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June 20, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:15
June 20, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, you mean in Houston?
Oh, yeah.
Well, there's dispute about that.
There's dispute about the meaning of that Supreme Court ruling.
We'll get into that.
That's sort of way down in the stack.
Today, the Supreme Court ruling on a wetlands.
No, I thought we said drainage ditches took a hit.
I thought you were talking about the flooding in Houston.
Why would he be asking me about that?
Hi, folks.
How are you?
It is the most listened to radio talk show in America, the Rush Limbaugh program, show prep for the rest of the media that follows, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
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You know what?
I got an email.
Yeah, when I went, when I got home yesterday, I always fire up the computer when I get there.
Show prep continues.
And I got an email from a guy who said, you need to turn that camera off.
You're playing to the camera.
You're over.
I guess it's a radio show you're doing and you're overplaying it.
You're not a good actor.
You overact.
So I wrote him back.
He was a subscriber.
A website.
I wrote him back.
I said, I don't even know the camera's here.
Half the time I forget to thank people for even using it.
I never play to the camera.
Well, ask Snerdley and see what he thinks.
It is amazing the way people react to things they see and hear the things.
I'm always interested in the reactions.
I can't respond to each of them.
I go nuts trying to please every individual.
But anyway, I just thought that I'd share that with you.
I just want to assure you people, I forget that camera is here half the time.
Yeah, this is the radio show.
It's the way it's always been.
In fact, it's probably a little bit tamer now than it has been in some years.
At any rate, telephone numbers 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
I got an email here.
Rush, now that two of our own have been tortured and murdered by the terrorists in Iraq, will the left say that they deserved it?
I am so sick of our cut-and-run liberals.
Keep up your great work.
Bob C. from Roanoke, Virginia.
P.S. I love the way you do the program on the Ditto Cam.
I read.
No, I added that.
He didn't put that in there.
You know, it's, I got to tell you, I perused the liberal Kook blogs today, and they are happy that these two soldiers got tortured.
They're saying good riddance.
Hope Rumsfeld and whoever sleep well tonight.
I kid you not, folks.
The people out there, and they're, you know, you'd say, Rush, we keep talking about these people.
They're inconsequential.
They are as individuals.
Democrat Party's listening to these people.
The Democratic Party is just concerned.
Went to their convention out there in Las Vegas.
I mean, they're real.
And by the way, I want to say something.
You know, the New York Times sent six people to that blogger convention out there.
The New York Times sent six people, including Maureen Dowd.
You had Democratic presidential candidates out there at this thing.
You had all kinds of media.
This was one of the biggest non-events in terms of influence and making things actually happen.
But yet all these powerful bigwigs in the Democratic Party and the Drive-By Media went out there as though this was the first time something like this has happened.
And I kept thinking, you know, the Freepers.
The Freepers have been around doing this for a decade or more, longer than that, and have never gotten any kind of anything other than ridicule from the drive-by media.
And these people at this left-wing blog convention are genuine lunatics, genuine kooks, who are being granted the presumption of sanity, substance, and size, simply because they're a bunch of libs.
But if you go there and you look today, you will find some posters saying, good riddance.
Well, how quaint.
Two of our soldiers were tortured before they were killed.
Isn't that just quaint?
Maybe Cheney and Rumsfeld will sleep easier tonight, as though we deserve this.
Well, you have to, in order to do that, you have to be sick.
But if to try to make some sort of sensible comparison out of it, you have to assume, you have to try to believe that what we're doing in our prisons, such as Abu Ghrab or Club Gitmo, is the same as what terrorists are doing on the battlefield.
And these people believe that it is.
They are, they're just, I think, deranged and delusional at the same time.
And I'll tell you what I'm looking for, folks.
I'm looking for the people who are always quick to condemn our country and our military for their so-called human rights violations, human rights, watch, whatever the names of these groups are.
Have you seen any of these defenders of human rights step up to repudiate these Islamic whack jobs for murdering two American soldiers in their custody?
They captured them and they were in their custody.
We are being held up as violators of human rights in Afghanistan, in Iraq, Club Gitmo, wherever.
