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Sept. 15, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:47
September 15, 2006, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, I tell you what, folks, George W. Bush is great in this press conference that started a little less than an hour ago.
Still going on.
It'll wrap up pretty soon.
We're working on audio sound bites for you, but this is fabulous.
And it's been two weeks of this.
Not only from him, but from Cheney on Meet the Press in Rumsfeld as well.
And they got to keep this up.
There has been a momentum shift in internal Republican polling in the House of Representatives.
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This has really been a best way to say this is ladies and gentlemen.
This is the George Bush that I I know when I'm with him personally.
The intense focused, uh, not taking any gruff, just ran right over David Gregory, uh, mouthpiecing uh John McCain in a couple of questions.
It was uh joy to behold.
We're gonna have it for you.
Cookie, even now working on the sound bites, making the case for the terrorist detention bill, wanting to clarify Article III of the Geneva Conventions that Republicans are holding up.
John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and John Warner.
Uh he's bantering back and forth with the press, uh, lighthearted at times, but he's deadly serious.
And the um, you know, he got a question about Colin Powell, he doesn't care about any of that.
Uh he's using these questions to speak directly to the American people, going over the head of these reporters while at the same time answering their questions.
Uh he's taking the case to the public on the war, including Iraq on interrogations on the Sudan.
He's on top of everything, and he's hitting their questions out of the park.
Uh as I say, Cheney did the same thing with Russert on Meet the Press last Sunday.
Rumsfeld started all this intensity about two weeks ago.
Uh, what we're watching here is pushback from the White House, not letting the libs and the propagandists win the public information war.
Uh clearly it's what they understand in the White House now, and they are uh the gloves are off.
It is uh it is truly election season.
It looks like the president's gonna take this at least to an hour.
This uh Rose Garden press conference started uh about fifty-five minutes ago.
I'm not gonna jip it uh because it's gonna be over soon, and we will have the uh uh relevant sound bites, the kick butt sound bites, as soon as uh we are able to put them together.
A lot of the press conference has dealt with the uh effort by the president to get specific congressional legislation over what Article III, General Article III of the Geneva Conventions means.
And he has very pointedly said if Congress doesn't give him a bill, this program's dead.
He's turned it right back.
He's blaming it on McCain and Warner and Graham.
If they don't get me something that I can use legally for our professionals to conduct interrogations to find out when and where the next attacks might happen, then I'm gonna put I'm just gonna put the program, and it'll be it didn't say this, it'll be on their heads.
Uh another thing.
Uh I I think something fueling the president's energy and passion today is that the president has been negotiating with McCain behind the scenes for two weeks now.
And these negotiations have proved worthless.
So the effort uh kicked into high gear this week.
The CIA director, Michael Hayden uh saying that without specific guidance, he would have to close down the interrogation program.
The administration now going public uh With this, as in the press conference today to throw it right back at McCain, which I have to tell you.
I think McCain probably loves this.
I think he's so absorbed with himself being in the news and being the focal point of discussions and being a roadblock here on things.
He probably likes this.
Uh even if he doesn't understand what is happening in terms of what the president is uh is doing.
Ego can do that to you.
Ego can make you think you're winning when you're not.
Ego can make you think you look good when you don't.
Ego can make you think you're important when you're actually a problem.
And those are the things that Senator McCain now faces.
Before we go to any sound bites here, I read a piece today by Richard Minater in the New York Post.
It's entitled A Deadly Kindness.
You know, yesterday was asking, oh, these poor terrorists, these poor poor terrorists, why they're being so mistreated and maltreated, and well, it's torture, and Bush wants this, they went to kill them, or they torture them and so forth.
Meanwhile, they do what they do, and we're sitting around here worried about how they get treated.
Well, Minator just got back from going down to Club Gitmo.
Uh he said the Pentagon seemed to be hoping to disarm its critics by showing them how well it uh cares for captured terrorists.
Richard Minater was uh was on a military-sponsored trip to Club Gitmo.
He said the trip was more alarming than disarming.
I spent several hours with Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., who heads the joint task force that houses and interrogates the detainees.
The military, by the way, is not allowed to call them prisoners.
Have to be called detainees.
