Here are the questions that I had after watching the speech. Why has it taken so long to recognize the problems that were admitted to last night? Why were these terrorist neighborhoods in Baghdad that we cleared not secured and instead abandoned? If we cleared a neighborhood, why did we move on without securing that neighborhood, which just allowed the terrorists to return as we moved on to other places? Why did it take so long to recognize the need for more troops? Why so long in deciding that the commanders in Iraq, who said we don’t need any more troops, were wrong, which necessitated new commanders? Now, I know that Lincoln changed his generals, McClellan to U. S. Grant. This isn’t unprecedented. In fact, this happens in every war, which I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but still I had the question, because General Casey was often quoted by the president as saying that we didn’t need more troops, that he had everything on the ground that he needed, and others said the same thing, too.
So what was the catalyst for concluding that two years of operations were wrong, the wrong policy, the wrong strategy, and so forth? The one thing, if you go back and look at the history of Iraq, you remember and I remember talking about it on this program, after the first couple series of elections in Iraq, all the columnists — there was one in Chicago, a couple in California, writing, maybe Bush was right. It seemed that everything was on an uptick. There were congressional delegations, both Republicans and Democrats, who had gone to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, came back, ?It’s not as bad here as what the media is saying.? There was an uptick and something happened, and what it was was the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. I think it was in February of 2005, and that just infuriated some, and the sectarian violence ramped up from that point, and of course that was not something we did but we got blamed for it. It was a terrorist move that we got blamed for.
But after I asked these questions and after I sent these questions off hoping somebody could answer them for me, I realized something. These questions could be asked during the course of any war. I understood these questions that I asked, and they’re the same ones that I thought the Democrats would pounce on last night and today. I also knew that they would pounce on the fact that the president used the word “failed” in his speech. In fact, one of the networks, it was ABC, went out to some diner somewhere and did a focus group. They had these people meters on them, and they were rating people’s reaction to the speech. By gosh, folks, I did a thing a couple weeks ago about how ?sorry? is the most important word in American society today.
You do anything, you say you’re sorry, and people love you. It’s an excuse to get away with things. ?I’m so sorry.? Just run around and apologize, just apologize all the time, and you will be loved and you will be thought to be enlightened and you will be thought to be sensitive and so forth. And, lo and behold, according to this focus group that ABC put together, the high point for them was when Bush admitted mistakes. I don’t know if he said he was sorry, but he admitted mistakes. There were two instances, and according to this focus group at ABC, those two points were the high point for them, which just illustrates a point that I have been making for months now that we are becoming just a nation of passive wimps with a focus all on the wrong thing.
When John Kerry ran for president, he illustrated this. First he wanted more troops, and then less troops. First he voted for supplemental funding, and then he voted against it, all the time criticizing anything we did, which he is still doing today. As for decisions on the battlefield, those questions that I asked a moment ago, president relies on his generals. I bet Hillary and Obama would rely on their generals as well, given they have zero experience in fighting wars, and that is if they committed us to one, but I imagine they would rely on their generals as well. It was only one year ago that a new government came to Iraq, and it took some time to see how it was going to function. It took some time to see how training of the military and the police would function.
This is what I know for sure, ladies and gentlemen. We could destroy these countries without sending any more troops. We could do it even if we withdrew the troops. We could destroy these countries, and you know it and I know it. We could win this and solve this rather quickly without sending any more troops. We have the air power, we have the naval power to obliterate these societies such as they are. So if the issue is winning, there is no question we can. The question is, ?Would the liberals support that?? The answer is no. This becomes a major obstacle for the president in conducting this policy.
The president’s not willing to do this, either, by the way. He’s not willing to obliterate these societies. He’s trying to win the war without obliterating these countries, which means it’s going to take more time, and that means also more US casualties. The liberals don’t want to use overwhelming force, and they don’t want to give us time, and they’re now trying to destroy every aspect of the strategy. They’re going to unleash investigations and hearings aimed at the civilian support structure, private companies that supplement the efforts over there. They want to paint them as profiteers and unpatriotic. They want to deny our forces in the field the reinforcement they need on the battlefield. This was something Lincoln was never denied. FDR was never denied this. Truman was never denied this. It would have been unthinkable.
