Rush Limbaugh Program - June 3, 2014, Tuesday, Hour #1

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June 3, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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June 3, 2014, Tuesday, Hour #1

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	Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
	Yes, America's Anchorman is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein sitting in, live from Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire.
	It's it's uh it's like a Taliban cave, but with uh without the deluxe luxury latrine, uh EIB wouldn't spring for that.
	Uh I'm uh I'm from the uh foreign exchange student wing of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
	It's a great program.
	Uh guys like me get to study here, and in return twelve internationally wanted war criminals get to go back to Muller Omar's boot camp for uh retraining.
	So it works out for everyone.
	Rush is out this week.
	Um who's in tomorrow, HR?
	Who's doing tomorrow's show?
	Oh.
	Eric, Eric Ericsson, and then uh Mark Belling comes in and then uh rush back Monday with with plenty to talk about.
	I think they hold the news now until he takes a day off.
	That's that's the way it seems uh that's the way it seems to work.
	Lots uh happening.
	Uh the new EPA micro regulations, which uh you'll soon be noticing.
	I think the EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy says it's going to add uh three hundred dollars to the average uh electric bill.
	So that's good news.
	Because giving money to uh to the United States government helps stimulate the economy or something.
	But taking it out of your hands, because you wouldn't spend it on the right thing.
	So three hundred dollars on the average electric bill uh from this uh n from these new EPA regulations.
	Um I like the Well no, I'm just I'm just going with the electric bill, all the other bill, everything else, because because this affects everything.
	This imposes costs on everything.
	And as I always say, uh US uh f just federal regulation sucks up ten percent of GDP.
	In other words, the entire GDP of India.
	We take basically the entire GDP of India and uh and flush it down the toilet every year, just in federal regulation alone.
	But that's no reason not to add to it.
	That ten percent of GDP sucked up by federal regulation.
	I'm fully confident we can get it up to fifteen, eighteen, twenty-three percent of uh GDP, and that will show a sign that we're good stewards of the planet.
	So we'll uh we'll talk about these new uh micro regulations in uh in the uh the the hyperregulatory tyranny under which we now labor uh later in the show.
	1800-282-2882.
	As I was saying on Friday, in a word of friendly advice to the United States of America from an illegal alien, uh I said, get serious or depart the stage of history.
	And uh over the weekend, the United States uh decided to depart the stage of history.
	Uh the that that rose garden ceremony was one of the strangest, weirdest things I've ever seen.
	And in a way, as as strange as it was, uh the somewhat muted reaction to it from the media.
	Even by uh so-called right wing conservative media strikes me as even stranger in a way.
	Uh I I would like to know.
	I would be interested to know whose idea it was to strange that to stage that event at the White House.
	I don't mean I mean just the event now.
	I'm not talking about springing five Al-Qaeda big shots for one useless loser who at best is a deserter and at worst is a traitor and a collaborator, and in either case, for the entirety of human history, uh would have been put up against the wall with a cigarette and a blindfold.
	And actually, I believe that's uh pretty much the penalty under the uh uh the the the uh code of military justice here, too.
	So uh that that's what he would be looking at uh for the entirety of human history right up to today.
	And I don't mean releasing to the world men who are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, like uh Muller Nori, one of these five guys, who's responsible for the murder of you know, well, let's put let's put aside Americans because nobody cares about dead Americans, certainly not this administration.
	Uh this Nori guy is wanted for the murder of thousands, thousands of Shiite Muslims.
	Uh, but he's he's now uh back uh to uh ramp up uh put a add a few more uh notches to his escutcheon, uh and uh he's been sprung sprung from Gitma.
	But as I said, let's put the deal to one side.
	Let's put the deserter to one side.
	Let's put these five battle hardened Taliban guys to one side, and let us just look at the president of the United States.
	People give a lot of thought as to who your head of state pals around with, who he's seen in public with.
	Uh and that that certainly, those of us at the uh conservative end of things know that this is how politicians think about this stuff all the time.
	That guy, who's that loser in Virginia?
	Uh Kucinelli.
