RUSH: Our helicopters are over there evacuating — and get this — they’re evacuating American citizens. Some 320 are leaving today, over a thousand will leave tomorrow, military helicopters are there off-loading. The Drive-By Media’s big concern is they’ve heard that the people being evacuated are going to have to reimburse the government for the trip out. So they get all these experts on asking, “Well, is this the way other countries do it? I thought other countries just pay to evacuate their own citizens.” Most of the time when the US issues an evac order, the US doesn’t send airplanes over to get you, doesn’t call up JetBlue or American Airlines and say, “We’ve chartered a bunch of 767s for you, head on over to the airport and get on one of them.” It’s up to people to get out of there at their own expense. But they’re making a big deal out of that.
There’s also an effort underway to humanize Hezbollah, which is not surprising. (Laughing) Bush is the real enemy. You know, if it weren’t so serious, it would be comical. The Drive-By Media, let’s go to audio sound bite number one, the Drive-By Media doing everything to humanize Hezbollah. They run social welfare programs in Lebanon, midnight basketball plans for the poor, and they’re socially active. It sort of reminds me of when Senator Patty Murray from Washington, after 9/11, talked about Osama bin Laden and about the reason he had so much support from people was he built them roads and he built them schools and stuff. People were pulling their hair out. We have a little montage from John King at CNN, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, and Miles O’Brien from CNN, and Yaroslav Trofimov, wherever he’s from, or her, describing the greatness and the kindnesses engaged in by Hezbollah.
KING: Hezbollah is a significant political force in Lebanon, holding seats in parliament and running cabinet ministries and building public support by running social welfare programs.
MITCHELL: Hezbollah’s charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has become Lebanon’s best known and most controversial politician. Nasrallah provides social services.
O’BRIEN: We see the militant side of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah derives support from its civilian component, its ability to deliver services.
TROFIMOV: Hezbollah doesn’t just fight, but it also runs a construction branch, which is called the Construction Jihad, which builds houses for its members–
RUSH: Hold it, hold it, stop the tape. Construction Jihad? Do you know what a jihad is? Jihad is a holy war. Construction Jihad. All right, resume tape.
TROFIMOV: — social service for the veterans, for the wounded in these battles, with a match-making branch. It finds wives, for example, for the veterans who marry them out of a sense of jihad, without even meeting them first.
RUSH: Well, that’s actually a great social service. Why, we should use that here, find wives for people before you’ve even met them. Sounds to me like that kind of stuff used to happen way, way back in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. At any rate, so you see what’s happening here. Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization, they are a terrorist organization, the charismatic leader, is that what Andrea Mitchell said? Hezbollah charismatic leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. My friends, I saw a bunch of people out there that are producing movies and documentaries, and of course as a powerful, influential member of the media I receive many of these, and there’s one being produced that’s pretty serious and pretty well done. It’s not available yet, it’s not out anywhere. It’s called “Obsession.” This DVD goes about an hour and a half. There are many clips of this so-called charismatic Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
The guy is a flaming maniac! You might want to say he’s charismatic in the sense that he’s able to convince his own people to strap bombs all over them and go out and blow themselves up, including his own son in 1997. I guess you could call that charismatic. Then he had the audacity to talk about how proud he was of his son for this kind of sacrifice. He’s typical of these guys. Gets everybody else to go out and do the dirty work but you don’t see him in the ditch, in the Construction Jihad, and you don’t see him strapping bombs all over himself. I’m going to have to watch this thing again, because this guy is all over it, along with a bunch of other guys like him, and they are out there swearing and promising death to all the infidels, and they’re stirring crowds up into a frenzy. This silly notion that they provide social services and so forth, as though the Israelis don’t? As though we don’t? As though the Brits don’t? As though the Dutch don’t? As though the Japanese and the Chinese and the Asians don’t? Hezbollah does?
