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Oct. 25, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:40
October 25, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #3
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All right.
I'm trying to do 20,000 things at once here, folks.
We are back, and we've got broadcast excellence straight ahead for another hour, and we are Ditto Kamick at Rush Limbaugh.com.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
All right, here's where we are.
I'm not I can't retrace my steps of the whole program.
Just uh catch it on the fly on a replay.
If you're a podcaster, you get the whole thing later today uh by automatic download.
If uh if not, you can uh g go to the website later and read the uh highlights, perhaps full transcript of these segments at rushlimbaugh.com.
But basically, we've discussed two primary things today, and that is the the out and out lying of the U.S. media in trying to portray George W. Bush as the first person to ever suggest that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that all that was lies, and that uh the way they treated Joe Wilson is proof of that, and the media is saying there have to be indictments coming on this.
It's about the Iraq war policy because Bush lied, and that's what Fitzgerald has to be looking at.
Well, Bob Cage in the Washington Post went and did a little research today, found out that uh in 1998-99, the Washington Post and New York Times were reporting identical stories.
Judy Miller had only uh her hand in only one story back in uh in that period, uh, and yet everybody's saying that Judy Miller being lied to by the administration, forced the New York Times to support the war.
Uh, and you can't go to war without the New York Times being on your side.
We had a we had a we had a Buffalo the New York Times, and once the New York Times was on our side of weapons of mass destruction, that was it.
And so all that was a criminality.
All that's a criminal proceeding and being looked at by Patrick Fitzgerald.
And the truth is that the same things that the media is reporting from 2002 on about what Bush said about WMDs was reported in 1998.
The same media reported the same stuff, and they never questioned it once because it was Bill Clinton's administration that was providing the information, along with worldwide intelligence agencies.
So the mainstream press today is essentially grasping the straw, just like they did with other elements in this campaign season.
Bill Burkett, Dan Rather, Cindy Sheehan, the Jersey Girls, the 9-11 Commission, Richard Clark, you name it.
Uh, it's just now Joe Wilson.
They're putting all their eggs in the Joe Wilson basket.
Uh, and we also pointed out even the Washington Times today covering their rear ends with a story on how unreliable his story is and how questionable a character he is uh in uh in all of this.
Second element of the program today has to be the uh has to do with the fact that the media is trying to destroy Kate Bailey Hutchinson or dump on her uh because she dared say on Meet the Press on Sunday that these indictments that come from the periphery of the case really are a tragedy, and and if there's the original investigation doesn't produce any crime, but to then go get indictments based on misstatements for the grand jury and call it perjury, it's a it's getting a little bit out of hand.
Her point is that if we're gonna indict people that are not even targets of this investigation, or not even the the focus of the original reason for the uh grant for the grand jury being impaneled and the special prosecutor getting the case, which is the leaking of Valerie Plann's identity and name, uh, then basically what we have here is a crime involving a cover-up of a non-crime.
And so they're disparaging her.
Can't believe she said this because the Republicans back then were destroying Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton did the same thing.
All he did was commit perjury, but back then the Republicans, why, they thought it was the worst thing possible.
And now that there might have been perjury committed by Libya Rove, why now they're trying to say it's no big deal.
And we've got to set the record straight on this.
We had a call from uh Rancho Mirage, California, uh last call in the previous hour from John who wanted to draw the distinction.
Yeah, Susan Reberite did cite Clinton for contempt, but that was in a civil case, and he was never convicted on it.
And in fact, he was not convicted of any of this during his impeachment hearings, and so uh to go after Clinton here and try to say there was something different about Clinton that there is about these other cases is a bit of a stretch, and the Republicans are perhaps being a little hypocritical.
So let's review ladies and gentlemen, some history, since this is what is sadly missing, sorely lacking in the mainstream press.
They are ignoring their own record from 1998 and 1999, and maybe they're ignoring their own record because they knew it was lies back then.
Hell, I don't know.
If somebody lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I sure as hell know this.
