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July 18, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
July 18, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you once again, thrill seekers, music lovers, and conversationalists all across the bountiful fruited plan, the award-winning Rush Limbaugh program and the excellence in broadcasting network on the air.
This is America's most listened to radio talk show, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the uh email address is rush at EIB net.com.
Well, there's no end in sight to the uh controversy and the war going on between the uh the uh Hezbollah crowd uh the and the and the Israelis and the Iranians and whoever, but some interesting arguments are springing up now in uh in this country.
Uh yesterday, or I guess that's yesterday, uh earlier this week, in the weekly Standard, there was a column by Bill Kristol, who's the editor-in-chief over there, uh, basically saying uh Bush should go to Jerusalem and the U.S. should confront Iran.
Uh and he's basically this is I I hadn't seen it until today when George Will referenced it.
Uh and disagrees with it totally.
Uh uh, which is interesting, is there's a there's uh there's an argument here among the conservative intellectual elites over uh what the proper uh course for United States uh involvement in this war is.
By the way, our helicopters are over there evacuating, and get this.
They're evacuating American citizens, some 320 are leaving today.
Over a thousand will leave tomorrow.
Military helicopters uh are there on offloading, and the uh drive-by media's big concern is his is uh they've heard that the uh people being evacuated gonna have to reimburse the government for the trip out.
And so uh they get all these experts on asking uh well is this the way other countries do it?
Uh I thought other countries just pay to evacuate their uh their own citizens.
Um most of the time when the U.S. issues an evacue, I mean, you U.S. doesn't send airplanes over to get you, doesn't call up Jet Blue or American Airlines and say, we've chartered a bunch of 767s for you.
Uh head on over the airport and get on one of them.
Uh it's up to people to get out of there at their um at their own expense.
But they're making a big deal out of that.
There's also an effort uh underway to uh humanize Hezbollah.
Which is not surprising.
Uh uh Bush is the real enemy.
It's it's it's it you know, if it weren't so serious, it should be comical.
The drive-by media, let's go to audio soundbite number one, the drive-by media doing everything to humanize Hezbollah.
They they run social welfare programs in Lebanon at midnight.
Basketball plans for the poor, um, and they're socially active.
It sort of reminds me of when uh Senator Patty Murray from Washington uh talked uh about after 9-11, uh, talked about Osama bin Laden about how he was he was the reason he had so much support for people was he built them roads and he built them schools and stuff.
People were pulling their hair out.
He we have a little montage uh from John King at CNN and Rhea Mitchell and BC News, Washington, and Miles O'Brien from CNN, and uh Yaroslav Tromivov, wherever he is from, or her, whatever she's from, uh, describing the greatness and the the the kindnesses engaged in by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is a significant political force in Lebanon, holding seats in parliament and running cabinet ministries, and building public support by running social welfare programs.
Hezbollah's charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nezrala, has become Lebanon's best known and most controversial politician.
Hezrala provides social services.
We see the militant side of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah derives support from its civilian component.
Uh, its ability to deliver services.
Hezbollah doesn't just fight, but it also runs a construction branch, which is called the construction jihad, which builds houses for its members.
Hold it, hold it, stop the tape.
Construction jihad.
Do you know what a jihad is?
Jihad's a holy war.
Construction jihad.
All right, resume tape.
It even learns a social service for the veterans for the wounded in its battles with the matchmaking branch.
It finds wives, for example, for these veterans who marry them out of a sense of jihad.
Uh without even meeting them first.
Well, that's an actually great social service.
Why we should use that here.
Find wives for people before you've even met them.
Sounds to me like that kind of stuff used to happen way, way back in the 12th and 14th centuries.
At any rate, so you see what what's happening here.
Uh Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization.
They are a terrorist organization.
The charismatic leader, is that what Andrew Mitchell said?
Hezbollah's uh charismatic leader, Sheik Hassan Nasralla.
