RUSH: All right: this business with the Turks and the Kurds in northern Iraq and the United States Congress, the Democrats in particular. Speaking of the Democrats, by the way, they have now admitted they do not have the votes and will not have the votes to override the S-CHIP veto of President Bush. They do have the votes to override in the Senate, but they don’t have the votes to override in the House, and there are two stories on this. The first story is how the Democrats don’t have it and how Pelosi is a little bit upset and she understands that their base is upset — because they’re always dissatisfied in the Democrat base. But the companion story is how the Republicans in the House are a little bit troubled by this because they don’t have an alternative program. How about the status quo? How about just renewing it? If you want to increase the amount of money proportionate to the number of poor kids that exist now that didn’t when the program was originally authorized ten years ago, just throw a couple billion more dollars at it, keep the same guidelines and the president would sign it. Put the Democrats on the defensive. I don’t understand what’s so difficult about this — especially when the Republicans have to know what this program is, as the Democrats have designed it. It’s simply a stealth mechanism to get more and more toward their objective of socialized medicine, where you’ll be pulling your own teeth with pliers as they’re now doing in the UK.
So this is being done deliberately to sabotage relations between the United States and Turkey. Turkey, of course, is crucial in terms of getting supplies and materials into Iraq from the United States for the troops, to keep ’em resupplied and so forth. This is just dastardly what these people are doing. Now, later, this story came across the wire: ‘Oil prices extended their rise on Monday after closing at a record high to end last week amid worries that supplies are insufficient for coming winter demand. Pirces [sic] has also risen last week on concerns over the conflict between Turkey and Kurds in northern Iraq. … US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday urged Turkey to show restraint in its response to attacks from Kurdish rebels, but Turkish leaders have appeared to be less receptive to Washington’s appeals since a committee of US lawmakers passed a resolution last week labeling as genocide the World War I-era killings of Armenians by the Ottomans — a characterization that Turkey rejects.’ So the Turks are telling Condoleezza, you know, ‘Take it somewhere else. You guys are going to try to offend us and embarrass us on the world stage. We’re one of your allies here.’ They are a, quote, unquote, moderate Muslim nation. So I think, let’s call this what it is. This is Nancy Pelosi’s war now. She’s doing everything she can to encourage this little incursion by Turkey into northern Iraq after the Kurds and to disrupt the supply lines — and then there’s this. ‘Democrats Press on with Genocide Bill, Despite Turkish Fury.’ Pelosi said, ‘Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values — Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture. … All those issues are about who we are as a country,’ and she said ‘possible reprisals affecting Turkey’s cooperation with the US military were ‘hypothetical’ and would not derail the resolution.’ That’s when she said this is about our values. What values? What timeliness here for your values. Now, this was discussed on Fox with ‘the Beltway Boys,’ Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes. This was on Saturday on the Fox News Channel. Here’s what Kondracke said.
KONDRACKE: Rush Limbaugh is saying that the Democrats are promoting this resolution in Congress in order to disrupt our relationship with Turkey — not get supplies to, but limit supplies from Turkey to, uh, our troops in Iraq and cause a defeat in Iraq. I don’t think that that’s the case, but I think the Democrats should be very careful in proceeding with this resolution, because the effect will be — or could be — that the Turks will stop allowing supplies through, and that will hurt our troops.
RUSH: Now, what kind of equivocation is that? Kondracke says, Rush Limbaugh thinks that that’s exactly what’s going to happen, and that’s why the Democrats are doing it. He says, ‘I don’t think that’s right, but the Democrats better be careful because this is what’s going to happen.’ Now, what’s that? That’s the kind of equivocation that we get from people that doesn’t serve anything. He knows full well what’s going to happen, and he’s equivocating on whether or not the Democrats ‘mean’ for it to happen. Now he’s warning them to be careful. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it with glee.
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RUSH: Let’s listen to Nancy Pelosi talking about the situation in Turkey. She was on This Week with Stephanopoulos yesterday. He said to her, ‘If the president, or Secretary Gates, or the chairman of Joint Chiefs called you and said they’re just certain that this is going to put our military at risk, is it still worth going forward with your resolution?’
PELOSI: The president hasn’t called me on it, so that’s hypothetical. Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture, all of those issues about who we are as a country. And I think that our troops are well served when we declare who we are as a country and increase the respect that people have for us as a nation.
