RUSH: Look at this headline: “House Democrats’ New Strategy: Force Slow End to War.” Now, much is being made about this resolution that is coming up. The president talked about this in his press conference today and this is one of the things that is mystifying to people like me and a number of others. He had numerous questions from the press, “What do you think about the Democrats?” He said (summarized), “I respect ’em. They’re patriotic people. You can certainly disagree with my policy and still be patriotic, but they gave me a warm greeting at the State of the Union. They allowed me to express my views,” and I’m going (long sigh). Frustration is setting in. They tee him up, they give him a chance to destroy these people and he won’t do it. It’s just not who he is. He’s never done it. He’s not going to do it. He’s not going to get partisan.
Jim VandeHei is over there with John Harris and guys from the Washington Post. This story is by John Bresnahan. “Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups…” I’m going to tell you something, folks. They are setting themselves up to be McGoverned all over again, and they don’t know it. This is almost a replay. They’ve been wanting a replay of Vietnam, and by golly, they are going to get it! Do you know that Mookie al-Sadr has fled Baghdad? Muqtada al-Sadr has fled the scene! He’s gone to Tehran. He’s got family, I guess, in Iran, and he got the hell out of Dodge, on the verge of the surge. Now, that’s a pretty good indication here of what Mookie thinks the chances are. He knows he’s targeted. By the way, he took his upper echelon, his so-called leaders and generals with him. That’s a pretty good indication of Mookie’s impression of what might be in store. I keep sidetracking myself here. This is key: “Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration’s options.
“Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition’s goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself. The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable. As described by participants, the goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the anti-war movement — the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field. That fear is why many Democrats have remained timid in challenging Bush, even as public support for the president and his Iraq policies have plunged. Murtha and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have decided that they must take the lead in pressuring not only Republicans but also cautious Senate Democrats to take steps more aggressive than nonbinding resolutions in challenging the Bush administration.
“The House strategy is being crafted quietly, even as the chamber is immersed this week in an emotional, albeit mostly symbolic, debate over a resolution expressing opposition of,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now: “…Murtha, acting with the backing of the House Democratic leadership, will seek to limit the time and number of deployments by soldiers, Marines and National Guard units to Iraq, making it tougher for Pentagon officials to find the troops to replace units that are scheduled to rotate out of the country.” This is their strategery. This is their investment in defeat. This is because they — as I have reminded you countless times here, my friends — cannot allow a victory to take place. They don’t have the guts to end the war because of their fear the public would think that they’re not supporting the troops. So now they’re going to go around the backside, do an end run and a slow bleed by eliminating the number of troops available for rotation duty in Iraq, forcing the president to pull everybody out in that manner — and they’re going to have a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to support this, in the midst of a surge which is designed to rout the insurgency out of Baghdad and bring stability to it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. First up here is David Gregory getting on the president’s case about the story that Iraq is having shipped into it IEDs made by Iran. Gregory says to the president, “Critics say that you are using the same quality of intelligence about Iran that you used to make the case for war in Iraq, specifically about WMD. That turned out to be wrong, and you’re doing that to make a case for war against Iran. Is that the case?”
THE PRESIDENT: I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of government, but my point is: What’s worse: them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it’s happening? So we will continue to protect our troops.
RUSH: Now, CNN’s Ed Henry followed this up later on. He said, “Mr. President, are you saying today that you do not know if senior members of the Iranian government are in fact behind these explosives? That contradicts what US officials said in Baghdad on Sunday. They said the highest levels of the Iranian government were behind this. It also seems to square with what General Pace has been saying, but contradicts with what you’re saying.”
