RUSH: Well —
CALLER: That’s the misinformation. That’s the misinformation.
RUSH: No, Ari, it’s a point. It’s a brilliant way to make a point. You’ve got Democrats claiming that this warning about potential terrorism in New York and Boston is —
CALLER: Terrorism. Al-Qaeda. You want to always make the connection between Iraq, Al-Qaeda, terrorism, 9/11 —
RUSH: If somebody —
CALLER: You don’t want anybody to forget 9/11 because that’s justification for the war in Iraq. That’s why Bush had to move when he could because it was an emotional — all right, I’ll let you ? What? What?
RUSH: Don’t filibuster here. Why aren’t you willing to have a conversation with me?
CALLER: I’m willing to have a conversation, I’m afraid you’re going to cut me short and I was cut off.
RUSH: When — I never do that.
CALLER: Well, the guy who filled in one time cut me short and I was (obscenity) off but go ahead. I’m sorry.
RUSH: Well, I don’t cut people off. I’d rather have conversation with you.
CALLER: All right, I’m sorry. Go ahead.
RUSH: That’s better. Now, we got — I’ve got to take a break. Can you hold on through the break?
CALLER: Yeah, absolutely, definitely.
RUSH: All right. Please, just — and you don’t have to curse here. I do.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
RUSH: All right, go back to Ari in Chicago. Okay, Ari, now, let’s have a conversation.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: Love the enthusiasm.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, I’ve done most of the talking so you go ahead.
RUSH: Well, let’s take your points. I’m not desperately attaching myself to anything. See, I think the larger stretch is for people on your side of this. One of the primary sources for the belief that Bush lied about Iraq has been exposed by two independent investigations: the British government, the United States Senate Intelligence Committee. That would be Joseph Wilson. That’s #1. What was the other point you made, because your text scrolled past me here and I don’t have it, but you think I’m desperately linking or attaching things to make Bush look good?
CALLER: Well, I mean you obviously want to support, to prop him up, you have to. You’re put into a hard position, you know. I feel sorry for you.
RUSH: Well, thank you.
CALLER: You have to keep toeing the line and trying to make the connections.
RUSH: Ari —
CALLER: You’re broadcasting to people. Like my — my — my in-laws. They’re the same types of people that try to tell me that Michael Moore is a communist, has no morals and wants to destroy all religion. They can’t back — they can’t continue with on the conversation. They just throw these things out there. I wonder where they hear these things.
RUSH: Well, I’ve never said that.
CALLER: I don’t know. Outlandish. How do you expect them to differentiate between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and 9/11? They can’t. It’s information overload.
RUSH: Ari. (Laughing.)
CALLER: These people, they don’t know — what he says difference —
RUSH: Ari?
CALLER: — no difference between Iraq and Iran.
RUSH: Ari!
CALLER: I am sorry.
RUSH: I’m trying to have a conversation with you.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: I’ve never said those things about Michael Moore.
CALLER: Okay, good.
RUSH: All I’ve said is that there deceits and lies and falsehoods and inaccuracies throughout his movie, and they have been documented, and it’s in more and more people are coming to recognize it.
CALLER: Well, I’m waiting — I’m waiting to see one. I’ve gone to — point by point, he even —
RUSH: No, no, no. See, you I don’t have anybody’s talking points here. I don’t have to toe anybody’s line.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: All I’m interested in, Ari, is the truth.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And I don’t think you are. I think you’re afraid of it. I think you’re afraid of the truth because what —
CALLER: What am I afraid is of?
RUSH: — because ?
CALLER: I’m not afraid of Saddam Hussein.
RUSH: No, you’re afraid of the truth because it will explode the foundation on which your whole political system resides today.
CALLER: The truth is that the Iraqi war was illegal. [sic] There was never a vote in the UN. [sic] (1991 Ceasefire Saddam Breached)</a> It was unnecessary —
RUSH: The Iraq war was not illegal.
