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Dec. 8, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:00
December 8, 2006, Friday, Hour #3
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Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, despair, torture, humiliation, economic depravity, cultural depravity, and even the good times.
Rush Limbaugh, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling maha-rushy on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
Email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Questions, comments, complaints.
You can whine, you can moan, praise, dote, whatever.
That's the purpose of Open Line Friday.
Oh, here it is.
The House Ethics Committee, the report has been released.
The brilliant leaders of the Ethics Committee now, the exalted ones, conducting a press conference.
Doc Hastings, a Republican chairman, but not for long, is conducting his press conference there going through the report.
I sum it up here for you.
The House Ethics Committee has concluded that Republican leaders did not break any rules in handling Mark Foley's improper advances to former male pages, but, but they were negligent in protecting the teenagers, a congressional aide said in advance of the release of the findings.
Republicans didn't break any rules, but they were negligent in protecting the pages.
Wonder if they were probably trying to convince girls to pose nude for just a year beforehand.
Who knows what was going on with the Republican leadership?
But bottom line here is, ladies and gentlemen, watching the drive-by media talk about this leading up to the opening of the press conference.
What was it?
Was it MSNBC?
And as I predict, they were breathlessly awaiting, and they are disappointed here.
I think they were hoping for some more emails, for some more instant messages.
They wanted a couple of Republicans to go under the knife under the guillotine.
Not going to happen.
And their reaction was, well, okay, so they didn't break any rules.
It just means what we've always said.
There aren't enough rules.
And somebody else said that's exactly right.
So anyway, a big dud of a report from the House Ethics Committee.
Also get an email, ladies and gentlemen, from a woman regarding the story I told earlier this week and today about how I treat my cat.
Dear Rush, if you treated me or any woman the way you treat your cat, I would never leave.
Yes, and that's the problem.
And that was the story that I am, the lesson I'm trying to tell you that I've learned from the cat.
CNN doing a story here on Obama Hussein Barack Hussein Obama.
And we had, I think we had this from Bill Schneider yesterday, too, breathlessly asking the question, is America ready?
Is America ready for an African-American president?
Hello, CNN.
First of all, the guy's half black and he's half white.
Second, he's not African-American in the sense that you mean it.
He's got no historical legacy tie to this country.
His parents, not from here.
Well, one was, but he's not a child of the South.
Just put it that way.
Barack Hussein Obama is not a child of the South.
He's half black.
He's half white.
But secondly, and more important, did CNN ever ask if Ohioans were ready for a black governor?
Did they ever ask if Pennsylvanians were ready for a black governor?
Did they ever ask if Marylanders were ever ready for a black senator, as in Michael Steele?
And I don't remember the question being asked, is America ready for a second black Supreme Court justice when they trashed Clarence Thomas?
Is America ready for an African-American president?
City of St. Paul is giving a break to ex-cons in hopes that they'll stay ex-cons.
St. Paul, Minnesota here.
Mayor Chris Coleman issued an order this week saying that the city will stop requiring job applicants to disclose whether they've ever been convicted of a crime.
While the immediate goal is to ensure the city doesn't discriminate against applicants with criminal records, backers say that they hope it gives people with minor rap sheets a chance to turn their lives around.
After 9-11, with the increasing number of background checks employers are doing, this has become a problem for people that have made a mistake in their lives, said Guy Gamble, advocacy coordinator for the Minneapolis-based Council on Crime and Justice.
Well, I don't see anything wrong with this.
I really don't.
In fact, this may be enlightened.
We don't check to see if they're legal.
We don't check to see if they're legal or illegal.
Why should we delve further into whether or not they have criminal records?
Audio soundbite time, the left and the do-gooders have a new cause out there.
Remember, I guess a couple weeks ago, I had this most unbelievable press release from Ruffle Thimmons.
Ruffle Thimmons had arrived in Africa, and he was, nobody cared, but he put the pressure on, I have arrived in Africa on my charter jet or what have you, and I'm here to promote jewelry, the right kind of jewelry.
He's promoting his own.
He's got a jewelry line now.
And I thought this is the most self-indulgent press release I've ever read.
I wish I could remember the thing because it really needs to be read.
I don't have it here at my fingertips.
Lo and behold.
Now, some of you may have heard of this, but it's new to me this week, the whole concept of conflict-free diamonds.
I'm sure it's not new.