It wasn't Bush that did it for the first time because Clinton out there saying it, and Tony Blair was out there saying it, and a bunch of members of UN Security Council are saying it, and all these international intelligence agencies were saying it.
So if there's lying about weapons of mass UN inspectors' agents uh were saying it, uh if if uh uh or weapons inspectors were saying this if a bunch of people were lying about weapons of mass destruction, it all started before Bush.
And if the press was reporting it back in 1998, and now they want to ignore their own reporting from back then, maybe they knew it was lies back then, and maybe they knew it was just lies to cover up for Bill Clinton, who was trying to divert everybody's attention away from a blue dress with semen on it, and stored tales about a cigar with Monica Lewinsky in the orville office.
Does that pretty much catch you up as to where we are here?
Okay, so let's let's look at a little history on this.
Susan Weber Wright did indeed dismiss the case against Clinton, but it went up on appeal.
And she said in her decision that he committed contempt of court.
He lied.
She found him in contempt for lying under oath in a grand jury, and she gave him the right to a hearing to argue against her ruling.
And Clinton refused.
Instead, he accepted her decision and paid a fine.
He did not refuse her contempt citation when given the chance to argue it.
Judge Susan Weber Wright was a federal judge.
She is a court of law, therefore.
She, as a federal judge, held him in contempt.
So he was held in contempt of court in a federal court, which went unchallenged by Clinton and is no different than a jury decision as a matter of law.
The judge finds you in contempt, the the jury finds you in contempt, it's all part of the court.
You have been found in contempt, and Clinton was.
The fact that the case was dismissed has absolutely no bearing on the fact of Clinton's contemptuous conduct, which was unchallenged by Clinton himself.
The case went on appeal.
Clinton settled it for hundreds of thousands of dollars before the Eighth Circuit Court could rule on the appeal of the case.
He wanted it washed away.
He wanted it done away with.
So in a case where he didn't do anything, and he was found in contempt, but the case was dismissed, he still paid his fine, still paid the settlement, and what have you.
But the biggest difference here, folks, is that no one yet is accusing George W. Bush, the President of the United States, of obstruction.
Nobody's accusing George W. Bush of perjury or the like.
Bush isn't even the subject of any investigation.
Clinton was.
He was the target.
Bill Clinton appeared before a grand jury.
It was videotaped, and we saw it, and he lied to a federal judge.
Now you can say all you want about well, it's no different than when Clinton came.
It's markedly different because we're not even talking about President Bush here.
The judge held Clinton in contempt, and let's not forget why.
The judge held Clinton in contempt because he assaulted the integrity of the judiciary.
There is no right to a jury trial in such cases, but a hearing was offered Clinton, and he didn't want to avail himself of it because he knew his lies would become even more apparent.
She found him in contempt, he lied, she gave him a chance to conduct a hearing to disagree, and he said, nope, he punted, paid the fine, and went on his merry way because he knew that more scrutiny would uncover the fact and cement it in more and more people's minds that he had in fact lied.
She said she didn't hold him in criminal contempt as opposed to civil contempt because she didn't want to create a double jeopardy situation because Ken Starr was still investigating him for lying.
That was why it was a civil contempt case and not and not a uh a criminal contempt case.
Now, we are looking for a link to her decision, as I can put it on the website tonight so that you can read it, because we there's no reason to speculate on this, and there's no listen, no reason to listen to people and the revisionist history on this.
You can read what Judge Susan Weber Wright said, and by the way, she was one of Clinton's law school students.
He was her professor at one time.
People were talking about a great irony that was.
We're gonna find this decision if we can.
We're gonna link it to the uh link to it at Rushlinbaugh.com so that you can uh read all this yourself.
Uh I think Clinton paid $850,000 to settle the suit before the circuit court ruled.
But it wasn't, you know, and it wasn't just us saying this, even some Democrats, Barney Frank, for example, uh staunchly defended the president and the uh on the House Judiciary Committee during the House Manager's presentation of the case.
Well, during the House Judiciary Committee's the the gathering of evidence.
Uh Barney Frank said it wasn't a surprise.
