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Dec. 2, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
December 2, 2005, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
The views expressed by the host on this show make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying.
And that's why the views expressed by the host of this program are documented to be almost always right 98.5% of the time.
It's Friday, folks.
You know what that means.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Rushland Boy, your host for life, doing what I was born to do and having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have doing it.
Great to be with you on Open Line Friday.
Pretty much whatever you want to talk about, we will talk about when we go to the phones, and I will go to the phones El Quicko.
I just want to devote this opening monologue segment one more little bit about Iraq, and then we'll move on.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
I received the most amazing letter from a member of the military serving in Baghdad today, and I want to share it with you.
But first, here is Congressman Murtha in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, just a little east of Pittsburgh, last Wednesday.
We got real problems.
The Army is broken.
The equipment is worn out.
We got a $50 billion backlog of equipment which needs to be repaired.
So he wants us to pull out the Army is broken.
The equipment is worn out.
They're living hand to mouth.
He got his 15 minutes.
He decided he really liked his 15 minutes, saying our troops are worn out.
So he wants to get his name in lights again.
And I'll tell you, this borders on insubordination or the T-word.
What he has just done, and I'm sure, I don't know, I'm not sure in his mind he's trying to do the right thing.
I mean, I know in the leftist circles he is unassailable, but not here.
What Congressman Murtha just did with that comment was practically broadcast to the Islamic terrorist wacko suicide groups around the world that our troops are worn out.
Worn out by what?
Roadside bombs.
The terrorists have only one play to use against us, roadside and car bombs hiding behind women and children in mosques.
They will not confront our troops head-on.
They can't.
They don't have any army.
They may not be cowards, although I'm not ready to concede even that.
Well, somebody willing to blow themselves up is not a coward.
It's a lunatic.
But they don't have the guts to face us head on.
Think about it.
There haven't been any major battles, only these annoying little deadly car bombs, and everybody goes ape over this.
And now the Democrats want to quit and cut and run and have invested themselves in defeat.
So now John Murthy with all these bright lights and the cameras facing him and chasing him all around has told the terrorists, has told Al-Qaeda that our troops are worn out and they're living hand to mouth, hand to mouth, he says, because the terrorists have been so successful.
He may as well go out and deliver a victory statement for Al-Qaeda.
That's what he's done here.
He's telling all of those people that want us dead that our troops can't even handle a war with them.
We can't even handle a war without battles.
We can't even handle roadside explosives.
Imagine what would happen to our troops if we actually got into a combat-style battle.
I mean, to me, it is unbelievable.
It's incredible.
And it frosts me.
It makes me mad.
And these people think they're patriotic.
They think they're doing a great service to the country.
I want to share with you excerpts from a letter I got today, an email letter.
Dear Mr. Limbaugh, I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am knowing that you are behind that microphone and honoring our troops here in the Iraqi theater.
Thank you, sir, for your unwavering support for all of our airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen fighting the global war on terror, especially those in the current battle for Iraq that are assigned under my charge.
I'm extremely proud of all my troops.
I'm also very proud of my coalition brethren who engaged in combat operations here.
The list of honorable warriors also includes members of the Iraqi armed forces.
15 years ago, I never would have imagined having my own boots on the same ground over which I've chased Iraqi Air Force MiG fighter jets across the sky in hot pursuit.
But times have changed.
So this guy was in the first Gulf War.
We get you live on Camp Liberty Radio Baghdad 98.0 FM.
I listen to you at 8 p.m. Iraq Local each day whenever I can.
At that time of the night, I may be likely on my way driving back from the Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root operated Chow Hall.
Friday is usually lobster and steak night.
It's pretty damn good.
Driving back from Chow, I'll try not to hit any protected wild dogs or gazelles that run across the road.
I'm not kidding.
There are protected wild dogs and gazelles here that we can't hit.
We don't care, though.
It's the threat, rocket, and mortar attacks that have more of my concern.
But we have to have a sense of humor here.
Every once in a while, something hilarious does happen, and my troops and I just bust a gut laughing.
