RUSH: Interesting story in the Jerusalem Post published today. ‘The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps ‘from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on [Good Friday] April 6,’ according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.
‘According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf. Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted a security official as saying, ‘Russian intelligence has information that the US Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory.” Speaking of Iran, as you know, Pelosi is all over the world now. She’s over in Syria despite the White House making requests not to do this, and the whole House left Washington on Friday for a two-week spring break without saying a word on the international crisis of the 15 British sailors and Marines being held hostage by Iran. Some Republicans are noting this, that Pelosi didn’t say anything about it. They say they should have gotten a chance to join the Senate in denouncing ‘the bold actions taken by Tehran.’ Charles Dent, Republican, Pennsylvania, said, ‘I’m very disappointed that the speaker chose not to act.’
Meanwhile, the Iranians are telling the president, ‘Stay out of this, Mr. Bush.’ Bush condemned the Iranians’ actions and the Iranians said,
‘Calm down, Mr. President. Calm down. Just calm down. Calm down, Mr. President. Just calm down. You must respect our constitutional authority.’ You have no such constitutional authority, Miss Speaker! You have no such role. You are not the commander-in-chief. You are not any of things that you think you are, and to tell the president to calm down! I’m telling you, folks, I know it doesn’t look like t but you’re going to have to sit there and have to trust me. These people, it’s almost gotten to the point: just get out of the way and let them hang themselves. I’m talking about the Democrats in the House and the Democrats in the Senate. Just get out of the way and let ’em say whatever. I have a rule when I’m hosing the talk show: somehow get an idiot on the phone, get out of the way and let ’em prove it. Don’t get in the way of it. It’s the same thing here. The Democrats are sowing the seeds here from an eventual huge embarrassment, and it’s going to be sooner rather than later.
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RUSH: All right, let’s go to the audio sound bites because we’ve got a couple things here, we’ve got Senator Feinstein, we’ve got a media montage about the whole situation in Iran. Last Thursday, I took a call from somebody who wanted to talk to me about ‘fairness’ and why don’t the American people stand up and demand ‘fairness’ from the rest of the world in the way we get treated, and this is what I said to that caller.
RUSH ARCHIVE: When you start demanding ‘fairness’ out there, understand this: it’s not to be extended to Americans (particularly in this climate of conservative or Republican Americans). Because by virtue of our power and our majority status, we are guilty, and therefore any act against us is permitted. But any act of retaliation by us is ‘excessive,’ unnecessary. That’s why we have to close Club Gitmo. Why, these are just poor little nomads, what do we think we’re doing acting like we run the planet, acting like we run the universe? Who in hell do we think we are! … We deserve this! We deserve to ‘find out what it’s like’ to feel like we have been making the rest of the world’s poor and minorities feel all of our existence. That’s the point of multiculturalism and the trashing of the original Founders and settlers of this country. It’s part and parcel. So if you want to call a mass rally and demand fairness for the United States of America, understand this: You are going to be laughed at by liberals and Drive-By Media in this country throughout.
RUSH: Hear Dianne Feinstein in the next bite, almost use my exact words. She’s on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. By the way, we do have more on her resigning from the MILCON committee, the subcommittee in the Senate. This is a scandal that’s every bit as big if not larger than Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana). It’s going nowhere, and it was started by a bunch of leftists, alternative paper publishers out on the Left Coast, in the northern Bay Area, and it’s just garnering no interesting whatever. We’re going to be mentioning it again on the program today. But first things first. Wolf Blitzer said, ‘Senator Feinstein, I want you to react to the regime change in Iran idea. We’re hearing a lot about that now. Is that the only solution from the US perspective, as you see it?’
FEINSTEIN (laughing): I don’t know who the United States thinks we are, that we are the keeper of all the world and if we can’t get along with a government, we’ve gotta change that government, and then we do it by preemptive war, and I think that’s tragic. Um, and I think it will set in place a kind of dialectic with the Islamic world that is very, very dangerous indeed. So I wish that conversation had never taken place. I think cooler heads need to prevail. I think diplomacy needs to work at its fullest, I think we need to put some of our best diplomatic minds forward to help the British and sit down with people and solve this situation, and stop all the saber rattling. It seems that these days, all America knows is the threat of force.
