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There's a joint press conference going on right now between President Bush and the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
This guy, all this talk about, well, we're going to get out of Iraq.
I don't think it's, but something's happened because he's singing a whole different tune.
One of the things he said, we should acknowledge the debt the world owes to the United States for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism.
And when I heard him say that, I could just hear Nancy Pelosi's face crack.
And I could just hear Dick Durbin and Russ Feingold, who was on TV yesterday.
By the way, Russ Feingold was taken to the cleaners by Chris Wallace yesterday on this U.S. attorney's business and all of these investigations that the Congress has mounted of the president.
He had to admit they have nothing.
They have nothing.
They think there might be something.
They think they might find something, but they have nothing.
Also, yesterday in the, where was it, the New York Times, there was a front page story was below the fold, and the headline in the 60s, a future candidate poured her heart out in letters.
Did you read this, Mr. Snerdley?
Well, that's, I'm getting to that in just a second.
We're going to cover that in great detail.
The New York Times column today, two Brookings Institution guys, these are leftists, by the way, say, hey, we are winning in Iraq.
Feingold also said, I don't care.
I don't see any evidence.
I'm just not going to accept the president's word for this.
This is going to be a big problem for the left because these two guys just got back from Iraq.
They say the surge is working.
It's showing great promise.
It would be unconscionable, they say, to pull out of there prior to 2008.
You can hear Pelosi's face crack again when she got up and read this this morning.
You can probably see it crack when she read this.
The left-wing blogosphere, no doubt, going nuts.
But you know, this is something maybe it's too much to hope for, but can you imagine how the attitude and the mood in this country would change if all of this, the reporting about the surge working could actually serve to help unite the people of this country behind this effort?
Do you realize the difference that would make in public attitudes and moods?
I know it's a long shot because the left is already invested in defeat, as are the Democrats in Congress.
But it'll be interesting to see.
We'll get into that in great detail.
We had a knockdown drag out at my house yesterday over this story in the New York Times about the letter story on Hillary.
And I'm going to explain what the knockdown dragout was about and why, because it was a classic.
Why in the world?
These are letters that Hillary Clinton wrote to some guy between whatever the year, 1965 and 1969 when she was 18.
And apparently the press heard about these letters.
They called this guy.
He's a former, he's a teacher now in San Diego, former friend of hers in Illinois.
And he just gave me the letters.
I said, this just doesn't happen by accident.
The Clinton Inc. doesn't, this is all designed.
After all of Hillary's years in public life, why now?
And why after the cleavage controversy?
Why now does this story appear?
These letters and so forth.
Them.
If you read the letters and you have to understand the New York Times when you read these letters and you have to understand their agenda, you have to understand what they're trying to persuade people of.
The thrust of the story is how she had to break away from her strict, mean, conservative dad.
And her family were just too conservative, and she had to break away, had to get away.
In fact, she wanted to go to Africa when she was a young lady, but she didn't go because she was afraid of what her dad would say.
She was afraid of her dad's reaction.
There's nothing revelatory in these letters.
There's nothing scandalous about it.
But it is, there's a reason and a purpose why that story.
I mean, how does this show up on the front page of the New York Times?
There's nothing newsworthy about it.
You know, she's got a likability problem, and this story was designed to make her appear thoughtful, educated, brilliant, smart at age 18, with her own future and her own life, a loving, thoughtful, very serious person.
There's so much behind this.
We got into arguments at my place yesterday with people.
No, no, no.
This is a very, very, very heartwarming story.
It was fascinating to listen to people who are the targets of the New York Times be totally affected by it.
It was fascinating for me to watch this.
Let's see.
Speaking of the cleavage story, there wasn't any cleavage.
There wasn't any cleavage.
She shows up with a little plunging neckline here on the floor of the Senate.
This is after the Brett girl, and everybody starts talking about the fact that he's more of a woman than she is.
And Clinton had to go, man, how demeaning is this?
