All Episodes
Previous Next
June 19, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:49
June 19, 2014, Thursday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Now, it's not a press conference, is it?
It's just a statement.
Obama, at 12.30, usually they're in the middle of it.
It's not a press conference, right?
Yeah, just a statement.
No, it's okay, cool.
Yeah, because it's going to determine here the order in which I do things.
I got a whole bunch of stuff on this IRS, Ms. Lois Lerner, and then Cheney's on Fox last night.
And it's going to be a typically loaded day, folks.
Just absolutely great to be here.
Can't wait every morning.
It's getting to the point now.
I can't wait to go to bed every night so that the morning arrives even sooner.
So I can start getting ready for each busy broadcast day.
Great to have you.
As I said, telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I guess so the pre-pub on the statement at 12.30 today, a mere 23.
Of course, he's never on time, but he'll wait till after our commercial break is over.
You wait.
This won't happen before 1233.
That's my guess.
Pretty educated guess.
Anyway, the pre-pub on this is that the president may send special forces into Iraq.
Now, I think if he's going to do this, it ought to be a full-blown press conference.
I mean, if he's the guy that they've always advertised to us, it should be a full-grown, full-blown press conference.
But it isn't going to be.
I think the president, let me just give you a little prediction.
What I think this statement is going to attempt to accomplish.
Whether, you know, forget whether there's an announcement about special forces or not, there's going to be an objective or two that the president wants to leave with everybody here, impressions.
And of course, number one will be that it's Bush and Cheney's fault.
And ever since Cheney's op-ed, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the Lyft has gone bat excrement out there.
They are just, in fact, in some places, sports columnists have been asked to write columns in the news section about what a rotten guy Cheney is and about what a liar Cheney is, and how this is all Cheney's fault and Bush's fault.
And poor Obama, all he did was inherit this, and he's saddled with an unwinnable, untenable situation, and it's those guys' fault.
This is the meme, the narrative, the theme.
So since that's already been established by the state-controlled media, it'd be quite natural for Obama to glom onto it.
A, it's Bush's fault.
And Cheney's, may not mention Cheney or Bush by name, wouldn't have to.
Predecessors, any number of ways to do it without mentioning their names.
But he might if he really wants to jazz up his base.
And not that he needs any cover from the media, but he could do this whether the media was already laying the groundwork for him or not.
But since they have, it makes a little bit easier.
And then the big one will be at the end of everything, we are all supposed to see Obama's good intentions.
How he really wants to do whatever he's going to do for the best.
This is key.
This is key to everything the left does.
Good intentions.
Their good intentions cover all of their failures.
It doesn't matter if it's a domestic policy failure.
It doesn't matter if it's a foreign policy failure.
Good intentions are how the left disguises and camouflages all of their failures.
So keep some things in mind here, ladies and gentlemen, as this statement comes up.
No, I don't know if I'm going to jip this or not.
I really don't know.
I don't have enough information as to what it is.
I mean, I'm not going to commit to carrying something that's going to go 10 or 15 minutes here, but I know some of our affiliates might want to carry it.
I just play it by ear.
I'll make up my mind at some point.
Do everything on the fly anyway.
Keeps people sharp.
You know, I happen to know one of the most irritating things about me for people who work with me is I give them very little lead time about what I'm going to do when, because I don't know.
And I hate having to make up my mind.
So I do everything seat of the pants.
And people that work with me, they want to know sooner than that.
And that's probably, if you ask them, if you could get them closeted quietly and assure them that whatever they said would never be repeated, that would probably be the biggest beef.
Maybe the only beef that people have is that we can't drag out of the guy when he's going to go do what.
But that's right, but it keeps everybody on their toes.
That's not the reason I do it.
It's just that I don't like pigeonholing myself.
I don't like telling somebody three weeks out where I'm going to be.
What if I change my mind?
Don't want to go two days before it.
So anyway, as you listen to the statement, and as you are told, as you already are being told, that the current situation in Iraq is not Obama's fault.
It's Bush's and it's Cheney's.
And in fact, everything Obama is doing is well-intentioned.
Remember, we're talking about the president who released five terrorist masterminds back to the enemy for one of our deserters.
We're talking about a president who erased his own red lines in Syria.
We're talking about a president who has backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and other places in the Middle East.
We're talking about a president who has let Vladimir Putin roll all over him.
We're talking about a president who had a Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, who made an embarrassing reset with Russia complete with a cheesy Lego-type reset button toy.
You remember that little Lego-looking toy that she gave to Putin could barely, he didn't know what to do here.
No, it didn't say reset.
