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June 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
June 27, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you, thrill seekers and music lovers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
Great to be back here at the EIB Southern Command and the official at Till of the Hun Chair, the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here are the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man.
All ready for three hours of broadcast excellence.
Good to see you, Mr. Snerdley.
Really nice to see you, Dawn.
Brian, thank you for showing up.
Telephone number, you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
The email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
I still, I've been racking my brain.
I'm trying to figure out how Bob Dole's luggage got on my airplane.
At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, I told the doctor, I said, look, I'm worried about the next election, not.
He misunderstands me.
Now, things are what they are.
We're here to have more fun than a human being should be allowed, and we shall do so.
Folks, I have to tell you about last week.
I wanted to tell you before it all happened, but I have this new policy.
I just don't get into specifics before things happen for a host of reasons.
But I have to tell you about, let's see, what was it, Wednesday?
Was it Thursday and Friday?
Yeah, Thursday and Friday in Washington.
After the program on Thursday, I flew up to Washington where I co-hosted a dinner in the Justice's dining room at the United States Supreme Court with Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Jenny.
There are 22 guests at the dinner, including all of my friends from 24 who were in town for the seminar that we did at the Heritage Foundation on Friday.
Mary Madeline was there.
I'm going to have trouble remembering all the guests.
Mary Madeline was there.
Laura Ingram showed up.
She used to clerk for Justice Thomas, big 24 fan.
Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, and his wife were there.
Had a fascinating conversation with him prior to dinner.
But it was just, we got a tour of the court after dinner.
Justice Thomas showed us the Great Hall and showed us America's courtroom.
By the way, welcome to those of you watching on the DittoCam.
It's a thrilled delight to have you with us at rushlimbaugh.com.
We saw that I've never been in the Supreme Court building.
I've never been there at all.
I've never been in the courtroom, obviously.
And it was just fascinating.
An enchanted evening.
I mean, once in a lifetime, dinner, co-hosting dinner at the Justice's dining room at the United States Supreme Court.
Noted terrorism expert Steve Emerson was there.
I'm trying to think of going around the table.
Did I say Mary Madeline?
Mary Madeline was there.
Well, he's Howard Gordon, Joel Cernow.
Oh, and Howard brought his 13-year-old son, Micah, with him.
And 13-year-old young man got to see the inside of the Supreme Court.
He's just at that age where he can start to appreciate these things.
I'll think of other people that were there.
But the next day, when this was all discovered, we were going to be there.
I got an email from Carl Rove, who invited us all by the White House for lunch in the White House mess after the 24 forum at the Heritage Foundation on Friday morning.
And that was a hoot, too, by the way.
Let me say something about that.
Folks, I warned you before this happened that we were not in control of the video feed.
I tried to tell you that we thought we had our bases covered, but every time we do this with a third party, they assured, oh, we can handle your load.
We do this all the time.
We say, you haven't done this.
And I know there were some video dropouts, some audio dropouts, and we got the transcript done now, and it's posted at rushallimbaugh.com.
And I think we're going to get a clean video version of this one way or the other.
And we will eventually have it up there, if not yet, on the website.
It was two hours.
Secretary Cherdoff led off the seminar, 650 people in the Reagan building on Friday morning.
And I have to be honest with you, the sound system in there was such that even during the forum or the panel itself, I was able to hear maybe 40% of what the participants were saying.
The sound effects in there were very echoey.
There was a lot of reverberation, and I kept leaning closer to the people who were speaking, but that just meant I would get in the way of the audience seeing them.
And I know that Greg Itson, who plays President Logan, zinged me a couple times, and I had no clue what he said, so I just had to do a Jack Benny expression to the audience.
And Mary Lynn Reisk, Chloe, she zinged me.
I don't want that zing me, but they came out with one liner.
Everybody's laughing themselves silly.
And I didn't hear what they said.
So I had to play along.
And even at that, even only being able to hear 30 or 40 percent of what they were saying, there was no better moderator in Washington that day of a panel or of a forum.
I did not get your autograph from President Logan because I forgot, but I can get it anytime.
I'll get it on the season.
