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July 28, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
July 28, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends.
You're listening to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
It's great to have you with us.
It's Friday, so let's keep going.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
And we'll be getting to your phone calls quicker in this hour than we did in last hour since it is open line Friday.
It is your show when we go to the phones.
Meaning.
You know, I'm a I'm a living legend here, folks, and as such I'm a benevolent dictator.
Nobody has the First Amendment right to speak on this show other than me.
Nobody has the right to be heard until I grant it.
But on Friday, I really cast all that aside and take a giant career risk.
My turning the program over when we go to the phones to uh veritable rank amateurs.
Great people, but rank amateurs.
I am your host for life.
Not retiring until every American agrees with me.
800-282-2882.
Yesterday, and I still haven't gotten that.
I didn't get anybody answering me in the email either.
I checked.
I might have missed some if you did, but I didn't see many if there were any there at all.
I asked, what is the root of this palpable frustration out there that the Democrats are talking about pollsters in the drive-by media keep reporting?
Uh David Rodham Gurgen was on television detailing all of the malaise in our economy and how rotten it is and how poor it is.
And looking at the stock market today's through the roof.
Uh up now 137 points.
So why do you think that is?
Because the GDP came in a little bit lower than expected.
It was forecast to be 3% economic growth.
Uh came in at 2.5%.
Democrats are going to say, see, in fact, I've got the story.
We're just all but a paycheck away here from the soup line, folks, because of the economic numbers that came out today.
But the market's going through the roof.
Now why is that?
Anyone have any guesses?
Markets going through the roof because they see slower growth as uh relieving pressure on inflation.
Uh which is everybody's big concern, even though we haven't had a problem with inflation.
I don't know, since most of our problems have been disinflationary when you when you really get down to it.
Yes.
What?
Right.
The the what?
The house.
Well, yes.
What about the housing market?
Well, is that what's the benefit of having a slower housing?
The benefit of having a I think Snerdley wants to know, okay, you want to talk about palpable frustration.
Explain the housing market to me.
Uh uh the how the well, first thing, you have to understand a drive-by's of the Democrats have been hoping for this.
They've been predicting the bubble.
They have been predicting this for how many years now?
They have wanted this to happen.
So now they've got it.
Why has it happened?
One of the reasons, there's a little known statistic, a little known story out there.
You may have missed this.
There's a glut of unsold new homes out there.
These new housing starts, developers were going nuts building houses.
Uh, and they're not selling as quickly as um uh as they were in the past.
And one of the reasons is that interest rates are going up.
Mortgages are getting more expensive.
But I mean, there's the the interest rates today are the biggest bargain.
You want to talk about interest rates, go back to the late 70s and the uh and the early eighties.
I don't ever want to go back to that.
I don't want to ever, ever return to that kind of that was just you talk about a genuine malaise.
But I'm still, you know, if if anybody wants to tackle this, what is this palpable frustration?
What's the root of it?
I am talking to those of you who are palpably frustrated.
Who's sitting on snurdly says it's out there?
Are you palpably frustrated?
Over what?
What are you what in the world would you have to be palpably have you not fixed your hurricane damage from last year or something?
What's what's that's part of it?
So the screen's still in the pool.
Okay.
Okay, so yes, yes, yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Yes.
I'm gonna okay, that's good.
Stop right there.
That's just one eat there.
I've got to repeat what you say to the audience, they can't hear you.
I can't sit here for five minutes not saying anything while you talk.
Nobody will hear anything.
And I'm not gonna put a microphone in there, because after all these years, you people have not earned my trust on the other side of the glass.
People says, people always say, well, just let me let's hear them.
You folks, trust me.
FCC fines, all you'd have to do is meet these people and you'd understand why.
Now, I mean, I don't even let you see them on the ditto cam.
Why don't you put their pictures on the on the website?
No.
No.
That isn't gonna happen.
You are palpably frustrated over the uh lack of um certitude uh the direction of the wall.