There was a pretty good consensus he lied in the deposition.
He did lie.
We don't have any evidence anybody's lied yet.
And we we know that the president hasn't even testified.
So to say that that well, you know, the Republicans being awfully hypocritical and honest thing perjury is no big.
We don't even have we don't even have the allegation yet.
Not officially.
We just got media leaks about it.
And notice something else about this, folks.
This president, during this investigation, has not claimed executive privilege or attorney client privilege or secret service function privilege on his behalf or his staff in order to obstruct the investigation either.
Bill Clinton did everything he could, creating all kinds of new privileges to deny the pr the the uh the grand jury any information or evidence that was part of this investigation.
He made a mockery of the investigation, and it was all because he was trying to protect his lilywide ass.
That's exactly what he was in.
You haven't seen this president behave in this way at all.
His this president, love it him love him or not, like it or not, has been out there talking about the integrity and the high quality of the investigation, and he's not trampled on it at all.
He's not tried once, nor has anybody in his administration to dismurture impugn the prosecutor.
Compare that to the Clinton administration, where Ken Starr was everything from a sex pervert to a Nazi murderer.
I mean, this guy they they were out of control on Starr, because that's all they could do because their client was guilty, the president of the United States.
And every time Clinton tried these privileges, he lost.
He lost every time.
Clinton went all the way to the Supreme Court with some of these claims of privilege and lost.
George W. Bush has not tried this at all.
We will put all this on the website tonight, so when you get into your arguments, which I know will ensue with these libs who are going half-cocked on cliches, then you will be able to refute them with some facts, and you'll be able to draw some distinctions here between the way Clinton behaved, the way Bush has behaved, Clinton was the target, he's suborn to perjury, Bush is not a target, he's not testified, he has not lied.
The comparisons here are weak indeed.
And I tell you, you know, I I marvel each time the left tries to bring up Bill Clinton as some paragon of virtue, they're gonna lose on that every time they try.
But they don't know any better.
All right, I had a run.
A quick timeout, we'll be back and continue here in just a second.
All right, we've found that link.
Uh it is from Arkansas Online.
So I will email the link here to to uh Coco over to website, we'll post the full text of uh Judith uh Weber writes, Susan Weber writes, knew that didn't sound right.
Susan Weber Wright's decision uh on the on the Clinton case.
So you can be no uh mistaking uh this.
Here is Brett in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Hey, Brush.
Hey, I I think it's time for Carl Rove to hit the road in all honesty.
I mean, I'm a I'm a big, I was a big Bush supporter, still am, big conservative.
But I look at I think he's great at getting somebody elected, whether it be an ASP election or a presidential election.
I just think he's not real great when it comes to helping with policy.
Tax breaks were a no-brainer.
Judge Roberts was a no-brainer, I don't think, but Myers was just horrible.
High Rock Ark was not the first place we should have gone, that's for sure.
And then since then, I don't think we've handled it as deftly as we should have, especially from the White House.
Katrina was not handled properly.
Not so much in that the Fed you know, FEMA's response as uh you know, I think they've played, I think Rove has led his president down the trail of play politics far too often instead of stick to the facts and stick to being right when you're right.
Hey, Brett, how long have you been listening to the program?
Oh probably ten years.
What year would that be?
Oh, golly gee, ninety-five.
Ninety-five.
Well, um, why do you think Carl Rove is responsible for all of this?
I mean, from what you've just said, It sounds to me like you might think that Bush ought to resign.
Well, no, it's not, it's not I think that, and I I think look, I mean, I agree with you that the State Department and the CIA have been useless for the better part of 60 years, and he really can't get a lot of help out of that from the bureaucracy.
But I think Rove, unfortunately, I think that the president has himself a very tight-knit group of of people that he listens to.
And I think ultimately, I think Rove does generate a tremendous amount of direction.
Whether or not I, you know, whether or not it's the direction, I often think.
What you're saying is, and this is this is why I'm please forgive me for this.
But you sound like uh a Democrat, because to believe all this, you have to believe that Bush basically doesn't have a brain, and that Carl Rove is his brain, and that Bush doesn't do anything without Rove.
