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May 4, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:09
May 4, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Sorry, I just I just got a note from Catherine, and I'm laughing myself silly.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back, folks.
It's Rush Lindbaugh.
Great to have you with us on the EIB network broadcast excellence, all yours, the fastest three hours in media.
I, of course, the big voice on the right utilizing talent on loan from God.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Well, no.
Catherine is uh she she she's doing some work at uh with with some some friends at uh at a coffee place, and they're sitting around having a little meeting, and some guy at the next table starts ragging on me.
So she sends me a note.
I'm sitting here, and some guy is ripping you to shreds.
So I wrote her back a what did you do?
I said, I said, look, buddy, I'm his wife, and I agree with you.
Oh, marriage.
There's nothing better.
We're great to have what, snertly went.
Yeah, I said that earlier.
So it's a it's it's a select group of 9-11 families.
Not all of them are invited tomorrow.
It was a select group of 9-11 families invited to Obama's ceremony.
I don't know how you make the cut.
I I you know, I don't even let's not even that's so easy to answer on a speculative basis.
Uh but I yeah, it's it's not they're not it wasn't a come one come all.
It was uh select invitations to 9-11 families.
And here's something else.
Bush was invited, and he didn't go, and and and there's two reasons I don't think Bush wants to participate in something that politicizes it.
But secondly, I don't think that he wants I don't think he wants to give Obama a lift.
Having Bush there'd give Obama a lift, he's gonna do that.
He also invited Der Schlieckmeister.
Bill Clinton was invited, and Clinton's not going.
Bill Clinton has a scheduling conflict.
He can't be there.
Uh that's odd, too.
So Obama's gonna be flying solo uh at his first trip to ground zero.
You know, everybody's talking about the gutsy call.
I've and the media is going overboard here in how gutsy the call was that Obama made.
And we've said earlier today that it really wasn't that gutsy because everybody saw hundreds of people knew that Obama had been or Osama bin Laden been tracked to that location, and if nothing was done about it, that's that's a huge political problem for the president if if everybody knows that uh Osama's in there and we don't do anything about it, and hundreds of people knew.
So it was only he had to.
He had to act.
Because if he hadn't, there would have been a lot of people really ticked off, and it would have leaked.
And he would have had a situation just like the path to 9-11.
Which was a movie that was made about how we got to 9-11 and how it could have been stopped if the Clinton administration had dealt with some things seriously, and that led the Clinton administration, actually Clinton himself leaning on Bob Iger at ABC not to run the whole thing.
They cut about a minute and a half out of it and did run it, but no DVDs have made been made available.
It would have been uh political heck.
Later, as the week has unfolded, we have learned how close to the top of the decision-making process, Leon Panetta was.
And one of the things that I want to say here is that I frankly have been pleasantly surprised by Panetta during all of this.
Panetta was Bill Clinton's chief of staff for many years.
And forgive my saying it this way, but it was his job.
It is a pure political hack.
But he's not engaging in political hackery here.
Well, that's as I say, he is a grown up.
I mean, Panetta, that's why I've been pleasantly surprised by Panetta, because somebody in that shop is an adult.
Somebody in that shop's got experience.
And somebody in that shop is is inserting himself, utilizing.
I think if you want to talk about gutsy calls, get ready, media, here comes your tweak of the day.
And there have been so many for you to choose from.
The tweak of the day.
The real gutsy call was Panetta even presenting Obama with the decision.
The real gutsy call was Panetta going to Obama or calling him on the golf course and saying, hey, uh, we got bin Laden.
That was the gutsy call because after that, you don't know what's going to happen with it.
Well, you of course he Yes, he had to if you're going into Pakistan, but the point is he still did it.
We don't know what kind of secrets are kept from presidents by by top aides.
We just don't know.
Panetta presented this knowing full well, look, how long did Obama dither on Afghanistan?
How long did he dither on on Egypt?
How long did he dither on Libya?
And then once we went to Libya, what does anybody know what we're doing there?
So it was uh it was a gutsy call on the part of Panetta to even present Obama with this option or this decision.
Now we had a caller in the last hour who was really flummoxed by all the publicity that we are giving to the results of this operation.
And the caller's point was that we're releasing so many details.
Uh the the attempts to get satellite photos of bin Laden.
Uh we we should have never heard about any of this.