I'll tell you what I'll do for you, Mr. Snerdley, when this season's DVDs come out, which will be in November.
I'll get one then.
Okay, I'll get his autograph on a DVD series.
I'll do that.
But if you want one sooner than that, it's just a hop, skip, and trip phone call.
But I have to, we went to the White House after the panel discussion.
Carl Rove invited us over, and he was going to host lunch in the mess, the White House mess.
There's a wardroom, seats, about 14 people.
And we all went over there.
Now, we were scheduled to arrive at 1 o'clock.
This is last Friday.
We were scheduled to arrive at 1 o'clock.
But we'd schedule a media gaggle for the participants in the panel after the seminar.
So at about 12.15, my security guy who looks like Joseph Stalin came up to me and said, the White House has just called.
And if you can get over there by 12.25, the president would like to say hi.
So I, president of the media, what do I choose here?
So I looked at the assembled media and cameras over there.
I said, let's go to the White House.
Went over to the White House and I chatted with the president in the Oval Office.
It was just the two of us for about 15 minutes.
And he said to me, where are the 24 people?
I said, well, they're still over at the media gaggle.
They're right behind me.
But he had a t-ball.
There was a t-ball game going on the White House grounds for some kids, and he had to be down there at 1 o'clock.
So he had to leave at 5-till, and he didn't get a chance to meet the 24 people.
I'm not going to divulge the contents of the discussion.
These things are off the record.
It was pleasant and highly informative, by the way, on a couple of things.
At about 5-till 1, Carl Rove walked in.
That signaled the end of the meeting.
And we went to his office and waited for the 24 people to show up.
And then they all did.
And it was time to go to the White House mess for lunch.
And I just have to tell you this about Carl Rove.
I have been in Carl's presence not a lot, three or four times, but never for this length of time.
And I can't tell you how brilliant and educated and informed the guy is.
He gave a, at lunch, he gave a veritable history lesson of the White House, of the White House mess, some of the characters that have worked there, some of the people that have been there 35 years in various jobs.
And I noticed this about people because I'm not able to do this.
And it's something I've always strived to be able to do.
Not one stutter.
I mean, he would speak for 20 minutes uninterrupted and not lose anybody's attention.
Not one stutter, not one loss of his train of thought.
And at the same time, totally captivating.
Tony Snow came in, joined us for lunch.
Pete Wayner, who works in Carl's office.
He used to work for Bill Bennett.
That's where I met Pete.
And they came in.
And of course, a bunch of people heard that 24 people were there, so they wanted to come in, get signed autographs and photos and stuff.
After lunch, there was a chance that there'd be an opening in the president's schedule for the 24 gang to go to the Oval Office and meet him.
So we repaired to two places.
The first place was Tony Snow's office, and he took us in the White House press room.
And we got Itsun up there, President Logan, behind the podium with all the Klieg lights on, all the 24 people in the White House press room in front of that White House logo with a bunch of pictures snapped.
I've got some.
I haven't had a chance, had such a, I mean, tremendous time in the Dominican Republic.
I haven't had a chance to go through the photos and find out what we got.
I just know what I took and what everybody else took.
After that, after we finished in there, we went back to Rove's office for another hour.
Maybe, what are you laughing at?
What is oh, I had a great time in the Dominican Republic.
Oh, man, I wish I could tell you about it.
Oh, it was a fabulous time in the Dominican Republic.
Casa de Campo went over to Santiago, where the Fuente cigar farm and factory is.
I'll tell you about that, too, because they're doing some amazing charity things up there at the cigar farm.
At any rate, the tobacco farm.
We sat in Rove's office for two hours while he continued to work.
He's got a conference table in there.
You may know that he wrote a piece for Time magazine on the Teddy Roosevelt issue that they're doing.
And he was finishing that op-ed, that 800 words.
He was finishing it.
And after he finished it, he gave it to Itson and said, here, read this.
So Itson started reading it aloud, about 800 words.
President Logan starts reading it aloud.
We're in Carl Rove's office.
And then Carl gives us another 30 minutes on Teddy Roosevelt and President McKinley, who he has admiration for.
