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Dec. 19, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
December 19, 2005, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Go ahead, bring it on, Carl.
Just launched.
Let's hear everything you've got, Senator Levin.
I can't wait.
The contrast between President Bush and these Nambi Pambi Democrats is just striking, and the more of it the better.
Greetings, my friends.
I hope your weekend was fine.
Mine was.
Of course, mine always are.
And I hope yours uh were as well.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program of the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, 800-282-288-2.
Email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Had a wedding, and I told you I went to a wedding.
These things scare me.
Yeah, I came out of it unscathed.
I'm still single.
I I I came out of this wedding with with uh with no with no marks, no scratches, no rings.
My uh my cousin Jim's daughter, Katie, got married uh in St. Louis on uh beauti beautiful ceremony.
Just it was great and and it was uh fun to get there, but it was also feel like you escape the scalping when you get out of one of those things the way you went in.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at eIBNet.com.
Uh we are waiting on uh some sound bites.
The president had a press conference today, folks.
And I don't know how many of you have had a chance to uh uh to watch it or to hear parts of it.
It was just I think one of the president's best public appearances in a long time because it wasn't scripted, and he was passionate and he was angry, and the media is a bunch of ignorant fools.
Some of the questions he got were laughable.
But the questions are irr-well, and I was gonna say the questions are irrelevant, but they're not really irrelevant because the questions were all about them.
The questions were all about their reporting.
There, I think there was one question about Iraq and the uh and the vote, uh all kinds of questions about Iraq and should we get out.
And it was it's it it becomes more and more obvious uh as time goes on that it may as well have been Harry Reed asking questions in there.
Uh it may as well have been Nancy Pelosi asking questions in there.
The mainstream press just symbiotic, uh almost incestuous now, this relationship that uh they have with the uh Democratic Party.
First five or ten minutes to meet the press yesterday.
Uh did it didn't take them five minutes, start asking, is this Watergate talking about Richard Nixon and this national security agency story?
We're gonna, you know, we nuked that on Friday, and we're gonna nuke it again today with the uh with the president's help.
No less than twelve times members of Congress were told about the program.
It was a program that started in previous administrations.
You've heard of the NSA massive computer gathering program called Echelon.
60 Minutes did a story on this in February of 2000.
Bill Clinton's still in office.
Steve Croft did it.
I've got the transcript of that show.
And it's all about how we how we go about making sure we don't nab the wrong people.
But to say that this all started with Bush is the same thing that the Democrats are saying about virtually everything that happens in the world.
It all started in 2001.
And prior to that, we were at peace, and everybody was singing kumbaya, and there was no problem.
There were no global warming, there wasn't any environmental destruction, there wasn't any terrorism, there was none of this stuff until Bush came into office.
There was no vote fraud, no electioneering, none of this until uh until Bush came in to office.
Now the Democrats are are I I I I have to tell you that they are the president let's put it this way.
Put it this way.
The president last night and tonight, and especially to this morning, and especially this morning as he was uh speaking off the cuff, especially during the questions portion of the press cover, just hammering these people between the eyes.
I don't even think they know it at this moment, how hard they got hit.
They are effectively unconscious.
This president comes across as uh someone that is personally and totally invested in the nation's security.
The Democrats come across with their allies in the media as being unconcerned with it as though there's not even a problem.
President was not defensive.
He was articulate.
He was passionate, and when he's passionate, he gets mad.
And when he gets mad, the passion ratchets up, and as those two things combine, uh everything that's in him that you don't see in a speech, a prepared tech speech, just comes out.
And it comes out in English.
It comes out in real world language.
The president firing back today.
Uh actually uh called out Harry Reed.
Mike, have you gotten those sound bites yet?
Okay, well, I was asking for you to tell me when we got the sound bites.
Listen to this.
This is this is just a sample here of the press conference.
This is um uh this actually, I don't think it's in response to a question.
He's just talking about the debate in the country about the nature of the enemy.
There is a debate in the country, and I fully understand that about the nature of the enemy.
You know, people I hear people say, you know, because we took action in Iraq, we stirred them up.
They're dangerous.
No, they were dangerous before we went into Iraq.
That's what the American people have got to understand.
That's why I took the decision I took on the uh NSA decision.
Because I understand how dangerous they are, and they want to hit us again.
That let me say something about the Patriot Act, if you don't mind.
It is inexcusable for the United States Senate to let this Patriot Act expire.
You know, there's an interesting debate in Washington, and you're part of it, that says, well, they didn't connect the dots prior to September the 11th.
