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June 16, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:06
June 16, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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Hi, welcome back, folks.
Nice to have you.
Rush Limbaugh making more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying because we here are invested in the truth.
We have a relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth here.
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Join us.
It's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Telephone number if you want to participate, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Monday through Thursday, we talk only about things that I care about.
If I talk about things I don't care about, I'm going to sound bored, and then you'll get bored, and that doesn't work.
But on Friday, when we go to the show, go to the phones, show's all yours.
We will talk about things that I don't care about.
Maybe not for long, but we will.
It's a chance for you to get something off your chest or to ask a hard-hitting question or even a stupid question.
There are stupid questions, despite what people say.
People say there's no such thing as a stupid question, but yes, there are.
800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
All right, if new Fox News poll finds that Americans overwhelmingly see Iraq finalizing its government as a victory, and most see the death of Zarkawi that way as well, the president's job approval rating out of the 30s in this poll for the first time since February currently stands at 40%.
In addition, there is widespread confidence the military will fully investigate allegations over the incidents at Haditha.
And a clear majority think that almost all U.S. troops are treating Iraqi people with respect.
Well, I'm so happy to learn that in a poll.
What a stupid.
What's starting to die down?
Haditha?
I think some people are beginning to question the reporting out of there.
And some of the defense lawyers for the Marines are starting to get a little aggressive.
And that's creating a different picture.
We still don't know yet, but we'll see.
But I do think it's quite possible that the drive-by media grasped onto this and is clinging to it because they hope it's true, just like the Dan Rather Mary Mapes story.
And given the way things have been going for them lately, I think that could happen.
The whole thing could blow up in the drive-by media space, their own version of an IED.
But I was watching the, well, I was not, I was listening.
I was driving home and I was listening to the Fox Roundtable trying to figure out why Bush is up to 40% in their own poll.
They were looking at the internals and they couldn't quite come up with an answer.
So it remains a mystery.
One of the things, though, that you can find is that most of the increase in support comes from the president's party.
Republicans, 82% of Republicans say they now approve of Bush's job performance, which is up from 71% last month and a low of 66% in April.
So clearly, the approval numbers come from the Republican side of this, as would be expected.
I think one of the things that may explain it is that during the period of time of this polling, there was much less drive-by media, incessant cackling at Bush.
Things were going Bush's way.
I've always thought that the reason these numbers are as low as they are is the result of five years of incessant badgering, bickering, focusing on crisis after crisis after crisis, doom after doom after doom, gloom after gloom after gloom.
Even with people who only casually sample a drive-by media, that is going to have an effect on people.
There also might be a component in this related to immigration.
The immigration bill has stalled.
This immigration bill is not going anywhere right now.
Denny Hastert said the other day, and I don't know if this took place within the period of time the poll took place.
Denny Hastert said, Well, we're going to take a long look at that.
I don't think we're going to get to this before our August recess.
I'm not really sure we will.
And I can tell you there was a lot of hosannas and cheers out there when that happened.
One more thing about this vote today in the House.
Basically, it was a resolution refusing to set timetables to get out of Iraq.
42 Democrats joined with the Republicans in voting for the resolution.
But it also, the resolution also linked the war on terror with the war in Iraq.
Now, everybody knew what the vote was going to be, or pretty close to what the vote was going to be, yet our old buddy Ronald Brownstein in the L.A. Times had this incredulous story, I'm incredulous, over this story.
Here's the headline: Iraq debate pits uncertainty against anxiety.
The new Republican drive to focus on the Iraq war represents a high-stakes gamble.
That doubts about the direction Democrats might set on national security exceed anxieties about the course charted by what gamble, Ron?
Where do you get out of the beltway, Ron?
That's no gamble.
Doubts about the direction Democrats might set on national security.
People walk around.
You think people are braced for hurricanes.
People are braced for Democrats controlling the national security apparatus.
It's no gamble, Ron.
Why do you think they did this?
42 Democrats joined them, Ron.
I know he wrote the story before the vote, but they knew how this is going to come out.
In the process, writes Mr. Brownstein, Republicans risk deepening their identification with a war that surveys show still spark skeptic.
Ron, stop reading the polls and get out there get a visa and go to Missouri or go to Iowa, go to Oklahoma and find out what people really think outside of your surveys.
The House of Representatives is a barometer of where the American people are.
42 Democrats joining the Republicans.
Those 42 Democrats are up for reelection.