He thinks one of the most underrated presidents in the history, the president who modernized campaigns, modernized the presidency, and gets no credit for it because he served such a short period of time.
But once again, it was just indescribable to listen to Carl Rove go on and on about the influences that these various presidents and campaigns have had on him and his explanation of history.
And finally, we got in the car.
We're headed to the airport to go to the Dominican Republic where we really had a great time.
And everybody in the room said, you know, this is another indictment of the media.
That is one of the smartest and nicest, most unassuming, gentle people I have ever met.
A bunch of people were telling this about Carl Rove.
He is brilliant, and he has this brain that's just oozing with knowledge, and he's able to Share his knowledge and his passions in a way that just keeps you spellbound without raising his voice, doesn't pound the table, doesn't get all that emotive.
It's just in awe of the facts, the detail that he knows and possesses and able to impart again with no stutter and with no loss of his train of thought at all.
So I just want to take some time here to thank Ginny and Clarence Thomas for the use of the Justices' dining room of the U.S. Supreme Court Heritage Foundation.
Could not have been better.
It was a thrill to meet Secretary Chertoff and everybody at the everywhere.
We ran into all kinds of people.
The White House, Josh Bolton, the chief of staff, came in.
Andrew Card was there.
It was just a great, great guy.
We were there three hours from one o'clock till four.
I was there three and a half, given my time with the president.
And the whole time we're in, after lunch, we're in Carl's office and he's working.
He's doing his correspondence.
And Pete's in there and we're talking about issues.
And as we talk about issues, Carl will hear something and he would join the fray and explain something.
It was just, I mean, an opportunity you never get, and it was unexpected.
And to give us this much time as they did on Friday, was unbelievable given how busy they all are.
So thanks to everybody who made this trip what it was.
It's one that none of us will ever forget.
I must take a brief time out here, a little long in the opening segment.
We'll be back and continue in just a second.
Stay with us, folk.
Oh, yeah.
Here's some other guests at the Supreme Court dinner on Thursday night.
My good friend Professor Hazlett and his just stunningly brilliant and gorgeous wife Alex was there.
And of course, Chloe was there, Mary Lynn, the 24 people, Greg Gits, and Carlos Bernard, Tony Almeda, was there.
And Bob Cochran, who's a co-creator of the program.
In fact, would you like to hear what ABC did with this?
Grab Audio Soundbite No. 12.
Grab Audio Soundbite No. 12.
This was from last Friday's nightline.
And they did a piece, I guess.
Well, I know they did a piece on the Heritage Foundation seminar that we asked, folks, would you sit tight?
We're going to get to Jack Murthy.
We're going to get the New York Times.
We're going to get to all that.
We've got lots of time left in the program.
Sit tight out there.
We'll get to it.
We put together a montage.
It seems now that the drive-by media is going to target 24 since they showed up in a conservative think dang to do a seminar.
This seminar montage Jake Tapper last Friday nightline.
It was a chance to see Rush gush.
I am literally in awe of the creativity of the brains behind the program.
The Conservative Heritage Foundation hosted a forum on the Hit Fox TV show 24 for the show's fans in the conservative power structure.
Vice President's a huge fan.
Secretary Rumsfeld's a huge fan.
Front row center, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
On stage, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherdoff.
Amidst the fawning burned a big question: Why has the show been so embraced, especially by conservatives?
Greg Itson, who plays the conniving President Logan, says it might be because the show depicts the need for torture.
I can take it from my character's point of view.
He doesn't want it to happen.
But if you need that information to find out where the nuke is hidden, you get it.
And morality be down.
At a time when conservatives are struggling to spread the message that terrorists are out to get us, they finally found a show that beats their drum.
Just wait for the movie.
What the hell is that?
At a time when conservatives are struggling to spread the message, terrorists are out to get us?
We have to spread the mess.
The fact that we have to spread the message at all is stunning.
Why do we have to spread the message?
That could take me right to the New York Times.
The New York Times, ladies and gentlemen, is doing everything.
It may as well be published.
Think 80% of their subscribers have to be jihadists.
If you look at the New York Times, the kind of stories they're leaking and running and the information they're getting, it's clear that they're trying to help the terrorists.
