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Aug. 22, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
August 22, 2005, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
This is great.
Folks, no matter what happens, you can count on this.
You put a bag of excrement in front of a bunch of liberals and they'll all step in it.
Put another bag out there and they'll all step in that.
And at the same time, think that they're winning.
At the same time, think they're making progress.
The latest example, you got to love this.
Well-known communist sympathizer Joan Baez in Crawford, Texas, regaling this bunch.
Now, I think they're having a new Woodstock down there now with more anti-American folk tunes.
And then you've got Sean Penn and his special from Iran or Iraq, wherever he was, on TV.
So the two new faces.
I guess Cindy Sheehan hasn't come back.
So you need a couple new faces that Joan Baez, a retread from the Woodstock 60s and Sean Penn.
I mean, they keep making our day here.
Greetings, welcome.
Nice to be with you, Rush Limbaugh.
After a wonderful weekend of hot, steamy golf.
Boy, it was hot out there this weekend, Brian.
Did you know that?
Did you go outside?
I love it.
I got to tell you, if it's global warming out there, I don't care who's responsible for it.
I love it.
Telephone number, if you ought to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Folks, let me start here with something somewhat serious, keeping in mind that our primary purpose here is to have fun while being serious.
It's a unique combination not found anywhere else in the media.
More and more, and I'm sure you've seen this if you read anything in the internet and if you watch television more and more, I am sure you have seen that there is a growing discomfiture with the war in Iraq on the side we are on.
There are a lot of people, and I'm not talking about Chuck Hagel.
We'll get to Chuck Hagel here in just a second.
I'm talking about people that you would think normally would be in for the long haul on this are starting now to express some reservations.
They're starting to worry about the apparent mood that settled in over everybody.
We're losing this and they were wandering aimlessly and we're bogged down and we're not going anywhere.
And this has ceased to be the war on terror.
Now it's a war for freedom and democracy in Iraq.
The reason I bring this up is because people are asking me about it.
People over the weekend are saying to me, and I don't mean email, I mean people I'm running into, are starting to express some concern to me.
And I say, Rush, what do you think about this?
You got to know things aren't going right over there.
The president's numbers are low and this is not looking good.
And I don't feel right about this.
Something about this.
We ought to be cleaning these people's clocks.
Don't get this.
We got terrorist camps in Syria, but we're not bombing the terrorist camps.
Rush.
What's going on?
We know where some of these insurgents are coming from.
We're not doing anything about that.
What do we do?
And these people, many of them have, I fear, already gone over the cliff.
They've already gone over the edge.
And many of them would be comforted if I were to join them.
And I will not.
And I've got a number of reasons for it.
But there's one big reason at the time.
And I look, folks, I mean, I'm just like everybody else.
You know, you look out there and this is not the hasty and decisive victory, apparently.
And I, well, I think it may actually be, but, but forget, I want to deal with perceptions here for a moment.
We'll get to the reality here in just a second.
Like a lot of people, you know, you get caught up in this and at some point, people worry about their own credibility.
Well, I'm not going to go to a mat on this if I'm going to prove me wrong.
I'm not going to just exhibit blind loyalty.
There's something far more at stake than that, folks.
And I know if you've read certain conservative websites, you'll see some doubting Thomases, and you'll see some people starting to slip off the cliff and go over the edge.
I think one of the reasons is that they are worried a little bit in some of these places about their own credibility, and they don't want to be accused of, you know, just being in the back pocket of the administration or anybody else.
But there's something far larger than that to me.
And that is, let's say, hypothetical.
Let's say that I were to come on this program and say, you know what, folks, I'll tell you, Iraq is a mistake.
And not because of Cindy Sheehan and not because that, but we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing over there when it's not going right.
And now that they're putting together this constitution over there, and if it's true that the government of Iraq is going to be an Islamic government, okay, then that's it for me.
I'm out of here because that's not what this war was told, what I was told this war was going to be on.
I'm getting out.
You know, a lot of people are saying that.
A lot of people are doing that.
A lot of people are, wait a minute, an Islamic government.
We didn't go.