Stop the tape.
We have a rush see, I told you so coming up here, because on Friday, on Friday, I'm I think my exact words are gonna be pretty close.
My exact words on Friday, they got mad Bush didn't connect the dots.
That's why 9-11 happened.
Now they want to accuse Bush of spying.
They being not only my administration but previous administrations.
I understand that debate.
I'm not being critical of you bringing this issue up and discussing it, but there was a it you might remember if you take a step back.
People were pretty adamant about uh hauling people up to testify and wondering how come the dots weren't connected.
Well, the Patriot Act helps us connect the dots.
And now the United States Senate is gonna let this bill expire.
Not the Senate, a minority of senators, and I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to go home and explain why these cities are safer.
It is inexcusable to say on the one hand, connect the dots and not give us a chance to do so.
We've connected the dots, uh, or trying to connect the dots with the NSA program.
And of course, he makes reference there to the wall.
That's the Jamie Guerellick wall to refresh your memory.
That is the wall that was built during the Clinton administration.
They chose to fight terrorism in the courts.
And they did it with grand jury testimony, which secret anything that was learned in grand jury testimony could not be passed on to an investigative intelligence agency.
It had to stay there because of grand jury secrecy rules.
And so that's why the dots weren't connected.
The Patriot Act, among many other things, tore down that wall.
Now the wall's back at the end of this month.
If they don't reauthorize that, the wall is back, and we won't be able to connect the dots.
And this is what the president's saying.
And it's no accident that he said a minority of senators, and I want senators from New York.
Hello, Chuck Schumer, or Los Angeles.
That would be either either uh Diane Feinstein, who's the other Democrat Boxer.
I keep thinking she's still in the House, and I wish she was.
Uh Barbara Boxer or Las Vegas, which is dingy Harry.
He was calling out dingy Harry on this, uh, folks, and it was it was just boy.
These are the kind of things we've been asking for this.
We've been hoping that this kind of thing would happen for so long.
Get in the game, call these people out.
Don't let them get away with this.
Use the bully pulpit.
You know, give you an example of what uh of why this is important.
How many of you have seen that uh uh the congressional approval numbers are half of what Bush's are?
Bush's over Congress's, and and the Democrats saying, Well, that's understandable.
The Congress is led by Republicans.
Well, how many of you know that?
If you watch television on an everyday, who do you everyday basis?
Who do you think the leader of the Senate is?
Bill Frist or Harry, right.
And if you watch this the TV on a daily basis, who do you think runs the House?
You think Nancy Pelosi runs the House or some republic.
But you can't name for me the Republican that runs the House.
Now the delay is gone.
But you can't name how how many times we heard from Roy Blunt?
How many times do we hear from Denny Hasbro?
You hear from Pelosi day in and day out, multiple times a day.
When the Sunday shows come, guess who we get on those shows?
We get Dingy Harry and we get Pelosi and we get Boxer, and we get all the the usual crowd.
So the country probably thinks that it's a Democrats that run Congress, and that explains why their approval numbers are half what Bush's is.
They won't admit this to them, so they're too arrogant to understand that.
They are living in an alternative reality dream world.
They think they're winning.
They're trying to recreate Watergate.
They're trying to recreate the Vietnam War.
They are begovernizing themselves time and time and time and time again, and they are going to pay the price down the road, uh, most notably next November will be the first chance.
What they don't understand, maybe they do understand this, and it just bugs them.
Side by side, George Bush versus Dingy Harry, it's no contest.
That's why Bush needs to get out there more as he did today, last night.
George Bush side by side with Carl Levin, Bush side by side with Schumer, Bush side by side with Kerry, it is no contest.
The average American watches this and understands this man cares deeply about the security of their families and this whole country, and gets the idea that Democrats don't.
Democrats want to create the impression there's no danger.
There's no problem.
Bush lied.
See, Bush made it all up.
Bush created terrorism.
I don't think they understand the sinkhole that they are in.
We've got more after this.
Sit tight.
We'll be right back and roll right on.
We are ditto camming, by the way, and we will for the um the whole program.
Mind you again that the adopt a soldier program is still underway, and we are we're still gathering qualified names of men and women of the U.S. military.
We got thousands and thousands and thousands of eager Americans who want to adopt a soldier or adopt a marine, or because some Marines I'm told are offended.
I'm not a soldier.
I am a Marine, okay.
Then we'll change the name to adopt a war hero or adopt an American hero, whatever, and make it specific to U.S. military men and women.
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Gotta go back with more right after this.
Stay with us.