I just, it's escaped me.
This holiday season, some diamond retailers say they are seeing heightened consumer concern about conflict diamonds, the gems mined in war zones that are sold to fund armed conflict and civil war.
Sales of so-called conflict diamonds have helped finance walls that killed millions in Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia over the past several decades.
Efforts to address the problem have been made within the diamond industry.
Human rights groups, though, now taking the issue straight to consumers.
And with Friday's release of Warner Brothers Pictures' new film Blood Diamond, diamond retailers are preparing to face more scrutiny than ever before.
So they're going to do to the diamond business what they've done, what they've done to the fur coat business.
So we have a couple soundbites on this.
First off, from the Today Show Today, co-host Al Joker was interviewing the writer Sally Morrison about diamonds.
And Al Joker said, look, we're hearing a lot about conflict diamonds, the movie Blood Diamonds, Leonardo DiCaprio, who is a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance in real life, and Jaman Hansu.
For people who don't understand this, what quickly, Sally, is a conflict diamond?
A conflict diamond is a diamond that comes from a part of Africa where there's a civil war going on and the diamonds are being used to fund illegal activity against the government.
The good news for consumers is that thanks to the Kimberley process, 99.8% of all diamonds in the marketplace now are conflict-free.
Clearly, one conflict diamond is one too many.
We all have to work as an industry to eradicate that last 0.2%.
But people can be very confident going to the stores that the Kimberley process is working and it's a great achievement, it makes it illegal to import conflict stones.
And 68 countries around the world are party to this agreement with the U.N. All right.
I guess this is where I separate myself from these.
I'm sorry, don't relate to this.
I think this is just mindless twaddle.
This is typical of a bunch of weak-kneed liberals trying to make a difference and trying to make themselves feel the new cathratio on this plate, trying to make themselves feel noble and moral and superior to everything.
I'm not going to wear stones that come from conflict.
Let's not address the whole idea of wearing jewelry in the first place.
I mean, for crying out loud, folks.
I mean, I don't even want to go there.
I'll really get separation.
But this is just nonsensical.
I mean, this is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
I mean, how many products are these people going to not be able to buy once they learn?
I mean, oil leads to the product that powers jet bombers.
What, Mr. Snowdley?
What?
Am I missing something here?
What?
How can I say what?
How can I say I don't, this is like the, we've got to divest in South Africa.
I'm not going to invest in.
I'm not going to divest here.
The world is at conflict at all times.
The world roils in conflict.
R-O-I-L-S.
Yes, consumers do have collective power, but are you telling me the diamond industry is going to fall for this?
Conflict-free.
And precisely because they're worried sick about it, they'll find a way to market conflict diamonds that aren't conflict diamonds.
And these people will be running, it's just going to be buying Priuses.
They're not going to make any difference in anything.
They're not going to stop the wars.
They're not going to stop the funding for the wars.
If the diamonds and their mining result in wars being funded, the funders of the wars will find somewhere else to go to get the money.
William Jefferson, Congressman Democrat Louisiana, who knows?
There's any number of places that these people want to wage war can go get the money.
What these people think they're doing is going to stop conflict.
I am not going to support war.
Mr. Limbaugh, I'm not going to support it.
Well, anyway, if you think I'm wrong about this, we have some advocates.
We've got another soundbite.
A montage of the actress Jane Fonda and the actress Jennifer Connolly talking about their diamonds.
This is not about we don't like diamonds.
It's that we have to be conscious of what we're buying and not buying and buy them only if they're blood-free.
You know, if I wear diamonds to insist that the diamonds that I wear are conflict-free, I'm wearing diamonds.
They're conflict-free.
I have the certificate.
Yippee!
How can you trust it?
How do you know?
Oh, I have a certificate.
Neville Chamberlain had a letter.
You talk about white guilt.
I mean, that's exactly what this is.
Now these Hollywood actress types who don't have time to shave their underarms.
Two-week old growth there, Maggie Gillenhall and whoever else, forget what was the other name, Maria Bellow.
Have time to shave their armpits.
But this is important, Mr. Limbaugh.
This is important.
Not only do men have to buy diamonds for women now, they have to make sure they're conflict-free.
I'm going to go out.
I'm going to make it my objective to buy conflict diamonds.
Somebody has to be able to support these wars because that's how conflicts are solved.
Back in just a second.
