RUSH: My buddy Andy McCarthy at National Review Online wrote a great, great piece today. We told you about this earlier today, and we played you the sound bites. In fact, let’s go back. Before we get to number nine and ten on Obama, Mike, let’s go back to number one and number three to set this up, from the president’s press conference today. There is a story in the Boston Globe today quoting a guy from the Institute for Peace and predictably a member of the Iraq Surrender Group. His name is Serwer, and he’s going out of the way to ask (paraphrased), “Well, these IEDs that are in Iraq from Iran, manufactured in Iran, we don’t know that they are from the highest levels of the Iran government. We can’t possibly say that,” and Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs, also said (paraphrased), “Yeah, we gotta be very careful about this. They’re in there. They’re clearly from the Quds Force, but whether they come from the highest levels, why, we can’t be sure.” So the president was asked about this today, first by David Gregory of NBC, who said, “About the IEDs coming from Iran, critics say that you are using the same quality of intelligence about Iran that you used to make the case for war in Iraq, specifically about weapons of mass destruction. It turned out to be wrong, and that you’re doing that to make the case for war in Iran. Is that true?”
THE PRESIDENT: I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of government, but my point is: what’s worse, them ordering it and it happening or them not ordering it and it’s happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.
RUSH: The point is, they’re coming from Iran, so who cares? They’re still being used by the enemy in Iraq, which means Iran is aligning itself with the enemy in Iraq. This was followed up later in the press conference by Ed Henry of CNN whose question was this: “Are you saying that today, that you do not know if senior members of Iranian government are in fact behind these explosives? That contradicts what US officials said in Baghdad on Sunday. It contradicts what you’re saying.”
THE PRESIDENT: Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don’t think we know, but we do know that they’re there, and I intend to do something about it. We know they’re there, we know they’re provided by the Quds Force, we know the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. I don’t think we know who picked up the phone and said the Quds Force, “Go do this,” but we know it’s a vital part of the Iranian government. What matters is that we’re responding. The idea that somehow we’re manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous, Ed. My job is to protect our troops.
RUSH: So Andy McCarthy just posted a piece recently at National Review Online: “Well, Sure Quds Force Operatives Are Killing Americans in Iraq, But How Do We Really Know the Iranians Put Them Up To It? “This is the latest illustration of the ostrich approach to Iranian war-making in Iraq, given voice today in the Boston Globe by this priceless observation from Daniel Serwer of the U.S. Institute for Peace and (of course) the Iraq [Surrender] Group, who said he was not convinced that the Iranian government had decided ‘at the highest levels’ to provide weapons to target US troops, just because the Defense Department has confirmed that we’ve caught them doing just that. The report elaborates: ‘The question is not so much about whether there are Iranian weapons inside Iraq,’ said Serwer, who served as executive director of the Iraq [Surrender] Group… ‘Sure there are. The question is whether there is a conscious policy by the Iranian government or some part of the Iranian government to support lethal attacks against Americans. I haven’t seen any proof of that yet.'”
Now, you must understand that the reason for this is the Iraq Surrender Group wants to involve Iran and Syria in a series of peace talks to end the Iraq war, and so Mr. Serwer has to say, “Well, we can’t say that the Iranian government is doing this.” Because if they concede that the Iranian government’s involved in this then of course it negates the whole possibility of talking to Iran and Syria about this. Now, Mr. McCarthy says, “When it comes to Iraq, the Left is dizzying. Are these not the same people who said that if Lynndie England was walking a naked Iraqi prisoner around like a dog on a leash, she simply must have been acting on orders from Don Rumsfeld, if not Bush himself? Now, the mullahs’ own militia, formed for the purpose of exporting the Islamic revolution, is caught red-handed exporting the Islamic revolution to Iraq, and the Left’s response is to ask whether we can really be sure the mullahs put them up to it?”
Now, the White House press corps which last year wanted to know how come no high-ranking administration officials had been made to walk the plank over Abu Ghraib is today found pressing Bush about whether Quds terror is really Iranian terror? You see how far they are willing to go to deny Iranian involvement, both at the Iraq Surrender Group level, the press level, and so forth, because anything that indicates that Iran is involved would necessarily require sensible people to admit that there might be reason for escalation here. We can’t have that, no, no, no, because we’ve gotta do the slow bleed, we have to do the slow bleed. The Democrats and Pelosi and Murtha have to do the slow bleed and end this war by making sure that the president doesn’t have enough troops to deploy where and when he wants. That’s their latest strategery, by the way.