RUSH: I mentioned this yesterday. I had the scoop on this from Bill Sammon, but I want you to hear this. There was a Barack Obama campaign conference call, Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner says to the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, ‘Should Bin Laden have the same rights that were granted by the Supreme Court last week to other terrorists?’
RUSH: Okay, so here’s John Kerry, an advisor to Obama — by the way, real change here, right? Revolutionary, new, never-before-seen mind-set, enlightenment, and here’s John Kerry. I’ve told you: Losing in the Democrat Party is the biggest resume enhancement you can have. So here’s Kerry saying: Yep, damn right! Osama gets the same constitutional rights as anybody else. Next up, Richard Clarke — another hack, certainly not new, certainly not fresh, certainly nothing enlightened — and he chimed in on the very same question.
CLARKE: If he were to be brought back for us, fourth, the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus, but fifth, terrorists have routinely in the past, prior to this administration, been successfully captured around the world and prosecuted — including the United States. With the exception of one participant in the World Trade Center attack of 1993, they were all found, all brought back to the United States, all given their rights, and all convicted, and they’re all locked up in super max in Colorado.
RUSH: That is an out-and-out falsehood! That is an out-and-out lie! And we went through the details of this yesterday, but, again, the point is that Clarke says: Yeah, damn right! Bin Laden gets constitutional rights! So this is new? We’re going to go back to the Clinton era way of fighting the war on terror in the courts? You know, we indicted Bin Laden in 1998. We still don’t have him, do we? We did indict, you know, the blind sheik and some of his cohorts from the ’93 World Trade Center bombing, and, yep, put some of them in jail. And look at all the terrorism that happened after that. See, the thing about this… These are supposed to be the best and the brightest minds around: John Kerry! Richard Clarke! The fact is, the legal approach, the indictment approach, that only happens after they’ve done their dirty work. After they have committed a terrorist act and if we’re fortunate to catch ’em, only then does their policy matter — and does it stop terror? Nope. No way. It’s nothing more… These people are incompetent. They cannot be put back in charge. You can see what happened all during the nineties with the buildup. But I just wanted you to hear this. Barack Obama, the enlightened one, the messiah, with brand-new policies that never before been seen, wants to bring back retreads from the past, the Clinton administration and a failed presidential campaign to put an exclamation point on the proposition that, ‘Yes, if we capture Bin Laden, damn straight, ethics, an ACLU lawyer. He gets Miranda rights read to him and he gets constitutional rights in the United States of America.’
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RUSH: Lots of noise from the mouth of Barack Obama, once again on his campaign plane yesterday, he goes right to the Democrat playbook and says: Don’t lecture me on terrorism!
OBAMA: This is the same kind of fearmongering that got us into Iraq, that has caused us to be hugely distracted from the war we do have to fight against terrorism, and it’s exactly that failed foreign policy that I want to reverse.
RUSH: Strictly cliches right out of the Democrat Party playbook. Folks, one of the things that’s bothering me here is that this… (sigh) This is just juvenile. I’m trying here. I’m aware that being too critical of this guy can evoke all kinds of sympathy for him. ‘Everybody (crying) — everybody — is really pounding Obama. He’s such a nice guy. All he wants to do is have a good country, change and future, everybody…’ I don’t want to create this kind of sympathy, but I tell you, I listen to this stuff, and I am going nuts over this. This is supposed to be a smart man. This man is not an independent thinker at all. This is dogma. Yeah, Clinton changed it up a little bit from speech to speech, but this is nothing but Democrat Party, leftist, anti-American dogma. I’m caught between two vises. I want you to understand, or I want to tell you how just brilliantly naive and truly dangerous this is. But at the same time I don’t want to come across as…
Another thing: Can somebody explain to me why it is with every Democrat first lady possibility, we have to do a makeover? We didn’t have to make over Laura Bush. We didn’t have to make over Nancy Reagan. We didn’t have to make over Pat Nixon. We didn’t have to make over Betty Ford. And we didn’t have to make over Barbara Bush or Laura Bush. But every day we had to make over Hillary. She had 14 different images a day, from baking cookies at home to Nurse Ratched. Now they have Michelle (My Belle) Obama, and there’s a big New York Times story on how they’ve gotta repackage her. They’ve gone out and hired some Cutter babe to come be her chief of staff and spokesman. I’ll tell you, the answer to that is they can’t afford to let them be who they really are. They will offend as many people in this country as anybody could possibly do and so they have to bring ’em in and basically say, ‘Look, you can’t be who you are or we’re sunk so we’re going to put different clothes on you.