This is being categorized as a surge. Look at it as reinforcements. Look at it as a changed policy with the focus now securely on winning. You still can’t get the Democrats to go along and that remains a major problem. It is an obstacle that the president has to overcome and it’s going to be very difficult for him to overcome it. What is happening is unthinkable. The Democratic Party is against victory. They are invested in defeat, and they’re doing what they can to sabotage this sending of reinforcements. What they want to do is distract and smear the diplomatic and military leaders who are trying to win this war, from Condoleezza Rice to Robert Gates. They want to destroy Bush, the commander-in-chief, and they do this by using political tribunals, congressional hearings to advance propaganda about Bush being a liar, being incompetent, being heartless and all the rest. So what we have to face, as we enter the aftermath of the speech last night, is that we have two enemies. We have one foreign and one domestic.
Now, we all know that the surest way to win the war is to remove the regime in Tehran. Why doesn’t Bush call for it? Because he knows what the political reality is. He can barely muster the political support to put down the murderers in Baghdad, ladies and gentlemen, the same media and the same Democrats who lost the Vietnam War, who watched as millions were butchered are at it again. Now, it’s easy for people like you and me to demand the toppling of the regime in Iran which ultimately, I don’t care how many years or decades from now it takes, but that will be crucial to winning the wider war on terror. But we fool ourselves if we think that that is on the agenda here. The Democrats, with the help of some weak Republicans like Hagel and Lugar and Warner and Collins and Snowe and Gordon Smith and even Arlen Specter, would stop at any effort to really get to the heart of this matter, would be stopped by Republicans just as Ted Kennedy and company cut off funds and cost us Vietnam.
So why is Iran a peripheral here rather than a central focus in the wider war on terror? I can only guess, but that guess is that President Bush knows full well that anything such as that would lead to defunding of the entire effort in Iraq. That’s something that he fears would happen if he ordered any action on Tehran and right now he can’t afford for that to happen. It’s axiomatic that we live in some unprecedented times. These questions I asked are not unprecedented, but having a domestic enemy that is intent on losing this war is. This is something that the president has to deal with in the way he conducts operations in Iraq and even in the wider theater over there.
RUSH: I was watching as many networks as I could last night, as many as I could take, and over at NBC, there’s Tim Russert and there’s Brian Williams. Russert quoted himself as saying a few years ago that Bush’s presidency was on the line, and then he said last night that the president has just doubled down. Now, look who we’ve got in the media. We got Brian Williams, who I like, he’s a nice guy, but he was an intern in Carter’s White House. Chris Matthews, who wrote speeches for Jimmy Carter and worked for Tip O’Neill. You’ve got Tim Russert, who was Mario Cuomo’s guy. You’ve got a Cuomo guy at ABC and you?ve got George Stephanopoulos at ABC. ABC and NBC have become the media DNC. This is who’s giving us our news and commentary now, all the while maintaining that they have no objective, that they have no bias, they’re not interested in outcomes, they’re just trying to be fair.
Let me put this to you in a way in which I see it. Right now, George W. Bush, whatever you think of him about anything else, is the only person in Washington who is standing up to the enemy. Right strategy or wrong strategy, he is the only person standing up to the enemy. The liberal media never, ever talks about the consequences of withdrawal and defeat. The Democratic Party doesn’t either. In fact, they talk about how everything will be peaceful and light and it will just be cool. They have no consequence or share none of the consequences with us about withdrawal and about defeat. Let me just give you one. We pull out of there now, as they want us to, they defund this now, if they ever succeeded — and, by the way, Mitch McConnell says he’s going to filibuster any attempt to do that, and Dingy Harry’s going to need ten votes because Lieberman’s on our side on this, so Dingy Harry is going to need ten votes to break the filibuster.