We we in the normal scheme of things should not have vote learned.
The public should not have learned of any of these secrets of spy craft, but they're all out now.
Some of these things are really the most highly classified of all secrets.
Panetta has been one of the biggest blabbermouths out there about this, but even despite what I just said about him.
It's just too bad for Bin Laden.
Uh Apple fixes their location service problem a week after Bin Laden gets blown out of the sky.
If it only done this earlier.
But it's the way things are.
Audio sound bites.
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington breaking the news that Obama will not be releasing the photo.
Listen to why.
This breaking news right now, Pete, so stay with me.
Uh, our own Savannah Guthrie reporting from the White House.
The president has decided not to release the photos, not to release the photos of Osama bin Laden.
You, as uh someone who's covered every aspect of this, know part of the reasoning, and we've been talking to officials, is they do believe that it could be inflammatory, and they believe that they've got the evidence.
They've got the goods, they don't have to prove anything.
They've got the DNA, they've got the facial recognition, and they should not be on the defensive.
They want to take the offensive.
Oh, okay.
They've got the goods.
They don't have to prove anything.
They got the DNA.
They've got the facial recognition.
They have to be on the defensive about this.
They don't have to release the pictures.
There's no clamoring for it.
Here's Pete Williams responding to Andrea Mitchell.
Interesting too, Andrea, there were some calls from members of Congress to release the pictures, but not many.
And uh the members who've spoken up today have said Diane Feinstein, for example, others have said they they don't think there's any need to do this.
And they do understand the potential backlash as apparently Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said they think no good can come of releasing the picture.
So I guess this decision isn't surprising based on uh the fact that there was no real strong drumbeat for releasing it here in the U.S. Well, there you have it.
There was no strong drum beat.
Members of Congress didn't want to see the picture.
Um Diane Feinstein, uh John Boehner, he said he didn't need to see the picture.
So there was no drum beat for it.
No.
Uh Media GOP not demanding it, so why release it?
Simple call.
Nobody wanted to see it.
You believe that.
Nobody wanted to see the picture.
You remember back in 2009 when more photos from Abu Ghrab were uncovered, Obama wanted to release them.
He had to positively be hog tied to keep him from releasing them back then.
The Taliban wants to see the photo.
Why that other uh Muslim organizations, they want to see the photo, but nobody else does.
Also this afternoon on PMS NBC, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News.
She had uh this exchange, little discussion here with White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie.
I was talking to Chuck earlier, and those I've spoken to were, to put it mildly, annoyed that in the aftermath of this successful commando raid against bin Laden and taking down the world's most wanted man, that all these questions are being raised about their initial narrative and their rush to get information out before the Pakistanis uh put out their own information or bin Laden's daughter or others putting out their inaccurate information.
Yeah, I mean, I think that to some degree there is frustration that rather than the focus being on the successful raid and this daring mission that suddenly people were talking about will they or won't they release the photos?
So I think the president making this decision today is an effort to can't speak too late to nip it in the bud, but to end this issue so that there won't be this continued speculation about whether these photographs will be released.
Well, they're upset.
The regime's upset that they got the world's most wanted man, and some still dare to ask questions.
I mean, that just did they can't believe it.
Frustration rather than the focus being on the successful raid, this daring mission, the gutsy call.
Yeah, I let me let me ask this.
If the SEALs had put women's underwear on Osama's head, would Obama release those photos?
Because they've released photos like that.
You know, our military's put uh underwear on the uh on the terrorists' heads.
And they and they released those photos.
Wonder if that would have made any difference.
What do you think, Snerdly?
Think so.
So he could berate the seals.
If the SEALs had put underwear on Osama's head.
This is from uh Larry King alive, Walter Cronkite.
Uh on uh it's the Friday nights.
It's it's it's uh in October of 2009.
Uh 2004.
October 2004.
It's the it's right before the election.
And here's Kronkite.
It's about the latest bin Laden video.
I have a feeling that uh it could tilt the election a bit.
Uh I I in fact I'm a little inclined to think that uh Carl Rove, the uh the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, uh he probably set up uh uh the the bin Laden to this thing.
Just, what do you say to this?
Call, call, call, call.
It's October 29th, 2004.
Carl Robe sent Bin Laden up to this day.
Poor old Jake Carney now just sent to the wolves.
