All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 5, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
December 5, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yeah, and hi, folks.
Welcome back.
Told you we'd be here, and we are here at Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network from the prestigious and distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And I told you we'd be revved up, and we are revved up.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882 and the email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
I've been getting emails today about the congressional hearing, the Senate hearing today, confirmation hearing of Robert Gates to be the new defense secretary over there at the Pentagon.
People said, have you seen the looks on some of these senators' faces?
Not really.
The only face I really look at is my own.
It takes a while for me to focus attention on other people.
But I've been focusing on the answers and the questions.
And we're putting together the audio soundbites from this as we speak.
Don't have them yet ready to go.
But the big news out of the hearing today is that Carl Levin asked Dr. Gates if he thinks that we are currently winning in Iraq.
And Gates said, no, sir.
And Levin, or Levin, I mean, it was like an orgasm.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, Dr. Gates.
Your acknowledgement that we're not winning in Iraq, frankly, is a necessary, refreshing breath of reality that is so needed if we're going to look at the ways of changing course in Iraq to maximize the chances of success, which is a strange thing for Carl Levin to say because success, the way the Democrats define it, equals defeat.
So we will have these soundbites.
A number of people also literally foaming at the mouth over the statements made by Senator John Warner of Virginia.
He said it yesterday, and I think I'm waiting on the soundbites, but I think he said it also today during the confirmation hearings of Robert Gates.
Essentially, what Warner said is that he wants Democrats now in the war debate.
He said he's going to call on President Bush to solicit privately the opinions of Democrats before forging a new strategy on Iraq.
Said this in his opening statement today to Gates.
And I see what happened here.
A copy of his prepared remarks were obtained late Monday by the Associated Press.
Well, I wonder how did that happen?
How did the AP get hold of his prepared remarks?
Gee, these mysteries in Washington, how the press gets hold.
You know, these people must be really doing their jobs out there.
They must have their finger to the pulse and their nose to the grindstone or whatever.
Must be digging under every rock to get this stuff.
Or, oh, wait, could it be that the senator's office just sent them a copy?
Obviously, that is what happened.
Here is what...
Do you have the sound bites in there yet, Mike?
Have they been delivered to you?
Was that yes or no?
Okay, after the president has had the opportunity to review these important reports, said Senator Warner, I respectfully recommend that he privately consult with the bipartisan leadership of the new Congress before making his final decisions.
Later on, he said, to me, this fulfills the moral obligation that our government has to the brave men and women of the armed forces and their families who have sacrificed so very, very much in this fight for freedom.
Now, some of you, I think, are making a mistake here if you assume that Warner and other Senate Republicans who agree with him on this are eager to cede power to the Democrats and let them run everything, including the war, because they won the election.
I don't think that's what's going on here.
I think this is a pretty crafty move, actually.
It's going to depend on the president doing it for it to fulfill my theory on this.
But I think they're trying to get the Democrats to have some ownership of this.
Because we're not pulling out anytime soon.
We're not going to pull out of there in two years or three years.
I don't care what anybody says.
And whether we admit we're losing or not, that may make the Democrats happy.
But look, they did win the election.
They need ownership of this now.
They don't get a free pass.
They don't get to act like spectators on the sidelines without power as they did during the campaign and simply throwing stones and rocks.
They've got to be brought in the process.
They have now got to be utilized in a way that gives them responsibility and accountability for what happens.
And I think this is what Warner is up to.
Because otherwise, you have to believe that Warner is an absolute idiot.
Because we already know what the Democrats want.
They want out.
You know, to say for the president that needs to come up or invite these people to come up to the White House and listen to what they want.
He really doesn't need to do that.
He knows what the Democrats want.
He himself said it during the campaign.
They have done everything possible to undermine victory in this war.
They've done everything possible to denecrate presidential authority.
Their buddies in the drive-by media have leaked secrets, have waged war on the war.
And so Bush is supposed to bring these guys up there for their ideas.
He knows what their ideas are, and so does Warner.
So the idea here is to get them in the loop here in the sense that they have some accountability.
