We are on the left coast today here in Southern California at our satellite studios in Los Angeles.
As Johnny Donovan, so staff announcer wise says.
Great to have you here.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
So our first caller of the day was Ralph.
Uh really upset.
He said he remembered me, thought it was me, or Fox, saying that when Obama was campaigning or first immaculated into orifice, that he thought veterans, since they volunteer for service, should also pay their own health care.
And Ralph sounded like a smart guy.
I didn't reject it at hand, and I didn't remember that at all.
So we immediately began extensive research.
Ralph was right.
Obama pushed for soldiers to have to pay for tri-care.
Obama wanted to get rid of it.
And we had it at Rush Limbaugh.com on March 17th, at least.
But the original story came from military.com.
Senators slam plan for wounded vets to use private insurance.
The dateline here, CNN March 12th, 2009.
So this is not during the campaign.
This is while Obama has around the time of the stimulus, actually.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama regime is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.
Now, I just have to interject here.
If I forgot that I expect that most everybody else did, except the veterans who remembered hearing it and were affected by it, or thought they might be affected by it.
But I it's impossible to keep it.
You can't remember every assault on the traditions and institutions this country that this regime has made.
That's why Rush Limbaugh.com is so valuable.
I mean, what it is Rushlimbaugh.com, our website is a veritable encyclopedia chronicling the seminal events in this country combined with expert analysis and commentary by me.
It is a gold mine.
And it's a subscriber-based website, obviously, but we also have a free side at Rushlimbaugh.com, which features a lot of information itself.
But I mean, this is once again a reminder, if I don't mind saying so.
I mean, I've if I don't, who will?
It really, how worthwhile and valuable chronicling what happens every day on this program has been.
And that's what Rush Limbaugh.com is.
So again, it was a CNN story.
March 12, 2009, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the regime is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance, meaning their own.
Lawmakers said they would reject a proposal to make veterans pay for treatment of war wounds with private insurance.
Asked about the proposal, Shinseckey said that it was under consideration.
A final decision has not been made yet.
And we in fact did talk about this.
The headline at Rush Limbaugh.com is outrage.
Obama plans to charge wounded veterans for treatment.
March 17, 2009, the next story is an absolute shocker.
I'm reading from the website, transcript from this program.
Next story is an absolute shocker.
Actually, it's a two-parter, and it's all over the place.
McClatchy, AP, veterans' groups have even put out a press release.
The Obama administration considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service related injuries.
The plan would be an about face on what veterans believe is a longstanding pledge to pay for health care costs that result from their service.
But in a White House meeting on Monday, veterans' groups apparently failed to persuade Obama to take the plan off the table.
So Ralph was right.
Now his point was I don't care what Obama said yesterday.
I don't believe him.
I don't believe he was mad.
I don't believe he cares.
I don't believe he wants to get to the bottom of it, because Obama wants veterans to be paying for their own health care insurance and treatment on their own.
And it turns out Ralph was right.
And on the same day, March 17th of 2009, on the same day, I had a story about how Michelle Bell Obama went to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to begin her mission as the guardian of the military and their families, which she and Dr. Jill Biden have campaigned on ever since.
And we see how far their concerns actually went.
Now note the involvement here of Shinnsecki and CNN.
Shinn Seckey, he is at the root of all of this.
CNN had a story.
Senator's slam plan for wounded vets to use private insurance.
And again, I just want to share this with you.
It was March 12th, 2009.
CNN, Veterans Affairs Secretary, Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday, the regime is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment.
How many of you remember this?
Did you remember this, Snertley?
I did not remember this.
And we made a big deal of it back on March 17, 2009.
Now the stimulus was also going on at the same time.
And Obama was out saying, you know, rotten things about John Deere or maybe not John Deere, caterpillar, one of the two, until they fell in line on the uh on the stimulus.
And it's just, it's impossible without the documentation at Rushlimbaugh.com to remember every assault that this regime has proposed.
Now it is.
It's a new assault every day.
So Ralph, our first caller, it turns out has a really great point.
If if Shin, and by the way, by the way, here we go again.
But Rush but Rush, it was Shinseki.
Obama's name's not in the story.
The Obama administration.