My friends, I saw a um uh there's a bunch of people out there that are producing uh movies and documentaries, uh, and of course, as a uh powerful influential member of the media, I received many of these, and there's uh there's one being produced that's pretty serious uh and pretty well done, and it's not available yet, it's it's not anywhere else.
It's called obsession.
And in this in this DVD, uh goes about an hour and a half, there are many clips of this so-called charismatic Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasralla.
The guy is a flaming maniac.
There is nothing charismatical.
Well, I mean, you might want to say he's charismatic in the sense that he's able to convince his own people to strap bombs all over them and go up and blow themselves up, including his own son in 1997.
I guess you could call that charismatic.
And then he had the audacity to talk about how proud he was of his son uh for this kind of sacrifice.
He's typical of these guys.
He gets everybody else to go out and do the dirty work, but you don't see him in the ditch in the construction jihad, and you don't see him strapping bombs all over himself.
But I'm gonna have to watch this thing again because uh this guy is all over it, uh, along with a bunch of other guys like him.
And they are they're out there swearing and promising death to all the infidels, and they're they're stirring crowds up into a uh uh into a frenzy, and this silly notion that they provide social services and so forth as though the Israelis don't.
As though we don't, as though the Brits don't, as though the Dutch don't, as though the Japanese and the Chinese and the Asians don't.
Hezbollah does.
What is the incessant need on the part of the drive-bys to humanize I well, I don't even need to finish asking the question because I am capable of answering it.
They are the small fry.
They're the victims, and they are the people of colour.
And they are very small, and it's def it's the big, powerful, mean Israel with jets and big tanks against these poor people who are just trying to provide construction jihad and uh wife swapping services for veterans, and white open not swapping.
Well, that probably happens too.
Wife finding service.
What a great culture.
And here Israel is on uh verge of wiping them out.
Why we can't sit by and tolerate this.
Remember the call we had yesterday from Pamela, the blogger uh who had been to the pro-Israel rally in New York City, who was just so she was excited, and I went and looked at her website, and uh she's a babe.
She's had she's got she's got uh I think four kids, if I read right, but she's uh very active, and she's got pictures from this thing yesterday, some of the finest, funniest pictures of Hillary that I have seen.
She was talking a blue streak, and she mentions on her website, uh, and I'll get the link here in a second.
I've still got it there, I just have it written down.
I'll get it to you after the break here, but she um talks about how the big thing of the day was getting through to me and spreading the word on this program about the about the rally.
But she said something that uh uh Ellie V sell was there, and Ellie V sell thanked God for President Bush.
And uh she said, You won't see this anywhere else.
This won't report be reported anywhere.
Uh and she was right, but we have the audio of Ellie Wiesel.
This is reported nowhere else in the drive-by media.
This is uh uh it's it's internet quality here, but you'll be able to hear Ellie Wiesel speaking yesterday at the pro-Israel rally in New York City.
You are not alone.
You never will be alone.
We are with you, and the manica is with you.
And the president of the United States thank God for the enough.
Well, there you have it.
And in terms of someone with uh with more look at now we get another profile piece on this wacko.
Every time I see his name, uh Hassan Nasrallah, I think of nostrils.
I think of a nose.
It's like that terrorist that killed Mayer Kahane, Uh Abu Salam uh nosehair.
Or some there he is.
Look at CNN International is doing a puff peace profile on this guy, and uh how great he is and what he's meant to his peoples and so forth.
Here's Hillary at the same rally, by the way, uh a montage of Hillary at the pro-Israel rally.
Uh just listen and I have a question for you.
Israel has every right to defend Brussel, and the world must know that the United States, our government, and our people will stand with Israel.
We will support her efforts to send a message to Hamas Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians, to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom.
Okay, does that sound presidential to you?
Uh sound like a future president shrieking uh at you uh there, uh, ladies and gentlemen, or an ex-wife.
I had a chance to tune into some of this puff piece profile of uh well uh uh uh what's his Hassan Nasrallah.
It's not Nazarelli, snerdly, it's Nasralah.
At any rate, this was so funny.
They got their reporter out there, and apparently the the big story is he is huge in Syria.
