RUSH: Katie Couric last night led her hapless newscast with the Iraq Surrender Group, and she was just breathlessly reporting the study, breathlessly, it was like the Second Coming, ladies and gentlemen. Well, she hit her lowest ratings since taking the anchor chair last night. ABC beat her four to one in Chicago, she was beaten three to one in Philadelphia. ABC doubled her ratings in New York City. She led with the dullest pile of steamy nothing of the year. Now, I realize my ratings are immune to that kind of cellar-dwelling position that she has earned, ladies and gentlemen, but still, we have an obligation here.
One of the silliest notions in this surrender report is talking to our enemies. I mentioned this yesterday. Baker, “Well, we talked to the Soviet Union for 40 years.” Yeah, and we also deployed Pershing missiles in Europe, as well as spent them into oblivion because we were taking them on. It was Reagan idealism that prevailed over the Soviet Union and the evil of Soviet communism. These people are running around talking about “the new realism, the new realism.” It’s bureaucrat-speak. It’s nothing but elitist hogwash. Realism, pragmatism, consensus, bipartisanship. It’s all bunk. In the first place there’s nothing wrong with partisanship. Bipartisanship means that somebody had to cave, and guess who caved? It was our side that caved on this because this document pretty much — in fact the Democrats, they’re accusing the commission of plagiarism essentially.
They’re running around saying, “Well, we’re happy to see they took our ideas. Most of these ideas in this surrender group report are ours.” Pelosi’s out there saying it, Reid’s out there saying it. Stop short of this, gang, because they didn’t take John Murtha’s idea of cut-and-run, they specifically reject that. But this notion of talking to our enemies, the west and the United Nations, we’ve been talking to Iran for what now on their nuclear program, three years? If it’s three years, it’s six. I mean, how long have we been talking to them? The result is what? They are three years closer to nukes. We’re going to talk to them next month, they’re going to be a month closer to nukes. We’re going to talk to them another six years, they’re going to be six years closer to nukes. Oh, yeah. But we can do this in a bipartisan fashion, we can make everybody feel better and we can make people think that we’re going to get along with these people because we can go talk to them.
Well, how about going back in time, turning back the pages of history and looking at another time in American history with a talk-to-the-enemy result. The day before Pearl Harbor, Baker-Hamilton Day 1941 — that would be December 6th. By the way, I’m going to make a motion that all these calendars that you go out and buy either on your computer or at the bookstore, whatever, have an official notation now, December 6th, Baker-Hamilton Day. Just Baker-Hamilton, Iraq Surrender Group Study Day. Put it on the calendar and make it official. It’s one of the biggest days in American history, judging by the way these worthless nomads in the Drive-By Media are celebrating and reacting to it. It’s the biggest day in American history in their lives certainly. But going back to December 6th, 1941, in the afternoon Japan sent the first segments of a 14-part message to its embassy in Washington, and the instructions were ordering the Japanese ambassador to present final demands to the United States at one p.m. Washington time tomorrow, December 7th.
The one group, the one country that the group wants no involvement in any discussion over there is Israel. This plan, if it were implemented and if it ever happened can only succeed if Israel sold out. The right of return basically is endorsed by this idiot bunch of people, which would allow the Palestinians to head home and claim what they claim was theirs prior to 1948, Jerusalem and everything else. This is a political statement.
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Let me share with you the words of Bill Bennett writing at National Review Online about the Iraq Surrender Group. He says, ‘I’ve heard again and again — at the press conference and on subsequent interviews — variants of ‘this is how a commission should work in Washington,’ ‘this has been great bi-partisanship,’ ‘it’s too bad we can’t operate this way more,’ ‘if any message is to be sent it’s the message that five Republicans and five Democrats of goodwill sat down since March and put together a remarkable document.” Those are some of the things being said about this embarrassment and abomination of a report. As Uncle Bob’s brother, Bill, says, ‘This is the triumph of the therapeutic, where bipartisanship — a hug across the aisle — has become a higher value than justice. The crisis of the house divided has been inverted; we no longer are worried about the crisis but the House, the moral, the good, and the just take a backseat to collegiality. Does history really give a hoot about bipartisanship? Who cares whether they are getting along?’
Show me the book in the library, “Great Bipartisanship in American History.” Where does it happen? “The task is to do the right thing, especially in war. But, when relativism is the highest value, agreement becomes the highest goal, regardless of right and wrong. And, woe to those who disagree, they will be sent whence they came – the outer reaches of ‘extremism.’ This is the tyranny of the ‘best people’ today?s equivalent of the Cliveden set. One reporter asked if the president would accept this ‘edict,’–” This was Dana Bash at CNN — we talked about it yesterday — exhibiting a total lack of understanding of how the Constitution is set up.”
Mr. Bennett concludes, “In all my time in Washington I’ve never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible.” You want to hear some great lines from this report? Try this. Recommendation number 19. “The president and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership.” Wow. That’s recommendation number 19. There are 79 recommendations in this thing, and here’s number 19. “The president and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership.”
Do you realize how fortunate we are to have such brilliant Republicans and Democrats on the surrender group to come up with that? I mean, folks, this is special. Not a one of us has the brain power, the intellect, the insight, the enlightenment to ever conclude something this brilliant. This is why we need special people, my friends, who do not see the world in such simplistic terms, but rather see the world as a complex morass of gray and shades of gray, and only with their superior insight and intellect can they conclude that the president and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership. Would you like another one? “The support group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq, and of course Iraq itself.” Well, how long did they have to write this? I’ve read that to you as it — I’ve truncated it, but “the support group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq and of course Iraq itself.
