RUSH: You know, these terrorist guys, they’re just mean. They’re just really mean! I can’t believe that Zawahiri did this. Doesn’t he know it’s Christmastime here! When the children hear about this, it’s going to ruin everything for them! It’s going to upset ’em. I mean, hell, if the kids are running around being upset at the school bus driver wearing a Santa Claus hat, can you imagine what the kids are going to think when they hear about the latest tape from Ayman al-Zawahiri? Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. El Rushbo: a program that combines irreverent humor and parody and satire with the serious discussion of issues, a combination not found anywhere in major media, which leads to many liberals not understanding what happens on this program because so few of them have a sense of humor. The telephone number: 800-282-2882. The e-mail address is Rush@eibnet.com.
He didn’t identify the real powers, but who could he possibly be talking about. The guy is feeling left out. So then he went on to promise more attacks and said the United States… So he’s basically telling the Democrats, “Hey, we love the fact that you want to use diplomacy and you want to have talks and all this, but you’re talking with the wrong gang. You need to be talking with us.” It’s almost a plea to the Democrats! “The video, which bore the logo of Al-Qaeda’s media production house, al-Sahab,” (laughing). Wore the logo of Al-Qaeda’s media production house? (laughing) My side is starting to hurt. “It was the 15th time this year that al-Zawahiri has sent out a statement. On Wednesday’s tape he appeared exactly as in previous videos that have been authenticated by CIA analysts. He wore a black turban and white robe and pointed his finger at the camera for emphasis.”
“He said these concessions began with Hamas signing the truce with Israel last year, then group took part in the January elections based on a secular constitution. He rebuked Hamas particularly for not pushing for an Islamic constitution before it contested the elections.” So he’s not happy out there. He’s thinks being ignored by US Democrats who are traveling all over the region to talk to people he thinks are only going to lead to further problems for us. I guess Zawahiri is essentially saying: “You want to get out of Iraq, and you want to do a negotiation, come talk to me. Come talk to me, and we’ll find a way to get you out!” It would be interesting to see if the Democrats hear this, if the Democrats respond to this in any way, shape, manner, or form. At the other end of the region, “Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said yesterday he was ready for dialogue with the US but he warned Washington against giving Damascus orders.” (laughing)
These Democrats are such hopeful fools, and now Assad is basically giving us orders. “Well, we’ll talk to you, but you’re not going to order us around, pal.” Meanwhile… “Iran demanded yesterday the UN Security Council condemn what it said was Israel’s clandestine development of nuclear weapons and compel it to place all its nuclear facilities under US inspection, while, meanwhile, Ahmadinejad today said, ‘We are nuclear ready!'” (laughing) “Rush, how can you laugh at this?” Because it’s absurd. I’m not suggesting this, but let me see if I can put this in a proper context. If we did somehow for some reason find ourselves in armed conflict, in a war with Iran, they wouldn’t last… I don’t know how long, but it wouldn’t be very long. A year and a half ago, Ahmadinejad was the mayor of Tehran — and Pat Buchanan made this point yesterday, in arguing that this guy should have been TIME’s Person of the Year because he’s had the most effect on the news.
In a year and a half, this guy, with words alone, has dominated the world. With words alone. He’s running around talking about the obliterations of Israel every other day. He’s running around talking about (he said it again recently) the United States, the Zionist regime, and the UK will all “cease to exist” and they will all “go the way of the Pharaohs,” is his latest prediction, threat, or challenge — and about the only thing we’re doing is increasing our naval presence in the Persian Gulf. I mentioned this yesterday. There’s news on it today. “Pentagon considering a buildup of Navy forces in the Persian Gulf as a show of force against Iran. Speaking on condition of anonymity because the idea has not been approved, the official said one proposal is to send a second aircraft carrier to the region amid increasing tensions with Iran, blamed for encouraging sectarian violence in Iraq as well as allegedly pursuing a nuclear weapons program.”
There’s no “allegedly” about it. They are. At this point we don’t know how close they are to it. One day they say they’re ready; another day we hear it’s going to be four years or what you have you, but in the meantime, people who could not — and this is, I guess, a little bit of a think piece. People who could not deal with us for five minutes in an armed military conflict are ordering us around and threatening us, and we seem to be backing down to it! The Iraq Surrender Group wants to turn over the power of saving Iraq to Iran and Syria! If we wanted to, we could take Damascus, finish it off inside of a day or two, and Tehran the same thing. I’m just talk about with the power that we are able to project. I’m not talk about the politics and what would result from it — and these people know it. There’s no way they can do anything to us in that sense. Yet they talk like we’re the little kid on the corner, and they are the giant bully that runs the town or runs the world, and we’ve got way too many people in this country who want to accord them that status! I, frankly, don’t care if elected officials go talk to foreign leaders, like the Democrats have gone off to talk to Damascus and Assad. But I don’t like the attitude they take with them! I don’t like this notion going over there and groveling and saying, “Will you help us? We have this report here prepared by brilliant Americans, and it says that we should talk with you. You’re willing to help.” This is not how you remain a dominant superpower in the world, and people run around and act inferior and subordinate the interests of the United States to this guys and how they might think about us and feel about us? It’s just not who we used to be, folks
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RUSH: Riverside, California. Hello, Joe. It’s nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Mr. Rush Limbaugh, major cigar smoking kudos to you! I think you are the wisest of all life.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: And I have done myself an injustice because I have not subscribed to your letter yet and trust me, I will be doing it soon. My question is simple. If we had a female president, whether Democrat or Republican, will our enemies look at that as a weakness, and will we be opening ourselves up to even more and worse attacks as they look at a female president as a weakness?