You're talking about Iraq and now the Hezbollahs and the Israelis.
Okay, okay.
Uh, what's number two?
Just want this, what's number two?
Don't give me a paragraph.
Spending.
I can't believe.
Are you actually going to tell me that you are out there palpably frustrated over the spending in Congress?
What if I what if I okay, well, you could be mad, but I mean, is this affecting Okay?
I understand a lot of you are palpably frustrated about spending, so am I. I'm palpably frustrated over the lack of conservatism in the uh in the house.
But Senate too.
I mean, the the the house where all the spending originated.
Now, uh the this is this is a great illustration and example of why repetition uh is uh so crucial.
How many times have you heard me say to callers on this program, people, how many times have I told you, how many times have I written in my newsletter and on my website and in my books that you cannot ever allow what's going on in Washington to determine your happiness.
If people if you people are gonna sit around and be have your happiness and have your lives and your future and your attitudes affected by too much spending, I understand it's frustrating, but you fix it at the polls, you fix it with letters to Congress, but don't let it ruin your life.
As to the wall, I'm gonna tell you where this is headed.
I'll tell you right now where it's headed.
History is repeating itself.
I have said this countless times.
I'll say it again.
Uh there is a one of the most dire threats to all of humanity that is growing stronger every day.
Militant Islamism.
It is an ideology that is hiding behind a religion.
Uh it's uh there's a piece in the American thinker today by um a uh a Muslim who says, you know, people won't realize the threat that exists out there, and uh that it's it there are many reasons for it.
It's it's too easy to ignore threats in this country where it's so affluent amidst all of our palpable frustration.
I think palpable frustration might actually result from all of our prosperity.
It's harder to make ourselves happy.
The more we get, the more we expect, and the more we expect, the more we don't get.
Even though we're getting and getting and getting.
He got Emmanuel Cleaver out there.
Taint enough, taint enough.
We've got more than we've ever had.
Taint enough, taint enough, taint enough.
I'll tell you what this war is headed.
Just as the British were not interested in listening to Churchill, they they sought refuge in Chamberlain until Hitler started marching.
Well, we've had 9-11, but that isn't enough.
What's going on in Iraq is not enough.
Taint enough.
Well, the Israeli Hezbollah conflict taint enough in terms of alerting the free people of the world that they all we all face a dire threat.
And so, uh whether i i if Israel loses this, uh, it's only going to get worse.
The uh militant Islamists will be uh emboldened.
As I was gonna say, this guy on the American uh uh thinker website today, the blog, was talking about, you know, we get sidetracked by thinking of all the nice Muslims.
That's not the problem.
The nice Muslims you can't look at the nice Muslims and say, oh, they're okay.
They may be fine nice people, but they're gonna be swept aside too if they don't follow the demands of the militant Islamists as their rise and their march and their expansion continues.
At some point, they're going to have to be defeated.
Some point they're going to have to be defeated.
I don't know if it'll happen in our lifetime, folks.
I don't know how fast this is going to take.
We're blowing opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to take care of this now.
Because it's not big enough.
It's not a big enough threat to where everybody recognizes it.
It's not a big enough threat to where people actually fear it.
In fact, the American left would be the first beheaded.
The American left would be the first ones taken out and drawn and quartered by these people if they had the chance to do it.
They think they'd be the safest.
They think they have a bond of understanding, can talk to anybody, can be understood and negotiate with anybody, be the first dispatched.
Same thing with the drive-by media.
Well, they probably hold on to them so they can continue to use them as they have been using it.
But after they've used them up, they're beheaded too.
And I'm not speaking with loose lips here.
This is what these people do, and it's what they want to do.
So we're going to have skirmishes like Iraq, and we're going to have skirmishes like uh the Hezbollah's and the Israelis.
And I don't know how either of those are going to turn out.
Uh, but if if well if if it is if it is deemed that we lose uh in both places, uh the Hezbos and the other militant Islamists are going to continue to grow and expand.
