{"id":8308,"date":"2014-09-24T16:22:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T16:22:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2014-09-24T16:22:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T16:22:03","slug":"obama_went_to_war_to_win_the_senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/09\/24\/obama_went_to_war_to_win_the_senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Went to War to Win the Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: So George Bush supposedly went to Iraq for oil, right? So I guess we could say that Barack Obama went to war with ISIS for the Senate. It looks like that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s going on. And I\u2019m like you, I\u2019m watching all of the reports about we\u2019ve already taken ISIS out. I watched Kerry on TV today: They\u2019re done. They\u2019re over. We have wiped \u2019em out. John Kerry was talking to Christiane Amanpour on CNN, and he said (imitating Kerry), “Yeah, yeah, we wiped \u2019em out. We\u2019re gonna keep going, too, but we wiped \u2019em out.”<\/p>\n

They\u2019re putting the news out there that after one day, two days, that we have just had overwhelming success against ISIS, ISIL, the Kardashians, Khorasans, whatever they are. (interruption) I know, I know, that\u2019s the point. ISIS is advancing. I mean, I\u2019ve got Max Boot here, who is, you know, Max Boot used to be at the op-ed page, editorial page of the Wall Street Journal years ago, and now he writes for Foreign Policy.<\/p>\n

<\/a>He\u2019s a freelancer and gets a lot of his stuff published, and he has a piece here Commentary: “Yesterday\u00c2\u2019s Real News Out of Iraq and Syria<\/a> — There were three big stories yesterday out of Iraq and Syria. Question: which is the most significant? Story No. 1: The US Navy and Air Force, in cooperation with five Arab allies (Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE) launched a series of air strikes and cruise missile strikes on ISIS targets in and around Raqaa, Syria. Separately, the US launched air strikes against the Khorasan group, another jihadist terrorist organization.” You know what, all they are is Al-Qaeda. They are maybe an Al-Qaeda splinter group. <\/p>\n

From what I understand, the Regime has given this group a new name in order for Obama to be able to continue to say he wiped Al-Qaeda out. So you come up with a new name for Al-Qaeda, the Kardashians, whatever, the Khorasans, whatever they are, and either way it\u2019s defeating. I mean, if you wipe out Al-Qaeda, how can they have a new group spring up? If you wipe \u2019em out, you wipe \u2019em out. If you get rid of a species, it\u2019s gone, right? Until you discover it somewhere in the Himalayas. So this new group is essentially just Al-Qaeda renamed. There may be some differences beyond that, but nevertheless. So, anyway, that\u2019s story number one. <\/p>\n

Story number two from Max Boot: “ISIS continued to attack the Kurdish area of north-central Syria, killing large numbers of people and pushing more than 130,000 refugees over the Turkish border.” This doesn\u2019t sound like we\u2019ve wiped anybody out. Did I mishear Kerry? I\u2019m watching him. I didn\u2019t have the audio on. I\u2019m looking at their headline slug, their chyron graphic, and it was clear that they were conducting an interview with Kerry in which he was talking about phenomenal first day success against ISIS. <\/p>\n

Story number three: “ISIS attackers in Anbar Province, Iraq, reportedly killed more than 300 Iraqi soldiers after a weeklong siege of Camp Saqlawiya where some 800 soldiers had been trapped. Few, if any, Sunni tribal fighters did anything to prevent yet another large Iraqi army formation from suffering annihilation.”<\/p>\n

Remember, these are the moderates we\u2019re depending on here, folks. These are our boots on the ground. “Few, if any, Sunni tribal fighters did anything to prevent yet another large Iraqi army formation from suffering annihilation.” The got annihilated and they didn\u2019t do anything to stop it. <\/line>“The Iraqi army showed itself unable to supply its soldiers or to fight effectively.<\/line><\/p>\n

“Judging from the news coverage, story No. 1 is the most important,” and that would be, again, the Navy and the Air Force cooperation with the five Arab states launching a series of air strikes and cruise missiles on ISIS targets in Syria. Max Boot says that\u2019s not the most important story, just the media coverage. And I guess that\u2019s what I saw on CNN. I guess Kerry was out there with Christiane Amanpour taking great credit for this attack and actually suggesting that it was quite substantive. <\/p>\n

Max Boot says here: “In reality I\u00c2\u2019d argue that No. 2 and especially No. 3 are more significant. No one doubts that the US can launch air strikes on ISIS.” Nobody doubts that. Why is that big news? And he\u2019s got a point, wouldn\u2019t you say? Is this echoed? Mr. Snerdley, have you been watching any of that this morning? (interruption) All right, so is the news media, in fact, focusing on the air strikes and reporting how massive they were? (interruption) That\u2019s the story. Okay. All right. (interruption) Yeah. It could go on for years. Even though we\u2019ve wiped \u2019em out, it could go on for years.<\/p>\n