And here's one such story.
The most recent chuckle involved launching a dilapidated refrigerator made in France from the catwalk on top of the Baghdad International Airport control tower.
The control tower stands about 200 feet above ground and the refrigerator reached terminal velocity quickly after leaving the catwalk prior to impacting the ground.
It may not sound a bit funny to many people.
However, military necessity dictated removal of the refrigerator made in France from the tower cab.
This necessity arose because of a loud and annoying chronic squeal a French refrigerator made each time it powered itself on.
The squeal was often heard as background noise in the radio transmissions made from the tower.
At first, this background noise was misconstrued by coalition military aircraft and civilian airliners as enemy power from the refrigerator made in or as enemy electronic radio jamming countermeasures on our radio frequency.
But the noise, coupled with the drain in electric power from the refrigerator made in France, weakened our radio output power transmissions and drowned out our voice.
We considered for two-tenths of a second conducting an in-depth staff study of the apparent noise jamming reports we received, but my senior NCO solved the problem by pulling the electrical plug from the wall connecting the refrigerator made in France.
That worked for about a week, after which time the same refrigerator made in France began to stink.
The sunlight through the tower cab windows somehow turned the inside of the refrigerator into a large yogurt culture.
The only course of action we deemed appropriate was to get rid of that refrigerator made in France.
Option one involved several flights of stairs would need to be surmounted downward as we would need to carry the large ice box down the stairs.
Option two involved using a building's elevator, which also made in France.
This was too risky since the elevator only worked when it felt like it and only between the hours of 10 and 1400 and only after much stroking with preventative maintenance technicians.
It's always the belts, the flumsy flimsy rubber belts or the motor made in France that rendered the elevator made in France useless to us to move the refrigerator made in France out of the building.
No French technicians were around to fix any of this stuff and we couldn't read the French placards on any of the machinery.
Thus, in order to avoid any lower back spinal disc vertebrae compression fractures, at the time we settled on option three, we launched the refrigerator made in France from the catwalk.
It was a decision made out of military necessity.
It came crashing down.
It hit the sidewalk, exploded wide open.
There was also a rather large, smelly dust cloud that lingered for quite some time after impact.
It attracted some attention, but it wasn't really clear with all the dust what really happened after impact.
But after a while, we didn't pay much attention to any of it.
We moved on, and we're still moving on.
Now there's no loud squeal in the control tower radios.
The radio transmitter is at full electrical power, and the safety of flight for coalition air operations has increased exponentially.
None of my comments are intended to imply any political leanings one way or the other.
Mr. Limbaugh, war is ugly, and it is.
And some refrigerators are ugly.
But there are things in the hearts of men that are far uglier than war itself.
And my troops and I are fighting for those cherished ideals of democracy.
Democracy is our strategic weapon in the global war on terror.
And from what I can see from my airmen, Iraqi counterparts, Iraqi families and children, it's working here in Iraq.
I'll never forget the images of this war.
It's horrible.
But we really believe this is worth the fight.
And it's those stupid, priceless moments shared with my troops like the above story, throwing the Made-in-France refrigerator off the catwalk atop the Baghdad control tower that I know I will cherish forever.
Thank you again for supporting my troops out here in Iraq.
I'm honored by your gracious support.
I admire your courage and wish you continued success in spreading the message of warfighters fighting for freedom to your audience, because that's what this war is all about.
And we will win the battle for Iraq.
In fact, we are kicking some ass.
Thanks, Rush, for staying awake through this email, mega dittos from Baghdad.
May God bless you very respectfully.
Enclosed is a picture of all the guys that work in this control tower, the air traffic control section.
I don't know if this is before they threw the elevator, the refrigerator off the catwalk or not, but got the picture.
It's a fabulous picture.
And I want to thank, I'm not going to mention the name here.
This elevator story may get some people in trouble, so I don't want to mention the name of the guy who sent me.
He knows who he is, and he'll hear this at some point.