And at some point, they're gonna have to be dealt with, or they win.
And I I think they're pretty patient.
Um I don't think they've got grand designs on on making this happen uh next week or or next year, otherwise Mahmud Ahmadinizad would already be on the march trying to find a 12th imam, but they are trying to do it with proxies proxies with uh with Hezbollah.
I think it's a serious problem, I guess.
Very, very serious problem, and people don't.
Not enough people do.
Not enough people recognize the grave scope of this threat.
It doesn't help that half of our country is a bunch of linguini-spined lackeys, as Peter Beinert says, uh, without any conviction whatsoever, just pandering and just doing whatever they can to reacquire their power.
Uh but as far as this palpable frustration goes, little story here from the uh the uh CBC.
Um Adrian White is a scientist, it's a Reuters story actually, uh, and there's the money quote from this piece is um there's a belief that capitalism leads to unhappy people.
However, when people are asked if they're happy with their lives, people in countries with good health care, a higher GDP per capita, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy than people who do not live in such countries.
Now, they surveyed what, a hundred and seventy-eight countries based uh the study on data from 178 countries and a hundred global studies.
The United States came in twenty third in happiest countries on the planet, Britain was in forty-first place, Germany 35th, and France was in second place.
Uh Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria, Iceland and the Bahamas uh were near the top.
The uh at the bottom was the Congo, Zimbabwe, and Burundi as the places where people are the least happy.
So there's a palpable frustration out there, and yet we are the twenty-third uh happiest country in the world out of at least 178.
But if somebody can tell me if you are palpably frustrated, because I'm gonna talk you out of it, because it's simply ridiculous.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
If you are palpably frustrated, it means you're falling prey to daily exposure to the drive-by media and nothing else.
Back in just a second.
Go ahead, folks, and admit it you are addicted to this program, EIB, airborne phenomenon spread by casual contact.
When you get it, you'll know it, because you will be cured.
It's open line Friday.
It's 800-282-2882 to Los Angeles.
Dan, glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Thank you, sir.
Um I am forced reluctantly to conclude that the loss of the two UN observers in that artillery strike in Lebanon Is directly attributable to the United Nations.
I believe the United Nations probably left them, hung them to dry, and sacrificed them deliberately.
I believe Onan or one of his minions, and you look at the reaction of our so-called chief diplomat to immediately accuse Israel of apparently deliberately attacking them when everybody knows that the Hezbollah will hide behind women,
children, mosques, anything that's a non-target, would obviously go on to a UN observation post that should have been pulled out long before that these guys were left there as a potential sacrifice.
This is a serious charge that you were making, Dan.
You are you were saying that Kofi Annan uh desired the deaths of his two peacekeeper observers.
Well, I won't go that far, but if that happens, someone in the chain of command went, well, my goodness, crocodile tears.
We the UN has never left forces in the middle of a fire fight when they send in peacekeepers.
As soon as it gets nasty, they pull out.
That's the history of them.
Throw in the Canadian major sending an email to that Canadian network, which probably would have cost us career, that said that what the Israelis were doing was tactically appropriate.
And of course, there's more and more uh stories are starting to surface about the Hezbos locating their rocket launchers near UN sites and in homes and so forth.
But it's it's not it's not really being generally reported.
It's it's obvious you watch the drive-by media that sympathy is with the uh with with Hezbollah here.
Um Charles Crowdhammer writes today, the moral universe is totally inverted.
Uh uh a country that does not attack civilians, that defends itself, Israel put on the clock, while the country that does the attacking wantonly targets innocent people and civilians.
Uh they are considered the victims.
The Israelis are told you better wrap this up very quickly, and the Israelis are talked about as mean-spirited, extremist, bloodthirsty hacks.
It's just the opposite.
I'm going to tell you, whatever when you're watching drive-by meter reports of this war, you will be best advised to consider what you hear, and then say the exact opposite may be true when you are hearing about the nature of the attacks, who's hitting who and who's dying, who's getting hurt, who's getting wounded, uh, in terms of civilians and so forth.
