RUSH: Look at this. The Wall Street Journal (snapping pages), right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, lead editorial: ‘Harry’s War: Democrats are taking ownership of a defeat in Iraq.’ Hmm! Where have we heard that before, ladies and gentlemen? (Gasp!) Why, right here on this program! Democrats own defeat. There’s no question about it. This is about Dingy Harry. You know, I have to share with you something here from Rich Galen, who has this blog that’s called Mullings, and he’s really right on the money about this. ‘If the Republican apparatus were up and running with any kind of efficiency, the RNC would be demanding of every Democrat in the nation running for (or serving in) any elected office to declare whether or not they agree with Harry Reid’ that the war is lost, and there would be a number of Republicans demanding his resignation as we have done on this program. But the Republican apparatus is not up and running. About the only Republican apparatchik that is out there is Cheney! Vice President Cheney has taken all the arrows (that’s what happens to pioneers) and he’s the only one throwing any spears out there and firing back at these people. It is breathtaking to watch this. Harry Reid and the Democrats — by the way, THE Democrats ARE circling the wagons around Dingy Harry.
The Democrats do not want victory. They know that Dingy Harry has stepped in it, and he’s not backing off on this at all. He can’t afford to. But I tell you, the Democrats are doing long-term damage to themselves. They don’t know it. I don’t know when it’s going to manifest itself in terms of electoral results. It could be ’08. There’s something very interesting about this. You know, Obama is out there pretty much taking the same line. Mrs. Clinton is going to have to make a calculation. Obama is catching up, and as Galen points out, it’s not Mrs. Clinton that’s going to have to make a calculation, it’s Bill. It’s Bill Clinton that’s the brains of this pair. It’s Bill Clinton that devises the strategy, and they’re going to have to figure out at what point do they start moving left to head off Obama at the pass. You know, Dingy Harry and Pelosi, these two are becoming the spokespeople for the Democrat Party — which cannot please Clinton, Inc., and it’s all about this situation with the war in Iraq and the war on terror. It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out, because they are doing incredible damage.
They own defeat. They are seeking it. They’re excited about it!
They can’t wait to send this bill up to the president that will no doubt be vetoed, and one of the things Pelosi and Reid are saying is, ‘Well, we’re happy to send this bill up there because this will finally give the president total accountability on the war.’ Finally give the president total accountability on the war? I read that, and I said, ‘What the hell does this mean?’ and I figured it out. There’s a bunch of Democrats that are nervous about the fact that they voted for it back in 2002, 2003. In fact, you can go back to October of 2002 they demanded — in the Senate, the Democrats demanded — a new debate and a new resolution that they could sign, because they could read the tea leaves back then. The polling data and the American people were clearly all for this. Now they want to wash that away, and so they think they can send this bill up there, the president will veto it, and the bill basically gets us out of Iraq by next April, and when he vetoes it, then they’re going to run around and say, ‘It is his war! It is officially now Bush’s war. We have nothing to do with it! He is totally and singularly accountable for this failure and for this defeat,’ and they’re going to start tagging him with it. That’s the game plan here — and Cheney is not backing off. This was late yesterday at a press conference on Capitol Hill. The vice president met with Republicans. He said this.
CHENEY: The timetable legislation that he is now pursuing, would guarantee defeat. Senator Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq would bring his party more seats in the next election. It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage.
RUSH: Yeah, but this is nothing new. You remember when Gephardt, Little Dick out there, was the minority leader in the House when the Republicans ran the place, and the stock market was going through — I think it was the dot-com bubble that burst. The stock market was plunging, and Dick Gephardt’s out there rubbing his hands together in glee. ‘For every hundred point loss we pick up a seat,’ and he was excited! The misery of the American people, economic disappointment and malaise would lead to more Democrat seats — and that’s what Dingy Harry’s out there saying, too, that the war in Iraq is going to bring them more seats. It’s purely political. It’s nothing more than a political issue to them. Reid responded yesterday to the vice president with this.
REID: The president sends out his attack dog often. That’s also known as Dick Cheney. I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9% approval rating.
RUSH: Well, that has nothing to do with it. That’s the time you get into a little tête-à-tête, isn’t it? When you have your opponent at 9%, how can you lose, Dingy Harry? He didn’t want to get into it with him because he knows he’s in a tentative position, and there are a lot of that. David Broder was on some show on satellite radio, and he is concerned that the Democrats are blowing this. He’s not excited. He’s not happy with Reid at all. They’re fumbling this, and a number of other press people. This is not gonna redound positively for the Democrats. It’s not looking good. The Drive-Bys, some of them — not all of them, but some of them — are trying to send out their little warning signs, little red flags, ‘Hey, you guys better reign this back in.’ One person not hearing it is Dennis Kucinich. He was on CNN last night, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, who asked him, ‘Why the vice president? Why impeach him, if you’re so concerned about the war, as opposed to the commander-in-chief? That would be the president you should impeach.’
