RUSH: According to a report that I saw earlier today, we are not going to let this terrible peeing scandal stop us from negotiating the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan. Some people are starting to call this Urinegate. “Taliban Says Marine Tape Will not Hurt Afghanistan Talks.” Now, what does that say? You go back to the Bush years, we had the Abu Ghraib pictures and, “Oh, no, my God, that’s the end of the US military. Oh, what a horrible country. Oh, gee, what a great terrorist recruitment tool. Oh, Abu Ghraib, that stupid Bush, oh, no, how horrible.” Remember that? Remember when I said, “Ah, it looks like a fraternity hazing prank.” But, oh, they got all over me on that. And the left used that to try to destroy the military and its credibility and the mission. You remember.
So now we have a videotape of some marines breaking the rules and taping it. It’s curious why they did that, and now it’s gotten out. Snerdley, which do you think is more offensive, a greater transgression: Abu Ghraib photos or the urination on corpses of the Taliban. Abu Ghraib far worse. Abu Ghraib far worse than urinating on Taliban corpses. I know we don’t know when this happened. The details are sketchy. So as a discussion matter, we’ll take it as it is. But get this Reuters story: “Taliban Says Marine Tape Will not Hurt Afghanistan Talks.” Now, what does that tell you? What does that tell you?
All of a sudden you have something that, if they wanted to, the left could exploit as another Abu Ghraib. That goes without saying, Abu Ghraib blamed on Bush, why isn’t this blamed on Obama? Nothing can go wrong. This will be blamed on the individuals, not Obama. When a president is Republican, everything that the government does is blamed on him. But the more important question here, the Taliban, those, according to the story, was their people who were dead who were the urinatees. And the Taliban says that that tape is not gonna hurt anything, we’re not bothered by that. I’m simply asking, what does that tell you? (interruption) No. It doesn’t tell us that they’re tired of being hit by drones.
It tells us that they’re winning and they’re close and if they start raising hell about this, it’s gonna delay the ultimate. Karzai is out there saying one thing or another. A senior member of the Afghan government’s High Peace Council said, “Such action will leave a very, very bad impact on peace efforts.” But the Taliban says, ah, not gonna hurt anything here. Taliban must think they’re close to winning. Taliban must think they’re pretty close to taking over Afghanistan. There are peace talks going on, and the Taliban must think that we’re pretty close to surrendering it to ’em and getting out, and they don’t want this to come along and stop that process and delay. That’s how I interpret it. This would be my wild guess.
Obviously Urinegate will not interrupt the process of turning the country over to the Taliban. If they wanted to they could go after Obama. They could be out there saying that Panetta should resign. Where is CODEPINK? Where are all these anti-war groups? Where are these people who hate the military compared to way they were around at Abu Ghraib? You remember the fake stories about flushing a Koran down the toilet from Michael Isikoff. They wanted to frog march Bush and Cheney into jail over Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was on the front page of the New York Times above the fold, get this, for 32 straight days. Urinegate, ah, what’s the big deal? No big deal. We can’t even pinpoint when it happened. We’ll deal with it internally. Panetta gets away with talking about how outraged he is. He won’t put up with it. Okay, fine, that’s all we need to hear, let’s move on, nothing to see here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Prince Frederick, Maryland. Gloria, thank you so much for waiting. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Oh, hi, Rush. (giggling) I’m so ecstatic to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you. Thanks very much.
CALLER: I just want to let you know I love you, but I thought earlier — maybe I misunderstood — that you had compared Abu Ghraib to what went on with these four kids, these four Marines; and I was going to give you a dusting on it, but I think… (giggling) I don’t know. Maybe I misunderstood you.
RUSH: Well, no, I didn’t. I talked about them in the same sentence but I didn’t. No. I did not equate them.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Other than in the way they’re being reacted to.
CALLER: I know. I’m so mad. I just don’t want these kids to suffer anything. I don’t care if they get a little slap on their hands, but they did nothing wrong. These troglodytes deserved more than just a little whiz on ’em, and it really just boggles my brain that these —
RUSH: Now, my understanding is — and this is from the father of two Marines who has written about this. He wrote about it last night. His name is Michael Ledeen, a friend of mine, and he says that they did break rules; that this is not something that is taught, recommended, or what have you. The thing is, everybody knows it happens on both sides. There is a famous picture of George Patton urinating in the Ryan river before making a march on Hitler. We know this stuff happens. We know they do it and worse. What happened here was videotaping this and putting it out there. We know this. This is war, for crying out loud!
