Feb. 16, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
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| Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast. | |
| Now, this is really funny. | |
| This is funny. | |
| Have you seen the story, or better yet, have you seen the picture of the new wax figure of Hillary? | |
| Madame Tussaud's got a, I don't know what you call them, a wax statue or wax whatever. | |
| It's the wrong material. | |
| It needs to be an ice sculpture. | |
| Greetings, my friends. | |
| Welcome. | |
| It is the award-winning Thrill Pact, ever-exciting, increasingly popular Rush Limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. | |
| Happy to have you along for the ride today. | |
| Telephone number, if you would like to join us, 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBnet.com. | |
| Now, if you follow the news of the day today in the antique media, oh, and by the way, we are ditto camming today. | |
| Everything is up and running on the ditto cam at rushlimbaugh.com, and it'll be up barring an unforeseen emergency. | |
| It's never happened, but there are times, and I'm going to do that, maybe turn you on the bars and get myself a little privacy here. | |
| But I haven't had to do that, but it'll be up and running at all three hours, and you can get it if you're a subscriber or member of Rush24-7 at rushlimbaugh.com. | |
| If you're paying attention to the antique media today, you will believe that the most important stories today are these. | |
| Vice President Cheney hears harsh criticism for the delay in the details of his hunting accident. | |
| Vice President Cheney hears harsh criticism for agreeing to admit that he had a beer five hours before going hunting. | |
| Vice President Cheney hears harsh criticism for choosing Fox News rather than facing the music in David Gregory in a press conference. | |
| You will hear Secretary of State Rice hears harsh criticism for Middle East issues from Republican senators as well as Democrats running for president. | |
| You will also hear Homeland Security leader Michael Cherdoff hears harsh criticism for the Homeland Security Department's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. | |
| And of course the icing on the cake, just what the world needed, previously unreleased Abu Grab photos and videos. | |
| Now, obviously, those four lead stories are so far down the priority order of important news, news that affects the country, that affects our world. | |
| I mean, kitchen table issues. | |
| News priorities are totally out of whack. | |
| They are so far out of whack that that's news. | |
| Their priorities are so out of whack. | |
| That's what the news is. | |
| The Iran problem has gone from worse to one step closer to high noon. | |
| The French, of all people, are saying we've had it. | |
| No more. | |
| We have had the economy. | |
| The economy is going great, and there's some great news about housing starts. | |
| Here's another thing. | |
| They've been praying and waiting for the housing bubble. | |
| Now we've got housing starts at an all-time high. | |
| But yet, there's a bad omen out there, a little harbinger, because the tax cut extension has not yet been signed off on. | |
| The economy's sweating that out. | |
| Homeland Security sweating out a Patriot law extension, Patriot Act. | |
| And the Iraq war is still being held captive to liberal power ambitions. | |
| All those senators grilling Condoleezza Rice, running for president, Biden, Hegel, Kerry, Allen, fine gold. | |
| Given the alleged important news of the day, I wonder what makes Cheney, a Cherdoff, a Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice take on the responsibility that they do, the long hours, the endless crises. | |
| We know it's not the money, and we know it's not the respect. | |
| What makes a public servant be a public servant? | |
| And I guess it's the same thing that makes our troops be our troops. | |
| They're going to lose a leg. | |
| They're still positive about the war, about the future, lose an arm. | |
| Can I get back to continue the mission? | |
| These denigrated public servants and our troops, they march to a different drummer out there, folks. | |
| The one that has the spirit of 76. | |
| It's an amazing thing to behold. | |
| Rasmussen has some polling data on the Cheney hunting accident. | |
| Not surprising here. | |
| 27% of the American people believe that the recent hunting accident involving Dick Cheney raises serious questions about his ability to serve as vice president, but twice as many, 57%, say, it's just one of those very embarrassing things happens to all of us, no big deal. | |
| 57% say no big deal. | |
