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Oct. 12, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:02
October 12, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Yes, Abba Hubbad Duba Duba.
Greetings and welcome back, America's Anchorman, doing play-by-play of the news and as a bonus commentary on the news from behind the golden EIB microphone Rush Limbaugh program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the uh email address is rush at EIB net com.
So this letter from Zawahiri to Al-Zarkawi, promising to establish an Islamic nation, an Islamic beachhead in Iraq.
There's a lot of talk today about uh Harriet Myers.
We've engaged in it ourselves here, myself, ourselves, and I've mentioned to you though that we're not going to allow single issues to um cast aside or to cause to be cast aside, other things going on of uh of import.
This is certainly one of them.
Uh because the the it's it really this letter is an extraordinary letter.
Uh it this letter from Zawahiri to um Al-Zarqawi, it's got a chilling comprehensive view of what Al-Qaeda's strategy in Iraq is and about their global objectives.
And I think this letter puts puts uh to rest any question about whether Iraq's a central front in the war on terrorism.
Because it clearly it is for Al Qaeda.
It certainly is for Al-Qaeda.
Uh and and the uh the the scale and the scope of their ambitions clearly laid out in this letter.
Uh it it's uh I mean it's it's very educated.
Snurdley, could you get me a copy of the letter or give me a text of the letter so I can read some excerpts of this?
Uh so I'm just giving you a a summary here because the the summary, and I didn't print it out, I made notes here jotting them down off the computer.
The the the letter clearly states what is the long-term strategy of Al-Qaeda.
That is to get the United States and a coalition allies out of Iraq to impose a radical Islamic government in Iraq, and then to use Iraq as a base to expand its uh uh efforts to attack Iraq's neighbors and beyond.
The interesting thing though is that at the same time in the same letter, Zawahiri reflects his concern that developments in Iraq are turning against Al-Qaeda.
The letter details Zawahiri's concerns that Zarqawi's violence is undermining public support for al-Qaeda and Iraq says, hey, come on, stop blowing up mosques, stop blowing up Muslims.
You're going about this the wrong way.
You're turning our own people against us.
Stop this sort of thing.
It is a it is a uh fascinating, fascinating document.
And it's all uh it's every time that there has been either the the uh transfer to sovereignty, the vote, the first elections, the vote in the constitution, and now this upcoming vote, because all these sides are starting to come together now.
The Sunnis are starting to get on board, and uh the Iraqi constitution looks like it's uh it's gonna happen.
And this is sending the Al Qaeda operatives over there into a panic.
This letter clearly does indicate, if you can't find it out there, Snerdley, I know where to go on my okay, he got it.
But if you if if if when you put it all together in this letter, it illustrates that the case that has been made about Iraq is right on the money and that it's working.
These guys are in a in a sort of panic, and Zarkawi is uh, you know, Zawahiri's upset.
Stop blowing up Muslims over there.
Stop blowing up mosques.
And the reason, the reason Zarkawi is doing this is because he's trying to intimidate people from supporting the Constitution, and Zawahiri says this is not gonna work.
So they're they're clearly they're they're feeling the pressure uh and this letter has been intercepted, it's been seized.
And I I just think it's uh it is a uh it's a great sign.
Also, the press is buzzing today about Carl Rove being asked back to the grand jury or being are asking to go back, and Judith Miller asking to go back to most of it from the New York Times.
Now most of these, most of these stories are focusing on Scooter Libby, Louis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, and most are suggesting, why Libby didn't tell them everything.
Libby left out something.
Guess what, folks?
There's a whole other way of looking at this.
Judy Miller didn't tell them some things.
Judy Miller left some things out.
Judy Miller's notes somehow all did not get to the independent prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald.
And Mr. Fitzgerald has asked Judy to come back and explain some of these notes, some of these emails that she didn't submit with her original uh filing.
Federal prosecutor is summoned.
New York Times reporter Judith Miller to make a second appearance today before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plaim's name.
The decision by a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald comes just days after Miller found notes from a previously undisclosed conversation.
June 23rd, 2003, with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby.
She is to return to the grand jury today to supplement her earlier testimony, said the Times executive editor Bill Keller in a memo on Tuesday.