‘We’re going to make you speak a different way. We’re going to give you some words not to use. We’re going to tell you to smile all the time, and we’re going to really have you tell everybody how you came from dirt. You came from the wrong side of the tracks. You came from nothing — and you don’t even have much now, but you’ve come farther from where you started than anybody ever expected that you would.’ Every damn potential first lady that the Democrats have, they gotta do makeovers. Anyway, I did not lose my place here. ‘This is the same kind of fearmongering that got us into Iraq.’ Fearmongering that got us into Iraq? Have you ever heard of 9/11, Senator? We have not ‘abandoned’ the war on terror. We’re in Afghanistan. We have routed the Taliban. We have not been distracted whatsoever from the fight against terrorism. Senator Obama, it’s your party that has stood in the way of fighting the war on terror. It is your party — along with you, Senator — who have assured the American people we can’t win it. You’ve been out there saying, ‘This war is lost. We haven’t even gotten Bin Laden!’ Now you call this a failed policy, a failed foreign policy you want to reverse? You want to reverse victory? (sigh) Here’s the next bite. He’s still on the same plane. I wish this plane would land somewhere.
OBAMA: These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11. In part because of their failed strategies, we’ve got Bin Laden still sending out audiotapes. And so I don’t think they have much standing to suggest that they’ve learned a lot of lessons from 9/11.
RUSH: The audacity of this inexperienced rookie to sit there and say things like, ‘These are the same guys that helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq.’ Senator, what in the world have you done to prevent another attack on this country? What policies have you supported, what policies have you authored that have prevented an attack on the United States of America? Would you also explain to me, Senator, what impact — what economic, what destructive impact — does an audiotape from somebody claiming to be Osama Bin Laden have? How in the world, Senator, do you proclaim a failed policy on the basis that Bin Laden is still making audiotapes? What is it, sir, about audiotapes that scares you? What is it about audiotapes of Bin Laden and Zawahiri that make you feel intimidated? Would you rather have them sending out a bunch of meaningless audiotapes or hijacking airplanes?
Would you rather have them get killed and knocked off in Iraq and have their numbers dwindle and their spirits lowered, or would you rather have them sending out audiotapes? This is dangerously irresponsible. You can’t just say, ‘Well, Rush, it’s a presidential campaign. He’s gotta say something opposite of Republicans.’ It may be a presidential campaign, but damn it, this is the United States of America, and we got a Democrat Party presidential candidate who is doing everything he can to reverse the policies of victory, to reverse the policies of national security. And he calls ’em failed policies! You know, I want to go back to something, and then I’ll go back to your phone calls. It wasn’t too long ago on this very program we played audio sound bites from the haughty John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) and Richard Clarke, well-known White House terrorism advisor top both Clinton and Bush 43.
They both agreed with the premise, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. The indictment’s the way to go. The legal system! Bring Bin Laden to court. If he were captured, damn right: We bring him to court. We give him a lawyer, and we get an indictment — and, yeah, that’s what the Supreme Court said. It’s what we’re going to do.’ You talk about a failed policy? That’s the Clinton policy: to fight the war on terror in the courtroom because you only do that after you’ve been hit. It’s not preventive in any way. And these guys want to do that. Well, let’s take this to some logical steps using the US court system. We capture Osama wherever he is — Pakistan, Afghanistan — and bring him to the United States, and we assign his trial in Manhattan because the indictment that’s on his head since 1998…
You want this? Vote Obama.
