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Oct. 25, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:21
October 25, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, yes, yes, I know it's it's time to start, and uh we are starting.
Ladies and we have a little problem with a screw here.
Oh no, now I've got the hiccups.
What a way to start.
The microphone boom wouldn't stay up.
My mouth had to be just above the desk level, and now I've got the hiccups to start the pro well.
And it's it's only Tuesday.
Greetings and welcome, folks.
Great to have you with us.
This is the award-winning thrill packed ever exciting Growing by Leaps and Bounds Rush Limbaugh program.
And we are here as America's anchor man in America's truth detector, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have on the excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
If you'd like to be on the program, the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Hard to know what um big story is today, but it's all over the place.
I really think I was gonna say I think the media have lost respect for themselves, but I don't think that's possible.
I think they think they're so crucial and so important that it's impossible for them to lose respect for themselves.
But I'll tell you what, if this if this keeps up, uh an ever-increasing number or percentage of the public will hold them in utter contempt.
Now, first, here's a New York Times story.
And if you read well, basically just one-fifth of the story, you'd have to conclude why is it a story?
Here's the headline.
Cheney told aid of CIA officer, lawyers report.
Ooh.
Because you see, that the the the the media's got their template on this.
There's a little domino theory on the left out there, folks.
The plame leak was to discredit Wilson.
Wilson said there were no weapons of mass destruction.
No weapons of mass destruction means a war was wrong.
The war was wrong means we got another Vietnam, another Vietnam means we have another quagmire.
So let's leave.
And who's responsible for all this now?
Cheney.
Because Dick Cheney leaked Valerie Plame's name, even though Dick Cheney is entitled to know everything going on in the government, and Dick Cheney is entitled to tell his chief of staff.
I scooter Libby.
Whatever he wants to tell him.
This is as absurd as this loco weed, Lawrence Wilkerson, or whatever his name was at the State Department saying that the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal hijacked foreign policy.
For crying out loud, Cheney's the vice president.
Bush is the president.
They were elected.
They are in charge of American foreign policy.
You can't the president can't hijack anything.
The vice president can't hijack anything except the Oval Office.
And he hasn't done that.
This is a it's all of this is patently absurd.
So the plame leak was to discredit Wilson.
The whole thing here was to destroy Cheney and the whole the whole and I'm gonna tell you this too.
I don't care if this independent prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, if there are no indictments, it isn't going to matter.
If there are no indictments, that story will be on page 822, and we will continue with There Were No Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Joe Wilson found out about it, and the White House set out to destroy Joe Wilson and his wife.
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
The administration lied.
They've already got themselves convinced that's what Fitzgerald's investigation is all about anyway.
And they don't know diddly squat.
Just like they didn't know what was going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
And just like they all told us Michael Jackson's slam dunk guilty, gonna be in jail.
Just like they're telling us the same thing about Tom Delay.
Now, here's the here's the uh New York Times story.
Cheney told Abe of CIA Officer Lawyers report.
I, Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the CIA officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with his boss, Mr. Cheney, weeks before her identity became public in 2003.
Go to the Novak column, folks.
Novak says her identity was widely known when he wrote about it.
But so what?
There's no crime here.
Cheney found out.
I mean, he's entitled to know what's going on.
CIA's entitled to know who's there.
Still doesn't matter, though, because even when Cheney found out, you know, the law requires that this babe has to be covert in the last five years.
She wasn't.
Cheney didn't know that she was covert when he told Luby Libby anything.
This is just absolutely worthless information.
It is a non-story.
None of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12th of 2003 appear to differ.
Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the CIA officer Valerie Plame from journalists, the lawyers said.
Again, this is not Fitzgerald.
Well, we don't know, it could be, but it's lawyers.
The notes taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation for the first time placed Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Mrs. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson Fourth, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.
By the way, Washington Post has a story today on the unreliability of this Wilson guy.
Now, I find this curious.
Putting this out there that we're here we are, we are.
It's approaching Christmas Eve.
You know, normally you and I, we know when Christmas Eve is, so the media Christmas Eve floats.
Christmas Eve is a day before indictments come down from this special prosecutor.
So they're hoping it could.
This could be Christmas Eve, because Wednesday could be the day.
But if it's not, tomorrow could be Christmas Eve.
Thursday could be Christmas Eve.
So the they're just getting all excited about this, and on the verge of Christmas Eve, here comes the Washington Post with a story about the essential unworthiness or unreliability, should I say, of Joseph Wilson.
