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July 12, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
July 12, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Welcome back to the program uh setting in for rush today and tomorrow and uh Paul W. Smith on Friday, rush back on Monday, and um so remember uh during the uh presidential election in 04, th the well Michael Moore was by far the the the biggest noise with his Fahrenheit 911, but that's where political campaigns have moved is they've moved to uh they move to the uh to the movie studios.
Everyone wants to come out with a movie now, and w whatever it might be, some sort of movie, and that's where that's where they're going to try and make their political messages to the country is sneaking up on them over at the movie theater in their local neighborhood, thinking you're going to go get some entertainment.
Instead, it's a bunch of uh political brainwashing and spinning going on.
And so that was then.
Now we're moving.
In fact, I saw an article yesterday about uh YouTube.com, how it's becoming so there's sixty thousand videos added a day, and a lot of it's going to be political uh messages in in YouTube.com.
Uh so this is kind of the all the new media is becoming part of the message to try to get you to think one way or another, all trying to get into your head.
And um another way, according to USA Today, uh their title, this is back from uh June fourteenth.
It says War on Terror faces a literary onslaught.
A new wave of books critical of the Bush administration's war on terror will hit bookstores this summer.
Reminiscent of the flood of titles bashing the president during the 04 campaign.
Uh you've got Oath Betrayed coming from Random House, the end of Iraq from Simon and Schuster, what terrorists want from Random House, um is Iraq another Vietnam by public affairs, and the USA Today says, uh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we found a book.
Yes, we found a book that is optimistic.
Um these others are all about uh they think we're losing the war, it's hopeless, it's a fool's errand.
Uh but Sentinel has published a book called America's Victories, Why the US Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror by historian, history professor Larry Sweichhart from the University of Dayton.
And Larry, thanks for coming on the program today, and thanks for the book.
It was a nice surprise to get it last week, and you had no idea that I was gonna do this because I wanted to to point out the fact you've got the only book out there that's optimistic.
Well, thanks, Tom.
Thanks for the kind words.
Uh it's not only optimistic, uh I not only say we will win the war, I actually think we won Iraq back in November of two thousand and four at Fallujah.
And I think when historians finally getting around get around to write uh an accurate history of the war on terror, they will point to Iraq and say, Well, that battle was pretty much wound up back in two thousand and four.
So you might say it's a pretty optimistic book.
What what makes Fallujah the the point?
I mean, I know it was like a midway or some other is that what you're saying?
Yes, exactly.
And and I I do not mean to in any way uh discount the fighting that's going on there now, and we'll go on for for some time, maybe a couple more years, uh, or the uh the bloody battles that are still ahead, but your your um likening it to Midway is exactly right because in if I were to tell you in say uh middle of June 1942, ask you, well, you know, where are we in the war in the Pacific?
You know, the average American would say, well, you know, we won this this battle at midway, that was important battle, but boy, you know, it still looks bleak.
Japanese still hold half of China, uh they're moving into Burma, they're they're they're threatening Australia, they hold the Philippines.
And yet, looking back from a historical perspective, yeah, almost every historian would agree, well, you know, the war was the battle the war was really over as of midway.
The Japanese could no longer win the war in the Pacific after Midway.
And I think that's that's really the point we hit at Fallujah in 2004, and then the uh uh death of Zarkawi.
It's eerily similar to the death of Yamamoto about a year after Midway.
You know what else uh is interesting too is they're talking about uh you know a lot of people after uh Zikawi was was killed said, Oh, well, yeah, that's uh well it's not gonna change anything because everything's uh well they've still got the big organization and everything else and yet the same media is reporting about the Checking rebel leader and his death and how that's such a blow to his organization and their abilities.
So it seems we we keep getting spin in our newspapers and magazines and so I I look to you as a history professor.
That's what you do is you just look at history and we keep forgetting the old axiom about history repeats itself.
So I read that you've got you've written well you're like most professors you like to write.
Good more than twenty books on national defense and business and financial history.
Ah man to my own kindred spirit.
But the but but these books that you've written of late you've got one on September day about um I guess nine eleven.
