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Feb. 8, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:26
February 8, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #2
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And greetings and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Happy to have you along, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Without any further ado, we want to welcome to the program the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose new book is out today.
It's a memoir called Known and Unknown.
Mr. Secretary, welcome.
Great to have you here on our program.
Thank you so much, Rush.
I'm delighted to be with you.
Is this your first book?
It is my first book, and at seventy-eight years old, that's that's a long gestation period.
Well, it is amazing.
You have been in public life.
Folks, how long he's been in public life.
He met Dick Cheney when Cheney applied to be an intern in Secretary of Rumsfeld's congressional office.
What year was that?
1969.
Okay, so you mean I've I've I've lived one third of the history of America.
Well, that's what I was taking.
Just from from one standpoint, civility in American politics.
You have been around since 1969, and that's the Vietnam War.
You were around through uh Watergate.
You left for a while and joined G. D. Searle, where you presided over the uh marketing of uh aspartame equal.
You go back into government.
You've been a patriot all of your life.
Um I want to ask you, as as forthrightly, honestly as you can tell, what is the difference, if there is any, in civility, mean spiritedness, extremism, uh uh intra-party rivalries, the uh defamatory things said about people in politics.
Is it always been the same to you, or is it gotten progressively worse?
And it at any time uh were you just shocked and saddened by it that you um you you thought maybe it's not worth it anymore.
Well, I actually uh when I left the Navy, I was a Navy pilot.
I went to Washington when Eisenhower was president, then I was in Congress during a tough period during the Kennedy and Johnson era when Vietnam war was going on and the civil rights legislation, and there were riots in America and and protests and blood being thrown on the Pentagon and graves being dug.
So that was a tough time.
Um and as you said, that we now come up into the uh twenty-first century, and uh you think of of what people like Senator Kennedy said about the uh Abu Ghraib.
He said that Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are now under new management, the United States government.
And Senator Durbin said things like uh that that Gowantanamo Bay was like Nazis and and the Soviet gulag and Paul Pott.
Um if you even go back to Abraham Lincoln uh and some of the perfectly terrible things that were said about him.
We've had these periods in our history where that's happened.
Uh, but but the short answer to your question is no, Rush.
Uh, there's never been a time when when I've thought that it wasn't worthwhile.
I I believe it is worthwhile.
And I I I think that it's important that Americans uh be willing to serve and and be willing to live with the kind of lack of civility that occurs.
And and I'm proud to have served.
Is this lack of civility, and I'm I'm I'm focusing on this here at the outset because it's now used as a political wedge uh to try to silence people like you in government when you're there.
Uh at is it worse now, or is it you cite the civil war?
I can't imagine the country ever being more royal uh since the civil war.
Uh is it worse today?
Does that it is it are the people claiming that we need to get get rid of public voices of a certain persuasion?
Do they have a point, or is this all just manufactured at standard operating procedure for democracy?
Well, let's hope it isn't standard operating procedure for a democracy.
Uh what we need is is people willing to to say what they believe, to become engaged and and helping to guide and direct the course of this country.
And you look at most recently, the energy from the Tea Party people, where they've they've gotten excited and concerned and and stood up and and and spoke their minds, and that's such a healthy thing and and provides energy for our country.
I think I think that's a good thing.
Now, is it uh is it disappointing to see people uh behave in a way That's that's so uncivil.
Yes, it is disappointing.
But we we can't let that turn us off because we as citizens have a responsibility.
Now you talked to Diane Sawyer, I think, uh what was w a world news tonight recently, and you um you told her that you were you were you wanted to be allowed to resign after the pictures from Abu Ghrab were published.
Um you were y you thought those pictures were such a stain on the uh on the country.
Uh and then you had all these six generals that stepped forward to call for your resignation.
What was it about, given all the things you've seen, all the things that you have been in charge of over your years in government.
What was it about Abu Grab that so disgusted you?
Well, the behavior was was disgusting.
It was perverted, it was deviant.
