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Sept. 25, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
September 25, 2006, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, have you heard this?
Have you heard who's going to do the coin toss tonight at the Superdome?
Monday Night Football, the New Orleans Saints reopening the Superdome against the Atlanta Falcons.
From what I have been told, they are letting the man who personally killed thousands of blacks and poor people by destroying blacks back into the city, into the Superdome, to do the coin toss before the football game tonight, President Bush.
Whoa, is that going to make him mad?
Folks, I think the implosion that I have been predicting in the Democratic Party happened yesterday.
It's been effervescing there, bubbling up underneath the surface for a long time.
And I think they just all came unhinged and unglued yesterday.
I've noted that the only prominent Democrat out there defending Clinton is another raving lunatic, Howard Dean, who I predict will be institutionalized shortly after this election in November for a sickness that he has had for oh, so long.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
Great to have you with us.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, three straight hours today.
The telephone number 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
Wow.
That interview with Bill Clinton yesterday.
Can you imagine how Paula Jones must have felt?
Kathleen Willey?
Purple Rage.
That is how George Stephanopoulos described Clinton's anger in his book when Clinton and Stephanopoulos were both in the White House.
Such an innocuous question, even though Chris Wallace did suggest that it was generated by viewers, people in email.
I think that's actually one of the things that set Clinton off, if indeed he was set off.
The idea that he was blindsided by this is a bit absurd.
He knew he was going on Fox, and he knows the ground rules are.
He's a former president.
Nothing's really off or out of bounds or off limits for these kinds of things.
I think, you know, rather than this being a meltdown, I think it was, I think Clinton's been waiting for this ever since he first heard that I supposedly helped write the path to 9-11.
I think he's been waiting to explode, and this was the question in public that he had been waiting for.
I think he's very proud of what he did yesterday.
I think Clinton thinks he hit a home run, even though no Democrats are out there defending him.
You've got to remember, Clinton's a pathological liar.
His only truth is what he says.
The truth that the real truth, reality is not his.
His reality is what his memory is, what he constructs it to be.
You can see very plainly how thinly created, how thin the foundation is of his legacy.
It all hinges on a mainstream media that covers for him and continues to promote the legacy.
But when it came to it yesterday, he could only cite Richard Clark as a factual asserter to make his case.
He couldn't cite the 9-11 Commission admitting that it was a political document, and we know why it was a political document.
The Democrats in that committee were there to hide the lapses of the Clinton administration.
I think what happened yesterday on Fox News Sunday, and I got the transcript to it Saturday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and I was just, in one way, I was stunned.
Such an apparent loss of control, such a horrible PR blunder and mistake by the people whose reputation for PR greatness is unsurpassed.
The timing of this could not be any worse.
But what we saw yesterday is that with Bill Clinton, it's all about him.
He doesn't really care about the impact on the Democratic Party, except maybe for Hillary, and certainly not this election cycle.
He's concerned about himself.
He's concerned about his legacy.
It also illustrates my point that I've been making this for years.
One of the reasons the Democrats smear people, and that's what Clinton did yesterday, he smeared neocons.
Here's a former president.
He may have used the term before, but I'm not aware that he has.
Neocons is something that the Kook Democrats, the liberal blogosphere fringe, some in the drive-by media use.
But we got the earthy Bill Clinton.
We've got what he really thinks about his political enemies and so forth.
He thinks everything's a vast right-wing conspiracy, and as does Hillary.
It seems to be one of the pages, one of the old pages in their playbook that they keep going to, sort of like this New York Times story yesterday about the national intelligence estimate that basically said what?
I mean, it's been mischaracterized as well.
They pull a couple of quotes from it, the New York Times, and try to portray that the whole estimate said what their small little analysis of it said, but it's really nothing new.
It's just opening the book, playbook, to an old page.
And in this case, Bush is creating the terrorists.
Well, that's really working, isn't it?
I'm dumbfounded here at how they're so predictable.
Everything that they do is going to like, I got a note from somebody today said, well, I think this is the equivalent of the New York Times story the week before the election in 2004 about all these newly found unexploded weapons and ammunition and so forth, which was an old story, at least a year and a half old story.
Tried to turn the election on that.
And I said, no, this is going to be its campaign season.
The intelligence community is going to keep leaking.
And I told Snerdley today, I said, you know, the problem with this is not what the Democrats are saying and doing with these leaks.
It's the fact that the leaks are happening.
If it is true that the intelligence community, CIA, DIA, wherever they are, if it's true that they are more interested in destroying a sitting president than they are doing their jobs, then we have a fundamental problem in the intelligence community.
