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June 28, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
June 28, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, good friend.
Thanks for reminding me on that.
This is one time the crew of New York actually did something right.
So we'll um audio soundbite five will proceed six.
That's correct.
All right.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
Great to have you with us.
I am Rush Limboy, your host for life, America's Anchor Man, America's truth detector, making your dreams come true on a daily basis.
Here the one and only EIB network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
This a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
I don't know if you people have seen this.
We'll get to the uh John Kerry up at here in just a second, but some wackos want to build a space ring around the earth to stop global warming.
Make it look like Saturn out there.
They want to put up a bunch of spacecraft or a bunch of particles to provide shade for the equatorial and tropical areas.
One of the drawbacks of this would be that it would be a constant moonlit appearing sky every night.
Because while we're at night, the the space ring will be reflecting uh sunlight back into the atmosphere, and it will it will look like a full moon every night in dark parts of the world.
I I kid you, I kid you, I'm not kidding you, Mr. Sterling.
This is from uh from Livescience.com.
I found this on the uh irreplaceable uh drudge report.
I'll have details coming up after we uh Did I tell you about Paula Abdul and her testimony yesterday at the uh uh California legislature on the sanitation concerns at nail salons out there.
You know, as I say, you just you have to give thanks that there are people committed and concerned about the issues that we all face, and they're willing to give of their valuable time.
Uh not only state legislators in California, but people like Paula Abdul to testify about this.
Um and I didn't know if you'd know about it uh had I not mentioned it to you, so I wanted to mention that to you.
Okay, folks, uh we we catch um a little break here.
Uh called a little break.
We were informed by the uh media that John F. Kerry is not as brainy as he pretends to be.
They call Bush a dunce during the 2004 campaign.
We find out from Carrie's naval records that Bush outgraded Kerry at Yale, that if any of the two of them, either the two of them is a dunce, it is Kerry.
So I read his op-ed today in the New York Times, the speech the president should give.
And you know, I um after I read it, I I have to wonder, am I am I too dumb to understand what Senator Carey is saying?
Is he so smart that I don't get it?
For example, uh Senator Kerry says the first thing the president should do is tell the truth to the American people.
And my reaction was, huh?
President Bush has been telling the truth to the American people.
He's been talking about a cause and an effort that will outlive his presidency.
He's been talking about this from before we started it, that it was going to be long hard work.
He made no promises on a quick end.
He made no promises on a quick one.
And as Rumsfeld said the other day, you know, he was being prepared.
Well, what's our exit strategy?
What are we going to get out of there?
What are we doing?
Rumsville said, how I can't give you an extra strategy.
We don't know what Iran and Syria are going to do.
Well, as I said in the moments ago, I think, you know, the some of the in like the CNN poll, which is the only poll that shows this number, but 40% are dissatisfied with the uh with the war.
Maybe it's that they're dissatisfied with the intensity.
Maybe they think we ought to be kicking butt every day.
Maybe they think we ought to be doing shock and awe every day.
Maybe it's time to get serious about this and route these people.
Maybe it is that Americans don't understand how a bunch of ragtag unorganized so-called terrorists can cause this much havoc.
Why the hell don't we just get serious about it and take them out?
And why don't we get serious about it and stop pussyfooting around and being distracted by all this gobbledygook at places like Abu Ghrab and Gitmo?
And why don't we get serious about this?
Why don't we pretend this is Pearl Harbor and World War II all over again and get serious about it?
We were serious then.
We dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.
And we went all over Europe, South and Southern Europe and Africa to wipe out the Nazis.
And maybe it is that a lot of Americans are wondering why we're not doing that now.
I can if if if you're among that group wondering why I can tell you the American left is going to stand up and oppose us every time we do try to do something like this.
They're trying to horn swoggle the effort.
They're trying to gook it up, if you will, so that they can gin up anti-war support for the American people.
The American left, I mean the elected American left is not going to sit out there and demand that we get out of there, but they're going to hope that they can create enough of you in the public to think we ought to get out of there so that they can follow you when you start demanding.
It's the Vietnam template all over again.
The media party is trying to rally the Democrat Party to get the hell out of there.
And both are sympathetic to it because they don't want any success for Bush or anything else.