| This will anger David Gregory and the mainstream press because what this does is illustrate yet again their inability to shape public opinion to their wishes. | |
| They've gone overboard in the process. | |
| In fact, let's start with audio soundbite number two here because the press unloaded on Britt Hume and the Fox News channel last night. | |
| Now, all of this is predictable. | |
| I mean, but I just want you to hear it. | |
| Usually when a reporter lands a big interview, he or she is applauded for great work. | |
| But no, no, no, no. | |
| Britt Hume, who they used to mostly like when he was at ABC, they said he was fair and balanced at ABC, but now he's just a hack. | |
| Now he's just a hack, and Cheney didn't have any guts. | |
| Cheney is going to a friendly interview. | |
| Cheney doesn't have the guts to face the real media in this country. | |
| Here's a montage of some of the reaction that Britt Hume and Fox got yesterday and last night. | |
| The vice president chose to make his first public comments on Fox News Channel Special Reporting. | |
| He selected, obviously, the person to give the interview to. | |
| This has been cherry-picking of the media like I've never seen. | |
| He's comfortable with Britt Hume. | |
| Vice President Cheney chose to break his silence, not with a press conference, but in a one-on-one interview with a news organization whose location and identity we can't disclose tonight. | |
| Not at a news conference, nor in a written statement, but rather before the more malleable cameras of Fox News. | |
| The vice president chose to speak with Fox anchor Britt Hume, a former White House correspondent. | |
| He has been outspoken in his criticism of the White House Press Corps' coverage of this story. | |
| Who cares? | |
| I mean, he goes on Fox News. | |
| No one is going to believe anything he said. | |
| Didn't exactly represent a profile and courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-Word network for a sit-down with Britt Hume. | |
| That's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it? | |
| Last one is the most famous bite going around today. | |
| That's Jack Cafferty. | |
| They're all bent out of shape. | |
| You know why he went to Fox? | |
| He went to Fox because it's the most watched of all these networks where all these little people are watching and moaning and complaining. | |
| And Britt Hume's show for an hour is the one hour of the Fox News channel. | |
| It is focused on Washington. | |
| But, you know, the point is you want to get the story out if you're Dick Cheney. | |
| And you don't, these guys have already made it plain as day that they think the story is about them. | |
| I don't know if you watched this Cheney interview last night. | |
| He was clearly distressed over this. | |
| This is, I think, in fact, Gloria Borger of CBS, and I guess she's still at Newsweek. | |
| I'm not sure, says that she has sources who say that Cheney was, it was Rove who did it. | |
| Carl Rove forced him out there, but he was in a meltdown. | |
| He was just, he was just devastated over what had happened. | |
| And it was obvious to me watching last night that that's true. | |
| And in that circumstance, and they're also saying, by the way, he didn't apologize. | |
| Cheney didn't apologize. | |
| He accepted responsibility, yes, but he didn't apologize. | |
| Well, maybe he didn't, quote-unquote, apologize to Harry Whittington last night on TV. | |
| You think he has in person, maybe? | |
| You think he's apologized to Harry Whittington by now? | |
| The idea that Cheney didn't apologize is just absurd. | |
| And it's a clear illustration of why it was a wise move not to go into that hornet's nest. | |
| There's nothing to be gained by it uh, as they have made clear. | |
| In fact, last night on Joe Scarborough show on Msnbc was talking at TIME Magazine's Joe Klein and uh, and he, as Scarborough says, do you think the press is handling this uh Cheney story in a responsible way? | |
| Totally overplaying it? | |
| Uh, from from beginning to end. | |
| I mean, this is the kind of thing that makes people just hate us, the uh, the scrums in the White House. | |
| Why didn't you tell us? | |
| Why didn't you tell us first? | |
| Uh, why didn't you do exactly what you we, wanted you to do? | |
| Klein gets it. | |
| He understands it. | |
| They look like a bunch of lazy elitists uh, upon whose mind. | |
| The last thing they should do is actually have to dig for a story. | |
| They demand everything be handed to them. | |
| Now get this. | |
| The Olympic flame continued burning at full force thursday in Torino as organizers ignored a request from environmentalist wackos that it be turned down in honor of the first anniversary of a key global warming treaty. | |
