RUSH: So George Bush supposedly went to Iraq for oil, right? So I guess we could say that Barack Obama went to war with ISIS for the Senate. It looks like that’s exactly what’s going on. And I’m like you, I’m watching all of the reports about we’ve already taken ISIS out. I watched Kerry on TV today: They’re done. They’re over. We have wiped ’em out. John Kerry was talking to Christiane Amanpour on CNN, and he said (imitating Kerry), “Yeah, yeah, we wiped ’em out. We’re gonna keep going, too, but we wiped ’em out.”

They’re putting the news out there that after one day, two days, that we have just had overwhelming success against ISIS, ISIL, the Kardashians, Khorasans, whatever they are. (interruption) I know, I know, that’s the point. ISIS is advancing. I mean, I’ve got Max Boot here, who is, you know, Max Boot used to be at the op-ed page, editorial page of the Wall Street Journal years ago, and now he writes for Foreign Policy.

He’s a freelancer and gets a lot of his stuff published, and he has a piece here Commentary: “YesterdayÂ’s Real News Out of Iraq and Syria — There were three big stories yesterday out of Iraq and Syria. Question: which is the most significant? Story No. 1: The US Navy and Air Force, in cooperation with five Arab allies (Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE) launched a series of air strikes and cruise missile strikes on ISIS targets in and around Raqaa, Syria. Separately, the US launched air strikes against the Khorasan group, another jihadist terrorist organization.” You know what, all they are is Al-Qaeda. They are maybe an Al-Qaeda splinter group.

From what I understand, the Regime has given this group a new name in order for Obama to be able to continue to say he wiped Al-Qaeda out. So you come up with a new name for Al-Qaeda, the Kardashians, whatever, the Khorasans, whatever they are, and either way it’s defeating. I mean, if you wipe out Al-Qaeda, how can they have a new group spring up? If you wipe ’em out, you wipe ’em out. If you get rid of a species, it’s gone, right? Until you discover it somewhere in the Himalayas. So this new group is essentially just Al-Qaeda renamed. There may be some differences beyond that, but nevertheless. So, anyway, that’s story number one.

Story number two from Max Boot: “ISIS continued to attack the Kurdish area of north-central Syria, killing large numbers of people and pushing more than 130,000 refugees over the Turkish border.” This doesn’t sound like we’ve wiped anybody out. Did I mishear Kerry? I’m watching him. I didn’t have the audio on. I’m looking at their headline slug, their chyron graphic, and it was clear that they were conducting an interview with Kerry in which he was talking about phenomenal first day success against ISIS.

Story number three: “ISIS attackers in Anbar Province, Iraq, reportedly killed more than 300 Iraqi soldiers after a weeklong siege of Camp Saqlawiya where some 800 soldiers had been trapped. Few, if any, Sunni tribal fighters did anything to prevent yet another large Iraqi army formation from suffering annihilation.”

Remember, these are the moderates we’re depending on here, folks. These are our boots on the ground. “Few, if any, Sunni tribal fighters did anything to prevent yet another large Iraqi army formation from suffering annihilation.” The got annihilated and they didn’t do anything to stop it.
“The Iraqi army showed itself unable to supply its soldiers or to fight effectively.

“Judging from the news coverage, story No. 1 is the most important,” and that would be, again, the Navy and the Air Force cooperation with the five Arab states launching a series of air strikes and cruise missiles on ISIS targets in Syria. Max Boot says that’s not the most important story, just the media coverage. And I guess that’s what I saw on CNN. I guess Kerry was out there with Christiane Amanpour taking great credit for this attack and actually suggesting that it was quite substantive.

Max Boot says here: “In reality IÂ’d argue that No. 2 and especially No. 3 are more significant. No one doubts that the US can launch air strikes on ISIS.” Nobody doubts that. Why is that big news? And he’s got a point, wouldn’t you say? Is this echoed? Mr. Snerdley, have you been watching any of that this morning? (interruption) All right, so is the news media, in fact, focusing on the air strikes and reporting how massive they were? (interruption) That’s the story. Okay. All right. (interruption) Yeah. It could go on for years. Even though we’ve wiped ’em out, it could go on for years.

So Max Boot is right, that’s the big story. That’s what the media’s doing. It’s all about winning the Senate or holding the Senate, and it’s all about positioning Obama politically. Pure and simple.