This is just offensive as it can be, especially coming from these people who have done everything they can [to undermine our mission.] Why do you think we have a rotten image in the world, if we do? My friends, I don’t agree that our image is rotten, but they certainly want it to be, and they want it to be blamed on Bush. But who the hell, in public for four years, has been running around ripping the hell out of this country? Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry, you name it, John Murtha, it doesn’t matter. Jay Rockefeller. Take your pick. Ted Kennedy. We’ve had Bill Clinton; we’ve had Algore; we’ve had Jimmy Carter, all Democrats traveling the world ripping this country to shreds; saying that it’s immoral; saying that our president is an idiot and agreeing with socialists all over the world that George Bush is an idiot, a clown, or whatever. It’s just unseemly.
We were talking about this at lunch yesterday. I just have to think that there are far more many Americans who feel the same way I do and you do about this than any of us ever know. They’re just not asked about it. The popular perception in the Drive-By Media is that every American agrees with Democrats on everything. But this is just unseemly. There are Americans who are fed up with hearing their country run down day-in-and-day-out for the last four years, our troops run down, criticized, impugned, day-in-and-day-out, for the last four years. To have what the Democrats say repeated on the nightly newscasts, on the cable networks, all over the newspapers and so forth, it is unseemly. Now, to offer this resolution, the third of its kind, two previously have already passed, to anger Turkey, the primary supply line for troops, and then to say, ‘No, this is about our morality. This is about who we are as a country.’ Yeah, where were you during the Rwandan genocide? What are you doing besides flapping your gums over what’s going on in Darfur?
The enemies of this country seem to be the allies of the United States Democrats. It’s just stunning. It’s classless, it’s unseemly, and to me, folks, it is reprehensible. This answer that she gives here, ‘Well, the president hasn’t called me.’ You shouldn’t need a phone call from the president to understand what you’re doing. She doesn’t need a phone call. She knows exactly what she’s doing. They all do on the Democrat side of this, know exactly what they’re doing. Some of the things are harmful to our troops. Does she really believe that the rumors, the lies, the smears of US soldiers at Guantanamo, at Club Gitmo, are actually hurting our troops in Iraq? What’s hurting our troops in Iraq is Democrats and their judges, as in the first hour of this program. A soldier from Queens kidnapped in a surprise attack by Al-Qaeda in the triangle of death. We are not allowed to get wiretaps on the phones in the communications the kidnappers are using for ten hours because the lawyers have to approve the request for a warrant, in the middle of a war! Not in the middle of street crime; in the middle of a war!
The Democrats want to keep those restrictions in place. They are trying to hand victory to the enemy. They are failing, because Al-Qaeda is on the run. There are even more stories in the stack today that I have coming up about how it’s getting really, really tough to deny here that things are improving in Iraq. In fact, here it is. It’s an editorial in the Washington Post, of all places, from yesterday. ‘The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month — whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq — have gotten relatively little attention.’ I wonder why? Because that doesn’t fit the template, does it? Good news in Iraq does not. We had the audio sound bites from those two journalists last week, (paraphrasing) ‘We can’t report good news, why, one month doesn’t make a trend. Besides, how do we verify these numbers? We can’t be sure these numbers are accurate.’ Yet the death toll goes up, ‘Oh, the numbers have no question about them, they’re totally accurate, and that, of course, is news.’ It’s maddening.
‘A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the US military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that ‘civilian deaths have risen’ during this year’s surge of American forces. A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures,’ and they go on to cite how they have plummeted. ‘Nevertheless, it’s looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus’s credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq’s bloodshed were — to put it simply — wrong.’ This is in the Washington Post yesterday. The Democrats want to screw this up because, as I, El Rushbo, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-everything Maha Rushie, have been warning you about for the past six months, the last thing the Democrats can afford is editorials like that to stick and be spread throughout the Drive-By Media. The last thing they can afford is the perception by the American people that we are winning and that victory is at hand. Politically that cooks their goose; politically that finishes them, because they’ve already got us losing. They’re fundraising on it; they’re running for office on it. The last thing they want is victory. And Mrs. Pelosi runs around and says this gobbledygook to Stephanopoulos. She ought to be ashamed.
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RUSH: Here’s another sound bite from Nancy Pelosi from Stephanopoulos. The question: ‘The congressional approval ratings have taken a hit this year. A lot of that, as you know, is because of disaffection in the Democrat base, the anti-war activists. Cindy Sheehan is running against you.’
PELOSI: I respect the, uh, dissatisfaction, uh, with the war and myself would not give Congress high marks on ending the war. Uh, we don’t have the veto — the pen to sign or (nervous laugh) not to veto.
RUSH: What?
PELOSI: We’re doing all we can to change the debate. I’m one of the most vociferous opponents of the war, and so that is even more ironic. But again, I was an advocate myself. I — I — by their nature, they are dissatisfied, persistent, uh, and — and — and per — and just keep fighting, and — and I respect that.