They love Nasrallah in Syria, got wide support.
They even go to Singapore, you go anywhere in the world, and there are posters of this guy all over the towns, and they love this guy.
And he's got whole total support and sometimes, wait a second here.
I know how PR works, and I know that these these mass movements require all kinds of these are not even free societies we're talking about, where people can put posters up of who they like, put the wrong poster up, and you get gunned down in five minutes in most of these places.
I know how this PR works, and it's amazing.
The media, if they want to, drive-by media will fall for the slickest PR campaign, depending on who um who puts it out.
Uh so it's clear that there's an effort now to humanize uh and and and to uh uh soften uh the image of a bunch of terrorists has bottled do you know how long they have been around?
They are terrorists.
These are the clowns that blew up the marine barracks in uh in Beirut.
These are the clowns that uh uh participated in the Cobar Towers uh uh bombing.
These these clowns are have been terrorists for uh uh a long time, but all of a sudden now that they're engaged with a U.S. ally, why they're just poor little uh wife finders, uh uh construction workers, uh doctors and nurses, uh, water sanitation experts, uh school teachers and all I it never gets easy.
Doing the right thing and being the big guy is never an easy thing, particularly when so many of uh members of your club resent you, and I would say that that represents the drive-by media.
Let me get to this comparison here between George Will and Bill Crystal, because I hadn't seen uh uh Bill Kristol's piece until I saw Will's piece today.
So I went and got Crystal's piece.
And Crystal, uh, in the weekly standard, Bill Crystal basically lays out what uh what I laid out yesterday, a lot of people are.
Uh I call it a gift to the world, this whole uh event that's happening over there, because we've got an Iran that is building up toward being nuclear weapons capable.
And the question that we all have to ask ourselves is do we have a plan of dealing with a nuclear Iran beyond containment?
There are a bunch of uh uh uh uh how shall I say uh highbrow uh uh intellectuals smarter than all the rest of uh uh ladies and gentlemen, containment uh did work with Stalin, and the containment worked with uh Kustav, and the containment worked with uh with uh Brezhnev, as though it is a legitimate containment.
They mean go ahead and let them have the nukes, but then keep a sharp eye out.
Well, there you know I I I just I marvel that these are the people who are credited with being the smartest people in the room, these intellectuals.
But the real question is, do we want to deal with this?
Now, I know some of you might say, what right do we have to say to country A, you can't have nukes, and country B, you can.
It's called leadership.
You know, it's if you don't believe in the concept that we are the good guys, then you're gonna have problems understanding this whole thing.
If you think we're evil, I know a lot of Americans do, because they're laden with self-loathing and guilt, but for the vast majority of people, we don't want another especially we don't want another Korea, North Korea, a nation with nukes that's constantly threatening to use them, constantly and can use them for blackmail.
You know, freedom-loving societies have these weapons as deterrents.
And you have them to prevent the fact that they get used, or to prevent their usage, or to be able to defend yourself if they do uh happen to be used against you.
Uh when you have a nation that's out there actively suggesting they want nuclear weapons to blow Israel off the map or to do whatever else they want, you have to take this rather seriously.
So the question uh becomes um do we want to deal with the nuclear Iran?
And the real then challenge is if we say no, then what do we do about it?
Because as I said yesterday, Israel can't do it alone.
They might be able to get some some missions.
They could fly maybe some missions and maybe have some success bombing nuclear targets uh in in Iran, but they can't send ground forces in there, and it may not even be necessary, but they're already they've opened this Western front with Hezbollah, and they're occupied with that.
Uh and you know, I'm also reading people saying, but you know, this is not like previous conflicts.
What this is about is this is really just about two Israeli soldiers that have been kidnapped.
It's about so little.
Why is it escalating out of control?
It's just about two if Israel would just forget it.
I mean, it happens, it's war.
Yeah, Israel's supposed to forget there too.
We're supposed to keep a head count of our 2500 plus and uh and get out of the war as uh in in Iraq as uh as a result of it.