We're losing American kids' lives to set up an Islamic government.
I'm not going to go.
Folks, we did not go to war in Iraq to set up an American guy.
I laugh.
The same people that worry about an occupation, that worry about us imposing democracy and opposing, imposing America's way of life over there, now are shocked that we're not doing that.
But here's, let me just cut to the chase as one of the reasons why I'm not going to abandon this policy is what's the alternative?
You want to turn all of this over to the people you see from the left on television every day?
You want to turn this over to people like Hillary Clinton?
You want to turn all this over to people like John Kerry or Ted Kennedy or Patrick Leahy?
Do you want to turn it over to that crowd?
Not me.
I don't care, folks, no matter how bad it may be getting and no matter how bad you think it is, it isn't that bad in Iraq right now.
But regardless, the one thing that I just can't come to grips with is turning over the national defense of this country to the American left.
I just, there's no national security if we do that.
There's just, you know, it makes no sense.
And by abandoning either emotionally or psychologically or even intellectually, by abandoning the current policy and the effort, you are handing the left a huge victory and big ticket.
And I think it matters.
You know, there are degrees.
Okay, you could say, well, we're losing.
So the side that's running the losing side ought to be dispatched.
All right.
I can understand that.
But then look at what's going to fill the vacuum.
You want it to be worse than it is?
You want it to be 10 times worse than it is, and not just in Iraq, but elsewhere around the world?
Well, okay, fine.
Then abandon this policy right now.
But the idea that there's unity on the other side is something else that needs to be dealt with.
The newspapers today are a delight.
Listen to this.
Let me just give you the headlines, and we're going to go through this as the program unfolds before your very eyes today.
Ronald Bronstein in the Los Angeles Times political leaders' silence on Iraq war is a dereliction duty.
What?
What silence on the Iraq?
How in the hell can anybody paying attention to what's going on in the country write a story, an analysis piece that says there's no debate going on about Iraq, that there's a silence from political leaders on that?
How can anybody say this?
All we do is debate the Iraq war.
The debate on the Iraq war has never stopped.
Even the people on the Democratic side who voted emphatically for the resolution now wish us to think that they didn't.
I think what's happening to Mr. Brownstein is, and a bunch of people on the left, this little Woodstock thing down in Crawford has bombed.
It has bombed big time.
It has not turned the tide in this way.
It has not elevated the Democrats or the left or their position at all.
Regardless what the president's numbers are, approval-wise, the left's numbers are lower.
The Democrats' numbers are lower.
They have gained nothing.
They've gained nothing from Bill Burkett.
They gained nothing from the Jersey girls.
They gained nothing from Richard Clark.
They gained nothing from the whole 9-11 Commission public hearings.
And now they've gained nothing from Cindy Sheehan, and they're fed up.
And what Bronstein's fed up about is that there aren't any Democrat politicians down in Crawford joining that new Woodstock down there.
That's what he wants.
And all the left in the media want this Sheehan situation to have spawned something meaningful, as they define it, which is a huge debate with liberal Democrat politicians going down there, holding hands, singing, kumbaya, saying, get us out of Iraq, hoisting up all those people down there as heroes, and it ain't happening.
They don't want any part of it done.
Now, why is that?
Let's go to the next story, which is in the Washington Post.
Democrats split over position on Iraq war.
Activists more vocal as leaders decline to challenge Bush.
Well, hubba, hubba.
We have basically the same story in the L.A. Times and the Washington Post.
The Democrats just aren't debating the president enough.
Well, the left is.
The far-left fringe is full-throated.
The media is giving them all the airtime and then some they can possibly ask for, but it's not inspiring Washington Democrats.
The Washington Democrats aren't embracing Woodstock Crawford, and they're all upset about this.
And it gets, if you dig deep in the story, you'll find that they're worried about looking defeatist.
The Democrats are getting tired of appearing defeatist and pessimistic and like losers.
In fact, we've talked about these behind-closed door meetings that Democrats have been having the past six weeks, two months, or whatever, to try to come up with their beliefs.
Listen to this passage.