Oh, one of my all-time favorite tunes, Al Wilson.
And show and tell here on Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, at Christmastime.
Favorite time of year, too, especially when I'm in Florida.
It's Open Line Friday, and if you don't want to go the phone route, you can do email.
That's rush at EIBnet.com.
All right, Conflict Diamonds, I know exactly what this is.
The challenge is going to be exposing it to you as the fraud that it is.
So, how about this?
How about, folks, I spearhead a new movement, terrorist-free oil.
Yes, the lofty goal.
Why should we be buying oil or using any derivatives or refined products from oil where the profits end up in the people who bankroll in fung terrorism?
Why, that's war.
That's war against us.
Oh, I guess that's okay.
But in all these places where we have no vital interest whatsoever, like Kofi Annan, our old boy Kofi, listen to this.
Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will ask today how the international community can allow the horror in Sudan's Darfur region to continue and say there is more than enough blame to share around the world.
No, I will not resign.
Above all, we must not wait to take action until genocide is actually happening.
By which time, it is often too late to do anything effective about it except burn the bodies.
All right, so Kofi Annan, no mention of Iraq, no mention of North Korea.
This is not quite his farewell speech, but it's close.
Nothing about Iraq, nothing about North Korea, nothing about Iran.
No, we got to go to Darfur.
Why?
No U.S. vital interests are at stake.
I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone this morning.
Well, it was an instant message chat.
Don't worry, nothing in it for you, Foley hunters.
And this guy said, you know, what really bugs me about this war and this whole study group is if the president were a Democrat, the Democrats would be all for the war in Iraq.
And I said, no, they wouldn't.
It's different now.
He cited Kosovo and Clinton.
I said, well, the difference in Kosovo, we had no vital interest in Kosovo.
We were humanitarian missing.
Meals on wheels.
This in Iraq, U.S. vital interests are at stake.
Democrats cozy up to our enemies, Ortega, Hugo Chavez, the Soviets.
We start defending ourselves where there are vital interests and they get upset.
Here's Kofi, Darfur.
Got to go to Darfur.
All this talk, we don't have enough troops.
We're short.
We can't get anything.
Got to go to Darfur.
Have to stop the genocide there.
Kofi Annan.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it is plain to see here what the purpose of the left is, and it has not anything to do with building this country up or protecting it.
So, oil for terrorists.
No oil for terrorists.
Conflict diamonds, no conflict diamonds, no oil for terrorists.
Or no terrorist oil, however you want to put it.
Anything out of fly?
There is a way to do that, by the way.
And the way to prove my point about this is our own and war.
Gulf of Mexico.
Off the coast of California.
Can we do it?
No way.
Why would destroy the environment?
Destroy America.
It would pollute the world.
No, no, no, we can't.
We will use oil for terrorists.
So now we've got Conflict Diamonds.
This is not the first time this has come up, ladies and gentlemen.
Remember this?
Couldn't catch, couldn't eat tuna that was caught in a net.
It wasn't fair, and they caught dolphins at the same time, and the dolphins drowned in the nets.
Dolphin-free tuna, conflict, diamonds.
These things just repeat, ladies and gentlemen.
And remember, the objective here is to stop conflict.
And if you think a bunch of gaudy bubbles, baubles being worn by a bunch of women who are mined in a non-conflict area are going to stop wars, then you don't understand men.
Mike in Pittsburgh, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Oh, you're the greatest, man.
You're going to be laughing all day.
Hey, listen, don't them nerds in Hollywood understand because this Leo DiCaprio movie come out with that conflict diamond thing.
They're letting every man in America off the hook now.
Honey, I was going to buy you that one carrot diamond you wanted, but now it's a conflict diamond, so here's a salad spinner.
I mean, come on.
Great.
What did you say?
Here's a what?
A salad spinner.
Oh, a salad spinner.
I know you're above all that.
You got your chef to do that, but that's okay.
The bamboo steamer.
Rush, I love you, man.
I have to apologize to you.
You know, all the nasty emails I sent you before, that was because of the divorce.
I was just transferring all my hate on you.
I have to apologize.
Well, that's all right.
Look, hate is, I'm used to it.
I've got boundaries here.
It didn't bother me.
But you know, here's something that does bother me, Rush.
It's 2:30 now.
You watched the Steeler game last night with everybody else in America, and not a word, not one single word about the Steelers.