| The cauldron, that's about 200 feet high, consumes 1500 cubic meters of natural gas per hour. | |
| Organizers said the flame could go out if they reduced the gas flow. | |
| If you reduce it too little and there's no visible change, if you reduce it too much, you risk extinguishing it. | |
| It extinguishing it, said Giuseppe Getino, spokesman for the Toino organizing committee. | |
| It's not the same as using a burner at home. | |
| Giuseppe Gettino said that the flame's gas consumption is already half what organizers originally expected. | |
| But today marks the first anniversary of enforcement of the worthless Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which requires participating nations to cut emissions of six greenhouse gases uh to five percent below 1990 levels by 2012. | |
| And these wackos actually want the flame turned down. | |
| The Olympic flame is a symbolic. | |
| It's just laughable. | |
| The things that get these people riled up. | |
| Nothing, nothing is sacred to these people. | |
| Quick timeout, oh whoa whoa, whoa. | |
| Go back to audio soundbite number one. | |
| Since i'm talking about the flame and wackos and the Olympics, here's Bryant Gumble on the latest episode of his show on HBO REAL Sports, the winter Games. | |
| Count me among those who don't like them and won't watch them. | |
| In fact, I figure when Thomas Paine said these are the times to try men's souls, he must have been talking about the start of another winter Olympics, because they're so trying. | |
| Maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too like try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks, who never heard Of skating or skiing. | |
| So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. | |
| I'll tell you what, there are a lot of communists there, though, Brian. | |
| It's got to be a tough choice for you here. | |
| You may not be able to watch the blacks that you like skiing in the downhill and on the Luge and in the two and four man bobsled, but there are plenty of commies over there. | |
| In fact, one of our guys ought to be signaled out. | |
| What is this guy's name? | |
| Weir? | |
| Put on an old throwback Soviet Union jacket with the CCCP logo on it. | |
| Yeah, he's dating some Svetlana, you know, some Russian babe, and she gave him that for his birthday or something. | |
| He's running around over there wearing one of those old Soviet Union jerseys or warm-up jackets, and it's caused some people to notice. | |
| But here's a blatantly racial comment. | |
| He just accused the Republican Party here of being total racist. | |
| And I bet you he could have even gotten away with saying that on ESPN without any flak. | |
| We'll be back, folks. | |
| Stay with us. | |
| Okay, a couple more audio soundbites here. | |
| As I want to illustrate for you the left continuing to overplay its hand on this Cheney circumstance. | |
| Last night on CNN, Paula Zahn now. | |
| Chuck Schumer is the guest, and Paula Zahn said, Look, Cheney's apologized. | |
| He said it was his fault. | |
| He explained why he doled out the information the way he did, using the ambassador as the spokesperson. | |
| What else do you need to know? | |
| I think he ought to hold a press conference and let the whole press corps ask questions and get finally to the bottom of this. | |
| And I think when a vice president is as powerful as Vice President Cheney is, he ought to be coming before the public. | |
| There are questions about his role in the Plame investigation. | |
| There are questions about his role in the Iraq war. | |
| There are questions about his role in countless other issues, and we never get answers to these. | |
| You don't care about answers to any of it. | |
| You just want to sabotage it all. | |
| And Cheney knows that all you want to do is sabotage it. | |
| One of the things that's made the left breathless today is a story being carried by Pete Yost of the Associated Press. | |
| Vice President Cheney says he has the power to declassify government secrets, raising the possibility that he authorized his former chief of staff to pass along sensitive pre-war data on Iraq to reporters. | |
| Cheney coupled his statement in a TV interview on Wednesday with an endorsement of Scooter Libby, his ex-aide. | |
| Libby is under indictment on charges of perjury, obstruction, and lying to the FBI about disclosing the identity of undercover CIA officers. | |
| That's flat out BS. | |
| He is not charged with leaking anything about a covert agent. | |
| That's what the original investigation was about. | |
| There's no charge. | |