And I never, just like I seldom, if ever, I can't remember a story in the drive-by media praising any heroism on the part of U.S. soldiers outside of the first story about Jessica Lynch, which was sort of manufactured for a TV movie, I think.
But nevertheless, we don't hear any human rights organizations condemning the Islamo fascists.
These soldiers were in captivity.
They were tortured and then killed.
And by the way, the drive-by media is all excited about this because they think this is payback.
This is payback for killing Zarkawi.
And this proves this war is going nowhere.
This proves that Bush didn't accomplish anything.
In fact, this may be killing Zarkawi may have been a setback.
That's how they're looking.
Let's let you listen to the audio sound bites.
On MSNBC today, female info babe anchorette talking to the Wall Street Journal's John Harwood.
Question.
The president has been writing a lot of good news over the last week and a half or so out of Iraq.
But what does the announcement and the news of the death of these two soldiers do to the administration and that progress?
The president got only a modest bounce in public opinion polls after the death of Zarkowi.
Stop the tape.
It is not about a bounce in the opinion polls, Mr. Harwood.
We are fighting a war.
We took out the general on the ground, the commander.
He didn't get taken out, so the polls would go one way or the other.
And we can talk about these polls.
There's a lot that goes into these presidential approval polls, but make no mistake, folks, the president is not in as bad a position as these polls would indicate, nor is the Republican Party.
It's irrelevant anyway, because all this is going to be not a non-factor, but other things are going to happen between now and the election that will shape it and so forth.
This incident is not going to be a major factor, even though the drive-by media is going to try to continue to make it one.
And the surprise trip he made to Baghdad, this is precisely the reason why that happened.
The American people understand.
Ho, whoa, whoa, whoa.
The two soldiers were killed and tortured, captured, tortured, and killed because we got Zarqawi and because Bush made a famous night ride to back.
Is that what he's saying?
That's why this had happened because we are at war.
And Mr. Harwood, the Islamo-fascist insurgency, has been doing this the entire time, capturing American troops and torturing them and killing them and beheading them.
Where have you been?
It's part of the war.
This is nothing new.
And it's not because Bush captured Zaikawi and killed him and flew there to meet with the troops to get the poll numbers.
This is deranged.
That the toll of this war, more than three years long, 2,500 U.S. troops killed so far, has been growing, continues to grow.
This is certainly a setback for the administration, and perhaps in public relations terms, a worse setback than the step forward he took with Zarkawi.
See, so everything's looked at here through the political prism.
How does it hurt Bush?
How does it help Bush?
It hurts Bush when these two soldiers are killed after being tortured, after being captured.
Yes, his poll numbers didn't get much of a bounce, and now they're going to go down.
Certainly a setback for the administration in public relations terms.
What about the soldiers and their families, Mr. Harwood?
People volunteering to defend and protect the United States.
And then to say this is a worse setback than the step forward he took with Zarkawi.
You don't measure it that, my gosh, talk to anybody wearing a uniform.
I don't know if they're a liberal Democrat general.
You do not measure the progress of a war, death by death, capture by capture.
Just like you don't measure the progress of a football game play by play.
Yeah, you know, that touchdown and the touchdown the first quarter.
Well, that field goal, that field goal hadn't kind of mitigated the fans' mood and the PR the head coach got when they scored the touchdown.
This is embarrassing.
These guys are supposed to be the guardians.
They have First Amendment protection.
This is embarrassing how limited their scope is.
Well, and we know what that is.
Destroy Bush.
Destroy the war effort.
Let's now go to this morning from Baghdad, Major General Bill Caldwell, the spokesman for the U.S. military, held a press conference with reporters.
Press has ignored this in order to obsess over the two soldiers.
We took out another very senior member of the Al-Qaeda network, Sheikh Mansour, was killed by coalition forces in the very vicinity where we have been searching for our two missing service members.
This picture here is Sheikh Mansur, probably identified as being in the probably top five of the Al-Qaeda organization.
Coalition forces initially targeted a vehicle on which he and two other people were inside.
They attempted to flee.