So Max Boot is right, that\u2019s the big story. That\u2019s what the media\u2019s doing. It\u2019s all about winning the Senate or holding the Senate, and it\u2019s all about positioning Obama politically. Pure and simple. <\/p>\n

Now, Max Boot argues that, “But in reality I\u00c2\u2019d argue that No. 2 and especially No. 3 are more significant.” Continuing to attack the Kurds in northern Syria and ISIS attackers in Anbar province and killing more than 300 Iraqi soldiers, he thinks those are much more significant stories. “No one doubts that the US can launch air strikes on ISIS. The question is whether those attacks will be effective in degrading and eventually destroying this terrorist group.<\/p>\n

“The answer is: not until there is an effective ground force able to take advantage of the disruption created by American bombs,” and without that ground force, serious people are asking: Okay, how serious is this? Do we want video of massive launches of fighter and bomber aircraft? Do we want the American people to see the launch of the takeoffs down the runway and lift off — down the runway, down the carrier and lift off — and then footage of bombs dropped or the results of bombs dropped?<\/p>\n

<\/a>You know how important pictures are, and therefore the pictures coupled with the footage of our jets and bombers taking off creates the illusion that massive success occurred overnight. The question is whether those attacks can be secured without a ground force, and they can\u2019t. There are I don\u2019t know how many years of world history, world military history that confirms this. It still all comes back to how serious is everybody involved here, and it won\u2019t take long to find out. It really won\u2019t. <\/p>\n

If no ground force of ours that\u2019s competent is part of this, then the main reason we\u2019re doing this is for the pictures everybody has already seen, which are supposed to convey an impression or image. Now, Max Boot, wrapping ups here: “What this means is that, however welcome, the US air strikes in Syria are of more symbolic importance than anything else. Their military significance is likely to be scant until the US can do more to train and arm forces capable of mounting ground attacks on ISIS militants.”<\/p>\n

So there you have it. There you go. That\u2019s pretty much where things stand with this right now. We\u2019ve got symbolic footage — well, we\u2019ve got footage of a symbolic attack that is supposed to convey to low-information voters that we are kicking butt. We got John Kerry on CNN confirming the pictures everybody\u2019s seen. “We kicked butt yesterday, and ISIS and ISIL and the Kardashians and everybody are on the run!” The truth of the matter is, ISIS is on the run, but not from us.<\/p>\n

ISIS continues to advance. But the news is we bombed Syria. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: The way the left is rationalizing all of this, ladies and gentlemen, is that George W. Bush\u2019s War on Terror was a “dumb” war, and Obama\u2019s is a “smart” war. (interruption) Well, they\u2019re not… Yeah, depending on where you look they\u2019re calling it a war, but they\u2019re still calling it an “action,” and they\u2019re saying that Obama\u2019s doing it in a smart way. And of course Bush was dumb, shouldn\u2019t have gone there in the first place. But, you know, back to this Khorasan Group.<\/p>\n

They come out of nowhere, named by the administration just in the past couple of days — well, last week sometime. Is there any doubt…” If Obama hadn\u2019t been running around bragging about taking out Al-Qaeda and wiping out bin Laden and thus ending Al-Qaeda, would we even have heard the name Khorasan Group? But because Obama\u2019s been running around bragging about taking out Al-Qaeda, starting at the Democrat convention in 2012?<\/p>\n

Okay, Al-Qaeda hasn\u2019t gone away, so the Regime has to give them a new name to make it look like it\u2019s a new group after Obama wiped out Al-Qaeda. But it\u2019s just Al-Qaeda. Now, we have a couple of John Kerry bites. Let\u2019s listen to these. We have the audio sound bites of what I saw but didn\u2019t hear on CNN today with Lurch speaking with Christiane Amanpour. Her question, “The Khorasan plot, Mr. Secretary, can you confirm precisely what it was and the imminence of it?”<\/line><\/p>\n

KERRY: These are remnants of who are Al-Qaeda. These are people who were definitively plotting against the United States and the West. It is true that we didn\u2019t put a lot of public focus on them because we really didn\u2019t want people to take… We didn\u2019t want them to know that we were, in fact, tracking them as effectively as we were. So this would have happened with or without ISIL. There were active plots against our country, we knew where they were, and we did what we needed to do.<\/p>\n

