RUSH: We’re gonna start in Cordelia, California. This is Roy. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Good morning, Rush. It’s an honor to talk with you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Something’s been bothering me about the reports out of Benghazi. The disposition of Ty Woods illuminating the mortar with his laser designator.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Other folks have said that he probably lit that place up in hopes that someone would see it.

RUSH: No, no. No, no, no. He wouldn’t light it up unless he knew there was somebody up there, unless he thought somebody… I never said hoped. He had to think that somebody was gonna act, otherwise he’s giving his location away.

CALLER: Exactly. My contention is — and I’ve been keeping in touch with folks who are still active. Those guys don’t light those things up unless they’re in touch with some sort of asset that’s there to help them.

RUSH: I know. That’s why this is really befuddling to me. This is a Navy SEAL.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: He knows what he’s doing. The story we’ve had is that he was told, he and his buddies, three times, “stand down,” you don’t show up. They went over anyway. And then they designated a target. He designated a target with his laser. That is worthless unless there’s a bomb that’s aimed at what he’s lasering. So I’ve thought from the beginning that he had to think that he had a C-130 or drone or something up there that was gonna fire based on what he did.

CALLER: Agreed. And I contend that he possibly was in contact with someone.

RUSH: Would almost have to be. Look, I probably haven’t said that, I just assumed people would understand that he has to be in communication with somebody. You don’t go light up targets with a laser designator on your own. You just give yourself away. There’s no point in doing it.

CALLER: Those guys are too well trained, too well dedicated, and too intelligent to leave themselves open as a target.

RUSH: Okay, so what you’re saying — and we’re in a dangerous territory here because now we are really speculating, but I guess what you’re thinking is is that there’s a whole lot we don’t know here, that if Ty Woods goes over there, does this, that somebody had to be involved in a coordinated response that was underway that didn’t happen.

CALLER: Yes. I will leave open the possibility of the desperation of the moment. Maybe he felt that he had no other choice, but just in blind hope that something was coming to help them, that he lit that target, but I find it hard to believe.

RUSH: Well, look, you have to consider everything. That could very well be possible, that he just hoped against hope, that because people knew he left, people knew that he and his buddies went over there, maybe somebody would have backed ’em up, because that’s what happens. I don’t know. There’s so much that’s been left open for interpretation because there hasn’t been any explanation. Now all these denials of everything that we thought we knew, and there’s no question here, folks, that some of what we know is true is being covered up now. This was an utter disaster in every which way you look, and the people involved in that are obviously trying to cover up what made it a disaster.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mike in Camden, Tennessee. I’m glad you called, sir. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks. Talking to Rush Limbaugh, I got something to talk to my grandchildren about someday. Wow. Anyway, the point I wanted to bring up is this Benghazi thing, what it needs is a John Dean. And I think Petraeus could be that person that, you know —

RUSH: Hope springs eternal in the audience of the EIB Network.

CALLER: See, he could be that man. He could go tomorrow and just tell the truth. And, you know, since he’s not employed by the government anymore, he’s not beholding to the government anymore.

RUSH: Well, we don’t know that. We don’t know —

CALLER: — this affair thing hanging over his head.

RUSH: We don’t know any of that. I mean, this Jill Kelley babe is saying she’s tight with Petraeus and can help a guy broker a coal gasification deal in South Korea.

CALLER: I watch the Fox News shows and I see the former generals and people like KT McFarland who say they know this man personally and how honorable he is.

RUSH: Yeah, that’s what they all say.

CALLER: And I think he could do it.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: I’m holding out hope.

RUSH: All right. All right.

CALLER: But, you know, what scares me about this whole thing, Rush, is I’ve got an 18-year-old son in high school, he’s a chief master sergeant in the Civil Air Patrol, and he wants to go into the military, and I am really concerned that, you know, he would have Barack Obama as his commander-in-chief and John “If you’re not smart enough, you go to Iraq” Kerry as his defense secretary.