You just did.
And we move on on Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Donald Rumsfeld.
Moving on, audio soundbites number seven and eight here.
Donald Rumsfeld today had his 42nd town hall meeting of farewell to the troops, if you will, at the Pentagon.
Two soundbites.
This is a portion of his remarks.
We've got two portions, actually.
This would be the first.
You can look at what you've done here this past period with great pride.
I wish I could say that everything we've done here has gone perfectly, but that's not how life works, regrettably.
When thousands of people make dozens of difficult decisions on hundreds of pressing issues, for the most part, matters that are new and unfamiliar, where there's no roadmap and no guidebook that says here's exactly how you should do something, the hope has to be not perfection, but that most decisions with the perspective of time will turn out to be the right ones, and that the perspective of history will judge the overwhelming majority of those decisions favorably.
You know, folks, we haven't talked about this much since Donald Rumsfeld announced his resignation, but he really is a great man.
He is an extraordinary public servant.
His second term as Defense Secretary, he's accomplished much in his life.
But more than that, he's just a classy, decent man.
And I've had the good fortune of meeting him.
Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation dinner this past April in New York at the Waldorf hysteria in the big ballroom they have there.
He's just it, you know, it bothers me personally to see great people like this torn apart and shredded and thrown overboard by people that couldn't even put on his tie every day.
And it's a loss when our government loses somebody of this caliber.
Here's the second of these two soundbites that we have.
Yet, despite the tumult of the times, I left this post in 1977 believing strongly that America was a force for good in the world, that the vast majority of the American people were wise and decent people, and that America would continue to be the principled leader in the free world.
That has been proven right.
And I can say that as I leave at the end of my second, and the good Lord willing my last.
I do leave, believing as I did 30 years ago, that America is a truly great nation, that the American people are wise and decent, and that America's leadership in the world is not just useful, but that it is urgently needed.
And let there be no doubt, despite the fact that we have been successful in preventing attacks since September 11th, years without an attack in this country, ours is a troubled and very dangerous world, and we must not forget it.
That's absolutely right.
We shouldn't forget it.
People want to, though.
They'd rather pretend it didn't happen or think it's something that it wasn't rather than deal with it.
Donald Rumsfeld, farewell.
Town meeting with the people at the Pentagon today.
Back to the phones to Newark, Ohio.
This is Bill.
I'm glad you were patient, sir.
Thank you for waiting.
Oh, it is a pleasure to talk to you.
I thank God every night for you.
Thank you, sir.
The Democrats and our malicious media are the ones that are responsible directly for the terrorism in Iraq.
For at least two years, all we've been hearing is how the Democrats were going to win, and as soon as they won, we were going to pull out of Iraq.
So there's no way that Maliki is going to let the Shiite Muslim army be disbanded because they're going to be his only line of defense once we're gone.
Otherwise, he's a dead man.
Well, that's a good point, but there's a larger point.
I mean, look, I agree with you that the Democrats have done a lot to encourage the morale of the enemy.
And there's no doubt the Democrats were the chosen party of our enemy.
And after the election, the enemy made it clear they were happy with the result.
Now that the Iraq surrender group report has come out, some people are not happy with it.
Some people are, but it did not achieve the consensus anywhere that the authors and the commission members hoped that it would.
As for Maliki, he's got a big problem, and that problem is Muqtader al-Sadr.
Maliki serves at the pleasure of Al-Sadr, and Al-Sadr is the guy who really needs to go if that place has any chance of being straightened out.
And when the president goes over and meets with Maliki says, this is the guy for the job, Maliki really, he stays alive because of Muki al-Sadr.
Could well be stated, maybe a bit of an exaggeration.
But your point is well taken, and it just reinforces the fact that this war, really, Bill, has been going on in this country, not over there.
The Democrats have been waging war against the enemy, and to them it's Bush and his policies and therefore the country.
And that's why.
Pardon?
Can I ask you a question?
Oh, sure.
That's what Open Line Friday is all about.
I love questions.
If the Republicans and the conservative Democrats got together in both the House and the Senate, how close to a majority would a new conservative party have?
Well, you mean a third-party conservative party?
No way.
I just, I don't see it happening.
I think third parties are pipe dreams today.
There simply isn't the financial base for it.
Third parties are generally the result of a singular leader running for president.