And then Kerry said, the president must also announce immediately that the U.S. will not have a permanent military presence in Iraq.
Senator Kerry, when you when you uh orate words like must and immediately, uh, that suggests leadership.
But but come on, when you write the must and immediately have to be followed with substance, not a bunch of BS as you have in your op-ed here.
He also needs to put the training of Iraqi troops on a true six-month wartime footing and ensure the Iraqi government has the budget needed to deploy them.
So now he's insisting that deadlines are met, which is of course what the president has been insisting on.
This is what the president has been told can't be done and has been done since the battle began.
This is what Ted Kennedy also said.
John Kerry said the elections should be delayed because they can't happen successfully.
John Kerry and Ted Kennedy said there will be no sovereignty turnover date on June 30th.
And guess what?
The one year anniversary is two days from now.
They said we're never going to get a constitution written over there.
We're never going to get elections.
We're too sweet, just don't have time.
The securities forces aren't up to speed.
We're not.
They've been wrong about everything.
Every deadline that Bush set for himself has been met.
And yet here they come saying he needs to set deadlines and stick to them.
You know, I I think what Senator Kerry ought to do is write an op-ed or give a speech that makes sense to Hillary.
That he'll drop out of the 2008 campaign rather than sitting here advising George Bush on how to win the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
Because I'm telling you, John Kerry doesn't have the slightest clue about it.
Nor does Teddy Kennedy.
The administration must work with Iraqi government to establish a multinational force to help.
Okay, Ted Kennedy said the same thing.
We still need the French and the Germans in there.
We still need our European friends because without them it isn't gonna happen.
It's the same old garbage from the same old playbook.
And what it adds up to is not one serious contribution to anything.
Here's how Condoleezer Rice responded to Senator Kerry today on Fox and Friends.
The uh the weather guy, Steve Ducey was interviewing her.
He said, Kerry has this editorial, but what the president should say tonight, and one of the things he says is the president should tell the truth about what's going on in Iraq, to the best of your knowledge, as the president ever not told the truth about what's going on in Iraq.
The president is absolutely, of course, sincere in telling the American people what needs to be done.
Uh the American people need not be underestimated.
They they can see that this is a difficult, uh, difficult struggle.
But the American people have always come together, and I think they are coming together when uh the stakes are at the highest.
And the stakes in Iraq are very high because we're talking about a change in the center of the Middle East that would change the poisonous politics of that region, which is producing so much of the extremism that produces terrorism.
So the stakes are very high.
I think the American people understand that.
Well, she's right, because the very own ABC Washington Post poll, 60% say stick it out, don't leave.
Clear majorities are optimistic about the outcome over there and know full well what we face.
The exact opposite of the CNN USA Today Gallup poll that uh that is out today.
Uh so uh it it's I just want to reiterate for you, you're gonna watch the speech tonight.
If you're gonna watch it tonight, don't expect anything really dramatically new.
You're just gonna get more consistency from the president.
You're gonna get he's gonna tell you how hard it is.
He's gonna tell you how tough the going is.
He's gonna tell you he told you this from the get-go.
He's gonna tell you how long it possibly will take.
It's Not misled anybody about this in one area.
And libs keep trying to talk about, well, they misjudged this aftermath.
This didn't plan for the peace.
Well, do this right.
Didn't do that right.
He won't admit mistakes.
He's not going to admit mistakes tonight.
He's not going to do a Maya culpa.
He's not going to tell the press they were right and he was wrong.
He's not going to say he wished he had done something different.
He's not going to do any of that.
Which means the press is just going to be all over him tonight and tomorrow as a dunce and a failure and tin ear.
He doesn't hear anything.
He's not sensitive.
He won't admit mistakes.
Blah, blah.
It's just going to be a replay, folks, of the campaign.
And it's going to be a replay of that press conference where we had six different questions from reporters.
You think it's time to admit mistakes.
And the president said, Yeah, admit some if I could think of any.
I just don't know of any I've made.
And it just, it just eat them off.
And prepare yourselves because that's what it's going to be tonight and tomorrow.
Quick timeout.
Back with more after this.
As I mentioned, a bunch of Democrats went down to Club Gitmo, ladies and gentlemen, Ellen Tosher, California, Walnut Creek.
Big lib.
Big.
Huge lib.
