All Episodes
Previous Next
July 21, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
July 21, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And greetings.
Welcome back, folks.
A thrill, a delight to be with you.
This is Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network setting, the broadcast standard for excellence in all of the major American media.
It is Friday.
Let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
And that's real simple to explain.
Monday through Thursday.
This program is devoted exclusively to what interests me.
I don't deal with it if I don't care about it.
But on Friday, when we go to the phones, show is all yours.
You own it.
You can talk about whatever, whether I care about it or not.
I am a benevolent dictator.
There is no First Amendment on this program for callers, only for me.
Nobody has the right to free speech here, and nobody has the right to be heard unless I deem it so.
800 282-2882, if you want to be on the program and rush at EIB net.com if you want to go email.
Here some of the things.
I just I want to because I'm gonna I'm gonna again branch out beyond the uh the war that's going on between Israel and Hezbollah uh in due course this afternoon.
Some of the things that I have in the stack here that I want to address.
Centrist Democrats ponder how to counter the net roots.
This is the Democrat leadership council having a meeting on how to deal with their fringe kooks out there.
U.S. says that Iranians were in North Korea to witness the North Korea missile test.
The Japanese science ministry says that they're soon gonna have a supercomputer called the Earth Simulator to be able to forecast the weather 30 years into the future.
We have a story here about how the uh the rich in Paris are abandoning the country because their tax rates are now as high as 72%, and they're getting fed up with all the underclass, lazy bums that they're being forced to support.
Socialism rearing its ugly head in a fascinating way.
Also out there, Robert Samuelson in Newsweek with a brilliant column today on the truth about budget deficits, and it will stun you.
Uh fishermen in Britain prefer angling or fisher uh fishing to love, uh, according to uh a new poll.
A woodpecker, Woody Woodpecker's halted an irrigation project in Arkansas, complete with a picture of the woodpecker.
It it might be extinct.
Woodpecker might not even sure it exists.
Somebody'll find a woodpecker brigade in, just like did in Sebastopol, California, and bring in those fake flowers.
Uh Saddam Hussein has written a letter to us, to Americans, urging us to pull out of a rock.
He knows the Democrat uh tendency and love for pulling out.
Uh, in Las Vegas, it has become illegal to feed the homeless.
Uh, those are just some of the things on the list.
Uh give you a little uh added list here.
Uh conflict class sec.
I knew so on the cutting edge am I talking about conflict resolution, and uh and now in New York.
Just give you a little teaser here.
Mercedes Muller wasn't quite sure how to deal with the love struck teenager who obsessed about his girlfriend's fidelity, but she knew enough to listen.
Yeah, he'd cry every day for three to four weeks.
He'd say she's messing around on me, said Muller, who taught eighth grade at the time.
I told this teenager love isn't supposed to hurt.
Well, then that sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
But is it is it realistic?
Uh, one way love always hurts.
There's no getting around it.
Uh, at any rate, uh the the um uh the way that this teacher wants to deal with this love-struck teenager is through conflict resolution.
Uh we will have the details.
And of course, the lesbian couple whose lawsuit led to legal same-sex marriage in Massachusetts have announced that they've separated.
Julie and Hillary Goodridge are amicably living apart, said Mary Breslauer, a local political consultant.
So these pioneers in same-sex marriage are separated.
This is not what you think it is, folks.
This is now we got to take over the divorce laws and uh and get those ironed out uh for same-sex couples.
That's what that's what this is.
Don't you mean some of you might think, see, it doesn't work.
I think this is part of a grand strategy out there.
Another story on smoking during pregnancy tied to kids' behavior issues, not just their health issues, but now their behavioral issues, and Con Ed's got everybody in Queens just in an uproar because they're without power up there uh and uh they don't know when it's going to be restored, as it's it's been out for days, and then everybody's just in a tizzy.
But I want to go to the uh audio sound bites.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, to continue here with our discussion on the circumstances in Lebanon and in Israel.
Last night's situation room with Wolf Blitzer, a portion of a report by correspondent Nick Robertson.