Senate Democrats, according to AIDS, convened a private meeting in late June to develop a cohesive stance on the war and debated every option only to break up with no consensus whatsoever.
So that's one.
Then if you rummage around the, as I say, more details from all these stories as the program unfolds.
If you rummage around the Democrat blogosphere, and sometimes that can be as much fun as going to a movie or anything else that you can imagine doing, one of the wackiest, craziest places you can go is this thing called Daily Cause.
And I don't know if you, it's Daily KOS.
I don't know how a guy pronounces it because his name is Marcos, Marcos something or other.
Maybe the Daily Coast.
I have no clue.
But this guy is right in there with moveon.org.
And these guys are, they are fed up with the Democrat Leadership Council.
Remember, I told you on Friday, I read you the agenda for the Democrat Leadership Council.
They got together their agenda.
Sounds very conservative, very right-wing.
Remember when moveon.org earlier this year sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee saying, you guys adopt what we believe in or we're taking over this party.
Screw you to hell with you.
We're taking it over.
We're not putting up with a bunch of limp-wristed, linguini-spined little Washingtonocrats anymore.
Well, this guy at the Daily Cost website has promised that he has a secret plan, a secret plan to destroy the Democrat Leadership Council if they don't change their way in two weeks.
This guy is, and he's not revealing what his secret plan is, but he's going to mount it and he's going to launch it.
And he is, so you have moveon.org and you have these left-wing kooks in the fringe on their websites, all upset that everything they're doing out there to generate all this anti-Bush, anti-Iraq sentiment is not rallying the elected people in their party, and they're fed up to be tied, and they are going to set out on a mission they claim to destroy these people.
So while all this is supposedly wreaking havoc with Bush, the simple fact of the matter is the Democrats are being torn apart by their ultra-left-wing fringe, which is slowly becoming the mainstream of the party.
Then in the midst of all this, guess who shows up with some of the worst and most inexplicable timing you can imagine?
Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, with whom we will discuss or talk, about whom we will discuss next.
Stay with us.
Don't go away.
All right, so let's reset the table here briefly.
We got Joan Baez out of mothballs and dinner theater in San Francisco.
That's what she was doing.
Now it's down there strumming pro-communist songs and anti-American songs down at Crawford's Woodstock.
And then you've got Sean Penn ready to go public with his reports from wherever he is, Iran, I don't know.
He was in Iraq.
He's in wherever he went.
And you've got the Democrats coming apart at the seams over all this.
You've got the left-wing fringe, which is their money base, going absolutely nuts over the fact that elected Democrats won't join them down at Crawford Woodstock and won't go anti-Bush and won't go anti-war.
And in the midst of all this, in the midst of all this, who shows up with the worst timing, not only for the issue, but for himself?
If he's got presidential aspiration, we love Chuck Hagel here on this program, but the timing of this, the timing of this could not be worse.
Chuck Hagel comes along to step in it.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
He was on this week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday, along with Virginia Senator George Allen.
Stephanopoulos says, you say stay the course in Iraq is not a policy.
Stay the course is not a policy.
Part of the problem that we have, as Henry Kissinger pointed out here in the last few days in an op-ed in the Washington Post, is we have no measurement for progress, for success.
And so I think by any standard, when you analyze two and a half years in Iraq, where we have put in over a third of a trillion dollars, where we have lost almost 1,900 Americans, over 14,000 wounded, electricity production down, oil production down, any measurement, any standard you apply to this, we're not winning.
All right.
By any measurement, any standard, we're not winning.
Now, to me, I think the statement's both false and ignorant, but you know what?
He's echoing a lot of sentiments that I'm hearing out there.
People are getting nervous.
All this criticism is starting to take hold, even on people on our side.
I again ask you, if you're even tempted to agree with Senator Hagel, what's your alternative?
You want to set an exit date now?
You just want to get out of there?
I mean, you know, even some people on the left now admit, you know something?
Okay, we may have been there for the wrong reasons.
This is the left speaking.
We may have gotten in there for the wrong reason.
We may have lied to get in there.
But we can't leave without winning.
I mean, it'd be the worst thing to do would be leave.