Rear Admiral Harry Harris, Jr. is a distinguished Navy veteran who was born in Japan, educated at Annapolis and Harvard, is a serious man trying to do a politically impossible job.
I spoke with him at length and with a dozen other officers and guards and visited three different detention blocks.
The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong.
We are far too soft on these guys, and as a result, we aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.
The politically correct regulations are unbelievable.
Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours' sleep, and they can't be awakened for interrogations.
They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day without interruption.
They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.
Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two, and of course, are interrupted for prayers.
One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them subway or McDonald's sandwiches.
Both are available on base.
Turns out that one of the Al-Qaeda terrorists uh sorry, detainees' favorite items is uh McDonald's Folia fish.
Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee privacy.
Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's dangerous.
Admiral Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell Al-Qaeda network has developed in the camp.
Military intelligence can't yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training others for making weapons and so on, talking about the detainees here.
They have cells of people for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training others for making weapons and so on.
And they can make weapons from almost anything.
Guards have been attacked with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs, and fan blades.
Some are more elaborate.
Harris says these folks are McGivers.
Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others.
How do they do it?
Detainees use the envelopes.
Stand by for this, folks.
Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages.
Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners on a pro bono basis, with more than 18,000 500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.
Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of attorney client privilege.
Even if they know the document inside is an Arab language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.
That's right.
Accidentally or not, American lawyers Are helping Al Qaeda prisoners continue to plot.
Well, I wonder who these lawyers might just happen to be.
Could they perhaps be members of an organization whose acronym is ACLU, I wonder.
Mr. Minator continues, there's little doubt what this note passing and weapons making is used for.
The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July of 2005 to August of 2006, an average of more than eight incidents per day.
Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks, involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards 432 times to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.
One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life.
The doctors now wear body armor to treat their patients.
The kinder we are to terrorists, the harsher we are to their potential victims.
Striking the balance between these two goods, humane treatment, foreknowledge of deadly attacks is difficult, but the Bush administration seems to lean too far in the direction of the detainees.
No expense spared for Al Qaeda health care, some 5,000 dental operations, including teeth cleanings.
5,000 vaccinations on a total of 550 detainees have been performed since 2002.
All that taxpayer expense, eyeglasses, 174 pairs passed out.
Twenty-two detainees have taxpayer paid prosthetic limbs and so on.
What if a date detainee confesses a weakness like fear of the dark to a doctor that might be useful to interrogators?
I asked the doctor in charge, would he share that information?
Doctor said, my job is not to make interrogations more efficient.
He cited doctor patient privacy.
Also asked that his name not be printed, citing the potential for Al Qaeda retaliation.
Afraid of the prisoners that are in the prison.
Who are locked up.
Food averages 4200 calories per day.
The guards eat the same chow as the detainees unless they venture to one of the on base fast food joints.
Most prisoners have gained weight.
Of Gitmo's several camps, military records show that the one with the most lenient rules is the one with the most incidents and vice versa.
There's a lesson in this.
We should worry less about detainee safety and more about our own.
Some twenty current detainees have direct personal knowledge of the 9-11 attacks.
Nearly every one of the current 440 say they would uh be honored to attack America again.
They need to be taken at their word.
This is Richard Minater in the uh in the New York Post today.
Uh he is a best-selling author, adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
And this just blew me away when I put this within the context of McCain and Warner and Lindsey Graham attempting to and all the Democrats, don't leave them out of this.
The frustrating thing is that McCain and Graham and Warner giving Democrats all a cover on this.
Before it's all said and done by the way, Bush is going to be ripping the Democrats on this is probably going to work out one way or the other.
But the bottom line here is that this that you have just heard, this kid glove treatment, is being characterized by Americans in the United States Senate as torture.
And the drive-by media has editorials today about how Bush is asking for a torture bill.
None of this is anywhere near torture.
I must take a brief time out.
We'll be back and roll right on right after this.
You know, we uh uh we have three of the bites from President Bush so far.
I want to wait till I get some more in here, uh, and I'm gonna first play some of the drive-by media montages and some from Senator McCain to set up uh the powerful Bush response today at the press conference.
Washington Times editorial today, a skewed view of detainee writes, has an interesting paragraph here, an interesting point.
Leave aside the question of whether the rogue states confronting America today would ever afford decent treatment under any circumstance.