In other words, the fate of the war in Iraq the next two years cannot simply be on the shoulders of Republicans anymore.
Democrats won the House.
Democrats won the Senate.
Warner is saying, hey, you know, look, these guys won the election.
The president owes it to the troops and their families to talk to these people.
Bring them up there.
I don't care what they say.
The president doesn't have to do what they say.
He can do, well, I don't know what he'll do.
He can implement all their ideas.
Who cares?
Who knows?
It's tough, but the bottom line here is that they must be made to have some accountability.
Whether it succeeds or fails, they've got to be in this.
And I really think that's what Warner is doing.
We'll see if the president accepts his ideas.
Also, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite leaders said after meeting President Bush on Monday that civil war could only be staved off if U.S. forces struck harder against Sunni-led insurgents.
No Shiite, surely.
It's about time somebody is...
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Gotcha.
We're talking here about Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the biggest party in Iraq's government.
He met Bush in Washington yesterday.
Hakeem denied that majority Shiites were stoking sectarian violence, put the onus on Washington to take tougher action against the insurgents.
The strikes they're getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts, said Aziz al-Hakim.
Eliminating the danger of civil war in Iraq could only be achieved through directing decisive strikes against the Baathists, the Saddamists, and the terrorists and the other Islamists in Iraq.
Otherwise, we'll continue to witness massacres, he said in a speech after meeting Bush.
Bush, for his part, told Abdul Aziz al-Hakim that, hey, you guys aren't doing enough.
It's time to pull your weight.
You guys aren't doing nearly enough here to get your acting gear, and we're watching, and we're going to be paying attention.
But it seems to me that there's a consensus developing here that we need more troops, that we need more firepower, that we need more strength.
And this is what Abdulaziz al-Hakim was suggesting.
McCain did the same today during his turn during the Gates confirmation hearings.
And Lindsey Graham, whose, I think, sole purpose in life is to impress Senator McCain, was asking some very, very simple-minded, why are we in Iraq?
Why is Al-Qaeda in Iraq?
If we leave Iraq, will Al-Qaeda follow us home and so forth.
Lindsey Graham was trying to set Gates up with easy-to-answer questions.
There was one thing, I actually found this sort of pathetic.
Well, Mr. Snerdly is saying we don't have a moral obligation to listen to the Shiites, to Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim.
Oh, the only moral obligation we have is to listen to the Democrats.
Well, you know, bring them all in, Snerdley.
I mean, I'm bring them all in here.
Make everybody accountable for this thing.
Get everybody's thoughts on the table.
Take a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B, a little bit in column C. Come up with this giant omelette of a strategy so that everybody can get blamed when it goes to hell or that everybody can take credit when it works.
But the idea of Democrat ownership, they've got some accountability.
They must be made to have some accountability.
They just don't get to sit on the sidelines with it.
Anyway, I was going to say that the thing that I found pathetic was Senator Byrd.
His age is showing.
It has been for a while.
I don't think he raised his head during the questioning.
He was reading the questions from his pieces of paper in front of him.
I'm not sure if we have Senator Bird.
If we don't, we can get him.
I know that, looking at the roster here, Senator Byrd is...
Yep, yep, yep, we've got some of it.
So we'll take a quick time out here.
I'll assemble the sound bites as I've got them.
By the way, the Board of Health in New York has voted to make New York the first city in the nation to ban artificial trans fats and restaurant food.
That's hydrogenated shortening and other products, the hard stuff.
That's really, that's bad.
I mean, that'll kill you in like 40 years.
This stuff, I mean, you don't have a prayer.
You start eating this stuff or stuff fried to 40 years and you're going to come out with some sort of cholesterol problem.
Also, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, thinking of copying London and raising or establishing prices to drive below 60th Street in Manhattan.
There's a price, it costs $16 a day now if you want to do that in London, whatever their equivalent of the most congested parts of London are.
And this is, you know, Americans, even in New York, I mean, where mass transit's the primary means of transportation, plus taxicabs, Americans just resist this kind of thing.
