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<\/p>\nRUSH: This is Nick in New Orleans. Welcome, sir. Great to have you.<\/p>\n
CALLER: How are you doing, sir? Mega dittos from a fellow veteran. I served in the Iraq war and am third-generation military. My grandfather and my dad was in. I wanted to ask you a question about growing up. A bunch of veterans, some of my dad\u2019s friends, one of the issues they had with Bush Sr. was behind the scenes how he treated General Schwarzkopf in the first Iraq war. Schwarzkopf begged him and begged him to take care of Saddam Hussein and Bush Sr. kind of caved in to the political pressures, and he told him no, they weren\u2019t gonna go in and take care of it. If he would have listened to Schwarzkopf, let him do his thing, we wouldn\u2019t have had the Iraq war that we have today. I wanted to hear your take on that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
RUSH: All right. I\u2019ll give you my take. Let me restate, \u2019cause I don\u2019t think… You said that you\u2019re answering a question I asked. I got sidetracked but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve asked a question about this; you did. But I\u2019m gonna answer it here anyway. In Gulf War I, we had the Iraqis. I mean, they were fleeing. Folks, it was one of the greatest military events of our lifetimes. The Iraqi army was surrendering in six hours. They were waving the white flags around.<\/p>\n
They were doing everything they could to give up. Saddam Hussein was simply huffing and puffing and tried to be the biggest guy in the Middle East to show everybody else in the Middle East that he was fearless when it came to standing up to the United States. He called it “the mother of all battles.” Look, I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t share with you that the media in this country was hyping the Iraqis. The media was writing stories about the near impossible task that the United States had before it.<\/p>\n
The media was writing stories on all the body bags for American military personnel that had been ordered and all the caskets that had been ordered. The media was doing stories on how the U.S. military was totally unequipped for desert warfare. The U.S. military wasn\u2019t trained and it wasn\u2019t ready for warfare in the middle of the sands, in the middle of the deserts. They were building up Saddam Hussein like he was somebody that could not be beaten and that we had no business going there.<\/p>\n
All of this was in service of criticism of George H. W. Bush, who today is being lionized as one of the greatest Republicans ever precisely because he raised taxes one day. You remember all of this, Mr. Snerdley? I\u2019ll never forget it, folks. And I don\u2019t know… If you weren\u2019t alive or old enough back then, do not doubt me, because those stories about how we had no chance and we were up against an enemy we didn\u2019t understand?<\/p>\n
The media was even saying, “These people in Iraq, they just had an eight-year war with Iran. We don\u2019t have any idea what we\u2019re headed for!” Well, the truth was Saddam Hussein had depleted his people. He had lost them. His military was not loyal were to him. They were surrendering within six hours. This war was over in a couple of days, essentially. To get to the caller\u2019s question, it was so bad that the Iraqi army was retreating, and Schwarzkopf did want to follow \u2019em all the way to Baghdad and wipe \u2019em out.<\/p>\n
It was “Colonel” Colin Powell who advised not to do it. Colin Powell! Ultimately, the call was George H. W. Bush\u2019s. The caller is correct here. Do not misunderstand. But it was on the advice of Colin Powell who said it would look very bad. It would look horrible for the gigantic the United States military to be slaughtering these Iraqis running for their lives back home to Baghdad. So it was decided to let them retreat and let them return, and I\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n
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You talk about Schwarzkopf? The media was there when Schwarzkopf was just about to get in his Humvee and go to the surrender meeting with the Iraqis, and Schwarzkopf was giving orders to his staff. One of the orders that he gave was, “I don\u2019t want any gloating. I don\u2019t want any, ‘N\u2019yah-n\u2019yah-n\u2019yah-n\u2019yah-n\u2019yah!'” He was telling them to play it straight and don\u2019t lord it over these people. You can think of it what you will, but that\u2019s what Schwarzkopf was telling his people.<\/p>\n
“You know, we\u2019re not gonna treat these people like we just defeated \u2019em,” in other words. “We\u2019re not gonna make \u2019em do 20 push-ups and run a bunch of laps or whatever. We\u2019re gonna sign the surrender thing here and then we\u2019re gonna pull around and we\u2019re gonna get out of there,” and that\u2019s exactly what happened. Now, the caller\u2019s point is that because we allowed the retreat, because we didn\u2019t follow that ragtag army of Saddam\u2019s and wipe it out on the way back to Baghdad…<\/p>\n