What is the incessant need on the part of the drive-bys to humanize — well, I don’t even need to finish asking the question because I am capable of answering it. They are the small fry. They are the victims. And they are the people of color. They are very small, and it’s a big, powerful, mean Israel with jets and big tanks against these poor people who are just trying to provide Construction Jihad and wife swapping services for veterans. Well, not swapping, though that probably happens, too. Wife finding — what a great culture! And here Israel is on the verge of wiping ’em out, why, we can’t sit by and tolerate this. Remember the call we had yesterday from Pamela, the blogger, who had been to the pro-Israel rally in New York City? She was excited, and I went and looked at her website. And she’s a babe. She’s got, I think, four kids if I read right, but she’s very active, and she’s got pictures from this thing yesterday, some of the finest, funniest pictures of Hillary that I have seen.
She was talking a blue streak, and she mentions on her website, and I’ll get the link here in a second. I still got it here, have it written down, I’ll get it to you after the break here, but she talks about how the big thing of the day was getting through to me and spreading the word on this program about the rally. But she said something, that Elie Wiesel was there, and Elie Wiesel thanked God for President Bush, and she said, “You won’t see this anywhere else, this won’t be reported anywhere,” and she was right. We have the audio of Elie Wiesel. This was reported nowhere else in the Drive-By Media. This is Internet quality here but you’ll be able to hear Elie Wiesel speaking yesterday at the pro-Israel rally in New York City.
ELIE WIESEL: Israel, you are not alone. You never will be alone. We are with you and America is with you, and the president of the United States, thank God for him now.
RUSH: Well, there you have it, and in terms of someone with — look it — now we’ve got another profile piece on this wacko — every time I see his name, Hassan Nasrallah, I think of nostrils, I think of a nose. Just like that terrorist that killed Meyer Kahani, Abu Salaam Nose Hair or something. There he is — CNN International is doing a puff piece profile on this guy and how great he is and what he’s meant to his peoples and so forth.
Here’s Hillary at the same rally, by the way, a montage of Hillary at the pro-Israel rally. Just listen, and I have a question for you.
HILLARY: Israel has every right to defend herself, and the world must know that the United States, our government, and our people will stand with Israel. We will support her efforts to send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians, to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom.
RUSH: Okay. Does that sound presidential to you? Does it sound like a future president shrieking at you there, ladies and gentlemen, or an ex-wife?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I had a chance to tune into some of this puff piece profile of — (interruption) yeah, what’s his name — Hassan Nasrallah? It’s not Nasarally, Snerdley, it’s Nasrallah. At any rate, it’s so funny. They got their reporter out there and apparently the big story is he’s huge in Syria. They love Nasrallah in Syria, got wide support. You can even go to Singapore, you can go anywhere in the world and there are posters of this guy all over the towns, and they love this guy. He’s got total support, and I said, “Wait a second here,” I know how PR works, and I know that these mass movements require all kinds of — these are not even free societies we’re talking about where people can put posters up of who they like. You put the wrong poster up and you get gunned down in five minutes in most of these places.
I know how this PR works, and it’s amazing. The media, if they want to, Drive-By Media will fall for the slickest PR campaign depending on who puts it out. It’s clear that there’s an effort now to humanize and to soften the image of a bunch of terrorists. Hezbollah, do you know how long they have been around? They are terrorists! These are the clowns that blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut. These are the clowns that participated in the Khobar Towers bombing. These clowns have been terrorists for a long time. But all of a sudden, now that they’re engaged with a US ally, why, they’re just poor little wife finders, construction workers, doctors and nurses, water sanitation experts, school teachers. (Laughing.) It never gets easy, doing the right thing and being the big guy is never an easy thing, particularly when so many of the members of your club resent you, and I would say that that represents the Drive-By Media.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Your first today, Brandon, on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s a pleasure talking to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, I was just going to comment, I was watching the news all day today because it’s my day off from work and the Hezbollah story in Washington, when you came out today with your intro saying that they were trying to — the left was trying to sympathies with Hezbollah, it’s total — just crap. I mean, like you’re the Michael Moore on the right just blowing things out of proportion and totally turning them around.