And she says she's satisfied with conditions at Gitmo.
But she fears the U.S. is sending suspects to other countries.
She's I don't think she visited Castro's prisons, and uh that would be a great thing for anybody going to Club Gitmo to do.
Go to you want to see some real gulags, you can find them in Cuba, Senator Durbin, and they're being run by Fidel Castro.
All right, to the phone.
So we'll get to Ellen Torcher because we have sound bites on this.
You know who else is with her was that wizard from Houston.
What's her name?
Um Sheila Jackson Lee, who, again, while watching the Mars rover tool around the surface of Mars, ask NASA if it would if it would go over to where the astronauts left the flag.
Here's uh Michael in Los Angeles.
Hello, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Thank you.
You know, I the one major point that I have is conservative or liberal.
If, uh, in other words, regardless of how you look at it, it seems to me that if if if, as the administration says that Iraq is now the central front on the war on terror, why would they really even consider leaving that battle to the Iraqis themselves?
The United States military is so far superior to any rival, and so far more superior than any other superior power has ever been to any rival.
There is and and if it is as vital as it certainly appears now to be, there's no way it should be left to the Iraqis to do.
It should there should be no question about who would win, and it should be fought in a way that there's no doubt about victory.
Are you responding to uh Rumsfeld specifically when he over the weekend and uh yesterday, I believe, said that uh it'll be the Iraqis who eventually defeat the the insurgents.
Well, he's the one who's finally come out and said it publicly, but many, many other people have been saying it all along.
And and that that is just uh it's not acceptable.
It is purely and simply not acceptable.
Well, I let me give you my interpretation.
Uh I I think two two facts.
A, we are not leaving Iraq.
And B, we are involved in the war on terror in Iraq.
It is the central front in the war on terror, and even the majority of Americans now believe that as expressed in this ABC News poll.
So what I think is going on is two things.
Since we're gonna be there, we're always gonna be engaging these people in battle, but there's a secondary aspect to Iraq, and that is setting itself up as a functioning country, duly elected government and able to protect itself.
And at some point they've got to start doing it.
At some point they've got to start figuring out how to do it, learning how to do it, and training can only go so far.
You know, you eventually get out of law school and you've got to go take the bar, and then you've got to go to court, and then you gotta try cases or whatever you do in law.
Same thing with medicine.
You eventually get out of school, you gotta go to the operating room or the doctor's office or whatever.
Any profession is this way.
Uh at some point the Iraqis are gonna have to be able to defend themselves.
There's it may as well start now in in uh in learning how.
But I don't really believe that we're gonna abandon the war on terror and leave it up to the Iraqis.
I don't think that's what is uh is meant when Rumsfeld says that the insurgency will ultimately be defeated by the Iraqis.
He's trying to make the point that the insurgency is not acting against the United States.
The insurgency is acting now against a duly elected government of Iraq, and this is a key point, folks.
Uh, and I hope the president does make this point tonight.
And I'm not trying to split hairs with you here, Michael.
I really do think you've got a duly elected government, these insurgents are attacking Iraqi citizens who voted in large numbers for a duly elected government, and it ultimately it's gonna the Iraqis are gonna have to defend themselves because we're not gonna stay there forever.
But we're not going to abandon the total war on terror to them either.
We're not going to leave it up to them.
I wouldn't I wouldn't think that'd be possible, like you say.
You know, that's that is wonderful spin.
But if the United States isn't defeating them, what makes us think that the Iraqis are going to be able to do it?
Well, I I don't agree that we're not defeating them.
I I think you talk about spin.
I I think that's spin coming from the negative uh down in the doom gloom naysayers.
Rumsfeld himself said it.
Rumsfeld himself said it.
We are not going to defeat them.
Why not?
No, that's not what you just said.
You said we're not winning.
I don't believe we're not winning.
You're you're talking about defeat them as in FINIE over it's up and done with.
To the degree to which it is possible, there it there shouldn't be any wavering on this point.
It is uh the the conduct of terrorists, and I'm gonna tell you straight, I'm a liberal, okay?
And frankly, I think that when uh the Iraqi government tried to kill the former President Bush, to my mind that was sufficient reason right there to remove that regime.
That's completely unacceptable.