And here are these truly wonderful men and women in the United States military who volunteer to serve our country, and and their reputations were stained by the behavior of uh of a few handfuls of people.
And the implication was that that had something to do with interrogation.
And of course, the truth was none of the people that were being abused were s subjects of interrogation, and none of the people doing the abuse were interrogators.
There were prison guards.
It was an it was discovered by the military, investigated by the military, and people were prosecuted and punished.
But the the damage to our country was significant.
If you think about it, the enemy could go out and use those pictures to raise money against us, to recruit against us.
And I've always believed in accountability.
And since the lines of accountability were confused and some people who had been there were gone and the people who were there were new, I decided that the easiest way to demonstrate accountability and the importance of it would be for me to submit my resignations.
So I did twice.
But the president didn't want you to quit.
That's correct.
Now do you really think that the those pictures from Abu Grab um really did terrorists really need that to recruit?
They were No, they're perfectly capable of lying, and and they did.
I mean, take take one of the rumors that was spread around the world about alleging that someone at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet.
There were riots in three or four cities, people were killed, and by the time the the truth came around that there never was a Koran flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo is an absolute fault.
And of course, the the journal that did it then said they were if there was some portion of their story that was wrong, they're sorry, but the the people were dead already.
Um so these things are important.
The thing that was on the backside of that, however, is that there's something about our country that we're reluctant to engage in a competition of of ideas in government.
Um we are up against a vicious enemy.
The radical Islamists are there.
They intend to try to create a caliphate in this world and and fundamentally alter the nature of nation states, and and we're reluctant to engage in the competition of ideas and and and point out what they really are and how vicious they are.
Um this current administration is even afraid to say the word Islamist.
And and we need to to fight.
We need to be willing to say what it is and be willing to tackle it, and thank goodness for people like you who are willing to do it.
In context of all that, what do you make of what's happening in Egypt?
So many people are confused.
I um I must confess I'm having a tough time finding somebody I believe who's able to convince me what this is really all about.
First, it seems to me that that the what's important is private diplomacy, not public diplomacy.
Public diplomacy tends to be aimed not so much at at uh the people you're trying to persuade, but to uh satisfy your own base and to make yourself look good.
And and one one knows that that the private diplomacy is what ultimately is going to be important.
So it's not surprising that that those of us on the outside uh don't have a perfect fix on what's taking place.
Second, I would say that that there are without qu each first of all, Egypt's an enormously important country.
It's large, it's it's historically important, uh, from an educational standpoint, it's it's a a big factor in the Arab world.
And what happens there makes a big difference to us.
As you know well, um we we watched what happened in Iran where there was a popular revolution, and the people that were the best organized and the most vicious uh took over the country, and they didn't end up with freer political systems or freer economic systems.
They they ended up with the Ayatollahs uh controlling that country.
Well, that's the thing.
Uh, we're looking at something similar here, or is this really I mean, there are people telling us, hey, this is a democracy movement.
We need to be fully, fully behind what's going on here.
If that means the ouster of uh Mubarak, then we must be for it immediately.
We're hearing that that argument as well.
Well, you can have a perfectly legitimate democracy movement where there are a variety of people across the political spectrum who all agree that there needs to be change.
The problem is that the people who tend to be the best organized are the most r radical and the most vicious, and so you can have a broad popular democracy movement and have it end up being taken over by the most vicious people, and and the result is you don't end up with free political systems or free economic systems, you end up with uh a handful of radicals controlling the country.
That's the risk.
We're speaking with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of practically everything in his career uh in the U.S. government.
Were we surprised uh at what happened in Iran when we uh decided the Shah had to go?
Was there intel that the Ayatollahs might take over and form an Islamist government as they have?
Well, there was certainly intel that suggested that that the return of the Ayatollah from I re as I recall Paris to uh Iran, and that there were people who had extreme views.
I think that that the actual departure of the Shah uh came as a surprise.
I don't think our intel suggested that.
W there was clearly information that there was concern about the uh the secret police, the Savak during that period.
Uh and the the country had not moved towards freer political and freer economic systems.
