And so remember during the presidential election in 2004, well, Michael Moore was by far the biggest noise with his Fahrenheit 9-11.
But that's where political campaigns have moved is they've moved to the movie studios.
Everyone has to come out with a movie now, whatever it might be, some sort of movie, and 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 political brainwashing and spinning going on.
And so that was then.
Now we're moving.
In fact, I saw an article yesterday about youtube.com, how it's becoming so, there's 60,000 videos added a day, and a lot of it's going to be political messages in youtube.com.
So this is kind of 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 another way, according to USA Today, their title, this is back from June 14th.
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.
You've got Oath Betrayed coming from Random House, The End of Iraq from Simon ⁇ Schuster, What Terrorists Want from Random House, Is Iraq Another Vietnam by Public Affairs.
And USA Today says, wait, We found a book.
Yes, we found a book that is optimistic.
These others are all about they think we're losing the war.
It's hopeless.
It's a fool's errand.
But Sentinel has published a book called America's Victories, Why the U.S. Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror by historian, history professor Larry Schweikart 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 going to do this because I wanted to point out the fact you've got the only book out there that's optimistic.
Well, thanks, Tom.
Thanks for the kind words.
It's not only optimistic, I not only say we will win the war, I actually think we won Iraq back in November of 2004 at Fallujah.
And I think when historians finally get around to write 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 2004.
So you say it's a pretty optimistic book.
What makes Fallujah the point?
I mean, I know it was like a Midway or some other.
Is that what you're saying?
Yes, exactly.
And I do not mean to in any way discount the fighting that's going on there now and will go on for some time, maybe a couple more years, or the bloody battles that are still ahead.
But you're likening it to Midway is exactly right.
Because if I were to tell you, in, say, 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 battle at Midway.
That was an important battle.
But boy, you know, it still looks bleak.
Japanese still hold half of China.
They're moving into Burma.
They're threatening Australia.
They hold the Philippines.
And yet, looking back from a historical perspective, almost every historian would agree, well, you know, 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 really the point we hit at Fallujah in 2004.
And then the death of Zarkowi, it's eerily similar to the death of Yamamoto about a year after Midway.
You know what else is interesting, too, is they're talking about, you know, a lot of people after Zakawi was killed said, oh, well, yeah, that's, well, it's not going to change anything because everything's, well, they also got the big organization and everything else.
And yet the same media is reporting about the Cheken rebel leader and his death and how that's such a blow to his organization and their ability.
So it seems we keep getting spin in our newspapers and magazines.
And so 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 more than 20 books on national defense and business and financial history.
Ah, man, to my own kindred spirit.
But these books that you've written of late, you've got one on September Day about, I guess, 9-11.
Yes, a 9-11 novel.
Right.
And it's historically accurate.
I'll give you that.
And then A Patriot's History, which is about from Columbus's discovery to the war on terror.
Right.
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.
But 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 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.
We win wars because we have an 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 Guantanamo Bay is like the Nazi death camps, all the way to 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 Zweickhart, University of Dayton, 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?
And when you say we always win.
Well, 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 enemies in, was not the North Vietnamese.
We could have wiped them out in a second, but with Soviet Russia.
And so both in the case of Korea and 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.
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 immediately began correcting what they had done wrong.
This is, of course, where the famous Navy Top Gun School came about after seeing the lack of success we were having in dogfighting 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 and 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 training that I witnessed down there for the Marines was stunning.
They are getting real-time feedback from Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are incorporating that into their training methods within a matter of weeks.
It used to be that a GI who fought in a campaign would be given 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 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, last Wednesday, maybe it was Monday, the Army came out and said, pardon me, we have beat our estimates.
Our recruiting goals, we signed up 8,700 and so many 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 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, well, you know, she says 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 they're basically 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 career that's an occupational, desirable occupation for people.
And she was mind-blowing by it.
So that ties in with your comment about the fact that the reason we win is because of the fact we have citizens who see and enjoy freedom.
But is that all there is to it?
Because I think a lot of us don't know about anything but freedom.
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 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 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 Creedon's Clearwater song, it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's 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.
I mean, it's just crazy.
These are very fine people.
Well, I saw this.
I did some stat research myself, and it said 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 2% of people who can't, who for some reason say, I don't do well on test or whatever.
But in other words, you have to pass an aptitude test.
And 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, I would love to see a test case where randomly selected, you took teachers of the New York public school system and matched 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 Sweikert.
He is the professor of history, University of Dayton.
His 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 Limbaugh Radio Program.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Tom Sullivan sitting in for Rush.
Rush will be back on Monday, and we're talking to Professor Larry Swikart, author of America's Victories, Why the U.S. Wins Wars.
This business about freedom, this was prior to 9-11, Larry, in a local Siroptimus group, had a contest for seniors or something to write a piece about freedom.
And I never really thought about it until then.
I saw this, and I thought, how do you write about something that'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 you seem to say that is the key to the success of the American soldier.
That's a major key.
And I tie it in in a chapter called If You Build It, We Will Win, which deals with one of your favorite topics, the economy, and how in a free society, it's not just the successful weapons, the weapons that really work that turn out to be really great, that help us win wars.