Coalition forces pursued them and during that time period engaged the vehicle and destroyed it.
Sheikh Mansur was a key leader in Al-Qaeda and Iraq, including having relationships with both Zarkawi and with Al-Masri.
His death will significantly continue to impact on the ability of this organization to regenerate and reorganize itself.
Yeah, but I wanted to play that for you because I don't think the drive-by media do you know about this, John?
Did you heard about that?
I know you're new.
You're not paying attention to news anyway, but you are now when you watch this show.
But nobody's been told about it.
And drive-by is not going ape over it.
No big deal.
In fact, there's even a story, I didn't even bother to print it out, that there's a story, the drive-by media, this new replacement of Zarkawi is being credited for the deaths and the torture of our two soldiers.
Oh, what a leader.
The drive-by media can't wait.
This guy's already on a field way.
He's been in there less than a week, and he's already got two kills.
It's obscene, folks, that continue to watch this.
But have no fear because just as it affects me the way it does and you, so does it affect many others.
We'll be back because the vast majority of the people in this country do not want American soldiers to die and they don't want it celebrated and they don't want it talked about in terms of, does it help Bush?
Does it hurt Bush?
Two more soldiers die tortured.
Got to hurt Bush.
Yeah.
People are offended by that.
Good going in there, Aldermont.
We had a substitute broadcast engineer today, folks.
You never know what happens in those circumstances, though Oldemont has generally proved out to be pretty good.
Dick Cheney yesterday showed up at the National Press Club, really stuck it to the left.
And I have some soundbites.
I think it's a good time to play them as, you know, in transition from the soundbites we just heard in the news about the soldiers in Iraq.
Here's first is a portion of, you know, there's a story, and I was looking for it here, even while communicating with you, somebody talking about Cheney and how he's, oh, it's a story on Frontline.
PBS frontline got a story on how Cheney and Rumsfeld took over their own defense structure and intelligence structure because they didn't trust the CIA.
And he's just decoy.
He couldn't sit around and wait for that anymore because CIA blotched everything.
And so Cheney and Rumsfeld basically created their own intelligence network in the Pentagon.
And it refers to Cheney in this, I guess it's being broadcast tonight.
They refer to Cheney as being on the dark side of the administration, the dark side.
Darth Vader, the evil emperor without the pockmarks.
Here's a portion of Cheney's remarks at a national press club yesterday.
It's been nearly five years now, and we haven't been hit again.
Nobody can promise that we won't be hit.
But the fact of the matter is we've been safe and secure here at home.
That's not an accident.
It didn't happen just because we got lucky.
Several reasons.
So I think why we have been successful up till now is that we've gotten extremely aggressive at taking the battle to the enemy overseas.
But secondly, also because we've taken some measures here at home that have been instrumental in collecting the intelligence we need to be able to disrupt attacks against the United States and to protect the lives of Americans.
And there I would point to such things as the Patriot Act and the terrorist surveillance program.
The moderator here, and this is, you know, this drives the drive-by media into a full-fledged tizzy.
And this next bite sticks to his assertion that the insurgency in Iraq is in its last throes while the kook bloggers on the left and their slaves of the Democratic Party are secretly, well, the bloggers are not secretly, they're openly, all right.
How quaint Cheney and Rumsfeld see how they sleep tonight after this torture.
It's absurd.
I don't know how far the Democrats are going following them.
But, you know, we have such a short attention span here.
We have no sense of the scope of history.
But here's the question.
The moderator, the moderator says, about a year ago, you said the insurgency in Iraq was in its final throes.
You still believe that?
I do.
I think the key turning point when we get back 10 years from now, say, and look back on this period of time with respect to the campaign in Iraq, will be that series of events when the Iraqis increasingly took over responsibility for their own affairs.
And there I point to the election in January of 05 when we set up the interim government, the drafting of the Constitution in the summer of 2005, the national referendum in the fall of 2005 when the Iraqis overwhelmingly approved that Constitution, and then the vote last December, when some 12 million Iraqis in defiance of the car bombers and the terrorists went to the polls and voted in overwhelming numbers to set up a new government under that constitution.
