are gonna be heard basically, I'll tell you these people, the the the Chinese let I'll get to that here in just a second.
I I want to go to some uh audio sound bites.
I want to stay on message here, Mr. Sturdley.
We'll get to the file transfer people here, the the the P2P people, uh P2 people, P2P, peer-to-peer is uh what it means in due course.
Let's start with Ted Kennedy.
Last Thursday in Washington, Kennedy uh calls the Iraq war a quagmire, goes on a diatribe about mistakes that Rumsfeld has made.
We are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire.
Our troops are dying, and there really is no end in sight.
You wrongly insisted after Saddam fell that there was no guerrilla war, even though our soldiers continue to be killed.
You wrongly called the insurgents dead enders.
But they are killing Americans almost three a day.
And Iraqis with alarming frequency and intensity.
So you basically have mismanaged the war and created an impossible situation for military recruiters and put our forces and our national security in danger.
Our troops deserve better, Mr. Secretary.
In baseball, it's three strikes, you're out.
What is it for the Secretary of Defense?
And Rumsfeld just threw it right back at him.
There isn't a person at this table who agrees with you that we're in a quagmire and that there's no end in sight.
From the beginning of this, we have recognized that this is a tough business.
It is difficult, that it is dangerous, and and that it is not predictable.
Third, the Issue of a guerrilla war.
I mean, my goodness, I don't think it's a guerrilla war.
You may think so.
I don't know if anyone at this table thinks so.
I did call them dead enders.
I don't know what else you'd call a suicide bomber.
What is a person who straps a vest on themselves, walks into a dining hall, kills themselves, and kills innocent Iraqi people or innocent coalition soldiers.
I will say that the idea that what's happening over there is a quagmire is so fundamentally inconsistent with the facts.
So you get to believe who you want to believe here, uh, folks.
You get to believe Senator Kennedy, or you get to believe uh Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
Uh if you ask me what we have here is the Vietnam War replaying itself.
You have the same template guiding Senator Kennedy.
What you have uh in Senator Kennedy's words here is utter pessimism, defeatism, and we may as well just get out of there a failure to recognize reality, and furthermore, why we just can't trust these people with our national security and national defense.
Senator Kennedy uh wasn't having any of this, though.
He asked Rumsfeld to quit.
Well, there have been a series of gross errors and mistake.
Those are on your watch.
Those are on your watch.
Isn't it time for you to resign?
Senator, I've offered my resignation to the president twice.
And uh he's decided that uh he would prefer that he not accept it, and that's his call.
General Casey was sitting there next to uh uh Rumsfeld, and he wanted in on this.
Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
But uh, as the commander in Iraq, uh, I would like to put myself on the record.
I also agree with the Secretary that to represent the situation in Iraq as a as a quagwire is a is a misrepresentation of the facts.
And I thought I was fairly clear in what I laid out in my testimony about what's going on in Iraq, but you have an insurgency uh with no vision, no base, limited popular support, an elected government, committed Iraqis to the democratic process, and you have Iraqi security forces that are fighting and dying for their country every day.
Senator, that is not a quagmar.
You know, the the key here is you have an elected government that the insurgents are now fighting.
There uh Senator Kennedy wants to continue to portray this as they're fighting Americans and are fighting the United States.
But the Iraqis have an elected government.
There were elections, and those elections were judged to be manifestly successful.
Those elections were judged to be surprisingly so.
So you have an elected government, and it is that government that's facing these attacks, and Senator Kennedy wants us to pull out of there.
He doesn't care about victory over there.
He in fact he's probably worried that it might happen.
Because it's the last thing the Democrats need for their re-election efforts.
It's uh it it Senator Kennedy is an example of what I was just talking about.
Every time there's a terrorist attack in Iraq, it hits in Washington, D.C. And Senator Kennedy is one of the victims.
One of the many of sadly some of them are Republicans uh as well.
But Sheets Byrd, he's sitting there listening to all this too.
And Sheetsbird says it's it's time for Rumsfeld to get off his high horse.