Israelis said that they had bombed a site uh in the southern suburbs of Beirut last night with 23 tons of bunker busting explosives targeting the leadership of uh Hezbollah Hassan Nasralah, included the tour that the journalists were taking on today, showed them a mosque with a sign outside showing uh that it was under construction, what it was for.
The mosque did have a basement, a bunker system underneath it, but it was very much under construction.
That was the conclusion of all the reporters there.
Um that was the only conclusion they could draw from what they were shown.
Right.
Now uh what do we have here?
Uh this is this is a drive-by media regurgitating propaganda of a terrorist organization.
It reminds me, and I'm sure you'll remember this, in the first Gulf War.
Remember when the Iraqis took a contingent of American drive-by media to a blown-up building, and there was a little white sign painted in red letters in English.
It said baby milk factory.
And of course, the drive-by media fell for this.
Why, how could the U.S. do this?
They blew up a baby milk formula factory.
How could this possibly be?
The sign was obviously hand painted.
Wasn't even a good graffiti artist that did it, and it was not even in Iraq or Iraqi language, whatever the language is.
They were just I mean, it was just pathetic.
So now, of course, a bunker system was underneath the mosque.
But what mosque doesn't have a bunker system underneath it?
Um this is CNN report, and there's one thing I you know i i people's memories are short, but or sure, but I ask you, what are we to do?
When their former executive Eason Jordan wrote that famous piece in the New York Times saying, yeah, we uh and he was he thought he was gonna get a Pulitzer Prize for this.
He had no idea of the outcry that r was going to result from this.
He wrote a piece saying, Well, yeah, we didn't report a bunch of atrocities that we knew were going on in Iraq committed by Saddam, because we needed our bureau here.
And if we had uh if we'd been honest in what we had seen, reported what we had seen, we might have lost our position.
We might have lost our ability to report from Iraq.
To which everybody said, What good are your reports if you're covering up atrocities committed by this regime in order just to stay there?
What's more important, get the truth of what's going on in Iraq out, or to have a bureau there that essentially reports gobbledygook.
And that led, I I think that was the beginning of the downfall for Mr. Jordan.
He then went over to the uh World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, not long after, and claimed he had evidence that U.S. troops had orders to kill journalists.
And Barney Frank, my boy Lollipop, was even in the audience, had trouble with that one.
Uh and it was not long after that uh Eason Jordan was said to resign.
Now, or forced to resign.
So here we have the same network, CNN.
I know it's under new management, uh, and Eason Jordan is not there.
But here we get this report.
Oh, we were shown, and uh Israelis lied to us.
They didn't, they didn't hit, they hit a mosque.
They didn't hit a bunker, they didn't, they didn't hit the headquarters of Hezbollah.
And then in uh uh the today's show today, anchor Ann Curry is in Beirut.
Here's a portion of her report.
This morning, Hezbollah showed NBC News and other journalists the impact of Israel's raids overnight on a residential area in Beirut's southern suburbs, saying bombs struck here from midnight to four a.m.
It would have been a massacre, but Hezbollah told us they knew to evacuate residents.
This Hezbollah spokesman said the U.S. and Israel have miscalculated Hezbollah's capabilities.
Well, what a bunch of great guys.
What a bunch of great guys.
Why this could have been a bloodbath except Hezbollah knew to evacuate their city.
The Bush didn't evacuate America.
See, we these guys watch CNN and they know exactly how to play them.
Yeah, CNN they they'll fall for this, I'm sure this Nasrala guy is saying.
So just a couple of examples here.
The media, the drive-by media remain behind the curve as to what a general consensus opinion that's forming is.
Now, one more thing.
I mentioned that uh uh I agreed with Katie Curry.
Katie Craig told Access Hollywood she's not gonna go over there.
Not gonna go to Lebanon.
Why should I mean she said I'm a single mother?
That's a war zone.
I'm I'm not going over there.
Now I mentioned this to Mr. Snerdley, and he hadn't heard it, and he was fit to be tied beside himself.
