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May 9, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
May 9, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Does that mean it's time to start, Altamont?
See, since I missed a commercial break yesterday, folks, and everybody is now panicking.
They've got signs on the other side of their glass.
They whisper to me on the IFB, which you can't hear, or they clear their throats.
All because for the first time in 30 years in this business, I miss a commercial break.
And it's only because the clocks are in a different place here.
Plus, I was on a roll and just zoomed right past it.
Anyway, greetings.
Welcome back.
Having more fun than I thought possible here in Los Angeles.
I just got a back rub.
That does not happen at the EIB Southern Command.
I'm not going to tell you who.
Doesn't matter.
But there will be more of that when the program ends.
Anyway, thanks, Lee, very much.
It was very touching.
800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address rush at EIBnet.com.
All right, there are other items in the news out there today.
And I know we've been focusing a lot on the Democrats today, folks, but there's a reason for this.
A, we're in an election year.
The Democrats are getting all cocky and arrogant.
Speaker to be Pelosi.
They've got this election all wrapped up.
And some of the stories in the newspaper today are just hilarious, like this business about another meeting to figure out their passions.
And then the story that we had right before the break about this book that Evan Bay and Mark Warner have come out with, which basically says, you know what, we've got to get on the right side of the war on terror.
We've got to make it out like we care about winning it too.
And what they're going to do, they're going to go back to their great presidents of the past.
They mentioned FDR, Harry Truman, and Kennedy.
In fact, and I didn't save this.
I read this and thought it was a bit esoteric to bring it to the radio program.
But Truman is under attack by some leftists.
They're trying to rewrite his racism and his mean-spiritedness in using nuclear weapons against the Japanese.
So, I mean, not even all Democrats agree that Truman's a great guy now.
But anyway, these guys in the book do, Truman, Roosevelt, and Kennedy.
And what they're essentially saying is, hey, look, you know, we have a longer tradition of believing in liberty and freedom than the Republicans do.
They're new at it.
Trust us.
Evan Bay and Mark Warner.
They're just all over the ballpark.
We got some sound bites here from Dianne Feinstein on the NSA program along with General Hayden, who, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, I have learned through exhaustive research that General Hayden is a huge Steelers fan.
I like the guy even more.
I also learned that Dan Rooney, who is the chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers, was his football coach in the Pittsburgh area.
He's a Duquesne graduate.
He goes to a lot of Steelers games, goes back to Duquesne University now and then to make appearances in speeches.
So, Diane Feinstein on Hayden.
Yeah, let's see.
That's probably the sum total of it.
But I mentioned earlier today, Richard Cohen has written a column in the Washington Post.
And the headline for his column is Digital Lynch Mob.
Now, remember, I don't know if you saw it or not, the White House correspondence dinner is a White House correspondence dinner is the equivalent of the Oscars in the drive-by media inside the Beltway.
It's often been said, and I believe this too, that politics is showbiz for the ugly.
People who love being front and center have this notice-me kind of ego, but they're too ugly to be in show business, are made to order for politics.
And so they still try to live the lives of celebrity and make themselves important within their own little universe.
So at this dinner, they had this guy, Stephen Colbert, who's got his own show on the Comedy Central network.
He's got an audience of a million people.
In other words, nobody watches the program.
A million people on a national program is zilch.
It's like working in Oshkosh and having an audience of 10.
Nothing against Oshkosh.
It's just the first market that comes to mind when I think of Little Market.
Small mark, fine place.
Don't misunderstand me.
It's like living in Little Rock and having an audience of five.
All right.
I'm not putting the guy down.
I'm just being honest about his reach.
But that was big stuff to the people who do the White House correspondency.
They bring him in, and he did a routine, and it got praise from some quarters.
The rabid, far-left fringe kook contingent loved it.
Others were made nervous by it because it was rude.
It was said to be rude.
It was said to be bullying and disrespectful of the president, which is not the first time that's happened at the White House correspondence dinner.
But nevertheless, Richard Cohen wrote a piece suggesting that he thought the guy Colbert was a bully and that he was rude and so forth.
And what happened is that Cohen was drowned in emails from rabid dog left-wing fringe kooks, and he writes about it today.