| This is a process crime, meaning they nailed Libby for lying and obstructing justice during the investigation, which turned up no evidence to back up the original reason for the investigation. | |
| Cheney said, Scooter's entitled to the presumption of innocence. | |
| He's a great guy. | |
| I worked with him for a long time. | |
| I have tremendous regard for him. | |
| I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case, and it's therefore inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case. | |
| Now, there was a little-known executive order signed in the spring of 2003 that also gave Cheney the power to classify, declassify documents along with the president. | |
| That's what's got Schumer and these guys so upset because now they're going to get back to the original theory was that Bush is just a puppet and Cheney is running the whole show. | |
| So they want him to go out there pure and simple because they want the Wolf Pack to have at him. | |
| They don't care what Cheney says in these press conferences if it were to happen. | |
| It's just, but they're overplaying it because the polling data is that the American people are not nearly as agitated about this as the left, including the media, happens to be. | |
| This morning on Good Morning America, Democratic strategist James Carville and Babe Buchanan were the guests. | |
| And Gibson says, James, let me come to how Cheney handled it because he said the reason he let this woman, Catherine Armstrong, call a local paper was because he wanted to make sure everything was accurate. | |
| But when she called the paper, she said it was Whittington's fault for not identifying himself, and the vice president himself said it was his fault. | |
| Everything that we were told at the beginning turned out not to be the case. | |
| It's a very simple thing they need to do. | |
| Number one, release the blood alcohol of Mr. Whittington's blood. | |
| Number two, released the after-incident report that you know that the Secret Service is filed. | |
| No one believes a word that they say. | |
| They go on, and again, it was, oh, blame Harry. | |
| Then Harry was peppered, but actually, Harry was hot, shot, and hot, and there was Zippo Booze. | |
| Well, maybe there was a beer. | |
| And, you know, it just goes on and on. | |
| And somebody's got to stand up and say, they didn't tell the truth about Iraq. | |
| They didn't tell the truth about the deficit. | |
| Why would anybody tell the truth about this? | |
| And that last line, that's the talking point. | |
| That is what's going out on all the Democrat fax machines last night. | |
| This is what they're all saying. | |
| They didn't tell the truth about Iraq. | |
| They didn't tell the truth about the deficit. | |
| Why would we expect them to tell the truth about this? | |
| Saddam Hussein is considered to be a more honest and accurate leader than George W. Bush or Cheney, demanding the blood alcohol in Harry Whittington's blood, demanding that be released. | |
| Now, let's talk about one thing. | |
| Catherine Armstrong did come out and say Harry did not announce himself to the group after going off to pick up the bird that he had shot. | |
| Do you think Cheney, just we're talking decency and common sense here? | |
| Do you think Cheney is going to go on television in an interview like this and blame Harry Whittington? | |
| He pulled the trigger. | |
| He's going to, of course, he's going to take the blame. | |
| It's the thing to do. | |
| He pulled the trigger. | |
| You know, if he had gone on television last night and said, well, you know, Catherine Armstrong had it right. | |
| I was just minding my own business out there as a duck hunting. | |
| And then Harry came up and he didn't tell us anything he was there. | |
| We didn't know he was back. | |
| And I'm shooting a bird and Ban Harry got hit. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| I mean, if Harry wouldn't have done it, can you imagine what the reaction would have been had that been Cheney's line? | |
| And here's Mary Madeline on the Today Show today, just taking Katie Couric to the cleaners. | |
| Katie wants to know: are we going to be living with the consequences of Cheney's tight lips long after this week's brouhaha? | |
| What's your reaction? | |
| It's completely absurd. | |
| It was the Department of Defense that first revealed the Abu Ghraib situation. | |
| That wasn't uncovered, and there was no cover-up. | |
| That was announced by the administration. | |
| This is absurd. | |
| The pejorative secretive, which is a creation of Cheney critics, is not the same as discreet. | |
| He exercises discipline and discretion when discussing policy outcomes. | |