The New York Times staff Reuters got a copy of it.
After spending 85 days in jail, Miller testified before the grand jury for the first time on September 30th.
And turned over notes from her two previously disclosed conversations with Libby on July 8th and July 12th of 2003.
Fitzgerald's wrapping all this up.
The uh grand jury's term expires on October 28th.
Now, Miller's notes could be significant because they suggest that Cheney's office knew who Wilson was and started talking to reporters about him some two weeks before Wilson publicly criticized the administration's uh Iraq policy in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6th, which is fact full of lies and everything else.
You know, it it is fascinating to watch uh the press cover this because the press has already got their conclusion.
Conclusion is that Rove is going to be indicted, and I mean there are stories out there today.
Can Bush governed without Rove?
And folks, nobody knows what Fitzgerald has.
Nobody knows what he's looking at.
All of this is a pure guessing game.
It's just as reliable as everything the press told us in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
And yet now they've got Scooter Libby.
Now he's gonna go too.
And it may even reach all the way to the top.
And just to give you an example, it was two weeks ago.
The New York gossip media was just a buzz with the fact that they had heard that this week 22 indictments are going to be handed down.
And they were gonna go all the way to the top, three of them, all the way to the top, including White House people.
Well, there haven't been any indictments.
Fitzgerald came out and said, I haven't charged anybody with anything.
I don't know if I'm going to.
But yet, everybody in the left wing media has assumed that they know what Fitzgerald's looking at.
They know who's guilty, and it's just a matter of time, and all of these people being called back.
And I tell you the big question to me remains, Judy Miller in the New York Times, folks.
I have to tell you, you know, I somebody let it be known that there were earlier notes from Judy's that she didn't hand over.
Now, when you're called back because you didn't hand over everything the first time, how that becomes bad news for Scooter Libby or Carl Rove, we'll just have to wait and see.
But here it's reached the absurd.
Last night on Hard Ball with Chris Matthews.
His guests include Mike Isakoff of Newsweek, Andrea Mitchell from NBC News, and Jim Warren of the Chicago Tribune.
Matthews says, What do you think of the politics of this?
I mean, I find it interesting that the oh wait, this is the wrong this is the never mind.
Oh, it is.
It is it's the right bite.
Never mind, I'm sorry.
What do you make of the politics of this?
I find it interesting that the real b uh.
Wait a minute.
Have I got No, I'm sorry, I've got I'm not sure that this is the right bite.
Um, because I don't think that I'm gonna have to check.
It's time to take a break anyway.
The question I have on the transcript is about Harriet Myers, and the answer is about Carl Rove.
So let me let me brief time out here.
We'll be back.
I'll get this straightened out because the the the bottom line of this is is that one of the um uh Jim Warren actually says, Well, we need to look at the way the West Wing handled this.
A TV show.
We'll be back in just a second.
Okay, got the audio soundbite roster straightened out at actually's on the Today Show today.
Kenny Coreick uh talking with uh Chris Meyer or Chris Matthews, and they're uh talking about uh the CIA leak case.
And this this is just where we've gotten now.
This is this is how convinced the press is based on who's been called to the grand jury and everything else that's been reported, who's guilty, and furthermore, what kind of White House we have?
Here's a little exchange between the perky one and Matthews.
Chris, isn't it more than just a rock?
Isn't it?
Doesn't it speak about the way this White House possibly operates in the minds of some?
Well, it's a question is is there a difference between political hardball going out and trying to discredit somebody who's trying to discredit you?
Let's face it, Joe Wilson was a threat to this administration.
He said the president went to war for a bogus reason.
They they felt they had to discredit him or they were going to be discredited themselves.
And the question is, did he cross the line?
Did they deny him his civil liberties?
Did they break the law with regard to espionage?
Did they release classified information about his wife illegally?
Or did they just simply say this guy's not to be trusted in many different ways to the press?
I I remain.
No, I'm not stunned.
I was going to say remain stunned, but what what Joe Wilson did, what he said, how he ended up in Niger, ordinary, none of these people apparently know the truth about.
They think this guy is clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.