Yes a nine eleven novel right it's historically accurate I'll give you a and then a patriot's history which uh is about uh from Columbus's discovery to the war on terror.
Right.
And um and now you've got America's victories why the U.S. wins wars.
So answer the question why do we win wars?
We win wars because Americans have a certain set of characteristics.
Many countries have some of them.
Very few have most of them.
Almost nobody has all of them.
And these characteristics involve having an army of citizen soldiers who are free individuals who vote themselves into combat, who own property.
It's having a military that learns from loss, can be self-critical and self-analytical.
And this is a no-brainer for Americans.
We go, doesn't anybody do that?
We do that in business all the time.
that that's not the case of some of the cultures we fought in the past and the current culture we're fighting.
Bushido Japan and uh certain elements of the Bedouin Islamicists do not learn from loss because to admit a loss is a shame in their culture.
So they can't be ashamed by saying you know we really screwed this up we need to do it better.
Uh we win wars because uh we we have an uh unbelievable sense of sanctity of life and this goes right through git mode where you have Dick Turbin and the rest of these guys claiming that uh Guantanamo Bay is like uh the Nazi death camps uh all the way to the the fact that we go out of our way to rescue our own prisoners of war like no other country in history.
I've never found any other fighting force anywhere that's attempted so many POW rescues as we have.
You start off in your introduction in the book.
We're talking to Professor Larry Swickhart, University of Dayton, a history professor.
You start off about Vietnam.
So that is one.
And another one that a lot of people that are still with us can remember is the Korean War.
Are these victories?
You say we always win.
well uh that brings up two interesting but kind of different points one is was Vietnam really a war or was it a battle within a bigger war?
I thought the war we were fighting our real enemy then was not the North Vietnamese we could have wiped them out in a second but was Soviet Russia.
And so both in the case of Korea and uh the Vietnam War, the larger war was won and it was won in large part because we did indeed prevent the expansion of communism in these other areas.
But you can take Vietnam a different way.
Uh if you want to call it a separate war, yeah we lost it, but this just proves my other point that we learned from loss.
Immediately the army, the Marines, the Air Force began studying doctrines and tactics that they had used to fight this and and immediately began correcting what they had done wrong.
This is of course where the famous Navy top gun school came about after seeing the uh lack of success we were having in dog fighting over North Vietnam and you might say we're doing the same thing right now with trying to reevaluate how to deal with insurgents.
I mean this wasn't what we were it was supposed to be a tough battle and an easy occupation and it turned out to be an easy battle in a tough occupation.
Right, exactly right you know I just came back from a tour of Camp Lejeune last week and it's all about training.
The the training that I witnessed down there for the Marines was was stunning.
They are getting real time feedback uh from Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are incorporating that into their training methods within a matter of weeks.
It used to be that uh a GI who fought in a campaign would would be given uh uh time off rest and relaxation sent back and often used in training other GIs.
But that process might take months and months.
Now we're doing it in a matter of weeks.
If there are changes on the battlefield, we get them into Camp Lejeune and other training uh facilities within a matter of weeks.
It's truly stunning how quickly we're adapting on the battlefield.
Talking to Larry Schweichart, who is the author of America's Victories, Why the U.S. wins wars.
Um last well, let's see, today's Wednesday, maybe it was Monday.
The Army came out and said we uh pardon me, we we have beat uh our estimates.
We uh our recruiting goals.
We signed up eight thousand seven hundred and so many uh young men and women to be members of the United States military, and that exceeds our goals, and we're ahead for July, and by this fiscal year, we're going to be ahead of our recruiting goals as opposed to uh missing it last year, and there was huge publicity about missing it last year.
This year there's almost no publicity about it.
So I was doing a little bit on my program, my local program about this, and this woman calls me up and says, She says, uh, well, you know, she says uh the only people going into the military today are a bunch of losers.
They're all people, you know, the courts are sending them there, and there's uh and they're and they're they're they're basically uh the the troubled people, and that's why they're going.
And she was just she could not imagine, could not imagine that somebody would actually like to make a a career that's an occupational, desirable occupation for people.