It was just a red button, which is actually a panic button in most circles.
So anyway, we have a president, Secretary of State, who did that.
We have a president who has left his consulate in Benghazi unprotected and undefeated or undefended, where four people died.
And we have a president who runs around the world acknowledging to our enemies that we, the United States, are also flawed, and therefore we're no better than you, and we're going to stop flexing our moral authority because we don't have any.
It's been one of the hallmarks of the Obama presidency is to travel around the world or make speeches, Most recently, to Native Americans in California.
Hey, look, you know, I'm just like you.
I grew up a minority and deck stacked against me in an unfair, unjust country.
I know exactly what you like.
He runs around the world apologizing, acknowledging the United States defects.
So just keep all this in mind as he announces in his statement today what his decisions are on Iraq.
So now we're going to entertain.
Oh, and how about sending Lurch out there to say that we might enter into an agreement with Iran to defend Iraq?
Now, Kerry, by the way, is denying that.
He's denying he ever said it.
Well, I didn't say that before I said it, is his defense.
But we have it on tape, him saying it.
So here's the point.
In my humble estimation, Barack Obama invited this day.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, you probably have heard there is a movement on that we need to get rid of Maliki.
He's got to go.
Let's see.
Who else had to go?
The Shah had to go.
How did that work out for us?
A couple of guys in Vietnam we said had to go way back then.
How did that work out for us?
There are any number of examples where we have been told or decided on our own that existing leadership in certain companies had to go because they were a problem.
Jimmy Carter sending the Shah of Iran packing, giving the world the Ayatollah Khomeini or the Ayatollah hominy, as pronounced by Pierre Salinger.
This is the president who has willingly overseen the IRS targeting of political opponents.
President of the United States who has willingly approved and probably privately applauded Lois Lerner and all the IRS people who targeted Tea Party nonprofit groups.
Groups consisting of nothing more than people who wanted to practice the art of dissent, time-honored art of dissent.
And a president who has presided over the absolute disaster that is now at the VA.
A president who has presided over the opening of the southern border to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands now,
illegal aliens and children, not just from Mexico, but from other Central American countries, is going to come before you today to present himself as an expert and eminently qualified to detail for us our future policy in Iraq.
And it is my humble estimation that the guiding experience and intelligence we have tells us that there is no example of competence in the past to give us any comfort that a correct foreign policy implementation will be forthcoming.
That's right.
We had to get rid of Mubarak in Egypt.
And how has that worked out for us?
We had to get rid of Gaddafi in Libya.
And how has that worked out?
And Basher Assad had to go.
Now, Basher hung on because he's got a supermodel-type wife, and the pop culture kind of likes him, so Basher was able to hang on.
Even in Syria, the pop culture reigns supreme.
The Saudis, Saudi Arabia, has given an apparent warning to Iran saying outside powers should not intervene in the conflict in neighboring Iraq.
We haven't said that.
Our Secretary of State has welcomed Iran to the table.
Now, he's denying it, but he did say that we're thinking of reaching out or might reach out or did, I don't know, to Iran.
But the Saudis are warning Iran, like we haven't done, to stay out.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal also said that Iraq was facing a full-scale civil war with grave consequences for the wider region.
Which, of course, leads to some confusion because the news media have told us for years that it was the presence of U.S. troops in the Middle East that was the cause of all the violence there.
Did they not?
The drive-bys told us it was our presence that was destabilizing the region.
Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright, any number of leftists upset at our superpower status, particularly after the Soviet Union was dismantled and there was no superpower left but us, they wrung their hands in despair.
And they worried the world was now forever destabilized because the United States was the only superpower remaining.
Because you see, in their view, we can't be, we are not the good guys.
No superpower is good guys.
But as long as we were a superpower with a competing superpower, keep us honest, i.e. the Soviet Union, then that was okay.
And I'm not exaggerating.
The Soviet Union was a justified superpower.
We are not.
We are an unjust, immoral superpower to the left because of the way we have acquired our power.
We've stolen it and we have conquered and all these other horrible, rotten attributes that we don't do that they attach to us.
But now that we're the only superpower, that's destabilizing.
And I was frequently reading over the last few years how it was the U.S. that was destabilizing that region.
The U.S. destabilizing the Middle East with our support for Israel, with our entrance into Iraq.
And yet, the Saudis are claiming that a civil war in Iraq is the destabilizing agent and needs to be dealt with.
The Saudi foreign minister's remarks coincided with an Iranian warning that Tehran would not hesitate to defend Shiite Muslim holy sites in Iraq against killers and terrorists following advances by Sunni militants there.