KUCINICH: Well, the vice president had a singular responsibility in whipping up public sentiment to lay the groundwork for a war against Iraq on false pretenses, and the articles of impeachment cover that — and there’s another, uh, practical reason, Wolf, and that is that if someone was to aim at impeaching the president, then Mr. Cheney would become the president. I don’t think that this country could tolerate two consecutive impeachments —
RUSH: (Laughing.)
KUCHINICH: So I think that the evidence is there to focus on the vice president.
RUSH: Two consecutive impeachments! The only reason they’re pursuing Cheney is because he won’t shut up. He’s out there taking it to them every day, and Kucinich is mounting this movement. Blitzer said, ‘High crimes and misdemeanors, that’s a high threshold. Specifically explain to our viewers here at CNN what your articles of impeachment — you have three of them — what are they alleging?’
KUCINICH: Well, the first article, and I quote, says that he fabricated a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States — the United States armed forces against a nation of — of Iraq, and the second article points to the fact that, uh, he fabricated a connection between — uh, uh — the government of Iraq and Al-Qaeda and used that to justify war. And the third article says that he’s, uh, openly threatening aggressive war against Iran, which is a violation of Article 6 of our Constitution and a violation of Article 2, Section 4 of the UN Charter.
RUSH: Wow! We’re going to impeach somebody because they’re violating the UN Charter. (Laughing.) Anyway, that’s who they are, and just like the Sheryl Crow and Laurie David tour, I offered to underwrite the rest of that Monday, if they would continue on the bus tour, keep talking. The more people that hear these dingbats, the better we all are. But somehow the tour is over. The bus tour ended when it got to Washington. So my effort to be compassionate and generous, underwrite the tour, failed. But if Kucinich — I hope CNN keeps giving him a platform. I hope he continues to talk. General Petraeus is testifying up on Capitol Hill before Congress about the horrors that would result if we pulled out prematurely in Iraq — and, of course, Pelosi is not going to attend. She has enough time in her schedule to fly out to Syria to meet with that little terrorist supporter, Bashar Assad. She can’t spend an hour or two for General Petraeus. Remember, the Senate confirmed him unanimously to run the surge. She’s just not interested. In fact, she says, ‘This is not even a political issue.’ Pelosi says the war in Iraq and the way it’s going is not even a political issue! It’s an ethical issue, and she’s got more important things to do than get bogged down in the latest ethics case.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Mark in Chicago. Great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Welcome.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Another long-time listener, first-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I wanted to call and comment on some of the information that the media leaves out about these Iraq Al-Qaeda links, particularly when they got on the warpath right after you interviewed Cheney about this subject.
RUSH: That’s right. They did get on the warpath after Cheney appeared on this program, and they’ve stayed on it.
CALLER: They’ve been on it for a few years but these stories always leave out the 1998 trip that Ayman al-Zawahiri made to Baghdad and received $300,000 from either Saddam himself, or someone in their — right underneath him, and this has been confirmed by a couple Clinton officials, including Buzz Patterson. Another note that hasn’t really been mentioned by anyone in the media is that hundreds of members of Saddam’s regime, including a lot of his top guys like Izzat Al-Douri, have admitted working with Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda since the invasion and hundreds of them have been caught. There’s a couple websites that do detail this.
RUSH: I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I’ve got time vanishing here, and I want to respond. We’ve gone through all those details on this program. If you think that the Drive-Bys are going to report that, you’re crazy. That’s not the template. That’s not the action line of the story. The action line is Cheney lied. Cheney made it up. Here’s what we are being asked to believe. In 1997, ’98, ’99, 2000, 2001, Al-Qaeda was in Singapore. Al-Qaeda was in Indonesia. Al-Qaeda was in Florida. Al-Qaeda was in Minnesota. Al-Qaeda was in Arizona, taking flying lessons out there and living amongst us. (They went to Vegas, just to get a little debauchery in before meeting the 73 virgins, who are hopefully dressed as nuns. Wouldn’t that be cool! Well, it would be cool.) Anyway, Al-Qaeda was Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was in Jordan. Al-Qaeda was in Egypt. Al-Qaeda was in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda was in Iran. Al-Qaeda was — well, they were everywhere! Al-Qaeda was everywhere, except Iraq. They had the world surrounded, but they were not in Iraq! That’s what we’re to believe. The action line is: Cheney lied. They are not going to report it. In fact, they’re going to do their best to disabuse the notion that Al-Qaeda had a presence in Iraq, which they did.