They're trying to help the jihadists.
So for Tapper to say, well, a time when conservatives are struggling to spread the message that terrorists are out to get it, what was 9-11 about?
What in the world is going on in Israel?
Say to people.
Just amazing stuff.
Here's how I closed it out.
Well, I didn't close it out, but Itson asked me a question.
He said, You asked a question about why the number 13 here, Mike, why we thought the show was as interesting to the country and to the question and the world.
Do you have an opinion about why it's as hot as it is or as fascinating as it is?
Yes, I do.
I have opinions on everything.
Yeah, you know.
That was an opening gamut, Russian.
I'm just curious.
And I'm documented to be almost always right, too, 98.5% of the time.
My opinions are audited.
First and foremost, I think it's just a good show.
Gory.
It's just.
The people who produce it and write it know what it is.
They're not trying to make it more or less than what it is.
They know what the audience expects, and they try to expand or exceed those expectations.
I also think, in all candor, and I'm having watched the first two seasons, bam, bam, bam, DVD-wise, as opposed to over the air, the number of plot twists.
I am literally in awe of the creativity of the brains behind the program.
The plot twists in one episode are more than you will have in most series in a whole season.
Yet they don't exhaust themselves.
This is a program you expend energy watching.
This is not something that you veg and are doing passively while something else is going on in the house.
You can't do that and follow it.
You have to keep up with it.
Things happen so fast.
There are little clues micro-inserted in the program.
And I'm in awe.
The reason I'm a big fan of it is I am in total awe of the brilliance and the creativity and the lack of boundaries.
You don't seem to be hemmed in by much.
And no matter what I think is going to happen next, I'm usually wrong.
You surprise me.
You can't predict.
There aren't any patterns.
Every show develops patterns.
I know you have them, but we as the audience don't figure them all out.
The actors are like your character this season.
People wonder that watch the show who really get into it really think that there is some inside knowledge that the writers have with people in government.
Some people are wondering: have we really had a president like this?
Do we really know that we haven't?
Public didn't know that you're like you are.
Have we ever had presidents?
People ask these questions.
It spawns thought.
Your program creates mental energy.
Just from an entertainment standpoint, all the other things about is it real?
Is it going to give people an idea?
Those are just, I mean, added bonuses for all of you.
But the fact is, to me, it's one of the most intelligent programs on the air tackling the subject matter that it does.
And that's why I'm captivated.
I'm not going to waste my time, and most other people aren't either with a vapid, boring show.
And yours isn't.
And there you have it.
Okay, quick timeout, folks.
We'll get back with the news of the day and what I think about it, which is why you're here right after this.
Yes, yes, I wore a tie in the Oval Office.
Wore a tie to the Heritage Foundation seminar.
I did not wear a tie.
The Supreme Court Justice's dining room for dinner.
Had on a very, very classy and cool mock turtleneck with a jacket.
Greetings, my friends.
And welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program serving humanity here on the EIB network.
I mean, let me ask a quick question.
And I want to ask those of you in this audience who are part of Al-Qaeda, you got to be out there.
I know we have Al-Qaeda members listening to this program.
They study the American media.
Certain elements of the media are their allies in the war that we have against them on terror.
So for those of you jihadists living in cells in this country, or perhaps even in caves in other countries around the world, as you tune into this program via the internet and my website, I have a question.
Is your terror cell living in terror?
Are you jihadists living in terror in your terror cells?
Is your safe house not that safe?
The infidels, as you know, the Americans are out to get you, and they're using satanic means to track you down.
Terrorists, of course, and those of you in Al-Qaeda will understand this.
You fight the honorable way.
Suicide bombs and beheadings.
The infidels, the evil Americans, they fight dishonorably with eavesdropping and tracking and tracing and, of course, spying.
None of this is fair.
So how do you level the playing field if you are al-Qaeda or a jihadist?
Well, if you want your sleeper cell to sleep safely, if you want your safe house to be really, really safe, then I suggest you read the New York Times.
In fact, I think the New York Times should start running ads and get some jihadists and get some terror members and have them say, I saved my sleeper cell thanks to the New York Times.