Your husband has to go out on Good Morning America to defend the fact that you're a woman and doesn't quite pull it off.
I mean, that's so here comes the cleavage.
And then when the cleavage happens, they cry victim.
They cry how inappropriate, how horrible.
Why is the Washington Post doing this?
It was so outraged Ann Lewis that she sent out a fundraising letter about it, portraying Hillary as the victim.
I tell you, if you really want to outrage Hillary, forget these cleavage stories, just revive that picture.
It showed up in the LA Times back in the 90s with Clinton and Hillary dancing to no music on a Caribbean beach in their swimwear.
You remember that?
They wanted us to see that.
The picture appeared in the Los Angeles.
Folks, it was not pretty.
And this was two weeks before the Lewinsky story was going to break.
So this was early 1995.
And all of a sudden, at the White House press conference that day, McCurry, the White House spokesman, opens up deriding the L.A. Times for daring to publish the picture.
And everybody in the press room said, what picture?
We haven't seen this picture.
And so that made sure the picture showed up everywhere.
And we later learned that they were dancing on the beach.
There was no music there.
The picture was supposedly snapped by Paparazzi snooping around unbeknownst to the Clintons.
It was all BS.
The Secret Service.
Yeah, whatever.
There was sabotaging the Clintons.
I mean, making them victims, which is Hillary's MO.
So this happens and turned her into a victim and then go raise money off of it.
Hilarious.
The Democrats are hyper-ventilating over all of this.
Never has so much been said about so little.
The media pretends not to want to discuss Hillary's cleavage in the process of endlessly talking about it.
We have a montage here.
We have Howard Kurtz.
We have Wolf Blitzer.
We got Mika Zezinski.
We got Amy Argensinger of the Washington Post.
We got Bill Weir.
We got everybody.
We got everybody.
There is anybody in the drive-by media.
Listen to this.
Hillary Clinton's cleavage.
Get the cleavage.
Debating Hillary's cleavage.
Cash for cleavage.
The cleavage controversy, calling Hillary, quote, a tempest in a B-cup.
It wasn't very much cleavage either.
It was not that much at all, was it?
No, it wasn't.
Senatorial cleavage.
Hillary Clinton's cleavage.
I'm not going to that cleavage story.
That cleavage.
Cleavage controversies.
I don't even see much there.
I don't, ugh, that looks like a shadow.
This was so marginal.
This was like microscopic.
Exactly right.
Folks, I have known cleavages.
As a callow and shallow youth, I have ogled cleavages.
I will admit this.
Yes, it's true.
I've even been distracted by cleavages.
But let me tell you, this was no cleavage.
Washington Post, fashion columnist, wants to enhance Hillary femininity, refers to her, you know, the C-word, cleavage in this case, the C-word.
Hillary team seizes on the cleavage and uses it as a fundraiser.
Hillary gets two benefits.
She gets the femininity benefit and the victim benefit at the same time.
Actually, three, because there's fundraising.
Funds, money, war.
You could say that cleavage leads to chest.
War chest.
I don't believe anything that happens with these people is coincidence.
Just don't believe it.
Not with Clinton Inc.
And that's this is another thing on this thing in the New York Times, the front page of the New York Times yesterday.
We'll take a quick break and be back.
Get started with all the rest of today's big program after this.
And welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, Rush Limbaugh kicking off a brand new week of broadcast excellence as your Nobel Peace Prize nominee, national treasure, prophet, and general all-round good guy here at 800-282-2882.
All right.
A couple audio soundbites.
Well, one audio sound, but you know, the controversy here over the Republicans not participating in the upcoming YouTube CNN debate has led to lots of discussion.
There's some people who think the Republicans are going to have this backfire on them because you got to go out there and you got to face the people.
If you're afraid to face the people, meaning the average Americans who upload their questions via video on YouTube, then you're acting cowardly and so forth.
Note, when the Democrats, to this day, who are scared to death to go on Fox, you got Barack Obama and Hillary in a meaningless argument over which thug around the world they will talk to when.