| The objective here was to reach the public with the greatest amount of information. | |
| That objective was chosen. | |
| It was effective. | |
| And I don't see any outcry from the public, who is our objective. | |
| We're not trying to please the LA Times or the media. | |
| Not trying to please you, Katie Couric, or David Gregory, or anybody else at NBC News. | |
| Speaking, Mr. Carville wants the blood alcohol content of Harry Whittington's blood. | |
| Make a deal, James. | |
| You get us Bill Clinton's medical records. | |
| He was president after all for eight years, and we might have a negotiating starting point. | |
| As usual, half my brain tied behind my back. | |
| Just to make it fair, WorldNet Daily has a well, in some measure, this is funny. | |
| Colorado man who laughed Monday when he first read that Vice President Cheney had shot a hunting companion was himself injured just hours later when he was accidentally blasted by his girlfriend in his own hunting mishap. | |
| Yeah, I read that thing about the vice president. | |
| I said to myself, how can you shoot your friend with your gun? | |
| And then look what happened. | |
| I got shot. | |
| Josh Kayser of Lafayette, Colorado, according to the Longmont Daily Times Call, another great American newspaper, the 21-year-old man was on the trail of raccoons that had been preying on chickens on his family's property. | |
| As he crouched down to look under his shed, his 17-year-old girlfriend, whose name was not released by authorities, crouched down behind him and accidentally shot him with a.22-caliber rifle. | |
| The bullet reportedly entered behind his right ear, exited through his chin, and ended up lodging in his left forearm. | |
| The doctors chose not to remove the bullet, lest they cause nerve damage. | |
| I feel fine, Kayser told the paper. | |
| Feels like a cigarette burn. | |
| He was discharged from Avista Adventist Hospital after spending the night. | |
| Police decided against filing any charges against the girlfriend. | |
| The women always get away with it. | |
| I mean, not even an investigation. | |
| Here's Aaron in Columbus, Ohio. | |
| Hi, Aaron. | |
| Great to have you on the EIB network. | |
| Megadittos Rush. | |
| It's an honor to speak with you, sir. | |
| Thank you, sir. | |
| All right, this is classic. | |
| Last night, Terry McAuliffe on the big story with John Gibson took maybe 10 seconds to somehow mention Osama bin Laden. | |
| I mean, this is a hunting accident, correct? | |
| Yeah. | |
| How did he work? | |
| How did he work bin Laden into this? | |
| Well, he mentioned that Dick Cheney has the most sophisticated communications equipment in the world, but somehow he can't call Osama bin Laden. | |
| I still don't get the connection. | |
| I don't either. | |
| And, you know, John Gibson, you know, he always has Terry McAuliffe on the show. | |
| I really don't know why. | |
| Maybe just for entertainment value. | |
| No, no, I think McAuliffe is a Fox news analyst or a Fox News contributor. | |
| There are a lot of liberal Democrats working at Fox in commentary roles. | |
| That's what makes this criticism of Fox and Britt Hume so critical. | |
| I mean, you don't see Hillary Clinton going on Fox, do you? | |
| She won't dare show up. | |
| And there's not one bit of criticism directed at her because of that. | |
| This is, folks, I'm just, I keep, it sounds like a broken record here, but you have to understand that as the polling data indicates on this on this shooting accident, the vast majority of American people don't think it's any big deal. | |
| And the way they're reacting does not comport to the energy and the anger that the mainstream press has about this. | |
| And it's just a positive sign. | |
| The mainstream press is unable to bend and shape public opinion at will. | |
| Now, if they stay with a story long enough, like the economy's going south, if they stay with that five years, despite the evidence, they can affect that. | |
| But on an individual story that's going to have a limited lifespan of a week or two, they're not able to move public opinion anymore. | |
| And it's, you know, Terry McAuliffe looks like, if you're quoting him accurately, goes on there and tries to draw some analogy to Osama bin Laden. | |
| It's about time a Democrat started figuring out they need to come out with an agenda. | |
| In fact, Dingy Harry sat down for an interview with one of our favorite left-wing kook sites, the American Prospect. | |
| And finally, the interviewer at the American Prospect gets a little impatient. | |
| Well, when are you going to come up with the agenda? | |
| When are you going to announce your version of contract with America? | |