And she she was mind-blown by it.
So that ties in with your your comment about the fact that the reason we win is because of the fact we have citizens who see and enjoy freedom, but uh um is that all there is to is that all there is to it?
Because I think a lot of us don't know about anything but freedom.
They they're a cross section.
The people in the military today are a cross section of American society as a whole.
This poor woman, I I pity her, she just does not know the people who make up our U.S. military.
We have people in there from every walk of life.
A recent study of zip code data shows that we have uh soldiers in the U.S. Army representative proportionally from every zip code in the United States, including the Beverly Hills 90210 zip code.
In fact, the old Credence Clearwater song, It Ain't Me, ain't it, I ain't no Senator Son.
Even that's wrong.
The sons and daughters of our elected representatives in Washington are serving at a higher percentage than the U.S. population as a whole.
So it's just nonsense.
These are very well educated people.
I have dozens of these ROTC students in my classes at the University of Dayton all the time.
They're excellent students.
Uh I mean it it's just crazy.
These are very fine people.
Well, I saw I saw this.
I did some stat research myself, and it said uh there's an aptitude test to see if you're cut out to be a soldier.
And they only allow a waiver of up to two percent of people who can't who for some reason say that I don't do well on test or whatever, but in other words, you have to pass an aptitude test.
And uh and uh I mean this goes right down through the list of the number of people that are there for any other reason other than the fact that they really want to go is a very, very small percentage, and those are the people that basically need to have the military experience to kind of grow up.
Well, so I think I would love to see a a test case where randomly selected you took teachers of the New York public school system and match them up against randomly selected U.S. Army and Marines on an aptitude test and see who came out higher.
Yeah.
We're talking to Larry Sweikhart.
Uh he is the uh professor of history University of Dayton, has a book out called America's War.
America's Victories, Why the U.S. Wins Wars.
We'll take a short break and come right back.
My name's Tom Sullivan.
This is the Russian ball radio program.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Uh Tom Sullivan's sitting in for Rush.
Uh, Russia'll be back on Monday, and we're talking to uh Professor Larry Sweichhart, author of America's Victories, Why the U.S. Wins Wars.
This business about uh freedom.
This was prior to 911, Larry, and uh uh local um Seroptimus group had a had a contest for seniors or something to write a piece about freedom and and I never really thought about it until then I saw this, and I thought, how do you write about something that that's it's like air?
We've always known it, we've always had it.
We don't know what it's like to be without it.
And and you seem to say that is the key to the success of the American soldier.
That's a major key.
And uh I tie it in in a chapter called If You Build It We Will Win, uh, which deals with one of your favorite topics, the economy, and how uh in a free society, it's not just the successful weapons, uh the the weapons that really work that turn out to be really great uh that that help us win wars,
but we never stop to think that it's also uh the many Howard Hughes and the people that build the spruce gooses and and and the weapons that don't quite work that allow us to see, okay, that doesn't work, but we don't ostracize these people, we don't kick them out, and and we don't treat them badly because they they didn't have a good idea.
We we learn from it and we move ahead.
That's the way the whole economy grows.
Well, I I've there's uh most people, but uh you've heard the the the critics say, what are you doing that anti-missile stuff for?
It doesn't work.
So why are you wasting your time on it?
And you go, well, maybe it doesn't work now, but that's how you get it to work, and thank goodness we have something now that good old Kim Jong-il is going to town.
Well, I I think the anti-missile system is working, uh I think it's working better and better every time it's tested.
But what's interesting is that now that we're opening up the Cold War documents uh from the Soviet Union, we found out that the KGB was spending upwards of 70 to 80 percent of its budget trying to stop the development of Star Wars.
Now, you don't try to stop an enemy weapon system from being deployed if you don't think it's going to work.
You encourage them to build it.
Oh, yeah, build that system, buddy.
Let's watch it fail.
What uh you've got a chapter called Pushing Autonomy Down.
What what's that mean?
This means that American troops, American commanders are are the most uh confident, most uh self-autonomous people in military history.