Do you know your phone calls are traced?
Do you?
Well, New York Times readers know that jihadists and al-Qaeda phone calls are traced.
For you jihadists and al-Qaeda members listening to this program, did you know your money transfers are being intercepted?
Well, the New York Times readers know that your money transfers are being intercepted.
I knew I rerouted my terror funds thanks to the New York Times.
Terrorists everywhere out there from Tora Bora to Tijuana, they read the New York Times every day.
All the secret stuff.
None of the positive news that could discourage you, terrorists, know all the secret stuff.
You have daily attacks on the infidels by Maureen Al-Daud, Paul Al-Krugman, and Tom Al-Friedman.
And of course, the entire frontal page of the New York All-Times, geared exclusively to jihadists and al-Qaeda members in their safe houses and their terror cells.
So if you are a terror cell member, if you are Al-Qaeda, if you are a jihadist and you are not a subscriber to the New York Times, subscribe today.
In fact, I'll bet you the Times gives quantity discounts for large terror cells and educational discounts for madrases and terrorist training camps who also want to get the first inside knowledge of what the infidels have in mind for you to wipe you out.
Read the New York Times, terrorists.
Al-Qaeda members and jihadists, read the New York Times, and your sleeper cell can sleep safely tonight and every night.
The New York Times, the Infidels Jihad Journal, published in the United States of America.
Ronnie in Bel Air, Texas, we start on the phones with you.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Thank you.
Actually, it's a she, but thank you, Rush.
Sorry about that.
My bad.
That's okay.
I wanted to make a quick comment about the media's coverage of this panel discussion that you had.
First, let me tell you that I am a fan of yours, a big fan, but I am not a follower, as Martin Bashir referred to me on Friday night.
That's a good idea.
Yes, I know, but don't take it personally, Ronnie.
It's a badge of honor.
Actually, it is.
To the drive-by media, you are just a mind-numbed robot waiting for marching orders here each and every day.
Exactly, and they make it so obvious.
If you learn to listen, as I have from listening to you, you hear the way they twist things.
The other comment I wanted to mention is that Maureen Dowd, maybe it was in yesterday's Times, but I got it in my Houston Chronicle today, made a comment about the fact that it's nice to have a panel in plays of Jack Bower, then admit that we have no real Jack Bowers.
And to paraphrase that Jack Nicholson comment, Miss Dowd, you couldn't handle a real Jack Bowers.
Maureen was there.
I didn't see her, but she was there.
Thanks, Ronnie.
I appreciate it.
She was there.
She did request press credentials.
And she wrote a piece.
And what are we?
I guess we stopped.
In fact, I got an email from somebody who said I didn't see the panel, but it must have rocked because Maureen Dowd is just ripping it to shreds today.
So I had my computer, my new Mac Intel, with me.
I have high-speed internet down in the Dominican Republic at Casa de Campo.
So I said, hey, guys, we're having such a great time down here.
I got to interrupt this, and I go read the piece.
So I'll go read it, and I'll come back and tell you what.
I was with 24 guys in all I wish.
This is a guy's weekend down in the Dominican Republic.
And great time.
So I went in, I fired up the computer, and I read the piece, and I opened the sliding glass doors.
I said, I cannot explain this to you.
The only way that you're going to be able to understand this is to come read it.
The piece was a rip on the Bush administration.
They weren't even part of the panel.
It was meandering and wandering.
It was not even worthy of a reply in terms of substance.
Guys are just all worked up over the success that conservatives and others are having.
And for, you know, the biggest thing in Washington that day would be a conservative hosting a panel at a conservative think tank.
I mean, the liberals own that town, and you go in there at your own risk.
Here's Monica.
Monica in Kankakee, Illinois.
It's great to have you on the program.
Welcome.
Thank you, Rush.
Hi, good afternoon.
Hey, Rush, I want to put my say in about the New York Times.
They quoted in there or said in there that the White House asked them not to print the article.
Yes.
And I think that there are things that the New York Times has not reported at Bush's administration's request, such as the February 2006 Zogby poll that was done in Iraq with the soldiers on the ground that showed 70% wanted to come home by the end of the year, right?