So that's where we are vis-a-vis Iraq.
We have a president, again, who has released five terrorist masterminds back to the enemy, replenished them in exchange for one of our deserters being given back to us.
A president who has erased his own red lines in Syria.
A president who has gotten rid of Gaddafi, gotten rid of Mubarak, all of these Situations resulting in the further advance of militant Islamists, which destabilizes the region.
The president has backed the Muslim Brotherhood.
He has let Vladimir Putin roll over him.
He had Hillary Clinton go over to the Soviet Union with his new reset button, which was a laughingstock of the world.
He left his consulate in Benghazi unprotected, undefended, resulting in four American deaths.
He has apologized as often as he can for the transgressions and the presumptive moral authority this country does not have to anybody who will listen.
He has applauded and encouraged, no doubt, the IRS targeting of his political opponents, presided over the VA, an absolute disaster, a human disaster and debacle, and of course the open borders.
And so now this same president is going to guide us to the next phase of Iraq.
We'll be back, my friends.
By the way, Nouri al-Malaki serves in office in Iraq because he was elected as a made prime minister by a democratically elected parliament.
But that doesn't matter.
He's the problem.
We got to get rid of him.
You know, even the AP, and I don't know how they let this slip by the other day, but even the AP made a point that it is only the United States' presence at Iraq that was keeping the peace.
You know, it's important.
Everybody's trying to glom onto this notion that we are the destabilizing agent there, starting with Cheney and Bush.
We had no business going.
We had no business being there in the first place.
And we went on false pretenses.
There weren't any weapons of mass destruction, and all kinds of people died, and there was all kinds of destruction.
And we were the ones that destabilized the region and so forth.
And that simply is the opposite of the truth.
And even the AP, and they said it in passing, but I'll not forget it.
Only the U.S. presence in Iraq that was keeping the pace or peace.
And as we continue to withdraw, with dates certain, all we were doing was sending, just like what's happening in Afghanistan now, we were sending signals to the bad guys.
Just be patient, sit around and wait for your time, because pretty soon you're not going to have any serious opposition.
We, the United States, was keeping the peace between the various Muslim sects, basically the Shiites and the Sunni.
Now, Al Gore, you might be interested.
Al Gore is blaming global warming for the civil war in Iraq.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
We will be back.
Well, another prediction has been verified as accurate.
President Obama was not on time for his 12:30 statement, whatever we're going to do in Iraq.
That was an easy prediction because he's always late.
Now, for those of you affiliates on the EIB network, I really don't know yet whether I'm going to dip this.
And I'll tell you what, joined it in procuring.
And I don't know how long it's going to go.
And I'll be honest with you, affiliates, the audience here is not really crazy about turning the program over to Obama when we can record what Obama says and go back to it later.
But even as such, I realize that competing interests and local affiliates want to be current and new as values.
So we are prepared to jip it here if I decide at the last moment.
I tell you what's going to happen here.
I'm going to get into something next.
And as soon as I really get into it, bamble, I'm going to have to stop if I want to do this and interrupt myself and destroy the momentum and train of thought.
So what I can do, I've got Megan Kelly last night on her show on Fox, really ripped into the Cheneys.
She questioned them from a place that would be close to where the left would question the Cheneys.
It was not rude or impolite, but the nature of the questions, well, I just tell you, I had a couple of people.
What is happening to the fuck?
Did you see?
I said, no, I didn't, because I just don't, I didn't have TV on.
Let's put that way.
But I have the soundbites here and I've got the transcripts.
And give you an example.
Grab soundbite number two.
That's where we'll start.
Megan Kelly with Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz and her first question.
Well, I don't know if it was the first question, the first one we have.
The suggestion is, Mr. Vice President, that you caused this mess in Iraq.
What say you?
Obviously, I disagree.
I think we went into Iraq for very good reasons.
I think when we left office, we had a situation in Iraq that was very positive.
We made major progress as a result of the decision President Bush made to go with a surge in 07 and 08.
There'd been a dramatic reduction in violence in the country.
They were prepared for negotiations that would lead to a stay-behind force of American trainers, technical people, intelligence, logistics capability, so that the Iraqi armed forces would be able to defend their own territory.
What happened was that Barack Obama came to office, and instead of negotiating a stay-behind agreement, he basically walked away from it.
Okay, so that's question and answer number one.
The second one we have, we'll just let you hear this is the next question Megan Kelly asked of Vice President Cheney.
Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir.
You said there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
You said we would be greeted as liberators.
You said the Iraq insurgency was in the last throes back in 2005.