He said, No, all anchors go to the battlefield.
And I said all anchors did, but that's always been a joke.
It's always been a myth.
It has always been part of the I won't call it propaganda, but the notion that there are three wise men in America, and they are the three network anchors.
And they hit the scene of the battle, the scene of the crime, the scene of the war, and they report from there, and this establishes their credentials and their credibility, and it lets us know that they read a teleprompter than anybody else because they've been in a war zone.
And what is the purpose of reporters?
Why not you've got reporters.
The reporters are underground on it.
Why do the anchors have to be there?
I forget the danger of it all and forget the expense of it all.
I just think it's part of the image making, the phony baloney plastic banana, good time rock and roller image making that has long been drive-by media.
Edward R. Murrow and these guys in World War II were there, but that was radio.
And they were at the scene of the crime and they were in the front, but they were reporters.
They came back later and became anchors, uh, which is what happened to Peter Jennings.
Peter Jennings was long a reporter in all these hot spots before he ever became an anchor.
Um, and it was his reporting over there that actually establishes credentials for this.
Uh but even so, the the the notion that there are three wise men in America, the three network anchors.
Nobody on cable qualifies, nobody in the print media qualifies, uh, simply because they're standing twenty or thirty miles away from where the action is taking place.
Um it it was all part of the illusion that was being created that that this is somehow uh credible and uh credentialed and so forth.
ABC has pulled out Charlie Gibson, and uh I've now I've I've read this.
I don't know that they're actually because I don't watch these newscasts anymore, and I I'm told that Brian Williamson pulled out from MBC, but the reason given on both scores was money.
Uh was just it's it's a little expensive to keep them over there, because there's no nobody knows when this is gonna end.
Plus, they've all got reporters over there anyway.
So Katie doesn't want to go, she's a single mother.
Katie knows that it's not to make a hill of difference whether she reports from there or on the set uh in terms of the ratings that she gets or or what have you.
And I think there's another reason for it.
If you listen to what she's been saying, you know, she's been Katie meets America tour.
She's been traveling all over this place.
They've got something, I don't know what it is, but they've got a whole different formula planned uh for the CBS evening news.
And it it they're gonna try to break away from this from this uh cookie-cutter mold that says big time network news has to be done this way.
And I think her not going and not being on the scene is uh probably linked to that as uh as well.
There's a there's a there may open what whatever it is, we'll we'll deal with it when we see it, Mr. Snerdley.
I'm not gonna criticize it before it happens, but I'm just telling you I think her decision not to go is rooted in CBS news desire to cast a different look for itself from the other two networks.
But there's also a third factor.
And on this one, I am gonna lay myself out.
She's a woman, and she has two kids at home, and she's single.
And they don't belong in war zones, wearing uniforms or not.
Back in a second.
Hi, welcome back, my friends.
I am Rush Limbaugh, proofing daily, and I am one of the great thinkers in American media today.
800 282-2882, a caustic email from a website subscriber, Mr. William Michael Poland, Sr.
Dear Rush, I heard you today discuss the fact that your nieces were solid A students.
You then pointed out that neither you nor your brother fell into the category of brilliant student.
Did it ever occur to you that the mother of these pretty girls just might have something to do with their academic skill?
I mean, there were two sets of genes at work there.
Shame on you.
He's absolutely right.
Although I'm not sure Lisa finished high school.
But sorry.
I'm sorry.
He's absolutely she is she is she is um very smart.
I didn't say that my brother and I are dumb, that we prove that we're not each and every day.
We just didn't get good.
He might have gotten good grades when he went to law school.
I think that probably required, but uh only point was that we're we didn't set the world on fire grade wise the way my nieces are.
Washington, D.C. Tom, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Right.
Am I on?
Yes, sir.
How are you doing, Rush?
Good, sir.
Thank you.
Uh first of all, I want I've been a long time listener, and uh just love listening to your show, and I appreciate everything that you do.
Thank you very much.
You're very welcome, sir.