The White House press secretary now out to talk to the state-controlled media.
it.
Not gonna be happy because yesterday Panetta promised Panetta, well, he assured of the photo release was coming.
Here's what Obama said to Steve Croft in uh taping 60 Minutes, explaining why he wouldn't release the photo of bin Laden.
He said, Imagine how the American people would react if Al-Qaeda killed one of our troops and put photos of the body on the internet.
I know they've done that, and one of the most famous instances uh was Blackhawk Down.
When an army ranger was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
They've done that.
Daniel Pearl.
Nick Berg, that's right.
They've uh they've done that.
You know, folks, I have to say this.
And I know it in media tweak number 20.
Media Twig number 20 today, but you know, whenever it comes down to deciding between American or Muslim sensitivities, Obama always seems to side with the Muslim sensitivities.
He just look at the ground zero mosque.
He weighed that, and and the Muslim sensitivities carried the day when it comes to his decision to support the building of a mosque at ground zero.
But this other thing, I'll tell you what offends me about this.
He said to CBS, imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaeda killed one of our troops and put photos of the body on the internet comparing a terrorist, that's bin Laden, a mass murderer of innocent civilians to our troops.
Our troops are not mass murderers.
Our troops are not terrorists.
Well, depending on the day and who's making the comment, uh John Kerry, John Mertha.
This is once again, this this this this moral equivalence that this man has.
To be able to equate Osama bin Laden with one of our troops.
Here's Andrew in Chicago.
Andrew, glad you waited, and welcome to the EIB network.
Mr. Limbaugh, it's a pleasure to be talking with you today.
Thank you, sir.
Sir, I had a comment regarding uh Osama bin Lam's burial at C. Yes, sir.
If he was labeled a combatant, the law of the land, uh the UCMJ, we are obligated to give him a military burial.
Your military is held to a much higher standard.
Regardless of our individual feelings toward the person.
Why didn't they just say that then?
I'm sorry, sir?
Why don't they just say that if that's the rationale they're using?
I cannot speak for my commander in chief, sir.
I can't speak for anybody else in the military.
But as far as us on the lower rung things, the guys who just take the orders.
But wait a second.
This administration, pardon the interruption, this administration has made it plain that they don't consider terrorists to be military combatants, that they are not the same as soldiers on the battlefield.
They are committing illegal criminal acts.
They deserve to be memandized and all that.
That in fact, that is one of the contradictions in Eric Holder claiming they go ahead and shoot him because he is a military enemy.
And they call this self-defense because Obama was a or Osama was a military enemy.
But this regime has gone out of its way to make it plain that in their view, this is not a subject where they're talking about military combatants.
They're all over the ballpark on this.
So you but bottom line, you don't think there's anything really wrong with uh the 40-minute ceremony on board the Vincent and then carefully laying the body at sea.
I know it's gonna aggravate a lot of people by me saying so, but the fact of the matter is, no, sir.
If a Navy SEAL was held at gunpoint by Osama bin Laden, and he was firing back or had hostile intent, he is considered, no matter really, is as far as my understanding of law and uh the law of armed conflict, excuse me.
As far as I'm concerned, he was considered a combatant with firing at anybody in uniform.
Quick question, 45 seconds.
We're told there were no weapons in that compound, and that bin Laden was not firing back.
Sir, he was one of the most highly wanted men on the planet.
That's true.
I'm just an individual from Illinois.
I have a weapon.
I can guarantee that every person over there is just about armed.
I've been over there a few different times.
But that's never met anybody that's not.
Okay, here we go.
That's fine.
That's the normal thing.
We would all think that thing is loaded with weapons and ammo.
But we're being told by our regime that there were no weapons.
The Pakistanis back it up.
There was no fire fight.
This regime has further said, I don't think people are hearing me.
That terrorists are not military combatants.
They are plain and simple criminals.
I appreciate the call.
We got a quick timeout.
We'll be back.
All right, welcome back.
Great to have you.
I have uh, ladies and gentlemen, um my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, a communique from a friend of mine who is uh uh highly achieved in the field of the law said, Rush, your last caller is wrong because bin Laden was an unlawful combatant.
That is, he is a combatant.
The Obama administration's wrong in that, of course, but because he did not comply with the laws of war, i.e., he didn't wear a uniform, he was not part of a regular military chain of command, he did not carry weapons openly, and he targeted civilians.
