RUSH: Okay. Audio sound bite time, President Bush last night on 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley. Here Pelley tries to get Bush to apologize to the Iraqis, Bush not having any of it.
REPORTER: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?
THE PRESIDENT: We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.
RUSH: Now, a perfect example from the 60 Minutes interview, Scott Pelley refers to US Marines as “your Marines.” This is Bush’s war, your Marines. They have to distance themselves from it of course. Listen to this exchange.
REPORTER: I was on the battlefield in Najaf when al-Sadr’s people killed your United States Marines.
THE PRESIDENT: Right, and we killed them, as you recall.
REPORTER: Is Muqtada al-Sadr an enemy of the United States?
THE PRESIDENT: If he is ordering his people to kill Americans, he is.
RUSH: Yeah, well, you know, the interesting thing here is that CBS leaks all this stuff that Bush admits he made mistakes and Bush did this or that, and of course it was typical CBS. I’m still mystified why the president would appear on this. I don’t care how you thought he did, I don’t know how many people watched it after CBS put these leaks out that Bush admitted this and said he was sorry and made Iraq worse and all this sort of stuff. The war at home here is a political war. Why then go to 60 Minutes? Go anywhere, go to the new media, use the free media, write op-eds, use the Internet, use your grassroots operation out in the neighborhoods. If the war is worth fighting abroad, which it is, then you gotta fight the effort by the left at home to undermine it as they did during Vietnam. But going to 60 Minutes is like Nixon going to Cronkite. Especially after every effort that CBS has made to destroy this man’s presidency. Look at who 60 Minutes has promoted: Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, Bob Woodward, Bill Clinton, and Dan Rather tried to destroy Bush before the 2004 election with the forged documents.
These questions that Scott Pelley asked may as well been written by the Democrat National Committee. I swear. I’m going to tell you something, and this may make some of you mad. President Bush, with his new tone, and with his attempt to replicate what he had done in Texas by putting everybody together in one big happy family, bipartisanship and so forth, has taught a lot of Republicans to join with the Democrats. If the president does it, they can do it, too. It’s a bad habit when it comes to policy. That’s what he did with Ted Kennedy writing the educational bill, having the Kennedy family up to watch the latest Bay of Pigs movie, the popcorn machine on full bore, full blast, full pop. If Bush can reach out to Kennedy and play nice with this new-tone stuff, then he sets the stage for lesser politicians in his party and Congress to do the same thing. McCain’s done it. McCain’s gone out of his way to reach out to Democrats against his own party, against his own president. Look at Schwarzenegger out in California. We always end up joining with the Democrats, the left, to advance their agenda. Does anybody ever remember them joining with us to advance ours? I don’t care what the issue. Look at the war, the war is the best example of it. I don’t know. I don’t understand it. What’s to be gained by going on 60 Minutes?