The left, liberal Democrats in this country, the elites, the so-called elites, cannot win elections anymore. They have not won a significant election in a long time and they continue to lose ground in each election that takes place. They are so far out of the mainstream of America’s values and belief system that even when they run their candidates for president on a strategy of concealing their liberalism, they still almost always lose. So what do they need to do? Well, in a way this is nothing new. A lot of liberalism has not found its way into the fabric of our society legislatively. Much of it, if not most of it, has found its way into the fabric of our society via the courts, and that’s why they are paranoid of Bush judicial nominations. As such they have to go over the head of the American electorate. We don’t elect judges and we don’t have anything to say about what they do. We can’t put them there. We can’t get rid of them, and so the left in that sense goes above and beyond the American people to get what it wants. But they now in this case, they can’t just rely on the judiciary.
This is why they’re so… Why do you think Clinton is spending so much time or did last year over in Europe seeking applause and seeking approval? Because that’s his audience; that’s why he’s truly loved. That’s why Kerry was truly loved: in the capitals of the socialist western European nations that couldn’t hold their own hats in a 40-mile-an-hour wind if that lives depended on it. So they go to Europe; they go to France; they go to Germany and any other socialist entity they can and they seek them as allies. Europe, the Third World, all of these places are left wing. They are socialist. Some of them are communist, and they’re almost the mirror image of the American left, and so what happens is that the left in an effort to get what transports in this country, when it can’t do so with the Democratic process seeks to essentially diminish our sovereignty by turning over such things as our defense, or seeking to, and our important matters to international organizations. By diminishing our sovereignty in this, and that’s the end result of it, the left can then appeal to a far more receptive audience or population: western European socialists, Third World dictators and thugs, and the like. That’s what’s going on here.
They’re desperate. They do not want to give up their power. They do not. I mean, they have lost it but they are still seeking to exercise it and that’s why you still hear people like Nancy Pelosi or Patrick Leahy or Dick Durbin continue to talk as though they represent the majority of Americans. You hear them speak, and you would conclude that they won the last election. When they hear it, when I hear it, I’m offended at the arrogance of it: the arrogance that they still believe they represent the majority view of a democratic nation that is rejecting them. They do not represent a majority view. Their view is shrinking in terms of its belief held by a majority of the American people, and part of their effort to assert themselves is this confirmation hearing that will Saturday tomorrow in the judiciary committee with Alberto Gonzales. They are attempting to define “torture” down so that the Bush conduct of the war on terror. It has nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. They’re going to use Abu Ghraib but this has nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. This has everything to do with G’itmo and Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists, not a bunch of Iraqi terrorists and insurgents that have been captured. They are seeking to defend Al-Qaeda and Taliban related groups and individuals who seek to replicate what happened in this country on September 11th, 2001.
Huh? We’re supposed so sit around and throw up to the democratic process — the democratic process — we’re supposed to sit around here and treat as American citizens Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists who seek to destroy the Constitution? Now, the Democrats may say, “That’s not what we’re doing.” Well, tell me how if you were doing it, it would be any different than the result you’re going to get here if you were to succeed? They probably won’t succeed, but just their effort is offensive, and I want you all to understand what motivates it and what is behind it. Because I don’t want you to ever forget who these people are, and they’re getting, as I have told you, the more elections they lose, the more wacko and extreme and dangerous they are going to become. When they are out of power, they’re not quite as dangerous as when they’re in power because they can’t implement what they believe, but they get crazier, and in the process they do a much better job of telegraphing just who they are, folks, when they’re out of power, which is what they’re doing. Now, this may get lost in all the tsunami coverage that’s going on. You’ll note I led the program today with one tsunami story. We have others to get to, but this is a crucial story that will begin tomorrow.
I intend to stay on it and follow it, because I want you to understand exactly what’s going on. Now, there’s a piece today at National Review Online by Andrew McCarthy. We’ve quoted from Andrew McCarthy before. He led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others. He now is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He’s written a piece here the first after of which is a brilliant bit of sarcasm. He details all of the crimes Al-Qaeda has committed since the early 90s. Let me list some of them for you. “Al Qaeda has, at the very least, killed American soldiers and desecrated their remains in Somalia; urged the murder of all Americans ? civilians and military alike ? wherever on the globe they may be found; conducted simultaneous sneak attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, resulting in the mass murder of over 240 civilians (the vast majority of them Muslims and non-Americans); killed 17 American seamen in an attempt to blow up the destroyer, the U.S.S. Cole; murdered 3,000 Americans in hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; and spearheaded guerrilla wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have killed well over a thousand American military personnel and countless civilians.