But when you get emails like that, and we get them frequently, Sergeant Clay Smith and his videos, which are now, by the way, available for free iPod downloading at rushlimbaugh.com.
And you get those.
And you get these emails, and we get these phone calls from people who have come back.
The people that are there, people are in the midst of it.
And then you compare and contrast their attitude and the things they say to what you hear from the likes of John Murtha and John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi.
And there's a huge disconnect.
I'm going to tell you something.
When it comes on the scale of balance, comes time to weigh who's telling us the truth.
I'm going to trust the people who are wearing the uniform, who are in the theater of battle, who are risking their lives, and who are the ones who volunteered to do all this.
I'm going to believe them in the face.
And they know what's happening.
When Murthy says they can't win, when Murthy says that they're worn down, that they're living hand to mouth, that they don't have the proper equipment.
Well, maybe they don't have a decent refrigerator in the control tower at Baghdad International, but they took care of that themselves as they're trained to do.
I'd much rather believe and put my faith in the people who have the guts and the courage to carry out the policies necessary for this country's ensured freedom, despite the best efforts of a major political party in this country, which is trying to undercut them.
It's infuriating and it's a shame at the same time.
But believe me, the party, the Democratic Party, the American left, that's attempting to undercut the mission to cut and run, to quit, to give up, attempting to demoralize the warriors and fighters that are actually engaged in this battle.
They are the ones who are being undercut.
They're stabbing themselves in the back, in the front.
I don't know if they're actually able to hit their hearts because I don't see much evidence they have any.
This is a cold, ruthless bunch of people, selfish, self-focused.
It's all about them, even in the midst of their fellow citizens who have volunteered to go to war to defend and protect this country and its constitution.
Some of them are dying.
Even in the face of that, the American left and its leaders can think only of themselves.
And it's not about you.
And it never has been about you.
And every effort you leftists and you Democrats make to make it about you just causes a greater distance between yourselves and the American voter, which you will see soon enough.
You would think they would have seen the evidence of this in the last two elections.
But they haven't gotten the message yet, and they may well never get it.
Quick timeout.
Back with more after this.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
So I just got an email from the military man that just sent me the email that I read.
His name is Taz, by the way.
It's his nickname.
He said, hey, go ahead and read that story about the refrigerator made in France.
I wouldn't have sent it if I was afraid to get around.
I mean, I'm already in Baghdad.
What else can they do to me?
Send me to Abu Ghraib?
So his name is Taz.
He's a fabulous guy, apparently.
Adam in Burlington, Massachusetts.
I'm glad you called, sir.
You're on Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
This is Sergeant Adam Walsh.
I just want to let you know, I just spent four years as an active duty psychological operations specialist out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
I did two tours in Iraq, and I want to explain why everything the LA Times is, why the L.A. Times is full of it.
Our number one rule in psychological operations is that we absolutely positively cannot lie under any circumstances because it completely destroys our ability to do psych and it ruins our credibility.
We can never do it and we don't ever do it.
And another one of our rules, the L.A. Times said something about we're writing press releases.
Well, one of our other biggest rules is that we are never under any circumstances allowed to psych off Americans.
And public affairs, the ones who actually write the press releases, they would never let us do that.
They are always very careful to stay away from us because they know that those kinds of things will come out.
So they never let us near them and they would never ever let us do that.
So that's complete crap.
All we're doing is countering enemy propaganda.
And make no mistakes.
Our cowie is very, very talented in the way of propaganda.
Yeah, it's called Al Jazeera.
It's called CNN.
It's called MSNBC.
It's called ABC.
It's called any number of things.
Well, exactly.
But we're trying to counter propaganda.
We're also trying to spread news about the great things, the Reconstruction and the humanitarian aid that we're doing over there.
We're trying to spread that news to the Iraqis because it's something they're not going to get from the media over there, like you just said, and something that they're not going to get from the U.S. media.
So we're just trying to spread those stories.
They're all completely the truth.
And it's a great shame that the people of this country can't hear all the wonderful things that are happening over there because there are a lot of great things happening.
There really are.