Catalogs his lies, catalogs his misstatements, catalogs with the Senate intelligence committees and say, why run that story now?
I'm saying it's a CYA.
In case Wilson's indicted.
How about that?
What if Wilson and Playmar indicted?
What if I'd been going on the radio for the last three months saying Wilson and Plain?
I've heard.
They're going to be indicted.
I got lawyers.
I know lawyers.
My dad was a lawyer.
I know a lot of lawyers.
I got some cousins and uncles who are judges, and they told me they think it could be Wilson and Plaim.
That's about what the media is doing here.
Wilson and Plaim.
Well, anyway, the Washington Post is doing something here because why run this story that basically trashes Wilson?
The New York Sun today has a great story on, and I tell you folks, this is it's uh this I will get to the story to you in detail here in just a second, but they have a fabulous story in the New York Sun about all of this infighting at the New York Times.
Everybody, Maureen Dowd got Judy Miller down on a mat, gouging her eyes out.
You've got the editor over there, Bill Keller piling on, it's a tag team, it's Mo Dowd and Bill Keller beating up Judy Keller, uh Judy Miller what they're doing, is basically saying she didn't tell us the truth.
She lied through her teeth.
She was Maureen Downs trying to say Judy Miller slept her way to all these sources, slept her way with Scooter Libby, slept her way with Pinch Schultzberger back in his 70s.
Yeah, that's what Mo Down's saying.
So everybody's fighting, well, you slept with Michael Douglas and he ditched you and threw you overboard, and you became a basket case after that, Mo.
So who are you to talk?
This place is turning into an absolute soap opera.
She was never the same after Michael Douglas dumped her, but that's, you know, that's for the soap operas, folks.
The bottom line here is that let's say that Fitzgerald's got all these indictments ready to go and Judy Willer's a star witness, and here comes her own newspaper basically discrediting her.
You can't rely on what she says.
If Fitzgerald's got indictments ready to go, and he's getting up reading the New York Times and going, oh my god, whoa.
So the newspaper of record that wants to take out Cheney and wants to take out Bush, maybe, I mean it's just possible, uh providing the uh the roadblock to indictments because the star witness here has just virtually been discredited, discredited by the newspaper of record.
Anyway, let me finish this New York Times story on Cheney, because as I say, one fifth of the way in, you say to yourself, why is there a story here?
Mr. Libby's notes indicated Mr. Cheney had gotten his information from George Tennett.
Well then, how can Cheney be the leak?
If Cheney got the news from Tenet and tenants of the CIA and Tennant is her boss, how can any of this be a leak?
Well, anyway, but it's still not the point.
But they contain these notes, Libby's notes contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified.
Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.
Well, that's where you say, where's the story?
Why'd you guys bother writing this?
Libby's notes contain no suggestion that either Cheney or Libby knew of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified.
And if you have to know that to be guilty of a crime and it didn't know that, we will take a break.
We will be back.
Now, AP tried their version of this after New York Times story came out.
It's utterly irresponsible.
And the AOL.com, AOL online, AO, whatever.
America Online, is that what it is?
Moscow Online.
Change the name.
Moscow Online, Beijing Online.
At any rate, they've got it.
They've got this story and a picture of Cheney snarling with his le off our lip.
You know how sometimes when Cheney smiles, half of his mouth moves, the other half doesn't.
And they've got a series of pictures in the auto auto auto winder took.
And they've taken one of those pictures in mid-smile, making Cheney look like he's snarling at you.
To go along with this with his story.
We'll get to that and a lot of the other things too.
When we come back after this, stay with us.
Okay, just shared with you the New York Times version of the story, Cheney.
In fact, what let me get the headline right here.
Cheney told aid of CIA officer lawyers report.
That's their headline.
Now the AP takes this a step further.
Cheney may be source of CIA leak report says, but this story also recounts the fact that Cheney learned about it from George Tennant.
If you read the story, there is no facts in this story whatsoever.
Just supposition, hopes, and dreams, utterly irresponsible.
Media out of control here, folks.
The media is a modern day scandal in action.
People die because of the media, as in New Orleans, who knows wherever else, but it's just it's a it's a it's a breathtaking thing to watch.
Now, here is the Josh Gerstein story in the New York Sun today.
The recent barrage of attacks on the credibility of a New York Times reporter Judith Miller could affect a prosecutor's decision about whether to bring indictments of White House officials in an investigation, blah, blah, blah, blah.
This according to legal analysts, attorneys closely following the case.