800-282-2882, Manheim Steamroller.
How many of you um I'll bet not many.
There was a big New York Times Sunday magazine uh article yesterday on Mannheim Steamroller.
But I've you know I should have learned.
I shouldn't they called me?
New York Times called me.
Chip Davis, Mannheim Steamroller, asked them to call me.
Uh we go back a long ways.
And I spent 15 minutes on the phone with a guy.
Zip.
I mean, the fact that we play Mannheim Steamroller tunes on it on the program was mentioned, but none of what I and I gave some great quotes about these guys and why I think they're successful.
Zip.
It's a long story, and it's it's not bad, but when am I gonna learn?
I I gave them a lot of great quotes about Bill Buckley, and two or three of them show up.
I guess that's normal.
But I don't know why they call me if they're not gonna use it.
Maybe they're hoping I'll trip up.
Maybe they're hoping I'll say something about McNabb when they ask me about Mannheim's steamroller, thinking I can't hear.
I think Manheim is McNabb.
Anyway, 800-282-2882, the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Can we take a quick look here?
Folks, let's do a this little list of how liberals view an American's right and ability to protect him or herself.
Uh and, you know, personal and national security, Democrat style.
This is a quick look at how liberals view your right and ability to protect yourself.
They want to take away Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.
They have historically voted to give criminals more rights than victims.
They are out actively seeking to prevent the military from recruiting in hascrels or college camp eye.
They regularly and intensely the past three weeks, demoralize our troops with propaganda, and proudly say we cannot win while at war.
They have advocated turning our military and foreign policy establishment over to the United Nations.
They, as recently as a year ago, in their presidential campaign, suggested that the French would be the best consultants, along with the Germans, for foreign policy advice.
They and one of their former attorney generals provide Saddam Hussein a defense for what they hypocritically say now is an illegal war.
They shamelessly slander the United States as a nation that, as a matter of policy, tortures prisoners.
And they have a little help in that regard with Senator McCain of the media and Vice President Graham of the media.
But for the most part, it's liberals shaming and slandering the U.S. as a nation as a matter of policy because we torture prisoners.
They actively restrict our ability to wage war and interrogate terrorists.
They are invested in the defeat of this country and this president and you and I in this war.
They're doing everything they can to sabotage every effort to achieve victory with this enemy.
They have voted unanimously to end the Patriot Act.
They are demanding a withdrawal from Iraq, thus setting up a Paul Pot-style mass murder part two.
They look the other way while the CIA illegally undermines the policy of the president it serves.
They leak top secret classified information and in the process detract from our ability to wage war, and this is part of the ongoing effort to sabotage our ability to defeat this enemy.
They lie about their direct knowledge of classified information for the sole purpose of trying to politicize the president's acts to advance their own political agenda.
Time and time again.
They claim to be out of the loop.
They didn't see the same intelligence the president saw.
We have demonstrated that they have.
They didn't read it.
They were well aware, not all of them, but those on the Intelligence Committee in the House and Senate were well aware of this latest uh uh executive order on domestic intelligence using the National Security Agency.
They're now out there lying.
Harry Reid said, I don't know anything about it.
Well, I knew a little bit about it, and nobody wants an investigation.
This is how liberals in this country go about making us more secure.
This is how they fight wars.
This is how they coddle the enemy.
This is how they endanger us all and make us less safe.
Bill Clinton even used to lie to us, saying that the no nuclear weapons were pointed at our country.
The point of this was to allow America's children to sleep peacefully at night.
At the same time, Bill Clinton is saying that there are no nuclear weapons pointed at our country.
He's giving away top-secret nuclear technology to the communist Chinese, making that statement inoperative, at the same time receiving illegal campaign contributions in the process.
Today, Bill Clinton's liberal friends say that our children would sleep peacefully at night if we would surrender in Iraq, if we would retreat, if we would cut, and if we would run.
That's who they are, folks.
And they're out in full force.
The laughable thing is they think they are winning.
They think they're scoring points.
They're flexing their muscles.
I think they may be a little bit less confident after the president's press conference today.
And let's return to a couple bites from that.
This is the uh, there's a question here from uh who was it?
Was it Kelly O'Neill?
Was it who asked this question?
I can't remember who asked the question.
Here's a question is are you gonna order a leaks investigation into the disclosure of the NSA surveillance program?
There's a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks.
I presume that process is moving forward.
My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war.
The fact that we're discussing this program is uh helping the enemy.
Now, I can understand you asking these questions, and and and if I were you, I'd be asking me these questions too.