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: We all know they have to take whizzes, like you said.
CALLER: (giggling) Exactly. And what they failed to mention is what the Taliban do to these poor villagers and their women and their children when they go into ’em. Why don’t they show those atrocities, and we’re worried about our guys taking a little leak on these Taliban?
RUSH: Because… In fact, you know something? This is actually a good point. Do you remember, after Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo…? Now, just stick with me on this. After Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo, all we heard about from Obama himself (while he’s a candidate) and all the other Democrats was how this is not America. “This is destroying our values! This is why the world hates us.” Remember all that talk about American values? Where is that now? Why aren’t the same Democrats concerned about the hit to American values with this? All of is so political and it’s always so political. The differences in the way stories like this are covered are so obvious. I was watching a show. I tell you… In fact, if you haven’t seen this show, you should watch this.
There’s a scene in this show where the male lead is a POW captured for seven years in a Iraq (I don’t want to take too much ’cause it’s a spoiler), but during the seven years of his captivity they routinely portrayed the guard urinating on him. My point is we all know this kind of stuff happens — and when people start saying, “Oh, how horrible! This is outrageous,” and she’s right: This is nothing compared to what happens to the innocent women and children of the Taliban, how they hide behind them and so forth and subject them to the drones (the drone attacks), which is what this show’s about, interestingly.
But you really ought to watch. It’s 12 episodes. The last episode’s an hour and a half. The others are anywhere from 52 minutes to an hour, and there are no commercials in ’em, and I didn’t know about it ’til it was almost over. Joel Surnow… Well, I did, but I didn’t pay enough attention. Joel said to me (I was out playing golf in California), “Have you seen Howard-o’s new show?” “No.” It’s Homeland on Showtime.” “Oh, okay,” and I hit my next shot and I forgot about it; and then somebody sent me an e-mail or somebody told me about it, and I said, “Wait a minute, I’ve heard of this,” and I remembered, “It’s Howard-o’s show!” So I started watching and Kathryn and I started watching it.
We had a marathon watching these things while we were in Hawaii. We got the DVDs because Showtime On Demand wasn’t available in the hotel. So I had to pull strings and get DVDs FedExed all over the place to get ’em out to the hotel. (interruption) There’s no ban on vampire movies. I just don’t watch ’em. No, I haven’t seen Twilight. II will just tell you this. We all have things that just don’t grab us. I’ll scan through the guide on the TV screen, and if the description of the show mentions the word “vampire,” that’s it. I go right past it, don’t stop. I have never… The last vampire show I saw was the old black and white with Bela Lugosi, Dracula. It’s the last one I saw. I don’t read the Anne Rice books. Nothing against anybody that writes or does TV shows about vampires. It’s just I don’t.
Not only do I not watch it, it’s one thing I literally do not understand anybody else being interested in, because where do I live? I live in Realville, and there are no such things. (interruption) Whoa, that stuff’s possible! Science fiction/fantasy stuff is all possible. Look at how many of the technogizmo gadgets we have today were in sci-fi movies in the fifties. The iPad goes way back to the Twilight Zone! The iPad actually goes back to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Those two astronauts had an iPad in it. But vampires are just…. Now, see, I’m getting myself in trouble because a lot of people like vampire stuff and think I’m ripping vampires, and we just have enough bloodsuckers with the Democrat Party to deal with here every day to have to go home and turn on the television and watch fake ones; and they’re all beautiful people!
It frankly amazes me that television and movie writers and book writers have been able to make such hay out of people biting each other’s necks. It’s essentially all it is. Why don’t we do a show on hickeys? (interruption) Well, I know it’s moved beyond hickeys, but I just don’t know. (interruption) Vampire sex is a big? You mean two vampires having sex, or the…? (interruption) Yeah, see, that’s the thing. That’s where I lose it. That’s where I lose it! If it was two vampires having sex that’s a whole different thing but it’s always a vampire going after some innocent, unsuspecting virgin who ends up being corrupted and then you got the werewolf guy that’s gonna show somewhere else later in it and it’s just all predictable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just got an e-mail that said, “Rush, you just illustrated your point. I was never more bored listening to you than when you were talking about vampires and you say that you’ll sound bored when you’re talking about things you don’t care about. You talked vampires, you sounded like you didn’t care about it, you were very boring.”
See? Point made!
Related Links