We trust our sergeants and our corporals with uh decisions that in many armies they don't trust lieutenants and and captains with.
I was talking to one uh American who trains forces in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, and he was saying that that our sergeants have more autonomy, uh freedom to to do things on the battlefield than than uh many foreign colonels have.
And and one of the reasons for that goes back to culture.
Uh many of these cultures are top-down cultures that don't believe in giving people any freedom.
They don't trust people.
We train our forces like no one else, and then we trust our forces to go out and kick butt.
Hey, uh H.R., can we put uh Vince on from Cleveland with uh with Professor Sweiger?
All right.
Um uh Larry uh Vince is on the line from Cleveland.
Vince, go ahead.
Uh hello, Larry, and hello, Tom.
Uh the reason that I called uh was that I uh I so much agree with what the professor was just saying.
Uh our noncommissioned officers, they're the backbone of our military.
Uh this enables the fighting men of the United States, uh when I say men, I mean men and women, uh, to adapt uh at a lower level of command, better than maybe any other fighting force in the history of the world.
Uh and and I think that uh it's the people.
Uh we've always been outnumbered.
Uh going back to Captain John Smith at uh Jamestown uh against Palatin.
Sure.
Always fighting against tyrants that outnumbered us.
How did we win?
And uh it's amazing that uh, you know, I'm uh I'm in the active reserve, and uh I know the code of the noncommissioned officer is number one, you take care of your people.
You take care of your troops, and life is precious.
We don't just expend troops like the other side.
Uh especially in this war.
I was taught that in in the military too.
Uh Vince, thanks for the call.
Larry uh Sweikhart, what's your comment?
Vince is absolutely right on the NCOs.
This is another point they made to me down at Camp Lejeune, is that ours is is above all other militaries in having this buffer between officers and enlisted men uh that i is seldom seen in history.
Now, the other side of that, though, is that we promote willingly through the ranks.
And I give plenty of examples in the American victories of people and promoted up from private all the way to general.
Yep, they have.
And I've unfortunately I'm running up against the clock, but I'm I'll promote your book and tell you the audience about the name of it again.
Thanks for being on with us today.
Thanks so much.
Larry Sweichart, University of Dayton.
We'll be back.
Hey HR, is there uh is there a way you're gonna post that on Rush Limbaugh.com, the link to the book, or uh how's that how does that work?
Uh because otherwise, you know, um in all due deference to the audience, uh they're driving their cars, they're doing their busy people, and they can't sit down and write all this stuff down.
But again, the name of the book uh is America's Victories.
And the author is Larry Schweichhart and uh Sentinel is the publisher.
But anyway, it's uh it's literally as USA Today was going through this thing about all these um these books, this onslaught of of books that are anti-Bush books.
And and and as Rush has told you so many times, what what baffles me about this is the president is not on the ballot anymore.
He's all it's done.
No more elections, no more, nope, no well, I don't know, Jeb, we could talk about that.
But but George W. is not going to be on the ballot.
And yet people are going Oath Betrayed is a book coming out.
Um a medical professor wrote it and Random House said, okay, we'll publish that.
The end of Iraq, what terrorists want from uh Harvard lecturer.
Uh is Iraq another Vietnam.
I mean, it's just the whole thing, and then finally Larry Sweikart's book comes along, America's Victories, and the USA Today says it's the only one they can find that is even halfway optimistic.
So I think uh the professor who has a long literary history uh of history is uh I just you know it's so simple to forget the old axiom about history does repeat itself.
It does, it does, it does.
So anyway, it's a good book.
Um the Army and their recruiting goals.
I mentioned uh when I was talking to the professor about the fact that the Army uh has has exceeded their goals, and you can barely find anything about it.
But they signed up eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-six recruits in the month of June.
And the lieutenant general who's in charge of personnel says very optimistic for July.
They're off to a very good start for this month.
Fiscal year ends in September 30th, so they've got uh basically August and September, and they say it's gonna be easy to get the rest of the recruiting goals for this fiscal year.
Uh they remember the big media hubbub about all of this a year ago about how they missed.
That's it.