	Uh Kuchinelli, I uh I've I volunteered by services after Michael Badd, who's suing me, uh the climate change hockey stick guy started campaigning for Clinton's bagman, uh Terry McCauliff, who's uh down there, campaigning for the Democrats.
	So being on the other side of this Michael Mann argument, I offered my services to Kutchinelli.
	And we got some bland email back saying that uh, you know, which uh decoded meant that the guy didn't want to be seen with me, and he lost.
	Uh and and uh good luck to him.
	Uh, you know, the uh the the uh Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper didn't mind being seen with me, and now they're they're now the prime ministers of Australia and Canada.
	But anyway, I'm uh I don't want to get into personal bitterness or anything.
	Uh what I'm saying is that politicians give great thought as to who they're seen in public with, and this guy in Virginia didn't want to be seed on a stage with me.
	And uh this this whose idea was it to stand the president of the United States next to these two people.
	You know, I'm just so I'm as I said, I'm not talking about the deal now.
	I'm talking about the optics, the perception, because that's all these twelve-year-old pajama boys in the White House care about.
	Uh their line is, you know, quote, perception is reality.
	This is some clever line they found in a tweet somewhere, and this guides what they do.
	They're less interested in reality than in the perception, because they think the perception determines reality.
	And the and yeah, and they and that and that's that's at some point they thought this was the kind of thing that you wanted to get the president of the United States involved in.
	That you would stand him there in the Rose Garden next to these two guys.
	Um again, it's fascinating.
	They the White House spinners have lately been leaking the Obama doctrine to the papers.
	Politico uh did a big story about this.
	And the Obama doctrine, which none of us have really managed to put into words, but the White House aides, the the spinners and consultants and the people who surround this president say the the Obama doctrine is quote, don't do stupid and I can't actually say the last word on air.
	It's four letters.
	It starts with an S, it ends in a T, and it has an H and I in the middle.
	It's the first presidential doctrine you can't say in polite company.
	Uh it's the uh it's the um Brown word, as Kathleen Turner tastefully referred to it in the film Serial Mom, I believe.
	Uh but that's the Obama doctrine.
	Don't do stupid fecal matter.
	So presumably this uh event they staged in the Rose Garden is not stupid fecal matter as they see it.
	What's the perception?
	What's the takeaway?
	What's the hashtag?
	That's all these guys care about.
	So what are we meant to perceive from that thing at the weekend?
	The president's holding a a rose garden photo op for an American deserter who cost the lives of uh many, many better men than he.
	Uh six guys who who died on patrol looking for him, but also many more uh who died just because uh they were told to go and look for this guy, and so their patterns of uh movement and behavior in this part of Afghanistan became predictable over the months after his capture, uh and a whole bunch of people were died and wounded and are injured.
	So he cost the lives of many better men than he.
	Better men whose parents will never get to go to the rose garden.
	Uh none of the parents of those guys at Benghazi uh is standing in the rose garden being hugged by hugged by the uh president.
	And this isn't that that's the other thing, all the hugging, All the hugging.
	It's not like uh, you know, Calvin Coolidge wasn't a big hugger, but this guy hugs.
	It's not a stiff, awkward affair.
	He's a hugging and a kissing Mrs. Burgdal, who's, you know, a bit of a hottie and he's all over her like he was with the Danish Prime Minister at the uh uh at the Mandela funeral until Michelle made him change seats, so he's uh but he's hugging and embracing Mr. Burgdull too.
	Uh and Mr. Burgdal looks like Mullah Omar's weedy cousin, and he addresses his son in Arabic and Pashto.
	Pashto.
	Uh when I was at school, uh we used to call it push to, but they've uh they've changed the vowels around.
	So it's Arabic and Pashto, the language of the enemy.
	And no, I'm not saying that everyone who speaks Arabic or Pashto is an enemy.
	Hamid Kazai speaks Pashto, and he's not happy about this deal.
	But nevertheless, Arabic and Pashto are what the enemy we're trading with speaks.
	So again, what perception are we meant to perceive here?
