RUSH: Let’s go to the president’s press conference. The first question I want to play for you is from David Gregory, who I have a new nickname for: Brave Dave. Here is the question from David Gregory. It’s about Iraq, that happened mere moments ago at a Rose Garden press conference.
GREGORY: Mr. President, after the — mistakes that have been made in this war, when you do as you did yesterday, when you raised two-year-old intelligence talking about the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, it’s met with increasing skepticism. The majority in the public, growing number of Republicans appear not to trust you any longer to be able to carry out this policy successfully. Can you explain why you believe you’re still a credible messenger on the war?
RUSH: Well, we have Brave Dave, Brave Dave Gregory, a man who supports the troops as much as he supported Don Imus. Imus helped make him a star. When Imus got in trouble, there was Gregory running for the hills. Now, we talked about this yesterday. This business that the two-year-old intelligence dump that the president referenced yesterday is received by the American people with skepticism is absurd. It’s received with skepticism by people like David Gregory in the media. Here’s the president’s answer to the question.
RUSH: We talked about this yesterday, too. I’m still stunned that more people — I can understand the media. The media, by virtue of the number of questions they asked on Iraq today, is still interested in forcing the president’s surrender and defeat. They just want to blow this up prior to the 2008 elections. We talked yesterday about the fact that the people after World War II, our generation, the baby boom generation today, said, ‘How could the German people have let that happen? What went on?’ You could ask the same question of what’s going on today in America. How could the American people not understand what’s going on? It’s not as though 9/11 didn’t happen. It did, and you’ve got Ahmadinejad, who today again has threatened Israel, threatened to wipe them off the map. He’s done this frequently.
Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, al-Zawahiri, it matters not who is on the enemies list. They’re telling us plain as day what they’re going to do. We’ve got intelligence here that backs it up, and people in the Drive-By Media just don’t want to believe it. It’s stunning. You know my theory on this. We know the media is who they are. But in this country, why are so many of the American people — I’m not sure what the percentage is — why are they so seemingly removed from this? The answer is, we’ve got so much prosperity; we have so much affluence that people don’t have pay attention to this if they don’t want to. It’s tough to pay attention. You pay attention to it and act like something’s wrong, it requires you to take action or be vigilant or what have you, and some people just don’t want to think of it as themselves or their neighborhoods or their country or various cities being threatened on a daily basis. I’ve always thought it’s going to take a couple more attacks to wake everybody up. The president continued, by the way, the answer to David Gregory with this.
THE PRESIDENT: They are a direct threat to the United States. And I’m going to keep talking about it. It’s my job as the president is to tell people the threats we face and what we’re doing about it, and what we’ve done about it is we’ve strengthened our homeland defenses; we’ve got new techniques that we use that enable us to better than determine their motives and their plans and plots. We’re working with nations around the world to deal with these radicals and extremists. But they’re dangerous. And I can’t put it any more plainly, they’re dangerous. And I can’t put it any more plainly to the American people and to them, we will stay on the offense. It’s better to fight ’em there than here. And this concept about, ‘Well, maybe, you know, let us kind of just leave them alone and maybe they’ll be all right,’ is naïve. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraqi. And they’ve been attacking ever since. They are a threat to your children, David. And whoever’s in that Oval Office better understand it and take measures necessary to protect the American people.
Question one: How important is a US victory in Iraq? All Americans — this is this month — 61% say it’s important. Democrats, 44% say it’s important. Republicans, 84% say it’s important. How hopeful are you the US will be able to succeed in Iraq? All Americans, 56%. Break it down by party, Democrats 42%, Republicans 80% think that. Who would you like to see the president rely more on for advice on the conduct of the war? Field commanders 72%; the Congress 21%. Now, what is this? How can this possibly be, if the results of the election in November were that the will of the people was expressed to get out of Iraq? They don’t want the Congress involved in this. Which of the following must be a higher priority for the United States: immediate trop withdrawal, 46%. Winning in Iraq, 40%. Now, that doesn’t make sense with any of the other questions, but it’s in there. Would you agree that the war is lost in Iraq? Percentage who disagree, all Americans, 54% disagree that the war in Iraq is lost. Would you agree the US is fighting a global war on terror? All Americans: 64%. Even 52% of Democrats say so. 81% of Republicans. A couple other questions here. But you get the drift.