Since when do presidents never get blamed for what goes on in their own administration?
This is the first time I can ever recall that happening.
When Alberto Gonzalez wanted to do anything, it was always Bush wanted to do something.
Whenever any Rumsfeld, it was Bush.
When Cheney wanted to do it, it was Cheney and Bush.
Bush was linked to everything that happened in his administration.
Obama is linked to nothing.
Obama is tied to literally not.
I'm talking about in the eyes of low information voters.
I know the media doesn't tie him to it.
But I mean, for crying out loud, whether whether the media does or not, when did it happen that the people of the country actually believe that the smartest president we've ever elected, the most competent?
This was the Bill of Goods we were sold, the great uniter.
Uh the Messiah, all his great stuff.
How does that guy end up being totally ignorant in the eyes of the public in a positive way?
How does that happen?
We have to trust the polling data is accurate on this.
You go nuts telling yourself every poll is a lie or an exaggeration or untrue to one degree or another.
So you can't approach it from that standpoint.
The polls are the polls, and people are going to believe them anyway.
But even without the polls and even without the media.
Now we've got CBS touting this VA poll today that they don't blame Obama at all.
For the wait lists and for the 40 deaths, they're blaming Shinseki.
I mean, how many people even heard of Shinnseckey before this week?
I mean, remember Shinnsecki when John Kerry was ballyhooing him and citing him as the uniformed opponent to the Bush war in Iraq, but that was many, many moons ago.
So it is a it's a real curiosity.
And it's one of these things, it's another item that makes people wonder what the hell is happening to the people of this country.
Or what is it?
Maybe this is more accurate.
What is it about Obama that for some reason people just do not link him to anything that happens other than the good?
Now I know I've had my own theories.
Well, Rush, I've I've told you it all boils down to intentions and he cares, and people think he wants to help people and do the right thing and so forth.
And I think there's certainly an element of truth in that.
Now, I think this applies here.
Let me tip tip.
Yeah, this is last night on uh on Greta's show on Fox.
She's talking with Kirsten Powers, the Fox contributor analyst and so forth, also a columnist at USA Today, and they're talking about Obama's remarks and the VA scandal, about how he didn't know.
And he is mad as hell.
He's not going to stand for it, not gonna tolerate it.
And Van Susterin says, how is the president handling this, Kirsten?
I can't figure out what would motivate them to wait so long to talk about it, especially if you consider the fact, as the president said today, that this has been sort of a signature issue for him and his wife, right?
I mean, this has been something that they have talked about a lot and that they have said is very important to them.
So why wouldn't you be out the next day?
And why wouldn't you just be turning over tables wherever you could, trying to get as much information as you possibly can?
I'd love to know if anyone has a theory on why he reacts the way that he reacts, because it's so strange and it's so like inhuman.
Well, I've got the theory.
Somebody knows Kirsten Powers, give her a call.
She's a smart woman.
And she has uh uh been very correct and supportive of me over two or three different uh events.
So that she needs to have the limbaugh theorem explained to her.
She's basically wondering what would cause this guy.
I mean, see, she knows Michelle Obama made military families and wives her first signature issue, just reviewed that.
We also now, you know, Obama has also, every president does try, particularly Democrat presidents, they really try to establish in the eyes of the public they love the military and they respect the soldiers.
Because the conventional wisdom is that Democrats really don't care about all that, really don't like the military.
So they go overboard trying to establish that connection.
Obama did.
But while Michelle is out at Fort Bragg with Jill Biden and beginning this whole process of making it look like military families or their champions are really going to get services for them and take care of them, they make the ultimate sacrifice.
And Obama's on the same day, the same time Obama's out saying that, you know what, they volunteer, I think they ought to pay for their own war wounds.
They ought to pay for the health care and their own insurance for their own injuries, since they're volunteers.
Tri-Care.
He wanted to get rid of it.
He wanted soldiers to assume that responsibility, that financial responsibility.
And people obviously have forgotten that.
So she's wondering, how can he, since he's made the veterans, he made a big deal of it in the campaign?
She's right, yet he made a he continues to make a big deal of it left and right.
How in the world can he go out there yesterday and act like he didn't know any of this was going on?
And the answer is the limbaugh theorem.