They like their sprawl.
They like their cars.
And so there's just too many of them in New York.
And so we're going to tax people for driving one element of the great American dream into certain parts of Manhattan if he gets his way, which, I mean, in New York City want to raise taxes.
Who's going to stop you?
We're still editing these sound bites so that they sound the way we want them to sound.
Wait till they get a load of that in the blogosphere.
Kidding!
Laugh, liberals!
Have a little humor in your lives.
This show would be good for you on that basis.
To the phones we go, we'll start at West Palm Beach.
Share across the bridge.
This is Chris, and welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, thanks for having me here.
Hey, it amazes me.
I don't think George Washington wanted war with the British as badly as you want war with Iran.
And this troubles me that you have somehow got the American people to believe that if we didn't attack Iraq and if we don't go into Iran, somehow Al-Qaeda is going to come over here and conquer Washington, D.C.
Now, I don't understand how they could get over here if we sealed our borders.
And I don't know if there's an al-Qaeda Navy out there that I don't know about.
You've got to be kidding.
You can't be serious about this.
You can't be serious.
Are you serious?
You honestly got to believe Ban.
Chris, what was 9-11?
Well, I was afraid of the secret.
How do you seal a border 35,000 feet on the script?
Yeah, I'd like to know why those five Israeli Mossad agents were found cheering outside the World Trade Committee.
Oh, come on.
Why is it that when I'm in the cooperation?
Startly, could you find me one liberal who's not a kook?
Oh, come on.
I'm not a kook.
I just want questions answered.
Really?
You're not a kook.
The Mossad got every Jew out of the World Trade Center before it blew up.
Oh, I don't believe that.
I don't believe that.
Well, what did you just say?
I don't believe that.
But I just can't believe that you honestly believe that if we don't attack Iran, that we're all going to be speaking Arabic in 10 years.
I just.
I didn't say that.
I don't know why you're not.
Here's the difference.
I think I got a pretty good understanding of the enemy.
And you don't.
No, I do.
No, you don't.
If you did, you'd agree with me.
If you had a proper understanding of who the enemy is, I listen to what Ahmed Dinejad says.
I have studied his religion.
I've studied his role and what he thinks and his role in world history is, and it's not pretty.
I also know that the focus of evil in Iraq in terms of keeping these skirmishes going is Iran.
If you're going to go take Baghdad, you've got to take the place that's supplying Baghdad as well.
I'm not saying nuke the place, anything of the sort.
And I'm saying to go to war.
You're misstating everything I'm saying.
I'm simply trying to let people know that we have declared a problem.
War has been declared against us.
There are some Americans that don't want to take that seriously because it's too discomforting and too upsetting.
I take it seriously.
Did you decide to war against us again?
What?
Who declared war against us?
Iran declared war against us?
Al-Qaeda.
Oh, Al-Qaeda did.
Yeah.
Okay.
And if we don't attack Iran, that means Al-Qaeda will conquer Washington, D.C. is what you're saying.
Well, no, the United States is a great nation at risk in a dangerous world.
Iran has also proclaimed their desire to destroy Israel, which is one of our allies.
You know, I'm just, you're making this much more complicated.
It is.
The enemy is telling us who they are, and the enemy is complicated.
Wait a minute.
I believe Iran causing the skirmishes.
I think Israel's occupation of the West Bank in Gaza is what's instigating all these skirmishes over there.
Now, I don't know if you're...
All right, let's take that as a hypothetical.
Let's say somehow that we do what Ahmadinejad claims needs to be morally done, that we just close Israel, and we take everybody that lives there and we move them back someplace in Western Europe.
You think that's the end of it?
You think that the militant Islamists around the world are going to become our buddies after we do this?
Honest to God, yeah, I do.
You know, you're dangerous.
I hope you never get elected to any leadership position.
I could never get elected, so don't worry about it.
Too many people believe in this.
I'm telling you, you're illustrating that you don't understand who the enemy is.
It is militant Islam, be it al-Qaeda, be it Iran, be it Syria.