By the way, to set that up, McCain, one of McCain's points is, well, if we come up with this torture bill the president wants, and some of our guys are captured in some of these countries, uh, then we're sanctioning the same kind of treatment against our own people that we're meeting.
It's just absurd.
The idea that there is a moral equivalence between Al Qaeda and us.
My God, folks, they behead their prisoners.
They kill people.
It's maddening to sit here and try to listen to Senator McCain and his cohorts establish some kind of moral equivalence here.
Anyway, the uh the paragraph in the Washington Times that's important here says, Since actual torture is already illegal, it would be helpful if Mr. Warner and McCain and Graham could explain what interrogation methods or punishment they object to.
Loud music, interrogating someone for prolonged period of time, limiting commissary privileges, even if it lessens the likelihood of preventing the next attack on Washington or U.S. servicemen in Kabul or Baghdad.
Um torture's already illegal.
Uh we're acting like the president wants to authorize and legalize torture.
The New York Times today.
Stampeding Congress.
We'll find out in November how while the White House's Be Very Afraid campaign has been working with voters.
Hey, New York Times, check your polling data.
You're about to be stunned and shocked and surprised.
We already know it's working in Congress, they say, stampeded by the fear of looking weak on terrorism.
Lawmakers are rushing to pass a bill demanded by the president that would have minimal impact on anti-terrorist operations, but could cause profound damage to justice in the American way.
This makes me want to puke.
When's the last time anybody of the New York Times editorial aboard was anywhere near an interrogation of terrorists to understand whether or not the impact is minimal?
What the hell do they know about anything?
This is why, ladies and gentlemen, there are people who genuinely do question on whose side some people in this country are on.
Let's go to a media montage.
Drive-by media panting over McCain's Republican rebellion against Bush.
Democrats can't agree on anything, but they never have rebellions.
Here is well, we got Nora Donald from M SNBC, Dana Bash, CNN, Britt Hume, Brian Lamb, Shepard Smith, Charlie Gibson, all saying Republican rebellion.
President Bush surprised the press court today announcing a press conference.
He is under fire facing a Republican rebellion from Don McCain, Colin Powell.
Republican rebellion over how to treat terror detainees.
President Bush faced an outright rebellion today at the hands of four influential Republican President Bush is facing a Republican rebellion.
Rebellion against the President and battle lines drawn within the GOP.
members of the president's own party in rebellion against the White House.
Well, they would love that, and they may want to portray it that way, but we'll see.
We'll just see how this goes down in the end.
The president took his case, and has been doing so for two weeks, to the American people.
And the latest polling data shows that the president and the Republican Party, 55 percent, over the Democrats on dealing with terror and so forth, And that's largely because of the president, not because of any other Republicans standing up and saying anything.
Last night on the Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Senator McCrain.
Uh Colin Powell, among other U.S. retired military personnel, agreeing with you that if this doesn't change, if the president's position stands, it would endanger U.S. troops serving around the world.
You speak with a little authority on this as a former POW yourself.
But go into a little bit more specific detail.
Why do you think the fighting men and women of the U.S. could be endangered if the president gets his way?
Suppose that uh we amend the Geneva Conventions to our interpretation of it.
Then another country that is not quite as democratic as ours decides they will amend their version.
A uh special forces person is captured by them.
And their attorney general tells our secret police, okay, here's our interpretation uh of Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions have at them.
That's what people are worried about.
You actually think, Senator McCain, that what we do is gonna impact the people we're talking about?
We're not talking about our soldiers being caught by the Brits.
What democratic country are you talking about?
We're not talking about our soldiers being captured by allies.
We're talking about what war are our soldiers engaged in, Senator.
What in the world do these people already do to prisoners and hostages that they take?
The president dealt with this.
This very question was asked of him today, and I'll wait for you to hear his answer rather than paraphrasing, although I'm really tempted to paraphrase it.
The president's answer was we want the way we interpret it to become worldwide because it was it would improve virtually everything.
There is no specificity in Article III now.
Anybody's free to interpret it however they want.
You know, all this is happening because of Supreme Court, folks.
And the president makes that point today in the press conference.
It's all happening because Supreme Court said we are commander in chief when it comes to this kind of stuff.