I know.
Well, slowly but surely that is starting to leak out.
The truth leaks out in this case.
But what you say makes total sense to me.
If you're going to do psyops and if you're going to put out a bunch of BS and the local citizenry over there can finally at some point figure out you've been lying to them and your credibility's shot.
It makes total sense.
The real story here is the anger on the part of the domestic U.S. press that the Army, the military of the Pentagon would attempt at all to get its side of the story out.
That's not their job.
We do the news in this world, they say.
What right do you have to circumvent us?
It's perverted.
It is an absoluted, perverted, absolutely perverted situation.
But it just goes to show what's necessary in this day and age to be successful in this kind of a conflict.
You've got enemies not only in the country you're fighting, you've got enemies back home.
You've got enemies all over the place that are not the terrorists, enemies to one degree or another, and you have to deal with them all.
Thanks, Adam, for the call.
I appreciate it.
Let's see.
Michael in Chicago, you're next at Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
Good to talk to you.
Thank you.
13-year listener, in the last four years, you've had your share of adversity.
You've handled it honestly and forthrightly.
And you've come up with even more respect and admiration.
And this is against the media that would love to see your demise.
I want to get your take on how Michael Irvin should have handled his situation with the pipe.
And I wonder if you've talked to him since that incident.
I have not.
I have sent him an email telling him that if there's anything he needs from me to let me know, I'd be glad to help out because I happen to believe him, his story.
He's been suspended for a week.
I think since the news hit, he's done everything right.
His mistake, as far as ESPN says they're concerned, was not telling them that they had to learn it from the press themselves.
And one of the things, you know, when you have a big network like ESPN or any business operation, if something of a bad nature is going to hit, they want to know before it hits so their crisis control managers can gin up a response to it.
So they don't appear to be broadsided and surprised.
I gather this is why Irvin has been suspended because he didn't give them the chance to have a heads up and be in the loop before the news hit.
Two days went by after the incident, the arrest took place, and when they found out about it.
And so that's why the suspension for a week.
So he should have told them.
I think the first thing he should have done after he posted Bond and so forth was to let ESPN know what had happened because he had to know that it wasn't going to remain an untold story.
But since then, I think he's done what you say.
I think he's been forthright.
He's been honest.
He's handling his suspension the proper way.
And I wouldn't have advised him to do any differently.
Back in just a sec.
A man, a legend, a way of life.
It is Open Line Friday, and this is Scott in Portland, Oregon.
You're next, sir.
Welcome.
Thanks, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
I appreciate the show.
I just was telling your call screener, I was ironically driving from a Walmart up I-5, and we are a manufacturer that's a supplier to both Walmart and Sam's Club.
And I have a little different take on On the type of business Walmart does.
Are you there?
Everybody has a look at the ticket.
Look at the number of people that shop there, and that's the evidence of whether people think it's bad for America or not.
This is absurd.
This whole poll is absurd.
It's a union-sponsored poll.
It's done by Zogby.
In case you're just joining us, Zogbi's got a poll out.
56% of the American people think that Walmart's bad for America.
It's patently absurd.
It's gotten to the point now that the desire and the effort to shill for the Democratic Party is so obvious.
I'm telling you, it represents a moment of crisis for them.
They don't even go to the trouble to try to hide this stuff anymore.
They're willing to do it right out in the open because they're so desperate.
But you can take a look at their stock, take a look at their sales figures, take a look at the people that walk in and out of that store, and you will find no evidence that most Americans think it's bad for the country.
Well, Rush, from a manufacturer's point of view, one of the things that's a big difference that we do business with them is they do not charge us any slotting, any advertising fees, any of that, as opposed to going to some of the national chains, which charge us, if you want to do a system-wide introduction to an item in one of the major national chains, it would cost you several million dollars.
Explain.
Wait, Explain slotting.
You're talking about buying shelf space.
Yeah, yeah.
If we want to put an item in on one of the national chains, depending if it's a national or a regional slot, they would charge you anywhere from $15,000 for an item in a regional area up to tens of thousands of dollars to get national distribution.