Uh the reason I'm calling Rush is I uh remember after Zikawi got taken out, the they had found some intelligence, and that intelligence was a letter that he, I believe, was trying to get in touch with his leadership, saying that uh the Marines were kicking his butt so bad that it was getting impossible for him to recruit, and his recommendation was to lure the United States into a war with either another country or another uh one of his terrorist buddy groups.
And I have not heard that commented upon anywhere.
And right afterwards, two weeks after he they got him, that's when the rockets from North Korea started going off and all the saber rattling from Iran, and uh a lot of things started to happen to to what seems to be provoke us to get involved somewhere else.
And I just uh I'm curious as to why it hasn't been talked about.
Well, I don't I I I I uh I have the uh the story, the AP story containing the news of the uh letter that they found in the Zarkawi's uh cache of stuff.
Two things.
Uh one of the reasons is that some of the uh one of the reasons hadn't been reported is that some of the letters remember it was called a treasure trove.
Right.
It the treasure trove of documents made it look like we were so devastating Zarkawi and his buddies that the drive-by media thought that they might have been forgeries, that they weren't real.
And so they didn't play them up because if they played them up, then they would have to play up the aspects of these uh uh writings of Zarkawi that described as you did that we were cleaning his clock and it was so bad he couldn't recruit and so forth, and he was complaining and whining to bin Laden about this and whoever else he was writing this stuff to.
They went out and they got people say, this is not even like Zarkawi's writings in the past.
Why this I mean, Arabs don't even write this way.
Al-Qaeda members don't even write this way.
This is so they they downplayed it because the news remember the the the the action line for stories involving Iraq only moves forward if it's bad news for Bush, bad news for America.
That treasure trove of documents from Zarkawi was just the opposite.
But let's deal with it, all right.
So I've got the um the AP story here.
Uh and here here just an excerpt of the letter.
In general, and despite the current bleak situation, we, this is Zarkawi writing, supposedly, we think that the best suggestions in order to get out of this crisis is to entangle the American forces into another war against another country or with another of our enemy force.
That is to try and inflame the situation between American and Iraq, or between America and the Shia in general.
The question remains how to draw the Americans into fighting a war against Iran.
It is not known whether America is serious in its animosity towards Iran because of the big support Iran is offering to America and its war in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Hence, It's necessary first to exaggerate the Iranian danger and to convince America and the West in general of the real danger coming from Iran, and this would be done by the following.
Number one, by disseminating threatening messages against American interests and the American people, and attribute them to a Shia Iranian side.
Well, one of the problems I have with this is that Ahmadinizad is the president.
He's not some innocuous figure, and he's doing a good job on his own of uh of letting it know that he intends the whole region to threaten the whole region and the United States and Israel and so forth.
But we have not made a move against Iran.
Uh we've not made a move against any of these countries.
Uh could well be that our uh uh the administration people that deal with this kind of thing believe what's in Zarkawi's letters and are not falling for the bait.
Uh but it also relies on the fact that we can't do two things at once, and that's where everybody in the world makes a mistake about the United States, including a bunch of Americans.
Yay.
One of America's truly great and innovative thinkers and performers here on the EIB network.
800-282-2882.
You want to hear something funny.
This is from yesterday, this and yesterday's Washington uh Post.
Americans took evacuation uh into their own hands is the uh is the headline.
And they had to No, wait.
That's not what you think.
Um it's a correction to the article.
Earlier versions of this story contained an incorrect telephone number.
The correct number for Americans in the United States seeking information about the evacuation is, and they give the number out.
Let me give you the story.
Shana Silverstein and her friends jumped into expensive taxis and sped from Beirut to Damascus, preferring to dodge bombs and bribe border officials rather than wait for the U.S. government to evacuate them.
Anne Ainsley Chibo said that she desperately phoned friends back home, urging them to contact the State Department to get her name onto an evacuation list.
She said she couldn't get through by phone to the U.S. Embassy in Beherut.
Now, this story goes on to list a phone number that Americans could call uh to uh uh help their loved ones over there get out.
And the number, when you dialed the number that the Washington Post published, was an 800 number.