The fact is neither of them has the guts to go on Fox News for a debate.
But you don't hear that portrayed in the drive-by media.
Now the Republicans say, you know what?
The office of the presidency is a little bit higher.
It has a little bit more prestige than subjecting ourselves to questions from idiots dressed up as snowmen and so forth.
Now they're saying it's going to backfire on them.
And this was a discussion on CNN's reliable sources on Sunday with Howard Kurtz talking with Jeff Jarvis, a media critic.
Kurtz says there was supposed to, or at least was tentatively scheduled, a Republican presidential debate with CNN YouTube format for September.
Now, a lot of the Republicans are expressing reservations, they have scheduling problems.
You think the Republicans are wary of being questioned by the people who submit their queries through YouTube?
I think they're revealing themselves to be a bunch of freighty cats.
The Republicans, for some reason, have not done as much on the internet and with YouTube as the Democrats have.
Though in Europe, it's the Conservatives who are ahead on YouTube.
So it's not a biased thing, as Rush Limbaugh tried to insist this week.
I think the Republicans were trying to find some way to weasel out of this.
And they used scheduling excuses, bias excuses, dignity excuses.
But I think it's going to come around.
I'm going to bet it's going to happen.
And because they can't avoid talking to us.
They're not trying to avoid talking to you.
By the way, they're going to try to reschedule this thing for December, is what I'm hearing.
But I never said the Republicans shouldn't do it because of bias.
We all know there's bias in the drive-by media.
We all know that CNN is going to choose questions based on their agenda, based on what they get submitted to them.
We know there's going to be bias.
I suggested that it would be a rotten thing to do because it's demeaning to the office.
It lowers the office to the level of the lowest common denominator of pop culture.
You know, besides, there's really this is this is being presented as some revolutionary new thing, and it's not.
It's no different to have an audience in there that you stand around, you run around with a microphone, let them ask questions, so forth.
And you know how well that goes.
And you know that they have never turned over, CNN nor any network has never turned over totally a debate to people in the audience.
They occasionally go to people in the audience, like the ponytail guy in Richmond, Virginia, back in 1992, who wanted all those candidates to be, you know, explained to him how they were going to treat us like their children and so forth.
That was gagne with a spoon time on that.
If, you know, if I were these professional journalists, I'd be a little upset that I'm being aced out of this.
The drive-by media is in enough trouble as it is without their prestige being put on the line here by claiming that the debate will be better with these Yahoos sitting out there with their cameras submitting their stuff via upload to YouTube.
All right, moving on now to the war in Iraq and the column in the New York Times today that everybody who pays attention to this particular issue is talking about.
It's called A War That We Just Might Win.
It's by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack.
And O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, which is a left-leaning think tank.
Kenneth Pollack, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, and they're both from the Brookings Institution.
Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal.
The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility, yet now the administration's critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Oh, no, they're not.
They are fully and totally aware.
That's why they've been pushing to get this report done in July, believe the enemy report, rather than wait for the full schedule report in September.
They know what's going on.
They know full well what's going on, and they're invested in the opposite.
They're invested in defeat, as we've discussed countless times on this award-winning program.
They can't allow this, folks.
This, I'm telling you, Nancy Pelosi's face cracked twice today when Gordon Brown praises America as a great leader in defending the rights of free people against terrorism.
And now this.
Here's what they say.
Second paragraph.
Here's the most important thing Americans need to understand.
We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.
As two analysts who have harshly criticized the administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily victory, but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops.
In previous trips, we found American troops angry and frustrated.
Many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics, were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that would not work.
And they were no doubt demoralized by the debate going on back here.
Today, they write, morale is high.
The soldiers and Marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in General Petraeus.
They are confident in his strategy.
They see real results, and they feel now that they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
For now, things look much better than before.
American advisors told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed.
The American High Command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army Battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners, at least for as long as American forces remain.
In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion.
How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part?