Now imagine you're Rumsfeld and you have to sit there and hold your temper while being lectured to by a former grand what what uh grand uh uh uh well no, it wasn't a Cleague.
It was uh it was No, it wasn't a dragon.
We learned last week, uh uh something like Colossus.
I don't I don't remember what is, but but Cyclops, a grand cyclops.
You're Rumsfeld, you gotta sit there, and you gotta you gotta hold your temper while some former clan cyclops is lecturing you.
I've watched you with a considerable amount of amusement.
I don't think I've ever heard a secretary of defense who likes to lecture the committee as much as you do.
You've got a lot of careless statements made by the administration, and you too, Mr. Secretary, I say most respectfully.
And I make mistakes too, who doesn't.
But to come up here and lecture.
Lecture these people, you seem to you're pretty feisty.
I kind of like that in a way, but at the same time, the people uh out there won't want us to ask questions.
So get off your high horse when you come up here.
Man, do you understand we are we are this is the Imperial Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and nobody is supposed to lecture them.
And nobody is supposed to question them.
And nobody is supposed to come in there and act uppity in any way.
Uh Otherwise, you know, we might start dispensing a little religious freedom to some of these senators and let them lop off one of these witnesses' heads.
That does happen in some religions in the world, folks.
And to the extent that maybe we are denying the prisoners at Gitmo the full practice of their religion.
If they're not allowed to behead anybody down there, you might be able to make that point.
But nevertheless, this attitude, you come up here all upity, American people want us to ask.
That's not what the American people want to use, Senator Byrd, and not of this committee either.
I want you to help win the war back after this.
You can definitely see the sadness in the uh faces of the reporters down in Aruba.
Uh seems like all the suspects uh in the Natalie Holloway case have been released for uh lack of evidence.
There are no suspects and there's no story.
Why do you have to keep the reporters there?
Uh and the reporters I'm sure they look sad because they're gonna face prospect of having to leave Aruba.
Anyway, greetings and uh and uh welcome back.
I just got this story from the Chicago Sun Times.
Shots rang out across the city Chicago Saturday night and Sunday morning from the far north side to the far south side with uh preliminary reports of nearly twenty-four people shot.
The uh overnight tally, which is unofficial, included two shootings on the same corner, a fatal shooting near the taste of Chicago, and several on the west side where detectives were swamped.
We're just spinning up here.
So nearly twenty-four people shot in less than twelve hours in Chicago.
And according to the Ted Kennedy way of thinking, maybe it's time to seriously consider pulling out.
Of Chicago.
Rumsfeld, back to him.
He was on uh Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday.
Wallace said, I got uh an unsolicited phone call from a veteran of Vietnam wounded twice there, whose son is now serving in Iraq, and he said that he never thought that this country would fight another Vietnam, meaning send our troops over there without enough strength to win.
But this is his argument.
There, that we're fighting another Vietnam in the sense that we don't have enough force to win.
What do you say to that patriotic but very concerned father?
The implication of the question was that that uh we don't have enough to win against the insurgency.
We're not gonna win against the insurgency.
The Iraqi people are gonna win against the insurgency.
That insurgency could go on for any number of years.
Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten, twelve years.
Uh the coalition forces, foreign forces are not gonna repress that insurgency.
We're gonna create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency.
Now, that question, that letter from the uh man who has a son fighting in Iraq, clearly illustrates the success the mainstream media has had in in in in reviving the Vietnam template.
It's just Vietnam all over again.
There's no purpose, there's no goal, there's no end in sight.
And of course, these uh these two uh conflicts could not be any more different.
Uh also on Meet the Press Sunday, uh Rumsfeld appeared.
Tim Russert said, Times of London reports this morning there have been two meetings between Iraqi and U.S. officials and some members of the insurgency.
Is that accurate?
Oh, I would doubt it.
I I think there have probably been many more than that.
I mean, I think what's happening in Afghanistan.
President Karzai is reaching out to the Telamon.