AMANPOUR: Can you tell us —<\/p>\n

RUSH: “Can you tell us…?” No, he\u2019s not gonna tell you, \u2019cause they\u2019re making all this up! So right here it is. They are remnants of core Al-Qaeda. “See? We wiped out Al-Qaeda!” That\u2019s what you are supposed to take with you from this. We wiped out Al-Qaeda. Obama did because with Bush\u2019s dumb war, he failed to get Al-Qaeda. There were no weapons of mass destruction! Bush is an idiot, is a cowboy; Obama\u2019s brilliant and is a smart commander chief.<\/p>\n

Despite the Styrofoam cup salute to the Marines, he\u2019s still a smart commander-in-chief and he knows how to do things. He wiped Al-Qaeda out and now here come the remnants of Al-Qaeda — which we wiped out, but we must have missed a couple of those maggots and so they form a new group called the Khorasan, and we\u2019re on \u2019em, and we\u2019ve been on \u2019em, and we knew what they were gonna do.<\/p>\n

But we didn\u2019t tell anybody about it because we didn\u2019t want to let them know what we knew that they knew that we know how we were gonna wipe \u2019em out. Christiane Amanpour is nodding thoughtfully and understandingly, and then she said, “You\u2019ve been doing this now for six weeks plus in Iraq, Mr. Secretary, against ISIS and whatever targets. They haven\u2019t been flushed out. They\u2019re not retreating. They are not surrendering.”<\/p>\n

KERRY: What we\u2019ve done is we\u2019ve stopped the onslaught. That was what we were able to achieve with air power. They were moving toward Erbil. They were moving towards Baghdad. Baghdad could well have fallen, the oil fields. We re-secured the Mosul dam. We broke the siege at Sinjar Mountain. So air power has been effective.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay, so we saved Baghdad. That\u2019s what Kerry was telling Christiane Amanpour. We backed \u2019em up, we stopped \u2019em, we put a halt to their advance, and we beat \u2019em back in Baghdad. Meanwhile, as reported by — well, everybody; Max Boot and everybody else — they\u2019re in Syria. They\u2019re continuing to advance in Anbar Province and so forth. It still remains true that even though… There\u2019s nothing wrong with air power, don\u2019t misunderstand. I don\u2019t want anybody to think that I\u2019m down on air power. I love it. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m like everybody: Just bomb these bastards to the Stone Age. But if you really want to get rid of them, if you\u2019re really serious about securing whatever you secure with air strikes, there has to be an accompanying, coordinated ground force. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Let\u2019s get started here with Greg in Rapid City, South Dakota. Thank you for calling, sir. Great to have you here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Howdy. <\/p>\n

CALLER: I appreciate everything you do. You know, watching the news over the last couple nights when we started these air strikes, not one casualty. I mean, I don\u2019t know if we got some bad guys. With all that air power and all those missiles, did we kill anybody? Because when Israel went into Gaza, everybody was pointing the finger at Netanyahu and all these casualties.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Yes, yes, yes. I predicted this very thing yesterday. I predicted there would be a whole lot of things not reported in this operation that were reported throughout Iraq. For example, we will not hear a running body count of American military personnel, which we were treated to every day during the Iraq war. We are not gonna get body counts on ISIS because the Regime is not going to lock itself into statistics that could perhaps be shown to be untrue. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re gonna rely on image, as I said earlier. The jets and the bombers taking off, B-roll footage of them flying and dropping bombs on targets that we don\u2019t know if they\u2019re actually real or just B-roll footage. And then we\u2019re gonna see black and white before and after shots of the targets we hit, and the result of the hit, before and after, and that\u2019s it. We\u2019re gonna have a well-orchestrated, essentially a PR campaign to show how successful the operation has been, and it\u2019ll be backed up and buttressed by appearances on TV of Regime figures like John Kerry describing the overwhelming success that the operation is incurring. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, something else, you can look all day and all night and you will not see, I\u2019m gonna make a prediction to you. You will not see any reports of civilian casualties resulting from our bombs, and you will not see any reports of collateral damage like a nursery school accidentally blown up by an American bomb. You will not see any footage of a hospital blown up by an American bomb, which you would if George W. Bush were still president and operating this campaign or commanding this campaign. <\/p>\n