But uh uh what I'm saying is this it shouldn't be this is not something that should be wavered about or negotiated about or hemmed and hawed about.
There should be no doubt the United States is in so far superior militarily that no one they shouldn't have to pass on responsibility or or even consider it.
That's all right.
If you then you know what you're you're you you almost fall into a um uh d fit of description when I was discussing the CNN poll that shows forty percent of the people dissatisfied with the Iraq war, I opine that it may be that we're pussyfooting around too much that a lot of Americans don't understand how a bunch of un you know uh ununiformed uh helterskelter nomads filtering in from Syria and Iran can give us such trouble.
And they're probably getting impatient.
So what do we what this kick some ass?
What we are the United States of America for Christ, and I hear you saying that in a way.
Absolutely.
I I didn't mean to interrupt you, but look, I I I'll be frank with you.
I was opposed to the to the the beginning of this invasion because I listened carefully to the congressional hearings, and it did not appear to me that preparations were being made appropriately.
That's why I didn't think it was the right thing to do, and many people did really predict that something very much like uh what is happening was going to happen.
If the war was going to be fought, it needed to be done in such a way that there was no doubt about the outcome that that it was clear.
I mean, after all, the United States is taking let me just finish a point if you don't mind.
The United States has taken responsibility for invading this country and removing obviously a poisonous, disgusting regime.
And it has in one way or another stood back now for about a year and allowed thousands of Iraqis to be killed, blown up, murdered, shot, beheaded.
When we had our military standing in that country.
Why in the world?
I've got to stop you here because of time, and I I I I want to I want to be able to answer this.
In the first place, yeah, you're right.
There are a lot of people said it's not gonna work, it's not gonna happen.
But I will submit to you the majority of those people who said that we're we're talking from the template of Vietnam where we shouldn't win.
We don't have what it takes, we don't deserve to win.
It's unfair, we shouldn't go in and kick such little people around.
The second thing is I'm as frustrated as you are, uh but I th uh uh about the apparent uh uh lack of progress.
That's what it seems like.
I think we are all prisoners to the daily reports of news coming out of there, which are all the when I hear from soldiers, like I did at the beginning of the program today, I hear an entirely different story.
But I also know this, and this is not spin.
This is not a conventional war.
But in conventional wars, this is what happens.
There are fewer lives being lost in this war than in a similar time frame in World War II, World War I, or any other war you can mention.
At the same time, you've got people not wearing uniforms.
They're hiding in churches behind little women and children where we don't go.
We're fighting a bunch of incivilized, uncivilized people in a civilized way.
It's uncharted territory.
It's not a guerrilla war.
It's the first war we've had on ground with terrorists, and it's a work in progress.
Thank you.
Thank you, and welcome back.
And you know, I just got an email note here.
Rush, I know it was a CNN USA today poll, but isn't Bush's approval rating in the 40s a concern?
It isn't to me.
I frankly don't care.
And you know why I don't care?
Because Bush doesn't respond to polls.
Doesn't, if if Bush were a poll-driven presidency, if this were a presidency like Clinton's that was driven by polling day, I'd I'd probably be concerned because it it means the American people weren't responding to him.
But no, I he's a second-term president.
He's not going to run again.
It doesn't matter, he'll have beans to me.
Yeah, it'd be better if it's in the 60s because the Democrats would be a little bit more intimidated, and this kind of gives them some energy, but it doesn't matter to me.
As long as on most issues he's doing what I think is the right thing to do, I don't care what the rest of the country thinks, tell you the honest truth about it, folks.
And I don't mean to sound megalominate megalomaniacal about this, but but you know, beliefs are beliefs, principles are principles.
And there's some things that I've always disagreed with the president on.
There's a few things I don't think he's paying enough attention to, like uh immigration.
Uh but on this, on the war on terror, I couldn't care less what the American people think if I think he's doing the right thing.
Uh it it is I mean this in a political sense.
It does it doesn't, it doesn't bother me at all that he may be unpopular on some of these things.
It doesn't matter a whit.
You folks, would you you want to you want to take a guess what my popularity or approval numbers would be if they if the if the usual suspects did a national approval survey on me.
Do you know what my approval number would be?
If you let ABC or the New York Times or NBC or CNN or US at their polling units go out and do such a you know what it would be?
It'd be 20%.