RUSH: In a sane world — in a sane world, folks — this house of cards that’s the Democrat Party would just crumble to shreds a year from now, November, and Hillary Clinton would already be — the whole party would be disqualified in terms of having legitimacy because of the things that they’re doing to try and sabotage this effort, even in the midst of profound success. More and more stories are starting to hit, too, and that’s I think ratcheting the Democrats up even more. But remember, I have faith that a far greater number of Americans are going to see this and surprise everybody on Election Day, than anybody that conducts and creates conventional wisdom is putting out.
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RUSH: Here’s Willie in Michigan. It’s a cell call. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Good to talk to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’d like to meet you one day.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I think this would be a real good time for you to refresh everybody’s memory how all the top tier of the Democratic Party said Bush was ‘isolating us from our allies. We need to make better friends with our allies, helping us with the war.’ Now look what they’re doing, chopping us off at the knees with Turkey. I can’t believe everybody can’t plainly see what they’re doing.
RUSH: Well, there are some people worried here that the Democrats are going to get away with this because they won’t have any fingerprints on all of this as far as the Drive-By Media is concerned, because the Drive-Bys aren’t going to report the Democrats’ involvement here, in order to protect them. That is a legitimate concern. As far as a lot of Americans will know, the Turks just decided to say, ‘To hell with the war in Iraq,’ and caused trouble and it’s just another ally defecting for Bush and so forth. Make no mistake: That’s exactly the way the Democrats want it to be reported, which is why I’m shouting this stuff from the rooftops, because the Democrats are the ones causing this, and the Turks are the ones telling us so. The Turks are the ones reacting to this. They don’t want to be embarrassed. This is an ally. You’re exactly right, and in the early days of this administration — particularly during those, what is it, a year and a half at the Security Council or 14 months at the Security Council? — all the Democrats were saying, ‘We can’t go this alone. We’ve gotta stick with our allies!’ Remember John Kerry’s ‘global test’ in the 2004 presidential campaign in one of the debates? (Kerry impression) ‘Weeeell, we need a global test out there. We need to go around and get permission.’ Remember how everybody mocked that, and he had to pull back from it? This is what I mean, and that’s a great point, Willie. This is what I mean about this current crop of Democrats and liberals.
You cannot believe anything they say, and then during all of this — it’s not just Mrs. Clinton, folks. When she criticizes the war, she only says what she won’t do, and what she won’t do is what Bush is doing, and that’s the secret to the message. She’s still campaigning to the base. ‘Well, I’m not going to get engaged in torture, and I’m not going to have things going on at these prisons, and I’m not going to be spying, and I won’t do this, and I won’t do that,’ and the Democrat base goes, ‘Yaaay! Yaaaaaaay!’ because all they’re oriented around, what animates them is their hatred for Bush. We never hear what these people will do! We never hear how they’re going to keep us safe. They never tell us what they will do in certain circumstances regarding national security, and here’s Pelosi doing it in her own way. They’re still running against George W. Bush. I know it’s still primary time, so they’re still running against the guy that their base hates the most. But, at some point, they’re going to have to get off of that, and they probably won’t, because I don’t think that they’re going to be able to gin up the same amount of hatred for a Rudy or a Fred Thompson or a Mitt Romney, whoever the nominee is. I simply don’t think they’re going to be able to gin up that kind of personal hatred, and that personal hatred is what animates them, and they’ve gotta keep their people animated. But, at some point, emotions have reservoirs, and the reservoir is empty — and I made a little joke about it the other day, but can you imagine how many Democrats are going to be upset when they go into the voting booth in November of ’08 and find Bush’s name not on the ballot to vote against? They’re going to be lost. What do they do?
RUSH: Lincoln, Nebraska, this is Josh. You’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Well, I’ll keep my comments brief. Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, got up and said that for 24 or 25 years he’s been trying to get this Turkey amendment out there, and I’m just wondering, correct me if I’m wrong, but in 1993, the Clinton White House and both houses of Congress, the Democrats had. They should have passed this then and there if it was such a big issue with Democrats. Steny should have brought it up then. Pelosi was there then. They should have all brought it up at that point, when it could have gotten through if it’s such a big issue. Obviously, this is politics. They’re trying to play politics.
RUSH: They did bring it up. They brought it up in 1984. They prosecute doctor bring it up at some point in the nineties. This is the third time in the last 20 years they’ve brought it up. But you’re exactly right. The timing of this has nothing to do with anything other than sabotaging what is now turning into positive news out of Iraq because they can’t afford for that to happen. They’re too politically invested in defeat. I’m telling you, it’s just unseemly. That doesn’t even cover it halfway, because they’re Democrats. It’s just… I’m trying to maintain my composure here and at the same time describe how livid I am about it.