Why doesn't Walmart charge you guys this stuff where everybody else does?
Walmart does not.
They want us to take it down to a net price so that the consumer gets a lower price.
Exactly right.
Exactly.
They are not charging you, and they're not charged, so you don't have to raise your price to cover whatever they're charging to buy shelf space or slotting, as you say, in their stores.
That's correct.
And furthermore, the same item on that national chain where they're using a 50% margin, Walmart might be only using 25%.
So to me, you know, who's getting screwed?
Well, look, I'm sure if we open the phones to nothing but Walmart today, we get these similar stories.
We've got stories from Walmart customers, Walmart suppliers.
It's just absurd.
This is, you know, it's no different than if we got a poll out today saying most Americans think SUVs are bad for America.
Let's do a poll and ask how many Americans think the Democratic Party is bad for America right now.
Somebody go out and do that poll.
How many Americans think that what the Democratic Party well, in fact, I'm sorry, the poll was done and it ran last Sunday in the Washington Post.
And a full 70% of the American people are fed up with what the Democrats are doing in the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
They think it's demoralizing the troops and they don't think it's helpful.
And they think it's being done for purely political reasons.
And 55% of Democrats agree with this.
Now you've got the economy coming up.
This is just, you know, it's one of these days that often are more and more frequent to me now where I feel like I'm in the twilight zone.
I got literally the mainstream news media trying to present to me a picture of my country that doesn't exist.
It's a picture of my country that they want me to hate.
It's a picture of my country that they want me depressed about.
It's a picture of my country that they want me forever wringing my hands and worrying about our ability to be great.
Well, you know, I have the independent knowledge and fortitude and the utter distrust of these people to shelve that.
But I know, folks, you watch this stuff with a steady diet of it and it can't help but affect you.
Start wondering, gee, I wonder if some of this is true and so forth.
Well, you know, be empirical about it.
We know so much of what they reported about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina was just flat out wrong.
We know that they relied On sources that were engaging in gossip.
We had a reporter at the New Orleans Times Picket fired for inflating the number of bodies found in a freezer at the convention center.
I mean, we've got so many stories now about fake quotes, fake sources, untrue stories.
The real skepticism in this country ought to be directed at the mainstream press.
And I happen to think more and more that it is.
Aaron and Columbus, I'm glad you called, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Wow, Rush, it's an honor and a pleasure to speak with you.
I can imagine.
Thank you.
Yeah, I want to talk to you about hybrids.
And I'm a little disillusioned by your attitude to them because hybrids are the result of ingenuity, which I always thought was your answer to our long-term energy problems.
Yeah, well, if this were the answer to that, I'd be all for it, but it's a scam.
Well, on the surface, and you read the statistics about how the efficiency isn't as high as they say, but if you're using them for long-term trips, you're not going to see any advance in efficiency.
But if you're using them for city driving, you do see a result in the efficiency or an increase in the efficiency.
No, here's the point.
The way they are marketed, and by the way, if you want one, go buy one.
I have no quarrel with anybody who wants one and going and getting it.
I have no quarrel.
If somebody wants an SUV, by all means, go buy it.
I'm not one of these people sitting around telling people what you should and shouldn't buy, should and shouldn't have, and that sort of stuff because some political thing.
But if you're going to go out and buy one of these things, make sure it's because you like it.
Because it's not saving any gasoline.
It's not saving any oil.
It's not protecting the environment.
It's not doing any of those things.
It's not even saving the buyers all that money, even though they may have run some numbers to make themselves think so, but it isn't.
Well, here's an advantage that a lot of people do buy them for.
I know, for one, I don't like going to the gas station.
If it can save me trips to the gas station, how can you put a price on that?
Well, you're going to pay some way or another.
You're paying $10,000 more for this car than you would otherwise pay for a similarly sized and powered car.
And so to cover that $10,000, your fewer trips to the gas station are going to have to accrue over five or six years before you make up the $10,000 that you've overspent on the car.