RUSH: I don’t think it’s a factor, and I don’t think it should be a factor. Golda Meier was one of the toughest leaders Israel has ever had, and she was superb in that role. It might have provided Israel with more problems. I don’t, frankly, know that it did. I don’t think that it did, but it matters who the woman is. It matters who the man is! I mean, you could have a man elected president who would be a laughingstock and wouldn’t be respected at all, and you could have a woman do the same thing, or you could end up with a Margaret Thatcher or a Jeanne Kirkpatrick type. I don’t think in trying to… Look, we’ve got Secretary of State Rice —
CALLER: I wanted to ask you about that.
RUSH: Even our so-called allied Muslim nation friends, they still meet with her. They don’t refuse.
CALLER: Do you think Condoleezza Rice, if she ran for Republican presidential candidate, do you think she would do a lot better than Hillary?
RUSH: I have no clue. I think there’s a romantic attachment to the notion of Condi running for the presidency, because people get caught up in the symbolism of things. “Oh! Republicans could be the one with the first woman — a black woman! Yeah, and that way we could show ’em we’re not racists!” The motivation for this is something that’s missing. She’s a brilliant woman and all that, but if she doesn’t want to be president, then I don’t want her running.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: And she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to be, and that she’s not going to. Now it’s politics and that can change tomorrow after one conversation with Dick Armitage or Valerie Plame. You never know. But I don’t think the sex, the gender of the president has anything to do with whether or not we’re respected. It has to do with that person’s character and leadership and strength and resolve, and I, frankly, folks, think that there’s one reason — well, it’s hard to say one, but there’s a series of reasons — why Al-Qaeda and others have not hit us again on our own soil, and there is a reason why Democrats are the preferred political party of our enemies, and you can’t deny that they are. Here’s Zawahiri with his latest tape scaring America’s children. He’s sending out messages to Republicans and Democrats, but in the aftermath of the election, the terrorists were all talking about how happy they were that Democrats won because they want Bush gone!
Bush. they fear. The one thing they don’t want to take the chance of is that Bush will retaliate if they hit us again, but they don’t look at the current crop of Democrats as being so-inspired or so-oriented, and why should they? Half the Democratic Party having around trying to meet with every one of these enemies they can to try to come up with “common ground” so that we can “talk and negotiate “and so forth. Even before the election, I asked you to consider a bunch of things that made it clear who the terrorists were for. Let me go through this again. Some of you may be listening here that didn’t hear this the couple times I did it before the election. Let’s say you’re Ayman al-Zawahiri or pick your terrorist. You are a big terrorist leader, and at the time what is the popular consensus of the war in Iraq? That we are losing! The Democrats say we’re losing; the Drive-By Media in America, they say we’re losing.
Accompanying this are claims from Democrats like John Kerry and others echoed by the Drive-By Media, that not only are we losing, but Bush is so agitating the Middle East that he is “creating more terrorists”! Why, they’re flooding into Iraq from all over the world because Bush won’t leave well enough alone! We have no business going there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, if you’re a big-time terrorist leader, Zawahiri, and you hear that, you say, “Okay, America is losing. That must mean we are winning! We terrorists, we must be winning,” and if it’s true that Bush is “creating more terrorists” with this folly of income Iraq and Afghanistan, then I, as a terrorist leader, should be very happy.
I need new recruits! I need more idiots willing to go blow themselves up with the explosives strapped around their waists. I need more martyrs! I need more people, and if Bush is doing all this for me, then by gosh I want Bush to stay in office, don’t I? If Bush being in office means everything’s going my way, I gotta keep Bush in office somehow! I gotta do what I can to influence the American election so Bush stays in office, and the Democrats don’t get anywhere near control of anything, because Bush is single-handedly giving us the victory. But then you have to stop and think, “Wait a minute. Before we killed him, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had written a couple letters to bin Laden saying, ‘We’re in big trouble here, meaning in Iraq, we’re in big trouble, we’re losing, things are not going well. The bottom line is this. Bottom line is this Zarqawi was his name, Mahmoud al-Zarqawi, whatever.
The bottom line is this. All of the conventional wisdom prior to the election, that Bush was creating more terrorists, that we were losing in Iraq, was absolute BS — otherwise the terrorists would not have been supporting issues, causes, techniques to influence the American voter to vote against Republicans. Republicans and Bush should have been the best thing they’d want! I’m telling you, folks, the reason we haven’t been attacked is because there is somebody in the White House these guys do fear, and there is somebody in the White House that they have no question and no doubt if they launch a major attack like that again, we’re going to come right back at them. They’re waiting, and they’re biding their time, and it’s clear to me that they think they’re going to have a much easier time of getting what they want and dominating us further if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008 and if the Democrats keep control of Congress. So the gender of the next president is irrelevant.
It matters who it is, matters what their core principles are, matters what their experience is, and it matters whether they have the ability to see the world as it really is or if they want to look through rose-colored glasses and deny that there are certain evils and horrors that await us out there that must be dealt with in ways that will bring us success, not doom us to continual defeat and humiliation. I frankly don’t know of any women on the scene right now that are candidates that are going to inspire that kind of respect or have that kind of world view because the big female candidate everybody is talking about is Hillary, and I’m telling you, that’s a disaster. That is an utter disaster: an incompetent, having accomplished nothing, thinks the office is hers by virtue of entitlement, is a disaster — and don’t buy this notion that she’s moderate, and move to the center. She is as core ultra-left-wing as she ever has been, and the only reason a core, ultra-left winger wants control of government is to expand it and do everything possible to control as many aspects of your life as possible.