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Aug. 25, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:29
August 25, 2014, Monday, Hour #3
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Time Text
I happen to have here in today's audio soundbite roster an example of something I just mentioned about how the left disqualifies people from commenting on something.
You didn't go to Vietnam.
You can't talk about the defense budget.
You got no right.
I can't tell you how many times I heard that back in my Sacramento days in the late 80s and even on this show in the early 90s.
I thought I'd have a little fun with it one day that didn't turn out to be so much fun with my dad.
But nevertheless, listen to this.
This is Dan Rather.
And it was Sunday morning on CNN's reliable sources.
And the host was Brian Stelter.
And they were talking with Dan Rather, who hosts AXS Television, Access Television.
I have never heard of that.
Must be some new.
I bet that the HD network's been renamed, because that's who hired him.
The HD network, AXS, Access Television, Dan Rather reports.
Anyway, Brian Stelter said, let me ask you about the television and media coverage the past few days since the horrible ISIS video was shown to the world of Jim Foley.
Have you noticed this guy became Jim Foley to everybody now?
It was James Foley.
Everybody's calling him Jim Foley like they knew him.
Anyway, what have you heard, Dan?
What have you sensed, Dan?
I know that you would hear a drumbeat to war if you heard it, Dan.
So have this is Dan Rather.
And this guy at CNN, Dan, if anybody would hear the war drums beating for war, it would be you.
So have you heard them?
I mean, that was the question.
Here's the answer.
The war drums have been beating along the Potomac for some little while, accentuated in recent weeks and now in recent days.
My first question to anyone who's on television saying, we have to get tough, we need to put boots on the ground, we need to go to war in one of these places is, I will hear you out if you tell me you are prepared to send your son, your daughter, your grandson, your granddaughter to that war for which you're beating the drums.
If you aren't, I have no patience with you and don't even talk to me.
Well, there you have it.
So if you can talk about going to war all day long, but if you're going to send your own kid, I'm not going to listen to you.
Meaning, you've got no right.
You can't be pro-war.
You can't be for killing terrorists if you wouldn't send your own kid to do it.
This is not new thinking, folk.
This is another classic.
I don't know that Rather is specifically aware of it.
He's just mouthing the words because he happens to believe it.
He thinks it sounds good.
But this is actually one of the many ways that the left has developed to deny their opponents credibility.
Well, that's the thing.
It's not 1970 anymore, Dan, and they're in the draft.
You know, it's a volunteer military.
Now, everybody who signs up for the U.S. military has to know in this day and age that the likelihood is good that they're going to be deployed to theater.
That doesn't matter.
The point here is this is Dan Rather's way of shutting anybody up or of saying whatever you think is of no interest to me and has no credibility.
If you're not willing to do it yourself, then I don't want to hear you.
Well, do you realize how little would get done if the only way it got done was if everybody involved did it?
It's a classic technique.
And they use it constantly.
It doesn't matter, defense budget is how it's manifested itself today, but it comes up in any number of other circumstances.
Anyway, folks, great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, back at you at 800-282-2882.
Now, what this is about, this beating the war drums, this is, well, depending on how much time I wanted to spend on it, I could make this pretty in-depth.
And it's fairly complicated, but not all that much, and it wouldn't take much to simplify it.
And I was prepared to spend a lot of time on it today.
And then it changed.
Here's the timeline of this.
One year ago, Barack Obama, 13 or 14 months ago now, Barack Obama declares a red line to Bashur al-Assad of Syria.
Because a year ago, there's a civil war in Syria.
That civil war is still going on, by the way.
A year ago, we were under the impression that Assad was gassing his own people and committing other unspeakable atrocities on his own people.
And we, a year ago, were banging the war drums to send American bombs and other armaments to the rebels in Syria opposing Bashur Assad.
And the red line Obama drew for Assad was to get him to stop gassing his own people.
Well, Obama drew the red line, but people in Syria continued to get gassed.
They continued to die.
And the regime, the Obama regime, continued to believe, as did everybody else, that Assad was gassing his own people.
Most everybody believed this.
And that went on for a year.
Last August or September that we were this close.
I've got my index finger and thumb about a 16th of an inch apart.
