RUSH: Does anybody remember how Barack Obama first achieved national attention? These are always intriguing questions to me, ’cause I of course know the answer. (interruption) Well, yes, that was the occasion of the speech. But what did he do in this speech, what did he say? What did Obama say?

Do you remember how Obama first achieved national attention? And if you’re shouting at me, “It was that convention speech, Rush, in 2004 at the Democrat convention.” Yes, that’s correct. That was the occasion. But what did he do in this speech? In 2004 Barack Obama condemned the war in Iraq. Well, actually there was a speech before that in 2002. Yeah, he never voted for it.

In the speech in 2002 he accused Bush of wanting to invade Iraq to distract us from a bad economy. That’s before he made any speech at the Democrat convention. And I think that’s noteworthy. And then of course he made his speech in 2004 at the convention: It’s a dumb war, it’s a pointless war, and so forth and so on.

I gotta take a break, but that’s a good time to do it ’cause you ponder that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: October 2002, Barack Obama, B. Hussein O., makes a speech, accuses George W. Bush of wanting to invade Iraq to distract us from a bad economy. We had not gone into Iraq yet. That happened in 2003. Bush was out trying to marshal all kinds of support for it. I mean, he spent a year and a half making speeches, sending Colin Powell to the UN. He spent a lot of time putting together a massive coalition for this and dredging up public opinion support for it. He just didn’t do this, Bush didn’t, willy-nilly overnight.

But Obama was out there in 2002, and this is how he came to be known. This is how he first achieved national attention. He never voted for the Iraqi war, so he had some credibility with the rest of the Democrats ’cause all the rest of them did. I don’t want to review this whole thing ’cause I’ve done it so many times, but there were two votes on the use-of-force authorization that Bush asked for, and the first one, none of the Democrats voted for it. Then they saw a public opinion poll on it, and they demanded a revote.

Bush did not have to have the Republicans resubmit it, but he did, because he wanted the Democrats on record supporting it so that a unified country would appear to be the case. It made sense in that way. Why go to war with all the Democrats opposing it? They asked for a second vote after they saw public opinion, and Bush granted the second vote so we could create, it turns out, the illusion of national unity on the use of force in Iraq.

So, Obama was one of the holdouts. He didn’t vote for it. He made a speech before it even happened condemning it, that Bush was just dredging it up as a distraction. He makes a speech at the Democrat convention in 2004, called it a dumb war, continued with that theme, and now look where we are. Would it be too cynical to suggest that Obama might be bombing Iraq to distract us from his numerous problems? I mean, we’ve got an immigration disaster taking place. Our economy is a disaster. Obamacare is a disaster. By the way, you know the fines and penalties that people were going to have to pay if they didn’t have insurance, either having insurance or paying a fine, a mandate was one of the primary funding mechanisms of Obamacare. Well, guess what?

It turns out that very few people are actually going to have to pay a penalty for not having insurance because they qualify as hardship cases and are not going to have either. And it’s well over 50%. I mean, it’s another financial hit. One of the primary revenue sources is not going to happen, is not gonna step up. This is even a bigger mess than people thought it was gonna be. That was bad enough. But would it be cynical to suggest that maybe Obama’s bombing here to distract everybody? Think of how bad things must be for Obama if he thinks his best PR move at this point is to ratchet up the war in Iraq. Can you imagine how bad things must be?

My friends, my point is, this is what put him on the map, opposing this. And he opposed every aspect of it. He even challenged the legitimacy of it. We had no business, it was phony, it was Bush distracting us from bad economy, or it was Bush trying to avenge an assassination attempt that Saddam had hatched on his father. And now things have gotten so bad that the best move Obama can make — there’s a genocide going on over there. It’s not just the Christians. ISIS is committing genocide and they’re trying to wipe out the Yazidi. They’ve been trying to wipe out the Christians for a long time, months. So clearly Obama is not concerned about that genocide, but something about wiping out the Yazidis makes it intolerable. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. December 14th, 2011, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

OBAMA: We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war, not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.

RUSH: So the Iraq war was wound down and there’s Obama trying to take credit for it. He opposed it at every turn. He campaigned against it for president in 2008. He said there was nothing noteworthy of any value in the Iraq war except that we learned how bad we torture people. There was not one positive. I don’t think Obama even voted for the surge. I think he voted against every aspect of this. I could be wrong on the surge; I’d have to check.

So there he was in 2011, and I predicted this. I hate reaching around, patting myself on the back, but all during the Bush presidency when the Iraq war was going on, people would say to me, “You know, the Democrats, they’re trying to secure defeat. If a Democrat wins the White House we’re gonna get kicked out.”

I said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand something.” The Democrats would love for us to lose the war in Iraq if Bush is president when it happens. If they can saddle the loss with Bush, they’d be more than happy for us to lose. But they are not going to lose a war when they control the White House. They will not. They will take credit for victory. They may despise the military and all that, but they are not going to allow themselves to be seen as the reason we lose a war. And again, that’s because of the political nature.

And, lo and behold, that prediction was borne out ’cause there’s Obama, December 14, 2011, thinking the Iraq war is over and the most noteworthy thing is the long march home. It’s a big victory, nine years in the making, an extraordinary achievement that it took Barack Obama to pull off. Three years later and last night at the White House, President Obama addressed the nation about actions he has authorized in Iraq.

OBAMA: In recent days, Yazidi women, men, and children from the area of Sinjar have fled for their lives. And thousands, perhaps tens of thousands are now hiding high up on the mountain with little but the clothes on their backs. They’re without food. They’re without water. People are starving and children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people which would constitute genocide. So these innocent families are faced with a horrible choice: descend the mountain and be slaughtered or stay and slowly die of thirst and hunger.

RUSH: And that’s been the ISIS gang has control of a dam now, and with control of the dam they could flood Baghdad, for example, if they wanted to. But they can also deny water to the pot growers and to people who want to drink it in Iraq. Look, it is what it is. ISIS has been going after Christians for months, and we had no business going back in there. But all of a sudden now we got a genocide on the Yazidi, and we have to move back in.

So that was Obama describing the desperate situation, which, by the way, is entirely of his making. And the reason it’s entirely of his making is because he just assumed that this war was over. He proclaimed victory and got out, but he did not leave anything behind that would enforce the circumstances on the ground that we were calling a victory. We pulled out of there. We had no military might anywhere near. We got out. It’s what his party wanted him to do. It’s what his base wanted him to do. We got out and everything went to pot real quick. It was entirely of his making.

This all could have been prevented. But, see, Obama doesn’t think, nah-nah-nah. In his view we caused all this by going there in the first place. So the only thing to do to make it fair and to fix that original problem was to get out. So next, same speech, last night, White House, next he explained how the military solutions that he has authorized to fix the problem that he created will actually not work.

OBAMA: I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these. I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done. As commander-in-chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq, and so even as we support Iraqis as they take the fight to these terrorists, American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.

RUSH: Well, then what are we doing here? Did you hear that? This is another one. It zips right by, but that’s the kind of thing that’s outrageous. Then what are we doing with even limited air strikes? And we’re not gonna call that a military action. Oh, no, no, no. Because apparently there aren’t boots on the ground. American combat troops are not returning, and so this is not military action, and therefore it’s not gonna work. That’s essentially what he was saying.

Explaining these military solutions that he has authored to fix the problem that aren’t gonna work. “American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq because there is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.” So I guess what he thinks is we can stop the genocide of the Yazidi with a couple of airplane strikes and bombs and get out of there, and it’ll be all done.

Quick time-out, my friends. This is incompetence run amok.