RUSH: Let’s listen to some media analysis of this, and I referred to this earlier how, you know, I am often portrayed by the media and by the Democrats as a simple-minded simpleton, and you are mind-numbed robots. Why, ladies and gentlemen, I see only black and white, I don’t see nuance. I don’t see the gray areas. Everything is either right or wrong, good or bad, and that equals simpleton. They are the ones with the nuance. They, the elitists, are the smartest people in the world, and they’re able to see things that mere mortals and plebes like you and I are incapable of seeing. What a 180 has taken place. Today, on the Today Show, the perky one, Katie Couric, apparently headed to the anchor chair at CBS, talking to Tim Russert about the ports. And Katie said, “We’re hearing about two conflicting images of the UAE. One as an ally in our war against terror and another is a home to two of the 9/11 hijackers. What depiction is accurate, Tim, or is it some kind of combination of the two?”
RUSSERT: It’s a combination. The fact is hijackers from September 11th did come from the UAE. On the other hand, they have helped US officials apprehend some Al-Qaeda officials. The president is saying to himself and the people around him, if I go before the world and say, “We’re going to cut back on this deal because the UAE is an Arab country,” what is that going to mean? What is that going to mean to the future of our foreign policy? It’s a more nuanced approach, frankly, that the Democrats are usually trying to argue. This time, the Democrats have the simple issue: We’re for national security, Mr. President.
RUSH: It’s going to come back and stab them in the back, because all of a sudden their whole modus operandi has been exploded. We don’t have any enemies; the Democrats been trying to tell us that we don’t need to be doing any of this; we don’t need the Patriot Act; we don’t need to have this NSA spying program; we don’t need Abu Ghraib; we don’t need these foreign prisons; we don’t need any of the steps that we’re taking because Bush is the one creating the terrorists. If we just stop Bush then, well, we’re going to be safer. Now all of a sudden we’ve got an enemy, and who do the Democrats zero in on? The United Arab Emirates. As I say, if the bin Laden family were buying the ports, then we’d have a different take on this. But even Russert points out that, frankly, it’s the president and of course me because there aren’t too many people other than me and the president who are being nuanced on this, everybody else is just like relying on the simple.
Of course, when he says, “The Democrats have the simple issue, we’re for national security, Mr. President,” we also know that Democrats inexorably linked to unions, and the unions are very much frightened and scared about this deal and will have a major impact on how Democrats react to this. It’s allowing them, their association with unions here, is allowing them to stand up under the banner of national security, which is really great. I just ask, “Why did it take them so long and how come they chose the United Arab Emirates as the enemy that they wanted to recognize as posing a grave threat to the country?” So the next question from Katie Couric, “What do you think about the Arab-American community claiming it’s bias and bigotry that’s driving this? And, in fact, President Bush suggested it as well when he compared all of a sudden Middle Eastern companies held to a different standard than a British company. Is there some truth to those claims?”
RUSSERT: Well, the Arab community certainly believes that. And if you look at the numbers, Katie, there are about 360 ports in the United States. About 30% have terminals operated by foreign companies, including China, Singapore, Denmark. And so many Arab-Americans are saying, why us? Why is the UAE being singled out?
COURIC: Right.
RUSSERT: Democrats and Republicans and the Congress will counter, because it was a country that was directly involved in September 11th.
RUSH: Let’s go cut eight. That question about their involvement in 9/11 was brought up to Rumsfeld yesterday during his briefing. And here is the exchange. It’s an unidentified male reporter.
REPORTER: Two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the United Arab Emirates. It’s an undercurrent.
RUMSFELD: One ought not, in my view, hold the country of origin responsible for every citizen they may have at any given time, particularly when people have multiple passports.
RUSH: Does the name Marc Rich mean anything to you? Marc Rich, pardoned by President Clinton, has been involved in a lot of nefarious criminal activities, used to be an American citizen. Does it make sense that countries that don’t want to deal with Marc Rich are going to say we can’t trust you Americans, look at Marc Rich? By the way, I might add that the Democrats have been doing their best to alienate as many foreign countries from President Bush as possible. They’ve been traveling to Saudi Arabia. You know, if somebody wants to look at who’s really posing a security risk, look no further than Al Gore, who goes over to Saudi Arabia last week, still this has not been reported on the mainstream press, and starts telling lies to an Arab audience, and he was doing it for payment, about the horrible treatment that Arabs are receiving in this country. Rounding them up wholesale, putting them in prison, not charging them, and they’re never to be heard from again, and on the cusp, typical Al Gore, less than a week after he makes the speech, here we are announcing a deal to sell these six ports to the United Arab Emirates!
What a blowhard idiot! He may not be an idiot in terms of speaking because his audience back here in the country, the left-wing kooks that are going to determine the next Democratic presidential nominee, may love it. But the fact is, with the cartoon controversy and these riots all over the world, and there’s Gore out there saying that we are rounding up Arabs in this country wholesale and sequestering them without legal protection, without any charges, it’s just absurd. And you’ve got Clinton basically going overseas and saying, “I’ll tell you what, we ought not be publishing any of these pictures of the cartoons, Prophet Mohammed and so forth, I think the press ought to be more responsible about this.”
So he’s coming out against freedom of the press, but these guys and Jimmy Carter have been going around the world, ripping the United States and its policy on the war on terror, ripping the United States and its policy on the war in Iraq, ripping George W. Bush personally and so forth, all for their own personal gain. You think that’s not whipping up a bunch of anti-American frenzy over there when an ex-president and an ex-vice president do this kind of thing? You know, I think it’s helpful to have a little perspective here.
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It was only mere moments ago, ladies and gentlemen, that I asked you if I was not correct when I said that one of your primary fears when you first heard the deal was that you conjured up a mental image of turban-wearing Arabs running the cranes and so forth, thinking that the United Arab Emirates would import their own people as employees and so forth. Yes, you did, Snerdley, that was exactly one of the fears that you had and a lot of people did, too. I was right about this and to show you just how knee-jerk reaction and simple-minded the media is, I have just a little question here for you, five seconds, you have to listen fast here and this is from Martha Raddatz to Scott McClellan, the White House briefing today, she is an ABC News reporterette.
RADDATZ: Scott, could we just go back to the hiring, so who’s running the forklifts? I mean, do we have any control over that?
RUSH: Good Lord, here is the mainstream — this is ABC, for three days it has been announced on this program, it’s been findable, discoverable everywhere, the longshoreman union will continue to be the union. The forklifts are going to be run by the forklift operators of today. The jobs are going to be held by the people who have the jobs today. The only thing that’s going to change are the people writing the checks. And she doesn’t know it. And McClellan has probably answered the question already twice by the time she gets to it again, and says, “Can we just go back to the hiring, who’s running the forklift?” I’ll tell you what’s spawning that question. She obviously has the same mental picture; she has the same mental picture. And so, at any rate, again, more evidence — I just know these people. I just know them. It is scary. If they knew how well I know them, they would be haunted
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