The way the Democrats spin this is of really no concern to me because we've heard it all before.
Bush lied, people died.
Bush created terrorists.
There were no terrorists prior to 9-11, blah, blah, blah.
And yet we got Bill Clinton out there saying yesterday he was obsessed with bin Laden and the Republicans were mad at him for being obsessed with bin Laden.
And that's a lie.
Extensive research over the weekend can't find any example of any Republicans being anything other than supportive of Clinton with his missile strikes, with his warnings of Saddam Hussein.
More on that as the program unfolds.
But I tell you, for the last 50 years, the drive-by media gave no challenge to liberal Democrats.
Whatever they asserted, whatever they believed, whatever their policies were were fawningly promoted, for the most part, obviously exceptions to this.
During the same 50 years, conservatives opposing all of this were routinely challenged, questioned, laughed at, made fun of, impugned, and forced to defend their policies and in the process learned how to do so in a persuasive way.
What we saw yesterday is that Bill Clinton and the Democrats cannot handle tough questions, and that wasn't even a tough question.
As I say, the thing Clinton didn't like about it was that Chris Wallace cited, I'm getting emails from viewers, Mr. President.
And of course, Clinton as a liberal Democrat doesn't want to hear what people think.
He's trying to change their minds.
And I think that's part of what set him off.
But you remember at any time in the last five years, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, or any Republican acting the way Bill Clinton did on Fox News Sunday, losing it, intimidating the interviewer, getting in their space, pointing fingers, jabbing fingers at Chris Wallace's notes.
Wallace said, man, I felt like a mountain was falling down on me.
This is, you know, remember when Hillary debated Rick Lazio and Lazio walked over and presented her some papers.
You can't do that.
You can't invade her space.
That's that sexist that you're trying to intimidate the girl.
You can't do that.
Clinton yesterday couldn't wait to sit forward on that chair and jab his finger.
Very, very unusually long fingers, by the way, too.
I think I'm starting to understand why liberal women have a fascination with this guy, but nevertheless, jabbing that finger in an intimidating fashion, those eyes becoming on the verge of madness.
Chris Wallace held his ground out there, but can you imagine how Juanita Broderick felt?
The only thing Clinton didn't say when he left was, hey, Chris, better put some ice on that lip.
I understand when he walked out, he was still exploding, and this time at his staff.
Apparently, he thinks he got set up.
But you don't see Republicans respond this way to some of the most vile, mean-spirited, hard-hitting questions ever, and yet Clinton does because he's not used to it.
It's a big mistake to react this way, ladies and gentlemen, because all it's going to do is focus attention on what he said.
The biggest mistake they've made is acting upset about the movie, The Path to 9-11.
And Clinton can't help it because it's all about him.
It's not about the Democratic Party, and it's not about the future of the country or even the safety of the country.
It's about his legacy.
And he knows that he doesn't have anything major that happened in his administration in terms of war, foreign policy that's going to create such greatness in his legacy.
So he's got to rewrite history about how he was obsessed with bin Laden.
Anyway, we've got a lot to do.
We've got the audio sound bites.
We've got some other things.
A lot of research that I've done here to try to set all this straight.
He's going to regret having done this.
This is not the way they wanted to do this.
And keep a sharp eye because I still don't think a whole lot of Democrats, other than Dean, are out there defending it.
But in the spirit of bipartisanship, ladies and gentlemen, and in the spirit of reaching out to those on the other side of the aisle and demonstrating fairness and understanding, I think we should all admit before we get started with all this that we need to be kind.
President Clinton did protect us from those who threatened us greatly.
The Branch Navidians will be back.
Stay with us.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, brand new week.
Broadcast excellence from the EIB Southern Command, America's real anchor man.
Once again today, doing the job that so-called big media is supposed to do, but hasn't done for decades.
By the way, correction, it is not President Bush throwing out the, well, tossing the coin at the Super Bowl Super Dome tonight.
It is the father of the man who destroyed New Orleans and the levees and let poor people of color die.
George H.W. Bush, President 41, who will be throwing out, or tossing, throwing out the first pitch.
They're tossing the coin, whatever the hell.
I think, folks, if you look at Bill Clinton and if you look at him in a proper context, all of that that you saw yesterday is understandable.
And it's what many of us throughout the 90s were attempting to explain to people.
You've got a guy, I think, who's basically ashamed in his soul, in his heart, when he allows momentarily the reality of circumstances to creep in.