	Uh imagine it's 1945, and Harry S. Truman uh is in the Rose Garden with the parents of some POW and they're talking in Japanese, and he's a hugging and a kissing him.
	Uh what's the perception here?
	And Mr. Burgdal is speaking conversational Arabic.
	He's speaking better Arabic than most Pakistani Imams, for example.
	Uh the guys who teach the next generation of jihadists in their madrasas, because they they can just recite from the Quran uh very crudely in heavily accented uh Punjabi accents, and that's about it.
	Arabic is not the language of Afghanistan.
	Arabic is the language of the foreign guys hold up there, the language uh at best of the Saudi money men uh delivering all the money to these uh these upcountry villages, and at the worst, at the worst, it's the language of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which is the reason we went to Afghanistan for the first place.
	And uh Mr. Burgdal claims he's speaking Arabic because his son's English has deteriorated during his time in captivity, but mysteriously his Arabic has only got better, even though the chances of his jailers in Afghanistan speaking conversational Arabic are absolutely zero percent.
	So this makes no sense.
	This guy learned, this Bo Burgdal learned Arabic, according to his bunkmates, uh, from Rosetta Stone uh tapes uh while he was in camp in Afghanistan.
	So his English has deteriorated in the last five years, but he's kept up his Arabic.
	Even though, unless he's dealing, unless he's converted to Islam and or become a collaborator and traitor, and so he's not dealing with just some bozo goat herds who are serving as his captors, but he's dealing with people in the very top ranks of the Taliban.
	There would be no one for him to speak in conversational Arabic to.
	So apparently his English has completely collapsed over the last five years, but his conversational Arabic has improved.
	Um and then and just one one final thing while I'm going here.
	Because as I said, this was so weird, so bizarre to me.
	The spectacle offered in the Rose Garden.
	Mr. Burgdal's first words in the Rose Garden were not just any old Arabic, not um A El Shuba El Nahada, uh, which is um Arabic for if I remember correctly, uh what's the soup of the day.
	I may have got it wrong.
	I may have said, oh, there's it may be Arabic for there's an American platoon just behind the next hill.
	Uh I uh that's Arabic for uh what's the soup of the day.
	I I used it in Ramadi in Iraq, and it worked so well that the waiter brought me the mixed grill.
	Um but his this guy Burgdl's first words in Arabic were Bismalah al-Rahman Al-Rahim, which means in the name of Allah the most gracious and most merciful.
	And those are the words which open every chapter of the Quran except one.
	And again, I'm not saying that everyone who says those words is an enemy of the United States.
	But to use those words at the Rose Garden in the heart of the White House is to frame what is supposed to be an American homecoming.
	That's the reason for this.
	This is we don't leave anyone behind, we don't leave anyone out there.
	We go, we get the last man and we bring him home.
	That's what this is supposed to be.
	The justification for this is that it's an American homecoming.
	And this Guy uses those words to frame the American homecoming for everyone around the planet through the world view of America's enemy.
	And it was one of the weirdest to sit there and watch that thing.
	The president is is standing there honoring a deserter, embracing a guy who's uh speaking conversational Arabic.
	He sends out who else, Susan Rice, the laughably misnamed National Security Advisor, to go out on TV and hail this guy, Bergdall for quote, having served the United States with honor and distinction.
	And we're told uh when we raise questions about this, well, this is how wars end, this is how wars end.
	No, it's not.
	No, it's not.
	This is how wars you lose and you choose to lose end.
	And this ceremony, uh, this is America's longest war, America's longest unwon war, unwon war.
	And when people want to know why we were there running around the Hindu Kush for a decade and a half and got nowhere, and they don't want to look through volumes and volumes and volumes of stuff.
	All they'll need to do is look at that five minute ceremony at the Rose Garden and know exactly why we are the biggest losers on the planet.
	Mark Stein in Farush, more straight ahead.
	Mark Stein in Farush, one eight hundred two eight two eight eight two.
	Just a step back from what I was saying uh before the break.
	Let's look at it from the other guy's point of view.
	Let's put the best spin on this guy's situation that you can you can put.
	He's he's the last guy held captive by uh the enemy in this thankless war.