Well, enough people have the same fear that the process is repeating itself in Egypt.
That's true.
I mean, and and it's a it's a perfectly legitimate concern.
How it will come out, we don't know.
But but if you if you think think about our world and and the relatively small number of countries where people are doing well for and have opportunities, those are the countries with the freer political and the freer economic systems.
The places where people are not doing my my favorite picture, as you probably know, is that picture of the Korean peninsula taken from a satellite at night.
And the same people north and south, the same resources north and south, and below the de demilitarized zone, you have this brilliant light with a twelfth or thirteenth largest economy on the face of the earth, and up north people are starving.
And and uh because there's a dictatorship up north and a free system down south.
We're speaking with former Secretary of Defense uh Donald Rumsfeld.
We've got to take a brief time out, and we'll come back right after this, my friends.
Don't go away.
And we're back with former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld.
His new bio is it's actually a memoir, known and unknown.
And uh right at the start of the program, it was number nine on the Amazon list.
It's big, it's eight hundred and fifteen pages.
It's his first memoir, first autobiography in uh in his entire life, and it is comprehensive as it can be.
And of course, Secretary Rumsfeld, it's been out now, you've had it reviewed.
The usual suspects are finding all kinds of things wrong with it, particularly uh Maureen Dow, the New York Times just is as petty as you can be, claiming your entire eight hundred and fifteen pages is an attempt to blame everybody else for everything imaginable under the sun, that you can't find any way in in in your heart to accept any blame or shame for whatever transgressions that they at the New York Times think you are responsible for.
Well, that's no great surprise.
You know, when you think about it, uh there was a lot of criticism of President Bush and his administration uh about Guantanamo Bay, about uh the in indefinite detention and military commissions and and the structure he put in place to go after terrorists and and to put pressure on them everywhere in the world.
Uh and after all that criticism and all that fussing, we now have had two years of the new administration, and that structure is still in place.
And the reason it's in in it's still in place is because President Bush did a superb job for this country in in defending it.
Here we are, a decade later, and we have not had another attack on the United States of America.
And that didn't just happen.
Where you that didn't just happen.
That is that took a lot of work and a lot of courage, and and God bless President Bush for the work he's done.
I must add one thing.
This book is, as you say, uh well documented.
There are a lot of there's thirteen hundred endnotes.
And in addition, we've did digitized a large fraction of my archive.
And if a person reads a paragraph on a memo in the book, they can then go to the website uh and at Rumsfeld.com and get the entire memo and see for themselves uh what the context was, what the perspective was.
So I feel very good about the the book and and it's uh the perspective it offers to the interested reader, a person who's interested in history of the time.
Now, let me I'm gonna talk about the uh the Joe Wilson Valerie Playham escapade.
I know this didn't involve the Department of Defense, but to those of us watching this, there were certain things that were true that just befuddled us.
We knew that the leak had taken place in the State Department.
Everybody knew that the leak had taken place in the State Department, everybody knew that the mission of the Wilsons was to undermine and discredit the Bush administration in the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and yet this whole thing unplay or f uh played out with everybody knowing the truth as though we were in search for a a uh a scapegoat, it ended up being scooter libby, who didn't leak anything to anybody who got caught in a process crime.
Uh what is it like for you?
I mean, you had to know all this.
What's it like for you over at Secretary of Defense or recently out of it, watching all this going on and unable to say anything about it at the time.
It is heartbreaking to see a fine human being like Scooter Libby um punished in that way.
Uh even though, as you properly point out, he was he was not involved in in leaking anything that should not have been leaked, and and it was a a travesty, and I felt terrible about it.
Uh what's interesting though, and and I think it's important that you point it out, is now there's a movie out that that that perpetuates the mythology about all of this.
Right, exactly.
It's disgraceful.
By the way, uh uh there's no wrong answer here, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
Do you have uh time at the end of the uh half hour here for another segment?
If you don't, you have to move on, that's fine.
But if you do, I'd be delighted.
Okay, cool.
Uh because I'm not going to get into everything I'd like within the last three minutes of this segment.