“In addition to killing civilians in sneak attacks ? commonly, detonating bombs within nondescript cars parked or driven in broad daylight in densely populated areas ? they also secrete themselves among their once and future victims. They wear no distinguishing insignia to segregate themselves as a militia. They use mosques and schools and hospitals to plan and store weaponry. They feign surrender and then open fire on unsuspecting coalition forces attempting the civilized act of detaining, rather than shooting, them. As for treatment of their own detainees, their practice ranges from execution-style homicide to beastly beheading ? usually captured on film and circulated on the Internet to buck up the other savages while scaring the living hell out of everyone else. So here’s an idea: Let’s make a treaty with them. Let’s reward this behavior with a grant of honorable-combatant status. Let’s give them the same kind of benefits the Geneva Conventions reserve for soldiers who play by the rules: who identify themselves as soldiers; who don’t intentionally murder civilians; who do not threaten schools, hospitals, and houses of worship by turning them into military targets; who grant quarter honorably; and who treat their captives with dignity and respect.
“Let’s provide al Qaeda with ‘amenities such as dormitories, kitchenettes, sports equipment, canteens, and a monthly pay allowance in Swiss francs’ ? the Geneva prescriptions for POWs that Lee A. Casey and David Rivkin Jr. outline with characteristic clarity in the current issue of National Review.” I shared that story with you yesterday. “Of course, we’ll have to find someone from al Qaeda able to sign the treaty [which] is no small issue. Leaving aside the whole fugitive-on-the-lam problem, treaties, you see, are signed between and among nation states.” The point that he is making here is that essentially what the Democrats in the Senate will end up doing by going after Gonzales and Bush and Cheney and whoever else that supposedly “have secret memos going around authorizing torture. Well, hey! Let’s just make a treaty with them and let’s just give them status as prisoners of war. Let’s just reward this behavior: detonating bombs with nondescript cars, beheadings. Let’s reward this behavior with a grant of honorable combatant status. That will be the effect of the Democrats’ procedures in the Senate starting tomorrow against Gonzales, as they come to the defense of these people. By demanding the Geneva Conventions’ protections or constitutional protections, they are essentially rewarding the behavior of Al-Qaeda and Abu Zakab al-Zarqawi. That’s the practical result of what the Democrats in the Senate are doing — and it’s time as many people as possible learned that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Can we envision this, ladies and gentlemen? Maybe we go find bin Laden. That’s what we need to do! Sign a treaty with bin Laden granting them the status of the Geneva Conventions, even though we don’t require them to put on uniforms, to be members of a nation state. They exist exactly as they are, and they don’t have to change a thing they’re doing. They can still try to blow up buildings, hijack airplanes, attack the U.S. military. We’re just going to have a treaty with them where we grant them Geneva Conventions POW status because in effect, folks. That’s what Senator Leahy and Senator Durbin, the other Democrats on the judiciary committee are doing. By attacking this administration, Alberto Gonzales, Cheney and Bush, they hope, in their prosecution of the war on terror — and make no mistake. This isn’t about Abu Ghraib. This simply the vehicle that these shameful American senators are seeking to utilize to drum up support. They do not understand. In fact, you go back and look at the polling data, you’ll find that the two groups of people that were the most outraged and the most upset over what happened at Abu Ghraib were the media and the Democrats in the Senate.
The American people never did think by a vast majority that this was a problem, because the American people understand we’re at war. The American people have not forgotten 9/11. They don’t think it happens in a vacuum. The American people’s sons and daughters are in the U.S. military, and they volunteered for it, and they do not want their sons and daughters who volunteered to protect this country to be given less legal status than a bunch of s– (sigh) terrorists. I don’t need to finish the sentence. These Democrats are not going to have a majority of the American people behind them and as such they’ll going to shoot themselves in the feet as they continue to embark on the same Bork procedures that they think they have succeeded with over the years. What they don’t get, what they refuse to understand is that those kinds of tactics are parse and parcel of why they are in an ever-shrinking minority and loss-of-power situation in this country. So I am sort of torn. I enjoy the fact that they’re shooting themselves in the feet.
I enjoy the fact they’re making absolute fools of themselves, but at the same time I am offended there are Americans in the United States Senate who are acting as the equivalent in World War II of any American who would stand up for the rights of Nazi POWs and try to grant them rights and privileges from Miranda on down of the U.S. Constitution. So let’s do. Let’s take Mr. McCarthy’s idea and let’s make it official. Let’s try to get a treaty with Al-Qaeda. Big signing ceremony in Washington. Everybody will feel better. Liberals always love treaties, especially treaties made with lying skunks who have no intention of upholding their end of the deal. Liberals like treaties even when the nation that signed the treaty no longer exists. The old Soviet Union signed all these SALT treaties, Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties. When the Soviet Union disbanded and became Russia again, Bush said, “We’re going to tear that one up. It doesn’t apply.” The liberals went nuts. “You can’t tear up an arms treaty!” Bush said, “Watch me.” (tears up paper) He tore it up. Libs are still frosting over that. So they love treaties. Let’s have one, with bin Laden. I hope I’m invited to the state dinner.
END TRANSCRIPT