But if that's what you want to do, I mean, I'm just telling you that all of this, you know, your first question to me sums it up.
You said you thought that I would be open to the market coming up with plans for alternative fuels, alternative energy sources.
This is not that.
And we haven't even talked about the battery problem.
What are we going to do?
You know, the main component of these batteries is nickel.
That stuff you've got to dispose of.
This is going to be a disposal problem when these batteries wear out.
They last six to eight years, I'm told, but then you're going to pay $3,000 to $4,000 to replace the battery pack in one of these things.
So it's a status vehicle for a bunch of liberals who it's look at.
The Prius, the hybrid is no different than one of those red ribbons or orange ribbons or blue ribbons or whatever color ribbon you wear around.
The purpose of driving that car for the politically oriented and motivated is I care about the environment and you don't.
I'm better than you.
I'm more sensitive.
I'm doing what I can to save the planet, but you're not, and so it's going to be destroyed anyway.
You know, it's a bunch of arrogant elitism by a bunch of suckers.
Hybrids are not where they need to be, but it's one of those innovations that maybe five, and you know, it is a maybe, but maybe five, ten years from now down the road going down this path, we will start to see the cars that get 100, 150 miles per gallon.
It's not there yet, but it will be there.
Well, of course it's not there yet.
Course, I know people who think the secret to that has been in a locked safe at the big three automakers for 30 years.
That they've got the car that'll get 150 miles a gallon, but the oil companies won't put up with it.
There's conspiracy theories all over the place on this.
Oh, car manufacturers will put out anything that there's demand for, and that's why they're flying off the lot.
It's because for whatever their motivation may be, they just might be a bunch of greenies, but they're flying off the lot because people want them.
So, if there's a car out there that can get 100 to 150 miles per gallon, the automakers, you know, who are in a lot of trouble right now, they're going to make it.
Absolutely.
But I just, this so-called hybrid technology is not, this is not the forerunner of some alternative fuel thing.
This is a brilliant marketing technique.
And I don't know to what extent they're flying off the shelves.
$500,000 a year, is that flying off the lot in terms of a car?
I don't know.
Because a car I buy, only they sell $400,000 a year total.
And that's considered good news for this brand.
So I couldn't tell you $500,000 off a lot in a year is flying off the lot.
To me, it was SUVs that were flying off the lot.
See, I think that's another thing.
Oh, yeah, everybody's buying hybrids.
Yeah, everybody's buying hybrids.
It's so rare when you see one, and they stand out like a sore thumb.
Well, I know the numbers have been going up, but my basic point is it's going to be American ingenuity and our spirit that is going to be a lot of people.
Oh, no question.
There's no question whatsoever about that.
But the ingenuity is going to be driven by the market.
It's going to be driven when gasoline.
Look at this.
For all that's said and done, this is not an alternative fuel vehicle.
It uses gasoline.
And whatever gasoline you're not buying, because you're making future trips, somebody else is buying it.
None of it's being saved.
This whole thing is just a classic.
The people that manufactured and created this thing had to know their market target was liberals, and they had to know how easy it was going to be to rope them in.
And they're probably sitting there laughing themselves silly at what they can make these people do and pay for and buy.
And I wouldn't blame them if they, but don't misunderstand me.
If you want one for any reason, go get it.
I'm not one of these anti-choice people.
Back after this, stay with us.
Rushboats serving humanity, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
All right, time for an update here on the Christian peace teams.
My friends, I know whereof which I speak.
When we first heard about these four desperate people taken hostage by the limp sword brigade or whatever they were called, I presented to you two options.
I said, one, it's a legitimate kidnapping, and these peace activists are now in a situation that they never thought they would be in.
They're people of peace.
They think they can reason with these people.
They think they can talk to them.
They've been to conflict resolution.
If only we would all treat these terrorists and insurgents like the Christian peace teams, these peace activists and Panzer's do well, they wouldn't have any problems.
I said, there's a part of me that, you know, you got to have sympathy for anybody who gets held hostage with a knife to their head, obviously, but there's a part of me that's okay, they're getting a little dose of reality here.
