{"id":26201,"date":"2007-07-12T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:15:26","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T05:15:26","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:15:26","slug":"rush_talks_with_tony_snow3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/12\/rush_talks_with_tony_snow3\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush Talks with Tony Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Tony Snow, welcome to the program. How long have you been on hold?<\/p>\n

SNOW: I\u2019m doing fine. Good to be here, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Good. How long have you been on hold? I\u2019m sorry I\u2019ve made you wait.<\/p>\n

SNOW: No, I\u2019ve just been hold. It\u2019s just been a matter of seconds.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You just got here. Okay, great! Tony, I thought the interim report today — and I know you\u2019re going to be talking about this but — I thought there\u2019s so much good in this, and I spent the first segment of the first hour giving a big shout out to the troops because they deserve it. They\u2019re doing yeoman\u2019s work. They\u2019ve only been at full strength for a month over there on the surge, and they need a great shout out. I thought the president was fabulous today. What should everybody know about these benchmarks in this interim report?<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, a couple things. First let me back up. The interim report is the beginning of a new kind of surge and it\u2019s a surge of facts<\/emphasize>, because what\u2019s happened with a lot of the war in Iraq, as you know, Rush, is that people get pictures of dead bodies, but they don\u2019t get any sense of what\u2019s actually going on on the ground — and today you got a little bit of that in terms of this interim report that says: Even though just a couple of weeks ago, even though when they were writing this report, we were just getting our last forces into place, if you take a look at the plan for Iraq — which was get your security picture first, then move on to political progress — guess what you find out? You find out that we\u2019ve had a lot of success in security. Not only have the Iraqis stepped up — they\u2019ve got three brigades in Baghdad; they\u2019ve got stations now in all ten districts in Baghdad — we have seen a dramatic reversal in the thought processes of Iraqis in places like Anbar Province, because all of a sudden they realized that they had a choice to go after Al-Qaeda, and the moment they realized somebody had their back, what did they do? They joined up with us; they went after Al-Qaeda. They\u2019re doing it in Diala Province; they\u2019re doing it in sections of Baghdad. In other words, people are responding the way you would think, which is: you give them a little bit of security, they\u2019re going to follow the natural yearning to be free. So you\u2019re absolutely right. The most important part of this report is the security piece. What you\u2019re likely to hear is a little grumbling. ‘Well, they haven\u2019t made the political benchmarks.\u2019 Well, we\u2019ve always said that politics would come after security — and it is. At some point, you know, the Iraqis do have to make a lot of the accommodations so the Iraqis look at their government as being their legitimate representative; they look at each other as neighbors rather than as feuding sects, and all of that is going to happen, but the first thing you\u2019ve got a do is go after the bad guys that are going in and beheading kids, and destroying farms, and threatening families. These are invaders. These are Al-Qaeda invaders, many of whom come through Syria and it\u2019s now time for the American people to wake up to, really, the heroic.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Let me ask you a question about the political side of this — and I must admit that I made some comments on this in the first hour. But these benchmarks have been set up by Congress. We have a Congress right now run by the Democrats for seven and a half months, six and a half months. You talk about their benchmarks? They\u2019re one out of seven. They\u2019re not doing anything but harassing you people in the White House. They\u2019re doing nothing. They launched 300 investigations in 100 days, and yet here they are trying to tell this fledgling democracy and parliament what to do and how soon to do it, when they can\u2019t get anything done of any substance themselves.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, they\u2019d certainly rather investigate than legislate, wouldn\u2019t they? They\u2019ve been trying for seven months to drag the attorney general across the coals and they can\u2019t get anything on him, but they\u2019re still doing hearings. I think you\u2019re right about that. I also think that the reason we need a surge in facts is a lot of members in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, they go back home and people say, ‘Get out of that war! It\u2019s a terrible war!\u2019 Well, that\u2019s because all they see is a failure narrative that gets played out on their TV screens. On the other hand, when they start getting a glimpse of what our folks are doing, I think they\u2019re going to change their minds. They\u2019re going to say, ‘Well, wait a minute. These people are on a mission that is going to make us freer and safer in the long run, and it\u2019s going to be the once-and-for-all refutation of terror.\u2019 Americans don\u2019t want to fail. They don\u2019t want to leave in humiliation. They don\u2019t want to give bin Laden any talking points. And so I think we\u2019ve got an opportunity over the next couple of months, not merely to lay out what\u2019s going on but also General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker to say… By the way, these guys are not doing political shilling. This is a very realistic report and they\u2019ll give you a snapshot. They\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s been achieved in the last two months. Americans want to win, ultimately. The president said it today. He said, ‘Look, all they want to know is we\u2019re in this to win and we\u2019ve got a plan for winning,\u2019 and now it\u2019s time for us to step up here at the White House, and around the country people will say, ‘Okay, we\u2019re going to take a look benchmarks for victory, not for getting out.\u2019<\/p>\n