It's not that hard to identify.
I'm not talking a Michael Vick t-shirt like we have in America.
These guys don't care about McDonald's.
They don't want Western culture in their neighborhood.
They want to preserve their culture.
They're not going to sell out like we did, Rush.
Wait a minute.
Who are you talking about?
People wearing t-shirts.
Well, that's all this is about.
I mean, is that what America is now?
I mean, what exactly are we fighting for over there?
Are we fighting for abortion rights?
Are we fighting for gay marriage?
Are we fighting for the economy?
You've got to afford iPods.
I mean, what exactly are we trying to do?
You've got to be kidding me.
I don't understand.
Okay, look, he's filibustering.
Take him down.
I'll tell you what we're fighting for.
We're fighting for this country.
We were attacked on 9-11.
These people have killed innocent Americans and others for 30 years.
They are attacking in Great Britain.
They are attacking in Spain.
You got your head in the sand, and you don't want to see it.
You're throwing all this gobbledygook, touchy-feely liberal symbolism at me, and it doesn't compute.
You just refuse to see what's going on, and that's the sole difference between us.
I don't know why.
I just gather you assume that it's too upsetting and disquieting for you to look at this and understand exactly what we face.
Either that or you have some general principle that war never solves anything.
You're anti-war or what have you.
And you want to reduce all of this to ridiculous slogans like Michael Vick t-shirts or whatever the hell.
I don't even understand what you're talking about.
But the bottom line is, when we're dealing with an enemy that has killed 3,000 innocent Americans in cold blood on a September morning in 2001, has sworn to keep doing it, has threatened us over and over again, is attacking Western democracies as often as they can get away with it in Great Britain and Spain and all over the world when they are moving back into Somalia now.
They are spreading worldwide.
We have problems in this country that have to be dealt with if we just can't sit by and allow this to go unchecked or we will be targeted again.
It's all about freedom and security and safety of the American people.
And there are people that have to unfortunately take all of this seriously while you are able to wallow out there in your sloganeering and in your liberalism and in your highbrow, I'm smarter and better and more compassionate than everybody else.
I mean, it's folly and ridiculous for you to sit here and say that what are we fighting over there for?
Gay rights, homosexual marriage or whatever.
You're asking that.
If anything, we're fighting for that here.
We're fighting for the freedom for all of those perversions to take place here, as well as everything else that goes on in this country that people want to be free to attempt to succeed in making legal via the democratic process.
Until you people have the guts to actually see the enemy for who it is, and they're telling us day in and day out what they intend.
Until you see that, we're going to continue to have the partisan divide in this country.
You are a risk.
Righto, folks, right between the eyes, El Rushbo having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Let me try to put this call from Chris in West Palm Beach, Florida, in some sort of context for you.
You heard the call.
You heard the total disconnect.
There was, I mean, he may as well be living in a different country.
May as well have just arrived from Mars.
Liberals are different, folks.
They're socialists, perhaps even some of them further left than that.
But they're not fighting for the same things that the rest of us are.
And until we understand that and start to fight them appropriately in a political sense, then we will lose to them.
They are not to be persuaded to join us.
They are not to have made their minds right.
They are to be defeated politically, consistently, so that they don't gain the reins of power to implement this disjointed view of their own country and the world that is inexplicable.
It is simply inexplicable, incomprehensible.
Now, as to this business of, you heard him say that Israel is the problem.
There's a root there, understanding about liberals.
Liberalism is a hotbed of anti-Semitism today, not just in this country, but around the world, particularly in Western Europe.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise.
The United Nations is now the main repository for anti-Semitism in the world today.
It is sanctioned.
It is applauded there.
And that is what enables liberals to say that Israel is the problem.
If we just get out of Israel, stop defending Israel.
And you heard him say it, why, Al-Qaeda will love us.
The military Islamists will love us and they'll leave us alone.
Well, if Israel is the problem, why do the Islamo-fascists attack the Hindus in India?
And why do the Islamo-fascists attack the Sheikhs in Kashmir?