Said the sharp criticism uh Ms. Miller has received from her editors and colleagues may discourage the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald from bringing perjury charges against Lewis Libby.
According to Ms. Miller and others who've testified before the grand jury investigating the leak, Mr. Fitzgerald has shown significant interest in whether Libby or other White House officials testified truthfully about their involvement in an alleged effort to discredit a vocal critic of President Bush.
The um self-styled raconteur, Joseph Wilson.
The prosecutors, oh, by the way, and that Washington Post story also that I talked about also alludes to the fact that Wilson really was instrumental in getting her identity and name out there.
Yes.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the New York Times or the Washington Post rather transcribed one of my monologues yesterday and rewrote it with two different guys because it's amazing.
I haven't seen this anywhere else in the media, and it's not there by accident.
They're covering their bases.
It means they're not sure what's coming here, folks.
Bottom line, despite all the certitude that you hear from them in their um reporting.
Now, the prosecutor's intense interest in Mr. Libby may be related to an alleged discrepancy about how he came to learn about Wilson's wife working at the CIA.
The notes don't indicate that Cheney knew that the operative, Valerie Flame, was considered to be under well, that's Judith Miller's name for her.
That's a well, I thought her name was Flame, uh judge.
Uh that's what my notes say.
Anyway, Paul Rosenswig, uh federal former federal prosecutor, said if this is going to be a perjury case, if that's where they're headed here, Fitzgerald's got a hard case because his key witness is Judy Miller, and she has some issues as a witness.
Last week the Times published a lengthy story containing unflattering anecdotes about Judith Miller, including a claim that she referred to herself as Miss Runamuk.
On Friday, the newspaper's managing editor Bill Keller sent a memo to his staff asserting that Miss Runamuk seems to have misled the paper's Washington Bureau Chief Philip Taubman regarding her knowledge about Mr. Libby's alleged campaign against Mr. Wilson.
And don't forget, you got Maureen down in her column on Saturday, pretty much alleging here that that uh uh Judith Miller uh slept her way to these sources.
It was carefully cleverly disguised with a word you'd have to go to the dictionary to look up.
I don't even remember the word right now, but the word means openness with powerful men.
That's exactly what the dictionary, her her willing willingness to be open, think eagle uh through powerful men.
Apparently there, well, there is a word.
I just I for I I I forget the word it's uh itself, but that's it was clear what what Maureen Dowd's implication was.
Then you've got Bill Keller out there writing this uh CYA memo.
On Saturday, Maureen Down questioned Ms. Miller's candor as well, suggested she no longer could uh be allowed to write for the newspaper.
Mr. Rosenswig, who worked on the independent counsel investigation of President Clinton, said the attacks on Judith Miller would complicate any attempt to present her as a witness.
Can you imagine a defense attorney saying, so I understand they called you Miss Runamuk?
A law professor, George Washington University, Jonathan Turley, said that the uh storm surrounding Ms. Miller adds a layer of complexity to Fitzgerald's decision about how to proceed.
So um it it would be just juicy as it can be, just ironically juicy as it could be, if if the New York Times uh beating itself up in public in an effort to uh cover itself for ever trusting this horrible Runamuk reporter does such a great job of discrediting her credibility that uh nobody wants to use her as a star witness in any kind of a criminal proceeding.
This is the kind of thing we may never know, too.
I mean, if there if there are no indictments of uh of these figures, we'll not know why.
Uh if they're so much is unknown here, and and it's it's just gonna be, you know, it's sort of like waiting for Christmas.
It just takes a lot of patience there when uh when you are a kid.
And there's an also in the Washington Post, not just the story uh about the the uh Joe Wilson aspect, and that headline, by the way, husband is conspicuous in leak case.
Wilson's credibility debate had as charges in probe considered.
Hmm.
We'll get to that in just a moment, but there's a fabulous piece by Robert Kagan.
Robert Kagan is uh uh currently a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He's also the Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and he writes a monthly column for the Washington Post, a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
Well, that's boy, I tell you, these these uh these think tank guys and the titles they give for themselves.
Here at the Limbaugh Institute, we don't have any transatlantic fellows because we are here.
We are all domestic fellows.
That's right.
The transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
Well, you take work where you can get it.
But he has a great piece here.
And it goes right at the media's template.
Uh, the headline of his story is it wasn't just Miller's story.
Now remember, and this is this is something that somebody for for just out of a sense of compassion needs to show this story to Chris Matthews.
Because Chris Matthews, uh, who has a by the way, Chris I must tell you, Chris Matthews has a uh a great interview today with Gail Schister in the uh Philadelphia.