You want these people brought in under the presumption of innocence? (laughing) As a matter of fact, somebody ought to ask Obama this question: ‘If we capture Osama Bin Laden and we put him on trial, do you believe, sir, he should be presumed innocent?’ Somebody ask Obama this question. ‘Cause it’s a damn good question. Bill Sammon, next time you’re one of his conference calls, Bill, ask the haughty John Kerry or Richard Clarke or whoever is on the conference call with you, ask ’em. ‘Based on your last conference call…’ I can’t get on these conference calls, so Bill’s my plant. So I said, ‘Bill, ask ’em: ‘Should Osama be presumed innocent if captured and brought to the US for trial?’ Osama be presumed innocent in a US court, should there be a trial? Now, for the rest of you… (interruption) You don’t think so? Can you imagine that circus? Can you imagine?
Now, but, with all that, here is the piece de resistance. If, ladies and gentlemen, Osama Bin Laden is brought to the United States under these new Supreme Court rules — as supported by the haughty John Kerry and Richard Clarke and everybody else in Obama’s foreign policy apparatus — and we bring Osama in under the presumption of innocence, somebody explain to me why we are trying to kill him? Why have we sent out Special Ops, SEAL teams, drones? Why have we sent the best we’ve got into those mountainous regions since 2001 to kill Osama if, in our court system, he would be presumed innocent? And, why is it that so many Democrats, lo these many years, have proclaimed the war on terror a failure because we have not killed Osama? We haven’t captured Osama or killed Osama. But it’s okay to nuke the guy on the battlefield. Why are we trying to kill Osama Bin Laden if he will be assumed innocent in an American courtroom?
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RUSH: I want to play an audio sound bite from Obama, the last sound bite from Obama on his campaign plane yesterday. He’s addressing remarks that he’d previously made about Club Gitmo.
OBAMA: Let’s talk specifically about my statement around Guantanamo. The question is whether or not, as the Supreme Court said, people who are being held have a chance to at least suggest that, hey, you’ve got the wrong guy, or I shouldn’t be here. It’s not a question of whether or not they’re freed. And the simple point that I was making, which I will continue to make throughout this campaign, is that we can abide by due process and abide by basic concepts of rule of law and still crack down on terrorists. The fact that you are allowing habeas does not necessitate that you are suddenly putting terrorists in a full US trial court. That’s not… Those two things aren’t equivalent.
RUSH: Does anybody have any idea what he said there? Again, illustrating my point: Get this guy off the teleprompter or without some prepared notes, and he’s wandering aimlessly for syllabic combinations that will equal a cogent, salient thought. I think the last thing that he said here is really what he was angling at trying to say. ‘Just because you’re allowing habeas [corpus] doesn’t necessitate that you’re suddenly putting terrorists in a full US trial.’ Oh, it doesn’t? Well, then why are we going to have to take them out of Club Gitmo, sir? And why are we going to have to bring them to the US court system and grant them lawyers? You don’t think those lawyers are going to go straight to court? And when they go straight to court with habeas corpus, doesn’t it mean, Senator, that they are presumed innocent? I often don’t say these kinds of things to you people, but I’m really proud of this point.
This thing that just popped into my mind, and I really do think this is a good point. How in the world can everybody in the world in our country — Democrats, Republicans — be dumping on Bush because we haven’t killed Osama? We haven’t found him. We haven’t wiped him out. We haven’t got him yet. The war on terror is a failure! The same people now want him to have habeas corpus, bring him into the US court system, bring him into a courtroom — where he’s presumed innocent. Somebody needs to ask Obama: If he is brought to a court, is he presumed innocent, Senator? And then what if some slick lawyer gets him off? What if he’s found innocent by a jury of his peers in New York, which won’t be too hard to find. Then what do we do? We gotta release him, and then comes the civil suit, Senator Obama! Can you then see Osama suing the United States in a civil trial for damage to his reputation? We’ve indicted him since 1998. He hasn’t stopped him from engaging in terrorist acts. Claire McCaskill, an Obama supporter, was on Joe Scarborough’s show today on MSNBC, the question came from Mika Brzezinski: ‘I’ve been so outnumbered this morning on one of these on your checklist, and that’s restore America’s credibility in the world.’
MCCASKILL: You know, the idea that simple civil habeas corpus is simply going to open up our national security or make us unsafe, is so counterintuitive as an American, it’s almost offensive to me.