I said, the second possibility is the whole thing's a stunt.
The whole thing's a stunt because nobody's ever heard of the limp sword brigade before, this group that kidnapped these Christian activists.
One of them happens to be from the United States somewhere.
Is it Texas or North Carolina somewhere?
The other three are from Germany.
If it's a stunt, what's going to happen is that after being held captive for a while, after a number of pictures have been released and video, miraculously, the four Christian activists will have been released.
And they will tell stories of how they talked to their captors and got to understand them as people and understood their concerns and pledged to work with them to bring about a better world, blah, Well, we still don't know which scenario is which, but it may be looking more and more like a stunt because an odd coincidence has popped up.
These four Christian activists who were kidnapped in Baghdad this week were grabbed in exactly the same place and in exactly the same way as that Italian journalist.
She was a reporter for the left-wing Ill Manifesto, a communist paper in Italy.
She immediately turned her adventure into an opportunity for anti-U.S. propaganda as soon as she was released.
Now, this happened in February.
She is still giving interviews to the liberal media in Europe about her ordeal.
Now, you'll remember that an Italian intelligence agent was killed in the affair after apparently paying a large ransom for her release and then drove at a speed at big speed, high speed at an American checkpoint.
U.S. soldiers fired on the car.
That resulted in his death.
The Italian journalist made headlines for months afterwards accusing the U.S. of deliberately trying to kill her.
Somehow she escaped the whole business unscathed.
The similarities between these two kidnappings were noticed by Baghdad police, reported by the AP, and published in the London Guardian.
All of which raises this question.
Are we about to see a repeat of the same melodrama surrounding the Italian journalist, that woman?
Is this a setup for more headlines to keep the international pot boiling against the U.S.?
Or is it just a criminal gang, the Limp Sword Brigade, out for a ransom using exactly the same modus operandi as before?
Here's a tip.
And I don't know from what I'm reading, but it's obviously a blog someplace.
But it's so close to what I said the second possibility was, and I'm sharing it with you.
If this turns into an international whoop-de-doo by the left and the activists return home safe and sound, chances are the whole thing was staged.
Now, I've said this to you.
When was this, Monday or Tuesday of this week?
The four tourists had been repeatedly warned by Iraqi and Western security officials that they were taking a grave risk by moving about Baghdad without bodyguards.
However, they declined protection.
What are they doing in Baghdad in the first place?
And by the way, why are devout Christians among U.S. and U.K. soldiers not called Christian activists by the media?
Why were Jewish settlers in Gaza never considered to be Jewish activists?
Why aren't the Shiite civilians who are regularly massacred by car bombs in their Baghdad mosques called Muslim activists?
To us, they are a far more heroic than the activists beloved by the AP and the Guardian.
So the jury is still out on this.
Too many coincidences have popped up.
And right now, were I a betting individual, I would bet on the fact that this whole thing's a stunt, that they will be released from this unscathed, and they will tell wonderful stories about how compassionate and nice their captors were, and the press will be all over it.
See, see, we are producing these people, but if we just had people to talk to them instead of blow them up and threaten them and let them invade their country and have their country back, none of this would have been happening.
Wouldn't put it past them at all.
Because, like I say, I know these people like every square inch of my naked body, not just the back of my hand.
Back right after this.
Stay with us.
You remember that story about two animal handlers, this out of California, so that they were fired because they refused to expose their breasts to Coco the gorilla?
You remember that story?
Well, that story has now advanced, ladies and gentlemen, and we'll have details when we come back from.
No, Brian didn't send me this story, but ever since the horse sex conviction, Brian hasn't sent me.
Now, this one came in over the transom in the normal show prep.
And the Pittsburgh Steelers now officially accusing the Indianapolis Colts of artificially producing crowd noise via the speakers in the RCA dome last Monday night.
The Colts say, we didn't do it, and besides, you can't catch us.
The game's over.
We're moving on.
We'll be back as we are.
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