What is she read?
Alien Daily News or Inquirer.
Well, well, you you got to register for that.
Uh you don't have to pay anything, but you have to read it, you probably have a way around it.
I haven't spent the time.
Well, see, no, that's not true.
I I have those papers down in Florida, but up here my computer doesn't know the password that I've used, and I don't want to create a new password up here because that would mean I change it down there, and it's not worth all that.
Well, if I can't remember the password, they create a new one.
So, anyway, but I got a rundown on the story.
And apparently Chris Matthews uh okay, it's Gail Schisters with the Philadelphia Inquirer, and it's an interview with Matthews in which he uh apparently uh uh ladies and gentlemen, uh what is he waxes uh eloquently on uh how tough it is and and and and what you do, uh, how to secure an audience of 250,000 people.
Uh as though he's an expert here in amassing and acquiring audio.
But But anyway, he's been out there on his program, basically saying for the last three or four days that it was the purposeful lying by the administration to Judy Miller and the New York Times that started the Iraq war.
Because you can't go to war without the New York Times being on your side.
You got if you're going to go to war, you have to have the New York Times on your side, otherwise you can't go and you can't win.
So the whole administration effort was to lie to the New York Times.
They lied to Judith Miller, and that's why we went to war in Iraq.
And Robert Kagan's piece here in the Washington Post thoroughly nukes that, and I'll share the details with you right after this EIB obscene profit break.
Oh, you're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the excellence in podcasting network.
Hey, there's other big news out there today, folks.
The Iraq Constitution was ratified today.
And as our research indicates, this also was against the wishes of the New York Times.
So bad, bad day for the New York Times and the mainstream press.
The Iraq Constitution was ratified.
You'll have a tough time finding news about this.
You may see it as a crawl on your local cable network station.
You may see a couple pictures of Iraqi women voting, but that would be about it.
You also won't see the fact that yesterday's attack at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was actually a profound signal of weakness from Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda doing everything they could to stop the ratification of this Constitution.
What do they do?
Go up and blow up a hotel housing the media.
I mean, that's idiotic.
They blow up their friends to boot.
What they and they were hoping for that.
They were hoping that a bunch of international journalists charred bodies would be shown on television that would therefore irritate the rest of the journalist community around the world, and all hell would break loose today.
But it just didn't work out that way.
The media clearly regards themselves friends of Al Qaeda and don't understand why Al Qaeda targeted them.
And that's because the left will never understand enemies.
In fact, the left will always think that the enemies of America are really not their enemies, because they're on the same side.
For the downtrodden, the little guy, and America's enemies are always the little guy.
And uh the left has this big problem with us being the big guy.
So they always tend to side with these little guys, no matter how vicious and barbaric they are.
So the Iraq Constitution ratified, and that's just another timetable date that has been met.
Another another step forward progress in Iraq that somehow gets cast aside and rendered irrelevant because of this stupid old Valerie Plame case.
But let's go back here to Robert, excuse me, Robert Kagan's piece in the Washington Post today.
The Judith Miller Valerie Plaim's scooter Libby imbrolio is being reduced to a simple narrative about the origins or origins, I'm sorry, of the Iraq War.
Miller, the story goes, was an anti-Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction hunting zealot, was either an eager participant or an unwitting dupe in a campaign by Bush administration officials and Iraqi exiles to justify the invasion.
The New York Times now characterizes the affair as just one skirmish in the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq.
Miller may be best known for her role in a series of Times articles in 2002 and 2003 that strongly suggested that Saddam Hussein already had or was acquiring an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
According to the Times critique, she credulously reported information passed on by a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors, and exiles bent on regime change in Iraq, which was then eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene there.
Many critics outside the Times suggest that Judith Miller's eagerness to publish the Bush administration's line was the primary reason Americans went to war.
The Times itself is edging closer to this version of events.
But there's a big problem with this simple narrative.
It is that the Times, along with the Washington Post and other news organizations, ran many alarming stories about Iraq's weapons programs before the election of George W. Bush.
A quick search through the Times Archives before 2001 produces such headlines as Iraq has network of outside help on arms experts say.
That's November 1998.
See, everybody forgets that this whole scenario was started in 1998 during the Clinton administration, and one of its purposes then was to divert everybody's attention from the blue dress and Monica Lewinsky and cigars, uh pizza deliveries, and the Oval Office.
But we have the Clinton quotes, and we've played them and we've shared them with you.