But it is a shameful act by somebody who has got secrets of the United States Government and feels like they need to disclose them publicly.
Yeah, and let me say something about that, because we've got this independent counsel investigation.
Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's prosecutor, and he is underway, and he's working on that very serious crime, the leaking of Valerie Plame's name by somebody.
We've got to find out who.
She wasn't covert.
The law that was in question was not triggered.
We've got an indictment of Scooter Libby, not for that, but for perjury and other things.
But the guy's got an open investigation.
It's time somebody at the Justice Department, the CIA needs to refer this case to Pat Fitzgerald and let him get going on this because this and the secret prisons leak and some of the other stories that have leaked to the New York Times, the Washington Post, those are serious national security leagues.
The Valerie Plame leak is romper room.
You've seen that picture of Joe Wilson of Valerie Plame in Time Magazine.
You haven't seen that?
Oh, I will describe they're in the the man of the year person of the year issue.
They're people that made a difference or some such garbage.
I will describe she's in pajamas at the bottom of the stairs.
It's incredible.
Just frolicking along through the snow in some cases.
And I'll tell you what, it was cold in Missouri.
I was cut just the cold in the northeast everywhere.
It was about 70 degrees here.
I got a little rain that cooled it off a little bit, but uh talking about this being a pretty bad winter, but we're frolicking through whatever is out there, folks, here on the EIB network.
Now I have this picture of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, Time magazine, People Who Mattered 2005.
These are the people I guess that were under consideration for people, person of the year, or what have you.
But this picture is incredible.
And I set this up.
Ostensibly, what do we have here?
We have this guy, Joe Wilson, great patriot, great ambassador, does nothing but great things for America.
He's over there trying to figure out whether this is ostensibly now.
He's over there trying to figure out whether or not we got anything to be worried about in Iraq.
We all know there's a setup job.
He was sent over there to basically come back and lie about it and try to undercut the war in Iraq.
He's just part of the problem in the State Department, the CIA, and wherever, and his wife is another part of it.
But ostensibly, he's a good guy.
He's just he's just a hero, just a great warrior.
He's been out there trying to save America.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
And in the process of doing this wonderfully patriotic job, some slime ball in the Bush administration happened to leak.
The name and identity of his lovely and gracious wife, uh, the former Valerie Plame.
And this, of course, has shocked and rocked their world.
It's turned them upside down.
Why, here we have these two brave, courageous American heroes, and now they are totally exposed, and they are lives are over as they knew it, and they have to go back and put it all back together like Humpty Dumpty.
Okay, that's that's the image that has been cast and portrayed for these people.
So in this Time magazine piece, people who mattered in 2005, they have pictures of all the people who mattered.
And there's a picture of Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame.
And this picture, this picture is sick.
Given the juxtaposition against the image these people have uh hoped they've achieved in terms of crafting for themselves.
Here you got it's a black and white picture.
It looks like film noir.
It looks like one of these old black and white Sam Spade movies from the 30s and 40s, the Maltese Falcon.
And there's Wilson sitting on the family sofa in what looks to be a sunken living room.
Or maybe it's not a sunken living room, there's a staircase there.
And he's got a coat and tiny looks just serious and violated at the same time.
And at the bottom of the stairs, in the only well, there's two blasts of sunlight in this room.
Wilson is in shadows, half his face litten by a reflection of light.
At the bottom of the stairs, it looks to be at the bottom of the front entrance, stands his wife Valerie Plame, looking disoriented, disheveled, and out of sorts.
She is in her pajamas.
And the light shines on the left side of her, and she is her left hand is up to her forehead as though she's out of sorts and confused and walking around in a daze.
This is a posed picture.
It is it These are people ostensibly concerned with their privacy.
They are concerned with the fact that her their lives have been destroyed because now it's all known, it's all out in the open.
You'd think they'd slink away back into the mouse hole in which they live and try to put things back, but no, they're out there exploiting all of this.
And here's Time magazine right there.
I don't know if I can zoom in tight enough on this, but let me try.
There's you get an I'm I'm showing this on a ditto cam for the people watching.
You get an idea about this.
Uh folks, this whole thing is just it's part of an act.
The whole thing is literally part of an act.
And it's laughable.
And these people when you stack them up against the president in his press conference today and the other things going on, they are beginning to look like a joke everywhere outside the beltway.
Inside the beltway, of course, there's still a couple of heroes.
Uh President, let's go back to the soundbites here.
We're up to number three here.
He just described that there is a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks.
And I presume the process is moving forward.