If we had done that, then there wouldn\u2019t have been the weapons of mass destruction version of the Iraq war. Well, I don\u2019t know. Ten years separates all that. Well, maybe 12 years, 1990. (interruption) Well, if we\u2019d taken out Saddam… Don\u2019t forget, Saddam had lit a bunch of oil wells on fire in Kuwait. Remember? Nobody in the media was worrying about climate change. Nobody wanted to blame Saddam for causing climate change or pollution or any of that. They were praising Saddam\u2019s military technique, making it tough to follow the guys out of there because he\u2019d set all the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire.<\/p>\n
We had to get “Red” Adair and a bunch of guys. John Wayne had to go over there and put out those oil well fires. The United States had to save Kuwait twice in this. You remember all those oil well fires? It was huge. But it was “Colonel” Colin Powell at the time who advised, “Let \u2019em go. Don\u2019t follow \u2019em. There\u2019s no PR advantage in going and getting them.” Now, Schwarzkopf… I think the caller is saying Schwarzkopf wanted to go get them.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ll never forget, folks, when the troops came home from this, it was one of the greatest few months in American history. It was the shortest war. It was just a total, complete, slam-dunk, kick-ass victory up against the media saying the U.S. had no chance. Sam Donaldson! I remember Sam Donaldson of ABC News talking about all the body bags and how the United States had no business fightin\u2019 a war like this \u2019cause it\u2019s not our home turf and we don\u2019t know how to fight in deserts and we can\u2019t survive and they\u2019re the experts in it and they\u2019re gonna flank us. They\u2019re gonna outrun us. They\u2019re gonna out-survive us.<\/p>\n
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It made me livid at the time, and that was because… I guarantee you, if Bill Clinton had been president, if a Democrat had been president… When Clinton was bombing aspirin factories, they were praising him. In the Sudan. Remember that? He blew up a Tylenol factory in the Sudan to distract people from Monica Lewinsky and then blew up a building in Baghdad with a janitor in it on Saturday night to distract people from Monica Lewinsky. And he got praised to the hilt for being a courageous wartime president.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Here\u2019s Tim, San Francisco, as we head back to the phones. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hi.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Yeah. No. They could not put up with it at all. They could not tolerate one second of it. Hey. You know, I wanted to give a war fighter\u2019s perspective of what I thought of George H. W. Bush, because I served, I was a fighter pilot in the first Gulf War and all through the in-between years. And I saw it firsthand. We all in the military thought George Bush was a wimp.<\/p>\n
RUSH: You in the military thought George Bush was a wimp during the first Gulf War? Did he hang up? He didn\u2019t drop. He hung up! The guy was a seminar caller. San Francisco, flew war fighter craft in Gulf War I, “we thought George Bush was a wimp,” and hangs up? You think the line was disconnected? That line wasn\u2019t dissected. He hung up. Why would somebody think Bush was a wimp? Let\u2019s take him seriously. Maybe I\u2019m wrong. We\u2019ll give the benefit of the doubt. Tim in San Francisco, it was a pretty bad phone line, I have to admit. Of course, they all sound bad to me.<\/p>\n
He said Saddam\u2019s forces were high-fiving for years (long pause) we had the no-fly zone, but they say Saddam was firing on us in the no-fly zone. Oh. So he said Bush is a wimp because we didn\u2019t follow him in there and wipe \u2019em out because, oh, he\u2019s another — okay. Okay. Well, maybe Tim wasn\u2019t a seminar caller and maybe he didn\u2019t just hang up after saying George Bush was a wimp. I don\u2019t know, wimp? I\u2019m just telling you that Colin Powell got to him.<\/p>\n
What will the media say? What will the pictures look like? They\u2019ve already surrendered. We can\u2019t just follow \u2019em back on the road to Baghdad and wipe \u2019em out. It will make us look bad. Hey, folks, I mean, that is a prison I can\u2019t tell you how many people are in, personally. It\u2019s really bad when a nation — and this is what the left does to us and too many people on the right worried about what our image will be, worried about what people will think of us. The only thing that matters is U.S. national security. If you\u2019re dealing with something you think is a threat, you have to eliminate it and wipe it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: It was Colin Powell who advised not to do it. Colin Powell! Ultimately, the call was George H. W. Bush\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":293602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n