What Joe Wilson did when he came back was basically confirm what whatever they thought was going on over there, that he writes a piece saying that he couldn't didn't find it.
The guy hasn't told the truth very often throughout this whole episode.
I love Katie's question too.
Doesn't it speak about the way this White House possibly operates in the minds of some?
That's White House, a bunch of lying, stinking criminals, right, Katie.
Just a bunch of lying, stinking criminals.
That's who the White House is.
Because that's the only way you can beat them.
The only way you can get rid of them is to make them criminals because you can't beat the White House when it comes to ideas.
You can't beat the White House.
Bush outsmarts you people every time you turn around.
So now you've got to criminalize him.
Joe Wilson, his wife, they're the angels in all this.
Carl Rovin, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney, and George Bush, they are the evil ones.
And why are they evil?
Because they've displaced you, and they've displaced you and your media majority and monopoly.
And they have to displaced liberal Democrats from positions of power throughout our government.
And that's why they're going to be criminalized.
And this answer from Matthews, he didn't even touch that.
He just wanted to go out and and uh uh they felt they had to discredit him or they were going to be discredited themselves.
By the way, this this business here uh attack the person who's attacking you, discredit somebody who's trying to discredit you.
The latest with Tom Delay, this just reminds me, Delay is now his lawyers have uh essentially sued the prosecutor.
And if it's in the prosecutor's corrupt, and I am stunned by some of the reaction that I'm hearing to that.
Ergo.
People are saying, Well, Tom, this is horrible.
Why don't you do you don't go out and attack the prosecutor?
You don't do that.
You don't make the prosecutor mad.
Don't go out and attack the prosecutor.
Why you why are you doing that?
And it leads me to this conclusion.
And a lot of people, by the way, saying this are people on the left.
Oh, this is really the bottom of the barrel for Tom Delay, now to go out and attack the prosecutor.
Folks, would somebody tell me where prosecutors in this country are infallible?
Will somebody tell me where whenever a prosecutor says something, it's gospel?
Where is this notion that when the prosecutor attacks, you just bend over, grab the ankle, say, okay, take me to jail?
Well, that's the thing.
They do they try to destroy Ken Starr, the very people who are now sort of chiding delay for fighting back at his prosecutor try to destroy Ken Starr.
But but beyond that, this notion that whenever a prosecutor comes up and files charges or whatever, oh you have to defend yourself against those charges.
What the what if the charges are bogus?
What if the prosecutor is acting outside of the bounds of propriety in the law?
Now, what if you're what if a defendant thinks that, like Delay does?
Just supposed to sit there.
I this is one of these things that's perpetually well, it hasn't puzzled me because I understand it.
But it's gotten to the point, and it's been this way for a long time.
When charges are filed against somebody, everybody just assumes they're true because why would they be messing around with this?
Why Why would they be why would they waste time with this?
Real criminals out there, why would they be messing around with this?
Well, we know why we'd be messing around with delay because they want to criminalize what delay did, because they can't beat delay.
One more bite here from the perky Katie one.
Do we uh nope, sorry, that's it.
Let's this let's do this.
Um I guess this this is from the situation room on CNN uh yesterday, the uh Kira Phillips CNN talking to James Carville.
And uh this is a discussion about Carl Rove.
Uh and uh question was you know scandals, uh, Mr. Carvel.
President Clinton didn't seem very distracted.
He seemed to still carry on and operate.
If you think if we weren't if you think we carried on, I mean you don't, but if you think you're not on the phone, or you're not you're not sleeping quite as well at night, you kind of or you know, you got something in the back of your mind.
Of course you do.
And I mean, President Clinton is like one in a million.
Uh his ability to start to keep it.
To handle scandal and handle the physics?
Yeah, but but I I would I would not say that people were not distracting.
I knew a lot of my friends that had to go before the grand jury, and they were very distracted.
One of the things that that you gotta understand is you can't talk to other people about this.
So you only talk to your lawyer, and you can only talk to your wife who hasn't privilege.
Man, is history being revised here.
So Clinton never cared.
Never cared a whit, didn't give a diddly squat.
He was able to compartmentalize why he carried on governing the country.
Yeah, and he testified before the grand jury too, and he lied, and he was found in contempt by a federal judge.