How much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission?
These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge can't go on forever, but there is good, enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.
Now, this did not appear in the Washington Times.
This did not appear in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.
This didn't appear in the Orange County Register.
This appeared today in the New York Times.
Something puzzling about this, the fact that the Times would run it, I think part of the reason for that is this is something they just aren't going to be able to hide anymore.
And the idea here that we should not make any plans of getting out of there before the end of 2008, the presidential election is, oh, that is going to send chills up and down the spines of Democrats.
By the way, there was a story in the Washington Post on Saturday: U.S. push for Iraq recruits widens.
Among the interesting things in the story was this: the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, called the development of the grassroots forces the most significant trend in Iraq of the last four months or so and one that could help propel slow-moving efforts at national reconciliation among Iraq's main religious sects and ethnic groups.
He said this is a very, very important component of reconciliation because it's happening from the bottom up.
The bottom-up piece is much farther along than any of us would have anticipated a few months back.
It becomes the focus of a great deal of effort.
There is a sense that this can bear a lot of fruit.
So on Saturday, the Washington Post has a story quoting Petraeus: hey, the integration of Iraqis into the security force is working from the bottom up.
We've told you this was happening all of the past two weeks.
And now this column in the New York Times today, which basically says this thing can be won, and that the progress is undeniable.
This is going to provide a real challenge for the Democrats on Capitol Hill.
I'm sure they're up to it.
But by the way, this isn't the only barrage against them in the media.
It happened on Chris Matthews' Sunday show yesterday.
Wait till you hear the audio I have coming up.
And having more fun than a human being in the process with my finger on the thermostat.
Now look at this.
Here we go.
Another one of these obligatory recycled drive-by media stories.
Mommy Guilt, a fact of life for most with kids.
And it's from Dunwoody, Georgia.
Caring for a five-month-old son and a nearly four-year-old daughter seems like a full-time job for Amy Little.
But the Dunwoody, Georgia mother also works 40 hours a week in sales at ATT.
I feel burned out.
I'm doing too many things at once, and I get stressed.
I think every mom feels guilty about something.
I think working moms especially feel guilty.
Oh, what is this setting up?
Because I'm telling you, people, this is nothing new.
Why is this story coming out now?
This is such old news.
Women trying to have it all and being guilty about everything.
This is a derivative of our good friends, the nags.
The feminists try to have it all.
Mommy guilt, every woman's got mommy.
I don't care.
It's nothing new.
There's been going on since birth.
It was first recorded in the human civilization.
All right.
For months, for years, ladies and gentlemen, we have been hearing a steady drumbeat from the Democrat Party.
We've got to get out of Iraq.
We got to bring the troops home.
They have to be kept safe.
We can't win this war.
We have lost this war.
It's a civil war.
It's sectarian violence.
There is no al-Qaeda in Iraq.
And the drive-by media has echoed it every day.
Every step of the way, the drive-bys have echoed it.
And they've gone up and they've dutifully asked Tony Snow and the president when they get their chats, why don't you pull out?
You know it's not going well.
You started this.
You created the terrorists by going to Iraq in the first place.
For years, this has been going on.
Then all of a sudden, yesterday, look at what's happening in the last three days.
Saturday Washington Post story, big success bringing Iraqis into the security system from the bottom up.
Petraeus says it's the single most exciting thing he's seeing over there.
It means the Iraqis are joining forces rapidly with our side to defend themselves, defend their country.
Then yesterday, we had three drive-by journalists, Kelly O'Donnell of NBC, Time Magazine's Mike Duffy, and CBS Gloria Borger on Chris Matthews' show saying that we can't leave Iraq.
We just, we can't leave.
It would be silly.
Also, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, there are four drive-buyers here.
We have a montage of their comments regarding leaving Iraq.
People are beginning to learn that exiting is not easy.
There are enormous costs.
Can't wait.
We have a thousand Iraqis dying a month at the current rate.
That could explode, maybe 10 times as many if the U.S. leaves.