It's another sign that the Americans, nobody wants to go fight in this uh illegal, immoral, blah, blah, blah.
So this lady calls my local show and she says, Well, they're just a bunch of losers.
That's all the people are going in.
They're all a bunch of disturbed people.
And um, well, uh for for she's not alone.
There are other people that think that way because they a hate the military, or B, uh they're a bunch of wusses, or I mean, we can go down the list, but they have no idea what they're talking about.
So the Department of Defense, since the 1980s, has had this um this uh aptitude test.
Find out, are you cut out for this?
And and and there are people that for some reason have a hard time understanding that some people want to be doctors, some people want to be butchers, some people want to be pilots, some people want to be nurses, some people want to be soldiers.
It's an honorable, honorable, honorable profession.
Putting their lives in harm's way.
I can't think of anything more honorable than that.
So anyway, they they have this aptitude test, and they say, well, we will let a maximum, no more, than two percent of the incoming recruits each year uh If they've got a good reason why they could not pass the aptitude test, but otherwise they got to pass this puppy.
And then you go through people that got waivers because of misdemeanor offenses of drugs or alcohol.
And they let in 15% that have some sort of waiver for misdemeanor offense, drug or alcohol.
So it's not the courts sending all these kids off to war.
It is an army, a navy, a Coast Guard, Marines, who I mean, Air Force, uh, they're all volunteers.
And when they say get a waiver for a misdemeanor, we're not talking about felony.
Nobody can get in.
You cannot get in to the United States military if you've got a felony.
But you can get in if you were a dumb kid and you did something stupid, and you got busted for having some pot or you got busted for having beer in your car when you were a teenager, and you go to the military and say, I really do want to be a soldier for the United States military, and I made a mistake, and it was the only time I mean whatever you get, they they will give 15, 15% of the people came from those kinds of waivers.
Small potatoes stuff that a lot of uh good people made mistakes when they were young and dumb, and the military looks at that and says, Yeah, well, we understand.
So that means 85% have no problems, have no background of any issues that uh are troubling them or their lives, and they're the people that are going in, and for some reason again, I don't know why, but there are people out there who um who just think uh I can't imagine.
These people really want to do this, there's got to be another answer.
Has to be another answer.
And and there isn't.
They just want to go do that.
And uh, as we were talking last hour about um about Korea and everything else, there's what what do you have?
We have thirty some thousand soldiers on the border with uh North and South Korea.
And I had a uh a guy who identified himself, uh he called my local show uh week or so ago, as a former intelligence officer in the State Department during the Clinton administration, and he was quick to point out he wasn't political, he was a bureaucrat, but he worked on intelligence regarding Korea.
And uh his point was a lot of the reasons why you'll hear South Korea talking about the concern about North Korea and trying to work out something, be nice to them, don't get too upset with the crazy cousin up north, is because of the fact that they can come rolling in and um and harm uh the the South Koreans and our soldiers that are sitting right there.
I don't know uh what the strategy is over at the Pentagon, but I would think one of them would be would be to uh have some sort of pullback and be able to fire away again if they start rolling across the border.
So that's part of it too, is our soldiers are there protecting this country.
And that's part of the whole reason why everybody's uh trying to go with kid gloves on the uh on Kim Jong-il and what he's doing up uh on the border, because of the pe of the people near near the border and including thirty some thousand United States military people.
All right, short break.
When we come back, I've got um Robert Novak today coming out and giving us some more information.
He wrote an article today in his uh loc in his newspaper in Chicago about um my role in the Valerie Plain leak story, which is which goes back again about how outraged everybody is about the leak,
especially the New York Times about a leak about somebody that may or may not even be anybody that should have been protected by the leak law, but it's okay to leak all the government secrets about the NSA and about the financial Swift program and everything else.
One leak's okay.
As long as it's our kind of leak, but not their kind of league.
We don't like their kind of leak, so we'll tell you what Novak said uh in his column today.
We'll come back.
The phone number to join the program is 800-282-2882.
My name is Tom Sullivan.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Radio Program.
Welcome back.