Well, you know, who cares why th folks, the the the the the the stimulus uh is going to be different on each occasion in a in a conflict like this where there are personal hatreds and enmities that have have been around for two thousand plus years.
Uh and and and the idea that this is just about two kidnapped Israeli soldiers misses the whole point.
There's a theory being boundy abandoned about today that uh uh really this is uh uh Hezbollah covering weakness uh and all-ups and Syria getting worried about us and Iran being worried about the world's reaction to its nuke plans.
So it was Amir Tahiri today, the New York Post says these countries just throw the Israeli card.
Whenever they get in trouble, blame Israel for something, or do something to cause Israel to react and get all the focus off yourself.
In this case, Iran and removing the focus on its nuclear program, Hezbollah and its focus, uh getting the focus off of its terrorism, and of course, Basher Assad, uh he's in trouble because of the assassination of the former pri former forget what he's a very high official, Hariri might be indicted.
Uh when I read that, how can this be?
How can when you are a dictator, how can you be indicted?
I mean, I I I I don't I can't believe that Basher Assad's really afraid that he's in any trouble because he killed a political enemy.
It's what they do over there.
I mean, it's like getting up and eating uh uh goat's eyes for breakfast.
As a lot of things I don't I don't prefer fried goats eyes, Mr. Sturdley, that's delicacy saw it in the James Bond movie.
Um it is.
It is, if you can afford them.
The goats.
Uh that is.
So you are left here to wonder, well, is this really over just two Israeli soldiers, or is it far more complicated?
Whatever it is, it's happening.
And whatever has caused it, it is happening and it's getting um tougher.
It's intensifying.
And in the meantime, there is an opportunity.
We know that Hezbollah is essentially The Iranian army in Syria.
But Rush, but Rush, they were elected.
Yeah, they're elected, but they're not part of the Lebanese government, are they?
Lebanon has a democracy, and Lebanese have elected their leadership, but they have not elected uh the Hezbollah.
Hezbollah people elected this whoever they've elected, but you've got a state within a state when you're talking about Hezbollah and uh and Lebanon.
Uh and and that's one of George Will's points, which I'm gonna get to when I have a little bit more time after the next break to compare what uh he and and some of the other conventional theories are about dealing with Iran, because the real question does boil down to do we want a nuclear Iran?
And if we don't, what do we do about it?
And you just can't say, well, it would be too hard to do something about it.
If it's worth de uh dealing with and doing, then how hard it is just gets factored into the equation, and you do it.
But the question is, are we headed in that direction as a country?
And I don't profess to know.
I tend to doubt it.
Wish it weren't the case.
Precisely what happens here.
We make the complex understandable uh correction.
I said that Hezbollah is not part of the Lebanese government.
They are, in the sense that they have a few members elected to the Lebanon Parliament, the Lebanese Parliament.
Uh it it it is is a is a is well, but it's it's it's a it's a very, very small number of Hezbollah members that are elected to Parliament.
However, uh they are quote unquote a political party with their own militia.
Uh the way to look at Hezbollah, I mean, the Lebanese have an army, and it's not Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, they're a bunch of terrorists.
In fact, uh Ben Stein today, uh, in the uh American Spectator, uh, has an interesting piece.
Let me read you some excerpts from it.
Hezbollah are the most vicious killers imaginable.
They killed 283 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.
They are the ones that kicked a helpless Navy man, Robert Steedham to death on a hijacked airliner.
That was TWA um uh, what was it, eight four seven, uh, going back and forth Rome to Damascus.
They have killed and mailed U.S. Embassy people wherever they could.
They blew up a Jewish community center filled with children in Buenos Aires.
And in October of 2001, CNN was beating the drums to smash Hezbollah.
Mike Becher, CNN correspondent with a voiceover.
Now CNN has learned it as part of the uh any war on terrorism.
U.S. officials are again targeting the alleged mastermind of the Beirut bombings, his name Imad Magnia, a uh founder of the Lebanese Islamic militia Hezbollah, which U.S. officials label as a terrorist group.