RUSH: Yeah. I’m looking for something. I don’t think I printed it out. And I’m going to have to print it out, since you called.

CALLER: What’s that?

RUSH: Well, a military guy has written a piece today that is being forwarded around by generals. I happen to know one of the retired generals who’s forwarding this thing, highly respected, you see him on TV. This piece rakes Petraeus and Allen over the coals, saying the last thing they are is duty, honor, country. Just based on what we know in this episode. And I only mention this to you because of all these people on TV saying that they know Petraeus and he’s the king of integrity and so forth. I’m just gonna let you know that there’s a piece out there today floating around saying just the opposite, and it’s a military guy, who is worried that the military is deteriorating like every other institution in this country. That all of the things taught at West Point, duty, honor, country, none matters anymore. Everything’s plastic banana, good time rock ‘n’ roll today, that nothing is at what appears, that our overall decadence is happening throughout every tradition and institution in the country, particularly the powerful ones we count on. That’s his whole point in this piece.

CALLER: I’ve got my fingers crossed. Tomorrow may tell the tale.

RUSH: By the way, John Dean isn’t no great shakes, if you want to get down to things.

CALLER: Well, I said a more honorable John Dean.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: I mean, I don’t think Petraeus —

RUSH: Where do you see John Dean on TV? MSNBC.

CALLER: Well, yeah, but, I mean, that’s the only example I could come up with at the time, but, you know, I think if Petraeus went in there and told the truth, afterwards he wouldn’t be called a rat. Like Mr. Dean was.

RUSH: Do I need to remind you what they were doing to this guy before he had even testified on the surge? General Betray Us. Hillary Clinton was talking and called him a liar, that you have to suspend reality to believe this guy. By the way, this piece —

CALLER: Maybe he needs to keep stuff like that in mind when he goes and walks through that door tomorrow.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand what you’re saying. You’re saying we need a hero. We need a hero. And everybody’s fear is that there aren’t any.

CALLER: He got caught with his pants down literally and he did the honorable thing, and he resigned. So, you know, maybe he can carry it out.

RUSH: Well, but he didn’t want to resign. He didn’t want to leave.

CALLER: That’s true.

RUSH: He wanted to stay. That’s been the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer. He wanted it swept under the rug. He didn’t want to leave. He essentially was fired. Anyway, I appreciate the call. I’ll find that piece between now and next week and print it out. No, I’ll find it here in just a second. I can summarize it in two or three sentences. I’ll summarize it in just a second. I’m already losing ground here. I’ve got sound bites eight through 21 on this Benghazi business that I thought I’d be over with by now. I have the comparison that Broadwell’s getting from two different women. She’s a slut to one woman, and to the other woman she’s a victim. So I’ve got a lot of stuff yet here, plus we gotta squeeze these phone calls in here. So during the break, I’ll get it here, and I’ll summarize this thing for you, five minutes, folks, maybe six.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. The piece here is written by G. Murphy Donovan, and it was forwarded to me by a retired general. G. Murphy Donovan, Vietnam veteran, former intelligence officer, writes frequently about national security, military affairs, and politics. I don’t know where the thing was published, but it was sent to me, and it’s going around, folks. The point is, this is going around the retired military officer community. And Snerdley, listen up. You wanted the summary, here’s the summary of this piece.

Petraeus is a fraud. The military has also been corrupted by our overall cultural-societal decline, and just as in the Democrat Party, failures are made heroes in the military. Now, I threw in “just as in the Democrat Party” because I’m the one that makes the statement. He doesn’t say it in this piece. He doesn’t say “just as in the Democrat Party,” but he does say pretty clearly that people rise to the top in the military, if they get — you have two kinds of generals in the military now, in whatever branch. You got the warriors and you got the politicians. And the politicians are winning. And what do politicians do? They pander.