	And yes, it looks as if he went awall.
	Let's not call it desertion, let's not call it collaboration with the enemy.
	He went A-WOL.
	He left his camp uh without his uh kit with just, I believe, just a knife and a compass, and he set off in the direction of the enemy.
	And let's put as benign a spin on that as we can, that he's a confused, troubled young man.
	He's not really evil, he's not really committed to the overthrow of the United States uh and uh that's why he's gone over to the enemy.
	He's just a confused, troubled, weird misfit loser of a guy.
	Uh and he's in a unit that uh is problematic anyway.
	The fascinating thing, I I again I don't know why I have to read about all this stuff in uh in foreign newspapers and on foreign media.
	But the British uh there was a British television documentary uh about this particular unit, and uh and it showed that there were there were problems with leadership in that unit uh and uh that uh all kinds of rules and things went by the book and all the rest of it.
	That I don't know anything about that, as I said, it just happened to come up in a British television documentary.
	Uh so let's say he's uh hasn't had a good time in the army, it's a thankless war, and it all and the strain of it gets to him, and he just walks out of camp one night and disappears, and it's all gone horribly wrong.
	And his father, uh, who loves his son, uh, wants to do everything he can to get his son back, and he gets immersed in it in the way that you everybody knows this.
	If you lose a child, if something happens to your child, you you become uh you invest uh what else you have in your life in that cause so that you you know, mothers against drunk driving and all the rest of it.
	People uh people become uh people get become expert in the course.
	So in in the course of becoming expert in what has taken his child from his family, the father decides he's gonna learn Arabic and he's gonna reach out to his son's captors and he's gonna start doing this in the name of Allah, the most merciful stuff and all the rest of it.
	Uh and he's going to grow a big Taliban-like beard and and all the rest of it.
	And that's fine.
	That's fine.
	But we are supposed to be a serious nation.
	And you don't put a guy like that pulling that kind of stuff next to the president.
	I don't even know how it happens.
	Because most of the time, if you're gonna uh have the privilege of sharing a public event uh with a head of state, and I don't know, nobody's ever asked, as I said, nobody's ever asked me to share a stage with President Obama, uh but uh but in m and around the world, uh and I know I know this from a zillion times it's happened in Canada that if you're gonna speak, uh if you're gonna stand alongside the Queen, they want to know what you're gonna say beforehand.
	And it's the same, and it's exactly the same here.
	They would have known what he was gonna do, and they would have known what he was going to say, and they were entirely comfortable with it.
	What is the message that President Obama what are the what is the perception that we are meant to perceive from that ceremony from that moment in the Rose Garden?
	What in the mess what is the message that the world gets from what President Obama was doing in the Rose Garden that weekend?
	Hey, great to be with you.
	Don't forget, though, that you need not be discombobulated by any sinister foreign guest hosts if you go to Rush Limbaugh.com.
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	Um I've had a a couple of emails who uh who uh from uh people uh who uh seem to think they're taking it personally when I call the uh United States government biggest losers on earth and imply that our military are the biggest losers on earth.
	Uh I'm not saying that.
	I'm not saying that.
	The United States has the highest trained uh most professional soldiery on the planet.
	Uh they are ill served by their leaders in Washington, uh, which is why uh we have been for thirteen years in Afghanistan, and why we are now negotiating uh with the Taliban, the fellows we overthrew in the fall of 2001, we're now negotiating with them.
	Uh and we all understand that to one degree or another uh they will be returning to power.
	Ten minutes after the after the uh last Western soldier leaves, it will be as if we were never there.
	So I'm not making I'm not making any criticism of the American soldier.
	He's under great strain.
	They're basically like uh an uh a very prominent Australian politician went out there to visit his troops a year or two back, and he said to me, It's like the crusade it's like Crusader forts in there.
	It's like state-of-the-art crusader forts.
	They're holed up in there, and outside uh is this mad world on which the United States government uh failed to impose its will because it had no strategic goals.
	It had no coherent strategic goals in Afghanistan.