I mean, this is hilarious that he actually thinks Republicans are taking a gamble with this resolution.
This shows the Democrats have no unity, period, on this issue at all.
Let's go to some of the, well, yeah, one comment from Senator Turbin today, this morning on the Senate floor talking about the 2,500 killed in action benchmark in Iraq.
Mr. President, there's been a debate this week in Washington over the war in Iraq.
It was also a week when the Department of Defense reported that we've lost 2,500 soldiers.
2,500.
White House spokesperson Tony.
Stop, How many did he say?
2,500?
He said it, what, once, twice, three times.
Did everybody hear that?
2,500.
I just want to make sure you all get - this is the point he's trying to make.
And I want to help Senator Turbin make 2,500 killed in Act.
2,500 in three years.
We had 17,000 murders last year in this country.
2,500.
This is a record for fewest casualties in a major war that the United States has conducted, but 2,500.
This is the benchmark.
This is how they measure.
Okay, resume tape.
Comment on this loss of 2,500.
I'm sure that the statement that he made doesn't reflect what he really feels in his heart when he said it's a number.
I'm sure he feels, as we all do, that it's more than a number.
It's more than an aggregate.
It is 2,500 precious lives that have been lost of men and women in uniform willing to stand and serve and risk their lives for America.
I've attended some of the funerals.
They're heartbreaking.
All right.
He was talking about Tony Snow.
Tony Snow said 2,500 is a number.
Let's go back.
It was yesterday afternoon, a Washington White House press briefing.
This is what Tony actually said.
It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks, people want something.
The president would like the war to be over now.
Everybody would like the war to be over now.
So from that, Senator Turbin, much as he has done with me or others, goes to the Senate floor making these wacko, ridiculous statements, taking out of context Tony Snow's heartless.
Tony Snow sounded heartless.
I'm sure he's not heartless, but he sounded heartless.
Can we go back June 15th of last year?
You might remember this almost one year ago to the day, just one year ago, Dick Durbin said this.
If I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Paul Potter, others, that had no concern for human beings.
Sadly, that's not the case.
This was the action of Americans in treatment of their own prisoners.
Right.
So one year ago, Senator Turbin is accusing Americans of acting like Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or members of Pol Pot's regime.
Today, he wrings his hands over the fact that 2,500 Americans have been killed in action.
Tony Snow has nothing to apologize for.
Dick Durbin did back in just a second.
Just got a note from our buddy the Hutch, Ken Hutchison up in Seattle.
He wants to weigh in on why white men don't hear as well as black men do.
He says everybody's always screaming at white guys, telling them everything's their fault.
I wouldn't want to hear that myself.
Ha ha ha.
Buddy the Hutch.
Here's Scott in Bur Oak, Michigan.
You're next on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Meghad Dittos from Buroke, Michigan.
Pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
I got a comment about the Lawnmower lawsuit.
Yes, sir.
That was in Virginia.
Yeah.
John Deere, I used to be a service technician for a John Deere dealer, and they do make a John Deere tractor that as soon as you put the unit in reverse, it kicks out the mower, so you cannot mow in reverse.
And we have had people that have bypassed the switch, so you can still mow in reverse.
Well, now, I'm looking for the story.
When you say a tractor, is this actually a lawnmower?
It's riding lawnmower.
Riding lawnmower.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then this lawyer didn't know what he was talking about.
Apparently.
Doesn't surprise me.
John Deere was the first to implement this in the industry.
And they have sold many units.
And when we were servicing a lot of these units, a lot of people have gone.
Now, wait.
I've found what may be the difference.
You said the John Deere blades come to a screeching halt when you put it in reverse.
That's correct.
What the lawyer said here, Or what the jury found in this case was that the manufacturer of the mower in question here, which is MTD products in Cleveland, responsible for not designing a mower that automatically stops its blades whenever it rolls backwards.
Well, if it rolls backwards, you can't.
Most of these units now are hydrostatic, and you can't roll it backwards.
MTD, they don't have anything that has this technology.
Well, but is there a difference in something rolling not in gear versus putting it in reverse?
Anything that is hydrostatic, you can't roll it backwards.
Gear-driven.
All right.
All right.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Obviously, we've got the upper crust of intelligentsia.
You're obviously Mensa.
We've got people from Rio Linda here.
Hydrostatic.
You've got to explain that to some people in this audience.
I, of course, know what it is, but you're going to have to explain this.
Hydrostatic is like a pump-driven gear system, and you cannot engage it unless the mower is running.