He's ashamed of what he did, but he can't lie.
He's not going to feel that.
So he's going to exercise that shame as fast as he can.
And he does that by lying to himself.
And he does so in a way that the uninitiated is somewhat persuasive.
For example, it's hard to describe just how ridiculous it is to say that Republicans accused him of being obsessed with bin Laden.
No such thing is true.
Newt Ginglich, Gingrich, sent out faxes to people saying, support the president on these missile strikes in Sudan and in Afghanistan.
We've got to come together fighting terror.
When the president in 98 warned us of Saddam, Republicans got on board the idea that they were out to.
It defies rational explanation and will require a professional, hopefully one who's treating or has treated Clinton, to explain this to us.
But for our purposes, it's just a flat-out lie.
He even says in his interview that he was accused of wagging the dog with these strikes, which shows he's extremely sensitive to the criticism he's gotten.
He is, I mean, he absorbs the criticism he has gotten and he files it away and it gnaws at him and it eats away at him.
And the only reason it does is because it's true.
If it were not true, he wouldn't have that big a problem.
But since he's obsessed with creating a legacy built on lies, he's got to control the lies.
He's got to control all this.
As to the wag the dog business, you know, there's a very simple response to that.
Mr. President, if you had not engaged in relations with a subordinate intern, Monica Lewinsky, while on the job in the Oval Office, would you not have been completely free to pursue bin Laden without claims of wag the dog?
I mean, the reason the wag the dog question comes up, Mr. President, is because of your behavior.
It's not invented out of thin air.
By the way, did you see, ladies and gentlemen, I have to, before I forget this, did you, on Saturday morning, I'm driving down to the golf course.
I have the radio on.
I got the top down, so it's a little hard to hear.
And I don't want to turn the radio up too loud because I don't want neighboring drivers even on a highway to think I'm running around with my boombox up to 800 decibels, pounding bass out there.
But I caught this little bit that somebody, the French or the Saudis or somebody saying that Osama bin Laden died a month ago of typhoid.
So I went on the golf course, told a couple guys about it.
There was some interest in it, a little panic in the eyes of some of the liberals on the golf course.
And I got back home and reading around about there.
There was abject panic out there that bin Laden might be dead.
There was panic on the Democrats.
Oh, no, don't tell us this.
After we're basing our entire argument that Bush has screwed up the war on terror by not getting bin Laden, don't tell us that.
And the Democrats' Day has been saved because apparently nobody can confirm it.
I think it's actually a wag the dog ploy to get that idiot to surface, like Zerkawi did, so we get a triangulation idea of where he is.
Let's start with the audio soundbites.
You'll forgive me for this, but Cookie, who put the sound bites together, is convinced that Clinton is obsessed with all this because of the path to 9-11 and because of this.
When the Democrats heard that I have an acquaintance with the writer of the movie, they went bat bloodles.
They just lost them to find out to think that I was involved with it.
And Cookie has given us a couple sound bites here to sort of illustrate her belief that that's the case.
First one, last night, NBC Nightly News weekend edition, a portion of the correspondent Mike Taibbee and his report.
It's been a debate that's picked up steam in recent weeks because of the fifth anniversary of 9-11.
And Clinton said, because of the ABC telemovie about 9-11 that used made-up scenes suggesting he let bin Laden get away.
It was a movie conservatives like Radio's Rush Limbaugh raved over.
It's got so much value, historical, dramatic value here.
Clinton's supporters are now Clinton himself, say he tried harder than anyone, including his successor, to get bin Laden.
There's a phrase that Clinton uses.
I remember after campaigning in 1992, tax cuts for the middle class gets into office within a month, says, I've worked harder on this than anything I've ever worked on in my life.
And I did, and they didn't tell me the truth about the problems of the budget out there.
And I'm sorry, I despite how hard I worked.
I cannot come through with that middle-class tax guy.
I just can't do it.
There's a phrase when he wags the finger, he's lying.
He wags the finger and he points it, I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, not a single time.
Not every non-deshaver, but never asked anybody to lie.
He's wagging that finger the whole time.
When he wags that finger at Chris Wallace, he's lying.
Lying through this whole thing yesterday.
This morning on Fox and Friends, David Rodham Gergen, interviewed at the Kennedy School of Government.
He's also editor-at-large of U.S. News and World Report.
Gretchen Carlson said, You say because you know Bill Clinton so well that you saw this in his personality all the time, but the viewers might have been stunned.
This president feels, as do many of the people around him, that they are being unfairly set up as the people who led us to 9-11.