This is again why he thinks that the insurgency over there is in its last throes.
And of course, drive-by media reporting on these two soldiers' deaths and their torture is being ramped up to show we're losing.
Bush taking a PR hit.
Insurgency coming back strong after the Zarkawi death.
And they're excited about it.
And they're judging it play by play, death by death, act by act.
Another question, the moderator.
You've said, Mr. Vice President, you talked about reclaiming the powers of the presidency that was lost following Watergate.
Should there be any limits?
And if so, what?
I clearly do believe and have spoken directly about the importance of a strong presidency.
And that I think there have been times in the past, oftentimes in response to events such as Watergate or the war in Vietnam, where Congress has begun to encroach upon the powers and responsibilities of the president, that it was important to go back and try to restore that balance.
So makes no mistakes, makes no bones about it, makes no excuses.
Here's what we've done.
This is why it's working.
Here's what we're going to continue to do.
This is why it will continue to work.
You may disagree with it.
And some of you might, particularly the assessment in Iraq.
I don't, but some of you might.
But even so, contrast this to the cut and run crowd on the Democratic Party.
You wouldn't believe a number of stories I have in the stacks of stuff today about how the Democrats still can't figure out what they want to do.
Kerry has now said, you know what?
I've only got six votes for my resolution.
I'm going to change that date.
I said it should be July of 07.
What did I say it should be?
Anyway, I'm moving it back six months.
And you got Carl Levin signing on to it, and you've got fine gold.
I mean, they don't have it's, it reminds me of the 1984 Democrat presidential primary.
You had, well, you had the Reverend Zach in that primary, but I'm not going to include him in this story.
You had Gary Hart and you had Walter F. Mondel.
And to listen to these guys' debate in their TV commercials was just hilarious.
Well, I'll get us out of Angola.
Well, I'll get us out of South Africa.
Well, I'll get us out of the subcontinent.
Well, I'll get us out of the Philippines.
Well, they were in a race to please their party to see who could be the one that would tell the Democratic voters which of them would get us, the United States, out of these dangerous hotspots the fastest and the soonest.
This is nothing new, this cut and run philosophy.
The Democrats have it as an article of faith.
It's almost genetic.
You make a commitment to something and then you don't follow through.
You make a commitment and then you back out.
You make it when the going gets tough or when your rabble-rousing voters start making some noise about it, hell with your principal and hell with supporting the policy that you demanded a debate on.
War resolution in Iraq.
And then you start claiming you were lied to and all this and pulling.
You just compare, you contrast Cheney with the way and Bush, with the way they're remaining steadfast with this, with any Democrat, particularly in the Senate, talking about what we ought to do about this.
And you tell me which of those two parties' groups' points of view is best suited to protect and defend the country during times of attack and challenge.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
Our buddies, ZC Top, getting us back in the content portion of the program.
Yes, here's a story from Al-Ap.
The bodies of two U.S. soldiers reported captured last week have been recovered, and an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Tuesday the men were killed in a barbaric way.
They were tortured.
Where are the Geneva Convention crowd people?
They're always telling us that our soldiers and our gatekeepers, our prison attendants, violating the Geneva Convention, that the terrorists that we capture should have access to the Geneva Convention.
What about our guys?
Why do we never, why do we never hear a human rights group decry the enemy?
Why?
Because to the human rights groups, brace yourselves, folks.
Al-Qaeda and these terrorists, these insurgents in Iraq, are not the enemy.
To human rights groups, the United States is the enemy, particularly when run by a president of the Republican Party.
Doug in Columbus, Ohio, I want to grab a couple phone calls here before we move on to North Korea.
Doug, welcome.
Great to have you with us.
Dennis Rush, I've been listening since 88 out in California, and you're out there.
First, I'd like to say God bless to all the soldiers that are over there, and God bless to the parents of those who've had to go through and live through what's happening right now.
They certainly deserve our support and our thanks.
And more than I don't think I could ever express it enough.
But my point simply is this.
I'm not a person in the spotlight.
I'm just over here and fly over America and Ohio.
