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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, I suspend my dictatorial control over the program.
You know, 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.
And 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 by turning the program over when we go to the phones to 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 it.
I didn't get anybody answering me an 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?
Polsters in the drive-by media keep reporting.
David Rodham Gergen was on television detailing all of the malaise in our economy and how rotten it is and how poor it is.
And look at the stock market today is through the roof, up now 137 points.
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.
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?
Anybody have any guesses?
Market's going through the roof because they see slower growth as relieving pressure on inflation, which is everybody's big concern, even though we haven't had a problem with inflation.
I don't know, since, in fact, most of our problems have been disinflationary when you really get down to it.
Yes, what?
Right.
The what?
The house.
Yes.
What about the housing market?
Well, is that what's the benefit of having a slower housing market?
The benefit of having it.
I think Snirdly wants to know, okay, you want to talk about palpable frustration?
Explain the housing market to me.
Well, first thing, you have to understand the drive-bys 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, 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, and they're not selling as quickly as they were in the past.
And one of the reasons is that interest rates are going up.
Mortgages are getting more expensive.
I mean, the interest rates today are the biggest bargain.
You want to talk about interest rates, go back to the late 70s and the early 80s.
I don't ever want to go back to that.
I don't want to ever, ever return to that kind of thing.
That was just, you talk about a genuine malaise.
But I'm still, you know, 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 Snerdley 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, so yes, yes, yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Yes.
I'm going to, okay, okay, that's good.
Stop right there.
That's just one.
I've got to repeat what you say of 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 going to 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, why don't you just let me just hear them?
Folks, trust me, FCC finds, all you'd have to do is meet these people and you'd understand why.
Now, I mean, I don't need to let you see them on the diddle cam.
Why don't you put their pictures on the website?
No.
No.
That isn't going to happen.
You are palpably frustrated over the lack of certitude over the direction of the wall.
You're talking about Iraq and now the Hezbollahs and the Israelis.
Okay.
What's number two?
Just one.
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 have I, what have 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 House.
But Senate, too.
I mean, the House where all the spending originated.
Now, this is a great illustration, an example of why repetition is 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 you people are going to sit around and 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 going to 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.
There is 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.
There's a piece in the American Thinker Today by a Muslim who says, you know, people won't realize the threat that exists out there.
And there are many reasons for it.
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 where this war is headed.
Just as the British were not interested in listening to Churchill, 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-Hezbo conflict taint enough in terms of alerting the free people of the world that they all, we all face a dire threat.
And so, whether if Israel loses this, it's only going to get worse.
The militant Islamists will be emboldened.
As I was going to say, this guy on the American 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.
You can't look at the nice Muslims and say, oh, they're okay.
They may be fine, nice people, but they're going to be swept aside too if they don't follow the demands of the militant Islamists as their marae 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.
They can talk to anybody.
It can be understood and negotiate with anybody.
They'd 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 them.
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 the Hezbo's and the Israelis.
And I don't know how either of those are going to turn out.
But if it is deemed that we lose in both places, the Hezbos and the other militant Islamists are going to continue to grow and expand.
And at some point, they're going to have to be dealt with or they win.
And I think they're pretty patient.
I don't think they've got grand designs on making this happen next week or next year.
Otherwise, Mahmoud Ahmadinezad would already be on the march trying to find a 12th Imam.
But they are trying to do it with proxies with Hezbollah.
I think it's a serious problem.
I think it's a 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 linguine-spined lackeys, as Peter Beinert says, without any conviction whatsoever, just pandering and just doing whatever they can to reacquire their power.
But as far as this palpable frustration goes, little story here from the CBC.
Adrian White is a scientist.
It's a Reuters story, actually.
And the money quote from this piece is, 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, 178 countries, based the study on data from 178 countries and 100 global studies.
The United States came in 23rd in happiest countries on the planet.
Britain was in 41st place.
Germany, 35th, and France was in second place.
Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria, Iceland, and the Bahamas were near the top.
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 23rd happiest country in the world out of at least 178.
But if somebody can tell me, if you are palpably frustrated, because I'm going to 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.
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 were saying that Kofi Annan desired the deaths of his two peacekeeper observers.
Well, I won't go that far, but if that happens, someone in chain of command went, well, my goodness, crocodile tears.
The UN has never left forces in the middle of a firefight when they sent 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.
Of course, there's more and more stories are starting to surface about the Hezbollahs locating their rocket launchers near UN sites and in homes and so forth.
But it's not really being generally reported.
It's obvious.
You watch the Drive-By Media, the sympathy is with Hezbollah here.
Charles Krauthammer writes today, the moral universe is totally inverted.
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, 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, 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, in terms of civilians and so forth.
Me, by the way, they've pulled that.
The UN observers have now been pulled out of there.
The UN, Kofi Onan, as you call him, has decided to remove 50 unarmed observers from posts along the Israeli-Lebanese border and 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, killing four observers from Austria, Canada, China, and Finland.
It's a peace story.
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
After an Israeli airstrike destroyed one of the posts earlier this week.
That may be what happened, but they didn't tell you why it happened.
They didn't tell you why the Israelis were not targeting that post because the UN 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 turf land against the mean, powerful Israelis and their ally buddies, the United States.