We were this close to actually maybe sending troops, but bombing Bashur Assad and Assad targets.
We didn't do it.
Obama called a paper tiger.
Assad was puffing his chest out because the red line was drawn and Obama didn't do anything about it.
Credibility again on the ropes.
And then shortly thereafter, I remember talking about this on the radio, and I had read a piece which I reprinted yesterday and studied it all over again by Yosef Bodansky, which documented one year ago that Assad was not gassing his own people.
So I took that piece and I came here to the EIB, Golden EIB microphone, and I openly speculated, based on what I had read in Josef Bodansky: you know, what if Assad isn't doing this?
What if it's being made to look like Assad is gassing his own people by the rebels, who we then later learned were al-Qaeda.
And the Bodansky piece documents how the United States was on the verge of with Turkey and Qatar and a couple other allies on the verge of arming, I mean heavily arming the Syrian rebels and planning bombing strikes against Assad targets.
Now, that never happened, but a year ago, when I shared the Bodansky story, I started getting emails from people who claimed to have knowledge of Syria in the Middle East.
Some had worked there, some had families, some were from there.
And they all said that Bodansky was right.
That it's a huge mistake that Assad would never gas his own people, particularly in Damascus.
He just wouldn't do it.
There's nothing in it for him.
Because a year ago, Assad was winning this civil war.
There was no reason.
That's why we were thinking of going in and helping the so-called rebels because Assad was winning.
There would have been, there was nothing in it for him to start gassing his own people.
And I started hearing this from more and more people.
So I started sharing that sentiment with you in this audience.
And I might have been, aside from Yosef Bodansky, a couple others.
Look, the conventional wisdom was that Assad was gassing his own people.
And this program raised openly the possibility.
Maybe he wasn't.
Maybe he actually was a victim here.
Maybe he was being made to look.
So anyway, that's filed away.
This past weekend, I'm working feverishly both days on show prep, and I see that we are prepared, that Obama is thinking about bombing in Syria, but this time he's going to bomb the rebels, not Assad.
So I looked at that and I did a double take.
I said, wait a minute, whoa, what's this about?
So I started delving into it.
And lo and behold, it turns out that what we were all speculating about a year ago was true.
Assad was not gassing his own people.
And the people that are making it look like Assad is gassing his own people is actually ISIS.
We came, here's the point.
We came dangerously close one year ago to allying with ISIS, thinking that they were just Syrian citizens rebelling against the dictator Bashur al-Assad.
We were this close.
And Bodansky, Yosef Bodansky, I went back to my website.
I found everything we had discussed about it.
I found a Bodansky piece.
And I'm going to ask Coco to repost it since I'm talking about it now.
He will automatically do it.
You read the Bodansky piece, and it is detailed as hell on all of the secret meetings that we, our government and Intel services, were having with the same people in Turkey and Intel services from Qatar and a number of other places.
And that a year ago, we were prepared to go in and unwittingly ally ourselves with the people who beheaded James Foley.
That's the bottom line here.
And we didn't.
At the last minute, we didn't because Obama never pulls the trigger on anything.
So when I saw this weekend that we were thinking now of launching strikes against the quote-unquote rebels in Syria, I asked myself, how many people will remember that a year ago we raised the possibility on this program that Assad was not the bad guy in this particular instance?
There was a, if you'll recall, folks, one year ago, we're on the we're so close.
I mean, the news is that bombing Assad is imminent.
And then, shortly after we had been discussing out of this program, and this program had nothing to do with this, don't misunderstand.
I'm not, I'm just giving you a timeline.
Shortly after we began to go off discussing, and I started sharing the details of the Joseph Bodansky piece, there was a walk in the Rose Garden.
You recall?
Obama took a walk in the Rose Garden with a general or with somebody, and the attack was called off.
Do you remember this?
It was going to be around September, first week in September of 2013.
But there was a walk in the Rose Garden, and the timing of it was not long after I had sighted and taken the Joseph Bodansky piece, National.
So you can imagine my shock and dismay when I started digging into work on Saturday and Sunday to see that we're about to go into Syria.
And it's still possible.
I mean, you can still find traces of the Drudge had the link up and then took it down yesterday.