When you dial that number, this is what you heard when they answered the phone.
Are you feeling horny?
Try these red hot lines from national, live hot fun at just 69 cents per minute.
Uh they gave out they gave out a phone number mistakenly, the phone sex hotline or some such thing.
And that that's why Americans took the evacuation into their own hands, because the Washington Post gave out a wrong number, and that's the story is a correction uh to that to that phone number.
Feeling horny, try these red hot lines from national, live hot fun at just 69 cents per minute.
Uh what, you want the number, Snerdley?
You don't want the number.
You're looking uh bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in there.
Now, as to this theory, and I want to I want to deal with the last caller we had this business about Zarkawi's letter suggesting uh look, we're in deep trouble over here.
We gotta get the U.S. involved in another war somewhere else.
In order to believe that, what you have to believe is that Zarkawi's message got through to somebody, and that in a matter of the past three weeks to a month, powerful forces associated with Zarkawi have enabled this conflict with uh Hezbollah and Israel to heat up and the nukes in North Korea, the test missiles to be launched in North Korea and so forth.
But if you read the San Francisco Chronicle today, story by Matthew Coleman, you find this headline.
Israel set war plan more than a year ago.
Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength at Lebanon.
Israel's military respense by uh a response by air, land, and sea to what it considered a provocation Last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.
In the six years since Israel ended its military occupation of Southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region.
When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly.
Now, the tone and the tenor of this story is is along the lines of Bush had plans to ovade Iraq before he even took office.
Bush was going to he knew that if he got elected president, he was going to invade Iraq.
It didn't matter about 9 11, it didn't matter about anything.
This Bush wanted to go in there and set a little scores for Iraq trying to kill his dad, or he wanted to go in and get the oil for Halliburton or what have you.
You remember all those stories.
And this is the same thing.
Those damned Israelis, they had this planned over a year ago.
They knew they were going to do.
We can't trust these guys.
Well, let's can we look at the real timeline here.
Six years ago, here came Kofi Anon and his UN resolution 1559 demanding at Lebanon get Hezbollah out of there and have them disarmed in exchange for Israel leaving the southern uh sections of Lebanon.
Five years later, Hezbollah's still there.
What are the Israelis to do?
They know something's up.
They know 1559's not been implemented.
So a year ago, a year ago, they started making plans for this action.
And they didn't take the action until two of their soldiers were kidnapped.
And yet here's still a story from the San Francisco Chronicle trying to say the Israelis had this planned all along.
There's no mention in any of these stories that the missiles and that the rockets that Hezbollah is launching come from China, probably through Iran.
There's no mention of 1559.
There's no mention of Syria, and there's no mention of anything.
It's all these dastardly Israelis.
They can't fool us.
They've been planning this for a long time.
Just another illustration of how the drive-by media's focus is so narrow that they are unable to see with a wide panoramic view and place events in context.
They have a template, they have expectations, they have a desire to report the news a certain way, and they'll have those blinders as narrow as possible in order to be able to do that.
Ian in Brunswick, Georgia, uh glad you called, sir, glad you waited.
Welcome to Open Line Friday.
Hey, Rush, how are you?
Just fine, sir.
Good, good.
Hey, listen, I got a question.
Um I'm sure this is a perfect open line Friday question.
Um you uh on your show, you constantly say that you're doing the job that the mainstream media used to do, or the media used to do.
And considering the fact I've only been listening to you since 1989, been paying attention to politics since 1980.
When did they do this job?
I mean, it it had to be before 1960.
Is that correct?
Or you know, it's actually a good question.
Um if you go back to World War II, uh uh, you'll find that the the what we call today the drive-by media was far different today, just like Democrats back then were far different than Democrats are today.
Uh but but I I think what I mean by it is what I was referring to just a moment ago.
Uh the the the drive-by media, the liberal media, whatever you're gonna call them, they've always had an agenda in our lifetimes, yours and mine, and their agenda has always been at odds with uh with what ours is.
And I actually have no problem with that.