And he's he makes no bones about the fact that he's mad at the Supreme Court, disagrees with him, but he's got to follow along, and that's why he wants Congress to go along with what he needs to do.
Brief timeout, back right after this.
An interesting question.
What if the detainees are being denied uh their rights to carry arms?
Senator McCain step in and do something about this, or the lawyers, more on that in just a second, lawyers for the Al Qaeda terrorists who are at Club Gitmo.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh on Open Line Friday.
In the first place, uh as far as that media montage with the uh media, eh, Republican rebellion, Republican rebellion.
There is no Republican rebellion.
There is there are forty-five Democrats who oppose the interrogations, joined by a handful of liberal Republicans led by McCain, the usual suspects.
There is no Republican rebellion.
Now let's get first things first here.
This section of the Geneva Convention, Common Article III, doesn't even apply in this war, except the Supreme Court said that it does.
You think dictators are going to apply this section of the conventions to themselves because our court says it should be, even though it doesn't apply?
And even if we get a bill that McCain likes, are the world's dictators and thugs going to abide by it?
What is this incessant need to draw some kind of moral equivalence between our enemy and ourselves?
Now, when when Bush says, okay, I have to follow the court, but I want us to properly interpret the section so we can conduct useful interrogations.
What does McCain do?
McCain says no.
This is the guy who held up the Senate for his own torture bill.
This is a guy who stopped everything in order to define what is torture.
And now he's doing it all over again.
We're not amending the Geneva Conventions.
We are simply interpreting them because it is vague and it is broad.
So we've gone from the Geneva Conventions not even applying to these shreds of human debris to having them apply to terrorists to preventing us from interrogating terrorists effectively.
Thank you, Senator McCain.
Thank you, Senator Graham, and thank you, Senator Warner, not to mention all the Democrats who have actually been leading the way on this before Senator McCain tried to start to throw his hat in the ring.
A little side note, I wonder how the Democrats feel about this.
Democrats are leading this charge.
Democrats are hoping to win the election on this.
Now McCain's taking all their glory.
McCain's getting all the oxygen in the room.
It's McCain's opposition.
Durbin's got to be furious.
Dingy Harry's got to be furious.
Yes, they are.
Don't think that they're loving the politics of this, because their egos will triumph over the politics.
They want to make an election issue out of it.
They'll be glad to welcome McCain and the boys to it to defeat the plan, because they want to defeat the plan, too.
But But they want to be the ones signified and notarized as the ones carrying the ball on this.
So again, we've gone from the Geneva Convention not even applying to terrorists to having them apply to terrorists to preventing us from interrogating terrorists effectively.
This is going to go down as the event that will result in us getting hit again.
And if we do, and if McCain at all prevail, I can tell you where fingers are going to be pointed on this program.
At every senator, Republican or Democrat who stood in the way here.
There is no Republican rebellion.
Forty-five Democrats oppose the interrogations, joined by a handful of the usual suspects on the Republican side led by McCain.
This is nothing new.
We've seen this before.
McCain does this all the time, joining with the Democrats to undermine the president.
Now, Dick Turbin, uh Senator from Illinois, uh says that people he said this on TV this morning.
People are going to end up forgetting McCain and Warner and Graham if there is blame for holding this up, and that the Bush and everybody will blame the Democrats.
They deserve some blame.
There are 45 of them leading the charge, and they've been on board for a long time.
They've been trying to sabotage victory over this enemy for years.
You deserve blame, Senator Derman.
Sounds like he wants it.
Sounds like he's hoping they forget McCain.
They might be scared.
Hope he is scared.
But they, you know, you make your bed, you lay in it.
Lie in it, sleep in it, whatever you're doing it.
People do different things with bids.
Back to the audio sound bites.
Another McCain, Wolf Blitcher, with another penetrating, hard-hitting tough question.
How concerned are you that the three powerful Republican senators, you being McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Warner, that some Republicans might say you're giving aid and comfort to Democrats during this very, very bitter political season, less than eight weeks before the election.
There's other Republicans that agree with us, and there's many other people around the country, like General Colin Powell, who agrees with us.
This is not, this should have nothing to do with politics.
Nothing.
This is about the lives of American men and women who are serving our country.