I have a question, ladies and gentlemen.
Anybody know where there's an Army-Navy store that sells the official Hezbollah uniform?
Because I'd like to get one.
Well, is that right?
There's not an official Hezbo uniform?
Really?
I guess you're right.
There is no official Hezbo uniform, and they probably don't have dog tags either, right?
So if that's true, if there is no official Hezbo uniform, military uniform, then I have a question.
How can anyone list the, what do they call it, civilian deaths in Lebanon when everybody in Lebanon's dressed as a civilian?
If the Hezbos 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 Hezbo 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 to 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.
Bill Clinton, what is this?
He's been to Canada.
This is his 20th visit to Canada in what length of time?
Well, her name is Belinda Stronach, but I'm trying to think.
It's not the focus of the story.
I just can't find the...
Yeah, here it is.
He's been to Canada 20 times since he left the Oval Orifice, mostly for speaking engagements.
In his speech Wednesday, he urged Canada to stay the course on universal health care.
Anyway, he went up there and said that the United States and other Western countries should be pushing hard for a ceasefire between Israel and the Hezbos, along with the insertion of an international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.
The Islamic group Hezbollah's tactics are at the root of the conflict, Clinton said.
But he also questioned the length to which Israel has gone to defend itself.
It's important for us to get some kind of ceasefire now.
I think this idea of an international force needs to be fleshed out.
This is a recipe for doom.
I want to go to this.
I 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 in the State Department with Jimmy Carter during the 444-day hostage crisis of 1979.
He was Deputy Secretary of State during Carter's term in office.
He was Secretary of State for Clinton in the first term.
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.
We're not getting the usual Colin Powell, Richard Armitage link leaks that we got when Kyle Powell was Secretary of State.
We're not getting that here.
And that's one of the things that tells me that the whole world is missing 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 disastrous, folks, 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 Hezbollahs responded to their direction.
Yes, they were getting creamed.
The Hezbos 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, and Syria saved the day.
In April of 96, when the Hezbo's again launched rocket attacks on Israel's northern border...
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 Hezbollahs again launched rocket attacks on Israel's northern border, the Israelis countered with Operation Grapes of Wrath, sending 400,000 Lebanese fleeing from southern Lebanon.
Errant Israeli bombs hit a UN refugee camp at Kanna in their Canaan, southern Lebanon, killing about 100 civilians and bringing the wrath of international public opinion down upon Israel.
This time, Shimon Peres, 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 10 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 10, 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 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.
The 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.
Call them operational pauses, whatever you.
This is why I say, folks, you leave the world in charge of people like Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton and you name it, the same foggy bottom clowns that live and work in a United Nations and the State Department.
Leave the world to them, and this is going to be a perpetual thing until it gets so bad that there's going to 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.
Traverse 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 you mentioned earlier that the politicians are always talking about how they want better health care and lower costs for everybody.
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 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 keep raising taxes even higher.
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 they're committed to limiting the size of government.
I want a Republican Party 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 process or get rid of this administration or get rid of this association or anything else.
Well, it's been done.
It's been said.
It just hasn't been done.
You've had a politician.
I want to get 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.
But I get your point.
Okay.
The Democrats are always saying the same thing.
Republicans are always saying 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, you know, I think the Constitution should be something that the people have a saying as far as amendments go, or, you know, the judges on the Supreme Court that say that, you know, the government can take your property for basically whatever reason it wants to.
Then you have other state Supreme Courts 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.
Six years.
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.
But, well, 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.
Why 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 1988.
Look at what has changed.
We don't lose sight of it.
We lose sight of the fact that Republicans won the House for the first time in 40 years, and now we're overwhelmed with how poorly they're operating there.
Understandably so.
These things take time.
You know, 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 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'd be PO'd.
And I'd have probably quit 10 years ago in utter frustration, thinking this is meaningless.
What's it worth?
I'm not accomplishing anything here.
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 or you don't realize that the long-fought battle.
And you may think we're losing ground.
Some people do.
I do in a lot of areas.
But I do know what can happen.
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 on the EIB network and Open Line Friday.
All right.
The President and Tony Blair just concluded their joint news conference talking about the wall, or should I say the walls.
And there was a question from David Gregory, and I want to play the question, not the answer.
They both answered the question, Bush and Blair did.
It went for three minutes.
I'm not going to play a three-minute soundbite here.
But they knocked the question out of the park.
Just trust me on that.
But the question is illustrative because I have been saying over the 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, I know the question sounds impudent and rude, but there are a couple of templates in this question.
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 came out.
I mean, Nubarik just this week said, we're not going there.
We're not getting involved.
He didn't have a word to say anti-Israel.
The Saudis, the Saudis saying a couple of things, but the administration believes that that's just public consumption.
Here you heard him talk about Malachi and his unwillingness to support the president here.
I guess 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 and Blair.
Both leaders knocked this question out of the park.
But it's an illustration here, folks, of just how 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 Hezbo, the Hezbollah and the Israelis.
And they're so excited.
They're just panting away for this to destroy Bush.
And it's just obvious.
And that's why I wanted you to hear that question.
I doubt that you hear the question.
Well, you might.
NBC might make a big deal of this question tonight in 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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