This is this, and I he didn't say it, but we do need to get an independent counsel looking into this.
He added these comments after that.
Let me give you an example uh about my concerns about letting the enemy know what may or may not be happening.
In the late 1990s, our government was uh following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone.
And then the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone, made it into the press as a result of a leak.
And guess what happened?
Osama bin Laden changed his behavior.
He began to change how he communicated.
We're at war.
And we must protect America's secrets.
And so the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with the full investigation.
I wonder what that means.
The Justice Department, I presume will move forward with a full investigation.
Uh I hope that means that the order has already been made to do so.
Alberto Gonzalez, the attorney general, is this is serious, and this makes the whole Valerie Plaim and Joe Wilson thing, for as I say, seem like who snole my snickers bar compared to what else is at stake.
Now, Bush has explained the program, he explained this program, the NSA spying program, he explained it in his uh opening remarks, he explained it in answers to questions.
And Kelly O'Donnell still had to stand up, she's from NBC and ask this question.
If you believe that present law needs to be faster and more agile concerning the surveillance of conversations from someone in the U.S. to somewhere outside the country, why in the four years since 9-11 has your administration not sought to get changes in the law instead of bypassing it, As some of your critics have said.
I want to make clear to the people listening that this program is limited in nature to Those that are known Al-Qaeda ties andor affiliates.
That's important.
So it's a it's a program that's limited.
These calls are not intercepted within the country.
They are from outside the country to in the country, or vice versa.
So this is not, you know, uh a if you're calling from Houston to LA, uh that call is not monitored.
And if there was ever any need to monitor, uh, there would be a uh a process to do that.
A uh open debate about law would say to the enemy, here's what we're going to do.
And this is an enemy which adjusts.
We monitor this program carefully.
We have consulted with members of the Congress over a dozen times.
We're constantly reviewing the program.
Those of us who review the program have a duty to uphold the laws of the United States.
And we take that duty very seriously.
And he made mention of the fact again that Congress was informed of it more than a dozen times.
But let's let's go back to the question because one of the things that I found listening to this press conference and watching it is the sheer ignorance of reporters.
And I'm not talking about stupidity, and I'm not trying to be insulting.
I'm ignorance.
They just don't know.
The level of ignorance about the separation of powers, the level of ignorance about the Constitution, the level of ignorance about the role of the commander-in-chief striking to me.
This question.
If you believe that present law needs to be faster and more agile concerning the surveillance of conversations, somebody in the U.S. to somebody outside, why has your administration not sought to get changes in the law instead of bypassing it as some of your critics have said?
He made the point, these are international calls.
They involve already known terrorists or terrorist suspects.
What else do we need to know, Kelly?
And Kelly, let me be the first to tell you, the president of the United States has a constitutional right to act.
Some of us think it's a constitual constitutional obligation to act.
We are at war.
That's another thing that I wondered.
Do they really get, or they are they so immersed in their alternative reality that they really don't get it?
They don't think it's a serious thing, or are they just trying to cover up that fact to carry the Democrats' water?
We are at war.
He said it a couple of times in this press conference.
Federal courts, Ms. O'Donnell, have said that the president has this right.
Every president does.
He doesn't need a congressional statute.
He doesn't need to run it by Russ Feingold.
He doesn't need to run it by Arlan Spector.
He doesn't need to give you or anybody else information that somehow, some way will manage to be leaked to the New York Times, because neither you, Kelly, nor the New York Times run the United States foreign policy or conduct wars.
Let's go to our buddies at Newsmax.
Two interesting stories.
One from yesterday ran at 10 o'clock last night.
Clinton NSA eavedropped on U.S. calls during the 1990s.
Under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program codenamed Echelon.
On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration's instituted a major shift in American intelligence gathering practices.
When it secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the U.S. to search for evidence of terrorist activity without obtaining court-approved warrants.
But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 90s, all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9-11 attacks.
In February 2000th, I mentioned this at the beginning of the program.
CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft introduced a report on the Clinton era spy program by noting this.
This is Steve Croft on 60 Minutes.
Quote, If you made a phone call today or sent an email to a friend, there's a good chance that what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency.
The top secret global surveillance network is called Echelon.
It's run by the National Security Agency.
NSA computers, Croft said, capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the NSA, told 60 Minutes that the agency was monitoring everything, from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.
He detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling 60 Minutes that agency operators, quote, can listen in to just about anything, unquote, while echelon computers screen phone calls for keywords that might indicate a terrorist threat.