THE PRESIDENT: Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don’t think we know, but we do know that they’re there, and I intend to do something about it. We know they’re there. We know they’re provided by the Quds Force. We know the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. I don’t think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds Force, “Go do this,” but we know it’s a vital part of the Iranian government. What matters is that we’re responding. The idea that somehow we’re manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous, Ed. My job is to protect our troops.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what the root of all this is. There’s a Boston Globe story today. By the way, happy Valentine’s Day to those of you who will go out and perform the perfunctory duties demanded of Valentine’s Day. Let’s face it: most of you people out there are doing Valentine’s Day stuff not because you want to, not because it’s really in your heart, because if it was in your heart you’d have done it yesterday. But you waited ’til today to do it because this is the perfunctory day that society says you go give whatever you give, show whatever affection you have. So if you’re out there engaged in this, more power to you.
I just wanted to acknowledge we, too, know that it’s Valentine’s Day, although, we abstain. Well, I’m speaking for myself. Dawn, did you abstain? She’s abstaining. What about you? No Brian? Well, you’re freshly married, you don’t have any choice. Snerdley, do you abstain today from perfunctory Valentine’s Day duties? You’re engaging in perfunctory Valentine’s Day duties! Whoa! Whoa! There must be somebody new in Snerdley’s life here. Well. (ahem) Okay. So two of the four of us here are abstaining, and the other two are prisoners of convention. Now, here’s a story in the Boston Globe.
“Security analysts and critics of the Bush administration are questioning the quality of intelligence presented by three unidentified US officials in Baghdad on Sunday to demonstrate the Iranian government’s ties to sophisticated explosives that have killed 170 US soldiers in Iraq.” This is the Boston Globe, and this is where all these questions came from today about this. “Some skeptics also say that US officials in Iraq and their British counterparts have known for more than two years that armor-piercing explosives were being smuggled from Iran, but had never displayed them to the media until Sunday,” which they did, complete with serial numbers. Now, get this: “Daniel Serwer, a specialist at the US Institute for Peace, a Washington-based [left-wing] think tank, said he was not convinced that the Iranian government had decided ‘at the highest levels’ to provide weapons to target US troops, as the three US officials told reporters. ‘The question is not so much about whether there are Iranian weapons inside Iraq,’ said Serwer, who served as executive director of the Iraq [Surrender] Group…
“‘Sure there are. The question is whether there is a conscious policy by the Iranian government or some part of the Iranian government to support lethal attacks against Americans. I haven’t seen any proof of that yet.'” (sigh) Haven’t seen any…? (sigh) “General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also downplayed accusations against the Iranian government. He told reporters yesterday in Indonesia that although material from Iran had been used in the bombs, ‘That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,'” which is what the president was saying today. The root of this — and in both of these questions from David Gregory and from Ed Henry at CNN (and I told you this was going to happen a long time ago) — is the so-called faulty intelligence touting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, war opponents who are opposed to it on principle — people that are anti-America, the blame-America-first crowd — are going to use this to question any use of the US military in the war on terror anywhere else.
If the intelligence was, quote, unquote, “wrong” that led us into Iraq, and, of course, we’d have to rewind the clock here and go back to all the reasons we went to Iraq, WMD was not the sole reason, but it was focused on as the major reason, nevertheless we’re now hamstrung. Hands are tied. It’s going to be very difficult here to live this down for the longest time because there are gonna be critics who say, “Well, what about the intelligence? You got the intelligence totally wrong back in 2003 going into Iraq, 2001, 2002. You got it totally wrong. We can’t trust this now,” and that’s why these administration officials are hedging their bets. “Well, we know they’re coming from Iran, but we don’t know if they’re coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.” What does it matter? What does it matter if it’s coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government or not?
In the real world, what does it matter? But the real world is in suspension, and we’re finding ourselves in the midst of an alternative universe here where the morality seems to support Democrats and their slow bleed strategy for defeat. Reality is suspended when it comes to such things as global warming, which cannot be proved by science; it can only be established by “consensus.” In the midst of record cold, record snow, record ice, nobody questions whether or not, “Could the scientists be wrong?” Yet let there be a hot day in September, “A-ha, global warming! See? It’s happening!” Let it be 60 degrees in January in New York (which happens every year, by the way) “A-ha! Global warming! See? It’s happening,” but when there is record cold when there should be warming, it’s totally ignored. It’s an alternative universe we’re living in. Try to stay sane.