But when our national leaders who are on the spotlight and at the snap of a finger can get cameras in front of them to start talking about dark prisons in Turkey and black prisons and potential torture and things happening to soldiers in Gitmo, they're not being fed well enough.
And all that does is fuel the fire, make the enemy treat our soldiers the way they did these two fine gentlemen.
And it just breaks my heart that these leaders of our country cannot stand.
They have to get before the camera and preach their own political gospel rather than trying to do what's best for the world.
I just cannot in my heart fathom the left side of this country when things like this happen to our good soldiers.
Amen.
Couldn't agree with you more.
Although I want to expand on this a little bit because, see, I think these terrorists are who they are.
Tiger's a tiger, a lion, a lion.
A bear who eats oatmeal in somebody's house is a bear who eats oatmeal in somebody's house.
It actually happened.
We got a story.
Goldilocks in reverse.
Baby bear showed up after waking up from hibernation and just went into a cupboard, got some oatmeal family, sat there and watched it and let the bear leave.
They had no one else to do.
And it left.
But a terrorist is a terrorist, folks.
And they are going to do what they're going to do regardless what we say or do.
The idea that this was retribution for what we did to Zarkawi, or the idea that it was retribution for what we have done at our prisons, creates, especially that latter one, creates something that's so outrageous because we have not killed anybody in captivity.
We do not torture them in the sense that these two American soldiers were tortured.
And he's right for American Democrat liberal politicians to go out there and decry our treatment, to give them lawyers so that they can have access to the U.S. Constitution as though they were American citizens.
All that does is doesn't change terrorist behavior.
It just gives them comfort.
It lets them know that morale in this country is down, that half the country and a political party is in a sort of a warpath to impugn and affect the effectiveness of our agents to fight the war.
That's why I've said, in my opinion, that there is an active ongoing effort to sabotage victory over this enemy.
Because this moral equivalence with Ted Kennedy in the past having said under Abu Ghrab, it's just the same as when Saddam ran it.
It's just under U.S. management now.
Well, that's not going to make a terrorist any more of a terrorist, but it's going to make him sit back and laugh and smile.
And what a bunch of idiots these people are.
Their morale may be lifted by this.
But the idea that these two soldiers were murdered after having been tortured, that's going to happen regardless.
Now, what would compound this is if the Democrats that Doug was talking about, if the Democrats like Senator Kennedy and whoever else have been on the warpath about our so-called torture, if they come out and try to equate this, if they come out and say, well, it's obvious that what happened to our soldiers is very unfortunate, but what do you expect when we hold them and their prisoners in Abu Grab and Club Giffo and what do you expect?
If they establish a moral equivalence, and I won't be surprised if they do, between us and the terrorists.
I mean, that is probably almost treasonous to me.
I'm as frustrated as Doug in Columbus, Ohio was over this.
But I do think you have to keep in terrorists are terrorists and they're going to do what they do regardless of what.
It's just that when they are given motivation and a morale boost after having done it, that is inexcusable.
Danny in Bridgewater, Virginia, I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Thank you very much, Mr. Limbaugh.
It's an honor to speak to you.
You bet.
I was also going to speak about the two soldiers that were just recently tortured and killed.
I'm a combat veteran from Vietnam, and it's a sad day when any soldier has to die.
But as much as it is a derogative thing that's happened to those two individuals, I actually think it might embolden our forces over there and cause them to be a little more self-protective in their tactical ops.
Hey, wait, wait, that is an excellent point.
I want you to stop right there and don't lose your train of thought because this needs to be pounded home with a couple exclamation points.
When you look at this incident and in how it's being treated in the drive-by media, like we had John Harwood, but it doesn't matter where you go, the drive-by media.
Oh, no, oh, no, they're strengthened, they're coming back, they're getting even for Zarkawi.
It's over for Bush now.
This is a bad PR move.
Oh, we shouldn't have killed Zarkawi, when in fact, that's typical of a bunch of people that have no clue what war is all about or how you win one, either in the Democratic Party or the Drive-Buy Media.
But you've got combat experience, and you're right.
This is going to steal the resolve of people who knew these guys and the whole uniformed contingent over there.
