RUSH: Now, I mentioned this, I think, in first hour, previously on the program. Obama has been refusing to help Iraq for at least a year. A year ago, it would have been easy, comparatively, to wipe out ISIS. They were still gathering tightly together in their staging zones.
Had you heard of ISIS a year ago? I venture to say that most people heard of ISIS for the first time in the past couple months. So Obama had plenty of chances. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, if Obama had wanted to take out ISIS, he would not have formed a supportive relationship with them in Syria! ISIS is who is “the rebels” in Syria opposing Bashar al-Assad. Before I get to Syria, I just want to put the exclamation point on this thought.
Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and the media (their willing accomplices) need Iraq to be always seen as a Bush miserable failure, a Bush war, a Bush failure. Just as Vietnam was supposed to be seen as a failure for Nixon. Now, you may be learning for the first time that the rebels in Syria were ISIS. Over the weekend, it was reported that Hillary Clinton ripped into Obama for his failure to help the Syrian rebels and that this failure to help the Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS.
It’s in The Atlantic in a story by Jeffrey Goldberg. It’s a long interview. But there is this knife-in-the-back criticism that Hillary directs at Obama, a comment that he made while Hillary was his secretary of state. Do you remember he praised her, “best secretary of state ever”? She might be, he said. On the day she resigned or the day they announced of her resignation, there was a joint presser.
Obama is praising Hillary to the nines and talking about how she may be one of the best secretaries of state ever, and now here comes Hillary back-stabbing Obama by claiming that his failure to help the Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS. Right here it is, Jeffrey Goldberg: “The former secretary of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine.
“She says this about President Obama’s: ‘Great nations need organizing principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organizing principle.'” It’s a slam, but I wonder: Are reset buttons organizing principles? Because, let’s not forget that Mrs. Clinton actually showed up with a Soviet leader… (pfft, slap myself) a Russian leader with a plastic and red toy that said, in crudely spelled words, “reset button.” I kid you not!
The secretary of state went over to Russia and presented him a toy that was a reset button, which was designed to reset our relationship after the disaster that was Bush. Now, how’s that worked out? This is just gonna make me angrier. Everything these people have done has led to an absolute disaster! Everything! The economy, health care, foreign policy, the border, immigration. Everything they’ve done, and they campaigned on being the smartest people in the world and the only ones capable of fixing all this.
So she slams Obama: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”
Is reset button an organizing principle, Mrs. Clinton?
The former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is out there saying that Obama’s failure to aid Syrian rebels led to ISIS. Now, she’s doing two things. She’s distancing herself from Obama, but at the same time she’s trying to head off criticism of her own recommendations because she didn’t speak up for these rebels at the time. She may want convince people that she did. But nobody in this Regime did.
“President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the US, early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups — like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today — from seizing control of the rebellion. … Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isnÂ’t buying it.
“In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the ‘failure’ that resulted from the decision to keep the US on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising. ‘The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,’ Clinton said.”
Which is funny, because that’s the same exact thing that Hillary and Obama said about the protesters in Egypt, whom we aided, and they turned out to be the Muslim Brotherhood. “As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.”
I’m telling you, these people, well, yeah, of course it’s convenient, but it also turns out not to be true. And, by the way, it is reported that the Hillary camp gave the White House a heads-up on this, that this was coming. It’s kind of like, “Hey, you know, I’ve got to do this. I’m running for president. Please bite the bullet for me on this.” And the White House said, “Screw you, babe,” and they have responded saying that they don’t agree with this description of events. Oh, yeah. The long knives are out.
You do not sabotage Obama. You do not even give him a heads-up that you’re gonna sabotage him and have him go along with it. You just don’t do that. Ask his white grandmother how that goes. You just don’t do it. But let’s go back and let’s revisit this Syrian business, because I want to play you a sound bite of me. This is September 11th, 2013, this is about a year ago, and I said this about US policy toward the Syrian civil war, and at the time I was — I don’t mean it to sound braggadocios, but I think I was a lone voice or one of very few.
The conventional wisdom was that Assad was gassing his own people. Remember, Obama, in the previous summer of 2013, issued this red line and dared Assad not to cross it. (imitating Obama) “You cross that red line, pal, you’re gonna have me to deal with,” and we never did anything. But the word was out that Assad was gassing and harming his own people. And I remember saying on this program — Koko, go back to that era and just for the website today, go find what I said on those days and relink it, ’cause I made the point, I asked the question, “What if it isn’t Assad? What if the people creating mayhem in Syria are actually Assad’s enemies disguising themselves as protesters of Assad and trying to make it appear as though he’s doing this, when in fact he’s not?”
And after I’d mentioned that, I got an e-mail from a friend who is somewhat aware of the circumstances in Iraq and I was told that I was more right than I knew. And Hillary is now coming along and essentially saying the same thing. She’s not suggesting that ISIS was there. She is suggesting that our lack of doing anything about it led to ISIS taking over the anti-Assad movement, when in fact it was ISIS all along. ISIS was doing it and they were making it look like Assad did it. And just like the media was biased toward Hamas, so was the media biased toward the same type of people in Syria who are trying to make it look like Assad was doing this.