	And if I if we want to lay political blame, we can lay that on both parties, but let's let's look at it this way, in crude terms.
	Seventy percent of Afghan casualties happened uh on Obama's watch because he thought it was the good war.
	He was the one who escalated it, and for his escalation, uh the the number of troops in Afghanistan peaked, not in 2001, when uh Don Rumsfeld overthrew the Taliban with an extremely light footprint.
	Uh the the uh m maximum number of troops in Afghanistan were in two thousand and twelve under Obama's joke surge.
	Seventy percent of the casualties were on his watch.
	Half the war is on his watch.
	Uh the first the first uh whatever it is, the first seven years uh were on uh were were on uh Bush's watch.
	This last half is on his watch.
	It was his war.
	It was the good war.
	It was the war that the Democrats said, oh, we should be focusing on Afghanistan, we shouldn't we shouldn't be In Iraq.
	Well, the truth is America has wound up in the biggest picture sense losing both those wars, losing both those wars.
	And that's not a criticism of anybody out there serving on the ground.
	That is simply a fact.
	And to put it in Obama terms, that is the perception of the planet.
	And it is a perception underlined when you have events like that at the Rose Garden where the father of uh uh uh the the sub the the father is standing there next to Obama uh uh praising Anna.
	And I want to go again, I want to go back to just how to understand the Afghan war in two simple snapshots, what's happened.
	Uh the fur th as I said, this guy Bergdoll is like a lot of young men.
	He's a confused young man, he's got a big hole somewhere inside him where his sense of identity once is.
	Uh and that's like a lot of if you've if you've had to l endure as many lousy third rate graduation speeches of as I've had to sit through in the last few days and as I'm going to be enduring for the rest of the week, you'll be aware that there's a lot of uh there's a lot of uh uh young Americans who feel that way.
	That they're not taught uh about love of country.
	They're not taught to feel pride in America.
	Uh and in and in the absence of conventional patriotism, they go looking for something else.
	And if you're lucky, if you're lucky, uh they'll just take up, you know, gay marriage or transgendered bathrooms or climate change or something relatively peripheral, uh, and that will become their big cause.
	But sometimes when you've got a big hole where your identity is, you you go looking for something uh you you you go looking to fill up that hole with something bigger than climate change or bigger than transgendered bathrooms.
	Uh and the first guy to do this in the Afghan war was a fellow called no one remembers him anymore, but he was like fame, he was the most famous American in town for a few days.
	John Walker Lind, uh back in the fall of 2001.
	And uh he and he um uh he was captured at a prison called Kalae Jangi Prison.
	Uh and this guy was uh born, he came from uh the the bastion of well-heeled dopey progressivism uh in uh Marin County, California, just now north of San Francisco.
	Uh the average uh house price uh back then uh when he was captured, I think was just shy of a million dollars.
	Um his i again he was he was a guy who had a big hole where his sense of identity was.
	His mother converted to Buddhism uh and the children were taught uh Native American spirituality, and uh John was sent to a quote alternative high school uh because he's in the Bay Area where all the high schools are alternative.
	The problem uh for for parents of school children in the Bay Area is trying to find any alternative to the alternative.
	Uh the the set texts at his high school included the uh the autobiography of Malcolm X and and uh John Walker Lind liked it so much that he decided to convert to Islam and changed his name to Suleiman.
	Uh and his parents were annoyed about this, not because they didn't like the name Suleiman or they were upset about him converting to Islam, but they'd called him John because they'd named him after their own hero, John Lennon.
	Uh so he agreed to let them uh continue calling him John, and uh they let him study at uh at the Mill Valley uh Islamic Center.
	And then they decided to let him spend a year in Yemen on the next stage of his spiritual odyssey.
	Uh he he went out looking for himself.
	He went out searching for himself.
	He was trying to find himself.
	And in the course of trying to find himself, he finds the Taliban, and he winds up uh in a battle at this prison in Afghanistan uh where uh only eighty-five people came out of uh it alive, a CIA special ops guy, Mike Spann.
	Again, nobody w nobody remembers this guy.
	Nobody remembers him.
	He was killed there, he was killed there.