This is as close as we can come to showing you his face.
This was a voiceover of an audio or a video presentation.
U.S. investigators say he is one of these men, the hijackers of TWA Flight 847 in 1985.
His face has remained hidden for almost 20 years.
He is believed to have had at least two plastic surgeries since the TWA operation.
He's the unknown terrorist, but incredibly, before September 11th, he was considered by the U.S. to be responsible for killing more Americans than anyone else in the world.
Uh that is from uh uh basically Ben Stein's piece today at American Spectator Online.
Uh so as recently as uh 2001, CNN was telling us what a dangerous bunch of thugs Hezbollah is.
Today, CNN International, uh a big puff piece on uh Noser Nasralla, uh Hasna, whatever his name is, uh charismatic leader uh uh builds roads, creates sewers, creates uh probably even runs abortion clinics for all we know.
Just I mean it just does everything right.
Very charismatic, loved and adored throughout the uh militant Islamic world.
Now, back to this Iranian situation very quickly.
Andy McCarthy, National Review Online today, posted a piece in which he posit the uh theory that Israel is actually fighting our war on terror here by taking on Hezbollah.
That Hezbollah is Iran, they're just the Iranian army uh stationed in southern Lebanon as part of a deal with Syria, which is supposed to have pulled out of Lebanon years ago and has not done it.
And uh he makes the point that uh no matter where you trace the lines here, it all leads back to Iran and asked the question that many people are asking, what do we do?
Where are we?
We've got an opportunity here.
What do we do about it?
Because Iran is is uh obviously ginning up uh nuclear weapons, uh, and do we want this to happen?
We declared a war on terror, and Israel is fighting our war in taking on Hezbollah.
And uh McCarthy's point is it's time for us to go all out.
I mean, it's one thing he says to build democracies and try to around the world, but that's not the objective of the war on terror.
The objective of the war on terror is to kill militant Islamo fascists, which does happen to be the definition of war.
Uh kill people and break things.
You know they probably people talking about proportionality too.
Well, and I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let me get to the one area of disagreement on all this, and it's from George Will today, transformation's toll.
There is, however, a sense in which that argument creates a blind eye.
It makes instability, no matter how pandemic or lethal, necessarily a sign of progress.
Violence is vindication.
Hamas and Hezbollah have, says Condoleezza Rice determined that it is time now to try and arrest the move toward moderate democratic forces in the Middle East.
He is responding here in writing to Rice on Sunday, making the point that the uh, as we had a caller yesterday, I think, echo that the uh hostilities here and all the tumult in the Arab world are actually result of our success in Iraq in establishing a democratic outpost there.
If you don't want to call it democratic calling right of self-determination, people choose their own leaders rather than to have them chose for them by dictators and so forth.
Uh George Will's not so sure.
He says there's also democratic movement toward extremism.
America's intervention was supposed to democratize Iraq, which, by benign infection, would transform the region.
Early on in the Iraq occupation, Secretary Rice argued that democratic institutions do not just spring from a hospitable political culture, they can also help create such a culture.
Perhaps, but elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a significant faction in Lebanon's parliament, from which it operates as a state within the state.
And as a possible harbinger of future horrors, last year's elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19% of the seats in Egyptians, uh the in Egypt's parliament.
The Bush administration is rightly refrained from criticizing the region's only democracy, Israel, for its forceful response to a thousand rockets fired at its population.
U.S. reticence is seemly, considering that terrorism has been Israel's tumint uh torment for decades, and that America responded to two hours of terrorism one September morning by toppling two regimes halfway around the world with wars that show no signs of ending.
Um Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah, no Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria, no Iranian support for Syria, you get the drift, so says the weekly standard.
We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Why wait?
Anybody think a nuclear Iran can be contained?
He's quoting now from Bill Kristol, that the current regime will negotiate in good faith.
It would be easier to act sooner rather than later.
Yeah, there'd be repercussions and there would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that's rejected further appeasement.
Why wait?