Not the ones with blood on their hands, but the others.
And he's saying, come into the government.
Let's stop killing uh Afghan people.
And the same thing's going on in Iraq.
We see the the government of Iraq is is sovereign.
They're the ones that are reaching out to the uh uh to the uh uh people who are not supporting the government.
Uh they're they're not gonna try to bring in the people with blood on their hands for sure, but they certainly are reaching out continuously, and we help to facilitate those from s from time to time.
Now I can uh uh vouch for what he says about Afghanistan because I saw it.
Uh I guess it was second to last night that I was there up in Kandahar.
Uh we had a troop visit there, and after the true troop visit ran like an hour and a half long because It took that long to take all the pictures and answer all the questions and so forth.
I didn't even have a chance to go back and clean up.
It was from there went right to dinner.
And the dinner was at an Afghan Taliban warlord's house.
Huge place that this warlord has now been brought into the government.
President Karzai's brother was there.
There were I guess altogether 25 to 30 Afghanistan people there, many of them uh in this warlord circle.
And they they had uh uh what what I guess would suffice as the cocktail portion before dinner, everybody sits along the wall in a big square room uh and there's just idle chit-chat going on uh across the room with a person sitting next to you.
And it uh it was clear uh that that this was a former warlord and uh been involved with the Taliban, but he had been approached and given up uh the evil ways, and I asked him how can you trust this?
Uh how can you trust these guys?
Well, you you uh you can't, but but uh time tells.
And uh this outreach had been going on all over the country.
It's one of the just multitudinous ways the United States is involved here, but in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So Rumsfeld is is uh is telling the truth here.
There still are pockets of warlords that are not even Taliban, they're just warlords in outer reaches of the country, and there's still skirmishes going on there, and the Taliban's still mounting little offensives here and there.
They don't amount to much uh anymore, but uh they still happen, and you still have uh the influence of Mola Omar and others that are on the border with Pakistan trying to incite violence within the country of Afghanistan, but the policy is working.
And the uh, you know, the peace-loving and law-abiding Afghanistan people uh love the U.S. presence there and hope that we never leave.
It's it's uh they're scared to death uh that if we leave too soon, uh that the uh the exiled Taliban will be able to come back in or retake the country.
And they're just scared to death that that's gonna happen.
And I can I can attest to the fact that great things are happening in Afghanistan.
I wanted to go to Iraq for the same reason, and I haven't been able to put that together yet, but it's it's it's obviously true in Afghanistan.
Now, Iraq, uh the hostilities there are no question more intense uh because the terrorists have made that, you know, their last gasp final stand.
Uh this is where all of the Al-Qaeda types are uh infiltrating right now to try to make sure that a free and open country in the Middle East does not become firmly entrenched and established.
And that's what we're uh fighting now to maintain and protect and enlarge.
Uh and the idea that that this is not understood or known by these uppity, arrogant members of the Senate foreign relations committee on the Democrat side, Sheets Byrd, the uh the grand cyclops, uh, and Ted Kennedy is uh is just absurd to me.
I mean, if I an average citizen can go see it, they certainly can know it and probably have greater knowledge and detail about it than I am able to uh amass just on my own in a short week over there.
There's two more Rumsfeld sound bites here.
Um from uh Meet the Press, one from George Stephanopoulos, Rumsfeld uh with Russert and Russert said, well, wait a minute, if you're talking to these people, isn't that negotiating with terrorists?
No, no.
Look, look, you you've got a situation in Iraq where you've got terrorists over here, you've got uh uh Sunni insurgents here, the Bathis types, and then you've got people who haven't decided what they're gonna do, then you have people supporting the government, then you have the government.
And the goal is to get people to all move to the towards the support of the government.
And uh it isn't a matter of negotiating with terrorists.
There's no one negotiating with Zarkali or the people that are out chopping people's heads off.
Then over on this week with George Stepanopoulos, the uh the question, well, you you you know what the suggestion of last throws is, it means we're coming towards the end.