And all we got to do is get rid of Rove, and then Bush can be Bush.
Well, no, I think you just need some new ideas.
I'm not necessarily of the mindset that, hey, look, to me, a function of a president is not to know everything, to surround himself with great people and listen to them when he needs to, because as far as I'm concerned, that's what makes a great leader.
That's what made somebody like Ronald Reagan.
Uh well, okay.
Uh everybody's laboring under misunderstanding here.
Um I don't know, for example, anybody can tell me what one Carl Rove decision was.
What did Rove decide to do?
And Bush said, ooh, all right, Carl Bay, that sounds good.
Let's do it.
When you cite Ronald Reagan, you know, this is it's a it's a great example.
They Reagan and all leaders are forceful.
They are uh definitive, they're not wishy-washy.
Leaders are understood.
You never have questions about where a leader is going.
You don't have questions about a where a leader's coming from.
So when Reagan populated his administration with people, they knew what Reagan wanted.
And they were there to do it.
And if they didn't do it, there was hell to pay.
There were problems.
Ronald Reagan was the leader of a movement in addition to being the president of the United States.
Somehow, uh some people think that Bush is not that.
That the people that work for Bush don't really know what Bush wants because Bush doesn't know, so they have to do it themselves.
And it's like the the latest, the latest that's come down the pike about Harriet Myers, by the way, is not Rove.
The guy being blamed for Harriet Myers is Andrew Card.
Andrew Card, the chief of staff, who is who it's now being said, well, you know, Andrew Card, he was really close to Senunu, and that gave a suitor, and it was Card that was pushing Myers.
Well, it wasn't Rove.
So I guess we got to get rid of Andrew Card as well, the chief of staff.
Now, my personal belief is that Harriet Myers is the nominee because that's who George Bush wants.
And I don't believe anything else.
I don't believe that there are shadow presidents here.
I don't believe this notion that George W. Bush is an empty suit running around uh and and other people are running the show.
They've tried they've tried this with Cheney.
Cheney is running, he's a foreign policy hijacker, you know.
He kind of hijacked a cabal because uh Bush doesn't know what to do about that.
Uh and I I would hate to see you falling for this notion, but let me tell you that let's just cut to the chase of your point.
You're you get time to get rid of Rove.
And I must tell you at the outset, Brett, I I thought you were a seminar caller, because that's that's a left-wing echo.
We got to get rid of Rove.
But see, the left doesn't want to get rid of Rove to make things better.
The left doesn't want to get rid of Rove to improve the administration.
I don't hear any Republicans talking about getting rid of Rove.
I don't hear any Republic well, I'm now hearing some Republicans saying this card guy's a problem.
But I think this is all just talk, and it's all founded in the notion that Bush is a wandering, aimless brain-dead human being and has no clue what he's doing.
And I know that that's not the case.
I know as well as I can know it anyway, not being in those buildings, that that's not the case.
But if Carl Rove is summarily dispatched, if Carl Rove quits, and if whether there's an indictment or not, if he if he resigns, all you're going to see is a call for the next scooter Libby to go.
And then it'll be time for Dick Cheney to go, and then it'll be time for Rumsfeld to go.
If you think Carl Rove resigning, retiring, offering himself as a sacrificial lamb, is gonna silence critics and is going to straighten out the administration and make for smooth sailing.
You are sadly mistaken.
The The way to fight this is to not give the left one shred of what they want.
When are we gonna learn this?
Screw them.
We'll be back in just a second.
With a capital S, folks, and a capital C all the way through Capitol W. You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
Sorry, folks, I'm caught up trying to keep track of what's going on at my home in Palm Beach, as well as uh doing all of this.
I mentioned this earlier in the program, and I've got to get this on the record today.
We'll have this on the website as well.
It is the uh Washington Post.
Did you have to play two bumps there?
Good, okay.
Because I just noticed the clock up there.
I was 30 seconds late coming back.
I don't often do that.