I had never seen any evidence that Bashar Assad — his father was different. His father, Hafez al-Assad, was a brutal guy and did commit atrocities to keep people in line. But there’s no evidence that Bashar had really done it. I knew that Al-Qaeda’s on the march and they’re trying to gain control. The Muslim Brotherhood’s trying to gain control, that whole area. It was a lot of Christians in Syria that were being beaten up, killed, assaulted, what have you, and it was made to look like it was Assad, and now we’ve learned that it wasn’t.
The point is I called it. I was right, and that’s what Hillary is now claiming that Obama missed and that she was right about, but she never said it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Here’s me, folks, from this program on September 11th, 2013. By the way, Koko, if you want to find the website history to link to what I originally said about this, find September 2nd, 3rd, 4th, somewhere in there, my memory is. But this was September 11th of last year.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Here we are 12 years later after 9/11, and think about it. Twelve years later we are supporting Muslim terrorists in Syria. Muslim terrorists who are threatening to kill Syrian Christians if they don’t convert to Islam. That’s who our allies are. Those are the rebels that Bashar Assad is supposedly gassing. So we’re aligned with ’em because we’re aligned against Assad. They’re threatening to kill Syrian Christians if they don’t convert to Islam.
RUSH: This was ISIS, folks, and we were anti-Assad. It was made to look like Assad was doing the gassing. He wasn’t, as it turns out. This morning on Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade spoke to retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney about Clinton’s remarks criticizing Obama’s handling of ISIS and here’s what the general said about Hillary’s remarks.
MCINERNEY: I happen to agree with her. I’m not sure why it’s just coming out now. I was pushing for the Free Syrian Army. They were a huge ally. We ended up arming the wrong people over there, and, remember, ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so look at what we have now create — we didn’t create it. By doing nothing, we let it create itself. And if we don’t stop it now and stop it and protect the Kurds, we have a huge problem not only in the Middle East, but globally.
RUSH: Well, that’s General McInerney. I’ve got 15 seconds before the break. It turns out that my sources on this way back a year ago were absolutely right, that Assad was not the bad guy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, I tell you what’s funny about this is Hillary Clinton. It’s clear to me that Hillary Clinton obviously thinks that foreign policy is still gonna be her strong pantsuit, as she heads into the campaign. She really does. That’s why she’s doing all of this. But I want to play this audio sound bite again from General McInerney, because there’s a gem in this that is another example of how Obama and the left, the Democrats, the media lied for five years, 2004 to 2009. Actually, 2003 to 2008 would be the specific time period, bashing Iraq every day, every night, every day of the year.
One other thing. Koko has found exactly what I was talking about. There was a post at RushLimbaugh.com on September 3rd, “What if Assad Didn’t Do It?” And my memory has now been refreshed. I had a couple of sources and an e-mail from a friend confirm, so three different confirmations here from people, that what we were getting in the news every day that Assad was gassing his people probably wasn’t true. That it was, it turns out ISIS, at the time known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq that was doing it, and making it look like it was Assad, and that’s who our allies were. We were anti-Assad and we actually had an alliance, loose though it was, formed with the very people we’re now bombing in Iraq.
I remember I took my fair share of heat, and I always do when I’m not part of the conventional wisdom. Assad’s easy to hate. Assad’s a dictator. Assad has a typical bad image and when somebody says he’s gassing his own people, it’s automatically believed. And here I came, all of Washington supports the idea that Assad was doing it, and I said, “I’m not so sure. What if.”
“Rush, you didn’t have to say anything. Why are you going out on a limb? Why do you want to sound like you’re defending Assad?”
I said, “I’m not defending Assad. As always, I’m interested in the truth, and I just don’t believe –” I had to work hard to get to a point where I automatically reject everything I hear coming out of the news media in Washington when the Democrats are in power because, by and large, when it comes to foreign policy, every story is made to cover up for their inadequacies, their incompetence, and the fact that they’re wrong about everything. But here’s McInerney again because there’s a little hidden gem in this sound bite that I want to see, if by some chance, some of you picked up.
MCINERNEY: I happen to agree with her. I’m not sure why it’s just coming out now. I was pushing for the Free Syrian Army. They were a huge ally. We ended up arming the wrong people over there, and, remember, ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so look at what we have now create — we didn’t create it. By doing nothing, we let it create itself. And if we don’t stop it now and stop it and protect the Kurds, we have a huge problem not only in the Middle East, but globally.
RUSH: In the early days of 2002 when Bush was traveling the country making the case for invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein, I remember a couple of instances pointing out that Al-Qaeda, prior to 9/11, had done some training in Iraq. And one of the things that had been found was a hollowed-out shell of an airliner fuselage.