	And uh John Walker Lind was on the side that killed Mike Spann, on the side that killed Americans.
	But everyone wants to be understand oh, these are just confused young people.
	These are just confused young people.
	And we can all understand, young people are very confused.
	Young they didn't used to be so confused.
	Tomorrow we're marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day, when men the same age as John Walker Lind uh and Bo Bergdall uh in the churning seas of uh the the uh off the coast of Normandy uh scrambled out of those uh uh out of those lamb landing craft and uh and and pounded up the beach under heavy German fire.
	Uh and they weren't worried about trying to find him find themselves.
	And they didn't have a big hole uh where their sense of identity was.
	But now we have all these confused young guys and uh and they've all got a big hole where their sense of identity is.
	And the difference is, and this is what this is why this is what thirteen years in the Hindu Kush and the Afghan war, bookended by the first American loser, John Walker Lind.
	Say what you like about him, but he was actually on the other side.
	And when he came back, he was tried and convicted and jailed when he was captured.
	Uh this guy, Bo Bergdoll, another confused American loser, he's actually on our side, and the president throws a big ceremony for him at the Rose Garden in which he embraces his father who stands there gibbering in Arabic and praising Allah in Arabic, and Susan Rice goes on TV and says he served with honor and dignity, and in fact he was captured on the battlefield, which is completely fine.
	I mean, I don't know why they don't just hang a big put a big neon sign on Susan Rice's head saying uh whatever this woman is saying, generally speaking, start with the opposite of it and work your way back from there.
	Uh and that is that is the bookends of the Afghan war.
	America's longest war, longest unwon war.
	The first loser uh was at least out there fighting for the Taliban.
	This second loser, confused loser, anti-American loser, man who thinks America is horrible and disgusting.
	Uh he's on our side and he's honored with a ceremony uh at the uh at the White House.
	And I believe, is this correct, HR, that they've actually just um uh they've they've cancelled his hometown, which I believe is the the same town Demi Moore lives in.
	Uh the the the his hometown in Idaho has actually now cancelled.
	They were gonna have a big ticker tape parade for him down Main Street.
	Uh but I understand they're not gonna have the ticker tape parade.
	They've uh they've they've they're seeing now if they can get a refund on all the ticket tape.
	Uh but that is the story, these two bookends of these two American losers.
	Mark Stein in for Rush will take your call straight ahead.
	Mark Stein in Farush.
	Uh I I talked about these uh twelve-year-old pajama boys writing this stuff at the White House, not even caring anymore, by the way, about whether it makes sense.
	The the the president said uh this is this is what happens at the end of wars.
	That was true for George Washington, that was true for Abraham Lincoln, that was true for FDR.
	Uh and the fascinating thing about that is none of those guys uh were uh president at the time the war ended.
	The um the FDR uh died uh and was succeeded by Harry Truman, uh who was the one who wound up having to uh close out the Second World War.
	But nobody cares.
	So FDR didn't have to confront the end, but nobody even cares about elementary uh, what does it matter?
	So what?
	Uh name some presidents people have heard of, you know.
	That's enough.
	That's close enough.
	Let's go to Chris in Vermont.
	Uh Chris, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Mark, it's a pleasure to speak with you.
	Um Hey, just just Chris, just before which which bit of Vermont are you in?
	You're just over the river from me or are you down in Sam Benington?
	I'm actually in a seport.
	Oh, right.
	So you you're down the Connecticut uh River Valley uh straight down.
	I'll uh I'll uh I'll make a point of waving as I go through.
	Hey, uh good to good to have you with us.
	What's on your mind today?
	Well, uh after your monologue, I'm I'm kind of scared to come on, but I I have a uh story um I was in the military, I served in Ramadi, where you've been.
	Um I was a cavalry scout there.
	Um so I was well with the people pretty much every day.
	We went out with you know, six man teams and hung out with the people, the Bedouins, and scouted around.
	And um I became quite enamored with the Iraqi people.
	Um it got to the point where every day we came back to the farm, I had a harder, harder time wanting to go through the gates.