He did not qualify for treatment as a lawful or honorable combatant.
The treatment your caller was talking about is reserved for lawful combatants.
And bin Laden was unlawful.
This goes to the whole thing of, you know, Holder issued March 13th of 2009, I think it was at Holder, issued a statement that the United States had abandoned the Bush administration term enemy combatant.
And he did that in an effort to try to argue that terrorists should get civilian trials.
So they were considered unlawful military combatants.
And therefore, they were subject to military tribunals, so they can't have it both ways.
You can't sit there and say, this guy was a normal military combatant who was owed the traditions and honor of normal military combatants, lawful combatants, killed in action, and how they were disposed of.
So that look, this bunch is so all over the ballpark, it is impossible to keep up with them.
And remember, as I as I mentioned mere moments ago, brilliantly, I might add, here's Holder out there today saying, Well, look, this was a self-defense operation.
I mean, this guy was an enemy of the United States.
This guy was, you know, a national military target.
No, you people yourselves have said they are not military targets.
They are common criminals.
Miranda rights, we don't grant Miranda rights and so forth, nor lawyers to lawful combatants on the battlefield.
So here's Holder doing a 180 today to justify, because he and he's speaking on the basis that the news reports are there were no guns, there was no ammo, there was no firefight, and people, well, well, why'd you go in there guns are blazon?
Okay, well, now it's time to pretend he was a soldier.
When they had stripped that away by virtue of the fact that he wasn't.
That's why the whole argument about whether or not the Geneva Conventions apply to these people was had.
And it and it and they don't.
Now, I just heard, I just listened to the most painful tortured answer to a question.
I sat here and I was in pain, listening to poor Jay Carney in the White House briefing trying to answer a simple question.
The question itself was sophistry.
The question itself was absurd.
It was an accredited journalist who said, Does the uh president does the burial at sea uh uh of uh bin Laden was that to further the president's outreach to the Muslim world,
and do you think the killing of bin Laden will harm the president's two-year-old program of outreach to the Muslim community?
Okay, shook my head at that.
Then poor old Jay Carney starts trying to put syllables together.
And there were pauses of of three seconds that felt like 30.
I say three seconds, it might have been five.
So I sent Cookie a flash note, and I said, I gotta have this answer.
I have you gotta go get this, and you gotta let me uh get it in time here for the end of the program before the end of the program so you people can hear this.
It's oh gosh, folks.
Oh, it's painful.
It is pain, not only poor old Jay and the way he's struggling with it, but what he ends up saying to Boot.
Now, um I put it.
There is another version of what happened here.
Before I get to this version, oh, oh, and the UK Daily Mail, get this.
This is gonna totally change everything.
Bin Laden was growing marijuana.
Bin Laden had marijuana plants growing alongside the cabbages and potatoes in his garden.
Now you wait till they hear about this in San Francisco.
You wait.
You wait, not it's not miracle marijuana, it's the weed.
You wait till they hear about this on the left.
Oh.
Whatever goodwill Obama might have established here is going to come into question.
Let's let's very simply establish a timeline here.
On Sunday night, we're all minding our own business, and the networks all stop what they're doing and telling us 10.30.
Obama is going to make a major announcement.
So at 10.30, NBC interrupts the celebrity apprentice.
Trump's show.
One night after Obama tells ridiculous Trump jokes at the White House Correspondent Center.
But Obama doesn't go on for an hour.
Scheduled to appear at 10.30, finally shows up at 11.30, maybe a little later.
Then we get the announcement of what happened, and from Sunday night through Monday, all kinds of variations on the story take place.
Different versions here and different versions there.
Then yesterday, Panetta tells us that the photos are going to be released around 2 p.m.
Between 2 and 2.30.
I got a note from somebody who said, uh, you can use this.
This is good.
It's official photo to be released 2 2.30.
Panetta.
No photo yesterday, no photo last night, no photo this morning.
Finally we find out no photo, period, by virtue of Obama announcing it in an interview being taped for 60 minutes on Sunday night.
Meanwhile, the story of the raid is changing by the hour.
And then there's this from the UK telegraph.
The assault team sent into his hideout.
Oh left something out.
U.S. commandos were told to assume bin Laden was wearing a suicide vest and must be killed unless he was naked when they found him, it has emerged.