You you have uh eight hundred and fifteen pages.
The documentation of things here is unprecedented in a memoir, as you've just pointed out.
Is there one thing you could tease people with that you think will surprise people the most if they endeavor to read all eight hundred and fifteen pages?
Well, I'll say one thing I did do, which which I've I found of interest.
You know, a lot of people don't read footnotes.
So what we did was we moved all the technical information and the sourcing and the referencing to the endnotes in the back of the book.
And as I say, there's something like 1,300 end notes.
But there's several hundred footnotes, and they're they're basically anecdotes or interesting things about the period uh that that I was writing about in that chapter, but which might have interrupted the narrative, but nonetheless, I think they're interesting to read, and I I think people will enjoy them if they take the time to take a look at them.
How much of it did you have to get declassified?
Oh, quite a bit.
We we've had uh good cooperation.
We've we've uh taken my course my earlier years when I was at U.S. ambassador to NATO uh for under President uh Nixon, and then as Middle East envoy for President Reagan, there far enough back that that much of that could be readily declassified.
Same thing when I was Secretary of Defense in the 70s.
The material from 2001 to 2006, we had to go through a process where the government did declassify it, and so we've been able to put up uh literally hundreds of documents on the website, many of which were previously classified, but now have been declassified.
General Petraeus, they newspaper ads, they called him a liar before he even testified uh about the surge.
Now, you probably have to, even in your position now, have to remain somewhat politic.
But as we watch this, I'm talking about myself as a representative of just the average American citizens.
We watched all of that play out, the surge, the attempt to finally win this thing in Iraq.
Many of us concluded that for political reasons, the Democrat Party simply did not want to see victory there, that they were too tied up in securing a malaise, if not a defeat, for their own political advancement.
Now there you are.
You're over at the Pentagon.
You are charged with executing policy and instructions as they come from the White House, and you have to listen to generals, and they're telling you what's best to achieve victory, and you have to sit here or there, and you watch all this on television, you listen to these outrageous things said about people under your command.
Uh you know full well that you are doing everything you can to achieve victory in this country and in this war, and you have to sit there and watch this.
There are those of us, and I put myself at the top of the list, and I want you to ponder the answer.
I got to go to a break here in 20 seconds.
But we sit here and wonder what must it be like for you.
You're a patriot.
You've devoted your life to serving this country.
You have to sit here and listen to this kind of that you know it can't possibly be true in your own heart.
You can't possibly be listening to these people tell the truth, and yet you have to sit there and endure this as did General Petraeus.
Want to get your reaction, we come back.
Welcome back, folks.
We are with the former Secretary of Defense twice in this country, Donald Rumsfeld and his new book is Known and Unknown, an 815-page memoir started the day number nine on Amazon, and no doubt now is number one and claiming.
Secretary Rumsfeld, I I um I'm looking forward to your answer on that because I don't know how you would do their uh how how you would do your job, how you would keep the lid on, watching such outrageousness, such efforts to tarnish you, uh impugn your your department, your reputation, your purpose, and there it plays out on national TV, and there you have the media supporting all this, and all of it is for political advantage.
The first time in my life I could remember uh uh uh an entire political party opposed to American victory.
If you take it one step further, Senator Reed, the Democratic leader, announced that the war was lost.
He he he came to that conclusion.
Happily so.
And and you know, if you think about it, uh we're fortunate to have uh generals like Petraeus and McChrystal and Odierno and so many others who who go about their business, recognize that what they're defending in in this wonderful country of ours is the right for people to be wrong, the right for people to have opinions different from ours or theirs.
Uh I I should add, however, on the surge, what George Bush did, President Bush, was courageous.
It was bold.
He made a judgment that he needed to galvanize opinion in Iraq and show that he was determined and wasn't looking for a way out.
He was looking for a way to prevail.
He galvanized opinion in the United States, and thank goodness we had a leader with that kind of courage and that kind of insight.
Now, you speak of President Bush.
People may not know.
You were asked to be Secretary of Defense in 2000.
