RUSH: We start in St. Louis. This is Steve. You’re up, sir. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
RUSH: Good.
RUSH: Well, it’s good to know that you’re there.
CALLER: You know?
RUSH: You took what I said personally, obviously.
CALLER: Well, yes. I think the majority of liberals and/or Democrats are taking it personally.
RUSH: Well, I hope they do. Let me tell you — I didn’t say it because I didn’t mean it.
CALLER: Why did you say it?
RUSH: I only listen to what Democrats say. I only read what they write on their blogs. I only listen to what they say to me on the phones here when they write me e-mails, listen to the Democrats in Washington. I dare say you can’t find one but Joe Lieberman who is making any sense about this or is even talking about victory and American might and American righteousness. I can’t find any of them.
CALLER: Rush, when the war first started, okay, you didn’t hear the outcry from liberals and Democrats. I was pro-this war, okay? But after these many years, it’s gone on too long.
RUSH: Right. Right.
CALLER: It’s gone on too long.
RUSH: We need to quit. We need to quit and get out of there.
CALLER: We need a strategy. We don’t need to quit.
RUSH: Well, what do you think is coming tonight?
CALLER: What’s coming tonight is, in your terms —
RUSH: Wait a minute. Did you say we need an exit strategy? That’s quitting, that’s cutting-and-running, that’s get out.
CALLER: No, Rush, let’s say it’s five years from now.
RUSH: Right?
CALLER: And we leave Iraq.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Isn’t that cutting-and-running?
RUSH: Not if there’s victory.
CALLER: What if there isn’t?
RUSH: You keep going ’til there’s victory.
CALLER: What’s victory?
RUSH: Victory is a stable Iraq.
CALLER: What’s your definition of victory?
CALLER: Rush, there comes a time —
RUSH: To quit.
CALLER: — no, not quit.
RUSH: I’m sorry, Steve, I can interpret it no other way. When you want to leave before the job’s done, whether it’s a war or whether it’s the assignment you have at whatever job you were — when you leave before it’s done, when you quit, there’s nothing valorous about it.
CALLER: I’ll tell you something, okay?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: There comes a time who you have to make a decision whether it’s the right or the wrong or the good or the bad. It’s come a time when the war has gone on too long, you have an exit strategy, whether it’s —
RUSH: Will you —
CALLER: — there’s no winning or losing.
RUSH: Yes, there is. You sound like Nancy Pelosi now. There’s no winning or losing, it’s just a situation we gotta fix.
CALLER: You know, again, and I hate, with all due respect, with all due respect —
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: — for many years
RUSH: I what’s coming now.
CALLER: — for many years — many, many years — no, for many, many years, and believe it or not I do listen to your program. I don’t agree with you the majority of the time.
RUSH: No. You need to work on that, too.
CALLER: Well — but you have termed people as being flip-floppers, okay? For many, many years, George Bush has said, ?Stay the course, stay this course, stay the course.? And now, he’s the biggest flip-flopper of them at all. He’s changing. Wouldn’t you say that?
RUSH: I can’t believe, of all the things that you have said, that’s the thing I find most incredulous. Bush is flip-flopping by changing strategy to win? Bush has never wavered from the desire to win. He is trying a new set of generals and a new set of strategical moves oriented toward victory, and you are look at that as a flip-flop?
CALLER: I would venture to say that the majority of people look at it that way.
RUSH: Well, let me ask you, where in the Constitution does it say that the majority of the American people are the commander-in-chief and the commander-in-chief has to bend to the will of the majority of the people?
CALLER: I can’t answer that.
RUSH: Well, because it’s not there.
CALLER: Well, okay.
RUSH: It’s not there. Bush can’t get elected anymore because he can’t run anymore, unlike Hugo Chavez, who is going to set up unlimited terms in Venezuela. Steve, seriously, there?s something you guys have to consider here. You opened your call by pointing out how you were heavy metal to the pedal ready to go for war when this whole thing started, you were right there, and all the Democrats were, too. And you’re right. In fact, they were so eager they demanded a new resolution in October of 2002 to make sure the American people knew they were for this, because the American people were ready to kick some ass after 9/11. Bush warned us about various aspects of Iraq and Saddam Hussein using identical words Bill Clinton had used in 1998.
Then when we got to a hundred casualties, that’s when the linguini-spined began to fall out. Then they started, “Bush lied to us, Bush lied to us, Bush lied to us, he lied to us!” There is a permanent anti-war wing of the Democrat Party, and it is existing whether there’s a war or not. It comes to life when there is a war, and it is in the Democrat Party, and it is large. It defines a whole segment of the Democrat Party and there are many reasons for it. They are pacifists, they are guilty, they think America deserves to lose in war, they are hesitant for the American military to succeed because it makes war look productive, which it is if it’s fought for the right purposes and the right places, but it never fails.
You can call here and try to claim all this great heroic credit for supporting this at the outset, but you get no credit when you want to cut-and-run before we win, meaning we lose. You don’t get credit, that’s not smart thinking, that’s not enlightened in any way, shape, manner, or form. Be patient. Just wait two years. You’ll probably elect a Democrat president and we’ll quit everything, we’ll give up everything and we’ll really start blaming America for problems like global warming, lack of a cure for Parkinson’s. If you want this country beat to shreds so that it’s unrecognizable in about ten to 15 years, be patient. If the Democrats win the White House in 2008, that process will begin.
RUSH: Frank in Tarpon Springs, Florida, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, I supported this war from the beginning and I’ve supported the president up until now.
RUSH: Another one.
CALLER: I believe that a troop surge at this point is misguided policy, and I’ll give you my explanation real quick.