There is a release on the back of the mower, so you can push it if the mower is not running.
Okay, so what you're saying is it's not possible to have a mower in one of the three forward-speed gears.
No.
Going up a hill and then lose steam and then start rolling back still in.
Not with a hydrostatic John Deere.
No.
Well, but we're talking about MTD.
MTD does not have that technology.
When we were servicing, we didn't just service John Deere's.
We serviced everybody.
But at that time, MTD did not have that technology.
Okay, so the lawyer is wrong when he says that no such mower exists or has ever been tested.
That's correct.
So you agree that the MTD company should have been found liable in the death of this little boy?
It's not a trick question.
Let me give you the details.
This is probably a wise thing to do because people may have heard this in the first hour.
This is a Roanoke, Virginia.
A jury has awarded $2 million to a couple whose four-year-old son died after being run over by a riding lawnmower at his daycare center.
They do not describe details of the accident here.
Correct.
So I don't, they said, I just assume that this thing went backwards over the kids.
Well, for them to state that there's no mower in the industry that the blades will stop when it rolls backwards is incorrect.
So the basis for their argument there, I think, is false.
Well, maybe so, but is it, okay, you've got people, the lawnmower is a, in addition to being hydrostatic, it doesn't have a brain.
That's pretty much it.
You've got owners of the lawnmower.
You've got owners of the daycare center where this happened.
Yeah, we got an operator malfunction is what happened.
Yeah, okay.
Operator malfunction.
And yet it's the manufacturer of the lawnmower that is being held liable here for the death of the little boy.
Now, this is, I mean, obviously it's a tragedy here, but.
Absolutely.
And I've got two kids with disabilities, and I'd hate for anything to happen to my two kids.
And I've got an older John Deere, and actually I've got four riding lawnmowers, and they're not allowed to even be outside when I mow.
Yeah.
Well, I have a friend that grew up year behind me in school in Cape Girardeau, and she was out in the yard minding her own business one day.
And I think her dad, her brother, one is mowing the lawn, and a lawnmower kicked up a rock and hit her in the chin, big gash, lots of blood.
They didn't even think about suing the lawnmower maker back then.
This is in the 50s, 60s.
The thought would have never occurred to anybody to sue the lawnmower manufacturer.
Yeah, it's all a sue country now.
And then, you know, you buy a bag of bread And your kids jokes on it, you're going to sue the bread manufacturer.
Well, we're getting close to suing a car maker for accidents.
In fact, let me find this to get this.
This is just, this is, and this is not new.
This has been coming, but it is the latest.
And I don't expect you to comment on this because you're a lawnmower expert, not Kentucky Fried Chicken expert.
But our old buddies at Center for the Science in the Public Interest, in the first place, I am dubious that these people are even scientists.
This is our old buddy Michael Jacobson and his anorexic girlfriends.
These are the ones that got Chinese food labeled as a killer.
They called the Fettuccine Alfredo heart attack on a plate.
Coconut oil out of theaters and concession stands to make popcorn.
It's just a perfect drive-by media story.
Trans fat lawsuit against KFC.
But we have somebody here from Fox Steve Malloy who's actually saying that this lawsuit is based on thin science.
The Center for Science and the Public Interest sued KFC this week, claiming the food chain's use of cooking oil containing trans fats is unhealthy.
KFC said the lawsuit was frivolous, plans to fight it in court.
It's not clear that KFC understands how frivolous the lawsuit really is.
In its lawsuits, the Center for Science and the Public Interest asked a Kentucky judge to order Kentucky Fried Chicken to use other types of cooking oils and to make sure that customers know how much trans fats trans fat KFC's food contains.
The lawsuit alleges that trans fats, vegetable oils that have been altered to be firm at room temperature, increase the risk of heart disease.
Now, in announcing that KFC would fight the lawsuit, a company spokesman said that KFC is looking at using other types of oil for cooking, but it's committed to maintaining their unique taste and flavor.
But there's no need for KFC to switch cooking oils because the entire trans fat scare is based on junk science, says Mr. Malloy.
While there are studies that purport to link trans fats with heart disease, when you look at the data and methodology behind the studies, their claims rapidly fall apart.
Despite the absence of real-world evidence that trans fats are dangerous, the alarmism continues.
There are at least two explanations for this phenomenon.
