RUSH: I want to say a couple things here, if I might about the “troop surge,” or at least the president’s speech coming on Wednesday, which will announce whatever the plan is. Because I said earlier in the very busy program today — and we played audio sound bites from Nancy Pelosi and some others, and, by the way, some Democrats are distancing themselves from her on this. Regardless, the president is coming up with a way here to try to win this. He’s shopping around for ideas. He’s got new generals, and the surge idea seems to be one that has a lot of consensus of support behind it.
Now, there’s some people suggesting that, “Wait a second. If all we’re going to do with this consensus is prop up the Shi’ite government so they can wipe out the tsunami evens, aren’t we going to end up with another Iran, basically, which is primarily Shi’ite? Wait a minute, that’s not what we ought to be doing here.” I don’t quite follow the full reasoning on this because whether we’re there or not, that’s what’s going to end up happening. The place is Iraq. But we’re trying to eliminate the impediments here to moving on with this country feeling and being free to decide its own affairs, and the Democrats just seem like this is an unnecessary provocation. We’re talking about victory here, and an ultimate US withdrawal, and the Democrats think this is an argument! They think it’s something they have to oppose. It is stunning. Only in today’s Democratic Party would victory in a war present a problem for the Democrats, and yet it certainly seems to have done just that.
The Democrats are talking about, “We shall not escalate this. We don’t want to escalate our involvement.” Let me tell you something. If we pulled out of there, like the Democrats and Reid and Pelosi want to do with their redeployment idea, you know what the result would be? The result would be a huge escalation of violence in Iraq! The argument that cutting the number of American troops will help stabilize Iraq is like arguing that the best way to put out a spreading fire is by pulling out the fireman and pulling out the water and grounding the airplanes with the suffocating anti-flammable dust that they throw on these things. It just doesn’t work! You don’t fight a fire by retreating, pulling out the firemen in the water — and yet that’s the Democrat philosophy here. The result would be catastrophic. It is apparent that the president has decided that the situation there requires that we redouble our efforts to provide order and security, but the reed-Pelosi line of thought is that withdrawing American troops will bring the war to a close, meaning we’re the only reason there’s a war going on over there!
If it weren’t for us, why, there would be peace and tranquility in that country. If we just got us out of there — and this is typical of the liberals, too: blame America. Whenever there is warfare, blame us. By the way, there’s another fascinating story in the stack today by Peter Beinart of TIME Magazine. All these years we’ve heard Bush is a cowboy; he’s going it alone. He’s not listening to allies. This is a piece in TIME Magazine that praises Bush and Americans for using allies in defeating the warlords in Somalia and Al-Qaeda there. It’s not quite that. It’s more hypocritical than even that. But there’s one thing I noticed in the New York Times yesterday. They’ve got a military correspondent there, Michael Gordon. I asked some people because what he wrote stunned me. I said, “I’m surprised it ended up in the New York Times.” I asked some people about this guy’s commercials and some people I spoke to said that he’s actually quite good and knowledgeable, and this is the point he made about the upcoming surge.
Quote: “But, you know…” Actually, it was on Meet the Press. It was not in the Times. He’s a Times reporter. But he said, “You know, we only have 15,000 troops now in Baghdad, a city of six million. Only 15,000 troops who are involved in the operation to try to stabilize the city. So 20,000 is doubling that force. It’s not inconsequential.” That’s a pretty good response to Biden’s argument that we’ve tried the surge idea and it’s failed. I was stunned when I’ve read that we’ve only got 15,000 troops involved in the stabilization operation in the city of Baghdad, and the surge is going to double that, that on a percentage basis or however you wish to define it as Michael Gordon said on Meet the Press yesterday, is not inconsequential. So, at any rate, the president is doing what he has always pledged to do and that is to try to win this, and the Democrats once again positioning themselves as the opposition to victory in some cases, not all. Yesterday on Meet the Press, Tim Russert was talking with Senator Biden, and said, “Senator Biden, let me start with you. If President Bush calls for more troops in Iraq, so-called surge, Joe Biden will say…” And then Biden interrupts.
BIDEN: No. There’s not much I can do about it, not much anybody can do about it. He’s commander-in-chief. If he surges whatever, 20, 30, whatever number he’s going to do into Baghdad, it would be a tragic mistake in my view but as a practical matter there’s no way to say, “Mr. President, stop.”
RUSH: He’s disagreeing with Pelosi. He doesn’t think they have any way to stop Bush from doing this. Pelosi says Bush has to go negotiate with them before he can do it. But once again, this is just nonsensical. More troops won’t matter, more troops won’t make a difference, more firefighters wouldn’t put out the fire. It’s silly! Steny Hoyer then decided to distance himself from the queen bee on de-funding the troops. This is Fox News Sunday. Brit Hume said, “Do you think there will come a day in the not too distance future when there will be an effort coming from the House to cut off the funds for this war?”
HOYER: I don’t want to anticipate that, Brit. Democrats and Republicans are going to support the troops. We’re not going to put the troops in any greater risk that they currently are. We’re going to make sure they’re supplied. We’re going to make sure that they have the resources they need.
RUSH: Not if you listen to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They want to pull ’em out of there. So there’s already some fractures here. Has anybody heard from Hoyer today? Anybody seen Steny Hoyer today? I haven’t, and the House isn’t in session today, so much for the five-day work week they promised. There’s a football game tonight, you know. They couldn’t work today because they have the football game tonight, which doesn’t start ’til 8:15 eastern, they couldn’t work today because of the football game, and that was the reason that they gave!