| When are you going to tell us what you guys are for? | |
| And Dingy Harry gets a little testy, and he says, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. | |
| They didn't release the contract with America until September. | |
| The Republicans, we got all kinds of time to release. | |
| The point is, they've got nothing. | |
| And Terry McAuliffe's comment trying to somehow maneuver the lack of capture of Osama bin Laden in this hunting accident is patently absurd. | |
| They're all making themselves look patently absurd. | |
| Hoboken and New Jersey. | |
| Tom, welcome to the program. | |
| Thittos Rush. | |
| Thank you, sir. | |
| I got a cover-up story for you. | |
| How about Eason Jordan and CNN covering up the atrocities of Saddam's two sons? | |
| That's absolutely right. | |
| Eason Jordan was blindsided, too, when he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times explaining this, thought he would be praised for showing great judgment in keeping the CNN Bureau in Baghdad open by failing to report the atrocities that were routinely taking place in Iraq. | |
| And instead, all hell descended on him. | |
| He had no clue that this was going to happen. | |
| He thought he was going to get praised for this. | |
| His theory was: well, look, we got a lot of employees over there that are Iraqi. | |
| We've got to protect them, and we've got to keep our bureau open. | |
| If we start being critical of the regime over here, they're going to kick us out. | |
| We've got to make sure we're here to report the news. | |
| What news are you reporting? | |
| What good is the news that you're reporting if you're sanitizing it in order to keep your bureau open? | |
| I mean, a sixth grader without any journalist training at all could analyze the faulty thinking in that. | |
| I'll give you another example, folks. | |
| They're all upset at Cheney, right? | |
| As Cheney withheld the news for 36 hours. | |
| Dick Cheney finally authorized a hack woman in Texas to call a fleabag little newspaper in corpus Christie. | |
| He didn't tell us, the big boys. | |
| He held back. | |
| What's he hiding? | |
| What's his blood alcohol level? | |
| Does the name Michael Issakoff mean anything to you people? | |
| Is it ring a bell? | |
| Michael Isakoff, the original author of the Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton story. | |
| How long did he hold that? | |
| He held that for weeks until his magazine spiked it. | |
| That story would have never seen the light of day were it not for a whistleblower in Newsweek's ranks who happened to call up old Matt Drudge and say, hey, guess what? | |
| We just spiked. | |
| Bamo story got out there, and it's never been the same. | |
| So these guys, I mean, it's always a one-way street with them. | |
| They want insulation from any of the judgments and criticism that they feel totally entitled and uniquely and exclusively allowed to make themselves on other people. | |
| They can sit in judgment of anybody. | |
| Their news practices and their job performance should never, ever come into any question. | |
| Their personal lives should never be focused upon. | |
| What they have done in their past is irrelevant. | |
| They are the journalists of the day. | |
| They are the fourth estate. | |
| They are the equivalent of the fourth branch of government. | |
| And they want insulation and immunity, if you will, from the same kind of garbage they try to pass off on everybody else and put everybody else through. | |
| So, I mean, here you've got Eason Jordan, and of course, he did pay a price for it, but actually didn't pay a price for that. | |
| He was forced to resign from CNN when he went to the Davos Economic Forum and started blathering on and on and on about how many journalists the U.S. military has targeted. | |
| And not even Barney Frank could put up with a hey, I got a huge, if you tell me, if we're doing that, I want the evidence. | |
| And of course, there wasn't any. | |
| So bye-bye, Eason Jordan. | |
| Issakoff holding back news, not reporting it. | |
| Newsweek spiking it and so forth. | |
| I mean, the double standard is obvious. | |
| And when the same light of attention is focused on the media that they focus on everybody else, They don't hold up. | |
| And it's becoming more and more obvious each and every day. | |
| Tucson and Eric, you're next on the EIB network. | |
| Hello. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Hello. | |
| As an example of that, here in Tucson, we have an ultra-liberal, it's the main paper, the morning paper called the Arizona Star. | |
| Today, on page one, it has the Cheney incident. | |