Anyway, the uh Washington Post has this piece on Joe Wilson, and what a what a questionable character he is.
And I find it fascinating that this piece runs today.
Why run a piece that basically casts doubt on your star?
Hmm.
Why run a piece that casts doubt on the star around which your whole case is built?
That case being that Bush needs to be impeached, that Scooter Libby and Carl Rove need to go and that Dick Cheney outed this poor man's wife and destroyed her life.
To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistleblower wronged by the Bush administration.
To his critics, he's a partisan who spouts unreliable information.
But nobody disputes this.
He's a publicity whore.
Now they didn't write that.
It takes up a whole paragraph to say it, but you can say what I'm going to read to you in one paragraph and two words.
He's a publicity whore.
Here's their paragraph.
Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the Camerlins, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife's identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials.
He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration's credibility and its case for war in Iraq.
Not only is a publicity whore, but the guy set out to undermine this presidency, and I think the war on terror.
That is my theory.
I don't think it's an accident.
That is war that his wife working over there at an analyst desk on weapons of mass destruction at the CIA gets him sent to Niger.
I do not think this is an accident.
Also beyond dispute is the fact that the little known diplomat took maximum advantage of his 15 minutes of fame.
That's because he's a publicity whore.
Wilson has been a fixture on the network and cable news circuit for two years from Meet the Press to the Daily Show.
He traveled to IMUS in the morning as well.
He traveled west and lunched with the likes of Norman Lear and Warren Beatty.
What does that tell you?
Next thing you know, he'll be uh having breakfast with David Brock.
He published a book, The Politics of Truth Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA identity.
It's a publicity whore.
He persuaded his wife to appear with him in a January 2004 Vanity Fair photo spread in which the two appeared in his Jaguar convertible.
He's a publicity whore, plus he buys foreign cars.
I know Jaguar is now made by Ford, but still made over there.
Now, amid speculation that prosecutors could bring charges against White House officials this week, Republicans preparing a defense of the administration are reviving the debate about Wilson's credibility and integrity.
Wilson's central assertion, disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger has been validated by post-war weapons inspections, and his charged administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent.
Now that is flat out untrue.
His claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear uh uh Bush's claim seeking nuclear material in Niger has been validated by post-war weapons.
It has no Such thing been invalidated by post-war weapons inspections.
Nobody said they bought yellow cake from Niger.
They said they're trying to.
And by the way, that has been confirmed, and the Brits, the original source of this, still stand by it.
At the same time, Wilson's publicity efforts and his work for Senator Carey's presidential campaign have complicated his efforts to portray himself as a whistleblower and a husband angry about the treatment of his wife.
The Vanity Fair photos in particular hurt Plame's reputation inside the CIA.
Both Wilson and Plame said they now regret doing the photo shoot, like hell they do.
Can't convince me a publicity whore regrets publicity.
When have you known any whore to regret it?
Not till a convent gets hold of him, and Joe Wilson's nowhere near the convent.
Wilson's critics in the administration said his 2002 trip to Niger for the CIA to probe reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there was a boondoggle arranged by his wife to help his consulting business.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial page defending the administration wrote yesterday that Mr. Wilson became an anti-war celebrity who joined the carry for president campaign.
Discussing his trip to Niger, the journal judged Mr. Wilson's original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited.
What do you mean the journal judged?
There's no judgment here.
This is all true.
Still, the Post is publishing this stuff.
Oops.
My state-of-the-art lighter just plummeted to the floor, and since I don't bend over in public, and this is public since the dindocam is on, I'll have to wait till a break to get it.
Before the before the Niger episode, Wilson was best known as the Charge de Affairs in Baghdad, a diplomat commended by George H. W. Bush for protecting and securing the release of American human shields at the time of the Persian Gulf War.
He was not known as a partisan figure and says he was neither anti-war nor anti-Bush when he went to Niger in late February 2002.
Well, Hellsby's a child of the 60s.
Later, Wilson became prominent in the anti-war movement.
Later, he became prominent in the anti-war.