And I don't know why, but you can still, if you look at various news sites, you will still find stories about how we are pondering bombing now the rebels in Syria, because it turns out they are the bad guys.
Assad isn't.
They are ISIL.
They are the people of Beheaded Foley.
And the point is, a year ago, we were on the verge of allying with them.
And somebody stopped it in the nick of time with a walk in the Rose Garden.
Now, the news today is: who's the Joint Chiefs Chairman?
Having a mental block on his name is right in front of me here, and I can't think of it.
But they're all urging not to do it now.
That there's no upside to it right now.
So it's still in very fluid, as they say, circumstance and situation.
But I was, if, if, if the story were still active, that we were actively planning to finally go into Syria and bomb, I was going to relive all of this stuff from a year ago and get into great detail.
I'm not going to do that now because it doesn't seem like we're going to do it because we still were going back and forth.
And the real point is, is not that what we're going to do now, the real point is that one year ago, we almost, we didn't, but we almost, yeah, Martin Dempsey is the chairman of the chief joints of staff.
And he's arguing against it.
But a year ago, we were infinitesimally close, infinitesimally close to bombing Bashir Assad and his military assets, allying with what was Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is now ISIL.
Anyway, got to take a break.
Back after this, I am not justifying Obama's drawing the red line for Assad.
It was a mistake to ever draw the red line against Assad.
Assad was not the perp.
It was a stroke of good fortune that Obama dilly-dallied on his own red line.
But I'm not justifying.
Should have never drawn the red line because Assad was not gassing his own people, as was the popular thought or perception a year ago.
See, there's a last Thursday, the chairman of the chief joints of staff, General Martin Dempsey, on Thursday of last week, Dempsey said that we would have to hit ISIS in Syria if we're ever going to beat them.
He said that on Thursday.
Now he says he's against it.
And there's a reason somebody probably said, hey, General, you don't speak for the regime because he's backed off of that.
Now, what's the difference in ISIL and ISIS?
And why does Obama keep calling them ISIL?
Well, I'm glad that you asked that question because now I'm going to explain it to you.
You notice how Obama keeps calling them ISIL.
And that is because he doesn't want to remind people that they are from Syria, that they are Syrian rebels.
ISIL, ISIS is the same thing.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, that's ISIL, sounds a lot better than the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Two different names.
I'll tell you, there's actually now a third name that is being used, a two-letter acronym to describe these glounds, and it's called IS.
They're just the Islamic State.
Now that's confusing too, because the Islamic State of Iran is their official title.
But this group, the Islamic State of Syria, or of Iraq and Levant, is ISIL.
ISIS is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Obama uses ISIL all the time for strategic reasons, because this is not to remind people that they're from Syria.
Syria, apparently, we that was such a close call.
We want nothing to do with it at this point.
Anyway, let me grab a quick phone call here before we lose control of the phone lines.
Havelock, North Carolina in Dallas.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
Thanks for having me, Rush.
I just want to real quick say that I grew up listening to you with my dad.
He's listening to you and Russia, friggin, sorry, Sean Hennedy and Michael Savage.
But real quick, too, there's two things I want to say.
The first thing is my heart goes out to the Holy family.
You know, I watched that video, and it's crazy that people can actually do that to other people, you know.
But the reason why I'm calling is because I watched a video last night of our president, and he was talking about how the first time in nine years that nobody, or there's no Americans fighting in Iraq, and now he entered the war and everything.
But what gets me is that he didn't do anything.
It was a guys on the ground, guys and gals, you know, that were actually serving in Iraq that did it, ended the war.
I just kind of want to get your opinion on that too, because it's just frustrating to me.
Well, you've just, you've stumbled across a common Democrat tactic.
And here's a guy who spoke out against Iraq.
It was unjust.
It was immoral.
We had no business being there ever.
In fact, that was a speech he made when he came first on the national scene and then claims credit for ending it in victory.
It's classic.
It was hypocrisy on display.
Hey, folks, if you think your family is a disaster, if your family embarrasses you to death, if you think your family is a joke, if you think your family is an absolute mess, what you need to do to change your mind about that, you need to get last night's episode of Ray Donovan and watch it.