I believe that we can work out our differences, and I will bend every effort to do so.
It's very important.
Not because we have an election coming up, but because we have men and women who are serving in the military who need every protection we can provide them with.
Senator, go read Richard Minader's piece in the New York Post, uh, the piece I lit off the program with today.
This is insulting to me.
I mean, I can understand being concerned about the American servicemen and whether they they know what they're signing up for.
Uh, they don't need to be treated like babies here.
They're trained to deal with this.
They are the fighting forces of the United States of America.
And they don't need to be treated like children like we're trying to treat everybody else in this country.
And uh, we don't need to humiliate them by forcing them to treat terrorists out at Club Gitmo the way they apparently are being forced to treat them.
We have a couple Durbin sound bites here.
Uh, Senate floor, Dick Durbin said this.
We went through this administration's effort to redefine torture, to abandon the Geneva conventions that we had stood by for decades.
We saw the scandals of Abu Grabe and Guantanamo.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a noted historian, says that the issue of torture has damaged the image of America and the world more than anything in our history.
Torture.
BS torture.
That's absolutely stop the tape a minute.
I don't care what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. says.
He's a relic now.
He's a partisan.
He's a lib hack, just like you are.
This is you ought to be scared, Senator Durbin, because this kind of comment, these kinds of speeches, rehashing without the uh uh uh the invective.
Uh your comments about club get mo.
Yeah, we're not gonna let people forget this, Senator Durbin.
McCain and Warner and uh Graham can do what they want to do, but you're on their team.
And you've been on the team a lot longer than they have where this is concerned.
Time now to start with the president sound bites.
We go to number 15 here.
Uh in this bite is from the opening remarks, the president describes what McCain wants to stop interrogations of monsters like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Calake Sheikh Mohammed described the design of planned attacks on buildings inside the U.S. and how operatives uh were directed to carry them out.
He told us the operatives have been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping.
He gave us information that helped uncover Al-Qaeda cells efforts to obtain biological weapons.
We've also learned information from the CIA program that has helped stop other plots, including attacks on the U.S. Marine base in East Africa or American consulate in Pakistan or Britain's Heathrow Airport.
President next takes it right to McCain in this uh excerpt from his opening remarks.
This program has been one of the most vital tools In our efforts to protect this country.
Were not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland by giving us information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else.
This program has saved innocent lives.
I'm asking Congress to pass a clear law with clear guidelines based on the detainee treatment act that was strongly supported by Senator John McCain.
There's a debate about the specific provisions in my bill, and we'll work with Congress to continue to try to find common ground.
Time for questions, Terry Hunt, uh AP says this.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world's beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.
Now, if a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former Secretary of State feels that way, uh, don't you think that uh Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you're following a flawed strategy, Mr. President?
It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.
My job and the job of people here in Washington, D.C. is to protect this country.
We didn't ask for this war, but this enemy has struck us and they want to strike us again.
And we'll give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country.
That's our job.
It's a dangerous world.
I wish it wasn't that way.
I wish I could tell the American people, don't worry about it.
They're not coming again.
But they are coming again.
And that's why I've sent this legislation up to Congress.
Colin Powell, who's he?
SWAT SWAT.
I am I'm I'm I'm just it's unacceptable.
I'm not going to tolerate the fact that people are going to establish moral equivalence between our enemy and us.
Reuters, Steve Holland.
Senator McCain says your plan would put U.S. troops at risk.
What do you think about that?
Common Article 3 says that you know there will be no outrages upon human dignity.
It's very vague.
What does that mean?
Outrages upon human dignity.
That's a statement that uh is wide open to interpretation.
What I'm proposing is that there be clarity in the law so that our professionals will have no doubt that that which they are doing is legal.
Sometimes you actually have to question the people who know the strategy and plans of the enemy.
The court said that you've got to live under Article III of the Geneva Convention, and the standards are so vague that our professionals won't be able to carry forward the program because they don't want to be tried as war criminals.
They don't want to break the law.
They're not going forward with the program.
They're not going, their professionals will not step up unless there's clarity in the law.
So Congress has got a decision to make.
You want the program to go forward or not?
I strongly recommend that this program go forward in order for us to be able to protect America.
He's throwing it right back at McCain and the whole Senate.