Also worth considering is the fact that the CSPI has been in the business of scaring people about the food they eat for more than 30 years, from labeling Fettuccine Alfredo as a heart attack on a plate to claiming that fat substitute olestra might make truck drivers sick enough to lose control of their cars while driving to claiming caffeinated beverages cause miscarriages.
CSPI has been and remains on the cutting edge of dietary absurdity, but they perfectly fit the drive-by media's recipe and template for news.
Back after this, my friend.
What do you mean, Gonna are having a good time?
More fun than a human being should be allowed to have with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
I had a breeze through the Stephen Malloy piece.
Stephen Malloy, by the way, the Kentucky Fried Chicken, he publishes junkscience.com, CSRW, or CSRWatch.com, he's a junk science expert and an advocate of free enterprise, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
And he's taking on this whole trans fat myth, he says.
And he said that there are two explanations for the phenomenon of the alarmism over trans fat and dietary fat, period.
First, he says it's been clear to the dietary research community for years, although they've been reluctant to share this information with the public, that the scare over dietary fat intake has been overhyped.
Like most everything else about what we eat has been overhyped, frankly, from bran muffins to oat brand to coffee.
I mean, it's it gets frustrating to watch, and everybody gets caught up in all these panics, crisis after crisis after crisis after crisis.
He says, vinyl nail in the coffin of dietary fat hysteria came earlier this year when a major study concluded that low-fat diets provide no demonstrable health benefits over high-fat diets.
So the trans fat scare constitutes a whole new way for researchers to scare the public about fat and to keep their government grants coming.
Second, the trans fat scare is a great new rationale for food manufacturers to introduce new and perhaps more expensive products that they market as good for you.
Food companies learned long ago that there's more profit in reformulating and marketing new and healthier products rather than trying to fight the bad science wielded by the well-funded, well-entrenched, and essentially unaccountable public health bureaucracy.
Of course, the trans fat scare doesn't work for every company in the food industry.
Some of them can't reformulate.
Several years ago, due to pressure from the Center for Science and the Public Interest, McDonald's announced it would switch cooking oils to eliminate trans fat, but the CSPI wound up suing them anyway after McDonald's could not find a substitute cooking oil that met its standards, particularly for its french fries.
Everybody loves McDonald's french fries.
And these are nothing more than a bunch of little liberals with a fax machine and a logo.
And they go out there, they do press releases and press conferences, and it just fits tidally with the drive-by media template of news.
Something's going to kill us.
Oh, we're going to die.
Oh, it gets unhealthy.
Oh, it's bad.
Oh, oh, good for us.
These people, look at them.
They care.
They're just people with big hearts and they want to save people's lives.
Blah, blah, blah.
Now they're just a bunch of little losers here who want some attention, who want to have some meaning in their lives.
And they're authoritarians who want to tell everybody else how to live their lives, all under the notion that we're going to die.
This could kill you.
As though you do what they say, you won't die.
Back to the phones.
Jenny in King George, Virginia.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Nice to have you.
Thank you, Rush.
I just have a quick question.
It goes back to the story about the little boy.
The article that you read, did it mention anything about the daycare taking responsibility?
In a civil suit, the Justin's family, the four-year-old little boy, actually not a civil suit.
They're seeking an out-of-court settlement with the owners of the daycare center.
But they're not taking him to court.
You want to know why the daycare center is not being held liable?
Correct.
I'll tell you.
I would think that them more than the companies that just happened to make the lawnmower should be responsible.
I agree with you.
I'll tell you why, though.
Here's exactly what.
Thank the trial lawyers out there and thank the drive-by media after years and years.
And thank the Democratic Party.
Because you wouldn't have juries finding in this way were it not for all three elements, the trial lawyers, and then you've got the drive-by media and the people.
The drive-by media and the Democratic Party have for years been attacking big business.
They've attacked all corporate business, manufacturing, drug, I don't care what it is, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken as killers, wanton killers.
They don't care about their employees, and they don't care about their customers.
The Merck people, they created Vioxx because they wanted their customers to have heart attacks.
They didn't care.
I mean, this is absurd, but this is what they want to create in the eyes of as many Americans as possible.
And this is why trial lawyers contribute lots of money to Democrats.
The Democrats will then go out and use class envy.
Big business is rich.
Big business underpays you.
Big business doesn't take care of you.
They don't give you health benefits.
They're just spoiled.
And they're elitists.
And they're members of Country Club.
Well, you have to go to Costco.
It's unfair.
And they, for 50 years or more, have been driving a wedge between average Americans and their employers and business in general, from big drug to big food to big oil to big auto and to big mower now.