And the reason they bomb out is because if they were to ever get elected, they're not going to have any support in the House of the Senate because nobody from the party runs.
You're suggesting that the conservatives in the House and the Republicans and Democrats form their own party and build it ground up, correct?
Right.
Yeah.
Because they're going to be the, when the Democrat conservatives get into Congress, they're going to be very disappointed that they're not going to be able to vote their conscience.
They're going to do what leadership tells them.
Yeah, that's the theory.
You're pretty wise and shrewd on that.
Otherwise, they won't be supported for re-election.
Or they might, depending on what the polls indicate.
They might be a little bit more bold than I think on specific things.
We'll have to wait and see.
I'm not opposed to the whole concept of conservatives banding together.
I don't know that they've got a new form, a new party.
If the conservatives, look, why not have a conservative caucus in the House made up of Republicans and we've got everything else caucus.
We've got progressive caucus.
We've got frog caucus.
We've got the black caucus.
We've got the feminine caucus.
We've got all these different caucuses in the house.
Why not a conservative caucus?
It probably would be the majority.
The problem is that the Democrats run the place and the Democrat conservatives who would join this caucus and buck the leadership, meh, I'd love to see it.
It would be fun.
Fun to see.
Not a bad idea.
Scott, Jacksonville, Florida, you're next, sir.
Hello.
Rush, my favorite man, my favorite band.
I've got a question that only a conservative capitalist would understand.
Looking at the fact that you have such a good inside look at the political situation as well as the cigar industry.
Yes.
Do you think that if Fidel becomes worm food, as I think he will soon, will the embargo be lifted?
And if so, what is that going to do to the cigar prices across the board?
Well, you know, we talked about this earlier this week, and it's well worth repeating.
Let's assume, because the real point you're asking, you want Cuban cigars.
Everybody who smokes cigars wants a Cuban cigar.
It's never had one because, you know, all this mythology about them.
It's so close.
Why can't I have one?
Because it's a violation of federal law and you can go to prison.
Trading with the Enemy Act can't do it.
So they're out there, but you can't legally have them.
And human nature is human nature.
When they tell you you can't have it, you want it more than ever.
So that's what you want.
You want your Cuban cigars.
I wouldn't mind having a punch double corona now and then.
As to the Castro's death meaning the end of the embargo, I don't know.
We still got Raul.
He's made overtures.
But I don't think our country has Cuba on the mind right now.
We should, because this whole hemisphere of ours is percolating with new birth communism from Bolivia nationalizing all those industries, that nutcase, Hugo Chavez.
Daniel Ortega has just won re-election.
Communists have taken back over in Nicaragua.
Cuba is what it is.
Yeah, Ecuador is split.
Mexico is what it is.
Of course, we did have the good guy win down there, but the other guy's pretending he didn't.
But, I mean, our own hemisphere is percolating here, and we ought to pay attention to it.
But I don't know that we're going to.
And you have to remember, too, that the Cuban exile community in this country is very powerful politically.
And the first thing going to happen, if an embargo is ever lifted before we even get to rum and sugar and tobacco and cigars and that kind of thing, those people are going to want their land back and are going to be demanding the U.S. government do something about it.
It's not going to be, oh, Castro's dead.
Embargo's over.
Cuban cigars in the store tomorrow.
Be first in line.
It isn't going to happen.
And I'll tell you why.
In addition to everything I've just said, what will happen when the embargo is lifted, let's just say it happens.
Frankly, I don't look for it anytime soon.
I've been hearing all my life it's going to end in five years, ten years from Castro advertisement.
All of these Cuban cigars that you want and everybody wants, the brands, all the Cuban brands have been marketed and sold by people and companies in this U.S. market.
They have invested in planting the tobacco in the Dominican and Nicaragua, Cameroon, all these places, Connecticut shade tobacco is grown in Connecticut, the wrapper leaf for a lot of cigars.
They're going to make first dibs on any Cuban tobacco because they're going to go to the Commerce Department.
They're going to say, hey, we built these brands up.
Yeah, the Cubans might have had a partigas and a punch and a Cohiba, but they didn't happen in the U.S.
We own those trademarks in the U.S.
And you just can't let the Cuban product come in here under the same name competing with us.
We're not going to let that happen.
And since the Cubans don't make political donations, and these guys do, guess who's going to win?
So the cigar manufacturers will probably, and I've had one of them tell me this.
