My question is why didn’t John McCain and his colleagues on this august committee command hearings at that time? When they heard about the abuse of prisoners, why didn’t they do something way back in January when it was first reported? Ooooh, don’t tell me they didn’t see it. Why, these are senators, my friends. These are all-knowing senators! They know everything that’s going on. Why didn’t the media react? They reported it. Why didn’t the media react back in January when this report was made public? I’ll tell you why. We all know why. It’s the pictures. It’s the pictures. But McCain and company had every opportunity to pick up the telephones themselves and ask for more information, once this story appeared in print — but they didn’t, did they?
They didn’t do anything. They were too busy in January and February in the Democrat primaries. McCain’s out there fending off questions about whether he’s going to be John Kerry’s running mate. He didn’t have time to call the Pentagon to get more information on this. Besides that, January and February of this year, Congress met only a few days during both of those months because they’re too busy doing other things. Then, lo and behold, damn! Here come the pictures, and, “Why look what we didn’t know!” BS. This was known. There just weren’t any pictures to go along with it. So what’s this all about? Is this reeeally about prisoner abuse? I submit that it’s not. It’s not about prisoner abuse. It’s about some pictures that have…surfaced. Let’s not even begin to ask how or why.
Pictures have surfaced, and we all know that this is a culture that doesn’t react or doesn’t believe anything until it sees a picture, either a moving picture or a still picture. All the sudden there’s this hell to pay reaction in the media which didn’t spend much time on this at all back in January when the details came out; the investigation has been going on that long, and, yes, the Pentagon did ask 60 Minutes to hold the pictures because they feared the impact on the war effort, and 60 Minutes couldn’t hold them for very long because everybody around the world was going to get ’em at some point. If anything here there’s a PR screw-up in handling the problem.
And, no, I’m not trying to shove the problem under the rug by saying this, but there is a bit of a PR problem, because this is damage control. This is not anybody really, really concerned about this. They’re just acting like it because it gives them a political opportunity in an election year — and look at the cost. Look at the cost of this. There’s one of my favorite senators up there now. I love hearing his name in the roll call, “Senator A-ka-ka.” He is from Hawaii. Senator A-ka-ka. I bet they have to really be careful not to mispronounce that when his name comes up on the roll call. Here’s a little bit of Lieberman. A previous caller referred to Lieberman. This is during his opening statement or his prelude to his questioning of Rumsfeld.
LIEBERMAN: I cannot help but say, however, that those who are responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq, working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized, and those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody.
RUSH: [Soto voce] Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat. One of the few voices of sanity and reason on this committee, and my hat’s off to him, because he’s going against the grain of his party. Now, he may have some reasons. His party just shunned him royally in the Democratic primaries last fall through this winter. But I don’t think he’s doing it for that reason, because he’s been consistent on this and this whole war from the moment he started speaking about it. He’s also consistent on Israel. He’s consistent on everything that ought to be done in the Middle East and consistently right about it, and my hat is off to senator Lieberman, because he is putting partisanship aside here and focusing on the issue, which is what everybody claims that their doing. “Ah, this is not partisan. We’re looking at the issue.” They are not. At least the Democrats on this committee are not.
(Rocking bumper music) RUSH: I want you to hear Jeff Sessions, who is just a fine, fine man, a great senator from Alabama. He’s a former U.S. attorney, attorney general down there, preceded Bill Pryor. He was nominated to be a federal judge or an appellate court judge and the Democrats killed him in confirmation hearings on the usual rigmarole of civil rights and this sort of stuff, but he’s a great, great man, folks — and here’s a little of what he said today following Senator Lieberman.
SESSIONS: I want to join with Senator Lieberman’s courageous comments and strong comments about how we do not need to dishonor the soldiers out there this very day, at risk of their lives, withholding firing weapons, being in hostile situations, taking chances with their own lives to protect the people of Iraq — and, yes, this is a serious problem. But I feel very strongly that the military deserves a lot of credit here. First, I want to say to Secretary Rumsfeld, “Thank you for your leadership and all of you there” — and yes, you have some complainers in the Congress, but we voted to send our soldiers to this effort. Nobody else authorized you to go. We voted to support it. And I would also note that the terrorists aren’t happy with you, either. I saw they put a $15 million bounty on your head along with General [Mark] Kimmit and General [Richard] Sanchez, and I thank you for that service.
RUSH: Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama firing both barrels in an effort to keep all of this in perspective.
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