RUSH: “President Bush said yesterday that he would not be rushed into a decision on a strategy change for Iraq, saying that a round of consultations, he heard both some interesting ideas and some not-so good-ideas.” We have some sound bites here. Here’s a portion of his remarks to the press yesterday after meeting with the grand pooh-bahs of war.
THE PRESIDENT: In the months of October, November, and the first week of December, we have killed or captured nearly 5,900 of the enemy. Our enemy is far from being defeated. There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that every day and night, the Iraqi government and our brave men and women of the Armed Forces are taking the fight to the enemy, that in spite of the fact that I am conducting a strategic review of the best way forward in Iraq, there are a lot of operations taking place, day and night.
RUSH: I’m just going to tell you as I opined yesterday, I think we’re getting ready for a giant “screw you” to the whole Baker-Hamilton bunch and all of the people in the Drive-By Media who have been trying to force us out of Iraq, making it
Well, the attempt to unite the American people is under the concept of
Ever since the election, I have marveled at all of the stories I’ve read from generals and experts who, before the election, were saying, “We’ve gotta get out of there! My God, we’re losing soldiers! We’re losing our national treasure! We’re humiliating ourselves, and we’re just not getting anywhere. It’s a mess! We gotta get out!” Now all of a sudden after the election, when supposedly “the American people spoke” and demanded that we get out, there’s not a soul of any responsibility who says that we should. In fact, they’re now talking about increasing troop levels. It’s not just McCain talking about it. It’s a lot of people talking about it, including the president. So I don’t see any indication where the president is prone to take
THE PRESIDENT: I’ve heard some ideas that would lead to defeat, and I reject those ideas.
RUSH: Hubba hubba.
THE PRESIDENT: Ideas such as leaving before the job is done, ideas such as not helping this government take the necessary and hard steps to be able to do its job. I put off my speech. Actually I was quite flexible about when I was going to give my speech to begin with, and one of the main reasons why is I really do want the new secretary of defense to have time to get to know people and hear people and be a part of this deliberation, and he will not be sworn in until next Monday.
RUSH: Now, when you listen to him, he’s just come out of a meeting — and I watched this yesterday. He’s just come out of a meeting with uniformed military people (and probably others), but those people in uniform were standing behind him when he conducted the press conference, when he gave his comments and then started taking questions, and this question about anything that would “change your thinking.” He says, “I’ve heard some ideas that would lead to defeat, and I reject those ideas.” I wonder if any of the people standing behind him had given him those ideas. It almost has to be. Either that or he’s referring to the Iraq Surrender Group, ladies and gentlemen. I hope it’s the latter, because I hope there weren’t a bunch of military people in there that were giving him ideas on how to 
This has to be a veiled reference to the Iraq Surrender Group. With a backdrop of these military people, I think a lot of press people said, “Whoa! I wonder who up on that stage he’s talking about.” Victor Davis Hanson today has a really good piece with some great reminders in it about the uselessness of this Iraq Surrender Group Report in the first place, and his theme is that one of the ideas of the Iraq Surrender Group, as you know, is that the United States needs to conduct talks with Syria (gasp!) and with Iran. By the way, we broke this story yesterday, but this Bill Nelson, this twit Senator from down here, there’s a picture of him meeting with Assad in the story today in the New York Sun. He actually, in violation — well, not “in violation.” The White House asked him not to do this (story), asked all these senators, “Don’t go do this,” but Democrats just cannot help it.
They have to go out there and talk to the enemy. So he went over there and he had this meeting with Assad. He comes out of his meeting with Bashar Assad and says (paraphrased), “You know what? I talked to Assad about dealing with us and helping us out in Iraq, and he’s more than willing to! He’s more than willing to cooperate with us! He says he wants to end the terrorism!” I’m sitting there saying, “What kind of blind bats do we have? Hello, Neville Chamberlain!” I’m getting tired of making this comparison. It seems like this whole party is a bunch of Neville Chamberlains. So anyway, Nelson is over there. (He just got reelected, so he’s safe. He can go make a fool of himself all he wants because people forget about it before the next six-year election for him is up. It’s one of the reasons he was sent, I’m sure.)
He goes over there and basically is doing his best to undermine US policy by promoting the Iraq Surrender Group, which is plummeting from the sky without a parachute. This thing is about to implode. It’s going nowhere; it’s soon going to be forgotten, but this is part of the effort to make the Iraq Surrender Group something, parts of it that the president picks up and tackles. He specifically said he’s not going to do it. Victor Davis Hanson reminds us: “Remember the Iran Contra scandal of 1986? That was a mess that sullied the reputations of some of those [James Baker] now calling for renewed negotiations with Iran. In ’83, Iranian-backed Hezbollah kidnapped Americans in Lebanon. Some in the Reagan administration thought that Iran could help free the hostages if we sold them arms, and all they proved was the old dictum that democracies should not eagerly beseech dictatorships from a position of perceived weakness.”
We’ve