You were surprised by that because you and his father uh had not gotten along.
What was the root of that?
You've got me.
I have no idea.
Uh he uh we we uh he he led people to believe that uh I had something to do with his going to the CIA, which was not the case, and that he felt that that might have been because it would rule him out for vice president.
But uh, and that's kind of what the books about him suggested.
President Ford pointed out accurately in writing and orally that that was not the case.
Uh I've never really quite understood it.
But you do know the you do the Bush family's close.
You get the call from 43 wanting you to be Secretary of Defense.
Was there any any red flags that went up?
Did you think maybe I'm being set up here for something?
Or how did you how did you make sure he was genuine about it?
George W. Bush is Is not uh George Herbert Walker Bush.
He's his own man.
And as I discuss it in my book, um, he made his own judgments and made his own decisions, and and I think uh one has to respect him for that.
Let's go back to the Pentagon.
Um seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, just outside looking in, seems to me there are two kinds of generals warrior generals and political generals.
Generals who will say and do whatever be politically correct in order to advance, and the warrior generals who, you know, turn me loose and I'm gonna win the war for you, Mr. Secretary.
You wanted to transform the military that will you wanted to revolutionize it and modernize it starting in 2000.
You met a lot of resistance from whom and why.
In the Pentagon.
Well, you know, in Washington, there is a a kind of a an iron triangle that operates.
It's the the permanent bureaucracy in the Pentagon, it's the permanent bureaucracy in the Congress, and uh and it's the defense contractors, and and they like things the way they are.
They they they there's a lot of golf games and a lot of discussions and a lot of dinners and meals, and and when someone comes in, as President Bush did, he gave a speech at the Citadel, he said he was gonna transform the Department of Defense and get it arranged for the 21st century.
And he knew and I knew that if you're gonna try to do that, you're gonna have to make changes.
And we also know that if you change something, somebody's not gonna like it.
And there's resistance.
So we set about that task, and as I look back, I I feel I really feel proud about what was what was accomplished.
If you think about it, we have dramatically increased the capability of our special operations forces.
We have significantly improved the d brigade concept in the United States Army where we've moved from a division concept to a a brigade concept which is has has been as transformational as anything that's taken place.
Okay, for people that don't know, what's the difference in a division and a brigade?
Well, it it you can what you can do today is deploy a much smaller element with all the capabilities needed in a brigade, whereas previously, if you needed a relatively small element, you you would uh a weaken the entire division, and the division would then not be able to function because the capabilities would have to go with the small element.
And now we we would not be able to be doing what we're doing today if we had not, if Pete Schumaker, General Schumaker, and and the Department of Defense had not made those amazing changes.
I would I would say one other thing about the the department.
Uh if to the extent the department functions jointly, we are leveraged to an enormous advantage for our country.
To the extent each service goes out and believes that they can fight an uh army battle or a navy battle or an air force battle separately, we lose that leverage.
And we have one other thing we've accomplished in transforming the department, we have rearranged our forces around the world in a way that fits the twenty-first century.
They were basically still in locations that where they were at the end of World War II.
And and they today are are lighter, they're faster, they're more lethal, and and our country is vastly better off for those changes.
Mr. Secretary, I um I once had the chance to talk to a former director of central intelligence, and I asked him if the director at CIA knows everything the agency has going on at the time.
I want to ask you, your office is at the Pentagon.
Is there anybody in the United States government who knows everything going on in every office at the Pentagon at one time?
It's so massive, it's so big.
Oh, you're exactly right, Rush.
The the the when you're dealing with an entity as large as the defense established excuse me, you have to delegate enormous chunks of responsibility.
I'm gonna get a drink of water here real quick.
Uh no problem.
We can take commercial break if you want and come back.
No, I'm fine now.
Okay, no.
So you delegate enormous pieces of responsibility and and try to pick good people and then work with them to see that the president's goals are accomplished.
But uh, I think it was Dean Rusk who used to say it at uh at every give any given moment, two-thirds of the uh world is up to something.