They're going to make first dibs on Cuban raw tobacco.
They're going to say, we deserve it first, and we will blend it with our own tobacco.
They don't want to create another market, a competing market, not with the same brand names that they have spent all these years during the embargo developing themselves.
Now, the state of the Cuban tobacco system is in bad shape anyway.
Ever since the Soviets' subsidy of $5 billion went away whenever the Soviet Union crumbled, the Cubans have been asking all of their retailers around the world that sell Cuban cigars to finance the growing of the crop every year because the Cubans just don't have the money.
It has fallen apart.
They're still producing cigars.
Some people say that the cigars coming out of there now are pretty good, but they weren't for a while after 1994 to 96.
Regardless, it's going to take some time to rebuild those fields, and it's primarily the Vuelta Abajo we're talking about in Piñar del Rio.
It's going to take time to build them up.
And while all that's going on, all these domestic producers are going to be demanding the raw tobacco to make their own cigars blended first rather than sell these competing brands.
So it's just not going to be as simple as embargoes over, you can go get a Cuban cigar tomorrow.
It will not happen if the embargo lifts at all.
You can't explain why it's on there now.
So explaining why it will be lifted is anybody's intellectual exercise.
Back in just a second.
This is not Mannheim Steamroller George Winston here.
We're back on the EIB network and Rush Limbaugh.
A couple little stories here, ladies and gentlemen.
Viagra and other impotence drugs like Cialis help switch on the immune system to attack a range of cancers, a study has found.
Disease usually manages to avoid destruction, partly because tumors produce a fog of chemicals that hide it from white blood cells, but Viagra, other drugs like it, found to reduce the amount of those chemicals, enabling the immune system to target the cancer more effectively.
That's going to shake them up out there.
And you remember, ladies and gentlemen, we did a morning update on this some few days ago.
We didn't actually talk about it during the body of the program, not for any reason, but we did make a huge deal.
Coco, make that morning update available just on the website this afternoon.
Not for re-download, just for people to watch it.
You got to see it if you didn't see that.
We got a test market for it.
Condoms designed to meet international size specs are too big for many Indian men as their penises fall short of what manufacturers had anticipated, according to an Indian study.
The Indian Council of Medical Research said that its initial findings from a two-year study showed that 60% of the men in the financial central or capital of Mumbai, that this is too small for the international sizes.
What better market for spray-on condoms?
The new spray-on condom, ladies and gentlemen.
It comes in colors.
It's magic.
If you haven't heard about this, well, you have to see our morning update on this.
See it.
You have to see it.
You can hear it too.
It's just as good.
Andrew in Farmington, Michigan.
Welcome, sir, to Open Line Friday.
Hey, mega Dittos of non-Indian descent here in Michigan.
Thank you, sir.
You're welcome.
Rush, I agree with you 99% of the time, but your comments about Donald Rumsfeld, I really had to call in and tell you that I totally disagree with you.
As a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Global War on terror, I saw what Rumsfeld did to the Army and the Marine Corps, and I got to tell you, I am no fan of Donald Rumsfeld.
I think he destroyed us, the ground troops, the morale of the ground troops, and didn't listen to the generals on the ground, nor did he listen to the generals that were the Army chiefs of staff at the time.
Yeah, I love these people.
Agree with me 99% of the time.
And then, you know, I've heard this complaint about Rumsfeld from a lot of people that he destroyed the military, that he destroyed morale.
What he was, was a reformer and believed that it was time to move forward with a new structure and design in the post-Cold War era.
We can argue about that.
I've heard both sides.
I've talked to people who don't think this is true about Rumsfeld, and I know plenty of people in the military who do.
All I know is that when the Pentagon's an established bureaucracy, and here's a guy that came in and shook it up, and these are people that have jobs for the rest of their lives, it's just like any other bureaucracy, and he was going to shake it up, shake up the apple cart, and didn't sit well with a lot of people.
But I was referring to his character.
I was referring to his decency as a human being, to his selfless service.
He doesn't need what he went through the last six years.
He could be on the beach playing golf or doing whatever, but he served his country.
I just think it's tragic to see such good men come under the knife with an attempt to destroy them.
We'll be back in just a second.
Been a great time today, folks.
Whole week has been fabulous.
Looking forward to Monday.
Have a great weekend and get into this spirit.
If you're not, it's Christmas time here and everywhere.
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