And I guarantee you, whatever your family is like, it will seem like heaven compared to the family portrayal.
This is a depraved show anyway that you can't turn off.
It's a dilemma.
It may even be a dichotomy because it's well done.
It's well written.
It's got great performances.
But man, is it depraved?
It is just sick.
Have you seen it, Snerdley?
I'm just telling you: if you think that your family, you wouldn't want anybody to ever come to a family birthday party or a family holiday, if you don't want to go to your own family's stuff, you've got the best way to feel better about your family is to watch this.
I don't remember the name of the episode, but just it's Ray Donovan Showtime, 9 o'clock Eastern every Sunday night.
Get the episode from last night.
Leo in Round Hill, Virginia.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hi.
Grush, thank you very much for taking my call.
I just got a real quick, short and simple.
You know, everybody's doing all this ice bucket challenge.
I got a bucket challenge for that little punk over there that cut his head off.
I'm 55 years old.
I retired from the Army 18 years ago.
And I tell you what, I got my uniforms out.
I got my weapons ready.
I will pack up.
I will go over there, put the Call of Duty out.
I guarantee you, those of us over 50 or even 45, or anybody retired, we don't need to call on our youth anymore.
Let us old guys go over there and finish this job once and for all.
We screwed up when we didn't finish this during the first Gulf War, when we didn't go and plant our flag, and now it's just like a broad over there.
That is so I'm ready.
You know, you have just when General Colon Colonel Powell told George H.W. Bush, no, no, no, no, let him get back to Baghdad.
All we promised to do was get him out of Kuwait.
That was it.
Let him slink back.
If we would have followed them and taken them out and done away with Saddam, then can you imagine?
Well, why Cryover's Built Milk?
The point is, you're right about it.
And I know you're reacting to Dan Rather, who Dan Rather said, hey, unless you're prepared to go, I don't want to hear you talking about how we need to go to war.
Well, you just said you're ready to go.
Blocked and loaded, ready.
Let's go.
Are you veterans?
There's a lot of other Americans that feel the same way I do.
This isn't going away.
It's getting worse, and it's coming.
It's here.
I know.
If we don't nip it in the butt over there, when it starts up here and we have another 9-11 type attack, Americans are going to go, oh my God, what just happened?
But that's what it takes for these liberals.
They don't get it until it's up close and personal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They don't have the foresight to understand this.
I know.
That's why it takes effective leadership, which is missing.
Anyway, Leo, it's great.
It's absolutely fabulous.
Thank you so much for the call.
You know, he mentioned this ice bucket challenge.
I haven't talked about this, but I want to say something about this.
The other day, the other day, I got a video.
Somebody sent me a video in the email.
He said, Rush, you've got to play this.
So, I'm not big on internet videos because of my hearing and so forth, although it's better.
So, I clicked on it, and it was my buddy George Brett and the country music star Keith Urban in Kansas City taking the ice bucket challenge.
And Brett names me as one of the three he next challenges to take the ice bucket challenge.
It was me and Tom Watson, who is the Writer Cup captain from Kansas City.
And I forget who the third one that George named was.
Now, obviously, I haven't done it yet, the ice bucket challenge.
But the reason why, like, George sent me an email, have you done this ice bucket thing yet?
You know, I called you out.
I said, No, I haven't done it.
Well, you ought to see these videos all over the internet.
It's incredible.
Everybody's doing it.
I said, There's something about this that doesn't make sense.
I think everybody's doing this wrong.
The ice bucket challenge consists of two things: you either donate to ALS or dump a bucket of ice on your head, right?
So, how are they raising money if everybody's just dumping ice on their heads?
It seems to me the idea is to send ALS some money.
Well, they don't show video of them doing both.
The videos are just people getting dunked with ice buckets in creative ways.
Like, Bill Gates built a whole guillotine.
The Bill Gates video, he builds this whole guillotine type thing, like gallows.
And instead of a hangman's noose, there's an ice bucket up there.
And he pulls the rope and he gets drenched.
And all these brilliant tech wizards are trying to get, you know, they're out geniusing everybody in trying to figure out how they get done.
Like, Brett and Urban, they just dumped the buckets over their head and dropped it.