The limbaugh theorem seeks to explain how Obama escapes accountability for anything, the economy, the disaster here at the VA, virtually anything, the unemployment mess.
How is it that Obama isn't tied to any of it?
The limbaugh theorem seeks to explain it and it's very simple.
The president never or seldom actually allows himself to appear as in charge.
He leaves it for people to assume that he is because he's president, but the pictures they see are of Obama campaigning all the time.
He is always, whatever the issue, be it the deficit, be it the next budget, be it his next jobs council, be it his next whatever.
He's got people convinced he really cares about.
He leaves Washington and goes out and does campaign style appearances.
And while he's in the middle of these appearances, it makes it look like he makes it look like he's not of Washington, that everything happening there is something he's trying to stop.
Everything going on, he's opposed to it too.
He's mad at what's going on.
He's mad at the unemployment numbers, and he's gonna get to the bottom of it.
And he's mad that the economy's not growing, and he's gonna get the he's gonna find out who's to blame for it.
He's gonna fix whatever Bush screwed up, whatever the issue is, he assembles either a group of supporters or college students and and basically creates a campaign appearance in which he acts as ticked off as everybody else is.
The thing is that people don't put together is what is happening is the direct result of his own policies being implemented.
Unemployment, whatever it is, jobs, the economy, Obamacare, it's all his.
Everything happening in this country is the result of Obama policy being implemented via legislation or executive order.
But when he's on the campaign trail, he's outside Washington.
He appears like a candidate.
Speaking in favor of an issue, not so much his reelection, of course, he's not campaigning for office, he's campaigning for issue after issue.
And he's he makes himself look like he's not of Washington.
Therefore, he's not governing.
He's not responsible.
All that stuff going on in Washington has him mad too.
And he wants people out there to support him and help him stop basically has convinced people that he is opposed to everything he's actually done.
That's the trick.
And the limbaugh theorem explains it.
So yesterday, when the excrement is hitting the fan on the VA, and there are 40 deaths, and there are fake secret waiting lists.
What do you do?
You go on television, act like you knew nothing about it, and you are livid, and you are fit to be tied.
You just found out about this and you can't believe it, and you're gonna get to the bottom of it, you're gonna convene a new investigation, and heads are gonna roll, and blah, blah, blah, and that's it.
Then nothing ever really happens because mission has been accomplished.
And the mission is always appear removed and distant from what's happening.
Never ever appear to be part of it.
Never ever appear to be actually governing so that what occurs appears to be linked to your governance.
Take a look.
I mean, if you've noticed other people talking about how Obama seems to always be in a constant campaign.
He learned this from Clinton, by the way.
Clinton did the same thing.
I got to take a break here, folks, but somebody uh get this newest to Kirsten Powers, because this is the answer to her question.
Amber back, and let's grab uh the phones again quickly.
Um there's much more to say about all this, but I want to get some phones in.
People have been waiting patiently.
It's Betty in Indianapolis.
Hi, Betty, thank you for waiting.
Great to have you on the program.
Thank you, Rush.
Um, I wanted to tell you that my mother had uh surgery when she was 95.
Uh it was to repair a crushed vertebra.
Um, it was a very successful surgery that uh gave her two more years of uh mobility and quality of life, and nobody, not the doctor, not the insurance company, no one suggested that she was too old and that it wasn't worth spending the resources on her.
Now here I am in my late 60s.
I've never really needed health care.
And I've always looked forward to an old age like my parents, but I won't have the health care that my parents have, and I have a sense of dread about it.
And my parents lived in a small town in Indiana, and they were always able to get the care they needed, and they didn't have to wait.
But unfortunately, that's not my future, and I'm pretty sick about it.
And what do you think the reason is?
Do you think is it's because of Obamacare and rationing, or is it that it's so expensive you can't afford it yourself, therefore you're dependent on third parties to pay it?
Is it you think it's policy that's driving us this?
What what what is the reason?
Why do you think this is going to manifest itself this way with you?
Because of Obamacare, because it our current medical structure is being destroyed.
And your mother was what year was it, if you said I missed.
What year was it that your mother was 95?
And let me see.
That would have been about um she died four years ago.
It's a long time ago, right?
Eight or nine years ago, eight or nine years ago.