Path to 9-11, as they felt on ABC, it was a wicked distortion of what the record was.
And because of the relationship of one of the major individuals in making that show, Path to 9-11, with Rush Limbaugh, they connected up in their minds that, you know, this is the right going after us.
I'm just amused I know I got under this skin.
I mean, Clinton, way back in, what was it, 93 that he was flying into St. Louis?
Interviewed by Camo X in St. Louis as he's flying Air Force One.
He's flying in to dedicate something at a train station there and just launched in an attack on me.
There's no truth detector, and people at Cam OX are not going to respond to any of the lies that I tell.
I know they're obsessed with me.
I know they got me on the brain.
I knew this thing.
Cookie's right.
Ever since it became known by me that I'm an acquaintance with the writer of the show, they probably think I helped write it.
Who knows what?
They probably think this has been a year-long conspiracy in the making.
But the reaction, once again, is not true.
I mean, their assertion isn't true.
It has nothing to do with the movie, but it's all about them.
We've got the Clinton soundbites mixed with others coming up, so sit tight, don't go away.
Yes, off to a rousing start, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
It's like the Wizard of Oz.
It is a great opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to finally peer behind the curtain and see the real side, the dark side of someone like Bill Clinton.
Quite a revealing little scene with Chris Wallace.
And among other things, It is a reminder why character matters most in a president.
Clinton's one of those people, we've all met them, turn most aggressive and enraged when what's being said about them is true.
It was fascinating to watch, no question about it, but there's nothing in it that surprised me.
I'm a Clintonologist and have been for many, many moons.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
Mike, it's going to be really hard for me to not shout stop after every five or six words here.
I'm going to try to be disciplined, but that's how often lies occur in this appearance.
Try to list this whole thing at once.
This first bite we have is a minute 14.
We may do a start and stop analysis of it thereafter.
Question: Wallace says, When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I've got to say I was surprised.
Most of them wanted to ask me, wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business when you were president?
I'm being asked this on the Fox Network.
Stop the tape.
I'm sorry, I can't help myself.
The first thing out of his mouth in response to this question is: I'm being asked about this on a Fox Network.
If this doesn't illustrate the Democrats know who their friends are and that there is a difference in the meeting, I know this is just an observation, folks, and you all know it, but so do they is the point.
And that's what makes this outrageous.
Clinton knows he gets soft coverage, he knows he gets fawning coverage.
So many female reporters, oh, please, why not me, Mr. Clinton, instead of Barbara Streiser?
Why not me in the White House?
And Clinton said, You've seen her, boob.
She showed up my thing without a bra.
You're asking me why you're not there.
Get a clue.
Here's the rest of the bite.
ABC just had a right-wing conservative running their little pathway to 9-11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9-11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9-11 Commission report.
And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say I didn't do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden.
All right, all right.
All right, stop, stop, stop the tape.
Let's share with you some research here.
Is all of the conservative Republicans who now say I didn't do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden?
Well, let's have, let's see, the next line, too.
President Bush's neocons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden.
They had all right.
Exhaustive research indicates, folks, that there was nothing but total Republican support for getting bin Laden.
The people did a thorough Nexus Lexus search over the weekend.
A thorough Nexus Lexis search identified absolutely no instances of high-ranking Republicans ever suggesting that Clinton was obsessed with bin Laden or that he did too much to apprehend him prior to the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000.
Quite the contrary, Republicans were typically highly supportive of Clinton's efforts in this regard.
As a little background here from the AmericanThinker.com, prior to the August 98 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, there is hardly any mention of bin Laden by Clinton in American news transcripts.
Prior to 1998, even though bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996, after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Clinton didn't even, maybe a couple sentences in his Saturday radio address, which followed the bombing on February 26th of 93.
He didn't want to deal with it.
He told New York it's a local law enforcement issue.
You people handle it.
Wanted nothing to do with it.
No mention, hardly any mention of bin Laden by President Clinton in American news transcripts.
And for the most part, the first real discussion of bin Laden by Clinton or by any U.S. politicians, for that matter, began after the embassy bombings in 1998 and escalated after the American retaliation in Afghanistan a few weeks later.
Now, at this time, Clinton was, of course, knee-deep in the Lewinsky scandal, and it was so much so that the press was a buzz.
The press was a buzz with the possibility that Clinton had performed these attacks to distract the American people from his own extracurricular activities, much as in the movie Wag the Dog.
But that begs the question, why did this possibility even get raised?