	I really enjoyed being with them.
	They touched a place in me that I think Americans are missing.
	They're more like the pioneer Americans.
	They're more like the old-school Americans.
	Americans are very tough.
	They're hardworking.
	We throw out these words, Taliban, Al-Qaeda.
	They're out there, but the majority of the time you're out in the field, you're not around those people.
	You're around the common man.
	They're very much like the older Americans were.
	long story short I actually ended my military career I I came back to Vermont and I joined a a a very an amazing unit here in Vermont it's a specialized infantry unit glorious men I'm not saying I I love them they're they're my brother though they were we got orders to go to Afghanistan and I I actually went overseas before before we got deployed and I to these certain regions and I came back and I quit.
	I couldn't do it.
	I knew if I went back there on another mission I would be this guy.
	This story hit me so hard in my heart and I've been living with this for seven years.
	But but what's just so you're you're talking about really when you say you didn't want to go back inside the gates which is what uh this Australian politician I reference uh called the Crusader Fort mentality.
	Right.
	That that you're you're holed up there and you've got your state of the art first world and you've got uh your Dunkin'uts and all the re the full the the this is the most well supported uh military on the planet.
	So it's got everything in there inside that fort.
	You can live in an American bubble but you're saying that that you thought actually there shouldn't have been a bubble and there should have been more uh kind of interchange with the actual people uh whose country uh you're in the middle of occupying exactly I mean you mentioned Ramadi that if you've ever been to the Ford operating base in Ramadi we didn't have we didn't have a Duncan donuts.
	We were well supplied I mean it was amazing.
	It was a beautiful place.
	But it...
	No, no, I'll tell you just quickly, but I'll tell you something.
	I fell for you guys when I ran into American troops on that road through the western desert in Iraq.
	And I actually much better when I ran into British troops down in southern Iraq.
	You guys, in those first months after the fall of Saddam, that was not a lavishly funded crusader fort that you guys had going there.
	we were well supplied it was in the you know it was a beautiful place to come back I mean no not say beautiful we had everything we needed but it it's also a distraction from what's going on.
	We have all these amenities you go back to the you go back to the FOB and you get on your halo you play PlayStation on your halo and you're on the computer and you're I would go to the to the translators room and learn Arabic.
	I lived with them I wanted to know where are we what are we doing?
	Where are you from who are you?
	What how are you connected to this the translators were my greatest friends because we would just talk day and night about the situation here.
	And you know the only visitors we had there I wish I would have saw you we had you know we had Ali North and we had the guy Taibo.
	Those were the only people that would go there and I wanted to speak to Ali North so much so badly but I saw him in there and I was with my Iraqi translators and you know I don't know and there's certain things that I heard about what happened during that time period and I I couldn't walk up to him and shake his hand.
	I couldn't do it.
	You know they well what's what's what's interesting Chris about the way you put this there's two things you you don't spend you you can do the you you can go in topple somebody you can take uh the the kind of rubble doesn't cause trouble mentality.
	You can go in you can blow up the presidential palace and string the guy up who's at the head of the regime like uh Saddam Hussein or or Mullah Omar or all the rest of it.
	But you don't spend you can't spend uh thirteen years in a country thirteen years in a country unless you're gonna be there for some purpose and and military occupation alone isn't gonna do it.
	And you're right.
	I don't know whether it's possible uh the the the British were in Afghanistan for a century on and off and uh took the view that you could not actually turn these people like you could do with Indians into loyal uh subjects of the King Emperor that there were certain limitations imposed on them.
	But then you don't spend thirteen hours and the solution by the way is not is not to sour on your men and uh go over to the other side like this guy Bergdall did.
	Uh, the solution is for people to pressure, pressure the guys in Washington for some real strategy and will, which has been missing in Afghanistan all along.
	Back in a moment.
	Mark Stein, in for us on the EIB network.
	We have been talking about uh one of the most bizarre, bizarre photo ops ever held at the Rose Garden, held to honor an American deserter.
	Uh, I mentioned earlier that I'd heard they'd uh canceled the ticker tape parade, and that apparently is true.

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