And I'm saying, wait a minute, this is ass backwards.
What you ought to do, I'm thinking of doing this.
Just make a video of writing a check to ALS and holding it up and not drop.
The point is, either donate or drop.
And everybody's putting ice on their heads for the video of it.
But I said, how's ALS getting any money out of this?
But I think, Snurdy, you're right.
Somebody, because they are raising a lot of money with this.
They have collected a lot of money.
But you know me.
I mean, I'm a student of the language and I am a man of precision.
And I looked at the ice bucket challenge, and it is not worded in such a way that you dump ice on your head and then send them a check.
It's one or the other.
I don't even know if I can do this, you know, with cochlear implants and stuff.
I mean, I'd have to take them off, obviously, but even at that.
So, and then I don't know what three people I would name.
I don't know three people to name.
I remember now, George Brett's third person that he challenged was June Jones, the head football coach at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, SMU.
And I don't know if Watson's done it.
I don't know if June Jones has done it.
I haven't.
Again, I'm a literalist.
I am the mayor of Rielville.
And the challenge is you either donate to the cause or have ice bucket, the bucket ice dumped on you.
Well, I donate.
Anyway, it's obviously metamorphosed into something other than that.
Here's Willie in St. James, Missouri.
It's great to have you on the program.
Hello.
How are you doing, sir?
Thank you for what you do.
I appreciate you, Willie.
Thank you for calling.
Well, I had now I got two things.
I got something about Michael Sands and something about the ALS.
With Michael Sands, the Rams probably shouldn't have drafted him in the first place.
I think it was all political, but this gets them the perfect out.
They can go ahead and put them on the practice team and let him get taken off by another team.
Well, here's the thing about putting them on the practice squad.
From what I understand, every team, whenever they designate a player for the practice squad, that player can be selected by any other team in the league.
Exactly.
That'd be their perfect out.
They get to cut them without cutting them.
They can say another team wanted them.
They had to let them go.
Oh, I see where you're headed.
I see.
Willie, you're a step ahead of me on this.
You're assuming they want to cut him but can't, and that would be the way to do it.
That would be it.
That's a golden opportunity for them.
Well, I have to admit, I have to admit that it all would depend.
If somebody doesn't pick him, then they just park him on the practice squad.
That would be it.
And then on the ALS, I don't think most people know.
My wife researched it.
Less than a fourth of the cash collected actually goes to research, and the primary source of research is embryonic stem cells.
Like 50-something percentage to run it.
I know that's true.
No, no.
Willie is up to speed here on a lot of stuff.
A lot of pro-life people object to the ALS research because it uses embryonic stem cells.
You know, there's a trade-off for everything.
But Willie, oh, buddy O'Pal, he was a step ahead of me.
He's assuming the Rams do want to cut this.
This is a great way to do it.
I don't know.
I don't pretend to.
I just, there are no more betas.
Snurdy says Apple coming out of a new beta.
They're going to continue releasing betas of the Mac Yosemite, but there aren't any more iPhone or iPad betas.
They said beta 5, and that's it.
Beta 5.
There was a sixth beta, but they sent that one to their carrier partners, which is the ATT and Sprint, and they're testing that one to make sure it works.
And if no problems are found, then they'll do a Goldmaster around September the 9th.
So, no, beta 5 is it.
Why are you asking that?
You don't have the betas on your machines.
Well, you want to know when the new phones are going to drop?
Well, it's all rumor.
The rumor is that Apple's got its announcement on Tuesday, September 9th, the day I get back from a little vacation.
I'm coming back for that, in fact.
But Apple hasn't confirmed that.
If that's true, if September 9th is indeed the day Apple announces them, then the date you can buy it will be Friday, September 19th.
If they do it as they've always done it, announce it on a Tuesday of a week, and then the following Friday, it's for sale.
Those dates are the 9th and the 19th, 10 days after announcement.
So book it if you want, based on experience and rumor.
Thank you for being with us today, folks.
And it's a great bunch of telephone calls.
There's only one guy, I could not understand what he said.
I still don't know what he was talking about.
I don't know why he was apologizing for Hannity, but anyway, we'll see you tomorrow.
Thanks much.
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