CALLER: Absolutely. Where was the Security Council’s vote, Rush? (<a target=new href=”http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0678.htm”>678</a>, <a target=new href=”http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0687.htm”>687</a>, <a target=new href=”http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/6802888.html”>1441</a> | <a target=new href=”http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2002/SC7564.doc.htm”>”serious consequences”</a>, <a target=new href=”http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/bt-un51.htm”>Article 51</a> | <a target=new href=”http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sanction.htm”>Chapter VII</a>)
RUSH: It was not illegal. (<a target=new href=”http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3202897″>1</a> | <a target=new href=”http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/18/1047749770373.html”>2</a>)</a>
CALLER: They wouldn’t have gotten a vote. That’s why they just went ahead. They said, “Well, we have all the resolutions.” Well, you’ve got to vote to actually take action on those resolutions [sic], <a target=new href=”http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/unscmdoc.htm”>(UN Resolutions on Iraq)</a> and they didn’t do that, because you had failed.
RUSH: Ari, see, this is one of the problems you have and this is why John Kerry is so dangerous. This was, if you want to call it preemptive strike, some would say it’s “a clear and gathering threat” or what have you, but you have the 9/11 event that takes place. We have the incontrovertible evidence of weapons of mass destruction being built in Iraq, violation of all these resolutions <a target=new href=”http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2002/SC7564.doc.htm”>(Iraq in “material breech” resolution)</a>. The UN wasn’t doing its job. We’re not going to depend on our security and freedom on the United Nations. It’s not the responsibility of this country to throw that off on somebody else especially if they’re not willing to do it. We have to take care of ourselves. It’s called leadership. The world is a better place. There was nothing “illegal” about this. To talk about this as being legal or illegal is to miss the whole point. But I think your framework here is (sniff) pardon the sniffles here, just because I was laughing during the break. Your framework here is based on so many premises that are wrong. You think that I have “talking points.” You think that I have to toe the line. You think that I have to be desperately attached to something.
Let me tell you something. As I said last hour</a>: this Joe Wilson thing is huge. Many elements of the mainstream media from Chris Matthews to Tim Russert to the New York Times to Vanity Fair gave this guy free rein, and he spread lies. Now, what I said last hour was, “If I had given Joe Wilson free rein to do what he did, to purposely make up stories that undermine the war effort for the purpose of doing damage to that war effort so as to damage the president, if I had participated in that and I now learned that either I had been duped and given my microphone to a fraud such as Joe Wilson, I would be personally embarrassed and for my own credibility I would be apologizing to this audience for it happening. There has been no such thing from the New York Times, no such thing from NBC. They want to ignore him and pretend he doesn’t exist. Now he’s out there working for the Kerry campaign. He has no credibility whatsoever.
This is a serious thing, and it’s led to a bunch of fundamental beliefs people have that are totally wrong. Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, Michael Moore, all of this stuff, when you add it up together, has created falsehoods and lies in the minds of gullible people who believe it — and this is a serious circumstance the country is in. This is not as political as health care. It’s not as meaningless as some silly little domestic issue that we argue about in our traditional, ideological ways. We’re talking about America and freedom and leadership throughout the world, and our ability to maintain that which we have provided for ourselves, and it seems like there are too many people who don’t want to take serious gathering threats, or take them seriously. So it’s frustrating. You know, the last thing I want to do is make up anything to advance a cause. What’s the cause worth if you have to lie about it? and that’s why I think you guys don’t need to be asking yourselves.
You have to come up with lies to advance your beliefs. Let me tell you, this whole existence of the Democratic Party right now is tenuously linked to this silly notion that there was no reason to go to Iraq, that there was no Al-Qaeda there and there was no terrorism there. Al-Qaeda was everywhere. They were even in south Florida! But somehow they missed 
Iraq! That’s the big stretch that you guys are asking us all to believe. The president of Iraq today is prominently saying, “There were connections.”</a> Everybody knows there were connections all through the 90s. It boggles the mind. The real stretch (cough) excuse me, seems to me is with you guys. But the notion that, you know, lies and falsehoods are spread here out of desperation to persuade people is incorrect because there’s no gain to that. It doesn’t get us anywhere, and it certainly harms any cause to build it on lies — and that’s what the left is doing, especially in this war on terror, and particularly war in Iraq. Fred, Chicago. Two Chicago calls in a row. Fred, you’re next, hello.
CALLER: Yeah, I think it’s you that got it wrong, Rush. I agree with a lot of what the last guy said. I had a kid in the Army. For one, we know Al-Qaeda was all over and in Florida but does that mean that Jeb Bush was actively cooperating with Al-Qaeda? That’s the whole premise of the war, that the whole government, the Iraqi government —
RUSH: Hey, hey, hey, hey. Fred, hang on just a second, now. That’s an interesting question. You can’t just say that Al-Qaeda and Jeb Bush weren’t connected? What about the election?