It would be 20 or 40 percent.
It's most certainly the way they'd stack the poll, the way they would raise the questions, hell yes, it would be.
And and I'm uh it doesn't concern me.
I look it.
There is a new me.
I don't care what people think of me, and I don't care what people think of my beliefs.
I don't tailor my beliefs to have them approved.
And I don't tailor my beliefs to have other people like me or approve of me or agree with me or any of that.
Uh I try to persuade them I'm right, but at the end of the day, if they disagree with me, it's their problem, it isn't mine.
And I don't let it affect my self-esteem one way or the other.
And I think Bush is the same way on this.
I don't think he cares.
I don't think he gives a rat's rear what the New York Times editorial page says.
I don't think he reads it.
I don't think he reads what these polls say.
I don't think he cares what the Washington Post says.
I don't think he cares what any of these White House reporters think or say of him.
It doesn't matter to him.
And in a way, we should be grateful for this.
They don't run the country.
He does.
They all want to run the country.
Everybody wants to think they have some influence on people in public life.
Uh media especially, but as far as being concerned about his 40% poll number, I'm unfazed.
I was more bothered, by the way, when Clinton kept scoring in the high 50s and 60s during Lewinsky than I'm bothered by this.
Because that worried me about the American people.
Didn't worry me about me.
Made me wonder about the American people.
But this, if I can understand this, I mean you watch the news every night.
And if you were just an average run-of-the-mill, 10 or 20 minutes of news a day person, and you watch the networks CNN or read these news, what do you what do you think you would think about this?
So they're, you know, numbers are somewhat understandable.
And I think it's directly proportional to how much Bush has been on or how little he's been on TV talking about this the last six months.
He hadn't really focused on a rock.
And focusing on Social Security and uh and whatever else.
So and I I also, when you when you have a low approval number, I I the same same theory as this low number of CNN has on the war.
It might not be that 60% oppose the war.
It might be that some of the 60% are dissatisfied that we're pussyfooting.
Go by the same token, if Bush's approval numbers are down, it doesn't mean that all 58 or 50, whatever it is that disapprove of him, disapprove of him because it's maybe they're unhappy he's not going far enough with things.
Maybe there are people that voted for him and feel let down on a couple of days.
Who knows?
I just know this.
When you've got a 40% approval rating and a 48, whatever it is, disapproval rating, not all 48% are Democrats and liberals at people that don't like him because they don't agree with anything he's doing.
Some of those people do agree with him and they're just dissatisfied at the speed and the energy that's being expended on getting some of these things done.
I'll guarantee you a lot of people in this disapproval number are disapproving of Bush because of immigration.
And I will guarantee you that a lot of people who disapprove of Bush are disapproving because he caved in on medical private or private savings accounts on Social Security.
Not because he's trying it, not because he wants to reform it, not because he wants to touch it, but because he appears to be caving in on it.
But you're not going to get this kind of in-depth reporting because the press only wants you to think that the majority country hates Bush.
Like they do.
Now, as to this business of turning the war over to the Iraqis, Rumsfeld is simply speaking the historical truth.
I mean, it's like I said to our um our caller, uh Bill out in it was Mike, I'm sorry, Mike in Los Angeles.
I mean, uh the Iraqis are gonna have to defend themselves.
They're gonna have to back their government, their military, their police force.
We teach them how to do, but at some point they're gonna have to start doing it themselves, and we're not gonna be there forever.
At some point, they're gonna have to figure out how to do this on their own.
But what's amazing to me in a way is is that you know, some of the uh people on the left who complain about how many people we've supposedly killed in this war, say we didn't do enough killing with more troops and more bombing.
It's a little bit of a contradiction.
If we put a million uh more troops on the ground, just to put a number on it, not only would that create more targets, but what would they do?
I mean, unless the additional troops are used to attack Syria and Iran, it's not clear to me why more troops are required.
I keep I keep hearing certain critics say this, but what do they want to do with them exactly?
What do they want to do with the troops?
I think I know.
I think they think that troop levels, troop level increases will automatically achieve victory.
But this is uncharted territory.
We've not fought a war with this is not a guerrilla war, as Rumfeld said the other day.
This is an insurgency or a it's actually a bunch of terrorists floating in from countries all over the over the region.
