RUSH: Brett in Reno, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Fine, sir.
CALLER: I’m calling to say that we are winning the war in Iraq and that Dick Durbin even said so last night, and I’m here to point out his hypocrisy. He said that we’ve enabled a constitution, free election, as well as, you know, deposing the dictator and trying him in front of his own countrymen and executing them, and then he had the gall to turn around and say that we are losing the war in Iraq, and the American people know it, and George Bush just admitted it. You can hear the sound bite from last night, it was sick.
RUSH: I saw Turban and I’ve got a little sound bite here. I didn’t choose that one because I don’t care in the substance of last night. Since when do the Democrats get to respond to a presidential speech on revised military tactics in the middle of a war? I can understand responding to State of the Union or whatever the hell else. But I mean that just illustrated to the Democrats this is a purely political matter. Anybody think that the president’s fighting this war politically? If the president were fighting this war politically, we’d be gone, he’d have an approval rating of 68% on the way out the door to Crawford. It’s the Democrats who are fighting this war politically and demanding equal time last night is the surest evidence of it. Who do they send out? They send out the guy who called American interrogators no different than Pol Pot’s thugs, the guys that ran the Nazi gulags, the Soviet gulags, the Nazi prison camps and so forth, and all these other reprobate regimes around the world.
So he goes out there and he praises the troops. You see, these guys know that they’ve got one foot in the quicksand on this. So Turban goes out there, praises the troops, talks about some of the great work they’ve done and then says it’s time to bring them home, we’re not winning, we don’t want to ramp this up. To my mind it’s pointless. I know many of you think it’s not because it’s relevant, these people influence the American people. But I can only take so much of it. I know what they’re going to do before they do it. I know what they’re going to say before they say it. I know these people like I’ve said countless times like every square inch of my glorious naked body and I’d rather look at that than them. Back in just a second.
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RUSH: Mike in Fort Hood, Texas, you’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: Mega Fort Hood 101st Screaming Eagle, 3rd Brigade dittos. I just came back from Iraq.
RUSH: God bless you sir. Welcome home.
CALLER: Thank you very much. I’ve been a long-time fan of yours, started listening to you right after I got back from the first Gulf War.
RUSH: Well, thank you.
CALLER: Thank you. Hey, Rush, I just wanted to make a couple comments. It seems to me, I just came back, like I said, from Iraq, I was in Samarra. I was there when the Golden Mosque was blown up.
RUSH: Yeah, tell me about that. Who actually did it? We were accused of doing it, but we didn’t do it.
CALLER: No. Actually, I was at a checkpoint or on the guard tower at the time, and several vehicles came screaming across the Tigris River at the time. It turned out it was Al-Qaeda. And they had infiltrated the mosque area, which was guarded by police, and there may have been some collaboration there —
RUSH: Right, and that happened in February of ?05.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: The terrorists blew this thing up intending to get us blamed for it, which succeeded for a while.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: And it did have the effect of reversing some really good success that was being made in the so-called sectarian violence. What?s the main point of your call here, Mike? I’m sorry I distracted you.
CALLER: No, that’s okay. One of the things I wanted to let you know that actually happened was that our rules of engagement changed. And I feel like political correctness has crept into the Army, all branches of the service —
RUSH: There’s no question about it.
CALLER: Yeah, we had 13 different rules of engagement. I’m an MPO. I’m experienced, I’ve been in the military for a while, but you get some young private that’s 18 or 19 years old, and they’re told to perform a job, but they’ve got all these different rules of engagement, they have to make a life-changing decision within a matter of seconds.
RUSH: I understand. Let me ask you a question about that. Last night the president addressed this, in a way.
CALLER: He did.
RUSH: Are they substantive, do you think?
CALLER: I hope so. I pray to God. If they’ll just let us do our jobs over there the way we?re trained to do —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — this war is definitely winnable. We can —
RUSH: Oh, of course it is. That’s what’s got so many people frustrated. It’s winnable in any number of ways, including without putting more troops in there. We could obsolete the place and genuinely show American power. But that’s not the proscribed way, because we’d also take out a society, and we’re not interested in taking out a society here, we want to build one. So, anyway, well, God bless you, Mike, thanks so much for taking time to call us so soon after you got back.
RUSH: Chris in Vancouver, Washington, thank you for waiting. You’re next on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, I was just curious. Last night the president mentioned Patriot missiles going into the theater. I was wondering if this may indicate to you that possibly we know a strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities is imminent and we’ll conveniently have the resources in place to stop any kind of response by Iraq?
RUSH: I have no clue. The idea of an Israeli strike on Iran is something that Israeli newspapers have said has been planned and so forth, but I try not to deal in analyzing these kinds of things before — especially when I don’t have enough information or input. Patriot missiles have many different uses. To me, it’s just another weapon that’s being introduced that has a specific purpose, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with Israel doing something with Iran. Probably has to do with things coming from Syria and Iran into Iraq.
RUSH: Mark in Moran, Pennsylvania. You’ve waited a long time. I appreciate it. Hello.
CALLER: You’re welcome. And I gotta say, George Bush is a man’s man. There should be a poster out there with George Bush’s head and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 25-year-old body, because, I’ll tell you what, George Bush is the only man in Washington that’s standing up and doing the right thing. We haven’t been attacked since 9/11, and if the Democrats, these pencil-necked waifs of human life would get on board, maybe our troops would be home already, as well as UN, as well as France. Maybe this damn war would be over if everybody would quit blaming us and just go in there and kick some ass and how can the Iraqi people be expected to stand up and say, ?Okay, we’ll fight,? when the politicians made us bail out on them once. Who are they going to fight when we’re not there to protect them?
RUSH: Well, you’re making a dangerous error, a false assumption. If I heard you right, you are indicating to me that you think Democrats might be concerned about the Iraqis.
CALLER: I don’t know what they’re concerned about.
RUSH: They’re concerned about power, concentrated power in the hands of a few. Therefore they are focused on themselves and their party. It is a myth that liberalism is the ultimate in compassion. It is not.