Now, the conventional wisdom was that Al-Qaeda had never been in Iraq, that Bush was making this up, or that the intel was all wrong, but likely it was just Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld lying to make their case, because Al-Qaeda was clearly the enemy after 9/11. Al-Qaeda had hijacked the planes at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Al-Qaeda was the evil, Osama bin Laden, and Bush was going after them in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq.
The Democrats and the media, led by Obama starting in 2002, and other Democrats, Teddy Kennedy, they were all — I mean, John Kerry, they were all making fun and mocking the idea that Al-Qaeda had anything to do with Iraq. Al-Qaeda was never in Iraq and nobody can prove it, they said. Saddam had nothing to do with 911. Now, the Bush people at the time were saying, “We can’t afford –” 9/11 had just happened. “What happened here is real. And any time there is anybody in the world vowing to do that or more, we are going to take it seriously.”
They were making the case for preemptive military strikes. That’s what all this was called, because the left and the Democrats were arguing that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, therefore it was not moral or strategically wise to hit Iraq. They had nothing to do with it. The Bush people were saying, whether they did or didn’t, it doesn’t matter, they’re threatening to do the same thing. And after it’s happened once, we are in charge of protecting this country and defending the people, and we can’t sit here and take these threats lightly.
Saddam at the time was lying to the UN inspectors about his weapons of mass destruction. It turned out that he was big timing and he was trying to look like the most powerful Arab in the region by being the most feared. So he was lying about at least the size of his weapons of mass destruction stock. And part of the lie, part of the illusion was to not let the inspectors in. He wanted everybody to conclude that he had a boatload of the stuff. And the Bush administration was trying to tell everybody we can’t afford to wait to be hit again to take action. We’ve got to hit preemptively.
I’ll never forget any of this, folks. Because I’ll never forget the Democrats arguing about it. Because the Democrats, even after 9/11, after a week of solidarity went by, the Democrats conceived a political strategy, the purpose of which was to make sure Bush did not secure any long-lasting credit for any policy he instituted following 9/11.
Also remember this, along those same lines. Bill Clinton, it was reported — he later denied it — but Clinton, according to some famous well-known Democrats, was lamenting that 9/11 didn’t happen on his watch, because it prevented him an opportunity to show greatness and leadership. He was upset that it had happened with Bush. If it was gonna happen, why couldn’t it have happened during his time? We reported that and all hell broke loose. A string of denials were forthcoming.
But the point is they politicize everything. There was unity for a week and after that the Democrats devised a political strategy, the purpose of which was to make sure Bush did not secure one positive achievement in the aftermath of 911. So these guys began opposing everything Bush wanted to do when it came to Iraq. At first they even opposed the use of force in Afghanistan. That’s when they asked for the vote a second time.
Remember, there was a memo uncovered, a memo that was written by Jay Rockefeller, Democrat senator from West Virginia, in which it was stated that as a strategy — and this had come from James Carville and Stan Greenberg in a memo. It was then written up by Rockefeller, who was the Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat in the Senate. He said that they had to make Bush out to be a liar.
And it said if they were to succeed with this, that their strategy depended on convincing people that Bush was lying about all of this in order to depress and lower his high approval numbers. So, as I say, here’s the gem that was in McInerney’s piece (’cause I’m running out of time here). Throughout all of this in the run-up to invading Iraq, whenever the possibility that Al-Qaeda might have been in Iraq came up, the Democrats said, “No way!
“Al-Qaeda never found its way to Iraq! They wouldn’t know how to get to Iraq if you gave ’em a map. They haven’t been to Iraq. They don’t have anything to do with Saddam! They were helpless.” Now listen to what we just heard here. ISIS was originally known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now, some of you might be saying, “Well, maybe so, Rush, but Al-Qaeda in Iraq didn’t exist before we attacked.”
It did!
We were able to confirm that elements of Al-Qaeda did connect with Saddam for training exercises and so forth. But the point is, in hindsight, look at what we’re learning here. ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Iraq are all over the Middle East, just like the Muslim Brotherhood. And in Syria, we were actually, stupidity and maybe unknowingly (given this bunch, I could believe it was unknowingly) supporting them
Because we had concluded that Bashar Assad was the one gassing his own people. I had never seen any evidence that Assad treated his own people that way. I knew he treated political enemies that way, which is why it was not a very long leap to making people believe that he might gas his own people if he’s gassed others. Ditto, Saddam and the Kurds. But there hadn’t been any evidence that Bashar Assad gassed his own people.
So, anyway, that’s that, and it’s just… Some of it’s ancient history, but some of it’s just last year and some of it’s just yesterday, and so much of it is lies. And so many of these lies are why we’re even here today. So all of these lies about all of this stuff is one of the very large reasons why Obama was elected in the first place. It’s just dispiriting in a way — and in another way, surely frustrating, and that’s why I’ve been so ticked off all day.