RUSH: The Associated Press: ‘Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confirmed his place in history as Al-Qaeda’s most ambitious operational planner when he confessed in a US military tribunal…’ and, by the way, the Drive-Bys are all over the place questioning this. “Was there torture used, Mr. Limbaugh? If there was torture used, we can’t count on any of this. What would have happened had he been tried in a real US court, Mr. Limbaugh? What would have happened? What would have been the case there? This is unfair!” You go to any kook website you want, and you will see comments from Americans proclaiming the innocence of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. By the way, the shot of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that every network is showing shortly after his capture is being misrepresented in several media places today as the way he looked after we tortured him (laughing), after the waterboarding.
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RUSH: The Khalid Shaikh Mohammed story, we’ve got some media bites here, a montage of some of the media reaction, but perhaps the most over-the-top one was on The View today with Rosie O’Donnell. I’m delaying playing the other Drive-By Media sound bites. What she said on The View show today is just… I don’t know. This woman is an order of fries short of a Happy Meal. The elevator doesn’t go to top. Normally I would ignore this, but you just have to hear this. This is what’s passing for intelligent conversation on Barbara Walters’ show.
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RUSH: We have vamped here until we had the Rosie O’Donnell sound bite. This is really tough to cut up. It’s nine minutes, and we’ve got 30 seconds of it here, which gets to the crux of it about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As you know, he’s confessed now to planning and supporting 31 terrorist attacks. Here’s a montage of the Drive-By Media rushing to his defense.
LAUER: How credible is this laundry list of targets? If you’re being subjected to waterboarding or torture, won’t you just spew out all kinds of locations to make it stop?
GUTHRIE: Was coerced, was tortured…
ROSS: This comes four years after KSM was captured in Pakistan and subjected to what the US calls extreme interrogation techniques, including, officials tell ABC News, waterboarding.
CUOMO: Waterboarding. It leads to torture.
BERGEN: He’d been waterboarded. Certainly defense attorneys in his case will raise the matter of how this information was obtained.
RUSH: Unbelievable! Except it’s totally believable. The Drive-By Media is coming to the defense of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We know that he was behind 9/11. Yeah, it may sound a little suspicious claiming credit for all of these things that have happened, but despite that, the Drive-Bys just can’t deal with the fact that this guy has confessed. They have to blame the United States. They have to doubt it because they think torture was used and because they think waterboarding was used. Now, Rosie O’Donnell, on The View today, got into her usual and predictable argument with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who is the ostensible conservative on this show. This show, The View — except for its size being smaller than Oprah — is just as dangerous to American women as Oprah is. This show is creating a bunch of mind-numbed-robot sponges sitting out there cramming in the Twinkies watching all this stuff. These are the women that they have to call a pickup truck to haul ’em out of the house to take them to the hospital.
She got mad at Hasselbeck because Hasselbeck called Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a ‘terrorist,’ Rosie O’Donnell said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! You’re going to rob him of his humanity now. You want to rob him of his humanity by calling him a terrorist.” Here’s 30 seconds of what we could cull from this. Cookie watched it and said it was one of the toughest things to watch, because, A, it’s stupid, but B, she knows there’s an audience out there soaking all this stuff up.
O’DONNELL: I think the man has been in custody of the American government in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It’s not that guy bin Laden. It’s this guy they’ve had since ’93 — and look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn’t he look healthy? This man, for whatever he did or didn’t do, he is not the be-all, end-all of terrorism in America, and our government has not found the answer.
RUSH: The guy has confessed to the World Trade Center long ago. This is indisputable. Everybody knows this. He hasn’t been in custody since 1993, and the picture of him was taken when he was captured, not after he was ‘tortured’ down at Club Gitmo. This guy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef. You all know who Ramzi Yousef is. He was the mastermind of what happened at the World Trade Center in 1993. She doesn’t even know that. This is just a clueless ignoramus, and of course the First Amendment’s the First Amendment, I know that, but you would have to think that a major broadcast entity like ABC — and especially a person like Barbara Walters, who as far as it goes, has this impeccable reputation — would run the risk of soiling it by supporting and sponsoring and putting this kind of drivel out about the greatest threat the free peoples of the world face today, is Rosie O’Donnell on the air at ABC. You would think there would be some compunction about this, some reluctance, but apparently not.
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RUSH: To Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hello, Rick. You’re up.
CALLER: Yes. Professor Limbaugh. Greetings from the college town that created the Clintons.
RUSH: Thanks much, sir.
CALLER: I was watching Rosie’s show this morning, and when they —
RUSH: What are you doing watching that show? I can’t believe you’d call here and admit that.
CALLER: Well, I make it a point to watch the first 20 minutes because I know she’s going to say something stupid, and I just get a big kick out of it.