George Will now writing in disagreement with Bill Kristol, perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran, and perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq.
And if Basher Assad's regime does not fall after the weekly standards hope for third war with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth war?
As for the healthy repercussions that the weekly standard is so eager to Experience from yet another war.
One envies that publication's powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises, all of them unpleasant that Iraq has inflicted.
And regarding the appeasement that the weekly standard decries, does the magazine really wish the administration had heated its earlier editorial, December 20th, 2004, advocating war with yet another nation, the bombing of Syria.
Neoconservatives have much to learn, concludes Mr. Will, even from Buddy Bell, manager of the Kansas City Royals.
After his team lost its tenth consecutive game in April, uh April, Buddy Bell said, I never say it can't get worse.
And in their next game, the Royals extended their losing streak to eleven, and in May they lost 13 in a row.
So Will is of the opinion that hey, this is only going to get worse.
It can get worse than what it is.
He wants Nash the uh uh well the thing about George Will, they this is not new for him, though.
He I forget how long, it seems like a couple months ago now, but he was he wrote a piece that sort of stunned uh uh conservatives just ripping the Iraq uh effort as a total failure, a dismal failure, did not was not accomplishing anything, maybe causing uh problems.
It almost sounded to me uh a little bucanonian.
Uh if you just coined a new word there, bucanonian.
Uh but uh any it's an interesting fissure that's happening here, and it when this is inside the beltway stuff.
This is a weekly standard versus George Will.
These two highly sm highly intelligent uh intellectual conservatives, and when the drive-by media stops propping up uh Hassan Nasrallah and and making him a teddy bear, they'll focus on this and they'll consider another conservative crack up occurring uh with uh George Will being a defector from the administration's uh position on this.
The one thing that that um I I just I can't I keep coming back to is uh I guess you look look down the road beyond your your own life.
You have to.
Do we want a nuclear Iran?
And I, you know, that's a question that uh people ask me all the time.
Where do you gauge the national will on dealing with something like that?
And I'll tell you what I think our problem is, and I mentioned it yesterday.
We are so prosperous.
In the midst of all this, in the midst of the rising gasoline prices, the economic news is still through the roof.
Economic news is great.
Drive around people are driving around as much as I've ever seen them, bribing around in new cars.
Uh housing starts are going up.
There is tremendous prosperity in this country.
And I th I I question whether um uh some people even think that the situation in the Middle East or Iraq is ever gonna have any bearing on their lives.
You know, with the with with prosperity and affluence, it becomes easier to bury your head or turn away and not face certain dangers or dangerous realities that exist out there because times are so good you want to enjoy them.
I don't mean people are not struggling, but I'm thinking we've never been more prosperous and affluent as a society in our history than we are today.
I'm just telling you, it does have an impact.
You've heard the old adage, fat, dumb, and happy, uh, versus hungry and uh and needy.
Uh we're not the same culture that we were in World War II, where the whole country banded together after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and even at that, we went into Germany first.
European theater before we went to the Japanese theater.
So uh I I'm I'm not well versed enough, uh, and I don't believe polling data enough to be able to tell you where we are on this, but that's why you have leadership.
Uh and we'll see where the leadership takes us on this one.
I got to run, take a quick time out.
Back after this.
As usual, uh half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Back to the phones now to uh Toledo.
Oh, not back, we're starting.
You're first today, Brandon, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Russ, it's a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, I was just gonna comment.
I was watching the news all day today.
It's my day off of work, and uh the has the last story, you know, that's all I've been watching.
And uh when you came out today with your intro saying that they were trying to the left is trying to sympathize with uh Hezbollah, it's just total just crap.
I mean, it's like you're the Michael Moore on the right, just blowing things out of proportion and totally turning them around.
Well, that's your take.
Uh I saw what I saw, and I I saw idolatry and I look at it.
I see a bunch of lies being told about the guy.
I hear it.
I played the sound bites.
Social services and all this sort of stuff.
This is a cover for a murderous bunch of terrorists.
It's it's trying it's no different than trying to make the mafia look like angels.