Yes, sir.
And I also believe that the next time something like this has a potential to occur, I don't think our troops are going to surrender.
I don't think anybody's going to lay down their arms.
I think, I mean, if it was me and I knew this was going to happen to me, or the likelihood was 90% that it would.
I'm going to pull a grenade out and I'm going to take whoever I've got to take with me.
I mean, that's, you know, end of story.
I mean, I know that sounds a little gruesome, but.
Well, you're saying that.
What do you know about this incident?
Did they give up their arms and allow themselves to be taken?
From what I understood, the driver was shot.
They were swarmed on, and they were, I believe, in a Humvee.
And they were swarmed on by like seven or eight guys.
And basically, they laid down and didn't offer resistance at that point.
Now, you're a Vietnam vet, and rules have obviously changed, but in your circumstance during your time in Vietnam, what were the regulations on something like that?
Were you supposed to lay down or were you supposed to?
It's your option at that point.
If you think you've been overwhelmed, and I was a squad leader, but if I thought my people had a better chance of surrendering and surviving than continuing to fight, I guess it's up to me to try and look out for the best option for my troops' lives.
However, in the circumstances in Iraq, I don't think I'd even consider surrendering.
I think I'm going to continue to resist until I'm gone.
I mean, because the way I would look at it is I'm going anyway.
These people are, they're going to take me prisoner, and they're going to do what they're going to do.
They're going to torture me.
Not one United States soldier after the war that has been taken by the insurgency has survived.
Not one.
Nobody has come back.
That is my point in asking where the human rights groups, where all these people that try to demand we uphold the Geneva Convention, where are they demanding that of the other side?
And they don't because they have no expectation of it, but they also don't condemn it.
And it's an uneven playing field, particularly in the so-called PR battle.
Well, look, I'm glad you called.
That's interesting take.
Do you think next time that the if similar circumstances, by the way, will there be a next time in similar circumstances?
Or will that also, will this also be a lesson from which they can learn in the way they structure movements?
And again, I would say this, as a squad leader, and it was a three-man convoy, a three-vehicle convoy.
Two vehicles left in pursuit of what they thought were hostiles.
The other guy, the commander, I don't know who he was, left three guys in a Humvee in a hot area by themselves.
I think that was kind of, you know, a foolish thing to do.
I mean, I don't know what kind of action they're going to take against him.
I would look into it myself.
But in the future, I don't think you're going to see people splitting forces.
I think they'll be calling an air cover if you have to leave somebody somewhere for a particular side.
I think it's going to basically make them operate in a more protective fashion so that, I mean, it's not that they don't currently.
I mean, I think it was just a bad judgment, Carl.
Well, the bottom line is that what you pointed out, not one soldier taken captive has ever gotten out alive.
Pretty sobering reality to face.
And just in informing and educating people as to who we're dealing with.
All right.
Thank you very much, Danny.
I appreciate it.
We have a brief, obscene EIB profit break we must take, but it'll happen in an El GIPO, a little Spanish lingo there, and we will be right back.
And we are back, America's real anchor man, El Rushbo, and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Grab audio soundbite number one there, Aldemont.
We've got an immigration discussion as we seem to each and every day coming up on this program.
And I just want to let you hear what happened on the roundtable, the Britt Hume panel last night on the Fox News channel.
Fred Barnes was talking during the Fox All-Stars, they call them.
And Barnes says, you know, the polls are misleading, as they can often be.
The polls show that the American people favor a path to citizenship, but all the intensity is all on the border enforcement only.
And that's what the conservative intellectuals have backed.
That's what most conservatives in the House of Representatives, most Republicans in the House back.
And then Mort Kondracki steps in.
Intellectuals are supposed to think more deeply than these passionate hot dogs on the radio.
In a year when the conservative base is demoralized and disheartened, here is an issue that gets them fired up and possibly to the polls.
And that's what these House Republicans are looking at.
But the White House is convinced it's going to hurt their party in the end.
For the record, I don't think those people on the radio are passionate hot dogs at all.
There you go.