We've talked about how Tom Dashell and the Democrats back in that day echoed what Clinton was saying.
Iraq was a horrible place.
Now, 1998 is two years before George W. Bush even began to run.
Well, one year before he began to run for the presidency.
So again, here's the New York Times archive, November 1998.
Iraq has network of outside help on arms experts say.
U.S. says Iraq aided production of chemical weapons in Sudan, August 1980.
Iraq suspected of secret germ war effort, February 2000.
Signs of Iraqi arms buildup bedeviled U.S. administration, February 2000.
Flight tests show Iraq has resumed a missile program July 2000.
You can also see a somewhat shorter list compiled from the Post Archives, including a September 1998 headline, Iraqi work toward a bomb reported.
Those times stories were written by Barbara Crossett, Tim Weiner, and Stephen Lee Myers.
Miller shared a byline on one of them.
Okay, so this paragraph right here illustrates that in 1998 through 2000, the New York Times was running gobs of stories about the potential threat posed by Iraq's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
Judith Miller wrote one of them.
The idea that this whole idea to go to war in Iraq had to be funneled through the New York Times and get them on Bush's side that Judith Miller was brought in to lay down on a couch and have a little relationship, Scooter Libby or whoever, to get it done is just absolutely infantile, folks.
It's irresponsible.
It is utterly irresponsible, and yet the media of today have a convenient memory loss when it comes to their own work and their own reporting.
Now many such stories appeared before and after the Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in late 1998, and what it insisted was an effort to degrade Iraqi weapons programs.
Philip Shannon reported official concerns that Iraq would be capable within months and possibly just weeks or days of threatening its neighbors with an arsenical arsenal of chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons.
This is again another New York Times 1998 story.
He reported that Iraq was thought to be still hiding tons of nerve gas and was seeking to obtain uranium from a rogue nation or terrorist groups to complete as many as four nuclear warheads.
Tim Weiner and Stephen Erlanger reported that Hussein was closer than ever to what he wants most, keeping a secret cache of biological and chemical weapons.
To maintain his chemical and biological weapons and the ability to build more, they reported.
Hussein had sacrificed over 120 billion dollars in oil revenue and devoted his intelligence service to an endless game of cat and mouse to hide his suspected weapons caches from United Nations inspections.
Now, people tend to forget all of this was reported in 98.
They tend to forget how eagerly Clinton was talking about this, how eagerly the Democrats agreed with Clinton about this.
But here you have, I mean, somebody needs to show the story to Chris Matthews.
How in the world can the major focus of an investigation of a responsible prosecutor like Patrick Fitzgerald focus on the fact that the Bush White House lied about circumstances to get us into New York or into Iraq when this stuff was being reported five years before Bush started talking about it.
Well, four years before Bush started talking about it.
I mean, it it the record is the record.
It's here.
And yet here you have the Democratic Party and its willing accomplices in the press, so off-base, so singularly focused on destroying this administration that they are ignoring the record, not supposition, and not somebody's questionable memory, but the record.
These stories, these headlines, the president uh in 1998, Bill Clinton making these claims, that alone is sufficient to throw out the whole notion in any responsible person's mind that this administration lied about it.
At the very least.
If this is what the intelligence was in 1998, and all the Democrats were on board because Bill Clinton was, well, most of the Democrats were, and by the way, back in 1998, when this is going on, the Republicans were supportive of Bill Clinton on this.
When that's the case, how in the world do you get from this factual record to Bush lied?
Which, folks, is the central theme of the rallying point of the new kook left base of the Democratic Party.
It is their central theme toward getting uh re-elected in 2006 and 2008.
Bush lied, and because Bush lied, soldiers died.
And now, by the way, we're up to 1,000 99.
And the fanfare and the and they're breathlessly waiting for that magical figure of 2000.
And when that is reached, we're gonna have protest marches, and we're gonna have parades, and we're gonna have all kinds of things, as the left defines a parade, such as Cindy Sheehan tying herself to the nearest tree, to celebrate this so as to further the notion that Bush lied, and Bush lied and people died.
Well, if Bush lied, then the New York Times died and lied, and Bill Clinton lied, the Democrats in 98 lied.
This is all a matter of record.
They're continuing to stand in quicksand on this.
They're sinking as rapidly as possible.
There's not even a branch for them to grab on to.
They are so desperate now that their whole future, it was linked to Bill Burkett, then it was linked to Richard Clark, then it was linked to 9-11, and it was linked to Cindy Sheehan.
Now it's linked to Joseph Wilson.