Me, uh, by the way, they pulled that the uh unit observers have now been pulled out of there.
The uh UN, uh Kofi Onan, as you call him, has been decided uh uh has decided to remove fifty unarmed observers from posts along the Israeli-Lebanese border and uh relocate them with a lightly armed UN peacekeeper force, a spokesman said today the decision came three days after an Israeli airstrike destroyed one of the posts earlier this week, uh killing four observers from Austria, Canada, uh, China, and Finland.
This AP story, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
Uh, after an Israeli airstrike destroyed one of the posts earlier this week.
Uh that may be what happened, but they didn't tell you why it happened.
It didn't tell you why the Israelis were not targeting that post because the unit observers were in it.
They were targeting a missile installation and firing installation that was close by.
You have the biggest bunch of cowards on the face of the earth in Hezbollah, they're being portrayed as brave fighters holding on to their little turfland against the mean, powerful Israelis and their ally buddies of the United States.
I have a question, uh uh, ladies and gentlemen.
Anybody know um where there's an Army Navy store that sells the official Hezbollah uniform?
Because I I'd I'd like to get one.
Well, is that right?
There is there's not an official uh Hezbollah?
Really?
I guess you're right.
There there aren't there is no official Hezbollah uniform, and they probably don't have dog tags either, right?
Uh so if if that's true, if if the if if there is no official Hezbollah, military uniform, uh, then I have a question.
How how can anyone list the uh what are the what do they call it?
Civilian deaths in uh in Lebanon?
When everybody in Lebanon's dressed as a civilian.
If the Hezbows have a uniform, it's pants and a shirt.
And an automobile driving around in an ambulance.
Now, if our cracked journalists wanted to report the truth, they would tell us how many Hezbollah deaths, how many Syrian advisor deaths, how many Iranian military deaths.
In fact, it gives me a good idea.
Iranians don't speak Arabic, they speak Farsi.
Why doesn't Israel broadcast funny jokes in Farsi?
First one to laugh, kaboom.
And another Lebanese civilian was killed.
The point is there is no uniform, and thus any count that I hear about civilian deaths in Lebanon is meaningless, ladies and gentlemen.
There's no truth to it, and there's not even any real curiosity.
Find out who they are.
Your host for peace here on the EIB network, speaking truth to kooks at 800-282-2882.
All right, Bill Clinton's back in Canada.
Uh Bill Clinton, what is this?
Has been to Canada.
This is his 20th visit uh to Canada in what length of uh time.
Well, our name is Belinda Stronuk.
Uh, but I'm trying to think what it's uh.
It's not the focus of this story.
I just can't find uh uh yeah, here it is been to Canada twenty times since he left the oval orifice, uh, mostly for speaking engagements.
In his speech, urged Canada to stay the course on universal health care.
Anyway, he went up there uh and and said that the United States and other Western countries should be pushing hard for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbos, along with the insertion of an international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.
Uh, the Islamic group uh Hezbollah's tactics are at the root of the uh conflict, Clinton said, but he also questioned the length to which Israel's gone to defend itself.
It's important for us to get some kind of ceasefire now.
I I think this idea of an international force needs to be fleshed out.
This is a recipe for doom.
I wanna I want to uh uh I want to go to this that mentioned it earlier.
Warren Christopher has a piece in the Washington Post today.
Now, Warren Christopher is the architect of the disastrous Iranian policy.
He was this he was uh in the State Department with Jimmy Carter during the 444-day hostage crisis of uh 1979.
Uh he was deputy secretary of state during Carter's term in office.
He was Secretary of State for Clinton in the in the first term.
Uh and those periods of time are periods of great success and tactical advance on the part of militant Islamists.
So I'll tell you what's happening here.
The drive-by media is not being leaked to.
Nobody in the administration is going to the New York Times or the Washington Post and describing an administration in kerfuffle.
An administration divided.
