Kerry Comes Out For Preemptive War… in Iran?

Get this. Let’s go back to this story. Keep in mind what Kerry just said, “If I get intelligence, you can bet I’ll go in there,” and I’ll kick ass. I remind you, “The September 11 commission report due out Thursday says that Iran may have facilitated the 2001 attacks in the U.S. by providing eight to ten Al-Qaeda hijackers with safe passage to and from training camps in Afghanistan. Weekly magazines TIME and Newsweek in similar reports quoting congressional commission and government sources says that Iran relaxed border controls, provided clean passports for the so-called muscle hijackers, to transit Iran to and from Osama bin Laden’s camps between October 2000 and February 2001. According to TIME, the commission’s report said that Iran at one point proposed collaborating with Al-Qaeda on attacks against the U.S. but that bin Laden declined, saying he didn’t want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia. TIME said the Iranian offer to collaborate with Al-Qaeda to attack the U.S. was made after the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors as the ship was being refueled in Yemen. ‘The offer,’ said TIME, ‘was turned down by bin Laden because he didn’t want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia.'”

So guess what? Osama turns down some religious fanatics here in Iran. How about he turns down some religious fanatics because he doesn’t want to alienate people in Saudi Arabia, his supporters there! Now, you have to understand what this represents to the Democrats and the liberals today. This is even better for them, that Bush might have screwed up and sent us into the wrong country. Wow, this is even better! Now they can say Iraq really wasn’t necessary. Bush screwed it up.
The question that needs to be asked, and I will ask it: Senator Kerry, since you said Friday that you support preemptive action when you’ve got the intelligence, what are you going to do about Iran if you are elected president? Are you going to deal with them? because, remember, Bush put them on the original axis of evil list. When everybody hooted and howled about how provocative that was. It was unnecessary. We didn’t need to go provoking these nations, bad enough they’re out there, but to call them evil! Why, that’s God. That’s too much religion. We don’t need people talking that way. We don’t like the way he uses the word evildoers, that religious talk. We don’t want to hear that. Well, you guys on the left have to be real careful about this because you’re so ready to get rid of Iraq you may end up with an even bigger problem: Iran. Because if Iran is what you guys claim Iraq was and we were lied about, we’ve got to do something about Iran, at some point — and your candidate has just said he’s for preemptive action, so hubba hubba! What we going to do about Iran now? That’s what I want to know. I want to know what those of you who claim that you’re going to defend us and you’re going to see to it these attacks don’t happen again because you’re going to do it “smarter,” and you’re going to do it “wiser,” and you’re going to make sure that there’s no oil involved and all this other happy-go-lucky Marquetty mark. I want to know what you’re going to do about Iran.

Well, don’t give me this diplomacy business. “Oh, we’re going to talk to ’em,” just like Ricky Holbrooke said we’re going to talk to North Korea. “We’re going to talk to ’em long. We’re going to bore ’em. We’re going to sit there and bore these enemies to death. They’re going to get so sick of us talking to them they’ll run away from us.” Is that the strategery? Let’s put this away. Don’t worry about, I’ll keep this filed away. When this pops back up — and it probably will happen this week — it’s going to become relevant because Kerry stepped in it with this, when he’s out there saying he’s for preemptive action.
COMMERCIAL BREAK

RUSH: Kevin in Blacksburg, Virginia. You’re next, and hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello, Rush, thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Dittos from academia and 20-something America.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: I just wanted to bring up the point that the Democrats are actually doing the Bush team a heck of a favor by focusing on Iran now. In that the one thing the American people seem to have never understood was the strategic importance of the Iraq war, as it pertains to the global war on terror. And Iran, fortunately, as it may be, is surrounded by Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf. So as such, we have them completely surrounded if we so choose to go in there at some point. And I think the Bush team has an opportunity here to score some political points and demonstrate to the American people that the Iraq war was the right thing to do.