But we never stop to think that it's also the many Howard Hughes and the people that build the Spruce gooses 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 we don't treat them badly because they didn't have a good idea.
We learn from it and we move ahead.
That's the way the whole economy grows.
Well, there's most people, but you've heard 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 think the anti-missile system is working.
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 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.
Watch it fail.
You've got a chapter called Pushing Autonomy Down.
What's that mean?
This means that American troops, American commanders, are the most confident, most self-autonomous people in military history.
We trust our sergeants and our corporals with decisions that in many armies they don't trust lieutenants and captains with.
I was talking to one American who trains forces in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, and he was saying that our sergeants have more autonomy, freedom to do things on the battlefield than many foreign colonels have.
And one of the reasons for that goes back to culture.
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, HR, can we put Vince on in Cleveland with Professor Sweikart?
All right.
Larry, Vince is on the line from Cleveland.
Vince, go ahead.
Hello, Larry, and hello, Tom.
The reason that I called was that I so much agree with what the professor was just saying.
Our non-commissioned officers, they're the backbone of our military.
This enables the fighting men of the United States, and when I say men, I mean men and women, to adapt at a lower level of command better than maybe any other fighting force in the history of the world.
And I think that it's the people.
We've always been outnumbered, going back to Captain John Smith at Jamestown against Palatin.
Sure.
Always fighting against tyrants that outnumbered us.
How did we win?
And it's amazing that, you know, I'm in the active reserves, and I know the code of the non-commissioned 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, especially in this war on terrorists.
I was taught that in the military, too.
Vince, thanks for the call.
Larry Sweikart, 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 above all other militaries in having this buffer between officers and enlisted men that 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 American victories of people who have been promoted up from private all the way to general.
Yep, they have.
And unfortunately, I'm running up against the clock, but I'll promote your book and tell the audience about the name of it again.
Thanks for being on with us today.
Thanks so much.
Larry Schweikart, University of Dayton.
We'll be back.
Hey, HR, is there a way you're going to post that on RushLimbaugh.com, the link to the book?
Or how does that work?
Because otherwise, you know, in all due deference to the audience, 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 is America's Victories.
And the author is Larry Schweikart, and Sentinel is the publisher.
But anyway, it's literally, as USA Today was going through this thing about all these books, this onslaught of books that are anti-Bush books.
And as Rush has told you so many times, what baffles me about this is the president is not on the ballot anymore.
It's done.
No more elections.
No more.
Nope.
Well, I don't know.
Jeb, we could talk about that.
But George W. is not going to be on the ballot.
And yet people are going, Oath Betrayed is a book coming out.
A medical professor wrote it, and Random House said, okay, we'll publish that.
The end of Iraq, What Terrorists Want from a Harvard Lecturer.
Is Iraq another Vietnam?
I mean, it's just the whole thing.
And then finally, Larry Sweickart'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 the professor who has a long literary history of history is, 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.
The Army and their recruiting goals.
I mentioned when I was talking to the professor about the fact that the Army has exceeded their goals, and you can barely find anything about it.
But they signed up 8,756 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 basically August and September.
And they said it's going to be easy to get the rest of the recruiting goals for this fiscal year.
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 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, well, she's not alone.
There are other people that think that way because they, A, hate the military, or B, 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 aptitude test.
Find out, are you cut out for this?
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 have this aptitude test and they say, well, we will let a maximum, no more than 2% of the incoming recruits each year, if they've got a good reason why they could not pass the aptitude test, but otherwise they've 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 Air Force.
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, whatever you get, they will give 15% of the people came from those kinds of waivers.
Small potatoes, stuff that a lot of 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 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 just think, I can't imagine these people really want to do this.
There's got to be another answer.
Has to be another answer.
And there isn't.
They just want to go do that.
And as we were talking last hour about Korea and everything else, what do you have?
We have 30-some thousand soldiers on the border with North and South Korea.
And I had a guy who identified himself, he called my local show a 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 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 harm the South Koreans and our soldiers that are sitting right there.
I don't know what the strategy is over at the Pentagon, but I would think one of them would be, would be to 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 trying to go with kid gloves on Kim Jong-il and what he's doing up on the border because of the people near the border and including 30-some thousand United States military people.
All right, short break.
When we come back, I've got Robert Novak today coming out and giving us some more information.
He wrote an article today in his newspaper in Chicago about my role in the Valerie Plain leak story, 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 leak.
We don't like their kind of leak.
So we'll tell you what Novak said 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 the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Tom Sullivan studying for Rush Today and Tomorrow.
Just got an email from the Wright brothers.
Not like the airplane guys.
No, right-like in to the right, the Wright brothers.
They said, yeah, they've got a video up on YouTube called Bush Was Right.
This whole YouTube thing is going to be a big political battlefield.
I mean, do you know of any television station or any television network that has 60,000 photographers submitting stuff every day?
That's what's going on with YouTube is 60,000 videos.
A lot of it's goofy garage 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 videos for the next election.