BRZEZINSKI: But the credibility issue.
MCCASKILL: The credibility issue, that’s why we have to restore. That’s why the Supreme Court did the right thing.
RUSH: Credibility issue. Okay, then the question: What if he’s found innocent? This habeas corpus business, both Senator McCaskill and Senator Obama… I’m telling you, they’re going to be freed from Club Gitmo. We’re going to close it down. They’re going to be brought to the US. If they’ve got constitutional rights, for crying out loud, they’ve got US constitutional rights; and they can go get a lawyer and they can go to a US court, and they can do so under the presumption of innocence. Shall we allow that? Is that what you want? Is that what you want? You know, this Supreme Court ruling was not all that definitive; there’s a lot of area for expansion and interpretation. So all you Obama supporters and Senator Obama yourself, you need to ask yourselves a question: ‘What if Osama’s found innocent?’ He’s brought in and presumed innocent, is he not? He’s innocent ’til proved guilty.
If there’s a trial, what if he gets off on some technicality or the evidence is not sufficient to meet the criminal standard in a US court with an ACLU-type lawyer? He’s presumed innocent in court, right? He has to be. I mean, he’s got constitutional rights! He’s presumed innocent. So somebody needs to ask Obama two questions. ‘Senator, if we capture Osama, and we put him on trial, do you believe he should be assumed innocent? He’s been indicted, Senator. Don’t give me this rigmarole that habeas corpus does not mean jury trials. He is under US indictment, ergo, he’d be brought to trial. If he is brought to trial, do you believe, Senator Obama, that Osama Bin Laden should be assumed innocent?’ That is a damn good question. And then, ‘Senator Obama, if you think he is presumed innocent, then why in hell are you and your party defining victory in the war on terror by saying it isn’t over, it isn’t won, ’til Osama is killed?’
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RUSH: Here’s Kirk in San Diego. Nice to have you, sir, on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Second-time caller dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You said earlier that it sounds so profound and yet it’s so simple and the reason why it’s so profound is first because you’re right, and second because it’s so rarely said. You hit a home run earlier, Rush. You did something that the McCain campaign could not do. You convinced me to vote for McCain because of the convoluted logic coming out of Obama and Obama’s campaign. This is the man who said he would drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan, our ally, if it turned out that Osama Bin Laden was hiding there. But now his campaign is saying that just because of a Supreme Court ruling, which frankly I think is wrong, that if we had Osama Bin Laden, we brought him here for trial, that he would be entitled to the same rights as American citizens? And the brilliant point that you made, that he has to be presumed innocent. This is so asinine, and you’ve now energized me with this brilliant observation that nobody else is doing, you’ve energized me now. I was going to wait until Election Day to decide whether or not I was too busy to vote and now I’m going to vote and it’s going to be for McCain.
RUSH: Well, fabulous. That’s nice of you to say, and I really appreciate it. I’m not trying to be a spoilsport here. I just want you to be honest. Are you going to vote against Obama or for McCain?
CALLER: I gotta be honest with you, I’m voting against Obama. I have felt that this man is a danger to the country, and I mean this in all sincerity. When it was the Democratic primary and the brilliance of Operation Chaos, I was like, you know what, I almost hoped that Hillary would be the nominee, because, to be honest with you, I was kind of wanting to vote for Hillary ’cause I felt that the Clintons was the evil that we knew. I do not trust McCain. I don’t like him on a lot of issues, but there’s one issue that I absolutely trust him on, and it’s this issue of the war on terror, and one issue that Barack Obama is totally dangerous on, I think he would ruin our economy, but I’m convinced that he would be very, very bad for our national defense.