The future of the Democrat.
Can you imagine of all the people, all the scalawags there are out there to catch yourself to and to try to ride yourself to victory, Joseph Wilson, who is documented now in the Washington Post to be a top-to-bottom up and down liar, and his little wife, who is pretty good at manipulating the bureaucracy at the CIA, that and Dan Rather and all these people, Ronnie Earl, these are the people you are gonna ride to victory in 06 and 08.
I say, bring it on.
Quick timeout will be and by the way, I'm not even halfway through Kagan's story with details about other news organizations and their headlines and their reporting in 1998.
This is just so far the New York Times.
So the idea that Bush had to lie to the New York Times in 2002 to get them on board, the Times had already been on the record.
And it wasn't even Judith Miller writing the stories.
About the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Be right back.
All right, we're back.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
I love it when we're on the eve of media crash and burn, folks.
And we're on the eve of media crash and burn with virtually every major story they report.
From all roads leading to Travis County, Texas, to the 9-11 commission that led to Abel Danger, and now we've got the Katrina aftermath where everything they did was wrong, and this is especially over the top because nothing officially is known about anything, and yet, if you've been paying attention, I by the way, I've been getting a lot of email from you people.
Well, that's why I'm here.
Uh this is this is uh you can't sit idly by on this, and I'm telling you, the mainstream press has already got their story written, and I'm here to tell you if there are no indictments, there will be no change in the way the press reports this.
Cheney is still a bad guy, still leaked all this information, exposed this poor woman.
Outed this poor woman, this poor desk jockey operative, or uh analyst, sorry.
It's just uh it I'm I'm here to tell you that we are witnessing desperation on the left.
We are witnessing recklessness on the left, and when you are in desperate straits and you behave recklessly, seldom do things turn out your way, folks, as you uh uh may know from your own personal experiences in life.
Last two paragraphs of Bob Kagan's story today in the Washington Post.
The New York Times not alone in reporting all of this weapons and mass destruction stuff as recently as 1998.
On January 29, 2001, the Washington Post editorialized, quote, all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous or more urgent than the situation in Iraq.
Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with or calling attention to the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction.
That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf, including intelligence photos that show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons.
Now, folks, don't try to sidetrack me on this if you're thinking of calling me.
Don't try to sidetrack me by Rush, where are the weapons of mass destruction?
Then that's not the point we're talking about, folks.
That's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about a current news story in which the theme is a news cycle in which the theme is that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and Bush knew it and lied about it and convinced the New York Times that it was all true, and this took us to war, and now 2,000 American soldiers are dead.
And that is as irresponsible a timeline as possible to construct, because what I'm demonstrating here with Robert Kagan's piece in the Washington Post is that the same media constructing this new fiction reported identically the details the Bush administration used in the run-up to the uh war in Iraq back in 1998.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the networks as well.
So it's not about where are they or if they were there, it's about the new theme that's been set, Bush lied.
It is impossible for Bush to have lied unless Clinton lied.
And unless everybody who agreed with Clinton lied.
And unless the British lied, and unless the Australians lied, and Interpol and whatever other uh international intelligence agency agreed with all this.
But the idea that Bush lied had to convince the New York Times, New York Times got convinced because of a bad reporter who was too tight with Iraqi exile.
All of this is BS, folks.
It's absolute flatulence.
I just tell you it's methane, it's absolute flatulence.
The whole foundation on which the current media cycle is based is BS.
As Kagan writes, this was the consensus before Bush took office, before Scooter Libby assumed his job, before Judith Miller did most of the reporting for which she's now uniquely criticized.
It was based on reporting by a large number of journalists, who in turn based their stories on the judgments of international intelligence analysts.
Clinton officials as well, as well as weapons inspectors from the United Nations.
As we wage what the Times now calls the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq, we have to grapple with the stubborn fact that the underlying rationale for the war was already in place when this administration arrived, and so what do we have?
We have a news media that is totally out of control.
We have a news media utterly willing to knowingly lie to make up the start date of a story so that they can say that the whole story is false, while ignoring the very record they themselves created years prior.
Now, if you try this at your job, you're gone, folks.
You try this in school as a student, you are gone.
But the mainstream press can ignore their own record, create a false start date, create lies about that false start date and from it, and base an entire news cycle on it, and then tell you, without one shred of firsthand knowledge, what indictments are coming during a special counsel investigation.
This is utter irresponsibility, and if you ask me, it is an ongoing media scandal.
We'll be back.
nothing we're writing is true.
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