Liberals Still Obsessed with Rush & Path to 9/11

RUSH: This next story — I’m sure you’ve seen this, heard about it. This is the kind of thing that infuriates me, and I have to tell you, when I watched The Path to 9/11. (By the way, we’re going back to audio sound bites three and four next, Ed.) When I saw all of the hesitation and all the rules and all the regulations that prevented us from taking out Bin Laden or other terrorists, my blood boiled, and now there’s this story in the New York Post today. Taliban — and there’s a picture of it. “Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral – and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone – dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report.
“U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial…” NBC had the pictures. It looked like there might have been a hundred and ninety of them there! “The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground. ‘We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture,’ one U.S. Army officer told NBC. But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report. Pentagon officials declined comment and referred The Post to Central Command officers in Afghanistan, who did not respond to a request for comment or explanation,” by press time.
Now, the Taliban bombs other Muslim funerals. The Taliban hides behind women and children, as does Al-Qaeda and all of these other terrorists. This is a new kind of war and we’re going to have to rethink these rules. I know why we do it, folks. I know why we do it. We do it to maintain the United States’ dignity and so forth. I understand not blowing up cemeteries and this sort of thing, but, man, we spell out hiding places for them in the process.
Let me go back to this, a couple more sound bites here on The Path to 9/11. We have an unreal analysis here from a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His name is Michael Delli Carpini and he’s being interviewed by PBS correspondent Jeffrey Brown who says, “There have been reports in recent days about ties between the filmmakers [The Path to 9/11] and conservative causes or organizations. I would quickly add, it’s not quite clear what that means exactly or what those ties would mean, but because it’s been so much discussed, in what ways would that matter to you, perhaps, and what way wouldn’t it matter to you?”

CARPINI: I think it matters a lot, and the ties are both with the director and with the screenwriter, and they have to do with involvements with organizations that have, as part of their mission, bringing more conservative views into mainstream media. What the audience needs to know — and what needs to be up front with people as they view it if they’re going to watch critically and understand what’s being said to them — is that that’s the case. I would put on the network a very strong obligation to let its audience know that they are getting a film that comes from a point of view, even if there is an effort to make that point of view more subtle and even if —
RUSH: Stop the tape. Stop the tape! Mr. Delli Carpini, would you also agree that we need such disclaimers in front of practically 90% of the movies that come out of Hollywood for the big screen and for television? What is this? To say that there is an agenda behind movies is now and only conservatives are doing it, and the public needs to be warned about this? And, by the way, what is so threatening and what is so dangerous about conservatives in Hollywood attempting to produce and write and distribute product? Well, I’ll tell you what’s so threatening about it, folks: the same way this program threatens them! They used to have a monopoly, and they’re worried sick they’re going to lose it. This movie, The Path to 9/11, was an earth-shattering thing. There’s no crime in being conservative. Oh, sorry. Yes, there is. Conservatism is criminal. They are attempting to criminalize conservative ideology. Here’s the rest of the bite. We’ve got one more from this guy.
CARPINI: Just as we would company a news show to tell us, uh, where their information is coming from, is there a bias, is this an opinion —
RUSH: Hold it! Hold it! Hold it! When do we get that? When do we ever get a news show telling us of their bias and where a certain story came from? This guy is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania! Here’s the rest.
CARPINI: — in their presentation of things.
RUSH: And then the next bite is this. Actually, different, different. It’s not the same guy. That, again, was University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Delli Carpini. On MSNBC yesterday the anchor babe, Milissa Rehberger, talking to Democrat strategerist Flavia Colgan. (Maybe it’s Flah-via, I don’t know. I’ve never heard it pronounced.) Rehberger says, “After you saw The Path to 9/11, were you upset ABC didn’t pull it altogether or did the edited version make a difference?”
COLGAN: Oh, absolutely not! One, I think it undercuts the credibility of the film when you have it being released to Rush Limbaugh beforehand! $40 million funding it, we don’t know where it’s coming from! Sandy Berger and Clinton were — were well, um, within their rights certainly to appeal to Tom Kean, the Republican co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission —
RUSH: Stop the tape! $40 million and we don’t know where it came from? How about ABC? It’s an ABC movie, Flavia-Flah-via. Touchstone put it out. I do have the DVDs. It irritates them so much. They can’t get over this! They’re beside themselves over the fact that I got the DVDs. But I wasn’t the first, Flavia-Flah-via. How many times have I got to say this? This movie was screened to the national press and half the audience was Democrats including Richard Ben-Veniste and some people from the 9/11 Commission. I was not first on the list. I had nothing to do with writing this thing! I didn’t even talk to Cyrus Nowrasteh in the process. All I knew was, some years, ago he was working on it. But, frankly, when he told me about it, it went in one ear and out the other because I figured, “This thing doesn’t have prayer, but go for it, Cyrus.” I didn’t even get all the details. I had no clue what this thing was going to be before I saw it! They think I wrote it. They think I guided Cyrus and his people. This is an ABC project, folks! This is ABC project, and I’ll bet you before all this hubbub came up, this thing was so good, I will bet you ABC, Iger thought it was one of the greatest things they’ve ever produced internally.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This University of Pennsylvania professor for just a second, Michael Delli Carpini, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, being asked about the movie, The Path to 9/11 — and I’m not going to listen to the whole thing. Stand by, Ed, for when I tell you to kill it.

CARPINI: I think it matters a lot, and the ties are both are the director and with the screenwriter, and they have to do with involvements with organizations that have, as part of their mission, bringing more conservative views into mainstream media. What the audience needs to know — and what needs to be up front with people as they view it if they’re going to watch critically and understand what’s being said to them — is that that’s the case. I would put on the network a very strong obligation to let its audience know that they are getting a film that comes from a point of view —

RUSH: Stop the tape. All right, sir. Mr. Delli Carpini, let’s say I were to take your suggestion as something useful and valuable. I would then say this to PBS and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: ‘The next time you have University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Delli Carpini on, inform your viewers he has a point of view. Inform your viewers where he comes from; inform your viewers where he’s a liberal criticizing what he thinks is a conspiratorial conservative movie.’ I mean, if it’s good for the goose it’s good for the gander. If conservatives in Hollywood have to identify their work — ‘We’re conservatives and this has a conservative slant!’ — then I think every liberal ought to be forced to do the same thing.

These people! You know, all these professors and all these elitists, are the smartest people in the world, a cut above — and they’re not. They’re so easily refutable (refut-able, for those of you in Rio Linda) that it’s hardly worst the time. I want to go back and correct something, folks. I said a moment ago that these libs think that I co-wrote The Path to 9/11 because I’m a friend of the writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, and they’re out there trying to say that it got released to Limbaugh first. They’re trying to imply Limbaugh was in on it. Here’s the bottom line: they know I had nothing to do with this.

They know full well I had nothing to do with any aspect of this movie . This is just the way they do things, typical smear tactics. I’m bad. Cyrus Nowrasteh is bad; that equals the movie is bad. They do it to people. They do it to people like me and Cheney and Bush and Rove and Rumsfeld. They do it to companies: Exxon, Wal-Mart, Halliburton. They do it to objects, guns, cigarettes and SUVs. All they do is smear things and smear people! They produce nothing. Liberals produce nothing. They accomplish nothing. They’re responsible for nothing. So they seek and destroy, because that’s the only way they can deal with their opponents is to discredit them.

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