RUSH: Yes. Regardless the reason, whether it’s actually his thoughts or the thoughts of others that he has been told to articulate, I’m sure he probably doesn’t disagree with many Democrats and liberals on this stuff anyway, plus tax cuts and the economy. We know Obama’s going to raise taxes. We know he’s going to cut back on energy supplies. We know that he is going to expand the federal government’s entitlement services. We know he’s going to raise the capital gains tax. We know he’s going to raise Social Security taxes. We know he’s going to take policies that are going to result in people losing jobs and income. The two questions, okay, if he’s brought to court, if Osama Bin Laden’s brought to court and has to be presumed innocent, and what if he pleads insanity and a New York jury says, ‘He’d have to be insane to do what he did.’ ‘Yes, not guilty by reason of insanity,’ he’d still go to prison perhaps. He won’t do that, but okay, he gets the presumption of innocence, and yet at the same time, you’re right, Obama was threatening to nuke Pakistan if they didn’t give us Bin Laden when we found him. So how do you juxtapose the two? What it illustrates is the folly of trying to impose the US criminal justice system on top of the prosecution of a war against enemies trying to kill us.
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RUSH: Now back to Frank in Richmond, Virginia, on the phones. Frank, welcome, sir.
CALLER: Rush, mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: In the process of comparing the military approach to Mr. Bin Laden and friends with the civilian, you’re missing all of the other constitutional rights that the Supreme Court might be expected to give, such as not only the presumption of innocence, but freedom from pretrial publicity and an impartial jury and an impartial judge. Where are you going to find an impartial judge in the federal or state legal system in New York? Where are you going to find a jury?
RUSH: Now, wait a second. What do you mean, an impartial judge? Do you mean all the judges in New York are going to see him as a victim and be predisposed to his acquittal?
CALLER: The problem is that the judges in New York are tainted by personal exposure. Every one of them is bound to know somebody who was killed on 9/11.
RUSH: Yeah, but they all blame Bush!
CALLER: Well, they can blame Bush on one hand and they can make the connection on the other. But they can recuse themselves, and then the judges outside the area could go even farther and say, ‘I can’t hear this case. I’m afraid to.’ I mean that was one of the exciting problems they had in Colombia during the drug business when they first started trying to get a handle on it. The judges were murdered systematically and new judges had to step up to hear the case. Well, here, the judges will be rightly concerned about their security for the rest of their lives. And, you know, how about the jurors? Would you sit on the jury and let your name be leaked or not just, you know, whether your name was leaked to the press or not —
RUSH: Look, you’re making some great points here, I understand, but this has happened. We did have judges, we did have lawyers, prosecutors and defense counsel. We had juries in the trial of the 1993 gang, sheik Omar Abdel Rahman who blew up the World Trade Center.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: He was convicted. He’s in jail right now. So it’s been done.
CALLER: It’s been done, but Omar Abdel, whatever, Mr. Rahman, the blind sheik, is hardly the worldwide notorious, most wanted man in the world. He’s just another Islamic fascist thug. Osama Bin Laden is the kingpin of the whole seat.
RUSH: I understand this, and I’m just playing devil’s advocate with you. I know one of the lawyers that prosecuted Rahman and he got countless death threats, as did Pat Fitzgerald who was the lead prosecutor in the case. Judge did, too. But, look, I get your point. Let’s go back to the beginning here because all of that is not known whether it will go that far, but if it does, your points are well taken and very wise.
CALLER: I hope so. I went to law school 30 years ago to find out about that. (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing) All right, since you went to law school, you’ll know this better than I. The ruling of the Supreme Court right now is vague. All it says is that these people who have been held without being charged have a right to know with what they’re being charged.
CALLER: That was the only issue before them at that point, but the way they ruled today on that issue gives guidance to prospective appeals in the future on the other rules.
RUSH: Oh, I know.
CALLER: They will be very happy — you know, they’ve given cert on every issue that’s been brought to them on the war on terror. They had the authority to say, ‘We don’t want to hear it,’ and it would have passed, but they have not denied certiorari or a hearing on any issue that’s been brought to them on the war on terror. They have systematically defined the Constitution far broader than anybody not in the Supreme Court could imagine. And they put us in great harm.
RUSH: No question about it. This could lead to the Mirandizing of these terrorist suspects.
CALLER: If they’re not Mirandized, then any information that’s obtained from them is inadmissible. If you don’t have admissible evidence to present to an impartial jury —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — by a competent prosecutor —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — with a competent defense, you can’t have a valid conviction.