Usually, the subject line said it all.
Some were friendly and agreed that Colbert had not been funny.
Most, though, were in what we shall call disagreement.
I said the man wasn't funny, and not funny has a bullying quality to it.
Others, including some of my friends, said he was funny.
It seemed that most of my correspondents have been egged on to write to me by various blogs.
In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob, and they went roaring after me.
If I didn't like Colbert, I must like Bush.
If I write for the Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger.
If I was over a certain age, which I am, I'm simply out of it, wherever it may be.
What to make of all this?
Well, first, it's not about Colbert.
His show has an audience of about 1 million people, not exactly American Idol numbers.
Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media.
We give you our email addresses, and then in theory, we have this nice chat.
Well, forget that.
Not only is email too often a kind of apostolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,500 emails now backed up in my queue.
But the message in this case truly is the medium.
The emails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred.
This spells trouble, not for Bush, or in 2008, the next Republican candidate.
No, this spells trouble for Democrats.
The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle.
Watch out, Hillary.
I have seen this anger before back in the Vietnam War era.
That's when the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon.
In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
Well, that same hatred is back.
I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage that they're the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during anti-war demonstrations.
I can appreciate some of it.
Institution after institution failed America, the presidency, Congress, and the press.
They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it didn't have.
Now, though, the gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy, and by so doing, aiding their enemies.
If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war.
Its critics will lose twice, once because they couldn't stop it, and once more at the polls.
Now, you may be saying, so what, Rush?
Everybody knows that's the point.
I don't know Richard Cohen, but he's just discovered this hatred.
And he wouldn't have discovered it had he himself not been the recipient of these emails.
I myself have been the recipient of this kind of hatred since my first day on this show, nearly 18 years ago.
I have had to learn to take it as a measure of success.
But it is the hatred and the rage on the left.
You and I, we were aware of this for the last five years to start Florida 2000.
But I guess up until now, that hatred and that rage was considered to be part of the loyal opposition from people inside the beltway.
But whatever, at least Mr. Cohen is aware now of just who the Democratic constituency is, and he is acutely aware of the threat they pose to the Democratic Party, which is a warning that I have been issuing them for five years.
They keep losing elections because of their hatred.
The Wellstone Memorial, the Kerry campaign, it was nothing but hatred.
That's all they have offered, hatred and rage.
And they had this story in the Washington Post yesterday about Pelosi and her policies and their agenda.
And all you can sum it up, we're going to hate Bush even more.
And we're going to make our hatred even more well known.
That's all they've got.
I've been saying for years now, you don't build a movement on that because hatred's not inspirational.
Hatred is not motivational.
It does not inspire people.
People don't want to walk around that angry all the time every day.
That's why I continually ask, what must it be like to be a liberal and wake up?
What a frightening thought that would be.
Get up.
You're mad the first.
You see the clock.
Then you turn on TV.
Whatever you do, you are enraged.
Well, whatever.
Mr. Cohen's just now discovered it.
And he's, of course, drives by media, mainstream media inside the beltway.
It may be a little indication that they're slow to realize what's really going on out there, even in their own party.
Some of the finest bumper music known to exist in the free and oppressed worlds.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, 800-282-2882.
Go to the phones to Louisville.
This is Jared.
It's great to have you on the program, Jared.
Rush.
Yes.
Good to talk to you.
It's a pleasure to be on your show.
I'm a student at the University of Louisville political science student, and I've come up with basically somewhat of a formula for the relationship between power and image in international relations today.
Basically, a thousand years ago, power is what mattered most.
If you have the biggest army, you win.
You know, to the winner goes the spoils.
But today, it's a little bit different because you have, you know, technology, the information age, the importance of public relation and public opinion and how that affects democracies and other governments around the world.
And finally, the rise of China poses such a threat to us that we really can't truly be part of the global community unless we can negotiate with China and stand on level ground with them.
So the bottom line is that I just don't see how U.S. militarism can continue, much less, you know, how we're going to be able to support it with our resources as we're being opposed by such forces as China, Russia, and much of Europe.
Well, that's interesting.
Now, let's talk about that.
That's why you called.