The assault team sent into his hideout would only have accepted surrender if they could be sure he had nothing hidden under his clothing, meaning his fate was sealed as soon as he was found in his bedcloth.
The admission by John Brennan.
Now why didn't they tell us this Sunday night?
Why didn't they tell us this Monday?
This is Wednesday afternoon, and we are just learning that the commandos, the assaulters, sealed Team Six, were told to kill bin Laden because of fears he was wearing a suicide vest, and only if he was nude were they to capture him.
Otherwise blow him to bits.
Now on Monday, we had stories saying that it was a capture mission, and Reuters came as nope, it was a kill mission from the get-go.
Then they started debating that.
Then we heard that it was a wife acting as a human shield who shouted, no Osama, no, that he had used her and shoved her in front of the gunfire.
Then that chain, no, it was a daughter.
Then it was a wife who was shot in the leg.
Then Nick Robertson gives us the news that we can't do without that neighborhood children's soccer balls were not returned to them when the balls were kicked over the wall of the compound into the luxury mansion yard.
And now this from the UK Daily Mail as well, CNN's Nick Robertson documented the plants growing alongside cabbages and potatoes in a report from the region on Tuesday.
Marijuana plants were growing alongside other crops, including cabbages and potatoes, and there is a picture of the marijuana plant growing in the luxury mansion backyard where Obama Osama was living.
Pakistan makes around four billion dollars a year from drug trafficking, though opium is more popular than cannabis.
No doubt there'll be uh some Google review action to the uh advertisement uh for this.
Well, there's a there's a on the wall here, there is an advertisement for a college, a girls' college, scrawled on the compound wall.
It's the Jamiya Ashrafia Girls' College.
Bin Laden, it says here was not well known for his progressive female education policies.
Progressive female education.
It's growing dope.
We've got the J. Condit.
We have got it.
All right.
Uh question.
Unidentified reporter, soundbite number 29.
Here we go.
Question.
One follow-up question.
Are you concerned about the way in which bin Laden was killed and buried at sea might hurt the president's ability to reach out to the Muslim world as he has tried to over the last two years.
The efforts that were made to give Osama bin Laden an appropriate burial, following Islamic precepts and traditions, were considerable.
However, I would also say that uh there is nothing the the respect that was shown to him and his body uh was far greater than the respect that Osama bin Laden showed to the victims on 9-11, or any of his other victims.
Uh and that's because that's who we are.
Uh so we feel very comfortable with the fact that we uh took uh extraordinary measures to to show that respect uh to the traditions of the Islamic faith.
Unbelievable.
Just unbelievable.
And no pauses were added, no pauses were removed.
Uh just, I mean, not only the presentation, but the content there.
So there, if you've had any doubts about it, folks, we went overboard respecting the precepts and traditions.
And they feel very comfortable with the fact that they took extraordinary measures to show respect to the traditions of the Islamic faith.
You know, wait till that pothead George Soros finds out that bin Laden was growing marijuana and his uh compound.
Somebody's double checked this for me, but I think that marijuana is considered to be against Islam.
It's it's not condoned.
You don't think I'm right about that, Snertley?
Well, they they they they I know they they make money and sell poppy heroin opium and so forth, but I Don't think that, you know, alcohol, all that stuff, I don't think you're supposed to use it.
Uh oh, don't give me this for the staff business.
The staff would be all Muslims as well.
And don't give me this renal failure business because he had kidney problems in uh medical marijuana.
I mean, it's still it's I just wait till the left gets a load of this.
Okay, it is.
I told you, it's unlawful.
Marijuana and heroin opiates are unlawful in Islam.
I've got a story here.
Where is this?
This is uh this is the UK telegraph.
This is from Tomy Toby Harndon on April of 2009.
In April of 2009.
Uh we'll we'll link to this at rushlimbaught.com so you can see it.
Barack Obama to release up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse.
2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse.
Obama could not wait to release them.
*music*
It's a legitimate question.
It is did bin Laden have carbonite.
That's a legitimate national security question for us.
We've got the data, but if they're able to get the data back just because we've stolen it, you never know.
Carney just said consistent with the laws of war, bin Laden's surrender would have been accepted if feasible.
But they would not explain how it was not feasible, and these people are not part of a war, according to this regime anyway.
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