It's uh the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Tom Sullivan's hunting for Rush today and tomorrow.
Just got an email from uh the Wright brothers.
Not like the airplane guys, no, the right like in to the right, the Wright brothers, they said, Yeah, they've got a uh a video up on YouTube called Bush Was Right.
This is this whole YouTube thing is going to be a big political uh uh battlefield.
I mean, do you know of any television station or any television network that has sixty thousand photographers submitting stuff every day?
That's what's going on with YouTube is sixty thousand videos, and a lot of it's goofy garage uh stuff that's being done by people, kids and so forth.
But there's also a lot of very good professional videos that are put on there, and they're going to make this a place for political um videos for the for the next election.
Micah in uh Jackson, Ohio.
Hello, Micah, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Good day, Tom.
How are you?
Good day.
Wonderful, thanks.
Well, I just wanted to call and uh refute your local caller who called in and said that most people who join the military, you know, down their luck or and it's stuck in a dead end and have no other option.
I recently just graduated from Kent State University with a degree in education, and you know, I have some opportunities to do that, but I felt that uh my country is more important right now, and I'm trying to uh join in um OCS for the Navy.
And I just wanted to call and let you know that that most people who join, at least the friends that I've had, they don't just do it because they have to, they do it because they want to.
That's all I wanted to say.
Well, Micah, thank you.
Uh first uh why what what is the attraction?
I mean, tell because there are people like I said that don't understand how you can think like this.
I I've I understand I served in the military.
I but I was in a different era too.
A lot of us that are the baby boomers, you know, it wasn't a matter of whether you were drafted or not.
It was a question of you were going to have to serve either through the draft or you're going to have to pick your branch and sign up.
But now it's totally on there's no pressure on you to do this.
Well, to be honest, my my worldview kind of changed with September eleventh, and it kind of opened my eyes to the you know the reality of our world.
And it's just something that's been like a calling to me.
And I was I was in school, so I graduated and I figured, well, hey, I can you know do something good for not only you know myself but my my country and my countrymen, so it just seems natural to me to do it, and I don't it's I'm a little nervous though.
Well, no, I think you you're doing great, and I find it also kind of ironic that you said you gradu you're graduating from Kent State where of course the uh famous anti-war battle was uh was uh took place back in the Vietnam period.
Uh but but did they have did they have ROTC on your campus?
They did, but I never really looked into it until uh I graduated, so now you want to go do that.
And and you want to go the why the Navy.
Um well my personality, I'm not like a super rough and tough guy, so I I was contemplating the Marine Corps, but I think the Navy, I looked into it, it was a little you know, it fits me a little more uh for me, I guess.
All right.
And you want to go to OCS, so you want to uh take your your leadership skills and learn leadership skills.
I'll tell you that they will teach you how to be a a leader of other people better than any other program anywhere.
There's not an MBA course they can teach you leadership skills like like the military OCS program.
Well, I'm I'm hopefully I get accepted and I'm really looking forward to it.
Well, see I have you have you your father's generation, your grandfather's generation.
Have you heard the term before about the fact that a lot of people uh r really needed um the military to to kind of mature and grow up and it helped them the rest of their life?
I mean, this is something that's not just I don't know how long you're signing up for, but it will help you.
Literally help you the rest of your life.
Well, actually, when I graduated from high school, three of my best friends joined the Marine Corps, and they were a little wild, and once they came back from boot camp the first time, like I noticed just a dramatic improvement in their personalities and their responsibilities and just the respect they had for you know other people and themselves.
It was went from goobers to uh to you to men, huh?
Excuse me?
Went from goobers to men.
Exactly.
And they they all did one did two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and the other was in actually the Battle of Fallujah, so kind of my inspiration.
Well, I salute you and I thank you, and uh and best wishes to you in in your endeavors.
So thanks from all of us.
You bet.
Appreciate it.
Marion in uh Bakersfield, Marion, hi, you're on the Rush Lindbergh.
Hi there.
I am calling you.
I'm a proud mother of an American sailor.
Yeah.
This is his third day of basic, and uh I wanted to tell you how proud I am of him and how proud he was to go in.
