RUSH: All right, Ted Koppel. He was on Meet the Press yesterday with Tim Russert during the roundtable with Michael Beschloss, noted presidential historian; Michael Duffy of TIME Magazine, and the Washington Post’s Dana Priest. Koppel, by the way, is with Discovery. Speaking of Discovery, as you people know, I am a huge aficionado of High Definition Television. I have been watching some of the most amazing programming on Discovery HD, about the migration of birds. The video shots they get are amazing. It’s a two-hour show, hour 45 minutes, about birds from all over the world and how they migrate. There was something I watched over the weekend with some of the most amazing photography.
Watching it in high definition, I can’t take my eyes away from it. There’s nothing political about it. Some of this stuff is from Animal Planet, which, of course, does tend to be these animal rights wackos, but some of this stuff was just fascinating. The photography is wonderful. Anyway, that’s where Koppel is working. But he said some things on Meet the Press that you will never hear from anybody else in the Drive-By Media or the Democrat Party. Russert said, “Ted, the meeting in Iraq — the Iranians, the Syrians, the Iraqis — what should we think about it?” We can’t even agree that we spoke to them. The Iranians and the United States cannot even agree that they had direct talks. When you can’t even agree that you’ve spoken… Anyway here’s what Koppel said.
RUSH: Stop the presses. Have you ever heard anybody in the Drive-By Media — well, yes, sort of. We had the audio sound bite from last Thursday where Michael Ware of CNN talked about basically the same thing. If we pull out of there, it will be an utter disaster. But where else do you hear that? You don’t hear from the Democrat Party, who’s invested in defeat. They’re doing their best to get it. They own it, and they want to clamp down. They don’t want to even have a mortgage on it, folks. They want to own defeat outright. Ted Koppel said the United States cannot allow this to happen. Now, in this next one you’ll hear Russert and Koppel admit that Iraq is part of the war on terror. You don’t hear that from the Drive-By Media or the Democrats. They say, ‘Iraq was unnecessary. It was a diversion from Afghanistan! Why, we should never have gone there. Bush lied, people died,’ and all that. Russert said, “Ted Koppel, you are tonight airing on the Discovery Channel a special called Our Children’s Children’s War, the long war, as you call it, called it repeatedly, that this war on terror is much more than just Iraq and it’s going to go on for a long time.”
KOPPEL: If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on and has been going on for the past 24 years. We just didn’t connect the dots. Twenty-four years ago, the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That was 1983. Two hundred forty-one Americans were killed. In the interim between then and now, you had two attacks on the World Trade Center. You had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. You had the attempt to blow up the USS Cole. You had the bombing of the two US embassies in east Africa. This war’s already been going on for 24 years. We were just a little bit slow to recognize it.
RUSH: Should I pollute this by pointing out that a number of those incidents happened in the nineties, or should I just let this stand on its own? What do you think? The majority of these incidents happened in the 1990s. We just weren’t connecting the dots. We weren’t taking it seriously. I know Bill Clinton says he was obsessed with bin Laden and he was obsessed with terrorism. In fact, his administration, he said, was telling him he was spending too much time on it. Anyway, you don’t hear this in the Drive-By Media. You don’t hear this from the Democrat Party. Here we have a couple of Limbaugh echoes in this next bite. Russert said, “Ted Koppel, what do you see in Washington?”
KOPPEL: The Democrats are making a great deal of hay out of saying we have to get out of Iraq, and indeed we do at some point or another, but the notion that the war will be over when we pull out of Iraq, and even after we pull out of Afghanistan? You heard what General Abizaid had to say. It’s not going to be over. It’s going to be a different war, but the war continues. You know, language means something. You said something a moment ago about it is the Democrats’ goal to have all the troops out of Iraq by August of 2008. Sometimes goals are met. Sometimes goals are not met. The Democrats are going to find themselves in a terribly uncomfortable position when this becomes their war.
RUSH: Well, they think they can always make it Bush’s war, but he’s right on the money. Words mean things; language means things. The Democrats own defeat in this war. Right now that’s just not been firmly established in people’s minds because Bush remains the focal point as the commander-in-chief. But the Democrats are doing their best — well, actually, they don’t want to own the war. They want Bush to get out of there before they become president. Hillary Clinton even said that she would resent it if Bush doesn’t wrap this Iraq thing up by the time she is inaugurated in 2009. I wonder if she’ll be similarly upset if Bush didn’t wrap up this Iranian thing by then; if he doesn’t wrap up the North Korean thing by then; if he doesn’t wrap up the Venezuelan thing by then; if he doesn’t wrap up the China problems that we have by then. I wonder if she wants a clean slate. I think this is just absurd.
In the Los Angeles Times today, there is a very strange editorial it’s worth noting. If the American people understood what the Times editorial is saying, that the bill the Democrats are talking about is simply nothing more than a bill… All of their resolutions are nothing more than part of the electoral partisan process, and that’s the point this LA Times editorial makes, that their resolutions and their bills really have little to do with defeat. (I will distance myself a bit from this. I do think the Democrats are trying to secure defeat, but that’s part of electoral partisan politics as well as they aim for the next election.) As far as the Democrats are concerned, nothing better could happen than for us to lose the war in Iraq and have the Republicans and Bush be blamed for it, meaning the Democrats get to sit here with open arms and sweep in all the voters. But this is not about winning the war. It’s not about the military serving and doing so with valor and honor. This is about Democrats trying to enhance their electoral chances, and the LA Times has figured it out. “Congress can cut funding for Iraq, but it shouldn’t micromanage the war.” In fact, the title of their editorial is: ‘Do We Really Need a Gen. Pelosi?’
Last paragraph of this editorial: ‘Members of Congress need to act responsibly, debating the essence of the choice the United States now faces — to stay or go — and putting their money where their mouths are. But too many lives are at stake to allow members of Congress to play the role of Eisenhower or Lincoln.’ We’ll link to the editorial at RushLimbaugh.com. If you care, you can read the entire thing. Speaking of Pelosi, ‘A few dozen peace activists marched across the Golden Gate Bridge and gathered outside the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday, demanding that Congress stop funding the war in Iraq. ‘San Francisco has been against this war from the very beginning,’ said Toby Blome, a physical therapist who organized the event. ‘This is our fifth year of the war, and Nancy needs to wake up and represent San Franciscans.’ Blome, holding a plate of cheese and bread and a glass of wine, was stopped on her way to Pelosi’s front door and told the speaker would not see them. Blom and about 10 other activists said they plan to camp outside the residence overnight.’ These babes are from Code Pink. (story) At any rate, they’re having a wine and cheese party. I’m sure it was Chablis. Well, it might have been something else. They’re having a wine and cheese party while they’re protesting, walking across the Golden Gate Bridge to Pelosi’s San Francisco residence.