The the fact of the matter is that as you get closer to the constitution drafting completion referendum and then elections, the violence could very well go up.
And uh that's I mean, think what they have to lose.
Think of Zarkawi.
There is no Ho Chi Minh or Mao there.
There's a Jordanian terrorist who's killing Iraqi people.
There's no national Movement in that country.
They don't have a vision.
They're they're losers, and they're going to lose.
And this is the attitude that uh permeates the Bush administration.
Uh Rumsfeld is on TV right now.
This is a full court press to try to get the uh administration's view and version of what's happening in Iraq out to as many as possible because there has not been a sustained whatever you call a PR push uh for a while to uh uh get that side of the of the story told.
And when you have news every day that only focuses on the number of American deaths and every Zarkawi attack and every uh uh bomb that goes off and so forth, it's easy to paint a picture of desperation and defeat uh when that is not the case.
Rumsfeld also says so he was asked about troop levels.
Uh and Rumsfeld says we've actually drawn down during the election period back in January, we had something 169,000 troops over there.
We're down to 139,000.
And he said there's one reason why, it's what the generals say that they need.
The generals, if they say they need more, they get more.
If they don't want any more, don't need any more, then that's what we do.
We listen to the people on the ground.
They're the ones that run this.
And whatever the generals say they need, then that's what they get.
And I don't know why that's such a foreign concept to people either.
I guess it's not that it's a foreign concept.
I just don't think the Democrats believe anything this administration says, is the bottom line, because they've got their template of what they want to happen in Iraq, and by golly, they're gonna make it happen, even if they have to lie about it.
They're gonna create the illusion of defeat in as many people's minds as possible because that's what they want to happen over there, and that folks is unique.
Well, it's not unique since Vietnam, but prior to that it was, but it is the Vietnam template playing itself out all over again.
Back in just a second with your phone calls.
And we are back, executing aside, host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes so far.
Let's go to Buffalo.
Hi, Peter.
I'm glad you called, and welcome to the program, sir.
Hello, Rush.
An honor to talk to you.
You there?
Uh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate you saying so.
Yeah, I've been listening to you for 15 years.
Hey, um, this really gets me watching the news.
You know, we're we've got reporters in Aruba, uh, tons of reporters of Michael Jackson trial, the runaway bride.
We had half as many of those reporters giving us daily reports on what's going on in 14 provinces in Iraq, not just reading a ticker tape or whatever they're getting it, on the four provinces that are having insurgent problems.
Uh I think we'd be uh we we'd get a fair and balanced type of uh a look.
But I'm afraid the I'm afraid the press is a co-conspirators in this in other words.
Let me are you on a cell phone because I'm having trouble understanding everything you're saying.
Uh I am I am I apologize.
Uh, let me uh well it's not your fault.
It's just that the product of my uh hearing limitations with my cochlear implant.
Let me let me rephrase what I think your point is.
You tell me if I got it or not.
You say that we've got a lot of reporters down in Aruba.
We had a lot of reporters on the runaway bride, we had a lot of reporters everywhere covering all these stories.
The Michael Jackson trial had two thousand reporters of the Michael Jackson trial, and they're all uh, you know, really hauling ass, trying to tell us every detail, find out everything that went on, and yet when it comes to Iraq, they're basically sitting in the hotel over there and listening to news feeds or getting uh getting press reports, getting uh PR statements or ticker tape, whatever you I think you said, uh and they're basically not out in the field actually with curiosity reporting what's going on in Iraq uh to the extent that they are some of these other stories.
Is that true?
Exactly my point.
Exactly my point.
Very frustrating.
Well, I understand your point.
It is it is somewhat frustrating.
There are or have been some embedded reporters during the actual invasion.
Uh and it's also, I think, safe to say, and I'm gonna cut them a little slack here, it's safe to say that when you're covering the Jackson trial or the Natalie Holloway case in Aruba or the runaway bride case, uh, you're you're not likely to get shot.
Uh you're not likely to get blown up in a in a car bomb.