No, I mean these are murdering terrorists.
What is so hard to understand?
One uh if now here's Tony Snow right now on CNN.
He's doing his briefing at the White House, and they are showing a press conference, the video only of this if this Hezbollah leader uh giving him moral equivalents to Tony Snow.
We aren't even fighting these guys.
Israel is.
Now you tell me why in the world what a major media operation, and this guy, this Hezbollah leader's picture right now is much bigger than Tony Snow's.
He's getting a bigger area of the frame of the uh TV than is Tony Snow and the White House press conference today, the press briefing that he conducts.
Why what's the purpose of that?
No, I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but I wanted to go back to my point.
When I was watching it, it just spent about ten seconds talking about Hezbollah doing the social services, and that was just explaining how Hezbollah has infiltrated the Lebanon's government and how that what they are doing.
It was the left is no in no way trying to uh say that they weren't a terror murderous terrorist group.
I mean, I just think you're totally blown out of proportion and they are terrorists and they need to be stopped.
But that was not the left's point of trying to try to dehumanize them and sim sympathize with them at all.
Well, I think it is, and I th I think I think it's uh part of a pattern.
It's not just Hezbollah.
Uh bin Laden has been praised for some of the great social work he has done.
And they do this, but you can't take the context out of it, uh, Brandon.
For example, let's do let's do a comparison.
I want you to go get audio soundbite number one, Mike, and then I want you to go get I'm looking for it here, but uh let's see uh I guess it's number fourteen.
I want to play these cuts back to back just to illustrate my point.
Here is a montage of CNN, MSNBC, CNN, and I don't know who this uh fourth guy is.
I always the Wall Street Journal's reporter, Yaroslav uh Troma uh Trofimov, and uh they're talking about uh Hezbollah and humanizing them.
Listen to this again.
Hezbollah is a significant political force in Lebanon, holding seats in parliament and running cabinet ministries and building public support by running social welfare programs.
Hezbollah's charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nezralla has become Lebanon's best known and most controversial politician.
Hezrah provides social services.
We see the militant side of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah derives support from its civilian component.
Uh its ability to deliver services.
Hezbollah doesn't just fight, but it also runs a construction branch, just called the construction jihad, which builds houses for its members.
And it even learns a social service for the veterans for the wounded in its battles with the matchmaking branch.
It finds wives for, for example, for these veterans who marry them out of a sense of jihad without even meeting them first.
All right.
Now let's go to cut 13 here.
This is Chris Matthews talking with uh David Gregory on Hardball last night.
We're all taught by our mothers never to talk when we're eating.
We're also told by our colleagues, don't talk when the line is hot.
Or did the president make both mistakes today?
Well, uh, it appears he did.
It's certainly nothing different than the president has been saying.
Right, so and they've continued to focus on that slip of the tongue.
Well, whatnot the slip of the tongue, but the open mic where the president uh uttered this uh mild profanity uh uh describing uh the byproduct of certain body functions.
And uh mean meanwhile, we don't get any humanization of George W. Bush, and we certainly don't get any humanization of the American military.
We don't get any stories about the heroism of the American military in Iraq.
All we get are how there is a bunch of bloodthirsty murderers and how our prison people do nothing but torture and maim and humiliate people.
If you look at the coverage, and this is something, Brandon, you cannot take out of the equation as part of the context.
You look at the way the United States drive-by media treats its own members, it's in the U.S. military, its own citizens, uh, and the prison guards and so forth and the president, you compare it with that montage that I just played for you about Hassan Nasrallah and how wonderful he is, and what what great social services this terrorist group operates?
I guarantee if you landed here from Mars and you watched the drive-by coverage of U.S. military uh personnel in Iraq versus the coverage of Hezbollah in the last couple of days, you would conclude Hezbollah is the good guys, according to the drive-by media.
And don't forget, Reuters doesn't even allow terrorists to be called terrorists in their news stories.
Christian Science Monitor today.
Hezbollah winning over Arab Street.
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