Here’s a passage in the surrender group report on Syria and what Syria can expect to get if it pitches in and helps us solve the problem in Iraq. Quote, ‘In exchange for these actions and in the context of a full and secure peace agreement, the Israelis should return the Golan Heights with sustainable negotiations leading to a final peace settlement which would address the key final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return, and the end of conflict.’ So what we are prepared to offer — so what this group wants to offer Syria for their help, is Israel. This document sells Israel out, our lone ally. And, by the way, they are not invited to be part of the international support group to discuss the circumstances there. Yes, Mr. Snerdley? Program observer has a question. What’s the question? Make it brief. Mr. Snerdley’s question is an obvious question, it’s a very logical question, a question that many of you are no doubt asking — what is the question again? ‘What the hell are they trying to do excluding Israel?’
It is clear to me that several members of this study group think that Israel is the problem. But you have to ask — Mark Steyn addressed that, by the way. He did it very well here. ‘For the Baker group to endorse this clapped out pan-Arabism is disgusting. An ‘Arab-Israeli peace’? What does that mean? What exactly is Israel doing to Iraq, or Tunisia, or Qatar, or any other Arabs except those in the ‘Palestinian territories’? To frame it in those terms is to adopt the pathologies of the enemy. Shame on Baker, Hamilton and all the rest.’ This is exactly right. Israel is being portrayed as the problem here. There’s an undertone in this document that pretty much leads me to believe that many in the group feel this way, staff, whoever wrote this thing. But Steyn is right: What’s Israel doing to Saudi Arabia? What’s Israel doing to Qatar? What’s Israel doing to Dubai? Israel is doing nothing to anybody. What’s Israel doing to Iran? What’s Israel got to do with this at all? Jimmy Carter could have written this. Jimmy Carter could have done the press conference yesterday. This is right out of the Jimmy Carter brain such that it still is. Jeff in San Francisco, you’re first on the phones today. Welcome on the program.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: It is so good to have you on the radio, man, I can’t tell you. I’m calling basically about Leon Panetta. Leon Panetta’s comments, he lectures the president, and he says the president understands that we have to — we can’t be divided.
RUSH: Yeah, he told the president, ‘Mr. President, the country is divided on this, we can’t have that.’
CALLER: The Democrats spent the last two years under the direction of Nancy Pelosi on a take no prisoners, oppose the president, oppose everything that the administration tried to do for success in Iraq, and now to come out and say the president is responsible for us being divided.
RUSH: That’s exactly right, no, no, no, from Panetta’s standpoint, from Pelosi’s standpoint, from Reid’s standpoint, from their arrogant, condescending smugness standpoint, they’re exactly right. You know, bipartisanship simply means Republicans cave on their core principles and agree with Democrats. That’s why everybody is praising the stupid report. Because there’s nothing in this about winning, there’s nothing in this about victory. There isn’t anything in this about moving forward in a positive way. This is cut-and-run, surrender without the words.
RUSH: Well, wait.
CALLER: — that would help us win.
RUSH: You gotta understand. These people are serious. They did what they think is the best work they could have done. They’ve come up with what they think are the smartest recommendations available. Now, I’m not trying to be funny here. I want you to understand who these people are. They are not the best and brightest, but they themselves think so. Who with any humanity at all could write recommendation 19? ‘It’s important for the US president and his national security team to remain in constant contact with Iraq.’ What? What? I would be embarrassed to put that in. That’s something that a junior high school essayist on a final exam might throw in or a Miss America Pageant contestant who wants to be Miss America on an agenda of world peace. But this is absurd. This is actually embarrassing. This is what passes for the best and brightest and those people think they are.
As to Pelosi and Reid and the Democrats dividing the country, you’re absolutely right, they have. But they say it’s Bush’s fault because Bush isn’t them, Bush isn’t listening to them. In order to understand liberals — and I know you do, Jeff, because you are surrounded by them out there. By the way, how’s the aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies today at the bus stops? What you have to understand, folks, is that there is arrogance. It is a pompous arrogance and condescension. Liberals are so arrogant and pompous and condescending, they will not even deign to discuss these things with people because it’s beneath them to do so. If you don’t have the smarts to understand it, you’re not worth talking to, instead they’ll call you names. So they do. Look it, when they tell you, or Panetta says that the country is divided and it’s up to Bush to do something about it, Panetta is being genuinely honest. It’s up to Bush to adopt Democrat ideas, to get rid of this divide.
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This from the Washington Post. Just to illustrate what I was just saying. The story here: ‘From Hundreds Of Sources, Panel Forged Consensus — Intense Talks Bridged Ideological Divide.’ This is written by Peter Baker, Robin Wright and Dafna Linzer. There’s only one relevant paragraph in here to make it clear to you how the Washington intelligentsia, the elites, the liberals look at this. ‘Whether the end result will prove meaningful is another question. A plan emerging from the middle invariably unsettles those at either end who view it as wholly inadequate. Even some of the authors consider the report released yesterday a ‘messy compromise,’ as one put it. But the story of how a little-noticed commission created by Congress evolved into a political powerhouse and a symbol of national unity harks back to a different time, when for better or worse ‘Wise Men’ advised presidents and shaped policy.’
I know, it’s a total load of bull.