And he lost his law license for a year.
And by the way, he was so incapacitated by this that he didn't bother dealing with any terrorist strikes that were occurring against Americans around the world.
But see, what what this old predicate, Bush is gonna fall apart once Rove's in jail.
See, they've got Rove indicted, they've got him convicted, they've got Rove in jail, they've got Rove outside the White House scooter libbies gone.
Pretty soon they're gonna have Bush gone, and the press are gonna be start talking.
Is Cheney healthy enough to govern?
Is Cheney healthy enough to serve?
Or should we just maybe indict this whole administration and put a Democrat in there and straighten this country out?
Uh and I'm telling you, they have no clue what's gonna come out of this grand jury.
They're just uh the the level of assumption knows no bounds in the coverage of this story.
And by the way, why let me use that as a means of transitioning to this story?
How many of you have heard since the immediate few days after Hurricane Katrina rolled through New Orleans that there was all kinds of poison and toxic residue in that water?
And it was going to be uninhabitable for six months, maybe a year.
And the people that went in there were gonna get sick if they had this little scratch on their arms or legs, and that water got in there, it was curtains for them.
And we were gonna need to quarantine people to come in contact with the water, and oh, folks, it was gonna be the worst of all situations.
Flood water, not as toxic as feared, experts say.
The floodwater that covered New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was not unusually toxic and was typical of stormwater runoff in the region, according to a study published yesterday.
Most of the gasoline-derived substances in the water evaporated quickly, because they're on top.
And the bacteria from sewage also declined over time because it just, you know, it gets absorbed.
The water's chief hazard was from metals that are potentially toxic to fish.
However, no fish kills have been reported in the Lake Pontcha train, where the water that once covered 80% of the city was pumped.
What it most looks like is the stormwater that's present in New Orleans every time it rains, said John Pardew, environmental engineer at LSU.
We still don't think the floodwaters are safe, but it could have been a lot worse.
It was not the chemical catastrophe some had expected.
Well, as I remember watching some of this, and I realize it's approaching lunch hour for those of you people on the left coast, but we kept hearing about all the floating bodies.
The decaying floating bodies.
And I remember the press asking experts, oh, what about the rescue workers coming to contact with these decaying bodies?
Isn't that a reservoir of disease?
Experts, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, decaying body won't hurt you.
You can do anything you want with a decaying body.
You put that decaying body in water, though.
Oh, I can't.
I can't stress how bad it would be.
And then we had all the chemicals.
We had all the gasoline.
We had all the oil.
I mean, it was a virtual cesspool.
It was a toxic dump.
Toxic soup is what it was called.
Oh, it was going to be horrible.
New Orleans was finished.
It was going to be uninhabitable, folks.
Well, just like there weren't any rapes at the Superdome or Convention Center.
There wasn't anarchy there, and there weren't mass deaths and all that.
It turns out it's just water.
And what happens when a flood?
It's just water.
So all of this hysteria turned out not to be true, and the odds are it's going to be the same thing when the truth of this grand jury comes out too.
Be back after this.
Stay with us.
All right, here's some highlights from the Zarkawi letter just to uh give you a little upside and word-for-word idea of this letter that we uh that we have seized.
This is a letter to his top deputy in Iraq.
Uh, the number two Al Qaeda leader uh said the United States ran and left their agents in Vietnam, and the jihadists must have a plan ready to fill the void if the Americans suddenly leave Iraq.
Uh, you know, as you read the letter, you find so many references to the same criticisms that the left uh makes about this war here in this country.
Says, I'm an Al-Zawahiri in the letter to Abu Moussaab al-Zirqawi, things may develop faster than we imagine.
The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents is noteworthy.
We must be ready starting now.
It has always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the heart of the Islamic world, said Al-Zawahiri.
The letter laid out his long-term plan, expla expel the Americans from Iraq, establish an Islamic authority, and take the war to Iraq's secular neighbors, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
The final stage Al-Zawahiri wrote would be a clash with Israel, which he said was established uh was established to challenge any new Islamic entity.
The letter is dated July 9th.
It was acquired during U.S. operations in Iraq, written in Arabic, translated by the U.S. government.