It's because of Clinton's own behavior with Monica Lewinsky.
It wasn't made up.
It wasn't made up by a right-wing conspiracy, and it wasn't made up by a bunch of enemies out to get him.
It was a direct offshoot and result of his behavior.
Were there high-ranking Republicans that piled on this assertion that it was a wag the dog thing?
Really not.
As the AP reported on the day of the attacks in August of August 18th of 1998, Newt Gingrich said the following on August the 20th.
Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing.
We can't allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing.
And I think we have to recognize that we're now committed to engaging this organization and breaking it apart and doing whatever we have to suppress it.
Talking about al-Qaeda, because we can't afford to have people who think they can kill Americans without any consequence.
So what Clinton did was the right thing to do.
There was Republican support for this, as I have drummed into people's heads constantly.
And yet Clinton is out there convinced that Republicans were angry at him because he was obsessed with bin Laden.
Gingrich wasn't the only one, CNN's Kennedy Crowley.
August 21st, 1998, the day after the cruise missiles were sent to Afghanistan, said this, with lawmakers scattered to the four winds on August vacation, congressional offices revved up the faxes from Trent Lott, Senate Majority Leader.
Quote, despite the current controversy, this Congress will vigorously support the president in full defense of America's interests throughout the world.
Candy Crowley continued, the United States political leadership always has and always will stand united in the face of international terrorism.
Those are the words of Jesse Helms.
Well, we know that's not the case anymore.
The United States political leadership does not stand united in the face of international terrorism today under President Bush's watch.
The Atlanta Journal Constipation, same day, our nation has taken action against very deadly terrorists opposed to the most basic principles of American freedom, said Senator Paul Coverdell, Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
This action should serve as a reminder that no one's beyond the reach of American justice.
Former Vice President Quayle, CNN, August 23rd of 98.
I don't have a problem with the timing of these missile attacks.
You need to focus on the act itself.
It was a correct act.
Bill Clinton took, made a decisive decision to hit these terrorist camps.
It's probably long overdue.
Were there some Republican detractors?
Yeah, chief among them was Senator Dan Coates of Indiana.
I think we fear that we may have a president desperately seeking to hold on to his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.
Arlen Specter questioned the timing at first.
However, other Republicans pleaded with dissenters on their side of the aisle to get on board the operation, chief amongst them Gingrich himself.
As reported by the Atlanta paper, Gingrich felt the wag the dog comparisons were sick.
Quote, anybody who saw the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, anyone who saw the coffins come home, would not ask such a question, said Gingrich, referring to the 12 Americans killed in the embassy bombings.
In fact, Boston Globe August 23rd, 98, Gingrich did everything within his power to head off Republican criticism of these attacks.
Indeed, Gingrich even saw to it that one of his political associates, Rich Galen, sent a blast fax to conservative radio hosts, urging them to lay off the president on the missile strikes and making sure they knew of Gingrich's strong support.
And even in the end, both Specter and Coates got on board the operation after reviewing the intelligence information collected on bin Laden.
Specter said, I think the president acted properly.
As for neocons, one so-called high-ranking member, Richard Pearl, wrote the following in an August 23rd, 1998 op-ed published in the Sunday Times.
For the first time since taking office in 93, the Clinton administration has responded with some measure of seriousness to an act of terror against the United States.
This has undoubtedly come as a surprise to bin Laden, the Saudi terrorists believed to have been behind the bombings.
So Thursday's bombing is a small step in the right direction.
More important, it reverses, at least for now, a weak and ineffective Clinton policy that has emboldened terrorists and confirmed that facilitating terror is without cost to the United States.
Go back to the topic cut three, Mike.
Recue the thing.
Now that you've heard all of the evidence of how the Republicans, the neocons, supported this, urged all of their supporters to get behind it on the basis that the country comes together in times of war, in times of attacks on American citizens internationally.
Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday claimed that Republicans were obsessed with his obsession with bin Laden, claimed that he was obsessed with bin Laden.
We're being critical.
Here from the top the whole bite now.
I'm being asked this on the Fox Network.
ABC just had a right-wing conservative running their little pathway to 9-11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9-11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9-11 Commission report.
And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say I didn't do enough claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden.
All of President Bush's neocons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden.
They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left the Lord.
Stop, stop, stop the tape.
Well, how many times did Clinton meet with his CIA?
What's Jim Woolsey said?
Had one meeting in eight years, one personal meeting in the Oval Office with his CIA director, with Jim Woolsey.
And after that, very few meetings with Tenet.