CALLER: Are you saying they are? We’re not saying anything like that, Rush. The premise —
RUSH: (Laughing) Fred. Fred.
CALLER: Let’s have an intelligent conversation, Rush. What you’re saying is just because they were there that the Iraqi government was in total cooperation with them.
RUSH: I’ve never said it. No, no, no. I haven’t said it, nor has the president. The president has specifically said, there was no cooperation between Iraq and Al-Qaeda vis-?-vis 9/11.
CALLER: But that’s what the whole premise of the war was based on. [sic] That’s how they put it.
RUSH: It’s not. It is not, and this is the falsehood and the premise that you guys are off the boat on. Bush has never said that Iraq, there’s any evidence tying Iraq to 9/11. He’s never said that. All he said was that terrorists —
CALLER: We’re not talking about tying it to 9/11. We’re talking about Al-Qaeda and their activities, whatever they may be, just because they’re all over the place.
RUSH: And that is established, that is established. Saddam Hussein did have ties with terrorists beyond Al-Qaeda throughout the 90s, the late 80s, into the nineties, and into the early 2000s, he did.
CALLER: Then why is this commission consisting of half Republicans saying this doesn’t?
RUSH: It says the opposite. Fred. What is this? This is the problem. It says just the opposite. All it says is what Bush said. You’re believing one sentence in this report, the 9/11 commission report is what you’re talking about, and there’s one sentence in this report that says, “no relationship, Al-Qaeda and Iraq, 9/11,” and the media ran with it. The rest of the report, if you’ll read it ? it’s in section 15 — it is clear as a bell that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq and has had ties and they have worked with Saddam all through the years. There’s just no evidence linking it to 9/11. The reason for this —
CALLER: Well, then I —
RUSH: You guys are trying to justify “Iraq is unnecessary” because that’s the only hope you have of getting Bush out of office. You clearly think Afghanistan was okay, but you think this Iraq war is all illegal and there was no reason to go there and so you want to come up with these things that you have to grasp at straws with to somehow suggest that Iraq wasn’t necessary, that Bush did an illegal war for Halliburton and oil or whatever it is, some cockamamie example or excuse, conspiracy kook theory you people come up with. (sigh) The fact of the matter is, we were attacked on 9/11. Saddam Hussein was unfinished business. He was required to do certain things under terms of surrender with the United Nations and the United States after the first Gulf War, (1991 Ceasefire Breached)</a> and he not only didn’t do them, he thumbed his nose at us, and continued to expand on his weapons programs and kicked inspectors out of the country.
The only responsible thing to do was to take care of this potential gathering threat in the aftermath of 9/11. It would have simply been irresponsible to ignore this, totally irresponsible, and now people are trying to say, well, this sort of dispels any notion of preemptive action. It better the damn well not, because preemptive action is what the whole business of intelligence gathering is based on, and I know that’s been damaged, but this is a totally responsible action — and I can’t believe you people on the left. I thought you cared about oppression. I thought you cared about being tyrannized. I thought you cared about people being murdered in concentration camps and jailed and tortured. I thought you cared about that. I thought you cared about people being dumped in <a target=new whref=”/home/menu/massgraves.html”>mass graves</a>.
I can’t find any liberal that’s happy about the liberation of the Iraqi people. I can’t find any liberal that thinks it’s a good thing that’s happened here. If I listen to you all, it’s almost like you just assume Saddam would still be in power and that his torture chambers and rape rooms still be open and the mass graves still being dug and filled. I don’t understand you people. “Weapons of mass destruction” was by no means the only reason offered for taking Saddam Hussein out. You know, the real question here is not, “Why did Bush do what he did?” There’s another equally as interest question: “Why did Saddam do what he did?” Look where he is compared to where he was. Saddam Hussein had 20 palaces, a labyrinth of underground tunnels. He had the life of Riley. He had his two sons running around terrorizing, torturing people; he had the rule of the roost; he was getting a nonstop supply of cigars from Fidel Castro. He was smoking them out there in public. He was raping women wherever he wanted, he was roasting lamb. He had the life of Riley. He’s now that 12-by-12 foot cell.