The Pentagon briefed reporters last week on portions of it, but the full text was not available until yesterday.
In his letter, Al Zawahiri, who is a Sunni, a Sunni rather, devoted significant attention to Al-Zarkawi's attempts to start a civil war with the rival uh Shi'ite sect, uh the majority that now dominates the new Iraqi government.
Ultimately, Al-Zahiri concluded that violence, particularly against Shi'ite mosques, only raises questions among Muslims.
This matter won't be acceptable to the Muslim populace, however much you have tried to explain it, and aversion to this will continue.
Meaning, stop blowing up Muslims.
Stop blowing up uh the Shiites and the mosques.
It ain't gonna happen.
We're not gonna we're not gonna persuade them to join us if you uh if you do that.
Al Zawahiri was also critical of the Taliban, which was toppled in Afghanistan because he said they didn't have the representation of the Afghan people.
He said students of the Taliban retreated to their tribes.
Even the devout ones took the stance of spectator Al-Zawahiri wrote.
And see, folks, this is key.
This is this is one of this one of the reasons why I believe that this letter is genuine.
They haven't had a state.
They've tried in two, well, maybe three separate places to establish an Islamic state.
Not just a nation of Muslims, but what a state in their image.
They tried it first in Somalia.
And then they went to uh Sudan.
And what Afghanistan was all about was taking over that country.
If you look at bin Laden's movements, he always ended up in stateless countries where there really wasn't much of a government at all to try to establish this mythical Uh militant Islamic State.
But the Taliban here never went along with it.
And he was also saying the Taliban didn't have the representation of the Afghan people.
That's what they're trying to do in Iraq.
Through intimid intimidation and blowing them up and blowing up the moths and causing all kinds of havoc in hell, they're trying to get the people of Iraq to surrender and peacefully accept a mis uh militant Islamic state.
This this whole letter makes the case exactly as Bush has laid it out.
As Bush has laid it out, this letter, practically word for word, illustrates that uh that that what we're being told about it is true.
At times the letter got personal.
Al Zawahiri said that he tasted the bitterness of America's brutality, noting that his favorite wife's chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling during an apparent U.S. attack.
His daughter died of a cerebral hemorrhage hemorrhage.
That would be his favorite wife chest, but he at least had other wives and other chests to visit and explore.
The letter then switches to the court of public opinion.
More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media, he wrote.
We're in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our UMA.
Thank you.
The people.
The line is an apparent reference to a phrase often used by President Bush, hearts and minds.
We're in a battle.
Media battle.
Well, it's obvious they know that.
It's obvious they know how to play the American media.
I mean, it is classic.
All right.
Vietnam, I know that Vietnam references and all that.
It's classic.
It is literally just classic.
Here's uh Fred in uh Poqueg, New York.
Nice to have you, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Yeah, Rush.
Uh listen, Hillary has been so uncharacteristically quiet about this Carl Rove thing.
I'm wondering, seeing that Matt uh Cooper's wife is one of her top aides, if she's got a little inside information to show that uh Rove is a victim here.
Uh wait a minute.
How are you getting from Hillary being quiet to Matt Cooper to Rove is in the clear?
I don't quite understand.
Well, Matt Cooper's wife is one of her top aides, correct?
Yes, that would that that would be uh Mandy Grunwald.
Right.
So I'm wondering if she's got a little inside information that the press hasn't been given, or the rest of us don't know, and she's uh not gonna go out on a limb and say anything because she knows that Carl Rove is the victim.
I I I I can't possibly know that.
I and I I don't I don't try to speculate on that kind of thing.
I think in the first place, can I just be I don't care what Hillary Clinton's doing or not doing.
I don't care.
No offense, uh Fred, please.
I'm this I don't I don't this is not my primary response to you.
I just don't care.
She is just a woman.
Now, at some point I will care.
I'll try to care now.
Hillary's not talking about the roe Valerie Plate affair.
Okay.
My first reaction is why should she?
Why does she have to?
She's got the media doing everything in the world for her.
Why uh uh No, it's not Snerdly's afraid that I'm going to be viewed as sexist because I said she's just a woman.