I have often shared a philosophy that a friend of mine from Sacramento, B.T. Collins, once said.
Actually, he said that the purpose of armies is to kill people and break things.
And one of my undeniable truths of life, brilliantly penned in 1986, I wrote that ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
Are you saying that that is not applicable or true anymore?
Well, that is partially what I'm saying.
I believe that, like I said, a long time ago, even until World War I, maybe even up until the beginning of terrorism in the 70s, military force functioned excellently as a means to, you know, in a sense, get your way on whatever level, be it resources, be it politically.
But I think today, because you have terrorism, because America's power in relation to China is shrinking, because of the information age and the internet and the free flow of ideas and money, we have to think about that too.
Money floats around just as easily as ideas do now.
Because of all these things, America, nor any other country in the world, does not possess the resources to act unilaterally on the world stage with our military.
That's the bottom line.
It's the fact that it's too expensive.
Okay, let's take this.
Let's go back.
Let's take this one step at a time.
When I said that ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force, you have to put this in many contexts, not just military use of force.
Yeah.
Let's take a look at Iran today.
Iran's nuking up, or everybody thinks they're nuking up.
Why is everybody quivering?
Why is everybody so damn worried about Iran?
Well, the answer.
Okay, answer it for.
Why is everybody so damn worried about Iran getting nukes?
I could answer that simply.
I think basically our stability in the Middle East.
Hold on, just one second.
You're making it too complicated.
You're making it too complicated.
The reason people are worried about it is because they're lunatics and they will use one.
Well, Brush.
Or, and hear me on this.
Or they are threatening to.
You don't have to use force, but if you have a credible threat, if people believe that you will, you have achieved the same thing.
Yeah.
Now, you talk about our relationship with China.
You say that we don't have the ability to unilaterally get our way anymore.
We do.
What we don't have is the willingness to use the full force of our power.
We are the most powerful nation on Earth, but we do not have, for reasons we've been discussing the last couple of weeks, we don't have the will to fully project the power that we have.
But when you talk about a totalitarian country...
Now, hang on, hang on just a second.
When you talk about a totalitarian country like anyone, what do you think it is that keeps the people of those countries enslaved?
It's the aggressive use of force.
Dictators don't use PR in marketing.
They might trying to fool Democrats in this country, but they don't use it.
In fact, they keep all of this free flow of ideas.
They do their best to keep that from their populations.
The aggressive use of force is constituted in many different ways.
We built the B-2 stealth bomber hoping never to have to use it.
It was a deterrent.
We have nuclear weapons hoping we never have to use them.
Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head there.
It's having the force, but having the will to use it.
And I think that we do have the force.
And look at India, China, Pakistan, Israel, China, Russia, France, Great Britain.
They all have the nuclear bomb.
And the fact that we're trying to get in the way of Iran's possession of the nuclear bomb in many ways sets a double standard.
Israel has the nuclear bomb.
If Iran doesn't have the nuclear bomb, they feel threatened.
So I think on a certain level, you cannot stop the spread of nuclear proliferation because, after all, the cat has been let out of the bag, so to speak.
And at this point, to try to stop them is only going to cause us more problems, I think.
No, I mean, I agree in seriously.
You're thinking the wrong way.
You're thinking the wrong way.
You're being caught up in this whole guilt business.
If we do what's in our best interest, you have to start from a premise that we're the good guys.
And some people have problems with that premise, like the left in this country.
You have to start with the premise that the things that we do are for the betterment of all the world's people.
That's our objective.
I firmly believe it is.
That's why we're in Iraq.
That's why we're doing the war on terror to protect ourselves.
It's why we do tsunami aid.
It's why we rush to every corner of the globe when there's a disaster.
We're the one country on the face of the earth that has the resources and the ability to be able to do it.
Plus, we're good people.
Now, you say we can't stop nuclear proliferation.
We sure as hell can.
Shimon Perez, it goes down to do we have the will to stop it?
Are we going to get caught up in guilt?
Oh my God, they're going to hate us if we do this.
If we take out Iran's nukes, why that's going to make the Chinese mad?
It's going to make the Russians mad.
What are they going to do?