RUSH: Well, that’s your take. I saw what I saw, and I saw idolatry — look it, I see a bunch of lies being told about the guy. I hear it; I played the sound bites. Social services and all this sort of stuff, this is a cover for a murderous bunch of terrorists. It’s no different than trying to make the Mafia look like angels. These are murdering terrorists. What is so hard to understand? Here’s Tony Snow right now on CNN, he’s doing his briefing at the White House and they are showing a press conference, the video only of this Hezbollah leader, giving him moral equivalence to Tony Snow. We aren’t even fighting these guys, Israel is. You tell me, why in the world would a major media operation and this guy, this Hezbollah leader’s picture right now is much bigger than Tony Snow’s. He’s getting a bigger area, frame of the TV than is Tony Snow and the White House press conference today, the press briefing that he conducts. What’s the purpose of that?
CALLER: No, I’m not sure what you’re talking about here, but I wanted to go back to my point. When I was watching today they spent about ten seconds talking about Hezbollah doing the social services and that was just explaining how Hezbollah has infiltrated the Lebanon’s government and how — what they are doing. The left is in no way trying to say that they weren’t a murderous terrorist group. I mean, I just think you’re totally blowing it out of proportion. They are terrorists and they need to be stopped. But that was not the left’s point of trying to humanize them and sympathize with them at all.
RUSH: Well, I think it is, and I think it’s part of a pattern. It’s not just Hezbollah. Bin Laden has been praised for some of the great social work he has done, and they do this — you can’t take the context out of it, Brandon. For example, let’s do a comparison. I want you to go get audio sound bite number one, Mike, and then I want you to go get number 14. I want to play these cuts back-to-back, just to illustrate my point. Here is a montage of CNN, MSNBC, CNN, and I don’t know who this fourth guy is — the Wall Street Journal reporter, Yaroslav Trofimov, and they’re talking about Hezbollah and humanizing them. Listen to this again.
KING: Hezbollah is a significant political force in Lebanon, holding seats in parliament and running cabinet ministries and building public support by running social welfare programs.
MITCHELL: Hezbollah’s charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has become Lebanon’s best known and most controversial politician. Nasrallah provides social services.
O’BRIEN: We see the militant side of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah derives support from its civilian component, its ability to deliver services.
TROFIMOV: Hezbollah doesn’t just fight, but it also runs a construction branch, which is called the Construction Jihad, which builds houses for its members, and it even runs a social service for the veterans, for the wounded in these battles, with a match making branch. It finds wives, for example, for the veterans who marry them out of a sense of jihad, without even meeting them first.
RUSH: All right, now, let’s go to cut 13 here. This is Chris Matthews, talking with David Gregory on Hardball last night.
MATTHEWS: We’re all taught by our mothers never to talk when we’re eating, we’re also told by our colleagues don’t talk when the line is hot. Did the president make both mistakes today?
GREGORY: Well, it appears he did. It’s certainly nothing different than the president has been saying.
RUSH: All right, and so they’ve continued to focus on that slip of the tongue. Well, it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, with the open mic where the president uttered this mild profanity describing the by-product of certain body functions. Meanwhile, we don’t get any humanization of George W. Bush, and we certainly don’t get any humanization of the American military. We don’t get any stories about the heroism of the American military in Iraq. All we get are how there is a bunch of bloodthirsty murderers and how our prison people do nothing but torture and maim and humiliate people.
If you look at the coverage — and this is something, Brandon, you cannot take out of the equation, it’s part of the context — you look at the way the United States Drive-By Media treats its own members in the US military, its own citizens, and the prison guards and so forth and the president, you compare it with that montage that I just played for you about Hassan Nasrallah and how wonderful he is and what great social services this terrorist group operates; I guarantee you if you landed here from Mars and you watched the drive-by coverage of US military personnel in Iraq versus the coverage of Hezbollah in the last couple of days, you would conclude Hezbollah is the good guys according to the Drive-By Media. Don’t forget, Reuters doesn’t even allow terrorists to be called terrorists in their news stories.