Uh we're not getting the usual Colin Powell, Richard Armitage link uh leaks that we got when Kow Powell was Secretary of State.
Uh we're not getting that here.
And that's uh one of the things that tells me that uh uh the whole world is missing uh the utter control over this situation that George Bush is exercising via Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton.
I want you to listen a little bit of what Warren Christopher writes today.
My own experience in that region, which is it was disastrous, folks, you just trust me on this.
My own experience in the region underlies my belief that in the short term we should focus our efforts on stopping the killing.
Human suffering, we've got to stop the killing.
We need a cessation of violence.
Twice during my four years as Secretary of State we faced situations similar to the one that confronts us today.
Twice, at the request of the Israelis, we helped bring the bloodshed to an end.
No, you didn't.
That's the point.
The bloodshed is ongoing and it is continuing.
It is not ending.
In June of '93, Israel responded to Hezbollah rockets along its northern border by launching Operation Accountability, resulting in the expulsion of 250,000 civilians from the southern part of Lebanon.
After the Israeli bombardment had continued for several Days, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin asked me to use my contacts in Syria to seek their help in containing the hostilities.
I contacted a foreign minister Farouk Shara, who of course consulted with the then President Hafez El Assad.
After several days of urgent negotiations, an agreement was reached, committing the parties to stop targeting one another's civilian populations.
We never knew exactly what the Syrians did, but clearly the Hezbollah responded to their direction.
Yes, they were getting creamed.
The Hezbollahs were getting shellacked, of course they wanted a ceasefire.
And thanks to Warren Christopher, we got it.
Instead of defeating them, they got a ceasefire.
And now look their back and look what kind of weapons they've got that they didn't have back when Warren Christopher in Syria saved the day.
In April of 96, when the Hezbows again launched rocket attacks on Israel's northern Wait a minute, Warren.
I just thought you said you had a monumental success in June of 93 by getting the Syrians to stop the bloodshed.
I thought you got your ceasefire.
And I thought the Syrians, you never knew what they did, but man, oh man, it really worked.
Diplomacy worked, and yet now you're telling us about the resumption of hostilities three years later, after your big successful ceasefire.
In April of '96, when the Hezbow again launched rocket attacks on Israel's northern border.
The Israelis counter with Operation Grapes of Wrath, sending 400,000 Lebanese fleeing from Southern Lebanon.
Errant Israeli bombs hit a UN refugee camp at Cana in Arcana, not how I pronounce it, Southern Lebanon, killing about a hundred civilians and bringing the wrath of international public opinion down upon Israel.
This time, Shimon Perez, who had become Prime Minister after the assassination of Rabin sought our help again.
In response, we launched an eight-day shuttle to Damascus, Beirut, and Jerusalem that produced a written agreement bringing the hostilities to an end.
Really?
What do you call what's going on there today, Mr. Christopher?
Folks, do you understand how absurd this is?
How utterly ridiculous?
Here is one of the elites, one of the smartest guys in the room, an abject failure writing a piece and signing his name to it, defining his success.
It's precious.
This is just precious.
This is another gift from God.
The Liberal Democrats write of their own incompetence.
They're so stupid.
They're so narrowly focused.
They think they're writing about successes.
This time, Shimon Perez consulted us, and we launched this eight-day shuttle, and we produced a written agreement bringing the hostilities to an end.
Weeks later, the parties agreed to a border monitoring group consisting of Israel, Syria, Lebanon, France, and the U.S. Until three weeks ago, that agreement had succeeded for ten years in preventing a wholesale resumption of hostilities.
What do these episodes teach us?
He asks that.
What these episodes teach us is that people like you are dangerous.
You don't solve problems when you think you do.
Repeated ceasefires, after which Hezbollah comes back better armed and better equipped than ever before.
And it's happened now.
They've been taking the last ten, six years, whatever.
Bunker building, tunnel digging, putting weapons and caches of weapons in them, all kinds of missiles, now some long-range missiles, 250 mile range missiles coming from Iran.