Monica.
Forgive me, madam, but the New York Times will not publish a Zogby poll, not because the White House asked them not to.
It's because they don't have a contract with Zogby.
Zogby has New York Times polls with CBS.
They've got their own polling unit.
But, Rush, none of the mainstream media reported this poll.
And you, as much as you read, you didn't even talk about it.
Christian David Monitor wrote about it.
No, no, no.
I did talk about it.
I just didn't believe it.
Oh, you think it's a fake poll, right?
Yeah, I think most polls are.
I think most polls are engineered to produce the result that those behind the poll want to achieve.
Wait a minute, Rush.
I have to.
Now, come on.
When Bush went to Baghdad, some of you said, oh, this is going to give him a bounce of the polls, and you were all excited about it.
So you can't say you don't believe polls.
Yeah, Look at this is not a rush.
The point is that the idea is rushed that this was a doubtful.
Monica, I'm just I've you if you listen regularly, you should know I've expressed my opinion on polls, why they're done.
I think they're just editorials disguised as news on the front page.
Polling is nothing but fake news creation these days.
You go do a poll that says 80% of the Iraqis hate us and want us out of there.
Doesn't jibe with reality on the ground.
But regardless, that's not the point.
You said that the New York Times has honored White House requests before.
They haven't on serious matters.
In fact, the New York Times said, look, we did hold this, but the White House, they gave us some people, but not the president.
And Bill Keller, the editor, said, that was sort of a half-hearted effort they made.
They didn't really try to sell us on not publishing it.
And they even gave us, they even gave us three people outside the administration.
Now, listen to this.
Grab the audio soundbite.
This is, let's find out what it is.
Yeah, cut four.
This is last night on CNN, the situation room and Wolfblitzer interviewing the New York Times editor Bill Keller.
Wolf says, the Treasury Secretary Jon Snow says not only Bush administration officials, but others appealed to you at the New York Times not to disclose this information, including Democrats and members of the 9-11 Commission, including the chairman and the co-chairman, as well as members of Congress on the intelligence committee.
Is that true?
Three people outside of the administration were asked by the administration to call us.
All of them spoke, they thought in confidence, and I don't think I'll breach the confidence of what they said, although I will say that not all of them urged us not to publish.
Who are the three people outside of the administration?
Tom Kaine, Lee Hamilton, and Congressman Jack Murtha.
Are we to understand that the White House asked Jack Murtha to call the New York Times and ask them not to publish the story?
I don't know what to make of this.
When Keller says not all of them asked us not to publish, well, it wouldn't be hard to figure out if Murtha's on the list, that he might be one of the ones that asked them not to publish.
But they didn't make a big enough deal of it at the White House.
The president didn't get personally involved, just cabinet people.
And Eric Lichtblau, one of the writers of the story, writing and or being interviewed by editor and publisher, said that, well, we waited as long as we could, but the competition's out there.
Another paper had caught up with us, that being the Los Angeles Times.
And people are upset with the LA Times, too.
They've got an editor response today explaining why they published the story.
And they said, well, you know, not that we are out to get the president.
People wonder.
This is very, very serious stuff.
Andy McCarthy, National Review Online, has a pretty, pretty brilliant piece.
And Andy's a brilliant guy anyway.
He had a pretty brilliant piece yesterday on all this.
Let me share some excerpts with you when we come back.
We'll resume your phone calls as well.
It's 800-282-2882.
El Rushbo, having more fun any human being should be allowed to have.
We'll keep up after this.
Okay, Andy McCarthy, National Review online yesterday.
Pretty good perspective.
The echo trails off the last defiantly gleeful chorus of, we are the world.
We are the children.
Reality stubbornly dawns on you.
There really are bad people out there.
They are the world too, and they want to kill you.
They refuse to be reasoned with.
They can afford to.
They're not a country.
They don't have to worry about defending a territory.
They're seeped into places that can't be bombed into submission.
They are the world, after all.
They're the children, or at least hidden among them.
No mutually assured destruction here.
No, you have only one defense, and that's intelligence.