Do not put my words in your mouth.
Pretend you spoke them to somebody and the Iraq, because that's not what happened here.
She's just a woman, she's a man, she's just a person.
She she just she just a guy puts her pants on one leg at a time like everybody else.
Is that what you want to hear?
I mean, it's just I don't care.
I really don't care.
There are a lot of people who aren't talking about this.
John Kerry's not talking about it.
Ted Kennedy's not talking about it.
More interesting to me is that is it is that Mrs. Clinton is making no effort to say what these militant left-wing kook extremists who become the mainstream of the party wanted to say about the war.
That's what's more interesting to me.
If you start talking about where Hillary is or where Hillary isn't on things, but I I would have I folks, I would avoid playing any kind of guessing game with this grand jury and with this prosecutor.
I don't fall into the trap.
I don't know what's going to happen.
But the point is, neither does anybody else.
There have been so many rumors that are not true out there.
Uh rumors that didn't pan out.
And until the prosecutor acts, we won't know.
Now, I you know, uh any time a prosecutor keeps an investigation open this long, you gotta get worried.
You got some concern about it over where it's headed.
Uh they have a lot of power, but until such time as as there's something substantive to know here, I I wouldn't I wouldn't go crazy in your own way the way the media is going.
I mean, they've got Rove convicted in jail, Bush unable to govern without Rove there.
Uh and they're happy and they're gleeful.
And I'm just pointing out the track record.
They haven't been right.
In fact, if you look at you could ask a question about Hurricane Katrina, could somebody name for me one thing they were right about.
Could you name for me one thing the media was right about in the like week, ten days after Hurricane Katrina went through regarding New Orleans.
See, you can't yet.
You may be able to come up with a couple things, it's going to take you a while.
Here's Bob in San Ramon, California.
Welcome, sir.
Hey Rush, thank you so much for taking my call.
I I've been listening to you since 88 in Sacramento, and uh you've changed my life.
Well, thank you, sir, very much.
Uh I just want to say hello to my dad who's right there in my prospect, and he listens to you every day.
He's like 84 years old and loves you.
Uh but I I just wanted to comment on the thing that's going on in Iraq with uh Sakawi.
Uh this memo uh is just uh incredible.
I mean, he states what he's gonna do, which is kill everybody first, then kill the Shiites, then let's go establish a caliphate and then go out and take Syria and Lebanon and I and I I I want to ask you what information you might have on how we disseminate this to the population uh in Iraq.
I mean, uh as a uh as a democracy, it seems to me that they're they're voting very well.
And I mean, this guy actually shows us befuddlement.
In fact, Zikawi sort of reminds me of that famous lost Indian tribe.
But uh I was I was looking at your comments on how we're doing in disseminating this kind of information to the population in Iraq.
I couldn't tell you.
I I have no idea if we're doing it.
Uh I I don't know that we're going to do it.
Uh and I don't if we do it, I don't know how, unless we overrun and overtake Al Jazeera.
Uh I'm sure that there are going to be some efforts, uh, some efforts made, uh, but that's a good question because it is it is a golden opportunity.
Uh I uh uh you know it it's it's obviously been disseminated in the uh in the U.S. media, and it's getting its fair amount of coverage here on the cable networks today, but uh you know, but the the pamphlet drop, the uh there are there are local newspapers that are publishing over there, and uh and everybody everybody has uh cell phones, and everybody but it is three minutes three and a half million cell phone subscribers.
There's any number of ways to uh spread the word.
Another interesting thing about this, here you've got Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan who have just been placed the crosshairs by Zawehiri.
Look, hey, look, um Abu, when you when you finish wiping everybody out that we need to wipe out an Iraq and you set up our militant Islamic government, we next gonna we're gonna take out Syria and we're gonna take out Jordan and we're gonna take out Lebanon.
And that's what we got to do.
Okay, so what's old Basher Assad think of this when he finds out he's gonna be in the crosshairs?
King Abdullah, uh, and by the way, there's there's been another execution suicide in Lebanon.
I say execution suicide because the number two guy in the government over there killed himself uh getting too close to the uh the identity of the people that killed that very popular leader some six or seven months ago.