And you said that after our intervention, extremists would have to, quote, rethink their strategy of jihad.
Now, with almost a trillion dollars spent there, with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?
And here's Cheney's answer.
I just fundamentally disagree with you.
Megan, you've got to go back and look at the track record.
There was no doubt in anybody's mind about the extent of Saddam's involvement in weapons of mass destruction.
After 9-11, we were concerned about a follow-on attack that would involve not just airline tickets and box cutters as the weapons, but rather something far deadlier, perhaps even a nuclear weapon.
We had an overwhelming vote of approval from the Congress, more votes for the action than we'd had in the Desert Storm some 10 years before.
Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, numerous others spoke to the difficulties of the intelligence that all of us saw with respect to the threat that Saddam Hussein represented.
It would have been irresponsible for us not to act.
We did do the right thing.
So then Megan Kelly said, do you think that President Obama is dangerous?
Yes, I'll answer that one, Megan.
I think there's no question.
I think that he is unique in terms of a president who is sitting in the Oval Office, who has made very clear that his desire is to weaken the nation.
And whether you say it's his intent, whether it's naivete, you can now look at the results of the policy the last six and a half years, and you've got 58% more al-Qaeda, more Salafist, jihadist groups now across the globe than we had in 2010.
There's no question but that he's a dangerous president, and that we've got to fight back, and that we've got to ensure that people understand the importance of American power in securing our freedom and security.
There is no question but that Obama is a dangerous president.
Now, it's been reported just now that Obama's still meeting with the national security team, still putting together their statement or making up their minds.
I think whether that's true or not, and remember everything is PR buzz image, and it could well be he's always late, and they're just trying to paint this.
He's so into it.
He's so focused on it that he and his team are still meeting, trying to come to the exact right thing to do, blah, blah, blah.
When in fact, lunch may be running late.
Who knows?
But one thing, it does seem that everything is just seated the pants last minute with this regime.
Now, get this also, from the Wall Street Journal today.
Sunni extremists in Iraq occupy Hussein's chemical weapons facility.
Or try this one from the UK Telegraph.
Iraq crisis, ISIS jihadists seize Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons stockpile.
I must be dreaming here.
I thought Saddam Hussein didn't have any chemical weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction.
So we've got two reports, Wall Street Journal and the UK Telegraph, both saying that the ISIS jihadists have seized Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons facility.
Chemical weapons facility?
I thought there weren't any chemical weapons.
I thought we didn't find any or other weapons of mass destruction.
Which takes me back to Dick Cheney's answer.
The second soundbite that we played after Megan Kelly asked him this question.
Time and again, history's proven you got it wrong as well, sir.
You said there's no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
You said we'd be greeted as liberators.
Said the Iraq insurgency was in its last throes.
You said that after our intervention, extremists would have to rethink their strategy of jihad.
What do you say to those who say you were so wrong?
And Cheney said, he fundamentally disagrees.
He said, you've got to go back.
And by the way, everything he says here is right on the money, dead on truth.
You've got to go back and look at the track record.
There was no doubt in anybody's mind about the extent of Saddam's involvement in weapons of mass destruction.
If I have to, if I have to ask Cookie to do this in order to prove this, I will because we have them.
We have sound bites of Bill Clinton in 1998 warning of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that is eerie.
It's almost not quite, but it's almost word for word for what George W. Bush was saying in 2003 and 2004.
And also from 1998, now this is the Winsky period, so Clint's doing a lot of things to distract people.
And also from 1998, we have sound bites of every Democrat in Washington agreeing with Clinton that Saddam Hussein posed a terrific threat.
And precisely because of his weapons of mass destruction.
Now, I don't expect even the drive-by media today to remember that.
When we went back and dragged those soundbites out of the archives, everybody had forgotten them.
The drive-bys didn't remember them.
It was eerie.
Clinton warning about Saddam Hussein almost exactly like Bush 43 did.
And then every Democrat signing on.
And the Democrats getting mad at the Republicans for not signing on.
It was only a few short years later that the tables are reserved and it reversed.
It's Bush doing the warning, except, can I take you back again to 2002?
The Democrats were salivating.
Remember, we're still in a Florida aftermath.
And the Democrats are still disimbobulated over the fact they think the Supreme Court stole the presidency from them.
So they just filled with outrage and hatred.
And Bush is making a move after 9-11 for a use of force piece of legislation, use of force agreement.
And he wants to go into Afghanistan, of course, and then Iraq.
And the Democrats initially, not all of them voted for the use of force.
And the Wellstone Memorial to attend to and opposing Bush.