It's just their pretense that they don't have that agenda and their objective is what grates on me.
I mean, they're thinking engaged human beings.
The idea that they don't have a vested interest in the outcome of events insults my intelligence.
They, of course, they do.
Uh, and Walter Cronkite has made it known that he always did during the Vietnam War and so forth.
But I think in general, what that what I mean is that their their um their their focus was at least wider.
Um I'll give you an example.
Uh this this is probably a good way I was, and I mentioned this earlier this week, but I was playing golf last weekend, and a guy asked me a question I'd never been asked.
He said, Do you have to spend a lot of money on your research?
And I looked at him and I kind of cocked my head in wonderment, and I said, No, I mean, I've I myself and uh and a couple people uh searched the internet, we have our sources and we do things, but no.
Well, I said the reason I'm asking is because you've got all these networks with vast amounts of money, and they can send reporters anywhere and they can go anywhere, they can they have no budget constraints, and I just wondered if it put you at a competitive disadvantage.
And then the light went off, and I said, no, not at all.
And I'll tell you why, because they don't use 95% of what they find, learn, or see, because if it doesn't fit their template or action line or agenda, they discard it.
And that's the best way to explain it.
They're just such a narrow focus.
I guarantee you, and I mean this in the bottom of my heart.
You listen to three hours of this program any day, pick a day, and then watch three hours of cable news or watch 30 minutes of network news, and I guarantee you you will learn more about what's going on in the country and in the world than you will by watching any so-called professional national news organization today.
Now, right.
It's not true about AP.
If you go on and read the wire services, then you'll find you'll get a broad uh spectrum because they're out covering all these wacko stories too.
They've got their food network people, they've got the lifestyle clowns, they've got the environmental people.
I mean, that's where we find some of this stuff.
But I'm just talking about the drive-by, the mainstream media.
If it doesn't fit what they intend to use and what they intend uh to uh uh try to cause to happen on a on a daily basis, they discard it.
Uh which is why I've always said it's not just the news that they cover and the way they cover it that contributes to the bias.
It is the decision making they engage in in choosing what news they think is worth reporting and what news they don't.
Uh so we just we have we paint with a much broader brush here.
I think this program is far more educational, it is far more informative, and it's more honest, because I don't tell you that I'm something I'm not.
I don't pretend to have no vested interest in the outcome of events.
I don't tell you that, hey, you know, I'm just observing this and telling you what I'm seeing.
I don't do that at all, which is what they do.
So I think this is a far more honest presentation.
I think it is far more varied in depth.
You get not only news, you get analysis, and sometimes a bonus, this program will tell you how and what to think.
But ultimately it's uh it's still up to you.
So it's I guess the best way to define it would be it's just narrow focus.
Howard Feynman, by the way, wrote a piece on MSNBC's website as a newsweek columnist, a reporter, and he said that it was in the Vietnam War that the United States mainstream media finally realized their power as a fourth political party.
They believe, and that's why they keep wanting to go back to those glory days, and why they keep trying to reconstruct this war as the Vietnam War, and this administration is Nixonian and worthy of another Watergate type in uh investigation because they look back and they think, man, that's when we came of age.
That's when we stopped being media, that's when we stopped being reporters and we become opinion makers, and we became movers and shakers, and we were able to move the American public.
We became the fourth political party.
So by his own definition, you would say that uh it would it would be mid-60s to late sixties when the focus of the media uh changed.
But I I think you're right.
I think you'd have to go back prior to 1960 uh to find a news media that was uh not nearly at all like and you know what's amazing about it?
We have more cable networks today, we got more magazines, we got more newspapers, and they're all alike in the drive-by media.
It's like I say, if you if you uh miss the New York Times, no big deal, read USA Today.
If you miss that, read the Washington Post.
If you miss that, read the San Francisco Chronicle.
Miss that, read the LA Times.
Miss that, uh, go out and read the Chicago Tribune.
Miss that, go read the Minneapolis Scar.
Miss that, go read the Janet Atlanta Journal of Constitution.
Um if you miss all that, watch CBS.