They're firing those rockets deeper into Israel.
And of course, the the compassionate Bill Clinton now says, well, we must cease hostilities.
We must stop the violence.
We must stop the killing, another ceasefire.
I'll tell you when the ceasefire will happen, when Hezbollah's out of rockets.
When Hezbollah's out of weapons, that's when the white flag will go up, and that's when Syria will get involved, and that's when we'll get another ceasefire, and then the diplomats will applaud.
And pat themselves on the back, breaking their arms in the process.
In fact, their heads are in orifices, their sun doesn't shine, folks.
It is just beyond me how many years of this kind of literal incompetence and insanity is it going to take for people to realize what we're up against here.
You can talk about all these great ceasefires you had in 93 and in 96, but they weren't ceasefires, Mr. Christopher.
They didn't solve it.
They may have ceased the firing at that point, but they didn't stop this.
this is why I say, folks, uh uh you you let you leave the world in charge of people like Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton and and uh you name it the same you know foggy bottom clowns uh that that live and work in a United Nations and in the State Department you leave the world to them and this is going to be a perpetual thing until it gets so bad that there's gonna genuinely be a world war because that's the only way this is ever going to end.
It's the only way they ever do end.
And these clowns think they're solving the problem in the midst of prolonging it and actually making it worse.
Traver City, Michigan, Pearl, glad you called welcome to Open Line Friday.
Well let me let you know what an honor it is to speak with the Chancellor of the Limbaugh Institute.
How are you doing?
Fine, sir, thanks very much.
The reason I'm calling is I you mentioned earlier that um the politicians are always talking about how they want uh better health care and lower cost for everybody.
Well well that kind of got my juices going because politicians from time immemorial have discussed things that they want to do and what they want to do never changes.
But the the reality that we all live in just gets worse and worse.
Republicans always want to limit government but we've seen nothing but government getting huger and huger and Democrats always want to raise taxes but not enough.
So they you know keep rating taxes even higher and and what we end up with as a people is now none of us feel like we have any control.
Most of us don't even vote because our votes don't count and nothing ever gets done.
I don't want a Republican Party that says that that they're committed to limiting the size of government.
I want a Republican party that's that is committed to reducing the size of government.
I don't know of any candidate that's ever said I want to get rid of this um process or get rid of this administration or get rid of this association or anything else.
Well it's been done it it's been said it just hasn't been done.
I would say you've had politicians I want to get rid of a national endowment for the arts I want to get rid of the PBS I want to get rid of the corporation for public broadcasting and the CPB and all that but they never do it once they get there because the liberals and the American left start screaming bloody murder and calling them names and they cower I but I get your point okay the Democrats are always saying the same thing Republicans always say the same thing and quote unquote nothing gets done this is leading you to your palpable frustration I assume.
Well that along with so many other things such as the you know I think the Constitution should be something that the people have a saying as far as amendments go or or you know the judges on the Supreme Court that are that say the you know the government can take your property for basically whatever reason it it wants to then you have other state Supreme Court that say no you can't.
It's leading up to a confrontation between the several states and the United States Supreme Court.
If the people were involved in the amendment process or in the election of judges in some way, then at least that would correct the situation, whether it's right or left.
Let me stop you there and respond, because we're getting close to a timeout here that I must take.
If what you have said is the reason for anyone being palpably frustrated, then I should have resigned 10 years ago.
No, hear me out here.
I have been advocating in a national forum and with a loud and clear voice for all kinds of things.
Have I gotten what we all want?
Have we gotten?
But I'm just talking about me, since we're talking about individuals being palpably frustrated.
Snurdily saying, I've got what I wanted, a lot of it, because the landscape of the entire country has changed.
Which is what I say.
would I be frustrated?
Why in the world would I be people how do you maintain your optimism look at what's changed since I started this program in nineteen eighty eight.
Look at what has changed.
We get we don't be lose sight of it.
