RUSH: Don in Madison, Wisconsin, I’m glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Great show. A listener since you first started. I’m a 74-year-old conservative that lives in metro Madison.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Yesterday on Meet the Press, on Meet the Press yesterday, Tim Russert made a statement that I felt was unbelievable, so I verified it on the transcript this morning. He said, ‘Can the Democrats say, ‘Excuse me, Republicans, you had your chance. You decided the Iraq war was the way to go after the war on terror, and that was wrong. We have a different way, a better way.” We did not go to war in Iraq for terror. We went to replace a brutal regime, and it was passed by over 90% in the House in 1998 and 100% agreement in the Senate. There’s a sentence that Bill Clinton made in his write-up on that Iraqi Liberation Act of ’98 that I think is worth repeating. I read it about every month. He said, ‘The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history of its ethnic or sectarian makeup. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.’ I call my senators about once a month and repeat that statement to them.
RUSH: When did he say this?
CALLER: He said it in the Iraqi Liberation Act that was passed and he signed it into law on October 31st, 1998.
RUSH: Okay, all right.
CALLER: And in his statement —
RUSH: We’ve played all those tapes. We’ve got all the audio sound bite. We’ve gone back to the newspapers and every Democrat said basically the same thing.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: The Drive-By Media reported it and the Drive-By Media amplified it. But now the narrative is different; the template is different.
CALLER: Exactly. And keep up the great work. A loyal listener, very conservative, and I thought I needed to see a psychiatrist before your station came on because I didn’t think I thought like anyone else, but then I listen to other people, millions of people, say the same thing I was thinking. So thank you for saving me that medical bill.
RUSH: Don, thank you. I appreciate that. You’re very nice. One thing about Iraq, though. It wasn’t just the liberation of an oppressed people that caused us to go in there, and this is important, because just as people have forgotten how fervently for Iraqi freedom Bill Clinton and the Democrats were in 1998, so have they forgotten, probably, the primary reason for going into 9/11. Let me, in explaining this — and, by the way, we went to Afghanistan first. Don’t misunderstand. The first place we went was Afghanistan. We set up bases of operations there. We went into Iraq later. It took us 14 months at the United Nations trying to get allies around the world to go in. We know now why they didn’t support us and that’s because they were all on the take, most of them were with Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Food program in the United Nations. But I want you to try to put yourself in the position of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and you’re going along. You’re cruising.
You get up on the 11th of September of 2001 and in the case of the president, you’re down in Florida visiting a school. If you’re Cheney, you’re in your office in Washington. You have the TV on. The president didn’t see this ’til later, but Cheney is watching it. You have the TV on, and you see the first plane hit the first tower. Whoa! Was that some kind of an accident or something? You’re trying to gather all the information you can, then the second plane hits that tower a half hour later. You are the president and the vice president of the United States of America. You have one really important charge, and that is the defense and the protection of the United States of America, its people, and its Constitution. You’ve just witnessed an attack unprecedented on American soil, and then the Pentagon gets hit. Then the fourth plane goes down in a field in Pennsylvania. Then you realize that in Iraq — the Middle East, where there are terrorists — you have Saddam Hussein who the world thinks (and knows) has weapons of mass destruction, and has been bragging about building more and bigger and powerful weapons of mass destruction. He’s lying to the UN Security Council about it, and he’s producing phony reports and he’s kicked the inspectors out. You’ve just seen your country hit.
The whole concept that I’m leading up to here is that of preemptive action. You have somebody who is actively seeking more powerful weapons, is giving $25,000 per family to Palestinians who blow their own kids up in terrorist acts or allow their kids to blow themselves up, teach them how to do it, and you say, ‘I’m president (or) vice president of the United States, and I just took this oath. I’m into my ninth month here of service.’ You go out and you give speeches, and you tell the American people you’re going to go wherever it takes to stop this. This isn’t going to happen again, and whoever is behind it is going to pay for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Can you sit there and just ignore the intelligence and the threats that are being boastfully made from Baghdad and take your job seriously?