And it's a big responsibility.
We have Fortunately, uh uh a great many wonderful people who are willing to serve our country and and do it with uh dedication and patriotism.
Do we have people there who aren't doing it with distinction and patriotism?
Do we have people at various levels of our defense structure who may not have the same national interests that say I might, or that you might, or the president might.
How do you avoid, how do you keep that from happening?
Well, of course, in any any large organization, you're gonna have people that run all the way across the spectrum.
Uh one of the biggest problems after September 11th was trying to inject a degree of urgency into the institution, uh, and to get the rest of the government uh behaving in a manner that they understood that our country was at war, and that that we had a task of defending our people.
I remember one thing I used to say to the leadership in the department is sit here today and imagine that we we suffered a nine-11 attack six months from now, only it was twice or three times as bad.
What is it that we would regret we had not been doing today, tomorrow, and the next day, and every day between now and six months from now?
What is it we have to do, with what degree of urgency to protect the American people?
And you simply need to see that there's a uh recognition of the danger and the lethality of weapons today, and and try to get a a gigantic institution determined to protect the United States of America.
Well, some people might say we need Joe Biden as vice president.
I mean, he said that he and Obama have won the Iraq War.
What was the reaction to that?
Well, you know, I've listened to him for so many years there's not much he hasn't said from time to time.
Uh one more thing here before we go to the break, maybe a couple more.
I'm I'm you you just talked about the Pentagon and trying to rally everybody up to 91.
One of the things that happened after 9-11 was over at the State Department, some people got together and said hey need to have a symposium here uh to find out why they hate us.
Uh we got to find out why they wanted to do this to us.
Now there you are over at the Pentagon.
And how does that did it affect the way you did your job?
Did it or there was just something that was something another department was saying, or you're scratching your head.
What's your reaction when somebody over at state says, Oh my gosh, we have to have a forum, a symposium.
We've got to find out why they hate, as though we almost deserve this, as though this was our fault.
It was in your government, it was your administration.
Our country's behavior.
Uh remember Jean Kirkpatrick and the speech she gave uh uh blame America first crowd.
Yep.
And and uh there's there's something in the American oh uh behavior pattern that that we tend to want to look to for assuming responsibility.
And and of course, what but that that ignores is is the respect that our country has around the world.
Uh the number of people who who line up at night to get a visa to come to our country.
The the opportunities that this country provides people.
I I had a new hip not too long ago, and I had a uh a therapist from Nigeria, and as he was leaving the finishing up after three or four sessions, he said to me, you in America just simply don't appreciate your country.
He said, in in Lagos, Nigeria, people line up and sleep in the grass at 10 o'clock at night, trying to be first in line to get a visa to come to your country.
It is an amazing land of opportunity, and we need to be proud of it, not ashamed of it.
We need to to stand up for it and and be be gracious and grateful that we've we were born here and we have the opportunities.
And I hope that my memoir, when people read it, will recognize the kinds of opportunities that I've had and the kinds of opportunities they they can have, and be inspired to be engaged in government and public service.
Well, I would heartily recommend it.
I don't think anybody could go buy a book written by anybody who has been more intimately involved, closer to power for as many years, has been through as much, has known all of the power players as you have.
It is it is amazing.
And I could I could ask you about the Halloween massacre.
I could ask you what were Rumsfeld and and Cheney like back during the Nixon and Ford years?
And that's that's not recent.
We're going way, way back.
You you were you were a congressman in 1969, and that's where you met Cheney when he shows up to to be an intern.
You've led um you've led quite a life and the vast majority of it in public service.
Uh I was elected to Congress in 1962 at the age of 30.
Well, that's what okay, 30, and you are now eighty what?
Seventy-eight.
Seventy-eight going on seventy-nine.
Seventy-eight.
Uh and footnotes, documentation, it is it is an eye on government that uh I don't think anybody else who's ever served is offered like you have here.
And I I think it's I think it's wonderful, and I wish you the best with it.
Uh proceeds go to the Rumsfeld Foundation, correct?