RUSH: Oh, all right. I’ll accept that.
CALLER: When Mrs. Hasselbeck asked her about the gentleman who hit the old lady in the lobby, she said, “You know, doesn’t it make you want to tear off his you-know-what?” And Rosie said that she would, quote, “Personally like to physically harm him,” and I thought to myself, ‘Well. So, apparently, physical pain is okay to inflict on someone when Rosie approves of it, but if it’s someone trying to annihilate a nation, that doesn’t quite meet the standard.’
RUSH: Now, see, you’re illustrating a point. I appreciate the anecdote about Rosie on The View, but she’s an idiot. She is a blithering ignoramus. She is stupid. Look, I understand certain lingo, and for those of you out there who think and speak this way, ‘Rosie has issues,’ and they are huge. She is headed for a huge crackup. This is a woman who is miserable. This is a woman who is unhappy, and she has a whole lot of reasons to be unhappy. This business about inconsistency? You expect consistency from somebody who does not have one informed thought in her mind? I’m stunned. Look, I’ve met Barbara Walters a couple of times, and I know how important integrity is to her. So I get some e-mails, “Rush, the First Amendment. She can say whatever she wants to do.”
Yes, but the First Amendment is a government thing. We all have the First Amendment. But it says government shall not pass a law, or Congress shall not pass a law that restricts free speech (even though they have). But let me tell you — I’ve mentioned this before — when I went to Sacramento in 1984 to start the program that eventually became this one, at KFBK, the then-consultant and program director said, “Look, we want controversy, but what we don’t want is somebody who’s just going to mouth off and say the most outrageous things in the world just to anger people and get ’em all worked up. Anybody can do that, and if that’s what you’re going to do, then don’t do it. Leave. Get outta here. If you can back up what you think and what you say, if people think it’s outrageous, that’s another thing. But we want intelligent people on this radio station, and we want informed people.” That has always stuck with me. I don’t say things on this program I don’t believe, and I don’t say things on this program I can’t back up. I don’t say things on this program just to make you mad or just to irritate you, but that is a perfect summation of what Rosie O’Donnell does.
She may believe this stuff, but it’s insanity. There are standards at major broadcast networks that, I am telling you, are not being upheld or they’re not concerned about, apparently, at ABC and The View. Now, she’s out there saying such idiotic things today like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been in custody since 1993. She portrayed this picture of him that everybody is showing as having been taken after he was tortured to get this confession, and she’s in the chorus of people that are out there saying, “We can’t believe what this guy says and we’re calling him a terrorist,” and that’s “robbing him of his humanity.” Let me give you some facts about this. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been under indictment in the United States since 1996. He was under indictment in 1996 in connection with a plot called Operation Bojinka from 1994. That was the plot to bomb a dozen US airlines over the Pacific.
Now, an indictment means that the government had enough evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt as a terrorist and send him away forever, or may be execute him — even if 9/11 had never happened, even if he had never been watered boarded, and even if he had never said a syllable to us. This was known. Now, the left is claiming, and Rosie O’Donnell joining in this fray, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s statements are all unreliable because he would say anything we wanted him to say when we tortured him, when we waterboarded him. How many of you people remember the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui? Moussaoui wanted desperately to call Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a defense witness, and the reason is because Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the guy who would, theoretically, under oath — for a terrorist — have to admit his role in all this and downplay the role of Zacarias Moussaoui.
Now, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told interrogators that Moussaoui was not involved in the 9/11 plot, which means I guess we didn’t torture him so well since we were trying to prove that Moussaoui was one of the 9/11 plotters. There are so many inconsistencies here and there are so many forgotten facts, and there are so many facts which are just simply unknown by people who have been granted a huge forum to go out and spew a bunch of drivel and bilge at a sponge-like audience. This is going to come back — frustrating as it is, it’s going to come back — to haunt these people left and right, big time, as it always shall and always does. Don in Davison, Michigan. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. SpongeBob SquarePants eternal optimist dittos to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Real quick on Rosie and the rest of the leftists and Drive-By Media. I’m a soldier that served two tours overseas, and I’m telling you right now, Rush, I know that they say that soldiers go over there and they defend the Constitution and they defend the right to free speech. But I can tell you from a personal account, the soldiers are tiring of going over there and watching their buddies die so that Rosie O’Donnell and the rest of the leftists over here can literally destroy all of the hard work and dedication that these men put into capturing men like KSM, in territories and provinces in other countries where there is no protection and there is no safe haven to retreat to, all the time and effort. Men died capturing this man.
RUSH: I understand, and these comments by Rosie O’Donnell — because of your two tours for which the American people are eternally grateful, as am I — no doubt hit you in the gut, because she is one of these people (she may not be one) that are making the claims as you cite, at the same time claiming they support the troops.