This is such a problem right now for the Democrats.
Privately, many of them will say, and Joe Biden has even said it publicly, that you can't withdraw overnight.
That it would be dangerous for us to do that.
We'll put it to the Matthews meter, 12 of our regular panelists.
Can Bush keep 100,000 troops or more in Iraq until he leaves office?
Looks like he can.
Eight of our groups says, yes, he can.
Chris Matthews then asked David Ignatius, what good does this Iraq war do to reduce the threat of terrorism here?
These struggles are different fronts of the same war.
The notion, you know, a defeat.
Stop the tape and recue this.
Do you realize what you just heard?
Do you understand what you just heard?
You heard a drive-by media columnist say that the war in Iraq is all part of the war on terror, that it's not separate.
He said, these are different fronts in the same war.
What's going on out there?
For four years, the drive-bys and the Democrats have done everything they can to segregate Iraq from the general war on terror.
That's what we got to go to Afghanistan.
We've got to get bin Laden.
We got to get Zawahiri.
There's nothing going on in Iraq.
There was nothing.
Bush just went in there, blah, blah, blah.
All of a sudden now, just since Saturday, this stuff on Sunday.
And then this New York Times column today by these two Brookings Institution guys say, hey, hey, hey, it's going well over there.
What's happening here?
There's something happening.
Nothing happens by coincidence in the drive-by media.
Folks, the news is packaged and presented just like food on the shelves of a grocery store.
The people that produce news, the editors that are back there working.
I mean, they've been working on the Sunday paper on Friday.
They work on the Monday paper on Saturdays.
They ask these columnists to write things and so forth.
This stuff just doesn't happen.
The people that produce news have a product that they're marketing and producing.
And three days in a row now, and in this Matthews show, here's the full quote from Ignatius.
What good does this Iraq war do to reduce the threat of terrorism?
These struggles are different fronts of the same war.
The notion that a defeat for the United States and its allies in Iraq is costless in terms of the larger war against al-Qaeda is just wrong.
I mean, you know, Bin Laden said again and again: the Americans are weak.
If you hit them hard, they'll run away.
They were hit hard in Beirut, they ran away.
They were hit hard in Somalia, they ran away.
I don't believe that I heard this.
I have been reminding everybody on this program for four years what Bin Laden said.
Why the Clintons didn't listen to him and why Bin Laden got the impression we pulled out of Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down?
He said it in ABC, these guys have known it all along, too.
Ignatius just didn't discover this.
And Gloria Borger didn't just discover the fact that there would be a genocidal massacre if we pull out.
They've known it for all, they've known this stuff.
So now, all of a sudden, they're swerving here into, well, what I would call more truthful discussions of this.
Here's one more little bite from Michael Duffy from Time magazine.
Matthews says, How will it be better if we stay there two years more than if we leave in a year?
You get to maybe protect two clear interests the U.S. has, keeping Al-Qaeda from having a safe haven on the order of Afghanistan and keeping that regional war from breaking out.
I am in stunned amazement here.
I am in total incredulity.
This has been the common sense reaction to everything going on over there for four years.
They've known it.
Now, all of a sudden, on the weekend of July 28th, they all of a sudden start mouthing this stuff.
Washington Post, Chris Matthews show on Sunday with prime drive-by media players, and then the New York Times piece today.
Something going on out there.
Here is Edward in Greenville, South Carolina.
We'll start with you.
I thought we were going to go somewhere else.
But here's Edward.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Oh, hey, Mike.
Mike?
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, I'm Mike.
You're Rush.
I'm so sorry.
I just talked to my friend Mike.
I have no clue who that is.
Mark and Joplin, Missouri.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Rush, I'm afraid that they're trying to set themselves up to take either partial credit or full credit for success in the war in Iraq.
They have preached defeat for the last, I mean, I'm really let down.
And I spoke with a man who served in Bosnia over the weekend at a high school reunion.