You can look long and hard. You\u2019re not gonna find any of the usual touches that the media uses to accompany reporting on conflicts like this that Republicans are in charge of, that the media wants people to think negatively of. Let me give you a further example. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a story here at CNN by Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh<\/a>, and the headline: “Politics of Fear – How the GOP is Using ISIS Against Dems.” Are you kidding me? How the Republican Party is using ISIS against the Democrats? “The politics of fear. Until recently, that seemed so 10 years ago, right after September 11, 2001. That is, until ISIS started beheading Americans.” Now, just a minor correction. 9\/11 was 13 years ago. So what CNN\u2019s doing here is referencing George W. Bush\u2019s reelection campaign in 2004. That\u2019s what they\u2019re talking about here. <\/line><\/p>\n

And if you recall that campaign in 2004 — if you don\u2019t, don\u2019t worry; I do — the media repeatedly said that Bush and the Republicans were not allowed to mention 9\/11 or to show any images of it in the campaign ads. That would be politicizing a tragedy, and they were not permitted to do that. And if they did it, the media was gonna call \u2019em on it. Do you remember this now? Even before that campaign got in gear, the media\u2019s out there, Democrats, “You better not use footage of 9\/11. You better not politicize this tragedy. Do you realize people are still hurting? Do you realize families are still trying to… You better not!” And they didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

Now here comes CNN claiming that the Republicans are using ISIS against Democrats. “Just six weeks before Election Day, security concerns could be a September surprise that shakes up the midterms. Across the country GOP candidates on the ballot in November are using the threat posed by ISIS to dust off an old playbook — attack Democratic opponents as weak on national security.”<\/p>\n

Why, how Machiavellian of them. I mean, after all, ladies and gentlemen, we know there\u2019s not a shred of truth to the charge that Democrats are weak on national security. We know that\u2019s totally made up, right? It\u2019s so made up that the San Francisco Chronicle today is asking where is the left-wing anti-war protest that they could expect? The left-wing anti-war protesters don\u2019t exist. They\u2019re too tired. They\u2019ve just blown all their energy on climate change protests, and they just don\u2019t have any energy now to protest the war. It\u2019s a terrible, not beautiful thing. <\/p>\n

You know, ladies and gentlemen, labels work. It\u2019s one of the reasons why people don\u2019t like \u2019em. And in some cases, identifying templates also work. And there is one that is undeniable, and that is that Democrats are doves. Everybody knows this. It\u2019s not something you have to prove. The Republicans aren\u2019t out lying about anything when they tell voters that the Democrats are weak on national security. Which party was it that sought defeat for the US military in Iraq? I give you the Democrat Party. Which party was it that was calling the generals leading that war in the surge, such as David Petraeus, liars, before they even showed up to testify before Congress? Democrat Party. <\/line><\/p>\n

Which Democrat Party Senate majority leader said, “This war is lost. This war is pointless” before the surge even began? That would be Harry Reid, Democrat Senate majority leader. It\u2019s not even arguable. This is what happens when Republicans dare to tell the truth about Democrats. Then the media gets in gear and accuses the Republicans of being too mean and accuses the Republicans of violating the standards of gentleman agreements during campaigns that nobody should ever say a party where a candidate is weak on national security. The reason they don\u2019t want it said is \u2019cause it\u2019s true. <\/p>\n

By the same token, how about the label or the narrative that Republicans are hawks. In fact, it\u2019s even worse. Warmongers. They\u2019re racist, hateful, bigoted, so forth. Democrats could say that all over the place, all the time, and they\u2019re never chastised by the media for violating any gentleman\u2019s agreements. They\u2019re never chastised for lying about things. <\/p>\n

No. They\u2019re applauded for it. When the Republicans dare to tell the truth — this is, I think, one of the reasons why the Republicans are so cowed and for the most part refused to tell the truth about Democrats because the media rises up and once again begins the never-ending assault all because Republicans correctly identify policy beliefs of their Democrat opponents. <\/p>\n

Listen to this, from the CNN story. “The sun had barely come up Tuesday after a night of new United States and coalition airstrikes in Syria, when New Hampshire Republican Senate challenger Scott Brown released an ad using an ominous image of a fighter holding a black ISIS flag, while Brown talks about the threat from ‘radical Islamic terrorists.\u2019 Brown, a retired member of the Army National Guard, touts his own experience in the ad before putting up side-by-side pictures of his Democratic opponent, Jeanne Shaheen, and President Obama, saying, ‘President Obama and Senator Shaheen seem confused about the threat, not me.'”<\/p>\n

Well, wait, is the ad accurate? What\u2019s problem? The ad is accurate. What\u2019s problem? “But Republican strategists tell CNN that ads like this are driven by voter data from focus groups and polling all over the country, which signals that security is a rising priority among voters, especially with married women –” There it is, folks. If you read far enough you\u2019ll find out what this is really all about. <\/p>\n