RUSH: You raise an interesting point, not so much the fact that we got these dudes surrounded in Iran, although that is true. We’re in the Persian Gulf. We’re in Afghanistan. We’re in Iraq. They are “surrounded,” but here’s the thing that interests me about this. Out of the blue, this 9/11 commission — we haven’t heard a word about this in public testimony; we haven’t heard a thing about this. Zip, zero, nada. Who gave them this information? You know, there are five Republicans on this commission. I mean, it is supposedly bipartisan. Everybody thinks the Democrats ran this commission, but all of a sudden here there’s a leak and what does it — Iraq, and guess who’s harping on it? All the Democrats. The press, they’re sitting around. This is almost a rope-a-dope, because now you’ve got the people who don’t think there ought to be any preemptive action, don’t think that Iraq was worth it, none of this and that, are harping on Iran and how serious it is — the very people who are opposed to taking any kinds of preemptive action. Now, how does it work out that the enemies of this war now become the big blowhards, if you will, on the gathering threat in Iran? Bush can say, “Hey, I’m sitting around minding my own business and the Congress says I ought to look into what’s going on in Iran, and I think, well, that’s a good idea. I think I’m going to take the advice of my fellow congressmen and senators and take a look at what’s going on in Iran.” Now, he won’t do it that way, because they could say, “You dunderhead! You should have known it all along.”
The source of this is interesting. Whoever told this to the 9/11 commission — (laughing) — I’ll guarantee you it isn’t Terry McAuliffe. It’s not Richard Ben-Veniste. None of the Democrats figured this out and leaked it. This is a trick. When I say it’s a “trick,” I don’t say it’s not true. It is a political maneuver that needs to be done because there is a clear and gathering threat in Iran and there always has been. It’s on the original list of axis of evil nations. But now the opponents, the people staking their political future to the notion that Iraq was pointless are now pointing, “No, we should have gone into Iran.” Okay, we should have gone into Iran. Let’s go. Let’s take care of it. If we should have gone, you’re going to support us now, right? “Well, I wouldn’t say that. I want to talk to them first.” Well, so we’ll just see. This is not getting as much play yet as it will. I mean, this story is from Friday, by the way. This story hit Friday night, by the way, long after the EIB’s excursion of broadcast excellence was over so today the first chance we’ve had to talk about it. Here’s Doug in Los Angeles. Hi, Doug. Welcome to the program. Yeah.

CALLER: It’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: You saved me from the clutches of the emotional appeal of liberalism my freshman year in college. I’ve been listening ever since. Thank you.

RUSH: You’re welcome, sir.

CALLER: I have two things to run by you to see what you have to see. The nuclear threat posed by Iran. I could see liberals saying, “You know, Bush went to Iraq while this other threat was gathering.” I think we don’t need to worry about that because there’s no way on earth Israel will ever let that happen. They took out Saddam’s nuclear facilities in the 80s and they’re going to do it again.

RUSH: In fact, you probably have seen this yourself which might be one of the reasons propelling your call, and that is that the Israelis have said this. The Israelis, if there’s going to be a nuclear arms factory built in Iran, they’re taking it out.

CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: They’re not going to wait because they know that they’re target. They’re going to be the first target of such production and they’re going to do it just as they took it out in Iraq, and they’re going to let the world complain and moan, the Kofi Annans of the world demand the resolutions of censorship and all this, but they’re going to do it. I saw it during show prep today. It’s not factual. When I say not factual, I mean it’s a not a rumor, but it hasn’t been officially stated by the Israeli government is what I mean, but it’s sourced. I think that this is in general going to be a wake-up call to everybody because all this is — check the timing, you’re the right about this, Doug, check the timing of this because the past six months the international atomic agency, whatever it is, the month ham — yes, ElBaradei, I get these Mohammeds confused. This Mohamed ElBaradei has been begging the Iranians, “Please don’t do this. We think they’re doing something crazy, and we can’t stop them, but we hope they change their minds.” All this little hands-off stuff. Meanwhile, the world hasn’t done anything about it, the world is not doing a thing about it. The UN’s got ElBaradei over there.

Now, all this has been going on, and this is a country that’s got as much oil as they need. They don’t need nuclear for power, and that’s what they say it’s for. Given who they are, the only sensible thing is to prepare for the fact that they’re making weapons. It would be irresponsible not to prepare for that. So, all this has been going on, now the left is all of a sudden pointing fingers at Iran and pretty soon it’s going to move to the top of the list of the focus of evil nations.

CALLER: Agreed, and that’s where my second thing I want you to comment on comes in. I know you touched on this earlier. Kerry has now flipped to saying he supports “preemptive (action),” but I want to go back to the flop where he said he would go to the United Nations. Say we had some sort of proof, some sort of satellite pictures or something that, you know? They’re pretty far in their nuclear ambition. Does anyone really believe that the United Nations, France and China would actually give us the green light to go in and take that out? I mean, I can’t see that ever happening.