So it's kind of funny, but Kondracki, yeah, these intellectuals are supposed to think more deeply than those passionate hot dogs on the radio, but they're not.
What he's upset is that the intellectuals all of a sudden have done a 180.
The conservative intellectuals he's talking about now understand the need for border security first, and they also are understanding, this is about the letter that these guys sent to Bush, Bill Bennett on there, and then Robert Bork.
I forget some of the others, but some of these people used to be open borders people, used to be part of the open borders crowd, would agree with whatever the premise of the Senate immigration bill was.
But some of them have access now to the actual American people rather than as intellectuals in their little cubby holes, you know, in this subterranean bunkers where they're thinking and they're writing and they're delving deeply into things.
And some of them have finally gotten out of those little bunkers and they understand what the American people are saying and thinking based on what's happening to the American people.
So there's been a 180.
And this is sort of, this doesn't make some of these other intellectuals happy.
How can these conservative intellectuals, why do a 180?
Why are these conservative intellectuals simply bucking to the pressure of these unsophisticated hot dogs on talk radio?
And so I play this primarily once again to illustrate to you that there is a whole cadre of elitist intellectuals in Washington.
I don't care whether they're conservatives or liberals, but in both cases, in some cases, they look down on you.
It's very condescending and arrogant.
You're unsophisticated.
You're not smart.
You're just reactionaries.
You know, you're just mind-numb robots out there.
It's the same old thing.
Pat in Queens, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
You bet.
I've been a fan of yours for years, and I've always appreciated your show, and I appreciate it even more now.
My son is a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, and he'll be deployed to Iraq in a few months.
And it just infuriates me when I see this constant barrage of liberal negative press where they say they're supporting the troops, but then they describe their mission as useless and the things they do as terrorist acts.
And, you know, I can't connect those dots.
I don't think anybody can.
And I'm glad that, you know, guys like you are out there, and you're under personal attack, too, but you show a certain courage that I wish we would see more of, not only in the press, but in government as well.
And I want to thank you for that, Rush.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
You said people say they support the troops.
I know that there are liberal Democrats elected saying they support the troops.
They want it both ways.
They say they support the troops.
They don't support the mission.
I, frankly, am not aware of too many people in the drive-by media saying they support the troops.
In fact, the popular refrain in the media today, and it has been since we got it started in Vietnam, but really intensified in the first Gulf War, is, hey, we can't take sides.
Why, that would be judgmental.
That would compromise our objectivity as the principles of journalism that we follow.
We can't choose sides here.
But of course, they have chosen sides because they come from a guilt-ridden self-loathing that makes them question the goodness of their own country for a whole host of reasons.
And they see insurgents or any of our enemies as hapless, poor, outmanned, outmatched, overmatched.
Don't have a chance.
And so anytime these people score a victory, it's sort of like, hey, you know, these guys are putting up a really good fight.
It's as though they have a guilt, Pat, about our size, our ability, our prosperity, our decisions to wage war where at any time we get a comeuppance.
It sort of makes them feel good.
And that really has been their stand, I think, for the last 14 or 15 years.
Well, Rush, you'll never be surrounded by a better group of people than when you're surrounded by men and women in our armed forces.
Tell me about it.
I know from first-hand experience on numerous occasions.
Now, just one thing, Rush, I do have to correct you.
I know you're 99.99% accurate.
No, 98.5, almost always right.
98.5%.
Well, you keep talking about this liberal playbook, and I submit it's at best an index card, which if you subtract out all of the things that are built on misinformation and deceit, you'll have a blank index card.
All right, Touche.
Whatever.
The liberal playbook's an index card.
It's a blank in that.
Whatever it is, they keep recycling it.
There's nothing new on it, and probably you're right.
There is nothing at all on it now, particularly when it comes to national security, foreign policy, the war on terror, and its theater in Iraq.
Thanks again, Pat, very much.
Country, as you well know, is heartily appreciative and in awe of what your son and people like him do.
voluntarily as we all are.
Thank you very much.
Be right back.
Bill Gertz, Washington Times, broke the story.
The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system to operational to deal with the North Korea missile test threat.
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