RUSH: Precisely. It’s also possible the, quote, unquote, arresting soldiers would have to be brought to trial, ‘Okay, under what circumstances did you capture this prisoner and on what basis did you deny him the rights of innocence as presumed by the US?’ It could be a total circus.
CALLER: And how do you keep him available as a witness for ten years while you get the case to trial in the first place?
RUSH: Well, you probably start the draft, ’cause you gotta replace the soldiers you’re going to have in court. It’s absurd. The whole thing is absurd. This is why, you know, you ask the basic question, all this stems from the presumption of innocence that they would have being in possession of US constitutional rights.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: In the case of Bin Laden, at the same time we have people who say, yeah, let’s capture and bring him here and give him the same ruling of habeas corpus that the Supreme Court decided, then that brings in the presumption of innocence. At the same time, we are having military teams trying to kill the guy.
CALLER: And then what does it do to other people who are not citizens of the United States? Illegal aliens now have free constitutional rights or stand to have every constitutional right that a valid citizen has.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. If we grant these rights, as the Supreme Court has, to an unlawful enemy combatant, a terrorist —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — are you saying the illegal immigration population, hey, what about us?
CALLER: That’s right. Because they are less obnoxious, they are less of a threat, they are less offensive to the people who are illegally here than terrorists. The terrorists are trying to kill everybody. They don’t care who they kill. But an illegal alien allegedly is just here to try to find a better life, and, you know, there’s good things and bad things to be said about them, but there are no good things to be said about the terrorists and yet they’re getting the best treatment you can give, so why not give the same treatment to other illegal people or — I mean, you know, not even illegal aliens. That is to say that a citizen of another country for some reason is charged with a crime in the United States, he’s just become a US citizen for all the purposes under the Constitution.
RUSH: No, it’s worse than that. It’s worse than that. He doesn’t have to be charged in order to have these rights.
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: He has a right to be charged, but he doesn’t have to be.
CALLER: He gets the full package, you know, just by sitting there.
RUSH: Just by killing Americans he gets the full package.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: I know, it’s terribly perverted, and most people are puzzled here, Frank. They don’t know what they can do about it, they don’t know what constitutional recourse there is.
CALLER: The constitutional recourse is very simple. Report to the Democrats in Congress and make the Constitution very clear. Congress controls the jurisdiction of the entire federal court system.
RUSH: I know. But they had a law, and the Supreme Court just overruled the congressional law signed by the president.
CALLER: Then Congress can turn around and overrule the Supreme Court the same way they literally packed the court back during Roosevelt’s term, because the Supreme Court wouldn’t play ball in the New Deal business. Roosevelt offered to raise the number of Supreme Court judges to 15 in order to outnumber the judges that were standing in his way. And, you know, there’s no constitutional limit on 9 judges. It’s just how many more (unintelligible) nomination and confirmation.
RUSH: Okay, but since we have a Democrat majority Congress that remedy isn’t going to happen. They are not going to go back and try to overrule this court. They love the ruling. So the constitutional remedy, quote, unquote, that’s most available is Republican majority in the Senate with a Republican president, conservative, who is going to appoint proper people when there are vacancies. Your prescription is valid, don’t misunderstand. I’m just saying the circumstances now, with the Democrats in charge of everything, it’s not gonna happen. Frank, I could talk to you for the rest of the program, but I gotta go, and I’ve got a couple things here to do before I get outta here. But thank you so much for the call.
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RUSH: Okay, let me clarify here after the call. We just hung up with Frank, the lawyer. What I’m trying to do here on this Osama Bin Laden thing and the Obama camp and the whole interpretation of the Supreme Court decision, is I’m just trying to point out the illogic of Obama’s position, of the Supreme Court’s position, and the position of all those who insist that fighting the war in the courtrooms is logical or even acceptable. The concept is simple. Out of one side of his mouth, Obama says we need to kill Osama because for this war to be won, that’s the definition. Out of the other side of his mouth he says if we capture Bin Laden, he needs to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Obama gets away with applying military and civilian standards for the same thing, and people say, ‘Oh, he’s so brilliant! He’s so, so smart.’