And then public opinion polls came out after the first round of votes.
And the American people were overwhelmingly, folks, go back and look all this up.
The American people were overwhelmingly in 2002 and 2003 in favor of going into Iraq.
It took Bush a year.
He went around the country, speech after speech, building the case.
He put together a coalition of nations at the United Nations who also went along.
We had intelligence company or agencies from nation after nation which agreed with everything our CIA said about the weapons of mass destruction.
There was a huge worldwide coalition.
And so the Democrats asked for another vote on the use of force authorization because they, after their initial vote, were on the wrong side, the American people.
So Bush magnanimously said, okay, let's do the vote again.
And every Democrat, including John Kerry, and including Hillary Clinton, voted for the use of force in Iraq.
And then only a few short years later, they acted like it never happened.
Some of them went so far as to even try to deny it.
Other Democrats said, well, I voted for the use of force, but I never authorized troops.
I didn't vote for starting a war.
I mean, they always wanted it both ways on this.
They wanted to be able to say they had done both, opposed the war or supported it so they can follow public opinion.
Now, my point here is, is that Cheney is exactly right when he says there's no doubt in anybody's mind about the extent of Saddam's involvement in weapons of mass destruction.
Everybody around the world, including Colin Powell, believed that Saddam had them.
And there are two newspaper stories today saying that ISIS, the al-Qaeda groups taking over Iraq now, has already commandeered Saddam's chemical weapons facility.
So we obviously have them.
Then Cheney said, after 9-11, we were concerned about a follow-on attack.
Would it not involve just airline tickets in box cuts?
This is another important thing.
We had serious people running the country back then.
I know I'm short on time here.
We had serious people running the country.
9-11 was huge.
I think it's already been forgotten, except for family members.
And back then, your President of the United States Vice President, if there is any indication that anybody had anything to do with it or was planning another one, well, we're going to take them out.
Revenge retribution was on everybody's mind.
Saddam was out bragging about the weapons of mass destruction that he had.
We had data intelligence that backed it up.
There was conflicting evidence on whether or not he'd had anything to do with 9-11 or offered parts of Iraq as training grounds for the hijackers.
There's any number of things.
People have forgotten all this.
But everything that we did was justified and public opinion was built for it.
They were not renegades who went in in violation of public opinion.
I got to take a break here.
I'm way long.
But I need to continue this because these are things that people forget.
And things the left never really wanted to ever admit, but they're all true.
Hi, welcome back.
El Rushball, the cutting-edge societal evolution.
Let me tell you something.
Everybody wants to sit here and second guess going into Iraq.
What everybody ought to be second-guessing is the election of Barack Obama, if you want to know the truth.
That's what we ought to be second-guessing.
Now, look, I'm not going to sit here and just blindly ignore some things.
Cheney was wrong.
We were not going to be greeted as liberators in there.
If it's a Shia country, it's an Islamic country.
That's why it's screwed up from our perspective.
But everything else about this, Bush put together this coalition.
Everybody was in favor of it.
Every Democrat in Washington demanded another vote on the use of force authorization, demanded it so that they could be on record as supporting it.
And then they cut and ran shortly after.
They are the, I don't know.
It's just amazing what they get away with.
They voted against it.
Public opinion excoriated them.
They demanded a revote so they could all be on the same side as the American people.
And two years later, they start trying to disrupt and tear down public opinion on this.
Then Cheney said, look, after 9-11, we were concerned about a follow-on attack that would not just be airline tickets and box cutters, but maybe nuclear weapons.
They had to be concerned about everything.
9-11 was huge.
It was the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor.
And the threats were all over the place that more were coming.
It couldn't be treated as a one-off.
Any responsible adult in leadership in this country had to take things seriously.
And one of the theories going into Iraq, there were two things, prevention and then the democratization, hoping to establish a beacon of freedom.
That was always a long shot.
But preventative action, this is always a debate.
Wouldn't you rather the cops stop a crime against you than have to wait afterwards to punish somebody?
That's what we were talking about here after 9-11.
If we have evidence that one was coming, another one, we were going to prevent it from happening.
That's what this was all about.
Cheney is exactly right.
And he said to Megan Kelly, we had an overwhelming vote of approval from Congress twice more votes for the action than we'd had in Desert Storm 10 years ago.
True.
Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, numerous others spoke to the difficulties, the intelligence that all of us saw with respect to the threat.
But in 98, they were all in favor of just this exact thing that Bush and Cheney did.
He said it would have been irresponsible for us not to act.
We did do the right thing.
▲
Export Selection