Now, Max Boot argues that, “But in reality IÂ’d argue that No. 2 and especially No. 3 are more significant.” Continuing to attack the Kurds in northern Syria and ISIS attackers in Anbar province and killing more than 300 Iraqi soldiers, he thinks those are much more significant stories. “No one doubts that the US can launch air strikes on ISIS. The question is whether those attacks will be effective in degrading and eventually destroying this terrorist group.

“The answer is: not until there is an effective ground force able to take advantage of the disruption created by American bombs,” and without that ground force, serious people are asking: Okay, how serious is this? Do we want video of massive launches of fighter and bomber aircraft? Do we want the American people to see the launch of the takeoffs down the runway and lift off — down the runway, down the carrier and lift off — and then footage of bombs dropped or the results of bombs dropped?

You know how important pictures are, and therefore the pictures coupled with the footage of our jets and bombers taking off creates the illusion that massive success occurred overnight. The question is whether those attacks can be secured without a ground force, and they can’t. There are I don’t know how many years of world history, world military history that confirms this. It still all comes back to how serious is everybody involved here, and it won’t take long to find out. It really won’t.

If no ground force of ours that’s competent is part of this, then the main reason we’re doing this is for the pictures everybody has already seen, which are supposed to convey an impression or image. Now, Max Boot, wrapping ups here: “What this means is that, however welcome, the US air strikes in Syria are of more symbolic importance than anything else. Their military significance is likely to be scant until the US can do more to train and arm forces capable of mounting ground attacks on ISIS militants.”

So there you have it. There you go. That’s pretty much where things stand with this right now. We’ve got symbolic footage — well, we’ve got footage of a symbolic attack that is supposed to convey to low-information voters that we are kicking butt. We got John Kerry on CNN confirming the pictures everybody’s seen. “We kicked butt yesterday, and ISIS and ISIL and the Kardashians and everybody are on the run!” The truth of the matter is, ISIS is on the run, but not from us.

ISIS continues to advance. But the news is we bombed Syria.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The way the left is rationalizing all of this, ladies and gentlemen, is that George W. Bush’s War on Terror was a “dumb” war, and Obama’s is a “smart” war. (interruption) Well, they’re not… Yeah, depending on where you look they’re calling it a war, but they’re still calling it an “action,” and they’re saying that Obama’s doing it in a smart way. And of course Bush was dumb, shouldn’t have gone there in the first place. But, you know, back to this Khorasan Group.

They come out of nowhere, named by the administration just in the past couple of days — well, last week sometime. Is there any doubt…” If Obama hadn’t been running around bragging about taking out Al-Qaeda and wiping out bin Laden and thus ending Al-Qaeda, would we even have heard the name Khorasan Group? But because Obama’s been running around bragging about taking out Al-Qaeda, starting at the Democrat convention in 2012?

Okay, Al-Qaeda hasn’t gone away, so the Regime has to give them a new name to make it look like it’s a new group after Obama wiped out Al-Qaeda. But it’s just Al-Qaeda. Now, we have a couple of John Kerry bites. Let’s listen to these. We have the audio sound bites of what I saw but didn’t hear on CNN today with Lurch speaking with Christiane Amanpour. Her question, “The Khorasan plot, Mr. Secretary, can you confirm precisely what it was and the imminence of it?”

KERRY: These are remnants of who are Al-Qaeda. These are people who were definitively plotting against the United States and the West. It is true that we didn’t put a lot of public focus on them because we really didn’t want people to take… We didn’t want them to know that we were, in fact, tracking them as effectively as we were. So this would have happened with or without ISIL. There were active plots against our country, we knew where they were, and we did what we needed to do.

AMANPOUR: Can you tell us —

RUSH: “Can you tell us…?” No, he’s not gonna tell you, ’cause they’re making all this up! So right here it is. They are remnants of core Al-Qaeda. “See? We wiped out Al-Qaeda!” That’s what you are supposed to take with you from this. We wiped out Al-Qaeda. Obama did because with Bush’s dumb war, he failed to get Al-Qaeda. There were no weapons of mass destruction! Bush is an idiot, is a cowboy; Obama’s brilliant and is a smart commander chief.

Despite the Styrofoam cup salute to the Marines, he’s still a smart commander-in-chief and he knows how to do things. He wiped Al-Qaeda out and now here come the remnants of Al-Qaeda — which we wiped out, but we must have missed a couple of those maggots and so they form a new group called the Khorasan, and we’re on ’em, and we’ve been on ’em, and we knew what they were gonna do.