So you get worried about all the things, and we subordinate what's in the best interests of free people the world over to what people our enemies are going to think or what they might do.
I guarantee you, we are the only nation that's used a nuke, and not one nuke has been used since.
The purpose of those two nukes in Japan was to save American military lives and defeat the enemy, and it worked on both counts.
And since the world saw the horrors of the use of those weapons, not one has been used.
The threat, the Soviets used it to threaten their neighbors.
The Iranians are doing the same thing.
And Shimon Perez in Israel said, What is this notion that they're going to blow us off the map?
We can blow them off the map too, which is true.
And there is a way to stop their nuclear proliferation.
It's do you try it diplomatically or do you stand up to them and say, Look, Mahmoud, we know your game.
We know what you're trying to do.
There is a nuclear club in this world, but it's made up of democracies that are elected by free people, and those arsenals are for defensive purposes.
We don't think you have a desire to use your nukes for defensive purposes because nobody's ever talked about nuking you, but you're talking about nuking Israel and you're talking about nuking other places, and you're talking, and you are sponsoring terrorism in your country.
You're training terrorists, you've been doing it for years.
You get a suitcase-sized nuke in the hands of a Mohammed Atta, and you constitute a threat to us, and we're not going to allow it.
We're not doing it that way simply because we don't have the guts.
For the very reasons that you cited, we're worried about what the world is going to say.
Well, hold on, just one second, if I may, because you're talking about guilt and kind of the history of it all.
But I want to go away from that.
I want to say that it doesn't matter what is necessarily right and wrong in my argument, because my argument is that we do not have the ability, the resources on our own to stop Iran from getting nuclear bombs.
We need China, we need Russia.
And if our answer to the quandary of a nuclear Iran is military force unilaterally, well, then we are going to run into a very serious roadblock, and that's going to be the will of the American people coupled with the will of the rest of the world.
I want you to hold that thought.
I want you to hold that thought because I'm going to try to demonstrate to you where you might be wrong about the fact that we can't do it without Russia and China.
You're saying we can't do it without two nations that are truly, when you boil it all down, our enemies.
You're saying we can't succeed without the cooperation of our enemies.
Hold your come back and expand on this and give you an illustration why that may not be accurate right after this.
Rush Limbaugh emitting vocal vibrations coast to coast from Los Angeles, well-known radio rack and tour here, general all-round good guy, harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Back to Jared in Louisville.
All right, now, Jared, we can't do this Iran's situation unilaterally.
We need China and Russia.
Two examples: Kosovo.
We went it alone.
UN wouldn't even join us.
The UN's there now with a NATO, and they can't hold it together.
But we were unilateral in Kosovo, and we weren't going to put up with ethnic cleansing and all of that.
Now, Kosovo didn't have the ability to fight back, especially the way we did it.
We waged war from 15,000 feet, but they didn't have any allies around the world that joined against us simply because we were taking unilateral military action.
The Russians didn't lift a finger.
They probably weren't as oriented in opposition to us then as they are today.
But Iraq and Iran are even a better A-B side-by-side comparison.
For all intents and purposes, we and the Brits and the Australians and the Italians went in there.
It was hardly a, it was a large coalition.
We had the superpower Belize, sent a couple tanks, but it was basically four nations with us being a large one.
We saw a threat.
We believed weapons of mass destruction and all that.
We went in, and we have taken out that threat.
We have made sure, regardless what Iraq is, whatever you want to argue it is, Iraq no longer poses a threat to that region militarily, dictator taking over oil fields.
Right next door is Iran.
And we've been dealing with them in a whole different way.
We've been going the diplomatic route.
We'll let the French and the Europeans and the Germans handle the discussions along with the United Nations.
Zilch, Zero.
All we get is Iran beating its chest, threatening to nuke Israel, bidding the oil price up.
Now, you can look at the diplomatic route, and of course the Chinese and the Russians are going to oppose sanctions, but let me sanctions aren't going to do diddly squat.
We sanctioned Saddam, and we ended up with the oil for food program.
We're not going to put sanctions are not going to cause Iran to change its attitude or its policy one matter or iota.
So it doesn't matter whether the Chinese or Russians are with us on this or not.