You can't leave now.
I mean, that's almost other than the fringe kooks on the left.
It's almost universal.
Here comes Senator Hagel.
This stay the course is not a policy.
By any measurement, any standard you apply to this, we're not winning.
I think that's both false and it's ignorant.
Is it true that by any measure, we're not winning?
We had the January 30th elections in which Iraq held free elections.
There was a 60% turnout.
They choose a 275-seat National Assembly.
You know, they've got this multi-ethnic government.
Iraqis are now engaged in negotiating constitution, and they're getting close to it, according to the news today.
The main concern in Iraq, I think, folks, has to do with security.
And the fact is that, you know, when you read the intercepts from the terrorists, it's they who worry that their objectives are not being achieved.
And nobody wants to focus on this.
We've had all these letters from Zarqawi and all these others.
They're worried that their objectives are not being achieved.
They've shown themselves utterly unable to derail the political process that's taking place in Iraq.
They didn't stop the sovereignty date.
They didn't stop the elections.
And they haven't stopped this constitutional convention.
And believe me, they fear that as much as they feared the elections, if not more.
Now, on the security side, the terrorists have not dealt what you would call a military blow against the Iraqi government.
The terrorists haven't convinced the Iraqis to give up.
They've convinced Chuck Hagel to give up.
The terrorists have convinced the left in America to give up, but they haven't convinced the Iraqis to give up.
They haven't been able to provoke a civil war.
How many times did we hear that that was the objective?
They were trying to provoke a civil war, going all the way back to Muktar al-Sadr, Muki, to his friends.
They haven't been able to promote that.
They have failed in their efforts to win popular support.
The insurgents, whatever terrorists, still have to kill people and hold them up.
The people are not joining them of their own free will.
All they've shown is a facility for roadside bombings and random acts of terror.
Yeah, it's a problem.
It's a problem around the world, by the way.
And it was a problem in Iraq when Saddam was running it.
They just didn't call it terrorism when Saddam was meting out the same sort of treatment to his own people.
But how you can say that by any measurement, by any standard, we're not winning?
How can you possibly say that, Senator Hagel, given the recitation I just put forth?
The terrorists, the insurgents, whatever you want to call them, have failed in their efforts to derail everything.
The only area that terrorists have not failed is in their propaganda efforts with the American media and the American left.
The terrorists' biggest successes are with the American media and the American left, both of whom are joined at the hip in their opposition to George W. Bush and the Republicans in this country.
That's where they've been successful.
And to the extent that those of you out there getting itchy and getting a little nervous about, hey, you know, we're losing in Iraq.
I don't understand what this is all about.
I didn't think it'd take this long.
What about the war on terror and so forth and so on?
Understand.
You are also on the cusp of falling prey to the only, well, not the only, but I mean the major terrorist success story is with the American media and the American left.
They're not having near as much success in Iraq as they are in America.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
You know me, folks, optimism is always preferable to defeatism and pessimism.
And I'm not saying optimism at the expense of admitting reality.
I just do not believe that Senator Hagel is immersed in reality here.
And I don't believe the American left and the media are immersed in reality.
We know they're not.
We know that they've been trying to talk down this whole effort in Iraq since it began.
And it's just, it's false.
As I say, the terrorists' biggest successes are not in Iraq.
They are in the American media.
How do I know this?
Well, you watch television every night.
You've got the obligatory tape of a bombed out car.
And then you have the obligatory interviews with people who say, we can't fight this way.
We're going to lose this.
It's not worth it.
Blah, At the same time, we have this story from last week where the editor of one of the papers in Florida that takes the AP got an email.
This was stunning.
This was literally stunning.
He gets all these emails from people saying, what about the 3,100 hospitals and schools and so forth that are open?
What about all the good things going on in Iraq?
And this editor sends a letter to the AP president, says, is this true?
Now, is she a reporter or not?
You know, somebody made the point, I forget, it might have been Mark Stein, I forget who it was, these people sitting around there, these are reporters, these are editors, and they're calling people who also are reporters and editors.
Is this true?
What do reporters and editors do?