So let me just give you a flavor for this thing. “General David Petraeus illuminates two grand military issues at just the right moment: officer corps character and flag officer performance. Petraeus could be the poster child for a clueless Gilbert and Sullivan character too — ‘The very model of a modern major-general.’ Major-general was the highest rank to which an officer might aspire to in the last century. Grade inflation has created the contemporary glut of four stars, including Petraeus.”

You don’t need to hear anymore. Grade inflation means there’s a whole bunch of four-star generals who are nowhere near it. A bunch of people who are getting C’s but they’re being given A’s. In this guy’s opinion — and remember this thing is being passed around by retired military top-line people — Petraeus doesn’t deserve the four-stars, and neither does Kelley, as you read this thing. Now, folks, again, I’m not saying this is gospel; I don’t know that it’s gospel. I’m just telling you how I got it. But since the theme today is the overall decline of the institutions — duty, honor, country, all these things — clearly, those things were set aside here in this episode, and this guy makes that point.

“David Petraeus gloried in wearing every token of service on his chest, including presumably the good conduct ribbon. Or maybe not! The good conduct medal only goes to grunts, not officers. Clearly, the good conduct award should hereafter be a badge of misplaced military expectations. Nonetheless; the US Army, West Point, and officers like Petraeus continue to pay lip service to traditional military values and ethics like ‘duty, honor, and country.’ The second imperative seems to have been honored in breach by the former ISAF commander. It’s hard to believe, as it was with Bill Clinton, that Paula Broadwell was a ‘one off.'”

So these guys are all running around saying, “Well, if there was Broadwell, there had to be others.”

“Or maybe the West Point honor oath is more relevant: ‘a cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal; or tolerate those who do.’ Ironically, cheating on your wife seems to be a moral misdemeanor in the Army; while cheating on your trigonometry quiz could lead to dismissal. Alas, Cadet David gets the hat trick here. On the larceny count, Petraeus stole reputation from both sides of his family. His wife Holly is the daughter of a former West Point commandant.” I mean, this guy is laying into Petraeus in this piece.

Now, can you imagine our caller, John from Crofton, listening to this? He called yesterday, just raking me over the coals, “This a 40-year hero, why in the world would you say he would go up and not tell the truth under oath?” Don’t we more often than not wonder who will tell the truth under oath these days, particularly in American politics? Isn’t the more unique occurrence when somebody tells the truth in politics? “And be not distracted by any ‘honey trap’ nonsense; cheating on wives is a military tradition, not a scandal. Officially, a remote tour is designated ‘unaccompanied,’ but overseas orders seldom require celibacy. Alas, unaccompanied officers are known in the trade as ‘geographic’ bachelors. A senior officer is not busted for cheating; he gets drummed out of the corps for getting caught — too visibly.

“And morality only becomes an issue when it embarrasses the Service. In this respect, contemporary military culture is no different than American political culture. If and when, Holly Petraeus, sings a few choruses of ‘Stand by Your Man,’ as did Hilary Clinton; the triumph of the bimbo ethics will be confirmed. Men behave like swine because the women in their lives, mothers and wives, have low or no expectations.
Petraeus not only gives new meaning to terms like ’embedded’ and ‘all in’ but he and Mrs. Broadwell give a whole new dimension to ‘ring knockers,’ a military euphemism for arrogant military academy graduates. Indeed, if the general was making booty calls with GI Jane in Kabul, the angst in the ranks should be unique. Unlike Europe, Korea, and Vietnam; ordinary soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are discouraged, if not prohibited, from fraternizing with Muslim women. Like Saigon back in the day, however, apparently the brass gets first run on the imported camp followers. Rank still has perks.”

The imported camp followers. Geographic bachelors. And, folks, there’s three more pagers of this stuff. And again G. Murphy Donovan. I’ve been told now it’s posted at American Thinker. But I got it from a retired general, and these guys are circulating this all over the place. Do with it what you will. Just telling you it’s out there. And it sort of fits with our overall discussion today on the decline of everything that we used to think we could count on.