Um I'm backing you up on the um on the comments you made, my son has an IQ of about a hundred and sixty, and uh he was the second highest on the intelligence, you know the the academic test they have to take.
You mentioned earlier they all have to take that test.
Yep, yep, yep.
When they go in.
He was the second highest they ever had in the center uh in their history when he went in and went down to the LA area.
He's a smart one, is he?
Yes.
And um he he knows the young man you were just talking to was talking about the Navy.
He said the Navy has a very good educational program, and I said, Well, did you check out what you can do?
And he said, Mom, I'll I'll get good things from the Navy, but that's not why I'm going.
I'm going to protect my country and my family.
It's just about I find this uh Marion, I t I take it since you're the mother of uh of a young man that you must be old enough to um remember when it was it was a draft military.
And and yeah, people volunte people volunteered, but there was also a lot of a lot of people volunteering because they they had to figure out they were going to serve one way or the other.
You there wasn't a choice.
Now these young men and women are totally no pressure, no pushing, nothing.
Um I I just love the patriotism that's coming from these stories.
Well, I had uh when I was in the airport in LAX one day, I met a Navy or an Army lady and she said the kids that are the young people that are coming through now are much different.
She said uh before nine eleven it was I want to get an education, what can the Army do for me?
Right she said now she's hearing a whole different tune.
And my son, Lee Forrell, is going to he's risen to the SEAL challenge.
He he uh worked out a lot and wait before he went to basic training he prequalified to get in the SEAL's training camp.
So he's gonna give that a try.
So wish him luck.
Only one in five makes it.
I was gonna say that's the that's a very tough program, but but I do wish him luck.
And I tell him thanks from all of us too.
Thanks, Mary.
Well he he uh listens to Rush Limbaugh every day when he before he went to basic.
So I'll tell you he'll be real happy.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Appreciate your call.
Michael in Toledo.
Hi, Michael, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Afternoon.
Good afternoon.
I I'd like to weigh in on uh the the comment by your local listener that uh, you know, the downtrodden and the and uh the like are are being accepted into the military because that's all they can get.
Uh I was a cadre member, I trained a cavalry scouts at the Armor Center at Fort Knox.
Uh the the military doesn't want people that are incapable of learning or that are are not too smart to operate these multimillion dollar uh systems that they have.
The uh people that operate these combat systems like the Bradley or the M1 tank, uh they're sitting in multi-million dollar pieces of equipment.
Yeah, yeah.
Everything everything's electronic computerized.
It's uh you got the you got the drones flying overhead, you've got GPS units, you've got a lot of a lot you you've got to be a smart person.
You can't be a fool and and uh go stumbling into the military.
So good.
Glad you called.
Thanks, Michael.
I appreciate it, and thanks for your service too.
I uh yeah, it's it's not it's not the the military it was ten years ago, let alone twenty years ago.
And I think that one comment that was made about the fact that I hear it over and over and again, nine eleven made a difference to these young people.
Uh I just it just swells my chest when I hear about that.
We'll be back.
My name's Tom Sullivan.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Radio Program.
All right, we got to uh I promised a little uh Robert Novak update in his column today talking about his role in the Valerie Plame leak story.
And uh he still refuses to identify one of his three sources, but this is this to me is amazing.
He says uh that uh special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told his lawyer that after two and a half years of investigations of the CIA leak case that uh he said uh nope, you're free to talk.
You uh everything with you is fine.
Uh we're not looking at you, and uh and by the way, the story that you told is the story that Novak t or excuse me, the story that uh Rove, Carl Rove Told and uh but there's one other person that uh that uh Fitzgerald knows about.
Well, two and a half years.
Remember there was another White House counts uh investigation um going on by special counsel.
And remember all the big screaming going on about how it took so many years and all that money and everything else, and why it was just a waste of taxpayer money.
I don't hear anybody screaming about the two and a half years that Fitzgerald two and a half years.
And all turns out where what Novak says is that he learned Valerie Plain's name from Joe Wilson's entry in Who's Who in America?
It all points back to Joe Wilson.
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