Yeah, pre-Obama.
Yeah.
Pre-Obamacare.
And I think I think yours is a fear that a lot of people have.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And also, Rush, I wanted to say that I heard you I heard your interview with your grandfather who was a hundred years old.
And I was so touched by him and by your love and respect for him.
And I know that no one in your family uh thought that he was too old to take care of.
I know that you all did everything.
No way.
Absolutely that that's exactly it's exactly right.
There was there was no way that that wasn't gonna happen.
Now there is there there's one other uh explanation for the VA mess only coming to light recently.
And it may be a bit of a stretch because Obama may and Shinsecky may not have this degree of control over it because this was affecting a whole lot of people, but it still has big possibilities here.
Obama comes out yesterday, says, I didn't know anything about this.
I'm livid.
I'm not gonna tolerate this.
I've told Shinsei, you investigate, and you find out.
We're not gonna have this.
We're not gonna have 40 people dying, we're not gonna have all these fake wait lists, we're not gonna have it, you fix it.
Why not come out and do this last year?
Why not find out about it, get mad about it, and make a big deal of it earlier?
And the answer, sad to say, plausible deniability.
The only way that such a determined ignorance on the part of Obama makes any sense is if he didn't want to know.
And it's entirely possible.
You know, presidents love plausible deniability.
Particularly when there's a scandal involved.
You keep my fingerprints off this.
There aren't gonna be smoking gun memos, IRS, whatever it is, I don't want to know.
Even though see, he doesn't have to, he doesn't have to direct anybody to do anything.
He's got fellow travelers in all these key slots who are gonna do what he wants done without.
You think Eric Holder needs instructions from Obama on what to know.
They're cut from the same cloth.
Lois learner IRS, I think she didn't need a memo instructing her what to do to screw the Tea Party.
She's gonna do it on her own.
All she needs to know is that the commander-in-chief's gonna sign off on it.
All she needs to know is that she's gonna be covered.
All she needs to know is that she's pleasing the boss.
All she needs to know is this is what the boss wants done.
But she doesn't get the smoking gun memo, it ain't gonna be one.
Same thing here with this VA business.
But there's another reason why Obama would not want the VA problems to come out in the media or anywhere else.
In his entire first term, Obama's trying to sell us on Obamacare.
You know, he's the first two years, he's desperately trying to get this thing signed and passed, passed and signed into law.
And he can't let, while all that's going on, a scandal at the VA Which illustrates how poorly the government is running the health care system for veterans come out.
If while he's making this big push to get Obamacare signed into law, passed over there in the Senate and the House, he making this big move to get he can't allow something like what's gone under the VA to become known.
That would undercut the entire Obamacare effort.
So now that Obamacare is passed, signed into law, and is in the process of being implemented.
Okay, now we'll take the lid off the VA and let things happen as they normally do, and lo and behold, the way we'll deal with it is I'll act like I didn't know.
Plausible deniability, I'll act like I'm mad, and I'll get to the bottom of it, and everybody will love me because they will think that I care.
And who knows, they might even think that people didn't tell me.
Might even feel sorry for me that I'm trying to do the best for everybody here, and something's gone wrong, and I'm the CEO, and they just didn't tell me.
Rely on that.
Anything's possible.
Perry in Cranberry, New Jersey, thank you for calling.
It's great to have you with us.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
This is Cranberry, New Jersey, D-U-R-Y.
Our American Post Office, our U.S. Post Office here.
It's called the Todd Beamer Post Office.
Remember him?
Oh, yeah, Todd Beamer, yeah, let it roll.
Okay, he brought it down.
So the reason why Americans tend to give uh President Obama the benefit of the doubt is because he got the bad guy.
He got uh Osama bin Laden.
Now you used the word before ignorance.
Of course, the root word of ignorance is ignore.
Americans aren't going to ignore the fact that President Obama was not the one that sent us in Iraq for no reason.
And then furthermore, me and my wife pay $16,000 a year for health insurance.
I'm a proud American, Rush.
I don't want it for free.
I understand that the free market system.
I can afford maybe seven, five, but sixteen thousand, I'm being victimized.
And I don't like it.
And at least President Obama pretends or says that he's concerned about the fact that I'm being victimized.