The 60 Minutes report also spotlighted echelon critic, then Representative Bob Barr, who complained the project, as it was, was being implemented under Clinton, engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving U.S. citizens.
One echelon operator working in Britain told 60 Minutes that the NSA had even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Senator Strom Thurmond.
Still, the New York Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under Bush had been unprecedented.
At one point, citing anonymously an alleged former national security official who claimed this is really a sea change.
It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches.
I told you on Friday at New York Times story was bogus.
It was bogus by motivation, it was bogus in content.
There's an ongoing effort to Sabotage this nation's ability to defeat this enemy.
The New York Times is getting leaks from disgruntled libs somewhere in this country.
CIA, State Department, wherever.
Hold that the Senate.
You never know where the leaks are coming from.
I you gotta have the Senate in it.
They held that story for over a year, not because of any security concern, but because it coincides with the release of a book by the same writer James Ryzen, which will happen in seven or eight days from today.
A book edited by the same editor that uh edited Richard Clark's books and uh published by the same publisher.
Steiman und Schuster, which is uh part of the Viacom CBS cabal, which means you'll probably get a 60 minutes report on that Friday New York Times story.
This morning, uh Newsmax ran another story.
Clinton used NSA for economic espionage.
During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton ordered the National Security Agency to use its super secret echelon surveillance program to monitor the personal phone calls and private email of employees who worked for foreign companies in a bid to boost U.S. trade.
In 2000, former Clinton CIA director James Woolsey set off a fire storm of protest in Europe when he told the French newspaper Le Figaro that he was ordered by Clinton in 1993 to transform echelon into a tool for gathering economic intelligence.
The former intelligence chief told the French paper, we have a triple and limited objective to look out for companies who are breaking U.S. or UN sanctions, to trace dual technologies, i.e., for civil and military use, and to track corruption in international business.
So here we have Echelon, the NSA.
It's thick and deep and goes all the way back to the 90s with Clinton.
And yet the news of the day is that it was something brand new invented by Bush.
Laws were violated, it set precedence.
We had never before spied on U.S. citizens.
All lies, folks, all bogus lies.
The I'm telling you, if it's in the New York Times, put it in the bottom of your birdcage, use it as toilet paper or whatever, because it probably is not even worth that.
Back in a moment.
Okay, we're back.
El Rush Ball, the EIB network, 800-282-2882, audio soundbite number five.
Our old buddy John Roberts uh stood up from CBS News and said, What would you say is the biggest mistake you've made during your presidency?
And what have you learned?
And there was something funny at the beginning of this.
Robert stood up before he asked the question and said uh uh uh a lot of questions uh uh uh time something, and Bush came back, really fired back at him and said, Well, then make your question short.
Uh I forget what the and a whole the whole press court left.
Uh Roberts had any humility, he would have been red beat with embarrassment.
Anyways, question was what do you say is the biggest mistake you've made during your presidency, and what have you learned from it?
The last time those questions were asked, uh I really felt like it was an attempt for me to say it was a mistake to go into Iraq.
And uh it wasn't a mistake to go into Iraq.
It was the right decision to make.
Uh I think that uh John, there's gonna be a lot of uh analysis done on the decisions uh on the ground in Iraq.
I said the other day that uh a mistake was trying to um train a civilian defense force and an Iraqi army at the same time, but not giving the civilian defense force enough training and tools necessary to be able to battle a uh a group of thugs and killers.
And so we adjusted.
And the point I'm trying to make to the American people in this, as you said, candid dialogue.
I hope I've been candid all along, but the can of dialogue is to say we're constantly changing our tactics to meet the changing tactics of an enemy.
And that's important for our citizens to understand.
You have to understand the template of this question.
This is Watergate.
This is uh this is Vietnam.
The whole thing's a mistake, it's not worth it.
We should pull out, we shouldn't be there.
When are you going to admit that you lied to the country about going in?
That's what Roberts wants to know.
Uh, an embarrassing performance by someone who was considered at one time to be the next Kendall cookie cutter anchor on the CBS evening news.
Be right back, folks.
Stay with us.
There's some great sound bites coming in from the Democrats here to contrast uh with President Bush.
Uh as well, ladies and gentlemen, as uh so what else we got your phone calls, yes, phone calls.
But I get to your phone calls as quick as I can.
I just had to set the table here today.
A lot of great calls are on hold, and if you're on hold, it means that you have been chosen for the rare honor of appearing on this program as a call contributor and a sort of a spark plug, an ignition, to help make me look even better than I look when I'm average.
Be right back and continue here.
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