So now when you have a little four-year-old boy who dies in a tragic accident, the trial lawyers say, let's go after the manufacturer because we're confident we can find a jury that'll be convinced that it's the lawnmower manufacturer's fault.
And we can get big bucks on this.
And we'll work on contingency.
And then they'll have their clients try to make an out-of-court settlement with the owners of the lawnmower and the daycare center in hopes of getting some money out of them without having to go to trial twice.
It's a double score.
And this could not happen without your friends of the Democratic Party and their supporters and the drive-by media.
Oh, yeah, not my friends.
I don't understand privileged philosophy.
I think it's really just sickening that people can't take responsibility for their own actions.
They don't have to anymore.
That's the whole point.
Don't have to take responsibility.
It's always somebody else's fault.
I miss that putt because the greenskeeper didn't cut the green, right?
It was horrible.
I missed the fairway because the fairway is too narrow.
It's not because I'm not good enough or I don't have the talent or whatever.
No, it's just it's it's rampant throughout our society, but now it's become a very lucrative big tobacco.
Look at that.
I mean, here we are.
We're trying to sue them out of business, yet we demand they keep making the product and selling it at even higher taxes so we can get the tax revenue for it.
We want them solvent enough so we can continue to sue them for killing people.
Big tobacco won most of those early lawsuits, but then the dam broke and water came in over the bridge, and that was that.
But that's the reason why these kinds of things happen.
That's why tort reform has been high on a lot of conservative politicians' electoral agenda.
Bill and Reno, Nevada, you're next at Open Line Friday.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Mega Dittos from the Silver State Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Rush, I keep hearing the statistics being played around, like 2,500 killed in Iraq since the start of the conflict in March of 2003.
But I never hear anybody bring up the statistic of how many deaths do the military planners expect anyway from normal peacetime activities in the military.
Did you look it up?
I've tried to look it up.
I talked to one of my sons who served in the first Gulf War, and he gave me a percentage, but I couldn't find it anywhere reliably.
But I know they expect somewhere between 900 and 1,000 a year anyway, just because the population of the military is 2 million people.
And then I tried to draw the same contextual relationship between deaths and the military and murders as you do.
And for the last two years, I've been making the same thing that you're now saying.
Look, since the early, late 1990s, there have been at least 16,000 murders a year in this country.
Why doesn't anybody ever try to do something to reduce the number of murders we have in this country?
Well, they do.
They try to send as few to jail as possible if they're Democrats and liberals.
Well, we have one of those here, though, don't we, in Nevada?
Yeah.
I'm being somewhat facetious, but I mean, the liberals will almost always side with defendants and perps when it comes to violent crime like this, particularly when it comes time to punish them.
I know I've been making the murder rate in this country comparison.
The whole thing is just a smokescreen.
This is all an attempt to gin up anti-war support.
And the reason the Democrats think they'll get or thought that they would have some success with it is that there is less historical context on part of the American people.
History education is such that most people don't know how many people died in the Civil War.
Most people don't, over 500,000.
Most people don't know how many died in a training exercise for D-Day, over 2,000 in a training exercise.
Most people don't know how many died at D-Day, the Battle of Bulge.
This isn't taught anymore.
And so there's no historical context.
And the Democrats know this.
So they want 2,500 deaths over three years to sound like, this is absurd.
We can't put up with that.
The United States shouldn't suffer any deaths in a war.
Why?
And it's a thoughtless war.
It's an aimless war.
It's a tankless war.
It is a war Bush lied about and blah, blah, blah.
But it doesn't matter.
The resolutions both went down to defeat in the House and Senate.
Let's not forget that we had almost 3,000 dead in less than an hour at one location on one day on September 11th, 2001.
Let's take a look at these murder statistics for a second here.
For 2005, the murder rate was 16,900.
Let's round this off to 17,000, shall we say, just make it a nice round number for the people in Rio Linda.
Even though it may be about 7,000 numbers higher than their comprehension, we'll still stick with it.
In Iraq, in three years, 2,500 killed in action.
Now, what would you say the average age?
We could look this up.
We could find out this exactly.
We're just going to guesstimate now.
What would you say the average age of a uniformed soldier in Iraq is?
Could we put them in a demographic type range, say 18 to 29?
That sounds like a pretty decent age.
That would encompass most of the uniformed personnel.
I know there are people older than 29 over there, but we're talking about the majority of them who fall between those two numbers of age, 18 and 29.