| On page eight, for the first time, they reported that we've now uncovered tape recordings of Saddam's brother-in-law admitting in 95 that they were developing weapons of mass destruction, that they were concealing them from the inspectors. | |
| And now we have documented proof that Iraq was clearly violating their terms of surrender, but the star sees fit to cover a shooting accident on page one versus now clear, uncontradicted proof that there were weapons of mass destruction, tape recordings of Saddam's brother-in-law admitting it. | |
| Now, why do they talk about cherry-picking news? | |
| This paper here is so extremely liberal that they just, that's their order of priorities. | |
| Well, why not? | |
| Let me page eight. | |
| Let me try to explain it to you. | |
| In the first place, news has become more and more tabloid and personality-driven. | |
| You know, what used to be in the National Enquirer was an embarrassment. | |
| Now, they're a legitimate competitor for scoops and so forth. | |
| And they are quoted routinely if it meets the approval of others in the media. | |
| Your little paper out there in Tucson is simply mimicking the big boys. | |
| Whatever the big boys are going to make big news, they're going to make big news. | |
| They want to get noticed by the big boys. | |
| As to these Saddam tapes, everything you said about these Saddam tapes apparently is true. | |
| There are 12 hours of these tapes. | |
| Nightline portrayed these last. | |
| The thing that Brian Ross did last night on the show with these tapes is that he made it possible for both sides to still claim that their side of the story is accurate. | |
| By both sides, I mean the side that believes, as you do, that these tapes show conclusive evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction, and nobody doubts that. | |
| What these tapes don't show is Saddam moving them 60 days or two weeks prior to our invasion in 2003. | |
| Now, there are Iraqis who are making that claim, and I've got two of them, and their claims appear to be reliable. | |
| But the tapes don't address anything as recently as 2003. | |
| The problem with this story is that you have active intelligence employees at various agencies saying these tapes are worthless, out there saying these tapes don't mean anything. | |
| You have to, look, I told you this is going to happen. | |
| I told you not to get your hopes up about these tapes, folks. | |
| I mentioned this on Monday or Tuesday. | |
| Whereas there are a lot of us who want this information and the tapes to be out for it to be accurate and for it to cause a, oh, wow, moment, the fact is we are outnumbered by people who will do everything they can to discredit what's on these tapes and their relevancy. | |
| A Democratic Party will do everything it can to disabuse the notion that these are authentic and meaningful. | |
| The intelligence agencies, the CIA, which doesn't really have much to hang its hat on in this whole episode, will do its best to discredit these tapes as irrelevant to the current debate because they don't want to sit around and have evidence pop up that they totally blew it. | |
| The people that looked for the weapons of mass destruction after our invasion of 2003 and wrote these big long reports saying, well, we found 53, but there are really no big deal here. | |
| Weren't any big stockpiles? | |
| I mean, there are a lot of people with careers and reputations on the line and are not going to let these tapes upset that. | |
| There's going to be people lining up to do everything they can to discredit these tapes or their relevance to events of today. | |
| And as long as you've got people in the intelligence agencies and in that line of work throwing news out and comments, ah, these tapes are this, they're the product of a bunch of kooks. | |
| These tapes, who are these people with these tapes? | |
| Who are they getting? | |
| If they're not going to back them up, the news media, which has an action line on this story, action line is there were no weapons of mass destruction. | |
| Action line is Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. | |
| It's going to be the truth for your little paper in Tucson. | |
| So as long as you've got a whole lot of quote-unquote experts, there's nothing to these tapes, that action line can continue. | |
| And i'm just telling you. | |
| I'll tell you something else had happened this, I forget the name of this group, the intelligence, it's Loftus's Group, I don't know, I can't remember the name of the group. | |
| They're going to make these tapes public tomorrow. | |
| Nightline got their first dibs on them. | |
| There are two members of this organization that have resigned today or last night, one and they're both former CIA directors. | |