And he, as well as I were really let down with the fickleness of the American people, driven by the media and by the Democrats.
And now they're going to try to set themselves up to take partial credit for this.
Well, that'll be interesting to see if they actually can take partial.
We've got the sound bites.
We have a whole archive of soundbites of the Democrats proclaiming defeat, saying it can't be won, demanding we get out.
They have proposed resolution after resolution after resolution condemning the war and demanding that Bush set a timeline for withdrawal.
Well, Rush, don't you have a whole archive of them saying we needed to go into Iraq?
Yeah, we do.
But they've abandoned that position.
They say Bush lied to them.
Right, but now they're switching.
I mean, it's just typical.
They're going to go right back to the.
Okay, well, you may have a point in some sense.
I mean, all of this could be a warning.
I think the drive-bys look out for the Democrats.
And I think privately the drive-bys are a little astunned, just like we all are, at how close to going over the cliff on national security the Democrats are coming up on a presidential race.
So here, nothing happens by accident in the drive-by media, just like nothing that happens with the Clintons is coincidental.
So the New York Times publishes this piece today.
You've got the Matthew show with these elite drive-bys yesterday.
It could be a warning.
It could be a bugler signaling retreat.
You guys better shift gears.
You better move into a CYA mode.
We might win this thing.
You got to have to change the way you're talking about this.
Now, whether they can claim credit, I know they would try.
And about the only thing I think they could do is to claim that their unrelenting pressure on the president forced him to adopt a strategy that they knew would work.
The problem is they have been talking down the surge since before it began.
So, you know, if they're out there thinking that the only thing they've got to do is change their message and the drive-bys are going to start amplifying it, and that'll take care of it.
They are going to make a mistake again at forgetting that there's a whole new media out there that holds them accountable.
This is, I don't want to make too much of this, but I really am stunned at what a reversal this is and the comments from these people on the Matthew show who have known what they said yesterday to be the case for four years, but have been out there mouthing Democrat Party talking points to the opposite.
Quick time out.
Lots more straight ahead.
All right, let's go to the president's press conference today on the war in Iraq, the war on terror.
The new Prime Minister, excuse me, Gordon Brown, with the president, joint news conference, unidentified drive-by reporter says, Prime Minister Brown, you've talked of Afghanistan being in the front line in the war on terror.
Do you believe that is harder or easier to win?
There is no doubt, therefore, that Al-Qaeda is operating in Iraq.
There is no doubt that we've had to take very strong measures against them.
And there is no doubt that the Iraqi security forces have got to be strong enough to be able to withstand not just the violence that has been between the Sunni and the Shia population and the Sunni insurgency, but also al-Qaeda itself.
What the hell is going on here?
Look, I'm sorry that I may be making too big a deal about this, but something has caused this as a 180.
The drive-bys are doing a 180.
There is a dramatic turn just in the last three days in the reporting on Iraq.
And it could all change tomorrow, by the way, but we'll have to wait and see.
I think they might be shaken up.
You know, the New York Times did a poll last week in which they found that an increasing number of people support today the initial invasion of Iraq.
And the New York Times is so stunned by that, they went out and did it again.
They went out and re-polled because they were stunned at their answer.
And lo and behold, they got the same answer two polls in a row.
Can you imagine them being stunned?
Where did the public get this information?
We didn't report it.
Where's the public figuring this out?
With all that we've done the last four years to destroy this war effort, how can it be that a larger number of people supports the initial invasion?
How can this be?
I'm at a loss here.
This is, I mean, it has happened before.
It's not unprecedented, but to really hear these guys on the Matthew show say what they said, that Iraq can't be separated from the war on terror.
Do you know there's not a Democrat elected in Washington other than Lieberman who will say that?
Who has said it?
From the moment we invaded Iraq in 03, the argument the Democrats have launched has been, what are we doing there?
They lied.
Cheney lied.
Bush lied.
There were no nukes.
There were no weapons of mass destruction that they're trying to erase for their kuk fringe base, the fact that they all supported it, or most of them did.