I don't want the government to run the health care system, but I don't want to be victimized.
Now you are explaining to me how an Obama supporter would look at this or how you look at it.
How I look at it, Rush, I'm paying the $1,600 a month.
And it's it's it's a major um health insurance company.
Okay, are you that are you telling me that so you're a seminar caller?
You you're you're telling you think that Obama is getting a pass because he got bin Laden and because he's fighting the insurance companies, they're the bad guys, they're the reason you're paying 16 grand, and Obama is doing battle with them.
Rush in Cranberry, we could smell the buildings burning.
I can you can anybody can go on YouTube and bring up President uh Bush saying that he didn't even care where Osama bin Laden was.
These things were important to Americans.
That's why we're patriots.
My father, my father stormed the beaches of Okinawa.
You don't just ignore the one who who attack you.
Okay, so I got it.
I got it.
You have been very helpful.
You've been very helpful.
I would in I would in no way ever assume an intelligent person thinks the way you do.
But I have had to deal with it here in this call.
Because what you're telling me is that Obama's getting a pass on all this because he didn't send us into Iraq.
Bush did.
And he got bin Laden.
And Bush didn't even care about bin Laden.
He didn't care where bin Laden was.
And now you're paying $16,000 a year for health insurance, and by God, Obama's not happy about it.
And he knows you're being victimized by the evil insurance companies, and so Obama, he's getting your vote.
He's getting your support because he's on your side.
This is the limbaugh theorem on display.
Right here.
Bush did it.
And believe me, do you know that in certain polls on the economy, Bush is still being blamed more than Obama.
It's closing.
The gap is like 5149 right now.
But many people still more blame Bush for this economy after six years of Obama than they blame Obama.
This guy, Bush didn't care about bin Laden.
He sent us into a war that we didn't need to go to.
He didn't want to get bin Laden.
He didn't care.
He didn't try the all boils down to this, doesn't it?
He didn't care.
He didn't care where Obama was, or Bin Laden.
He didn't care about getting him.
He didn't care about us.
He didn't care what it was costing me to live.
He didn't care what my health insurance was.
Obama does.
Obama doesn't want me to be a victim of America.
And so Obama's, and there you go.
Limbaugh theorem on displays exactly how it works.
Obama didn't send us into a war, and Bush didn't want to get bin Laden.
Obama got bin Laden, got us out of the war nobody wanted, and cares that the insurance companies are victimizing people.
This is probably well, no, it's it's probably pretty representative of the way the Northeastern liberals look at all this.
Well, some of it's got to be widespread.
I know that 5149 still blaming Bush for the economy is not just the Northeast.
It's narrowing.
Here, try this.
I I alluded to this earlier.
The Democrats, I got it right here in the New York Times.
Democrats seek issues to lure midterm votes after races booy GOP.
With Tuesday's primaries reinforcing the strength of the Republican establishment.
By the way, that's another thing.
If I have time, I might get the drive-by's are reveling here in reporting a death of the Tea Party.
That's an ancillary thing from this story.
Maybe we'll circle back to it.
With Tuesday's primaries reinforcing the strength of the Republican establishment, House Democrats are reassessing their electoral strategy based on a major internal research project that shows their candidates stand a better chance when they portray Republicans as uncaring toward the working class, while they continue to back policies favoring the wealthy in corporate America.
Democrats could build on this distrust, the research showed by emphasizing support for policies like equal pay for women and men, ensuring that corporations pay a fair share of taxes and increase job opportunities.
The U.S. so asternly in answer your question is it widespread?
Apparently so.
And I take you back to the exit poll from the 2012 Romney Obama race, where cares about people like me, exit poll question, Obama 181 to 19.
What this research project, this so-called internal research project of Democrats is showing is that there's still a wide perception that Republicans don't care about people, particularly the middle class.
But the Democrats do.
And the evidence that the Democrats care, A, they care.
B, they want equality.
They want equal pay for men and women, and they want corporations to really get sucked.
And it would dovetail with what our caller from Cranberry, New Jersey said.
He just loves the fact that Obama took it to the insurance.
The fact that Obama is ripping the insurance company.
Wait till he finds out Obama's gonna bail him out.