He was never anti-war before this, but then he became prominent in the anti-war movement.
Like Cindy Shehan never gave a rat's rear end about it either, until she became a member.
In June 2005, Wilson participated in a mock congressional hearing held by Democrats criticizing the war.
We're having this discussion today because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war.
The next month he joined Senator Schumer at a news conference on the two-year anniversary of the unmasking of Plame.
Wilson has also alarmed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair.
So how could the journal have judged then, Mr. Milbank?
For example, Wilson told the Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson had never seen the CIA reports.
He had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.
Wilson had to admit that he had misspoken.
No.
Wilson admitted he lied.
It's spelled L-IED.
Is it in the style book of the Washington Post when you're discussing a Democrat?
Can you use the word L-I-E-D in the Washington Post when you're writing about a Democrat?
No, he was admitted that he misspoke.
That inaccuracy was not central to Wilson's claims about Niger, but his critics have used it to cast doubt on his veracity about more important questions.
Well, a liar is a liar.
Try bringing him into court with this background.
Mr. Fitzgerald, if you're thinking about an indictment, here's one of your witnesses.
Let's see you roll this guy out.
I can't wait to some classy defense lawyers get hold of this clown, along with Judith Miller.
The Senate committee found that interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife suggested his name for the trip.
But Wilson maintained that she was merely a conduit, telling CNN last year her supervisors asked her to contact me.
But the Senate committee found that interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate his wife suggested his name for the trip.
The committee also noted a memo from Plame saying Wilson had good relations with Niger officials who could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.
In addition, notes on a State Department document surmise that Plame had the idea to dispatch him to Niger in the first place.
Folks, I am telling you that if ever anybody gets to the real bottom of this, we're going to find a plat a plan that's been hatched by these two.
We will possibly find a plan allegedly hatched by these two for political purposes.
The CIA has always said that Plaim's superiors chose Wilson for the Niger trip, and she only relayed their decision.
Wilson also mistakenly assumed that his report would get more widespread notice in the administration than it apparently did.
He wrote that he believed a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president had probably taken place, perhaps orally, but this apparently never occurred.
George Tennant said that we didn't brief it to the president or the vice president or other senior administration officials.
Instead, his report, without identifying Wilson as the source, was sent in a routine intelligence paper that had wide circulation in the White House and the rest of the intelligence community, but had little impact because it supported other earlier refutations of the Niger intelligence or Niger Intelligence.
So Cheney didn't even know that it was Wilson here that had been sent over there to do this report when Tennant told him all what had happened.
Wilson's name was not even part of it.
And yet Cheney and Scooterby somehow found out to make sen out of course to destroy the great patriot Joe Wilson and his lovely beautiful wife, the CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Folks, there's a reason this appears in the Washington Post.
As much as they try to sugarcoat this, it is very odd to me that you run a piece that mentions all of these allegations and uh cases of admitted misspokenness about your star uh witness.
This is just curious.
Now, some people say Russia making too big a deal out of this.
The Washington Post is just trying to show that they're balanced here when the case goes one way, but and maybe so, but I still find all this amazing, given the fact that all this was stated by the very same people in the Washington Post, New York Times, 1988, 1999.
It's as though those years have not been lived yet.
They never happened.
1998, 1999, when the same things about WMDs were being said then as they are being said in 2002 and 2003, never occurred.
The first utterances of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq came from the lips of George W. Bush.
And he's lying.
We'll be back.
Try this headline from the New York Sons.
Senator's plan pushed to end income tax.
I like this, disappointed by the recommendations of President Bush's advisory panel on tax reform.
Senator Dement, a Republican of South Carolina, will introduce legislation this week that would replace America's tax code with a simpler free market alternative that would abolish personal and corporate income taxes in favor of a flat rate levy on retail and business transactions.
So while a lot of people think that the uh the grand jury proceedings here are providing a uh stoppage on action in Washington.
They're not.