We lose sight of the fact that Republicans won the House for the first time in forty years and now we're overwhelmed with how poorly they're operating there.
Understandably so these things take time you know these these are these are battles and fights that go on for one's lifetime.
And when you commit to it, I think you have to understand that palpable frustration Might result from newly arrived citizens who really want to get involved, who don't see the changes that they're voting for happening fast enough, or don't see the changes cemented long enough.
Welcome to the way things work.
The liberals are still out there.
They still have to be battled.
You know, I don't know that Eisenhower got palpably frustrated.
I don't know that Patton did.
Maybe they did now and then.
But had they stayed that way, we would not have won World War II.
So look, I have to take a break here because I'm already long in the in the segment.
But the point is if I wanted to get all palpably upset, let this kind of thing affect a majority of the way I view my life.
Yeah, then I would be I'd be PO'd, and I'd have probably quit ten years ago in utter frustration, thinking this is meaningless.
What's it worth?
I'm not accomplishing anything here.
I am just all I'm doing is earning money.
Well the hell I can do that, doing anything else, and leave.
And that's what anybody else will be doing if they tune out simply because you don't get everything you want at once.
Uh, or you don't realize that the long-fought battle, and you may think we're losing ground.
Some people do.
I do in in a lot of areas.
But I do know what can happen.
We had um we had a Reagan.
There's not another one out there right now, but I know what can happen when one surfaces.
Anyway, quick timeout.
Be back after this.
Don't vanish.
Ha, welcome back.
Nice to have you uh on the EIB network and open line Friday.
All right.
The President and Tony Blair just concluded their joint news conference uh talking about the wall, uh, or should I say the walls.
Uh and there was a question uh from David Gregory, and uh you know I want to play the question, not the answer.
Both they both answered the question, Bush and Blair didn't went for three minutes.
I'm not gonna play a three-minute sound bite here.
Uh well, they knocked the question out of the park.
Uh just trust me on that.
Uh but the question, you know, is illustrative because I have been saying uh over the uh recent days that the drive-by media's focus on this story is so narrow and on most stories that they really don't see what's going on right under their noses.
Listen to this question.
Mr. President, three years ago you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab Israeli peace.
And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel.
Arab governments, despite your arguments who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune.
Now they're sharply critical of Israel.
And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.
So what has happened to America's clout in this region that you've committed yourself to transform.
Now, does I know that the question sounds impudent and uh and rude.
Uh, but there there are a couple of templates in this question.
Um Governments, Arab governments, despite your arguments who first criticized Hezbollah have now changed their tune.
I've got the New York Times story that says that, and it doesn't say that.
It purports to say it.
It tries to say it.
But nowhere in the story is there any evidence that any Arab governments that that would came out.
I mean, you barric just this week saw we're not going there.
We're not getting involved.
He didn't have a word to say, anti-Israelist.
Saudi's the Saudi's uh uh saying a couple things, but the administration believes that that's just public consumption.
Here you heard him talk about Maliki and his unwillingness to support the president here.
I guess uh Gregory didn't have time to read Peter Beinart today in the Washington Post before he went to work to prepare himself for questioning Bush uh and and Blair.
Uh the the both both uh leaders uh knocked this question out of the park.
Uh but the uh this it just it's an illustration here, folks, of just how the the the outcome that they want is humiliation for Israel, humiliation for George W. Bush, defeat for American policy.
And they think it's happening.
They think it's happening with the outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon between Hezbollah, uh the Hezbos and the uh and the Israelis, and they're so excited.
They're just panting away for uh this to destroy Bush.
Uh and it's uh just obvious, and that's why I wanted you to hear that question.
And I doubt that you hear the question.
Well, you might.
NBC might make a big deal of this question, their cable shows.
Quick timeout, though.
Back in just a second.
Stay with us.
One exciting hour to go, ladies and gentlemen.
Still lots of stuff to discuss, and lots of good phone calls from you.
Standing by and on hold.
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