Well, actually, they're gonna we have a foundation that does four things, but all the proceeds from the book on my proceeds are gonna go to the charities that support the troops, their families, and the wounded.
And and every nickel that we receive from this book is gonna go to support the wonderful men and women who serve in the United States Armed Forces and their families who also serve.
Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.
I've appreciated it.
Uh, and I appreciate your uh giving us the time today here on the EIB network.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Rush.
Good to be with you.
Same here.
That's the former defense secretary, as I former secretary of practically everything, Donald Rumsfeld, and the title of his book again is Known and Unknown, a memoir.
When we started, it was number nine on Amazon.
Um about 25 minutes ago, it was number six.
And it will soon be number one.
Deservedly so.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
You know, I said this throughout the Bush administration, and I I I said it several times.
Uh when Secretary Rumsfeld was attacked, personally, uh by the forces in this country opposed to this country's uh success victory, thank God for men like Donald Rumsfeld.
He has elected at age 32, and except for just a few years in the private sector, which were not insignificant years.
He CEO G. D. Searle, a uh developed and introduced to the market, aspartame, known as equal, and a number of other things, back into government at all levels, Secretary of Defense twice, putting up with all of that stuff uh for the sake of what he believed in.
The United States of America, thank God for men like him.
A true patriot, a genuine patriot.
And I don't know about you, but folks, it just I got, especially after I met him the first time and found out what kind of man he is, what kind of person he is.
It just infuriated me to listen to people in this country trying to destroy him.
Same with George W. Bush.
Not just disagree politically, not just disagree policy-wise, but actually try to destroy to have to sit here after going through all that for eight years and listen to all these moaning leftists about the lack of civility in our politics and stuff, just makes you want to puke and gag on it.
Because if anybody's the architect of a decline in standards of decency, uh patriotism or what have you, it's the American left.
And it's uh, you know, you you wonder how people like Rumsville put up with it.
He didn't need it.
He could have left it any time and headed down to the hog farm or gone out and hunted ducks with Cheney, whatever they wanted to do.
Could have done to the uh the uh the the Chesapeake Bay, sure.
They uh could have done anything they wanted, and they didn't.
They hung in there, and it's not they weren't being paid a lot of money.
They're just genuine statesmen.
That to sit here and get reamed by a bunch of people that couldn't even put on their socks.
It was just offensive as it could be.
Here's Mike in uh Madison, Wisconsin.
We go back to the phones here.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Rush, rush, rush.
Are you there, buddy?
Right here.
You ignore Hutch and you side with Obama's pick for the Super Bowl.
Come on, what could you really expect?
Did Obama pick the Steelers?
I didn't know that.
Oh, you're dang right.
You and Obama are like the Hutch picks the Packers and the Hutch the Hutch would have picked the um any team opposing the Steelers just to just to juke me.
Yeah, I think what we have here can only be described as a learning opportunity for both of you.
And I think what we need to do to rectify this is maybe you and uh Roger should sit down for a beer summit on EIB one.
Me and Aaron Rogers sit down for a uh beer summit.
I'd do that.
Dang right.
And now on top of this whole thing, we got uh Egypt that's gonna fall into complete chaos because of this football game.
How so?
I'll bite.
Well, how the heck do you expect Obama to concentrate on Egypt when he's got to worry about the most ferocious football team in the world that hails from one of the only conservative cities in the state of Wisconsin coming to the White House?
Believe me.
He must feel like uh no, no, no.
Don't doubt me on this.
Believe me, anything that focuses Obama's attention away from the economy, from Egypt, from pretty much everything, is a blessing.
It's a shame that game didn't go into overtime.
It's a shame that game didn't go into double overtime.
It's a shame that game is still not going on.
Don't doubt me on this.
I gotta take a brief time out, folks.
I know a lot of you have been on hold for a long time as we accommodated Rumsfeld.
We'll get to you early in the next hour.
Okay, another hour in the can.
It's finished.
It's soon gonna be transmitted and transferred to our secret warehouse location, harsing uh artifacts of the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.
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