The question boils down real simple.
Do we want the Iranians to join the nuclear club?
If we say, okay, fine, then stand back and let it happen.
If we don't, which is the tougher decision, then we can't start relying on enemies and others who are really not going to help us if we sense it's something that needs to be done.
Well, I think you're right.
We do not want Iran to be a nuclear Iran.
But the point is, is that to stop them from becoming a nuclear Iran, we have two options.
It's the unilateral option and the multilateral option, the UN option.
And if we forego the UN option and try to do this on our own, it will backfire in a way that will make Iraq look like a playground, a little recess for kindergartners.
I mean, it is a totally different scenario.
And when it boils down to it, you need the UN for this.
And if you try to do it without the UN, it's only going to hurt our global image, which is already faltering.
And it's going to make it harder for us to get what we want out of the world.
Jared, two questions.
Number one, on what basis do you believe, you said that Iran will be far worse than make Iraq look like a playground?
What that tells me is that you have bought into the PR and the spin and the marketing that you say now governs the world, that Iraq is a failure.
I would argue with you that it's not.
I think Iraq is a tremendous success story.
I think it is a success in that we got Saddam out, but I think that our military actions there have been easier than they ever would be in Iran.
Iran has the fourth largest army in the world.
Well, you're assuming that that's going to be the case.
What you've just done is confirm something that worries me, and that's because of the way Iraq has been spun and reported.
We are now going to paralyze ourselves from taking additional action that may be the right thing to do because we don't want the heat and we don't want the disagreements and we don't want the little skirmishes.
We're fighting this Iraq thing in a minimalist way.
And if we did it in Iran the same way, you could maybe make the argument, but is that a reason not to do the right thing simply because what the spinsters and the marketers and the PR people are going to say about the process?
This is why you need leaders, Jared.
This is why you need really huge backbone leaders who don't care about the stuff that's irrelevant.
Reality is what matters, not what PR people say, and not what the media says, and not what the Spinmeisters say.
The second thing you said was the UN.
We have to go through the UN.
That sounds like your professor in your political science class.
You can't name for me one successful UN mission of this type ever.
Well, and that's mostly because there have always been people blocking the UN, be it the United States, be it France, be it China.
There's always been people blocking the UN.
Or you take it a step further away from military, the Kyoto Treaty, excellent situation where America blocked UN action, which helped to undermine it.
Everything that people are doing.
But the Kyoto Treaty was nothing but a fleece job of the American taxpayers' back pocket.
The world's largest polluter is China.
They were exempt from it.
A typical UN move.
When you say people block the UN, like Russia and China, they are the UN.
Every member of it is the UN.
The United Nations, as a functioning, achievement-oriented body, is doomed to failure because it is mostly made up of the world's tyrants and dictators who are given legitimacy as leaders and diplomats.
They get free home turf on the U.S. soil, and their express purpose is to stymie our success, our power, and our growth, and to fleece us at the same time.
But they've never succeeded in a peace mission.
They're blowing it in Bosnia.
They're blowing it in Africa where blue-helmeted peacekeepers are now in trouble for having sexual abuse problems and rape of the citizens in whatever country it is.
I forget the name of the country.
They're a dismal failure to say that only the UN can do something is to believe that something that's never been can happen.
Well, I don't think that only the UN can, but I believe that for the United States to try to do it the way we did it with Iraq will ultimately backfire because you have too much opposition.
You have too much power in Iran itself.
But that's the whole point of my argument.
It's not that Iran should be a nuclear Iran or that we should stop trying to make the world a better place.
It's that as long as we're doing it on our own, it's not going to work.
And it's actually not going to be helpful and beneficial to us.
That's my point.
I just think we need to take that back.
See, I profoundly disagree with you in the most simplest of ways.
We define our self-interests, again, as I said, from the starting point, that we're the good guys, that we defend and protect and feed the people in the world who need it.
We do our best to help out as many people as possible.
So if we have to act unilaterally, as long as we're acting in our national security interests and our national interests, then it's almost a responsibility that leaders of this country have.
It's called the Constitution.
It's almost a responsibility people have.