See, I don’t think you can. I think this is what people miss about Iraq. You talk to a bunch of liberals, they’ve got it through their thick heads that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and they can’t tell you why he wanted to go into Iraq other than some silly reason: Halliburton and oil. It’s plainly simple to me — and the president made this very clear, as did the vice president, in their speeches about this — the need for preemptive action. In fact, that basically was a big bone of contention in the debate shortly afterwards because of preemptive action, people said, ‘Iraq hasn’t done anything to us!’ Yes, they had. Kuwait demonstrated they were on the march for the Saudi Arabian oil fields. They sought weapons of mass destruction. Intel agencies around the world knew it. The idea that Bush lied. For what? Why go to war for the oil? We’re already in Qatar. Just tell them, ‘Hey, gang, we’re taking over. Your oil is ours.’ Take over Saudi Arabia. What the hell, we defend ’em! It was asinine. It makes no sense, other than to examine it from the standpoint of here were two men who took seriously their oath to defend, protect the Constitution of the United States and the American people, and the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have a disabled vet named Ed from York, Pennsylvania, on the phone. Ed, thanks for waiting, and welcome to the program.
CALLER: You’re welcome. I enjoy hearing you every day.
RUSH: I do, too. I love hearing me, thank you.
CALLER: I heard you since August of 1988, and I was a little rough on you then because I wasn’t sure you were conservative, but you are.
RUSH: (Laughing.) I’ve had people tell me I’m too liberal for them. It happens now and then.
CALLER: You’re okay, could be a little more conservative, but you’re good.
RUSH: Well, there’s always room for growth.
CALLER: Of course. Hey, look at Joe Biden. He doesn’t want to be president for real, he just wants to be emperor. Anyway, the thing I was looking at is, you know, the media sort of is running this country, not the Democrats. The Democrats are taking what to do from the media. And it seems everybody is dancing to the media and they’re telling them what to do, just like they did in Vietnam, and they’re trying to screw with the country but the country’s gotten smarter for a change and it’s starting to look at things realistically and saying, ‘Wait a minute, why are you saying these things when you see other things?’ And it’s not like you can tell us that red is blue anymore. But these guys in the media are just trying to run this country, and they’re usurping our government.
RUSH: You know something, I wouldn’t quite put it that way, but you have an excellent point in this. It is questionable as to who gets marching orders from who here. I mean, it really is. The Democrats are entirely capable of giving themselves marching orders, but a liberal is a liberal, and they think alike, and they really don’t need to conspire other than when they come up with these words, like Cheney brings gravitas to the ticket, and all 15,000 of them use it. Here’s the real point about this, Ed. You said it, there are alternative points of view out there. People are learning not to accept the fact that the sky is red, when they’re told it’s red, and that’s because the Drive-Bys have lost their monopoly, thanks in large part to me, and others who have followed. This causes a natural human reaction in people. When you lose influence, lose power, and when it’s been monopolistic, you don’t like it, and so you do everything and anything you can to prove to yourself you still have that power, and that’s what’s going on here; that’s why all the extremism; that’s why all the polls; that’s why all the attempts to get us out of Iraq; that’s why all the attempts to convince the American people we’re losing. The Drive-Bys are trying to convince people themselves that they still have that power. In the process, they’re making it obvious where their biases are. Democrats, of course, the same thing.
As they fail at this, and they clearly are failing, the number of people supporting the surge and thinking it’s working is rising. The number of people supporting the original invasion is rising. After four years of a steady pummeling, of America sucks, it’s Bush’s fault, Bush lied, people are dying, we’re losing, there’s no chance of winning, they have not been able to effect their policy like they did in Vietnam. And that has been their objective, Ed. You know it and I know it. They have been trying to duplicate just so they can show themselves the power they still have to duplicate what happened in Vietnam. Ditto with this administration. They have been doing everything they can to convince the American people that this administration is Nixon and Watergate, because those are the days of their greatest glory, and they are trying to recapture them for themselves to prove they still have the power. As they do this and as they realize they don’t have the monopolistic power that they used to have, they’re going to continue to get even more extreme and more outrageous to prove to themselves they have this power. I’m not saying that they’re not motivated by true beliefs, they are. That’s the second part of the equation. It used to be they hid them. They wanted to put forth this notion that they were objective and fair, and that’s gone out the window now. You were very clever to observe that, and I’m glad you called. I appreciate it. August of 1988, and I’ve finally proven to him that I am conservative, could be a little bit more. We’re always working on it.