And they're when you get right down to it, they're a bunch of cowards.
They hide out in mosques.
They're probably hold a Koran.
You can imagine the PR spin that would result if we shot somebody reading a Koran while he had a you know a uh uh suicide bomb hidden under him or something.
But, you know, I I don't think the critics uh can decide what their criticism is.
It's time to pull out, we don't have enough troops, we're killing too many people, we're not using enough military power, we need to stop the insurgents, but let's not expand the war to Syria and Iraq uh or Iran where they're coming from.
Um they're just flailing around because war is hell, war is imperfect.
There are always problems, but this war has been pretty successful thus far, but there's no war plan.
In fact, if I can use a football, you put every football team comes into the game with a game plan, and it always gets blown up in the first quarter because the other side always does something unexpected.
So you can have all the great war plans you want, but you better have flexibility built into it because it's never gonna go the way you predicted.
But but there's so many conflicting demands here.
We're killing too many Iraqis.
We're killing too many people.
I can't deal with it.
We need more troops.
We need more bombing.
We need more killing.
Because what do you what do you think defines victory in a war?
You kill more of them than you lose of yourself.
It's I mean, there's no other way to define it, folks.
Wars are not won with words, treaties, doctors, nurses, clean water, or any of that.
They're one when you kill more of the other guys than you lose yourself.
All right, now to Club Gitmo.
East Bay representative Ellen Tosher, huge lib from Walnut Creek, said Monday that she observed improved conditions for suspected terrorists at the at uh Club Gitmo.
But she fears the improvements have come because the U.S. is turning over new suspects to be interrogated by countries with records of torture.
Oh, yeah, so it's uh yeah, we're doing great at Gitmo, but that's only because we're sending them elsewhere and mistreating them there.
My belief is we are running a facility at Club Gitmo that has no unlawful activities, Tosher said after returning from a seven-hour visit Saturday.
But she said that improvement over widely reported abuses at the prison probably, probably we don't know.
We're guessing, has come about because questionable activities have been moved elsewhere.
So we're still evil.
We're still rotten SOBs.
We're just hiding it from people now.
We're just we're just mistreating these God fearing terrorists in other camps.
These things aren't happening at Gitmo because it's gotten too hot for them at Gitmo.
So the translation is look, we know who the Americans are, says Congressman Tosher.
We know who they are.
They want to they want to rape these people.
They want to invade their space with female interrogators.
They want to flush Korans down the toilet.
They want to do all that.
We know they want to do it, but they can't do it at Gitmo because the heat's been turned up.
Too hot down there.
So they're importing all these new recruits, these new prisoners, to a different prison, and that's where we're flushing the Korans down the toilet.
And that's where they're invading their space with female interrogation.
That's what she's saying.
Let's go to the audio soundbite.
Sheila Jackson Lee on this trip as well.
Uh and this is uh last night.
Uh I don't know where she said this.
Uh uh well, this this is what she said.
This I guess is a press conference uh last night.
It just goes seven seconds, and then we've got a something to follow it right after that.
But here's what she said last night.
What we've seen here uh is evidence that we have made progress.
And that's an important statement to be made.
Okay, let's go back to April 6th, 2005, House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Patriot Act, where Alberto Gonzalez testified this is Sheila Jackson Lee.
I think under General Hood, they've made some real improvements.
I really get a sense there's a very different approach to the interrogations.
Uh you don't see the uh same kind of of stress points, sleep deprivation, uh, that sort of thing.
I will tell you, I've essentially made the judgment that you close Guantanamo, and you'll have less accountability.
Okay, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Hold on a minute, hold a minute.
That's that's Ron White.
I've screwed I I didn't follow the I thought we had another Sheila Jackson Lee, but that was just uh audio quote.
Uh let me forget Wyden.
I don't care about Wyden.
He couldn't even find Gitmo on a map if somebody didn't fly him down there.
Uh let's go to MSNBC last night.
Move on to soundbite number nine, because I want to get to well, I gotta take a break here, but we've got two is it two, yeah, two sound bites of Ellen Tosher about who this story is primarily about.
We'll take a break and get to that right after this.
Don't go away.
Okay, let's go to uh hardball last night with Chris Matthews, Ellen Tosher and uh Congressman Tom Cole, a Republican from Oklahoma.
