RUSH: Regular listeners will know that one of our favorite people here is the second-in-command State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. This woman is stereotypically perfect of the modern, empty-headed, totally vacant, but to-the-hilt-educated liberal, has come out of the Ivy League, looks the part, acts the part. She is just perfect. And she literally doesn’t know anything, but she thinks she knows everything.
She feels, and she’s compassionate, and she’s understanding. So yesterday, back to CNN, Wolf Blitzer. She was a guest there, and Blitzer said, “I guess what the president said on 60 Minutes, that the intelligence community basically got it wrong. The intelligence community is coming back and saying for at least a year they were warning that ISIS was on the move, getting stronger, gaining territory. They don’t think they necessarily got it wrong.”
HARF: What the president said was for a long time we’ve known about the serious threat from
ISIL. But I think everyone — us, the Iraqis; even ISIL itself, probably — was surprised by how quickly earlier this summer they were really able to take territory in Iraq. They moved more quickly than anyone could have imagined. And, you know, assessing the will of a force to fight? The capability is one thing you can assess, but the will? That’s a really tough thing to assess.
RUSH: You heard that right. You heard that right. Marie Harf, who is the second in command, the spokesman at the State Department actually said even ISIL was surprised by how quickly they were able to grow. Even ISIS was surprised how quickly they were able to pull off what they were trying to achieve. If ISIS was surprised, can you imagine the Khorasan Group? They didn’t even know they existed until people like Marie Harf and Obama made ’em up! So you imagine you’re a member of the Khorasan Group, and you don’t even you exist. Now you’re a member of ISIL, and you had no idea. You didn’t have any idea how big you were gonna get.
That’s the extent to which they’ll go to defend Obama, here, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ve been requested, ladies and gentlemen, to play this again, and I’m happy to do it. This is a greatest hit that I’m happy to play. Marie Harf — grab sound bite number 11 — was on with Wolf Blitzer last night. Wolf asks her about the news that the intel has been clear on
ISIS for a year, ’cause Obama’s throwing ’em under the bus. Obama’s saying, “The intel community kind of blew it. They didn’t tell me! I didn’t know.”
In which case, why is anybody there still employed?
You have national security director Jim Clapper, James Clapper. Whoever it is that Obama through under the bus, why do they still have a job? I mean, this is serious breach, to have known about ISIS for a year or two, and then not have told the commander-in-chief? I mean, that’s what Obama said essentially happened, and they’re still employed? So, anyway, Marie Harf is on with Wolf Blitzer to explain all of this, and, honest to God, we are not NBC here. We do not doctor 911 calls or audio sound bites.
(replaying of sound bite)
RUSH: No, it’s not! The will, how badly do you want it. We can assess Obama’s will, and it ain’t very high. It’s totally clear. But you heard her say it. “Even ISIL itself was probably surprised by how quickly they were able to take territory.” Why, ISIS underestimated ISIS! ISIS underestimated itself. It had no clue how good it was. Now, keep in mind, these are the same Obama flacks who say they couldn’t predict what the Iraqis would do.
They couldn’t predict how big ISIS was gonna get. ISIS couldn’t even predict that, and yet these are the same people that claim to be able to predict the weather and climate change 50 or a hundred years from now. Now, Jen Psaki, who is Harf’s boss, is the number one spokesbabe at the State Department. She was on Fox & Friends this morning with Brian Kilmeade. (interruption) It’s Saki? You don’t pronounce the P. I’m sorry. It’s spelled P-s-a-k-i, and I’ve not heard her name pronounced.
I thought it might be a real quick P, like Psaki. And it probably is Psaki. But they probably simplify it for the media by calling it saki, which they all drink, probably familiarity with it, it’s easier. It’s like Zbigniew Brzezinski’s name. Americans pronounce it Brzezinski, but that’s not how you pronounce it in
Poland. Poland you pronounce it Brzezinski. I know these things because I am a highly trained broadcast specialist and professional communicator.