If he didn’t have any of this stuff, what in the hell was he doing? and the only theory that’s been advanced is, “Well, he, he thought he had ’em, too, but his people were lying to him.” I’m sorry, we have to do better than that. We have to do better. He’s listening to somebody who told him Bush wouldn’t do what Bush did. He put his trust in the French. He put his trust in the Germans. He put his trust in all these people he had been bribing with his oil-for-food program. You know, you guys, you want to look at the scandal of the illegal Iraq war, and you want to turn the nation’s defense over to the United Nations. I would love for you people to have one ounce of interest in the corruption at the UN and the incompetence at the UN and the inability of the UN to do anything.
Two genocides under the UN’s watch: Rwanda and one going on in Sudan right now, and you don’t care! All you want to do is say, “There was no danger in Iraq. We shouldn’t have gone, and Bush and Cheney and Halliburton are a bunch of criminals.” Bush and Cheney and Halliburton haven’t murdered anybody; they don’t have torture rooms; they don’t have mass graves, none of this stuff. You people just continually amaze me. You tell me I’m the one making a stretch? You tell me I’m the one that’s in a mode of desperation? I think it’s just the exact opposite. I think you people are the in midst of a crackup. I think your whole world view is crumbling in front of your very eyes. You saw the nation love and adore Ronald Reagan. That wasn’t supposed to happen. That had to really bother you. Now you see success in the Middle East. Now you see an economy roaring back</a> because of tax cuts. Now you see the American people happy about their future and they’re optimistic and that just isn’t what you need to get your power back.
It boggles the mind the way you people have structured yourselves. Bad news for the country is good news for you. Good news for the country makes you feel bad. It doesn’t make sense to me, in a political sense or a human sense — and this opposition to Bush; the things you come up with him about him, about being a neophyte and a dummy and n SOB and a corrupt — it’s baseless. Gary Trudeau, whatever his name is, the Doonesbury guy. Some interview in some New York magazine; it might be New Yorker, New Yorker, whatever, but he went to Yale with Bush, and so in this interview Trudeau is talking what an idiot Bush was and how he was a “controlling social animal,” and that’s what his real strength was, was assembling people to do his diabolical deeds because he had this controlling personality, and it’s dangerous that somebody like (that is president.) Well, one of them ends up as a cartoonist and one of them ends up the president of the United States, and we listen to the cartoonist tell us about the man who ended up as president!
Nobody elected the cartoonist. The president was elected. Everything here is 180-degrees out of phase. You want to believe a bunch of enemies of this country. You want to align with people like Chirac in France? Believe me, he is no friend and no ally of this country, and I’ll tell you what’s going on in Europe, but I’m a little long here — and Kerry had better understand it, because this is something I don’t understand. Kerry — just by virtue of who he is and his charisma, his personality — is going to be able to get the French and the Germans on board with us whenever we want to go into some country to protect ourselves? Bah, humbug, because the entire interests of Europe have deviated from those of the United States. We’re still interested in the whole concept of the sovereign nation state. The Europeans are aligning themselves into the European Union. They are into world internationalism and they want to run it.
The French are in a battle with the Germans to run the European Union. They’re into an internationalist world government of sorts with them at the seat of power. They’re not interested in helping our sovereignty; they’re not interested in helping us. It doesn’t matter whether Kerry is president, Bush president or whatever, because our interests and theirs no longer coincide because theirs are not the interests of a sovereign nation state. Theirs are the interests in becoming leadership of a coalition of nations that they hope to rule the world with — and I don’t mean in a mad scientist kind of way. I’m talking about, you know, geopolitical politics here and strategery, and this is why they oppose us. It’s not because they don’t like Bush. That’s not the way nations make decisions! The French are not going to sacrifice their best interests because they like this lug head from Massachusetts. They’re going to continue to do what they think is in their best interests, and right now the U.S. is not in their best interests, and they’re just a bunch of ingrates for thinking that. But they are what they are; we have to deal with it. You people, you don’t know how good you have it compared to how bad it would be if somebody irresponsible had been in the seat of power these last four years.
END TRANSCRIPT
<*ICON*>Your Resource for Combating the Partisan Media, Liberals and Bush-Haters…
<a target=new href=”/home/menu/fstack.guest.html”>(…Rush’s John F. Kerry Stack of Stuff packed with quotes, flips & audio!)</a></span>