When you start saying we can't do this, we can't do it unilaterally because it's going to cause all kinds of problems and so forth, you're subordinating the best interests of the people of this country to other irrelevant concerns, ultimately.
Well, I think going back to what you said about China, you basically instituted a Cold War mentality in saying that China and Russia are enemies.
I think that is, I mean, a downright lie, basically.
China and Russia are not our enemies.
And to say that is almost a foregone conclusion.
Just because they don't support us in going into Iran at this moment does not mean that you should be saying they're enemies.
Not because that.
The Chinese are communists.
Oh, okay.
Communists?
Now, Jared, come on.
Don't disappoint me here, my man.
All right, all right, go ahead.
But I'll tell you something.
If you don't think the Chinese are working to undermine our power and to make us dependent on their involvement, like they're buying all of our national debt, they buy quite a bit of it, the treasuries.
If you don't think that the Chinese have a desire to cut us down to side, and believe me, if they could do it without using military power, they'd do it.
I'm not saying they want to nuke us or even wage war, but if they could diminish, same thing with Russia.
Look at, we're the guys at the top of the mountain.
We pose a threat to their way of life.
We're already, you could say, invading their country with capitalism.
And while they're benefiting from it financially, they monitor this.
They're very careful that it doesn't spread and grow.
They still run people over with tanks.
If they demand freedom, they put people in jail.
They are political prisoners extraordinaire.
And if the Russians, if they could undermine us, they would do it too.
That's why global interaction on economics is considered to be so important.
And I think that's why ultimately they're never going to succeed in destroying us unless we help them along.
But if you think that there are buddies, you have to reassess that.
Well, I think it's interesting to look at America's reaction to the Chinese president's visit to our country.
On the TV, on one channel, we had the whole coverage, the whole thing, the speech and everything.
On Fox News, they were more interested in Natalie Holloway's disappearance in Aruba than they were with the Chinese president's visit to our country.
Now, Jared, you're drifting away from me here.
No, no, no.
I'm bringing up the point.
You're drifting away from it.
Come on, Jared.
What's it?
I'm bringing up the point.
The thing that you need to take away from the visit of President WHO is that when a Falun Gong member stood up and protested him, as Cindy Sheehan constantly tries to do to George W. Bush, she was embraced as a hero.
This is a woman whose family, fellow citizens, are being murdered and placed in jail in China for wanting to practice a religion.
And she stood up and asked President Bush to call President Hu on it, not let him get away.
And the media embraced her and talked about how rude she was, how rude Bush was.
That was the story that came out of the visit of President Hu, plus the fact that the president, he also threatened Formosa, threatened us on Formosa.
We've got a treaty with Taiwan that if the Chikoms attack them and try to take the island back over, that we will defend.
And there's some question about whether we'll do that.
Now, the president lectured him on human rights and so forth.
It was not all that great a visit when you bought it all down, but the news that you should have taken out of it was not that Fox News was focused on Natalie Holloway.
Now, you're better than that, Jared.
Otherwise, I wouldn't have spent this amount of time with you on the phone.
I got to go because I got to take a commercial break.
Otherwise, everybody's going to start clearing their throat in my ear thinking I don't know how to run my own show.
But I hope you keep, I hope you remember this conversation because many people have had the opportunity, have desired the opportunity you have just had, and that is to have an extended conversation with me.
Don't waste it.
John Kerry and the Democrats, they have this phrase, speaking truth to power, a bunch of esoteric gobbledygook.
Well, I am Rush Limbaugh speaking truth to kooks.
Happily each day here on the EIB network.
Jared, I know you're still out there, probably dazzled and all that.
Let me tell you, you talked about Iran and its fourth largest army.
I'm quivering in my boots, Jared.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
That fourth largest army was defeated by a ragtag bunch of Iraqis in an eight-year war.
And Iraq had a fifth largest army.
And before we went into Iraq, we're like, oh, it's going to be terrible.
50,000 buddy bags.
Summer heat in the deserts.
Our troops aren't going to be able to handle it.
It's going to be a wipeout.
They're more committed than we are because we're soft Americans, blah, All the PR and spin that you think runs the world was as wrong in Iraq as your buildup of Iran is.