So, anyway, she pronounces it Saki. Fine and dandy. She’s on with Kilmeade. Kilmeade says, “Just now, new group, the Khorasan. They seem to be a special focus because you believe they are a direct threat here. Can you tell us what types of plot they have already pulled off to date?”
PSAKI: I can’t go into those details for the safety and security honestly of the American people, but I can tell you we’ve been tracking the Khorasan Group for about two years now. Uh, this is an affiliate of Al-Qaeda. It’s a group that we’ve been watching, and we’ve had concerns about. That’s why we took action.
KILMEADE: So if core Al-Qaeda still exists and a direct threat to us, can we no longer say that we decimated core Al-Qaeda?
PSAKI: I think, uhh, what you’re referring to, I believe, is the president’s statements that we have decimated core Al-Qaeda and certainly killed Osama Bin Laden. Those are all facts.
KILMEADE: You don’t believe it’s core Al-Qaeda?
PSAKI: Well, I think you’re talking about names and labels here. They are an affiliate. Certainly they’re a terrorist organization.
KILMEADE: That’s right.
PSAKI: That’s why we went after them.
RUSH: Who’s talking about labels? They’re the ones that invented the name. There isn’t a Khorasan Group. Khorasan is an area; it’s a border area. It’s like ISIL: Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. It’s an area. They just made it up. And they had to make it up because they didn’t decimate Al-Qaeda, they didn’t wipe out Al-Qaeda. Obama told everybody he did the Democrat convention. “I killed bin Laden, got Al-Qaeda and GM of course trucking along!”
They’re recalling everything, but they’re still trucking along. They made it up. And Kilmeade, I don’t think Jennifer Psaki even now understands how Kilmeade got her, but he did. (impression) “I think what you’re referring to, I believe, is the president’s statement that we have decimated core Al-Qaeda and certainly killed Osama. Those are all facts.” You decimated core Al-Qaeda, yet the Khorasan Group’s so big that you can’t tell anybody what they’re doing because of threats to national security.
“Yes, that’s exactly right.”
“Okay, cool. We — we get it.”
CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft in his interview with Obama: “How did they, Islamic State terrorists, end up where they are, in control of so much territory? Was that a complete surprise to you?” Barack Obama: “I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” That is throwing your intel guy overboard.
Now, keep in mind, when there were no weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence community… This was well known. The intel communities of the United States and the UK and even the Pakistans, they all thought, and thought they had evidence, and over-flight photos, even General Powell presenting pictures of it to the UN as Bush was assembling a coalition. Everybody thought that Saddam had them, and when there weren’t any significant stock files of WMD, and the excuse was, “Well, the intel community blew it”?
“Ah, ah, ah, you can’t say that!” They said it was Bush being an idiot. That was the explanation: “Bush was stupid, was a cowboy. Bush lied,” even though everybody knew the intel community. But Bush never threw ’em overboard like this. This is and it here’s Obama constructing another one of his straw men. Do you think Jim Clapper’s running around saying that?
You know, he’s in the White House running around, raising his hands, “Hey, hey, everybody! I got it wrong! Hey, I goofed! Hey, hey, look at me! I did it wrong!” That’s what Obama’s saying happened. “I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what has been taking place in Syria.” You see, it can’t be any deficiency in Obama. It can’t be any fault of Obama.
Now, this piece that I just quoted from is written by Glenn Kessler, and he’s the fact-checker at the Washington Post. And normally he’s a shameless Obama shill, and sometimes he even surpasses himself. From the article, “Clearly there were public warnings by [Regime] officials about the threat posed by the Islamic State. Yet at the same time, two senior intelligence officials have expressed regret at the quality of intelligence on [ISIS].”
In any case, how does the second sentence obviate the first? Obama was worst. Obama was warned about ISIS early and often. There’s no disguising that. Everybody… By the way, the people that know this are out covering their own rear ends with this, since Obama’s throwing people overboard, those people are refusing to jump. There aren’t a whole lot of people that want to fall on their swords in the last two years of a second term.