And the drive-bys, you know, they're willing accomplices of these Democrats.
It'll be interesting to see if what follows from this is if these drive-buyers start peppering Democrats with questions designed to get answers like the drive-bys offered on the Sunday Chris Matthews shows.
Senator, don't you understand that Iraq is certainly part of the larger war on terror effort?
Why is it so hard for you to understand that?
They don't ask him that question.
Let's see if they start to now.
Here's the president, by the way.
He jumped in after the answer you just heard from the British PM Gordon Brown.
There's no doubt in my mind that Gordon Brown understands that failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the security of our own countries.
That failure in Iraq would embolden extremist movements throughout the Middle East.
Failure in Iraq would basically say to people sitting on the fence around the region that Al-Qaeda is powerful enough to drive great countries like Great Britain and America out of Iraq before the mission is done.
So there was a joint press conference.
And by the way, the pre-pub we got on this was that UK was thinking of pulling out of Iraq.
And then Gordon Brown shows up here today.
And that's the last thing that anybody would conclude after hearing his remarks.
Fort Wayne, Indiana, this is Bruce.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
You've changed my life, sir.
Thank you.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
After hearing Brown splipping and flopping, I have one question.
What happened to the conservative movement in Great Britain itself?
Oh, they're talking about going wobbly and wimping out.
They just gave up.
I mean, you had Thatcher and Marshall and now Blair, which was kind of half and half, and now this guy.
And I just, I mean, I understand parliamentary, but I just, it just made no sense to me.
Well, look at, you know, defeat happens every time you try when you target it.
You know, when you give up your principles, when you become afraid, when you start working deals with the left, in this case, the Labor Party, when you start working deals for compromise, and they got shellacked so bad during Tony Blair's first election that they had no choice.
And that brought defection.
It's almost like what happened to the Democrats in 1994 when the Republicans won the House.
They were so dispirited that they started defecting, quitting, leaving, and this sort of thing.
But you can find a parallel here.
How many Republican presidential candidates today who want the office are out there citing Reaganism?
You can talk about the Tories who gave up on Margaret Thatcher.
I'm telling you, liberalism is easy.
Conservatism is tough.
Conservatism takes a spine.
Conservatism requires a tough skin.
Liberalism is the most gutless choice you can make.
All you got to do is walk around and see some suffering and say, oh, I love this suffering.
That is so terrible.
We've got to do something about that.
And you feel better already because you've seen it, you've commented on it, and you've told yourself, you're a good person because you've seen suffering and you don't accept it.
Now, you don't solve it.
You don't do diddly squat to solve it.
And as a liberal, when you try to solve it, you only make it worse.
But we're not supposed to examine those results.
We're only supposed to examine the good intentions and the big-heartedness of liberals.
Conservatism sees some suffering, so we've got to stop that.
We've got to fix it.
And the last thing we're going to do is make this person a victim.
They're going to teach this person how to extricate him or herself from these circumstances.
And we count compassion, measure compassion by counting the number of people who no longer are suffering because they've been able to help themselves.
It's not cynical, but a typical liberal is, oh, easy for you to say.
Easy for you to say.
Liberals want people helpless.
They want to see them as victims.
They want to see them as incompetent.
Conservatives want the best for everybody, and they have high expectations of all things being equal.
People.
There's some obvious people that have problems that they need help with, and we are the first to be there.
And I think what happened to the Tories is they just, they got, it's sort of like conservatives in Washington.
You get constantly tarred and feathers, mean-spirited, racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes.
I got to change my image here.
A couple more intricate reasons than that that are policy related to, but that pretty much sums it up.
Be right back.
You know, one of the things that could be, I mean, we just grasp at straws here.
It could well be that since Barack is attacking Hillary on her vote for the war, it could be the drive-bys are circling the wagons for Hillary to make sure that vote looked good.
Because she's healthy.
Folks, we're just speculating here, but I'm telling you, something's up.