RUSH: Muncie, Indiana, next. This is Dan. Great to have you, sir, on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, thanks, Rush. How you doing? I’ve been a longtime listener and a big fan. One question I had was that if the president’s been announcing that we’re not gonna have any boots on the ground, what happens if one of our pilots gets shot down behind enemy lines? Who are we putting these pilots’ lives in the hands of?
RUSH: Well, first reaction, we say we are not gonna put boots on the ground, but we also didn’t announce beforehand that we’re gonna hit this Khorasan Group, this new terror group out of there, and that came out of the blue. A lot of generals have been upset, retired generals, “What are we doing announcing that the first day is gonna be the most intense day? Why are we telling them this stuff?”
We’re eventually gonna have boots on the ground, is where I’m leading with this. A lot of people think this is a head fake, that we’re eventually gonna do it. Because you can’t win without it, and that the generals eventually will prevail once Obama finds out that you can’t accomplish what he’s promised to accomplish with air power alone. Now, as for the specifics of your question, I would just take you back to Benghazi. What efforts were made there?
CALLER: I agree.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: What really bothers me is we’ve kind of, it seems to me an announcement of no boots on the ground and that we’re gonna do it strictly by air, we’ve lulled everybody into a false sense of security that nobody’s in harm’s way.
RUSH: That’s what Clinton tried to do in Bosnia.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Clinton to this day, I guarantee you, if Bill Clinton were listening to the last hour, when I said that there has never been in world history a full-fledged war, one with air power, I’m sure Clinton was out there yelling at the radio, “Hey, hey, hey wait a minute. I did it. I did it. Don’t forget about me. There’s that Bosnian war out there and I fought that. Kosovo, Bosnia, whatever, I fought that war at 35,000 feet, and I was victorious and we didn’t lose a single soul out there. It can be done ’cause I’ve shown. Don’t give me this business Obama’s gonna be the first one to. Obama’s a hick, Obama’s a pretend, he doesn’t do anything, I did it.” I can imagine Clinton saying that.
Remember they made a big deal of conducting the war from 35,000 feet. Wesley Clark. You remember that war. The Kosovo war had the greatest spokesman. You know, wars have spokesmen, the White House has a spokesman, a guy that goes and briefs the media, and this guy was from Belgium I think, and his name was Jamie something or other, and I just loved listening to this guy. He’d go to microphone and his favorite phrase was to announce name of some general. “Our forces there under the command of General Archibald Duke III, our forces…” And the press is accepting and soaking it all in.
And I’m like, “What forces? We’re fighting this thing from 35,000 feet!” Our own president, by the way, it wasn’t ours, it was a NATO operation. Don’t forget that. We didn’t lay any claim to it. It was a NATO operation. Clinton’s base wouldn’t allow him to go to war so we did it under the auspices of NATO and that’s what this guy, he was NATO spokesman, Jamie something, “Our forces there under the command of Major General the Third Archibald’s Reginald Gleason III.” I’m thinking all along, “No, pal, we don’t have any forces there. We’re doing this from 35,000 feet.”
I’m sure that Obama is attempting to accomplish much the same kind of thing, no casualties, I mean, that’s the objective. The objective is to get a media report that says there are no casualties. Seriously, Dan, your question about a pilot shot down, look, these guys know what they’re getting into, and there are survival techniques taught and this kind of thing.
Jamie Shea was his name. Jamie Shea was the spokesman for NATO. I’m sure that the military has plans, steps, procedures to try to rescue pilots should they be shot down. I don’t think that’s gonna depend on boots on the ground.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Billy, Oklahoma City, great to have you on the EIB Network today. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh. I want to thank you for letting me get on here. I’ve been doing this for seven years and finally made it.
RUSH: Well, welcome through.
CALLER: I had to pull something up right quick. I remember a movie — I might remember, Behind Enemy Lines? And I pulled up the actual pilot. His name was Scott Francis O’Grady.
RUSH: Yep, yep, you’re right.
CALLER: That was shot down.
RUSH: That’s right.
CALLER: And it took a week. The only thing is, it took the Marines putting boots on the ground to go get him.
RUSH: Yeah. I’m glad that you reminded me of this. Because after we had the call, what happened here, Billy, we had a call in the last hour from a guy who said, “Hey, without boots on the ground, Rush, how are we gonna rescue pilots that get shot down in this operation against ISIS and the Khorasan Group?” And I said there have to be systems in place. The military has rescue systems in place, and I got a note from my friend Andy McCarthy who said that Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs Chairman, last week said that in this event they would deploy a boots on the ground rescue mission.
So I knew they had planned to do it. But the caller’s point was if we don’t have a boots on the ground element of this, that we’re never gonna be able to rescue downed pilots. Not true. And your memory is good. Behind Enemy Lines, they made a movie out of it. A guy got shot down in the Bosnia war and he was rescued. It was a great movie, too, by the way. Billy, I’m glad you called. I appreciate you getting through and your memory.