Micah in 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 refute your local caller who called in and said that most people who join the military, you know, down their luck or stuck in a dead end and have no other option.
I recently just graduated from Kent State University with a degree in education.
And I have some opportunities to do that, but I felt that my country is more important right now.
And I'm trying to join in 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.
What is the attraction?
I mean, because there are people, like I said, that don't understand how you can think like this.
I understand.
I served in the military.
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 worldview kind of changed with September 11th, and it kind of opened my eyes to the reality of our world.
And it's just something that's been like a calling to me.
And I was in school, so I graduated, and I figured, well, hey, I can do something good for not only myself, but my country and my countrymen.
So it just seems natural to me to do it.
And I'm a little nervous.
Well, no, you're doing great.
And I find it also kind of ironic that you said you're graduating from Kent State, where, of course, the famous anti-war battle took place back in the Vietnam period.
But did they have ROTC on your campus?
They did, but I never really looked into it until I graduated.
So now you want to go do that?
And you want to go with why the Navy?
Well, my personality, I'm not a super rough and tough guy.
So I was contemplating the Marine Corps, but I think the Navy, I looked into it.
You know, it fits me a little more for me, I guess.
All right.
And you want to go to OCS, so you want to take your leadership skills and learn leadership skills.
I'll tell you that they will teach you how to be a leader of other people better than any other program anywhere.
There's not an NBA course that can teach you leadership skills like the military OCS program.
Well, hopefully I get accepted and I'm really looking forward to it.
Well, see, have you, your father's generation, your grandfather's generation, have you heard the term before about the fact that a lot of people really needed the military 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 it, 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, I noticed just a dramatic improvement in their personalities and their responsibilities and just the respect they had for other people and themselves.
It was went from goobers to men, huh?
Excuse me?
Went from goobers to men.
Exactly.
And they all did, one did two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and the other was in actually the Battle of Saluzha.
So kind of my inspiration.
Well, I salute you, and I thank you, and best wishes to you in your endeavors.
So thanks from all of you.
You bet.
Appreciate it.
Marion in Bakersfield.
Marion, hi.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh.
Hi there.
I am calling you.
I'm a proud mother of an American sailor.
We sent him off to the Great Lakes Training Center.
This is his third day of basic, and I wanted to tell you how proud I am of him and how proud he was to go in.
I'm backing you up on the comments you made.
My son has an IQ of about 160, and he was the second highest on the intelligence, you know, 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 in their history when he went in down to the LA area.
He's a smart one, is he?
Yes.
And 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 get good things from the Navy, but that's not why I'm going.
I'm going to protect my country and my family.
I find this, Marion, I take it since you're the mother of a young man that you must be old enough to remember when it was a draft military.
And yeah, people volunteered, but there was also a lot of people volunteering because they had to figure out they were going to serve one way or the other.
There wasn't a choice.
Now, these young men and women are totally no pressure, no pushing, nothing.
I just love the patriotism that's coming from these stories.
Well, I had, when I was in the airport at 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, before 9-11, it was, I want to get an education.
What can the Army do for me?
And she said, now she's hearing a whole different tune.
And my son, Lee Florell, is going to, he's risen to the SEAL challenge.
He worked out a lot, and before he went to basic training, he pre-qualified to get in the SEALs training camp.
So he's going to give that a try.
So wish him luck.
Only one in five makes it.
I was going to say, that's a very tough program, but I do wish him luck.
And tell him thanks from all of us, too.
Thanks, Mary.
He listens to Rush Limbaugh every day before he went to basic.
So I'll tell him 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'd like to weigh in on the comment by your local listener that, you know, the downtrodden and the like are being accepted into the military because that's how they can get.
I was a cadre member.
I trained cavalry scouts at the Armor Center at Fort Knox.
The military doesn't want people that are incapable of learning or that are not too smart to operate these multi-million dollar systems that they have.
People that operate these combat systems like the Bradley or the M1 tank, they're sitting in multi-million dollar pieces of equipment.
Yeah, yeah.
Everything's electronic computerized.
You got the drones flying overhead.
You've got GPS units.
You've got a lot of a lot.
You've got to be a smart person.
You can't be a fool and go stumbling into the military.
So good.
Glad you called.
Thanks, Michael.
I appreciate it, and thanks for your service, too.
Yeah, it's not the military it was 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago.
And I think that one comment that was made about the fact that I hear it over and over and again, 9-11 made a difference to these young people.
It just swells my chest when I hear about that.
We'll be back.
My name is Tom Sullivan.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Radio Program.
All right, we got to, I promised a little Robert Novak update in his column today talking about his role in the Valerie Plain leak story.
And he still refuses to identify one of his three sources.
But this, to me, is amazing.
He says that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told his lawyer that after two and a half years of investigations of the CIA leak case, that he said, nope, you're free to talk.
Everything with you is fine.
We're not looking at you.
And by the way, the story that you told is the story that Novak told, or excuse me, the story that Carl Rove told.
But there's one other person that Fitzgerald knows about.
Well, two and a half years.
Remember, there was another White House investigation 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 at Fitzgerald.
Two and a half years.
And it 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.