They find out what's going on and tell people.
But no, these are sitting in their office.
They're calling the AP.
And the AP's answer to their membership newspapers was, well, you know, we have trouble getting out of our hotels over there.
It's pretty dangerous over there, but we'll look into it.
There's a mindset here, but you find out that good news is systematically being ignored coming out of Iraq.
Hey, and I'm not trying to be a phony baloney teenager.
Please don't misunderstand me on this.
I'm just telling you that pessimism and defeatism don't take you anywhere and don't get anything done.
And I firmly believe that the terrorists have not succeeded in stopping any of the advancements that are taking place in Iraq.
What they're succeeding in doing is convincing the American left and the American media that they are succeeding, and that is being reported.
Don't let it affect you to the extent that it has.
Back to another soundbite from Senator Hegel on this week with George Stephanopoulos, who says, but are more troops the answer over there now?
Well, no, I don't think so.
But you ask a question.
Let me go back and answer your question.
The reason is I don't think more troops are the answer.
Now, we're past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged down problem, not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam.
All right, folks, bear with me on this because I think this is perhaps the most absurd, second most absurd, if not the most absurd, argument that he is making.
Let me give you the differences between Iraq and Vietnam.
The Iraqi terror campaign is not a nationalist movement.
The North Vietnamese were.
They were a nationalist movement and they were led by Ho Chi Minh.
The Iraqi terror campaign is nowhere near a nationalist movement.
It has no popular support.
If it had popular support, it wouldn't need to resort to terror.
It has no indigenous national leadership.
There's not one leader in Iraq that you can say, this is the guy running the insurgency.
If there is a guy running it, he's not even there.
It's one of Bin Laden's boys, or it's Zerkawi who has fled the scene when he got hurt or whatever, but he's not even an Iraqi.
My point is there's not one nationalist Iraqi that is leading this.
This so-called insurgency or what have you.
They have no superpower support.
In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese had both the Russians and the Chinese arming them and helping them out.
There is no superpower support for the insurgency in Iraq.
They control no parts of the nation.
That's why they're called an insurgency.
They don't control one part of the nation of Iraq.
And there's a professor read this some time ago, James Robbins at the National Defense University.
And he pointed out some time ago the size of the conflict, the global context, the weapons, the doctrine, the force structure, the terrain, the motivation, practically every other point of comparison different.
There's hardly any similarity to Vietnam.
Iraq in 2005 is not Vietnam in 1970.
Only a fool can't perceive the difference.
And only somebody who wants it to be Iraq will say that it is, or Vietnam will say that it is.
And why Senator Hegel decides to join, he wants the Republican presidential nomination, I'm told.
Why he wants to join and utter the same rhetoric that you hear coming from the fringe left.
From the fringe Ku Klux, you do have some elected Democrats that are talking about, well, we're getting bought down here in Vietnam all over again.
Well, that's because that's what they want everybody to think.
They want America to lose the war.
They don't think we have a right to win the war because we're the nation's superpower.
It's just not fair.
So they want people to think that we're up against a nationalist Iraqi movement fighting for its freedom.
How many people, how many times have you heard people on the left refer to the insurgency as the moral equivalent of our founding fathers?
What a bunch of hogwash.
It's absolutely patently absurd.
All of these comparisons are.
But if you're anti-America, if you're anti-military, and you want to bring back your glory days of influence and power and victory, you've got to go back to Vietnam if you're the American left.
And that's what they're trying to do.
Senator Hegel, again, with timing here that is just, it's just choice.
His timing is almost as pitiful as Bill Clinton's was last week.
In an inexplicable move, I mean, not even McCain is saying things like this.
Not even Vice President Lindsey Graham is saying things like this.
I mean, you can't, you have to look.
I mean, Hillary Clinton isn't saying things like this.
But the far-fringe American left is, and it's odd to me that Senator Hegel would apparently like to be lumped with them.
I think, I'm guessing.
I think what Senator Hegel's excited about is he thinks he can be the lone Republican here to get out in front of what's really happening and be the guy who sounded the warning bells, but he's wrong about it.