You know, it's absurd, too, to compare what he didn't do in eight years to what the Bush administration did or didn't do in eight months.
He also is lying about turning over a terrorist program.
He quotes Richard Clark.
If you read Richard Clark's book, Richard Clark's book does not back up a lot of what Clinton asserted.
All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much.
Same people.
They were all.
Stop the tape.
Folks, it's just pathological.
You know, it is just pathological.
The guy has told himself this lie that he believes to be the truth.
Pathological liar.
Tells lies to himself to believe them.
And he firmly believes this.
Make no mistake.
In his mind, he's not lying.
He's telling me absolutely, he really believes that all these neocons are out there saying he was too focused on bin Laden.
Trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk Down.
What?
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Trying to get him to withdraw from Somalia?
And after the Republicans tried to force him out of Somalia, Blackhawk Down episode hacking happened the next day.
Refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.
Okay, now let's look at all the criticisms.
Blackhawk down, Somalia.
There is not a living soul in the world who thought Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Blackhawk Down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al-Qaeda was a going concern in October 93.
Not the point, but they did in 95 when they intercepted all these plans to blow up airplanes from the Pacific Rim to the west coast of California and the United States over the Pacific Ocean.
And besides, this is not the point that nobody heard of bin Laden.
Nobody knew of al-Qaeda.
Mr. President, the American people who watched ABC one night saw an interview with bin Laden in 95 or 96 in which he said that he was ginned up and encouraged by our reaction to the situation on the ground in Somalia.
So even if nobody knew about it in 93 or 94, whatever it happened, we all heard about it in 95.
There's simply no excuse here.
To try to say that nobody knew about bin Laden, nobody heard about this.
Nobody's making that claim.
This is not presidential.
Bin Laden himself said during your presidency, sir, nobody's making this up.
Right-wingers and Neil Khan said, not making up the fact that bin Laden drew conclusions from our exit in Somalia.
Bin Laden said it.
Now, you can try to rewrite history and reconstruct it, but it's a mistake bringing all this up because there's a new media out there, sir.
And it's not going to go well for you.
Back here in just a second.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbos, serving humanity, executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
All right, let's move on to the Richard Clark aspect of all this.
Richard Clark seems to be the single source authority for Bill Clinton's version of his unwavering and tireless efforts to get Osama bin Laden and to fight terrorism in general efforts that caused criticism, he says, from Republicans that he was obsessed.
We've blown that one out of the water.
Here is Wallace's question.
A 9-11 Commission, this is what they did say, not what ABC pretended they said.
They said about you and President Bush, and I, quote, U.S. government took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first, second, or even third rank.
Do you think Richard Clark has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?
He worked for Ronald Reagan.
He was loyal to him.
He worked for George H.W. Bush.
He was loyal to him.
He worked for me, and he was loyal to me.
He worked for President Bush.
He was loyal to him.
They downgraded him and the terrorist operation.
Read his book and read his factual assertions.
Not opinions, assertions.
He said we took vigorous action after the African embassies.
We probably nearly got bin Laden.
The CI was run by George Tennant that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to.
He said he did a good job setting up all these counterterrorism things.
The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until 1940.
Well, we're getting close here to Clinton and the famous.
What do you mean, the Buck stops here?
The Buck never got here.
I mean, look at Janet Reno.
That Waco thing was her deal.
A classic with Bill Clinton.
Buck never got here.
So George Tennant did this and wouldn't do that.
I authorized all this.
But, I mean, those guys wouldn't go get him.
What am I supposed to do?
They didn't have the guts to do it.
And I'm sitting there and I'm saying, well, did everything I can.
Tried hard.
At least I tried.
Maybe I failed, but they didn't even try.
Here's an account from Richard Clark's book.
You interpret this for yourself.
Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had always been heavily criticized for bombing al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan for engaging in wag-the-dog tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life.
For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the U.S.
He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing.
Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they didn't want to conduct.
He had tried that in Somalia.
Military had made mistakes and blamed him.
In the absence of a bigger provocation from Al-Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he couldn't do anymore.
Now, this 1996, he was really popular even during the Lewinsky business.
And the so-called pro-Clinton Richard Clark here even makes the claim here that Clinton was unwilling to use whatever powers he had as president to go after this because of limitations he himself imposed on his own past.
That's why character in a president matters, folks.
A little Michael Jackson music here for our Bill Clinton expose, Billie Jean.
All right, your phone calls.
We are going to get to them.
If you're on hold, be patient and stay there.
Lots more straight ahead.
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