But we didn’t tell anybody about it because we didn’t want to let them know what we knew that they knew that we know how we were gonna wipe ’em out. Christiane Amanpour is nodding thoughtfully and understandingly, and then she said, “You’ve been doing this now for six weeks plus in Iraq, Mr. Secretary, against ISIS and whatever targets. They haven’t been flushed out. They’re not retreating. They are not surrendering.”

KERRY: What we’ve done is we’ve stopped the onslaught. That was what we were able to achieve with air power. They were moving toward Erbil. They were moving towards Baghdad. Baghdad could well have fallen, the oil fields. We re-secured the Mosul dam. We broke the siege at Sinjar Mountain. So air power has been effective.

RUSH: Okay, so we saved Baghdad. That’s what Kerry was telling Christiane Amanpour. We backed ’em up, we stopped ’em, we put a halt to their advance, and we beat ’em back in Baghdad. Meanwhile, as reported by — well, everybody; Max Boot and everybody else — they’re in Syria. They’re continuing to advance in Anbar Province and so forth. It still remains true that even though… There’s nothing wrong with air power, don’t misunderstand. I don’t want anybody to think that I’m down on air power. I love it.

I’m like everybody: Just bomb these bastards to the Stone Age. But if you really want to get rid of them, if you’re really serious about securing whatever you secure with air strikes, there has to be an accompanying, coordinated ground force.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s get started here with Greg in Rapid City, South Dakota. Thank you for calling, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Howdy.

CALLER: I appreciate everything you do. You know, watching the news over the last couple nights when we started these air strikes, not one casualty. I mean, I don’t know if we got some bad guys. With all that air power and all those missiles, did we kill anybody? Because when Israel went into Gaza, everybody was pointing the finger at Netanyahu and all these casualties.

RUSH: Yes, yes, yes. I predicted this very thing yesterday. I predicted there would be a whole lot of things not reported in this operation that were reported throughout Iraq. For example, we will not hear a running body count of American military personnel, which we were treated to every day during the Iraq war. We are not gonna get body counts on ISIS because the Regime is not going to lock itself into statistics that could perhaps be shown to be untrue.

We’re gonna rely on image, as I said earlier. The jets and the bombers taking off, B-roll footage of them flying and dropping bombs on targets that we don’t know if they’re actually real or just B-roll footage. And then we’re gonna see black and white before and after shots of the targets we hit, and the result of the hit, before and after, and that’s it. We’re gonna have a well-orchestrated, essentially a PR campaign to show how successful the operation has been, and it’ll be backed up and buttressed by appearances on TV of Regime figures like John Kerry describing the overwhelming success that the operation is incurring.

Meanwhile, something else, you can look all day and all night and you will not see, I’m gonna make a prediction to you. You will not see any reports of civilian casualties resulting from our bombs, and you will not see any reports of collateral damage like a nursery school accidentally blown up by an American bomb. You will not see any footage of a hospital blown up by an American bomb, which you would if George W. Bush were still president and operating this campaign or commanding this campaign.

You can look long and hard. You’re not gonna find any of the usual touches that the media uses to accompany reporting on conflicts like this that Republicans are in charge of, that the media wants people to think negatively of. Let me give you a further example. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it.

There’s a story here at CNN by Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh, and the headline: “Politics of Fear – How the GOP is Using ISIS Against Dems.” Are you kidding me? How the Republican Party is using ISIS against the Democrats? “The politics of fear. Until recently, that seemed so 10 years ago, right after September 11, 2001. That is, until ISIS started beheading Americans.” Now, just a minor correction. 9/11 was 13 years ago. So what CNN’s doing here is referencing George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004. That’s what they’re talking about here.

And if you recall that campaign in 2004 — if you don’t, don’t worry; I do — the media repeatedly said that Bush and the Republicans were not allowed to mention 9/11 or to show any images of it in the campaign ads. That would be politicizing a tragedy, and they were not permitted to do that. And if they did it, the media was gonna call ’em on it. Do you remember this now? Even before that campaign got in gear, the media’s out there, Democrats, “You better not use footage of 9/11. You better not politicize this tragedy. Do you realize people are still hurting? Do you realize families are still trying to… You better not!” And they didn’t.

Now here comes CNN claiming that the Republicans are using ISIS against Democrats. “Just six weeks before Election Day, security concerns could be a September surprise that shakes up the midterms. Across the country GOP candidates on the ballot in November are using the threat posed by ISIS to dust off an old playbook — attack Democratic opponents as weak on national security.”

