RUSH: Our previous caller made a point responding here also to David Bell’s piece in the LA Times Sunday, ?Was 9/11 Really That bad?? The caller says we could have lost 45,000 if those planes had hit at a later time of day, if those towers had been more populated, had they not been able to extricate as many people from the second tower and the first after the first hit. The death toll could have been much, much higher. Then the Pentagon, had that plane hit in a different location, different angle, the Pentagon could have been a lot more death and damage there than was done, and we don’t know what else was in the works because air traffic control grounded every airplane shortly after the second attack, and it didn’t take them very long to get every airplane in US airspace down, every airplane coming from a foreign destination was diverted, and we shut down the air traffic system for four or five days. 
Now, his point here is that Mr. Bell, 3,000, and 6500 total, no big deal. That damage was wrought by probably less than a hundred people that planned it, and it took no soldiers. It took 19 hijackers. Now, the cynical reaction to this would be to say to the caller, ?But, sir, you’re missing Mr. Bell’s point. You are looking at what could have happened. We are looking at what did happen, and we are overreacting to it. You can’t say this could have happened or that could have happened, just like we can’t respond to what they say they want to do to us. We have to respond to what they actually can do to us.? And his point is they don’t have the ability to set off a nuke in this country yet, they don’t have the ability to wipe us out. Of course, to me, that is the ultimate sophistry, and we have, if you remember earlier this month, mimicking the hijackers who executed the 9/11 attacks, insurgents in Iraq reportedly tied to Al-Qaeda there considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the US to orchestrate similar but new attacks on American soil.
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency testified to this because he captured documents, coalition forces captured documents during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members. So you’ve got the American left now building up the notion that we’re not a threat, we’re not really at great risk, let’s put it that way, we’re not at great risk. Yeah, a lot of people are threatening us and saying they want to wipe us out, but they can’t really do it, so we’re just really overreacting here. So the conclusion, we have to wait until they can pull it off to deal with them? You know, ladies and gentlemen, I was having a conversation over the weekend with a friend of mine about all this, and this friend of mine is really gung-ho. This friend wants to just deal with the enemy right now, not waste any time, thinks that we’re just really botching this in Iraq with the strategy, and by leaving Syria and Iran alone, that we are just totally blowing things sky high. I said to him, ?The theory is that we would have to obliterate too many countries to wipe the militant Islamists off the face of the earth because they’re everywhere. They’re all over the place, and we can’t wipe out every country.?
He came back and said, ?Well, would FDR and Truman have thought that way during World War II? Why did they call it a world war? If we aren’t on offense, we’re on defense, and this enemy will not stop.? And I said, ?Yeah, but for all the talk about World War II, there were basically three countries: Japan, Germany, and Italy. Now we’re talking about the whole of the Middle East, Indonesia, parts of the Philippines, Chechnya, Bosnia, Turkey, they’re all over the place.?
He said, ?Okay, so I hear what you’re saying.? He knew I was playing devil’s advocate. ?I hear what you’re saying and that unfortunately is our strategy.? We can’t use our overwhelming firepower. We can’t take out Iraq. We can’t kill civilians. We would have lost World War II had we tied our hands the way we’re tying our hands now.
He says, ?By the way, I’m not saying attack all the countries where Muslims are or even where radical Muslims are. Iran and Syria are regimes that are giving safe haven to the enemy and attacking us, and, by the way, it wasn’t just three countries in World War II. It was scores of countries. I’m not aware of anybody saying that we should attack Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen, all that’s baloney, but we can cut the heart out of the militant Islamist movement as it’s aimed at us by dealing with Iran now rather than waiting.? 
The theory is that if we take Mr. Bell’s approach, too: Just wait! Just wait until they are a threat or wait until they are powerful enough to deal with the threat, and then we’ll have to deal with it. And his point is:
CALLER: Hello, Rush.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Hey, I want to let you know this war is a complete and utter disaster, and I don’t know why you keep pushing — the troops, there’s over 3,000 died, and the Iraqi people are really suffering and losing their lives, too, for these neocon shills that is just absolutely ridiculous, they don’t understand that this is no big deal that these people lost their lives?