You want to stop this fight?
I'm not going to go forward.
We'll scrap the whole program.
We won't interrogate one terrorist unless you clarify this for me because I'm not going to put my professionals at risk to be tried for war crimes.
I'm not going to do it.
Now, this next bite only takes about a minute, but it actually took six minutes to unfold.
It was a back and forth with David Gregory of NBC News.
We've cut out all of the David Gregory vacations.
But uh I almost wish you could hear that because the president just would not let him even follow up and ask the second question he was trying to ask, which is a repeat of the first.
He just refused to deal with the premise that that that uh Gregory was dealing with, and that's what I loved about all the ways he answered questions today.
He refused to accept the premise, some of these ridiculous questions.
Uh, Gregory said, Mr. President, critics of your program uh on interrogation rules say that there's another important test.
These critics include John McCain.
And that test is this.
If a CIA officer, a paramilitary, or special operations soldiers from the U.S. were captured in Iran and North Korea, and they were roughed up, and those governments said, well, they were interrogated in accordance with our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, and then they were put on trial, and they were convicted based on secret evidence they were not able to see.
How would you react to that as commander-in-chief?
My reaction is is that if the nation, such as those you named, adopted the standards Within the detainee detention act, the world would be better.
That's my reaction.
We're trying to clarify law.
We're trying to set high standards, not ambiguous standards.
We can debate this issue all we want, but the practical matter is if our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward.
David, you can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country.
The point is that the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in the law, and the best way to provide clarity in the law is to make sure the detainee treatment act is the crux of the law.
And the bottom line is simple.
If Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules, if they do not do that, the program's not going forward.
Gregory threw out that kept trying to re-ask his question.
The President just wasn't taking any of it.
A little long here, got to go quickly.
Back after this.
Stay with us.
A question you've got to ask yourself, folks.
Do the North Koreans honor the Geneva Conventions as interpreted by our courts when they took the USS Pueblo and tortured the sailors?
Did the North Vietnamese abide by the Geneva Conventions when they tortured McCain?
Geneva conventions were in existence for 20 years at that time.
Communists didn't care.
All these hypotheticals McCain brings up are just phony.
David Frum, National Review Online little post here on the blog they call the corner.
It's quite fascinating.
And it does touch on the potential Machiavellian characteristics of McCain's personality.
According to David Frum, some people have wondered whether the president's proposal was not time to help Republicans in the 2006 elections.
I asked that question myself last week, okay?
Now let me suggest that we do the unthinkable and submit Senator McCain's actions to the same suspicious scrutiny.
Most political observers agree that the worse Republicans do in 2006, the more likely they are to turn to McCain's Maverick candidacy in 2008.
Republicans don't like or trust McCain, but they want to win.
And the more they're convinced that their party is otherwise in serious trouble, the more likely they are to believe that McCain's anti-party candidacy is the solution.
McCain may have heard these theories too.
If he has and if he agrees, is it not in his interest to maximize Republican losses in 06?
If a vote on military commissions would embarrass Democrats and thereby help Republicans, does it not help Democrats to prevent such a vote from occurring before November 2nd?
Could it be that McCain just wants to stall this so that there's no action before the election?
Thereby not helping the president, thereby helping the Democrats.
His point is, should we ask whether this is personal for McCain?
Is McCain doing all this to only enhance his electoral chances in 08 by making sure the Republicans do as poorly as possible in 06?
Now you might think, well, who would come up with this cockamami idea?
Well, Mr. Frum has come up with it.
Uh when you hear it, does it not partially resonate?
Uh those of you who have uh pretty good knowledge of Senator McCain, does it sound possible to you?
Sound possible that he's megalomoniacal enough, desirous of the White House enough that he would throw his own party under the bus in order to enhance his own electoral chances.
Well, I ask you if you're saying it wouldn't go that far.
What's he doing?
He is throwing his own party under the bus in this specific instance of the uh terrorist detainee act or whatever the hell the name of it is.
Anyway, something to ponder, not to me that far out of the realm of possibility.
Back in a sec.
All right, just scratched the surface here today, folks.
We will um pick up right where we left off, and I promise we'll get your phone calls in here.
It is open line Friday, and that will happen.
Thanks for your patience in waiting.
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