So, I mean, I I I've always looked at the Middle East region since we got into Iraq as something that's undergoing a a great metamorphosis and change.
And this letter, this letter indicates the problem they've got.
Syria, they don't trust Syria anymore, and they don't they certainly don't trust Lebanon, and they're not gonna trust uh Jordan.
These are all so-called secularist uh countries there, meaning they're not Islamic, and can't have that.
Uh so just as the United States is trying to adapt establish a beachhead of freedom uh in Iraq, the uh Al Qaeda crew recognizes how devastating that would be to their cause, and rather than just beat us out of there, kick us out of there, and force us to leave, and we get as many people as possible thinking this is just like Vietnam, they want to set up their own state in Iraq.
So if it's gonna be very tough for a serious Democrat to say, yeah, we gotta get out.
But that's exactly what their left-wing base is demanding that they say.
So for all these problems, folks, that you keep hearing that the administration has, fear not, the left is clueless.
They don't have a slightest idea how to take advantage of this other than in a legal way, and that's not nearly enough to uh get them back to the power that they so desperately seek.
We'll be back at quick timeout.
Stay with us.
More is right ahead.
A clarification, folks.
When I told you that the president's commission on tax reform had come up with these two ideas to cap uh mortgage interest deduction uh maximum at $350,000, and to start uh taxing uh uh health care benefits over eleven thousand dollars, uh eliminating the business deduction on the corporations that provide them.
Uh keep in mind this is not what the president wants.
I don't want anybody to get the idea this is his idea.
This commission was put together for the express purpose of coming up of ways to reform the tax code, not come up with tax increases.
These are all tax increases, these wacko ideas.
The whole purpose was to investigate.
Should we do fair tax?
Should we do flat tax?
Should we reform it and simplify it?
They don't even address that.
At least they haven't yet.
So d I don't want anybody to be able to miss any many mis yeah, but yeah, but it time is short, trying to say too much here.
Under any misunderstanding, this is not the president's wishes.
This is a rogue commission acting on its own.
Uh Arlen Spector says that Bush uh is getting an unfair pummeling from conservatives.
Poor Arlen.
I I He said he said uh on the 9th of October the that he plans to vigorously question Supreme Court nominee Harriet Myers about her qualifications because she hadn't proved to him that she can handle the weighty issues that come before the Supreme Court.
Uh Senator Spector said he questions Myers' grasp of privacy and uh abortion law.
Then two days later, Senator Spector said conservatives are giving President Bush an unfair pummeling.
He said the nomination has drawn criticism from conservatives who say Myers lacks proven conservative credentials and a judicial background.
It's exactly what he said that he's got questions about.
He said they want more information on whether she would vote to overturn Roe versus Wade.
Well, I'm sorry that on doctrinal grounds, they don't understand that she can't tip her hand on Roe.
Well, then she can't tip her hand to you either.
You can sit there and ask all sorts of questions, but she's I this is fascinating.
In an attempt to defend President Bush, she says the opposite things about himself.
And I w I hope you heard today's morning update, uh limited time here, but um big, big, big battle coming up in big labor.
They have experienced two events this year that are gonna reshape their landscape.
There was the civil war at the AFL CIO, and the second uh is uh this week Delphi, America's largest auto part supplier, filed for bankruptcy, which is tantamount to a declaration of war on the United Auto Workers' Union.
They want to make dramatic cuts to union wages and health care benefits, and this is gonna leave some pensions uh unfulfilled and exposed.
Uh it it's it could signal the end of auto workers' upper middle class salaries, would end the United Auto workers' control over setting wage standards for the whole industry.
Uh one in eight Americans depends on the auto industry one way or the other for their livelihood, and also at stake are the workers' pensions.
GM, the former parent of Delphi, could find itself on the hook for 11 billion dollars in pension costs, and GMs having trouble with their own pensions without having assume Delphi's.
Steve Miller, the chief executive of Delphi, says he fears the upcoming battle could lead to intergenerational warfare, young workers resenting their wages being cut and taxed to support pensions for retirees.
What does that sound like to you?
Does that sound like social security to sound like young people's social- I'm I'm I'm I'm not gonna pay more taxes.
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