RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bite roster. This is Senator Dick Durbin yesterday. He’s on the floor of the Senate talking about our troops. Listen to this.
DURBIN: Our hearts go out to those families. Our prayers are with them and the troops, as this decision is made to escalate this war in Iraq. These troops followed these orders because they are the best and the bravest.
RUSH: Yeah?
DURBIN: They march off to war, risking their lives away from those that they love because they are sworn to protect this great nation.
RUSH: I’m starting to cry here.
DURBIN: We can never thank them enough —
RUSH: No, we can’t.
DURBIN: — for what they are doing.
RUSH: You should start.
DURBIN: And every moment of debate that we have on the floor of this Senate about the policy —
RUSH: Right.
DURBIN: — of our government toward Iraq —
RUSH: Yes.
DURBIN: — should not diminish or detract from our great debt of gratitude to these men and women and their families.
RUSH: Well, a little guilt there pouring out of the mouth of Senator Durbin. Can we go back to June 10th of 2005 on that same Senate floor.
DURBIN: If I read this to you and didn’t tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that’s not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their own prisoners.
RUSH: Well, now, which, Senator Turban, are we going to believe? First off, we have Senator Turban who is doing everything he can to defeat this new surge, this new presidential policy, doing everything he can to cut the funding. He’s part of cabal that wants to cut the funding from the troops that Ted Kennedy and the gang are talking about, and we owe them a deep debt of gratitude? This is disingenuous and phony as anything he’s ever said. He knows that he’s about to participate here in a symbolic vote that would cut off funds from the troops, but yet he knows the riskiness of that position and he wants it well known, he wants it on the record of his debt of gratitude and his appreciation and his understanding for what these troops do.
It’s what I told you in the first hour. I don’t care how opposed to this the American people are, and I?ve seen too many conflicting polls on this. I don’t know what the real pulse of the country is on this. But the one thing I do know is that if you do anything that punishes the soldiers and makes them look like they’re the guilty ones, you cut off funding, you may as well cut off their legs and the American people are not going to put up with that. Durbin understands and Chuck Rangel and these guys, they understand what a real vote to cut the funding would mean, so he has to go out on the floor and practically cry about how much he appreciates these people. I’m sorry, Senator Durbin, it’s too little, too late. We needed to hear this from the outset of the war, and we need to hear it within the context of your confidence that these brave troops can achieve victory, but you can’t bring yourself to do that because you can’t stand for victory on the table as a possibility because that would make George Bush look good, and Bush remains the real enemy of the Democrat Party today. One more from Senator Durbin, and this is this morning on the Senate floor talking about the troops again.
DURBIN: President Bush has reversed a position which he took early on. His position was that he would heed the advice and counsel of the men and women in uniform. The president told us over and over again he would only dispatch as many troops as they asked for. But clearly that has changed.
RUSH: Wait. I can’t handle the rest of this – stop this. The whole time Bush was listening to the generals, you were telling him that the generals needed to be fired. You were telling him that Rumsfeld needed to be fired because Rumsfeld was the architect of torture, Rumsfeld was the architect of troop levels. You wanted him firing everybody to whom he was listening and now all of a sudden these guys come forward and disparage Bush for not listening to the generals and now increasing troop levels. This is an illustration — no matter what Bush does — and you Republicans, someday, I hope it’s my lifetime, you are going to learn this — no matter what you say to try to curry favor with these people, it will not matter. They will lie and twist and misrepresent what you’ve said to fit their own interests, because they know they have the megaphone of the Drive-By Media to get away with it, and they will not be called on it. Here’s the rest of what he said.
DURBIN: More American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future. Those are the words of the commanding general in Iraq just a few weeks ago. Those were words which the president told the American people repeatedly would be his guidance in making decisions about whether to send more troops into battle. Those are words which the president tonight will ignore and reject.
RUSH: Yeah, because everybody was saying this isn’t working. Bush gave it time to work, he decided to change generals. He got sick and tired of listening to generals telling him they didn’t think that this policy was going to wrap up quickly enough. He’s changing generals. He’s getting some kick-ass generals in there to give him a different point of view, just like Abraham Lincoln switched generals. McClellan, Ulysses S. Grant. Not all generals are alike, but that’s not the point here. The point is when the generals are saying what the Democrats don’t want to hear, they’ll rip Bush to shreds. When all of a sudden Bush changes generals and they start saying things the Democrats again don’t want to hear, they’ll act like they agreed with the first set of generals when they were demanding that whole structure quit and be fired.
Now, once again we see from Senator Durbin here there’s no mention of victory, there’s no mention of winning, there’s no mention of triumph, there is no mention of national unity, there’s no desire to come together and win this as a nation. Even with what’s going on in Somalia, what’s going on in Afghanistan, this threat is real. There is no recognition of it. I have said over and over, these people are not ready, not fit to be trusted with national security, and as each day mounts, each day passes, evidence of that continues to mount.