Uh uh and so there probably is limited uh and who knows what limitations the military has on what they allow reporters to see and where they allow reporters to go.
But I will I I do think you have a huge point uh when you mention the level of curiosity about there's there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of curiosity uh about the day-to-day events in Iraq and what's happening there.
It Seems to no matter what news outlet you read or watch, the news seems to be the same uh each and every day.
Uh you don't get any different perspective.
Some do it better than others, but still, I think it's uh I think it's an interesting point.
And there's uh it goes back.
Did you the the latest pew uh uh Center for the People of Press study on the media?
Uh it's looking bad for the media out there, folks.
More and more people don't trust them, more and more people don't read them or or watch them.
And one of the reasons is that it's well known what their biases are going in.
It's well known who they are before they report the story.
Uh but it's all the same, too.
This is the thing that's I think starting to strike people as well.
It's like I've always said, if you miss CBS, watch NBC.
If you miss that, watch ABC.
If you miss that, read the New York Times.
It's all the same.
Uh and and there's there's there's not much of a div of a difference or uh uh especially in Iraq, a divergence of reporting uh in the daily ebb and flow of news over there.
And it is why most people in this country do believe that we're losing, and that we're going nowhere if you believe the public opinion polls on it.
Go to Atlanta next.
Rose, hello, and I'm glad you call.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, Rush.
How are you today?
I'm fine, thank you.
Um I just wanted to take the point that I do believe in uh not believe pre uh Mr. Kennedy, but in a sense I do.
We are in a Vietnam type war for the simple fact that the politicians are wanting to run it.
Um I was rather young during Vietnam, but my understanding of it is that the politicians basically came through with the idea we couldn't cross the 38th parallel, and they wanted to control the war, just as they're trying to do nowadays.
You are absolutely right.
And uh the way I look at it, the politicians want to control the war, and I always thought that it was the military's job to run the wars.
Military is civilian, it does report to the executive branch, uh, commander in chief, and they do report to Congress.
But you're you're exactly right.
What Senators Kennedy and Byrd and all those other Democrats are doing when they uh interview and question Rumsfeld is is to basically say, you're doing it wrong, uh, you're doing it wrong, and the the implication is the inference is they could do it better.
I realize that, and I my personal opinion is if they think they can do it better, why haven't they?
Okay, do you uh let me ask you a question, Rose.
You sound you sound studious, you sound uh in touch, you sound informed.
When you hear Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd uh either within the sound bites that I played today, or just if you happen to hear them or see them on the news or read about them, do you get the impression they want Iraq to end successfully for the U.S.?
No.
They do not want you Iraq to win uh to end successfully for the U.S. No.
Because then if they do that, their policies have failed and their mantra has failed.
Exactly right, and their electoral chances in 06 and 08 go down the tubes.
I certainly hope they do.
So they think.
This is what's confusing.
How you can be a Democrat today and think that the vast majority of the people are like you is amazing.
How you can be a Democrat today and think that most people don't like your country.
How you can be a Democrat and think that most people want your country to lose.
How you can be a Democrat and think that most Americans think that the U.S. deserves what it's getting in 9-11.
How can you be a Democrat and think that most people believe that we are an imperialist nation fighting ignoble and unjust wars and deserve to lose.
To me, if the Democrats are indeed doing all this as an electoral strategy, that's what they must believe most Americans think.
And they've got their news arms out there doing polls and producing just such data, correct?
I've always thought that if the Democrats wanted to really get back in the electoral game, start talking about their love for this country and be honest about it and be eager for American victory in the war on terror.
And try to outdo the come up with a better way of winning this rather than surrendering and saying we have no right to win.
And so they just keep corkscrewing themselves into quicksand here, and don't worry about my giving their advice or giving them advice, even if they hear it, they won't take it, folks.
And that wraps it up, second hour of broadcast excellence.
We have one more to go.
It will be Ditto Cammed.
We eagerly await its commencement, which will be just a few minutes from now, so sit tight.
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