RUSH: Okay, I’m ready. Let me take notes here.
CALLER: In 1991, we sent 575,000 young Americans, of which I was one —
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: — to Saudi Arabia to remove Saddam’s troops from a country the size of Rhode Island.
RUSH: Wait a minute. They sent you to Saudi Arabia?
CALLER: I was in the Red Sea, technically, but that’s where we were, in that region, Saudi Arabia, most of the troops were on the ground in Saudi Arabia.
RUSH: Uh, Frank, my friend, it was Kuwait you’re talking about here.
CALLER: Yes, sir, 1991.
RUSH: Right. Kuwait. That’s not Saudi Arabia.
CALLER: Okay, well, the American troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia on the ground. Regardless, we sent 575,000 —
RUSH: We had a base there, but we sent 500-plus-thousand to Kuwait.
CALLER: Okay. Well, we sent them to Saudi Arabia and then they invaded and went into Kuwait. Not all of them, part of them. But anyway, we sent 575,000 troops to the region to accomplish that mission. In 2003, we sent roughly 200,000 to occupy a country, topple the government for multiple years, a country of size of California. Now we need more troops to secure Baghdad.
RUSH: Wait, wait —
CALLER: So we need more troops now, we needed more troops in the beginning. This president has been presiding over a misguided policy from the beginning because he didn’t execute it properly.
RUSH: Wait a minute. You said you supported it from the beginning.
CALLER: Rush, hindsight is 20/20, okay? If you don’t have enough troops from the beginning, I can’t help you.
RUSH: Here’s something you people are missing. You’re still exhibiting the classic characteristics of quitters. Okay, 20/20 hindsight. Okay, might have been a mistaken the way it started, might have been the mistaken the way the mission was first defined, what does that matter? I’ve had this conversation so many times. I was at a golf resort down in Puerto Rico shortly after the invasion took place, liberal came up to me, ?You have to admit that this was ill-conceived.? ?Okay, I’ll grant you, if that will make you happy and start talking about something else, I will say yes, it was ill-conceived, but now what do we do?? Do we pull out because it was ill-conceived? Do we go to the United Nations and say, (crying) ?We’re sorry, it was ill-conceived, and we lied.? What do we do? What do you people want? You want embarrassment for your country? You want shame for the country? Okay, we are there. There is a mission. This is very enlightening, very eye opening to me. This nation’s big problem, one we can add to the list, is there’s a pot load of quitters out there, and they also are in the Democratic Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Carl in Redlands, California. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
CALLER: Oh, thank you, Rush. My suggestion, under the circumstances that you’ve been talking about all morning, would be for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to resign, immediately.
RUSH: Snerdley, what are you doing to me here? (Laughing.) You really think that’s going to happen, Carl?
CALLER: I’m talking about just as many of the things you talk about never happen, I’m just saying that this would —
RUSH: No, but my ideas are productive.
CALLER: — course to get the nation back together again.
RUSH: You really think so?
CALLER: Oh, I think so, absolutely.
RUSH: For Bush and Cheney to resign?
CALLER: Why don?t you put it to your audience out there and have them call in and vote?
RUSH: No, because I don’t do that.
CALLER: I’m sure, because you know what the result would be.
RUSH: No, I don’t care what the result would be. This show is not about what the audience thinks, it’s about what I think. And I think that you?re an idiot.
CALLER: Let me ask you this, Rush. You think that you’re more intelligent than George Bush?
RUSH: Uhhhh, well, that would be hard to say. He’s got a Harvard MBA. He went to Yale. I don’t have those —
CALLER: That doesn’t mean anything, you know that.
RUSH: Oh, really?
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: It doesn’t mean anything when John Kerry has an education, and he’s an idiot, too?
CALLER: That’s correct. He is.
RUSH: Well, if Bush and Cheney resign, who do you think should be president?
CALLER: Anybody out there that has a modicum of intelligence could be president, to be superior to this lamebrain that we have heading our nation.
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: And you’re a supporter of this lamebrain.
RUSH: Well, because I know he’s not a lamebrain.
CALLER: Oh, really? Then you must be worse than he.
RUSH: Well, now, that’s clever. That’s clever. You are a regular listener to this program, and you know I’m anything but a lamebrain. You know that I am qualified for Mensa.
CALLER: Look, Rush, you blow yourself up so much that it’s amazing that you don’t explode or implode.
RUSH: Oh, I have not blown myself up.
CALLER: Oh, you always do, in your books, the books that you’ve written, and your daily broadcasts —
RUSH: Yes.
RUSH: No —
CALLER: You are even ahead of the —
RUSH: Not bragging if you can do it.
CALLER: Excellence in broadcasting corporation.
RUSH: Well, it is excellence in broadcasting. I don’t lie about any of this stuff. I’m one of the most humble people you’d ever meet out there, Carl.
CALLER: Be serious.
RUSH: I am being serious. You are making a mistake. It’s really not your fault. Bush has an articulation problem. That doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. He is not an idiot. He is not stupid, he’s not dumb, he is not in any way unintelligent.
CALLER: Well, then look at his record —
RUSH: I think it’s very arrogant and condescending of somebody sitting in Redlands, California, to presume that the president — you couldn’t do one thing in your life George Bush has done. You couldn’t put up with one day of the abuse George gets from people like you. You couldn’t put up with dealing with the stress and the pressure of doing that job. Look at this economy, look at the state of this country today. It is in great shape. It’s only because people like you don’t want to see it that you ignore it. You are the ones living in an alternative universe, and in the process you are the one blowing yourself up to be something that you aren’t.