And then he also said this, we don't have this on tape, but he said, I think our involvement there has destabilized the Mabel East, the Middle East, and the longer that we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur.
This is the most ludicrous argument of all.
For one thing, the Middle East was churning out people committed to killing Americans before the war to liberate Iraq.
I mean, September 11th took place long before the war to liberate Iraq.
Middle East was not a source of stabilization before the war to liberate Iraq.
It was a generator of toxic anti-Americanism and suicide killers, and it still is to a certain point.
But we haven't destabilized any.
How can you possibly say the Middle East was stable?
We've been trying to come up with peace between the Israelis and Palestinians ever since I've been alive.
Three years longer than I've been alive, that's been going on.
We've had the Iranian hostage crisis.
We've had crisis.
We've had hijacking.
Who in the world can sit there and say that the Middle East was stable?
And then we got there and destabilized the whole thing.
I mean, the notion here that prior to the war in Iraq, the Middle East was like the nations of Scandinavia, just a bunch of nations that declared impartiality and didn't get involved in any conflict.
I mean, it's beyond my comprehension.
And then Hegel says we should start figuring out how we get out of there.
Once again, to put the focus on leaving instead of victory is exactly the wrong signal to sell.
Why in the world?
Okay, let's get out, but let's win it.
Hegel doesn't even allow for that in his interpretation.
It's not possible.
It's Vietnam.
Well, let me tell you something about Vietnam.
We were winning Vietnam, and we could have won Vietnam were it not for a bunch of elites in Washington thinking they knew how to run things.
And of course, we had the usual, for its day, political correctness.
We couldn't bomb here.
We couldn't go there.
And guess what?
We undermined ourselves from Washington.
And guess what we have now?
We've got the undermining.
If there is any similarity to Vietnam, it's the way the left is behaving, not the U.S. military.
U.S. military is valorous.
The U.S. military is brave and courageous.
The U.S. military is following its orders.
But the left and the media in this country are duplicating and repeating everything they did.
That's the similarity.
If you want any similarity between this war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam, simply judge the way the left deals with it and the way the media is reporting it.
And that's the extent of it, because there are no other similarities.
I don't care what anybody tells you.
Back after this.
Stay with us.
All right, we will get back to these newspaper stories that I'm going to dig further into and analyze a little more about the rift in the Democratic Party over what's not happening in the Democratic Party about Iraq.
But people have been waiting patiently on the phones, and we'll go to Manchester, New Hampshire to start with Gary.
Hello, sir.
Glad you called.
Hey, thank you very much, Rush.
Megan Dittos from the Liz Freer died state.
I wanted to comment on Senator Hegel.
You spoke of him not having a sense of reality.
Well, tell you what, if he wants to try and run for president, his dose of reality will come when he tries to convince Republicans to vote for him after this.
I would say he's pretty much through any presidential aspirations.
Forget about it.
He's done.
It seems so.
I'm at a loss to understand it.
It seems a bit petulant as well.
I'm trying to figure this out.
I'm going to put myself in his shoes.
What's he doing here?
What is Senator Hegel thinking on this?
And all I can come up with is that he's trying to be the lone voice, like McCain was often, the lone voice in the Republicans on what McCain thought was reasonable.
And I know McCain and Hegel both know that if they go on television like Stephanopoulos and rip the Republicans, they're going to get all kinds of fawning, uncritical coverage.
But they make the mistake then of assuming that fawning uncritical coverage will ingratiate themselves to Republicans.
The Republicans have as much opposition to the mainstream press today as they have to the Democratic Party.
You know, we asked the question last week, what's the main problem people have with McCain?
And I didn't bother taking any calls on this because we all know the answers, but I'll tell you there's something that doesn't get mentioned.
A lot of people say they have problems with McCain because of what he said about religious conservatives in South Carolina in 2000 and what he's taking every opportunity to oppose Bush on tax cuts, campaign finance reform.
But I'm going to tell you what I think.
And of course, what I think is probably right, usually is.
I think one of the biggest problems McCain has is that fawning, never-ending groveling and just total puppy dog support for the mainstream press.