There aren’t that many Republicans willing to throw Bush under the bus on funding, so whatever defunding action Ted Kennedy wants or they get in the House, is going to be thwarted in the Senate. That’s why they’re going to go to investigations. That’s why they’re going to go to hearings. They’re going to do everything they can to continue to browbeat the American people into not supporting this. They’re going to continue with the propaganda, ?This is a losing proposition, Bush lied, people died,? all of that stuff is just going to be front and center, get used to it, get ready for it. The question needs to be asked to all these people, what is their plan? What is their plan after the enemy swarms all over Iraq, takes the oil fields and creates more killing fields and then begins to threaten Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Israel? What the hell is their plan, damn it, what are they going to do? What is their plan for the consequences of this withdrawal?
By the way, if we pull out of there now as an American army that can’t win, where are we ever going to get allies again? Anybody who thinks this is the last armed conflict the United States is ever going to have because war is obsolete — I’ve been hearing that all my life, too — this remains a world governed by the aggressive use of force. It always has been and it always will be because that is the nature of evil men. It is the nature of tyrants and dictators, and we are always going to have them. You can wish it away, and you can pretend in an instant culture where things are resolved in 30 or 60 minutes on television that mega changes can be made in this area, but I guarantee you, human nature is human nature, and it isn’t going to change. There will always be war, because this is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
Now, this speech last night is going to pass, folks. It will be forgotten and whatever success is going to be very hard for us to learn, because the media over there is not interested in showing us this. The Democrats are poised to drive us out of Iraq. This remains the biggest enemy we have in this country that you need to remain focused on. The Democrats are poised to drive us out of Iraq one way or another and destroy as much public support for whatever is happening in Iraq as they can, and that’s what these hearings will be all about. Look it, folks, prior to 9/11 we followed the liberal prescription for dealing with the enemy. All through the nineties we didn’t do anything except chase ’em down with meaningless indictments. We didn’t deploy at all and what happened? We lost 3,000 people in two hours, not in four years.
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RUSH: Folks, I kid you not. We keep asking, what’s the Democrats’ plan? We know the Democrats’ plan. We had the Democrats’ plan in action all through the nineties. Nothing. Maybe issue meaningless indictments for people that live half a world away that we’re not even trying to capture. When that person who is indicted is offered to us by Sudan, I’m talking about bin Laden, (doing Clinton impression) “I don’t think we have enough to hold the guy. I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t want to get anything lower than 65% number when I go back to — where we going, Hillary? Not Arkansas, Chappaqua or whatever.”
We know what the Democrat plan is. We asked this question rhetorically, ?What’s their plan?? because we know what their plan is. Their plan, the liberal prescription for dealing with the enemy, do nothing, resulted in our loss of 3,000 people in two hours, and yet what do we hear? We’ve lost 3,000 American soldiers in four years, as though this is something that’s unacceptable. You know what? This makes as much sense as what Schwarzenegger’s doing in California. Has anybody stopped to think about this? He is cutting welfare benefits for California kids — regardless what you think of welfare, forget that for a moment — he’s cutting welfare benefits in order to pay health care insurance for every illegal kid in California. Christine Gregoire, or however she pronounces her name, is in Washington is doing the same thing. She is now getting on this bandwagon of health care insurance for every illegal immigrant.
These two governors are acting like they are more interested in illegal aliens and their welfare, concern or whatever, than American citizens. It’s a sight to behold. No matter where you find a Democrat — and Schwarzenegger is not a Democrat, but Christine Gregoire is — and wherever you find them, there’s so many misconceptions about these people. They have so successfully typecast themselves as something they are not. We all sit around and get fooled into believing that liberalism is about compassion, that it is the ultimate in compassion, that it cares for the less fortunate, and that it focuses on the little guy. Well, tell that to the people at Waco. We lost more people in the Waco invasion than we lost soldiers in Iraq in December. The liberals didn’t care about that. The idea that their first and foremost concern is human lives is a myth. It is propaganda. It is a stereotype that they have successfully foisted on everybody.