Is it Israel that causes them to attack and attempt to reconquer Somalia?
Is it Israel that causes them to attack in the Philippines or in Russia?
Is it Israel that forced al-Qaeda to attack Britain and Spain and Bali?
You know, this is a bunch of conventional wisdom out there, one of these myths that has been allowed to percolate.
And, you know, they would love it if we would abandon Israel.
It's not going to stop them.
They just say, okay, another notch in the belt.
Now we keep going.
There's no appeasing these people.
But liberals think they're smarter than everybody else.
We just sit down and talk to these people, let them know that we intend them no harm.
And that's why they love military defeats.
In fact, Jeff Greenfield, let me play this for you.
Grab audio soundbite.
Let me look at the roster here.
It's audio soundbite number seven.
This is last night in the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.
He's talking to Jeff Greenfield, and he says to Greenfield, when it comes to the war in Iraq, our senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is complicating the, or contemplating the L-word, losing.
Could the U.S. lose in Iraq?
And what would a loss mean?
What about what happened in Vietnam in 1975 after the U.S. pulled out and the Communist North conquered the South?
Or when the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, lost power to the Ayatollah Khomeini.
And when U.S. hostages were held in Iran for more than a year without any effective response.
In one view, such setbacks encouraged America's adversaries to be more bold in their assaults.
But over time, another picture emerges.
Less than 20 years after the fall of Vietnam, the Soviet Union literally ceased to exist.
As for Iraq, the turmoil there almost surely means that the ambitious goals of the invasion, a stable, functioning democracy, are beyond reach.
But if the United States chooses to engage and chooses as well to talk with nations in the region like Iran and Syria, that course will likely trigger a profound debate, perhaps even reaching into the next presidential campaign.
Can I translate this for you?
What Greensfield's saying is basically a loss would be a good thing because it would lead to diplomacy.
It would lead to more diplomacy.
It would force us to use diplomacy.
We get a greater and greater recognition that military actions just don't do the job.
Why, we defeated the Soviets without any military action, but we used the military in Vietnam.
We get creamed.
And when we tried a military response against Iran as cheap as it was with Jimmy Carter after the hostages were saying, well, that didn't work.
And now it's not working in Iraq.
So the whole point here is that military incursions cause defeat and humiliation.
We need talking.
We need consensus.
We need dialogue.
And that's the translation.
That's how you translate this.
So the effort here is to ensure, as I've said over and over again, somehow convince people this is a profound defeat, a humiliating defeat, because military action is not the answer, make it more and more difficult to ever use military action down the road because it makes liberals nervous.
They're not happy.
They're not happy anyway, but they're not comfortable when military action is being used.
I know Greenfield has a limited amount of time on these commentaries that he does on CNN, but some of this stuff has to go commented on.
What would a loss mean?
What about what happened in Vietnam in 1975 after the U.S. pulled out and the Communist North conquered the South?
Hey, Jeff, led to Pol Pot.
It led to a genocide in Cambodia.
It led to horrible things for all those people over there.
The way we pulled out, the way we cut and run, was devastating for that region.
The Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, lost power to the Ayatollah.
And when the U.S. hostages were held in Iran for more than a year without any effective response, in one view, such setbacks encouraged Americans' adversaries to be more bold in their assault.
No question about it.
But let's not focus on that.
No, no, let's move on.
But over time, another picture emerges.
Less than 20 years after the fall of Vietnam, the Soviet Union literally ceased to exist.
Jeff, it was the ultimate threat of military action.
Ronald Reagan's strategic defense initiative.
The Soviets knew they couldn't keep up.
They knew we could build it if we set our mind to it.
They knew that it rendered their primary assault weapon, the intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile, irrelevant.
They couldn't take the chance.
They were imploding of their own immorality.
They were a third world country with a first-rate military.
They could not sustain themselves on that basis.
We were the good guys.
They just didn't happen to go away on their own.
There were reasons that it happened.
Were it not for Ronald Reagan, the Cold War would still be alive and well today because people like Greenfield and others would be appeasing whatever Soviet leader was alive today.