Superpower, power is useless.
What are you going to do?
Hit them where they live, bomb Hamburg, bomb London, bomb New York.
Not an option.
All your nukes, all your stealth fighters, your carpet bombers, they're largely irrelevant.
This is not about killing an advancing brigade.
It's about killing cells.
A handful of operatives here and there nestled among millions of innocents.
The real challenge is not how to kill them, or at least capture them, it's how to find them.
How to identify them from among the hordes they dress like and sound like, even act like, right up until the moment they board a plane or wave cheerily alongside a naval destroyer or park their nondescript van in the catacombs of a mighty skyscraper.
Now, the only way to prevent terrorist attacks is to gather intelligence.
It's to collect the information that reveals who the jihadists are, who's backing them with money and resources, and where they're likely to strike.
There really is nothing else you can do.
So how do you get such intelligence?
Well, options are few.
The terrorists you capture, you squeeze until they break.
Since your laws and protocols forbid physical coercion, you must employ psychological pressure, relentless detachment and loneliness that may render a battle-hard, hate-obsessed detainee hopeless enough and dependent enough on his interrogators to tell you the deepest, deadliest secrets.
So you move your captives to places where they'll be isolated and forlorn, and eventually, maybe after a very long time, move to tell you what they know about their fellow savages.
Otherwise, you use your technological wizardry to penetrate their communications.
You use your mastery of the global web that's modern finance to find the money and follow it until you can pierce the veiled charities and masked philanthropists behind the terror dollars, until you strangle the supply lines that convert hatred into action.
All the while, you never underestimate your enemies.
You know they're clever, they're resourceful and adaptive.
You know that they study you, just as you are studying them more effectively, in fact.
After all, when you find their vulnerabilities, there is still due process.
When they find yours, there's murder.
Mass murder.
Life or death, which one it'll be turns solely on intelligence and secrecy.
Can you find out how they next intend to kill you?
Can you stop them?
Can you prevent them from knowing how you know so you can stop them again?
Simple as that.
Modernity has changed many things, but it hasn't changed that.
In command of the first American military forces and facing a deadly enemy, George Washington himself observed that necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.
Upon secrecy, success depends on most enterprises, and for want of it, they are generally defeated.
What on earth would George Washington have made of Bill Keller and his comrades in today's American media, the New York Times?
What would he have made of transparently politicized free speech zealots who inform for the enemy and have the nerve to call it patriotism?
Who say, if you try to isolate barbarians to make them hand up the other barbarians, we will expose it.
If you try to intercept enemy communications, as victorious militaries have done in every war ever fought, we will tell all the world, including the enemy, exactly what you're up to.
We are the New York Times.
If you track the enemy's finances, we will blow you out of the water.
We'll disclose just what you're doing and just how you're doing it, even if it's saving innocent lives.
We are the New York Times.
And why this last?
Well, remember five years ago back when they figured you're not doing enough was the best way to bash the Bush administration?
Remember the Times and its ilk, disdainful of aggressive military responses, tut-tutting about how the disruption of money flows was the key to thwarting international terrorists?
So why compromise that?
National security secrets, yeah, they're all fair game.
If it's about how we detain or infiltrate or defang the monsters pledge to kill us, the New York Times reserves the right to derail us anytime it finds such matters interesting.
But the media's own sources?
Whoa, silly.
That and that alone, why, that's sacrosanct.
Worth protecting above all else, not American lives, not the country.
No, no, no, the media sources have to be protected.
The leakers have to be protected, not American lives.
National security secrets, after all, are merely the public treasure that keeps us alive.
Press informants are the private preserve of the media, and they're just more important than you are, folks.
Well done.
Andy McCarthy, National Review Online.
From yesterday, wanted to share it with you.
Quick time out.
Back and continue in mere moments.
While I was away, Jack Martha said that the United States, he said this down in Miami, he said, the United States poses the top threat in the world to world peace.
And I know that a lot of you people upset the Martha and the Times and so forth, but I want to, I have a theory about all this that I've announced on this program countless times in the past, and I'll share it with you again when we get back.
I got to go back to my new theme song by Mac Davis.
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