Why, how Machiavellian of them. I mean, after all, ladies and gentlemen, we know there’s not a shred of truth to the charge that Democrats are weak on national security. We know that’s totally made up, right? It’s so made up that the San Francisco Chronicle today is asking where is the left-wing anti-war protest that they could expect? The left-wing anti-war protesters don’t exist. They’re too tired. They’ve just blown all their energy on climate change protests, and they just don’t have any energy now to protest the war. It’s a terrible, not beautiful thing.

You know, ladies and gentlemen, labels work. It’s one of the reasons why people don’t like ’em. And in some cases, identifying templates also work. And there is one that is undeniable, and that is that Democrats are doves. Everybody knows this. It’s not something you have to prove. The Republicans aren’t out lying about anything when they tell voters that the Democrats are weak on national security. Which party was it that sought defeat for the US military in Iraq? I give you the Democrat Party. Which party was it that was calling the generals leading that war in the surge, such as David Petraeus, liars, before they even showed up to testify before Congress? Democrat Party.

Which Democrat Party Senate majority leader said, “This war is lost. This war is pointless” before the surge even began? That would be Harry Reid, Democrat Senate majority leader. It’s not even arguable. This is what happens when Republicans dare to tell the truth about Democrats. Then the media gets in gear and accuses the Republicans of being too mean and accuses the Republicans of violating the standards of gentleman agreements during campaigns that nobody should ever say a party where a candidate is weak on national security. The reason they don’t want it said is ’cause it’s true.

By the same token, how about the label or the narrative that Republicans are hawks. In fact, it’s even worse. Warmongers. They’re racist, hateful, bigoted, so forth. Democrats could say that all over the place, all the time, and they’re never chastised by the media for violating any gentleman’s agreements. They’re never chastised for lying about things.

No. They’re applauded for it. When the Republicans dare to tell the truth — this is, I think, one of the reasons why the Republicans are so cowed and for the most part refused to tell the truth about Democrats because the media rises up and once again begins the never-ending assault all because Republicans correctly identify policy beliefs of their Democrat opponents.

Listen to this, from the CNN story. “The sun had barely come up Tuesday after a night of new United States and coalition airstrikes in Syria, when New Hampshire Republican Senate challenger Scott Brown released an ad using an ominous image of a fighter holding a black ISIS flag, while Brown talks about the threat from ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’ Brown, a retired member of the Army National Guard, touts his own experience in the ad before putting up side-by-side pictures of his Democratic opponent, Jeanne Shaheen, and President Obama, saying, ‘President Obama and Senator Shaheen seem confused about the threat, not me.'”

Well, wait, is the ad accurate? What’s problem? The ad is accurate. What’s problem? “But Republican strategists tell CNN that ads like this are driven by voter data from focus groups and polling all over the country, which signals that security is a rising priority among voters, especially with married women –” There it is, folks. If you read far enough you’ll find out what this is really all about.

The reason Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh at CNN are doing this story about how mean and tricky the Republicans are, trying to use ISIS against the Democrats, is because the Republicans have focus group data which shows that especially married women have greater confidence in Republicans to keep the country safe.

They called those “security moms” in previous campaigns as opposed to “soccer moms” during the Clinton era. These were security moms. Of course this doesn’t jibe with the War on Women, which is that Republicans hate women. They want ’em barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen, making babes and to shut up. They don’t want ’em taking birth control. They don’t even want ’em having sex except when it’s time to have a baby. This is the image that the left has put out about Republicans.

That’s what the War on Women is, and yet Republican consultants say, “Wait a minute. Don’t get mad. We’ve got focus group data here. Guess what. The American people, particularly married women, are very worried about the Democrat Party protecting the country.” Let me throw in a reason why this might actually be true. I’ll read this paragraph again: “Republican strategists tell CNN that ads like this are driven by voter data from focus groups and polling all over the country, which signals that security is a rising priority among voters…”

You think open borders might have something to do with this, too? And who’s known for wanting that to happen? Why, that would be the Democrat Party. I mean, you can’t have — what has it been — 300,000 unaccompanied minors just flow across the border and be picked up and snatched and then deposited in states all over the country. And you got the president United States talking about granting amnesty with a stroke of a pen. On any day, at any moment, he might do it. We’re talking 11 to 12 million, maybe more millions of people.

Here’s ISIS out there bragging about how easy it is to get into the country. Do you think intelligent people — including Republican women, married women — might be concerned that the Democrat Party’s not taking this security seriously enough? So the Republicans are running ads on it, and CNN thinks it’s mean and unfair and it’s biased and it’s politicizing the country at war in which we should all be unified. It’s just horrible.