RUSH: We are talking with Tony Snow, the White House press secretary. Do something for me, for my audience. Define victory.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Victory is an Iraqi government where everybody\u2019s got their rights, where people can start earning a living; they can start planning not on how you fight against Al-Qaeda, but how you build a peaceful future. It is not the total absence of terror, because the terrorists are going to keep trying to go after it. But it\u2019s basically an Iraq where the Iraqis take control of the key things: their security, their economy, their future.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And the ability to resist an attempt by Al-Qaeda and Iran to take over the country.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Absolutely, part and parcel of security. And, look, we\u2019re going to be there. We\u2019re going to have their back. It\u2019s interesting —<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know the dirty little secret is that if — if, and this is a hypothetical. If a Democrat wins the White House in \u201908, they\u2019re not pulling the troops out of there. They will not.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Of course not. You see this all the time, Rush, which is on the political stump people go out and they say stuff that they know just isn\u2019t true. They know it. The American people want somebody to say, ‘We\u2019re going to leave the war and we\u2019re going to have peace.\u2019 They know perfectly well that if we leave, what you\u2019re going to have is the equivalent of a detonation where terror is going to start emanating out from Iraq that\u2019s going to gobble up the Middle East. It\u2019s going to go to North Africa. It\u2019s going to go to Europe. It\u2019s going to go to Pakistan, and sooner or later it\u2019s going to wash up on our shore and it\u2019s going to be a big problem. They know this, and so it is absolutely irresponsible for anybody to think that you pull out of the fight before you win because, if you don\u2019t, the American people and the whole world are huge losers.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, but my point is politically the Democrats are misleading everybody. They would love to lose this war but they\u2019d love that loss to be hung around the president\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They\u2019re not going to pull out. If they are running the country in \u201908, they are not going to pull outta there and cause defeat and have it associated with them. The troops are not coming out of there until the situation you\u2019ve described is established.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Exactly right — and, you know what? One of the things I like about working for this president is he understands this, and what\u2019s he trying to do? He is trying to give the next president, Democrat or Republican, the tools to win. One of the things he mentioned today is you gotta upgrade your surveillance program, the FISA Law, so that you can make sure if there are people plotting to kill us, that we can find out who they are and we can go after them. I mean, we\u2019ve gotta make sure that we modernize the law so that we can do everything we can to protect the American people. He\u2019s putting all that stuff in place. He\u2019s creating a great big anti-terror toolbox for the next president of the United States, because, you know what? Al-Qaeda isn\u2019t going to change just because there\u2019s an election, and the next president is going to need the tools.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tony, thanks for your time. How are you doing personally?<\/p>\n

SNOW: I am doing great. It\u2019s great to be back on.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You sound great. You sound like you\u2019re ‘full of vim and vigor,\u2019 as they said in the sixties.<\/p>\n

SNOW: Yeah, vim and vigor. Look, man, I\u2019m motivated. This is really important, and you know me, Rush. I never balk from a good fight.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, you never have. You never have. Well, we appreciate your time. It\u2019s always nice to have you — and I\u2019m sorry we got to you late.<\/p>\n

SNOW: That\u2019s okay. Thanks, my friend.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tony Snow at the White House. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Tony Snow, welcome to the program. How long have you been on hold? SNOW: I\u2019m doing fine. Good to be here, Rush. RUSH: Good. How long have you been on hold? I\u2019m sorry I\u2019ve made you wait. SNOW: No, I\u2019ve just been hold. It\u2019s just been a matter of seconds. 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