If you miss that, watch NBC.
If you miss that, watch ABC.
If you miss that, watch CNN.
If you miss that, watch MSNBC.
If you miss that, watch CNN International.
If you miss that, you haven't missed anything.
It's you just it you you're not gonna miss the take your pick, read or watch any one of those things, and it's gonna be the same thing everywhere else.
Miss this show, and you're not gonna get it anywhere else.
Check out this hotline at the Fox uh website, Fox News website.
Rush to find solution.
Fox News is reporting that I will find the solution uh to the Middle East uh peace process.
Madeline uh sorry Connor Lisa Rice is doing a press conference now, uh saying she's gonna go over there look for a lasting peace.
Don't be deceived here, folks.
These people know that negotiation is not going to settle this.
Uh she's also saying that uh we are we're witnessing the pangs of the birth of a new Middle East.
The Bush administration really believed that this is all working.
Uh the people that expect all this to be resolved in 30 minutes in a sitcom or even two or three years don't understand the timeline that's necessary for this and why you can't cut and run at every sign of problems or trouble.
But they really do believe it all this represents a new paradigm.
Uh and if if enough time is given to it that uh it'll shake itself out in a positive way.
Laura in Erie, Pennsylvania, your next at Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Mega Optimistic Pro Life Conservative Ditto's to you.
Thank you for all you do.
Thank you very much.
I have a question with regard to the new Iraqi leader.
We just have a new democracy there, which a hundred and fifty thousand of our brave men and women are over there trying to uh be a part of.
And Mr. Maliki, I guess, uh said a comment that um, since I guess he's a Shiite, that he wanted uh Israel to uh pull back and kind of defended Hezbollah, which is a terrorist group.
Um I I'm kind of confused listening to all this language about World War III.
Uh isn't the um parties going to be those that support democracies versus those that support terrorists?
And doesn't Mr. Um Maliki have to make the choice because we're over there trying to defend a new democracy for him.
I think uh I saw that too, and I saw people get upset about it, and I I read uh various analyses of uh of drive-by media types who were just pointing fingers.
See, see, Iraq is worth it.
Look at this guy supporting Hezbollah, and this is the guy that we put in.
This is the word Bush failed.
And when I hear that, go.
Because uh there's gotta be more to it.
That's too easily something that fits their template.
Let's throw out some possibilities.
First place, Iraq is a fledgling democracy right now.
Number two, democracy has a broad-based meaning here.
We're not enforcing a representative republic kind of democracy.
They've got self-determination.
They can form whatever self-rule government they want.
We're not micromanaging it.
Uh we were up into the election process to ensure that they happen.
The third thing is this is still early in the game.
This guy is still a huge target where he is, not only within his own country, but uh neighboring countries too.
And it it may well be that he doesn't think the time is right yet to come out uh and say something other than what he said.
He may feel the need to buy some time for his own regime to strengthen itself.
And he could also be being honest.
I'm not uh suggesting that that uh your report that you heard and the reaction you're having is wrong.
You could very well be right as well.
But I haven't formed that conclusion yet.
I don't have uh immediate expectations of this.
I've I've never believed any of this was gonna be easy, and I've never believed any of it was going to happen fast, and I've never believed that it was uh uh that we were gonna have a profound stated loyalty to us.
See, this is the critics are saying that was the whole point to have a democracy in Iraq and that would be standing up for the U.S. and maybe change its opinion on Israel, give it time.
It's I I this this guy just got elected.
He's he's just uh th th it's still a battleground over there, and I think it's uh possible that a lot a lot of things that we don't see and don't know and aren't aware of or dictating these kinds of uh of statements.
They just might not be strong enough yet to defend themselves against attacks if they align themselves in a way that provoked people in the region.
Thanks to the call, Laura, we'll be back in just a second.
Whoa, look at this.
Hezbollah has been training for six years for this war with Israel.
They dug deep bunkers out there.
So much for Zarkawi sponsoring the war a month ago.
Back after this, ladies and gentlemen.
▲
Export Selection