The mainstream press on the Republican side is not trusted.
The mainstream press on the Republicans on the Republican side looks at the mainstream press and they understand it is an enemy.
And when the mainstream press sides with somebody, it ain't for the good of the Republican Party.
And people instinctively understand this.
So McCain got out there on his bus, the Straight Talk Express, and Chris Matthews, for two years after the year 2000, still treated him like he should have won the presidency every night when he was on his program.
And they long for the day that McCain would come back.
And it was the biggest thing whenever a cable show got McCain booked or McCain was interviewed here.
And I'm telling you, that hurts him too.
Whatever his policy positions are that have upset people like CFR, this fawning, almost slobbering, slavish devotion to McCain on the part of the mainstream press harms him as much with the Republican-based voters as anything else.
But as far as Hegel, folks, I cannot explain this.
Not this timing.
I can't explain the sentiment other than to say, well, on what he would say, I'm just being honest.
I'm not plotting anything here.
I'm not strategizing.
I'm not being calculating.
I'm simply telling you what I think.
Somebody's got to speak out on it.
And that's what he would probably say.
And, you know, if McCain has the Straight Talk Express, Hegel, you know, wants the Straight Talk Jet.
And I think you live in Washington and you get fawning, slobbering approval and support from the culture there, the establishment culture, including the media.
And it's like an aphrodisiac.
And it's sort of like the movie The Lord of the Rings, like that ring.
I mean, it was once you've got it, you can't do away with it.
You've got to have it.
You've got to keep getting it.
You cannot let it get away from you.
Once you've gotten that kind of treatment, because you think it distinguishes yourself from other right-wingers like Newt and the Republicans that are hated in that town, and you know in your heart, you think you're not going anywhere in Washington until the press loves you, until the culture loves you.
I just can't help but think that's a large part of this.
Frank in Parkville, Maryland, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Rush, I'm a liberal Democrat, and I disagree with Chuck Hagel.
I listened to him yesterday on the talk show, and I think he's totally wrong about pulling out or even setting timetables.
Now, I didn't agree going into Iraq.
I thought it was all phony, but we're there.
We broke it, and as General Powell said, we've got to fix it.
It's ours.
We own it.
So the only way to do it with honor is to seal the borders of Iraq with Syria and Iran to stop the insurgents from coming from Saudi Arabia.
And the only way to do that is all the generals have said is overwhelming force.
And in order to do overwhelming force, we have to about double the troops.
And if President Bush would do what President Roosevelt did, bite the bullet and put the draft in temporarily.
And that's the only way with a lot of men, are you going to be able to enforce the borders there and protect us in case we have to do something with China or Iran?
You need a lot of troops, and you're not going to get them by volunteers.
Frank, I love you.
And you know why I love you?
You're an FDR Democrat.
Right?
True, I'm almost 80 years old.
Yeah, I can tell.
We're one of these whole-line Democrats.
You understand the use of force, and you understand that it works, and you understand that that's how victory is achieved.
And you are unique, at least in my conversations with liberal Democrats.
Having said that, Rush, don't you believe, as all the former generals are saying on there, once they get out, they speak what I think is the truth, that we need overwhelming force not only to seal the borders, but when we clear out the insurgents in Baghdad or Faraday.
However you would define overwhelming force in this day and age, I think there are a lot of people in this country who think we were using more.
I think, in fact, to the extent that Bush's numbers on his approval numbers on the conduct of war in Iraq are down, I think it's not because of the Sheehan-type protests out there.
I think it's because there are a lot of people like you who are fed up that you don't think we're using our full potential, our full arsenal, to just shut this down.
It's like, okay, we've got some terrorist camps in Syria.
Is that where they're coming from?
Fine, let's bomb them.
We've got precision weapons that can hit them.
Why not use them?
A lot of people with this kind of an attitude.
I'm glad you called, Frank.
I love you.
Back after this.
Stay with us.
You know, the L.A. Times, part of the liberal left, anti-nuke, everywhere you turn, anti-nuke in America.
They've got a guy writing an op-ed today making the case that Iran needs nukes.
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