I wonder if that'll make him mad.
We haven't talked about that, but the stories in the stack.
Obama's gonna bail out the insurance companies for all the money they are losing because his website doesn't work, because Obamacare isn't working, and because there's no way for the insurance companies to get paid even from people who've signed up.
Obama needs the insurance companies to stay in business a little longer.
Because as the VA shows, the government's not ready to run health care yet.
They can't even get their website up and running yet.
People that have signed up for Obamacare and think they've paid for it, you remember those stories, the insurance companies have no record of it.
And yet they've got to provide payment for people when they go get their health care.
Obama's going to bail out the insurance companies because his own stupid website screwed up.
Now, wait till guys like our last caller from Cranberry, New Jersey, find out that the hated and despised insurance companies, if they praise Obama for kicking their ass, you're going to get bailed out by the guy kicking their ass.
That's going to be fun when they hear that.
But they may not hear it.
I mean, the news sources they use may not report that.
I have it in the stack here.
But I'm telling it all seems to come down to this.
Republicans don't care and Democrats do.
And it's over things that you and I think practically ridiculous.
Equal pay for men and women is a non-issue.
Not a non-issue because it's a problem, but because it no longer is.
Women are running more and more things every day.
The idea that women are underpaid is uh is something that's been dealt with.
Uh yet doesn't matter what people know.
Just pound them with the idea that we're for equality and for war on women.
We're amazed that works, snarkly, but it does with a significant percentage of the voting population.
Go figure.
The insurance industry story basically is that the insurance companies, some of them, pretty much all of them, have announced or are preparing to announce higher premiums before the midterm elections.
Folks, it is a it's a real serious problem.
The Obamacare website remains a de facto non-entity.
People have signed up.
There is no evidence that they've signed up, and people the insurance company is not being paid anywhere near by the number of people who have enrolled, which is a very small number when compared to the population anyway.
And yet the insurance companies still have to provide payment, and they, like anything else, they're going to raise their premiums to cover people in not paying them.
And Obama doesn't want that.
They start announcing premium increases before the elections.
Obama can't run the risk that you know that'll be blamed on Obamacare.
He's going to bail them out.
LA Times even has a story.
Stakes are high for Obama and health care law.
Insurers around the country have started to file proposed 2015 premiums.
New premiums next year announced this year.
Obamacare remains a top campaign issue.
Big premium increases in states with tightly contested races could prove politically disastrous for Democrats, so the only solution for Obama is to bail them out.
Cover their losses, because his website is not transferring payments.
He can't afford for them to go out of business yet.
That's, you know, five or six years down the road, but not now.
He needs them now, especially with this VA scandal going.
Now, here, listen to this.
This is Pelosi at her weekly press briefing talking about the Benghazi thing and uh a number of things.
But the point, well, this this is self-explanatory.
I'll analyze it after you hear it.
Maybe when we go into war, we should be thinking about its consequences and its ramifications.
You would think that would be a given.
But maybe it wasn't.
And so we go into a war in Iraq, uh going to Afghanistan, leave Afghanistan for Iraq with unfinished business in Afghanistan ten years later.
We have all of these additional veterans in the past five years, two million more veterans needing Benefits from the VA.
That's a huge, huge increase.
Okay, so this is a harbinger.
This is a little lead advance of what the Democrats' plan is.
The VA scandal.
And the I guarantee you that the Obama investigation, this is why he called for it, not to get to the bottom of it, but to fake an answer.
Obama's investigation, Shinseki and what's going on in the VA is going to be laid off on Bush for his two unnecessary wars.
And they were unnecessary because Obama got Osama without a war.
Didn't need a war.
So Bush wasted two wars.
We got all these veterans and all these wounded and all these injured, and it's all Bush's fault.
There's nothing to do with Obama and nothing to do with the way he's running a VA because nobody could be running the VA well enough to absorb all of these unnecessary wounded soldiers because Bush started two wars we didn't need.
And if you don't think that's going to resonate in New Jersey and New York and California, you have another thing coming.
No, no, it doesn't matter that the Democrats wanted to go to Afghanistan.
It doesn't matter that they said that was the legitimate war.
It doesn't matter that Obama campaigned on the need to win the war in Afghanistan.