Uh Chris Matthews says, Congresswoman Tosher, what surprised you down there at Club Gitmo that was different than what the PR had suggested it would be down there at Club Gitmo.
What I saw was a fairly new prison that's been built in the last two years, uh, that is up to American prison standards uh and uh pretty humane treatment for the inmates who are, by the way, very, very dangerous, members of Al Qaeda, uh, who need to be prosecuted.
Uh yeah, and so Matthew says, Well, could you tell in facing these guys that they were dangerous customers that these were hard cases down there at Club Gitmo?
I think we really have to get to the issue of how do we clear the record and how do we get uh this uh besmirched reputation that we've uh that we've uh earned by not clearing the record uh to the to the American people and to the world community, and that's why I think we need to have a presidential commission that does a thorough investigation of these very serious allegations about abuse at uh Camp X-ray, which has been closed about two years uh in Guantanamo.
So um uh see when you listen to these sound bites but know fully well what else she said.
Oh, yeah, it's a really we got some tough characters down there.
We're gonna deal with these people, they're really bad guys.
It's a really uh I found a humane prison, humane treatment uh uh built in the last two years, uh up to American prison standards.
But I also think that the real Koran flushing and the humiliation is happening elsewhere, and I think we're sending people to other prisons because it got too hot at Gitmo.
And so the the response to this is well, um sorry, Miss Torsher, but fact is you've probably been wrong from the get-go about what went on at Gitmo.
And uh what you saw down there is not much different than what what else has been going on down there.
But we were led to believe that all this torture and all this other was going on within the past two years, weren't we?
The Koran flushing and all this, and uh Time magazine's prisoners 063.
Why that was that was all in the last two years, I thought.
Now some Democrats have gone down there for what they've seen, they cannot continue to make the charge.
So they have to say, well, we assume it's happening somewhere else, though.
These people just I they have uh they just have a death wish.
Let's go to St. Louis.
Tony, welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
It's an honor to talk to you.
I just want to I wanted to make a quick comment uh from your previous caller.
You didn't think the Iraqis would be able to uh defeat the terrorists.
I think that they will.
I think that they're they'll be able to get it done because they're not gonna have to deal with the liberals uh and the liberal media mucking things up for them.
Well, in fact, I've got a story here from the uh uh Chicago uh Tribune.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jafari said Monday that two years would be more than enough time to establish security in his country.
A security in his country, a task the Defense Secretary Rumsfeld may take up to twelve years.
Uh but uh clearly I think um uh it uh that they they can they're gonna have to do it is the bottom line.
Just like every other country we liberate has to end up defending itself.
We don't occupy places around the world, although we're still we're still at Club Bosnia.
Clinton's war.
We still haven't gotten out of there any UN.
The only thing I'll tell you the people that screw up the peace everywhere they go are the UN.
But I like his point.
Once we get out of there, they won't have to deal with the American left, and they'll have uh a much easier task.
Uh let's see, here's Bill in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Afternoon, Rush.
Thank you.
Bill Smith.
Uh in two world wars, we lost approximately half a million Americans fighting the Germans.
The second time we did it right.
We went where they were, ripped the socks off them, occupied their country, disarmed their armed forces, and denazified them.
We put them jail, uh criminals.
We even hung a few, but we took we we turned Germany over to civilized Germans.
Five years later in 1950, they were building up their own army again on our side this time.
During the entire length of the Cold War, Germany, our former an enemy in two world wars, was the strongest ally we had against the Russians.
I suppose we didn't have a lot of things.
I I've got to stop you because of time.
I'm down to a few seconds, but that's because half of their country was armed against them.
They needed allies.
Uh East Germany, West Germany.
But let's also not forget the media, the New York Times, after we went into Germany after defeating them, wrote the same things then that they're writing about Iraq.
It would fail.
We had no chance.
Put that up on the website again tonight in advance of the president's speech.
Be back after this.
Stay with us.
I just saw the Brinks uh truck drive up.
Uh guess they're bringing my paycheck.
All right, folks, that's it for today.
Uh, but we'll be back tomorrow Wednesday do it all over again.
We'll look forward to it, have a great time.
We'll have a full analysis of the president's speech last night, what the media reacts to it was as well.
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