Of course, all of this is encouraged, promoted, and applauded when it happens with a Republican president. So, that’s why this whole story. It’s because of that one poll result of married women: Republicans are counting on women, married women. We thought the Republicans were waging war on women, and all of a sudden we hear that Republican women — married women — have more faith in the Republican Party to keep the country secure!

Security moms, they’re called.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Mark in Seattle. Great to have you, sir. Thank you for waiting. Hello.

CALLER: Rush.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: Hey. What an honor.

RUSH: Thank you much.

CALLER: Navy jackpot dittos to you. Never won the lottery, but I now know how it feels. True honor. True privilege. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the war, the bombings.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I was listening to the news and listening to how big of a success it is and how much we accomplished by dropping the bombs and it’s just unreal. And it hit me. I was wondering, if it’s so successful, if the bombing mission is so successful, why don’t we send in the Girl Scouts to wrap this thing up then? What’s the hesitancy for not putting boots on the ground?

RUSH: Well, they haven’t said it’s that successful, send in the Girl Scouts. By the way, the Girl Scouts, isn’t that a prejudicial organization? I mean, the Girl Scouts don’t let lesbians in. Or is it the Boy Scouts that didn’t want gays in? Whatever. Yeah, the Boy Scouts, yeah. And I don’t know, does ISIS like cookies? You might have a good idea if they like cookies.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Randall. Randall in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I’d like to run a scenario by you which I think could happen.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: We’re bombing ISIS and ISIL and whatever right now, but if we were to go and start bombing Assad and his infrastructure, would that pull the Russians into this fight? Because the Russians use Syria as a buffer to keep the wacky Muslim from running into their country.

RUSH: Not only that, it might pull Turkey into it. You know, this new leader in Turkey, this Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a militant Islamist, and Turkey is no longer the “moderate” Islamist ally that we’ve always known. They have very close ties to Syria and Assad.

CALLER: Okay, if we start fighting there because we started World War III or so, that’ll leave the Chinese open to do whatever they want in the South China Sea, to take whatever they need ’cause we’ll be busy.

RUSH: Yeah, but do you really…? What you’re describing here as World War III is simply, if I heard you correctly, us deciding to drop bombs in Syria? Is that what you said?

CALLER: No, us deciding to drop bombs on Assad, because Assad and the Russians are pretty much in bed together.

RUSH: I think that’s not ever going to be our intention, not here. What we are doing, best I can figure out — and I don’t even know if this is the case. A year ago we were going to arm the people who we’re now fighting because it was thought they were fighting Assad and Assad was trying to massacre them. Now, you may be more informed than I because these are the toughest three hours for me to stay up to speed on transpiring events. Is there some talk out there that we’re gonna hit Assad in this campaign or are you just speculating?

CALLER: No, but there was always this thing that we wanted Assad out of there because he’s a brutal Regime. But, you know, it takes a brutal Regime to keep these people in line.

RUSH: Well, that was a year ago. That’s right. Obama drew the red line because a year ago — now it’s 16 months ago. It was last summer, 2013, the popular consensus on the golf course was that Assad was conducting mass murder against average citizens in Syria. I’ve been through this a number of times. It turned out that wasn’t the case. It was actually ISIS that was engaging in activity made to look like Assad was doing it.

We were being sucked in — other nations were being sucked in, as well — to attack Assad under the premise that he was the bad guy in this particular contest. So now what we’re doing is, we’re arming moderate fighters, if you will; training them and all that to do our bidding. But I don’t know. I have no idea. I literally don’t know anything here, but I feel pretty safe in saying that they don’t want to hit Assad right now.

Unless there’s something bubbling underneath the surface, some grand scheme here that’s being plotted that nobody knows about, that all of this is a cover for. You know, you can’t just reject everything out of hand ’cause it doesn’t appear to make sense. Anything, I guess, is something that is possible. And, depending on the competence of people running this… Hell, I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about that.

The ChiComs are lurking in wait, but I don’t think the ChiComs want to destroy the markets they depend on at the same time. So, patience is a virtue in this, but I don’t think, Randall… It’s an interesting think piece or little bit to talk about here, but I haven’t read, seen, heard (and I read, see, hear a lot) anything about any part of this designed to target Bashar Assad. Now, a year ago that was a whole different proposition.

A year ago, that’s what we were threatening to do, but we’ve changed our mind on that. We got our minds right. Thankfully, in the nick of time, by the way, ’cause it would have been a disaster, because it turned out Assad was not the bad guy last summer. It was made to appear as though he was. Anyway, I appreciate the call.