| One is James Woolsey and the other one is John Deutsch and they have resigned and that's also not helping the uh, the credibility of these tapes. | |
| They have resigned because they say that the primary funder, the guy funding this intelligence group, is actually control. | |
| His name is Chirney, he's an Israeli and he's actually controlled by the Russian mob. | |
| And they said once and i've Woolsey said, I got credible evidence I can't stay in an organization that's got primarily funded by somebody who may have mob connections in Russia. | |
| So I I tried to warn you people on monday that this, this tape business, while it looks interesting and while it looks mouthwatering, prepare yourself because you think there are a lot of patriots in this country, you think there are a lot of people who want it known and proven that there were weapons of mass destruction two months before our invasion at Saddam moved them. | |
| You've got powerful people who will never allow that to happen. | |
| If they have anything to say about it, quick time, because it would ruin their careers. | |
| It would take the Democratic Party down the tubes. | |
| Their whole argument is, Bush lied. | |
| Bush lied about weapons and Bush lied us into war. | |
| Carville just said it on television today. | |
| You think these people are going to sit around and twiddle their thumbs while so-called proof comes out that they were wrong? | |
| Back in just a second we have some excerpts of the Saddam tapes that were on Nightline last night. | |
| They uh you will hear the translator. | |
| Here's the first of three, terrorism is coming, that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. | |
| I told them, in the future, what would prevent a booby trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington, or a germ or a chemical one? | |
| This is coming. | |
| This story is coming, but not from Iraq. | |
| All right, that was Saddam on tape and this is in the 90s where he cleans, talking to his buds about having warned America that this could happen. | |
| Here's Tariqa ZIZ, it's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. | |
| This is not done by a state. | |
| No need to accuse a state. | |
| An individual can do it. | |
| Even an American in a house close to the White House. | |
| And this is Saddam's son-in-law talking about how they lied to inspectors. | |
| This is Hussein Kamel. | |
| We did not reveal all that we have. | |
| Not the type of weapons, not the volume of materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. | |
| None of this was correct. | |
| And now what they need. | |
| As for the nuclear service, we say we have disclosed everything but no. | |
| We have undeclared problems in nuclear as well. | |
| So this guy is admitting in this tape how he sandbagged the inspectors. | |
| And they were working on a nuclear program. | |
| Now, current CIA people who've listened to say, ah, this is no big deal. | |
| This is old hack. | |
| We knew all this. | |
| This doesn't prove anything leading up to 2003. | |
| We knew all this. | |
| That's why it's going to have a tough time getting some traction. | |
| I want you to listen to what Brian Ross, the reporter, and Diane Sawyer got out of the tapes. | |
| They had this little chat this morning on Good Morning America. | |
| But you were saying that you can see on them that Saddam, surprisingly, is the calm one in the room. | |
| Not the raving lunatic of public image, but very calm. | |
| And Terek Aziz, who's always thought to be so calm, he's ranting and raving on these things. | |
| It's a very interesting insight into what was going on behind the scenes there. | |
| Yeah, the foreign minister and all the questions about Saddam's coherence. | |
| He seems perfectly absolutely in control and quite intelligent. | |
| What did I miss? | |
| When was it ever said that Saddam was his raving lunatic running around wild-eyed and so forth? | |
| Every time I've seen Saddam on TV, he seems like a normal, reasonable person. | |
| He's not an idiot when the TV cameras are on, but he's such a reasonable guy. | |
| So he's such a calm, cool, collected guy. | |
| It's all his advisors that are the maniacs. | |
| Why, what an insight here, Brian. | |
| Yes, Diane. | |
| Why? | |
| This is really, really instructional. | |
| Just absolutely worthless. | |
| They just obsessed. | |
| Saddam may be a nice guy. | |
| Maybe we were lied to about that, too. | |
| Unbelievable. | |
| I got an idea for the administration. | |
| From now on, make all economic figures, unemployment, growth, housing starts, make those classified numbers secret. |
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