Okay, of the people in this country who are murdered, of the men in this country who are murdered, what percentage of them do you think fall within the same demographic age range between 18 and 29?
Don't know.
I mean, I really don't know.
I'm sure we can look this up.
People have the murder stats.
We got the death certificates to prove it.
But I'm going to guess that a significant percentage of the murder victims, male murder victims, between the ages of 18 and 29 are far greater than the numbers of soldiers between 18 and 29 in Iraq that are being killed.
You could say that for men between the ages of 18 and 29, Iraq may be a safer place for you as a soldier than, say, as a citizen in, oh, say, New York, Washington, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago.
All of those places in America where you find little blue dots on a map of mostly red.
You know what I'm telling you has to be true.
And we also know we've had the statistics.
The most dangerous place in the world, just to live and walk around in terms of deaths per 100,000 population, is Jamaica.
Iraq is way down the list, even with a war going on.
My point with all of this is that there are more American males 1829 being murdered in the United States every year than there are American soldiers killed in action in Iraq in three years.
And yet here's Dick Turbin and all the Democrats trying to whine and moan and wring their hands over this magical number of 2,500, which they got all excited about with every incremental jump of 500 killed in action.
And as I say, it is as transparent and phony baloney as anything they're talking about.
It is.
Here's Charlie in Pompano Beach, Florida.
It's great to have you with us.
I'm glad you waited.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for accepting my call, Rush.
Kumbaya and Candyland Dittos from Pompano Beach.
Thank you.
We survived three hurricanes, but we still have our school buses.
We're braced for the hurricane season 2006 down here.
By the way, you know something?
You've reminded me of something, Charlie.
We had the story of how much fraud, deceit, how many scam artists and rip-offs there were with Hurricane Katrina relief.
And your call reminds me, I've never heard of such fraud and scams with FEMA relief in Florida after Hurricane Katrina.
I'd like to remind your audience that Katrina hit Pompano Beach directly before it hit New Orleans.
So did Hurricane Rita.
And most devastatingly of all, so did Hurricane Wilma.
As I speak to you, I can see blue tarps on roofs all around me.
We're still suffering down here, but we still have optimism.
Yes.
Back to my point, Rush.
I'd like to debate you about Iran.
I think you're wrong, sir.
I'm conservative.
You're conservative.
Let's put ourselves in the position of the man in the street in Iran.
We're conservative Iranians right now.
All around us are nuclear weapons.
Indonesia has U.S. military.
Wait, wait, wait.
You have started with a flawed analogy, and I'll tell you why.
If we are conservatives in Iran, we want rid of that government, and we want freedom, and we want the mullahs out of the country.
Let me restate my premise.
Let me just put myself in the man in the street of Iran.
From a strictly objective point of view, Indonesia has U.S.-military relations.
China has nuclear weapons.
We don't know how they feel about Iran.
They probably want to get the oil, so maybe they'd be friendly.
The former Soviet Union has all kinds of loose nukes guarded by soldiers who haven't been paid in six months with nothing more than a padlock to guard them.
Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons, and we just made a nuclear deal with India.
And then Iraq, of course, the U.S. military is in Iraq right on their doorstep, and they still have living memory of being invaded from Iraq when Saddam was in power.
So if you put yourself in the position of the Iranian man in the street, they would want a nuclear weapon simply from a form of self-defense.
You really think they think we're going to use a nuke against them?
I think they have more fear of global warming than a nuclear attack from the United States.
And we could always send them Daryl Hammett to climb a tobacco plant over there and protect them.
But having said that, I still think that if you go to the United Nations or any world body like that, Iran does have a legitimate military need for nuclear weapons if you look at all the countries around them that already have them.
Once again, though, you are establishing, this is what I don't understand, you are establishing a moral equivalence in making this claim, and then you are ignoring what the Iraqi leadership is.
You put yourself as a man on the street in Iran.
They don't have anything to say about their country.
They're more afraid of their government than they're afraid of our nukes or anybody else's.
They're scared to death of the mullahs.
The mullahs want it that way.
We've got a looney tune leading the country who's sworn to use nukes against Israel to wipe anybody out.
You don't let people like that in a nuclear club, and you don't try to understand why they would want one.
We know why they want one.
They're bullies.
And we also know militive Islam.
And if we're going to ignore that to our peril, if we don't open our eyes to what the real aims of militant Islam are, we're going to perish.
It's that simple.
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