And we have more and more arms limitation talks.
And we'd have Laura Dern on the still existing Phil Donahue show talking about how difficult it is for the children of Hollywood stars, when she's now 40, to wake up every day and face the awful nuclear threat out there and how people don't understand how difficult it is to go act with a nuclear threat hanging over your head.
Had the process of appeasement, and that's what we're getting now.
We want to appease Al-Qaeda.
We want to appease Iran.
We want to appease the United Nations.
We want to appease every one of our enemies by basically agreeing with them that all of this is our fault.
And it's our military's fault.
And it's our rampant use of the military.
And it's our superpower status thinking we own the world and we're out there.
We're going to make you do what we want you to do or you're going to die attitude that these people think is causing all the problem.
They refuse to see the enemy as it is.
They just, for some reason, can't deal with it.
Now, as for Iranian threats.
Boy, Rush, you sound like a warmonger.
You can't wait to go into Iran.
I hate war.
I don't know anybody other than Marlon Brando, an apocalypse now, who liked war.
Patton loved war.
Well, but Patton, Patton, Patton wanted to go under Russia.
They wouldn't let him do it.
Eisenhower and the boys wouldn't let him, because Eisenhower was tired, wanted to go back home, get elected president, play golf.
Join Augusta National.
Patton wanted to go into Russia because he saw what was going to happen.
Oh, can't do that.
Well, big United States, we don't have the time.
We don't have the money.
Patton didn't want to go to Russia because he loved war, and he didn't want to go to Germany because he loved war.
It's because he knew what those Hun bastards, quote unquote, were head up their sleeve if they weren't stopped.
Now, it's the same thing here with Iran.
Nobody wants to go to war with Iran just to go to war.
The generals don't like it.
Hardly anybody, the people that trained for it, I mean, they get into it and so forth, but the idea of having war for war's sake, you know, this is another one of these things that the left attempts to paste every conservative or every non-liberal with, and it just isn't true.
It's simply recognizing a threat.
We have to sit around and wait till we're attacked to deal with this.
Hell, that's not even enough anymore.
We have been attacked.
3,000 Americans dead, 9-11.
And now, five years later, we are debating whether or not we need to defend ourselves.
I mean, it's absurd.
It's frightening that so many lazy, linguini-spined Americans don't get it.
It's also dangerous.
Here's some fast facts for you from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
It's a backgrounder on Iranian threats, and it starts back here on, well, the date here is November 10th, 2005.
It's about a year ago, but threats are recent.
October 26, 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the World Without Zionism conference in Tehran.
In widely reported remarks, he called for Israel to be wiped off the map, expressed the goal of witnessing a world without America.
His statements were universally condemned by world leaders.
But what we do?
You know, we condemn this and condemn that.
It's just a bunch of words.
Ahmadinejad's statements are not new.
Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, Iranian leaders have repeatedly made clear their official policy calls for the destruction of Israel, the United States, and the Western world.
And you can't ignore Mahmoud and the 12th Imam belief in his religion.
This letter that he recently wrote to noble Americans.
It was not an outreach.
It was a warning.
And he was simply following a tenet of his religion.
That letter had to be sent as a warning to the infidels.
That's just no different than you go to church and they have the prayer at a certain time.
You've got to do the prayer.
You've got to say the prayer.
You recite the prayer as written or do your own.
This was not some off-the-cuff thing.
There's a timeline this wacko believes that he is fundamentally involved in making happen.
And you have to take this stuff seriously.
Some people have to take it seriously.
Others have the freedom not to.
But there are countless documented records, videos of Mahmoud speaking in his own country or around the world.
Here's another one.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Yahya Safavi on Iranian TV.
This is November 17th of this year, just last month.
The Americans have many weaknesses.
We have planned our strategy precisely on the basis of their strengths and weaknesses.
U.S. forces in Iraq are very cowardly.
We never reveal all our cards to the enemy.
They are calling us the enemy.
This guy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander, Yahya Safavi, refers to the United States, us, as the enemy.