Also, speaking of perjury, uh Maverick British lawmaker George Galloway solicited and nearly received six hundred thousand dollars solicited and received nearly, I'm sorry, solicited and received nearly six hundred thousand dollars in profits for himself in a charity he ran from secret deals under the Iraq oil for food program, according to Senate investigators who made these charges yesterday.
We heard a lot of bombast at that hearing, but Mr. Galloway has been anything but straight with Congress or with the American people, said Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican senator.
The outspoken British lawmaker who was expelled from the ruling Labor Party for his criticisms of Tony Blair and the Iraq War, denied the charges in written responses to a new report.
Now, the new findings are based in part on interviews with three senior officials under Saddam, including the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, as well as on bank account records.
The evidence details what investigators said were direct transfers of oil for food profits to bank accounts controlled by Galloway's wife and by the Merriam Appeal, a charity and political organization founded by Mr. Galloway.
So he's a hero to the left, by the way.
went on a big speaking tour after he uh he told the senators uh where to go and how to get there for his uh bombastic and flamboyant uh hearings.
You know, and I the total change of pace here, but I I just love stories like this.
This is a stuff from the New York Times.
It's called the Lap of Luxury.
It's happened again.
Another innocent man who just wanted a few lamp dances.
Claims to have been victimized by an exclusive New York strip club, scores.
This time it's an executive from Missouri named Robert McCormick.
I hope my family doesn't know him.
Uh simply because I'm publicizing this beyond the New York Times.
My family knows everybody in Missouri.
Well, everybody in Missouri knows my family, let's put it that way.
So what what this man did, he treated himself and friends to a night of lap dances and things at scores.
He ran up a 241,000 bill on his corporate American Express card two years ago.
He's now uh being sued by American Express because he hasn't paid up.
Several other unhappy customers have also used or sued scores over large bills.
There doesn't seem to be bill padding in these cases.
Uh American Express sought signed receipts from the club before bringing its suit.
In the most recent suit against scores, meanwhile, the plaintiff's justification is simply he was drunk when he signed his bills.
Now, I've never been to this place, but but I know what happens.
I mean, you go in there, and they'll charge you $3,000 for a bottle of champagne.
And uh whatever, I mean you want to this or that.
I mean, the the the the markup in there is is incredible.
Well, I don't even get a Coke in there, but Coke's in there's probably 50 bucks.
Something like that.
Uh if you call your bottle of champagne, that champagne, probably cold duck, if you call your bottle of champagne.
Whoa.
You could probably I don't know.
But what happens is guys go in there and they run up these bills.
And as this reporter at the uh at the New York Times says, uh all this is is it's just not like the $3,000 price tag in a bottle of champagne's not just for the beverage, it's part of the price of the experience.
McCormick probably didn't go to score strictly to see topless women or even for the physical contact and potential sexual gratification of a lap dance.
Both experiences can be had in simpler, cheaper ways.
Uh rather, he and his colleagues probably went because being surrounded by fawning, semi-naked champagne flute wielding women was for them a symbol of success.
Now, this is a woman writing this, so she's speculating on why men go there.
Which is another funny thing about the story.
If she knows where you can get a lap dance cheaper than scores, she ought to open the place.
Uh at any rate, I uh well, I imagine that Maureen Dowd was her source for what goes on in scores.
We'll be back after this paper.
Okay, before we get out of here, uh this story, and I'm sorry I just don't have time to be fair with another caller.
We'll we'll try to call some of those of you tomorrow and get you back on because some things you want to say are uh quite interesting.
Uh this is a story from the Wall Street Journal.
Much of Katrina aid money remains unspent.
The bottom line here is they've spent sixteen of the sixty-two billion dollars that have been uh appropriated.
They are still seeking twenty billion more.
They've only spent sixteen of the sixty-two, but they already know that sixty-two is uh is not enough.
So this is a classic.
There's going to have to be some money spent on Florida from uh uh the damage here from Hurricane Wilma, too.
So keep a sharp eye on these requests for more money from Louisiana, even though they're not spending what they've been authorized so far.
Have a great day today, folks.
We'll be back tomorrow.
We'll do it all over again with whatever's hot.
See you then.
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