Don't forget this, too.
Iran, you might think of them as this major military power because they're out there rattling their nuclear sabers.
They're using age-old, decrepit, defunct, no longer manufactured Soviet equipment.
And the Soviets probably gave them what they didn't need or want anymore.
I'm not saying it'd be a pushover, but we've got to stop this notion of building these people up that we have problems with so large that we get frightened into dealing with it.
We're the United States of America for crying out loud.
America and exceptionalism is still possible.
It still exists.
All it needs is a leader willing to put it on display.
Who's next on this project?
Jeff in Madison, Wisconsin.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
Hey, you were talking earlier about, I think it was 19 congressmen or senators that put together a book.
Well, it's a former governor, a senator, and 17 pollsters and analysts.
Okay.
Well, my point is they wanted to go back to the days of Truman and Roosevelt.
And then you were also talking about Feingold.
And tell me where I'm wrong here.
Wouldn't it seem like Feingold would impeach Truman and Roosevelt today?
Oh, I think they would impeach FDR first because he had a domestic spy program that was a genuine domestic spy program.
He was opening people's mail.
He deterred the Chinese, or the Japanese, rather.
He put them in those camps out in California.
He violated a whole bunch of people's human and civil rights, quote unquote.
He had all kinds of spying going on in this country because he was concerned that we were being infiltrated and he wanted to find out.
He wasn't going to allow it to happen.
And he wasn't spying on people to get the dirt on him.
He was trying to protect the country.
But under the terms of what Feingold's saying today, under the Democrats, they'd have to impeach their hero, FDR.
And they probably would impeach Truman for dropping a couple atomic bombs on the harmless, non-threatening Japanese.
Yeah, the Democrats of old, including JFK, if they were able to be brought back to life or brought back here in a UFO, they couldn't join today's Democratic Party.
It's too far.
Those guys would be more like, well, Roosevelt, he's still a big socialist when it came to the New Deal, but when it was time to fight and win World War II, he did it.
He wouldn't recognize the Democratic Party today.
Well, these seem to me to be the problem.
I'm like you yesterday.
I'm actually optimistic about November because when you actually answer or have to ask the questions that need to be asked, like what would they do in Iraq?
Most of the people I hear think we should stay in Iraq.
Not that they like being there, but they think we should stay there.
And when you ask a Democrat, well, yeah, we're going to stay there, but we should do it, like you said, smarter.
They were like Nancy Colossi yesterday.
They pulled us out of there.
Their strategy in Iraq is cut and run.
The Democrats, those of you, of course, fortunately have no children.
But those of you with children, you know that one of the first lessons you try to teach them is finish what you start.
Otherwise, don't start it.
Because an unfinished project, anything, if you're going to quit, don't even start it.
Finish what you start.
The Democrats cut and run in Iraq.
Finish what they start is a foreign concept to them.
The Democrats today have a situational view of issues and politics.
They really don't want to go on record saying they believe X, Y, and Z or A, B, and C because they believe that the circumstances are so fluid that they want the flexibility to take any position that they think will help them.
They don't want to be tied to a position on the basis of principle because that means if the tide turns, they might have to stick to it and they don't want to have that shackle, so to speak.
So as a result, they won't stake a position.
That's why they're not going to do it.
They're trying to remain flexible.
That's why the drive-by media works in concert with them every day.
Any news story can become the new Democrat issue that they are going to win back the House with or they are going to kick Bush out of White House with or whatever.
And that is not going to take them anywhere because it's obvious to anybody paying attention, and voters do what they can be counted on to do and accomplish, and that's very little other than work in their own self-interest.
Can I take commercial break now, Altamont?
Okay, do it.
I want to thank everybody here at the EIB Western Command Center in Los Angeles.
This has been fun two days.
It's been so much fun.
I want to come back and do it again sooner rather than later.
I have a House Ear Institute 60th anniversary dinner to attend tonight, and flying right home after it.
We'll be back at Southern Command tomorrow.
Probably touchdown around 7 a.m., which means that tomorrow's program will be unpredictable.
Speaking truth to Cooks, Rush Lindbos signing off the airwaves.
See you tomorrow, my friends.
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