In an interview on Iran's Channel 2 that aired on November 12th, 2006, General Yahya Rahim Safavi stated that Iran had based its strategy on the U.S. military's strengths and weaknesses.
He discussed the capabilities of the Shahab missiles and the weaknesses and cowardice of the U.S. military, claiming, among other things, that the Iranian military could disrupt enemy satellite systems.
So, I mean, they're saying these things.
Now, some people want to listen to it, want to ignore it, or just think it's the rantings of a bunch of lunatics.
What do you do?
Do you wait till they actually attack us?
Some people think they are attacking us by proxy in Iraq.
And frankly, that might be a good way to refer to all this.
The Iranians and the Syrians are fighting us by proxy in Iraq.
And to think that we're not already in some side of conflict with Iran is perhaps to be blind.
Back in just a second.
All right, we're back.
Let's go to audio soundbite number three.
This is Mr. Gates today, Bob Gates, in his opening statement during his Senate confirmation hearings to be Secretary of Defense.
Well, I am open to alternative ideas about our future strategy and tactics in Iraq.
I feel quite strongly about one point.
Developments in Iraq over the next year or two will, I believe, shape the entire Middle East and greatly influence global geopolitics for many years to come.
Good, so let's look.
Our course over the next year or two will determine whether the American and Iraqi people and the next president of the United States will face a slowly but steadily improving situation in Iraq and in the region, or will face the very real risk and possible reality of a regional conflagration.
All right, so what he's saying is he's open to new ideas.
But hey, Iraq is the key to the Middle East.
It's the key.
Meaning, we can't get out of there.
Didn't say that.
Next question from Carl Levin.
This is the one that got everybody all stoked up earlier today.
Mr. Gates, do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?
No, sir.
Thank you, Dr. Gates.
Your acknowledgement that we're not winning in Iraq, frankly, is a necessary, refreshing breath of reality that is so needed if we're going to look at ways of changing course in Iraq to maximize the chances of success.
That'd be all well and good, Senator Levin, if anybody thought you were interested in winning it.
These people just sound too excited, too ecstatic, too euphoric when they hear that we're losing.
Here's a guy nominated to be the next Secretary of Defense.
Says to the question, you believe we're currently winning.
No, sir.
All right.
That's what I wanted to hear.
Hubba, hubba.
Let's go get some popcorn and hot dogs.
Now we're cooking.
Now we're, that's what we Democrats want to hear.
America is losing.
And now we've got to figure out what to do about it.
And we all know what the Democrats' idea is to do about it.
Get the hell out.
One more here.
During his confirmation hearing, Senator McCain said, what?
We're not winning in Iraq.
Is that what you said?
That is my view, yes, sir.
And therefore, the status quo is not acceptable.
That is correct, sir.
Do you agree that at the time of Invasion, we didn't have sufficient troops to control the country in hindsight.
I suspect in hindsight some of the folks in the administration probably would not make the same decisions that they made.
I would tell you that when we were in Iraq, that we inquired of the commanders whether they had enough troops and whether a significant increase might be necessary.
And I would say that the answer we received was that they thought they had adequate troops.
It seems to me that as one considers all of the different options in terms of a change of approach in Iraq and a change of tactics, that inquiring about this again is clearly something, and it may be that Secretary of Defense might get a more candid answer than an outside study group that was visiting them.
I was just going to say, what are these generals supposed to tell you?
Their commander-in-chief is saying all over for the past two years, the generals are telling me we got enough troops.
Here comes the Iraq study group, included, including Mr. Gates.
We have enough troops over here, General.
Oh, yeah.
What are they going to say?
Hell no, we need 100,000, 200,000 more.
Then you guys can come back and leak that, or some angry staffer can leak that, and you've got all kinds of hell to pay before the election.
Anyway, I got to run here.
Time short.
First hour almost over.
Too bad.
For you liberals who still don't understand what this is all about, we're not in Iraq fighting for abortion rights or any of your pet liberal causes.
It's very simple.
We are fighting for our lives.
▲
Export Selection