RUSH: Well, that’s —

CALLER: What would John Kerry do?

RUSH: Well, this is another: How can we trust John Kerry? Your very question about it means we can’t put him in the White House.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: We don’t know what he would do and we have doubts that he would do anything to protect the nation if the UN stepped in his way. I mean because that’s pretty much what he said. But he’s also said, “I can get the UN to go along. I can get France and Germany to go along with us.” The fallacy of that is, and the reason he wants people to believe it, is he thinks he can do it because he can make the French and Germans like him whereas the French and Germans hate Bush — and that’s not what’s happening. Doug, this is key and Henry Kissinger wrote a piece on this last week and this is something to understand about the French, particularly the French and Germans. A lot of these western European nations, but particularly France and Germany, don’t believe this notion that the reason the French and the Germans and even the Russians opposed us in Iraq because they don’t like Bush. Nations do not make decisions on the basis of personality. Tony Blair worked with this country both with Clinton and with Bush. Everybody assumed he did with Clinton because he loved Clinton because they were soul mates. Wrong. He was doing what was in the nation’s best interests as he saw it. The United Kingdom’s best interests. That’s what France is doing.
France is acting in what it thinks are its best interests. Now, what are those best interests? It’s not just that the French oppose us. The French have something else going on. While we look at ourselves as a stand-alone sovereign nation, we make the mistake of looking at these other countries as stand-alone sovereign nations as well. The French: stand-alone sovereign nation. Germany: stand-alone sovereign nation. They are not anymore. They are seeking to unify just as we are the United States. They are seeking to unify as the European Union. They’ve been writing their constitution. In fact, they don’t want God mentioned in their founding documents. Pat on the back for old El Rushbo here, describing leftists — and what the French are trying to do is establish themselves as the leading nation of the European Union. They want to be the United States of Europe, which means standing up to us. They have their own interests. It’s not about not liking Bush. The point is they would be on this course even if Kerry were in office. Kerry is not going to get Jacques Chirac to set aside his personal ambitions just because he likes John Kerry. He probably doesn’t like John Kerry any more than he likes any other American. Ditto with Gerhard Schroeder.

It’s a myth to assume that all these European nations are simply in bed with Kerry because they’re fellow socialists or they like Kerry personally. It has nothing to do with it. So when you come to Iran, the reason the French are going to oppose the United States at the United Nations is very simple: anything that establishes the United States as the go-to nation in the world — as the nation that you have to rely on to fix problems, the nation that rights the wrongs of the world, the nation that protects the oppressed of the world, the nation that has the power to do anything that allows the U.S. to assume and illustrate that position — will be denied. Because it’s not in the best interests of the French, who want to set themselves up in their own little conclave within the context of the European Union as much the same thing.

Now, I don’t know if the French have sweetheart business deals under the table with the Iranian mullahs as they had with Saddam. That was one of the primary reasons they opposed us in Iraq, and they would have had Kerry been there, they would have had it been Ronald Reagan in there, wouldn’t have mattered. They were going to oppose us because they were in on the corruption of the oil-for-palaces deal plus they had their own under the table arrangements, so did the Russians and so did the Germans. So I think Iran poses a whole different set of circumstances. Iraq is one set. Iran is a whole different equation. And Iran is not, you know, there’s one guy, Mohammed Khatami but there’s a series of mullahs that run the show over there but there’s a big difference. The population of Iran is fed up. The population of Iran with a little nudging would revolt. Many experts believe that Iran is not even a military problem right now. They could be handled with just a little support without military. I don’t know. This is just what some think tank people that I respect have written and said. But it’s different equation. But the nuke component, coupled with the new awareness by the American left that Iraq is a clear and gathering danger, whether they know it or not, is falling right into the trap. Iran, Iran. Yeah, sorry. Iraq, our Q’s and N’s sometimes confuse me. I have verbal dyslexia now and then. It was a busy weekend and a late night, so stick with me.

You know, when I meant “Iran” when I said Iraq. You’re just trying to help out. That’s right, I meant Iran when I said Iraq. For the sake of this discussion, Iraq doesn’t exist. If I say Iraq, I mean Iran. Anyway, I’ve said what I had to say about it. I’d only be repetitive if I kept going. Thanks, Doug, for the phone call.
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