From the UK What is the date today? This is the 30th? Okay, so this is yesterday. “Obama Has Had Accurate Intelligence About ISIS Since BEFORE the 2012 Election, Says Administration Insider — President Barack Obama’s intelligence briefings have provided him with specific information since before he won re-election in 2012 about the growing threat of the terror group now known alternatively as ISIS and ISIL, an administration insider told MailOnline on Monday.
“‘Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president’s daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about ISIL have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the 2012 election,’ said a national security staffer in the Obama [Regime] who is familiar with the content of intelligence briefings.” Now. We are interested in fairness here. To be fair, how could Obama admit that there was a threat from ISIS while he was claiming during his campaign that he had wiped out terrorism? See the problem?
If you wipe out terrorism, you do that by wiping out Al-Qaeda, and you kill bin Laden, and you get out of Iraq, said there’s no reason to stay. We have ended it. And then you tell your State Department you’re not even allowed to use the word “terrorism” or War on Terrorism as a term because you vanquished it. So in the middle of that you’re giving intelligence briefings telling you about the rising tide of ISIS, ISIL. But you have to ignore them because you’re telling the American people there isn’t any such thing.
But then eventually it all comes to light and people have to pay the price, and it’s never the president who pays the price on things like this. “The staffer declined to share anything specific about the content of those briefings, citing his need to maintain a security clearance.” (chuckles) He’s well on the way to keeping that, anyway, by telling us this much.
“But ‘it’s true,’ he said, ‘that the [intelligence] community was sending pretty specific intel up to us. We were seeing specific threat assessments and many of them have panned out exactly as we were told they would.'” All of that comports with what we had on this program back in June of this year, that Obama knew about ISIS since at least 2012. Now, what’s different about this? Jonathan Karl at ABC has had a number of reports about what White House knew, and Obama is denying that they knew it.
Normally, if this were the first term, none of this would be going on. Everybody would be burying all of this. But it’s the last two years. We’re coming up on the last two years of the second term, and now people are thinking about their future employment in the private sector and making the big bucks. Nobody — or let’s say a very increasing number of people — are refusing to fall on the sword here.
So Obama is not getting away with his version of things and everybody shutting up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Mike in Atlanta. Mike, you’re next. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. How are you, sir?
RUSH: Just fine, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: I just wanted to point out that the president, when he talked about JV teams, I kind of think that’s a bad analogy when you compare it to ISIS. I played on a varsity team on high school, and we were beat all the time by JV teams.
RUSH: That’s a good point. You know I, in fact, was on the JV squad, my one year of high school football. He was on the JV squad. I don’t remember how we did against the varsity, but we didn’t roll over. That’s basically what you’re saying. The JV squad’s out there trying to make the team themselves.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: JV squad’s not there to be doormats. It’s a great point, and you go with, just illustrates that, you know, Obama had to make excuses for a lack of action against a group of people that pose a serious threat to national security. And since he hadn’t taken it seriously and wasn’t dealing with it, he simply comes up with a term, “They’re the JV squad,” meaning, “They’re not serious! These are not the real guys. You know, these are just a bunch of wannabes.”
It’s all coming back now to haunt Obama. He just doesn’t know it. But I want to go back to the giant See, I Told You So, the sound bite from CNN, where Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger just beside themselves and they’re wringing their hands over the fact that Obama’s poll numbers didn’t get a bump out of this, proving that that’s what all of this is about. It’s all about reversing political fortunes, rather than being a serious military operation with a serious, defined objective.
And can’t just rely on the fact that we are the big superpower United States and that we don’t lose and that this is gonna be handled. I think there is no defined victory here. The defined victory is going to be Obama’s poll numbers getting a bump. And, believe me, if that does eventually happen for whatever reason, you’re gonna hear about it. It’s gonna be the greatest news the Drive-Bys will have, and at that point then Obama will be free to pull out or declare victory or whatever his plan is.