RUSH: The threat of force! That is what our enemies are using against us, but yet she sees us as the primary guilty people on that score. It’s exactly what I said: ‘We’re the United States of America. We’re too big! We’re too powerful!’ We don’t expect fairness. Fairness is not to be extended to us. ‘Who do we think we are?’ she said, practically echoing me. ‘Who do you think we are that we’re the keeper of all the world?’ We’re talking about the enemy here, Senator Feinstein! We’re talking about the Iranians who illegally snatched 15 British Marines and sailors while they were in Iraqi waters. We’ve tried. We’re going the diplomatic route. You want to be Jimmy Carter 2 on this? You want these people held for hundreds of days while we do something other than ‘saber rattle’? Who is saber rattling? All we’re doing is responding to this, and she’s all upset here that the president had to get involved. ‘This is not about us. This has nothing to do with us,’ she says. These people are state sponsors of terrorism! Look at the threats that Ahmadinejad has made. This is why I say, folks, these people are out of it totally, and this is going to come back to haunt them. They are setting themselves up for a powerful embarrassment, and they’ve got themselves in such a circumstance that when that event happens or a series of events happens that will, no doubt embarrass them, they’ve got no way out of it.
They have allied themselves on the sides of America’s enemies. They own defeat of the United States of America, be it Iran, be it Afghanistan, be it Iraq, be it the war on terror, and in fact, you’re going to see… Well, I did see, Peter Beinart. I don’t know where he writes anymore. He used to be with New Republic, but I don’t think he’s there anymore. He might be. These Drive-Bys, it’s incestuous. They just go from one publishing house to the next. That’s like how they get their promotions. They move up from reporter to managing editor to bureau chief to what have you, but it doesn’t matter where they work. It’s all the same agenda, and he’s out there saying, you know, I don’t even think we should be talking about the ‘war on terror.’ The term is antiquated and it’s outdated. It’s not even applicable, he says. So this is where they are. There is no ‘war on terror.’ There aren’t any militant Islamists that want to wipe us out. We’re just making all this up, and we’re living here in a state of fear that’s totally unnecessary.
In the meantime we’re acting like this big braggadocios bully, running all over the world demanding the rest of the world kowtow to us. Which, of course, is a gross exaggeration of what’s happening. Anyway, I wanted to play the Feinstein bite, because I know these people, folks, like every square inch of my shrinking-rapidly-but-yet-nevertheless-glorious naked body, not just the back of my hand. So it is what it is. I know these people. We’re too big. We’re too bully-ish. We need to step out of this. We need to ratchet these things down. We need to understand that we can’t tell the rest of the world how to be — which is not what’s happening here. What’s happening here is simply the interest in US national security. Here’s example #2 of this, a montage, a Drive-By Media montage from last night and this morning. Who do we have here? Do names matter? They don’t matter. We have people from CNN. We got people from ABC. We have people from Newsweek, and that’s pretty much it, a montage reporting on these Iranian hostages.
T.J. HOLMES: President Bush used the word ‘hostage. ‘ Now is that something the British would rather the US stay away from?
JIM BOULDEN: Mr. Bush made that comment at a press conference. Maybe it was off the top of his head but certainly here the word ‘hostage’ is not being used.
MARTHA RADDATZ: You heard President Bush say ‘hostages.’ That’s the first time he said hostages!
FAREED ZAKARIA: Do you think Blair wanted him to use that word (crosstalk) part of a ‘hostage’ crisis?
MATTHEW CHANCE (background noise): Use of the word ‘hostage’ conjures up memories of America’s own crisis with Iran.
DAVID WRIGHT: British officials have been hesitant to use the H-word, ‘hostage,’ but President Bush had no qualms.
RUSH: Will somebody tell me what the hell they are if they aren’t hostages! Are they
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RUSH: Here we go, Mickey in Rockford, Illinois, glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Well, it’s good afternoon now. The two words I hate worst of all are ‘secular progressives,’ and I think they are doing everything they can do to make sure we back away from what’s going on in Iran, just like — if we want to call ’em ‘hostages,’ fine. If they’re uncomfortable with that, let’s call ’em ‘detainees,’ and then they can have detainees and we have detainees.
RUSH: Yeah, same thinking. It’s the same principle.
CALLER: Doesn’t that make us all equal? If we have everything the same?
RUSH: Well, but there’s more to it than that.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: There’s clearly an element here, but you have to understand that in the minds of people — Drive-By Media, leftists, Democrats — who don’t to want call these people hostages, the first thing that governs them is fear. They are afraid we’re going to offend the Iranians.
CALLER: Again, yes. We must not say anything that bothers anybody. Ugh!
RUSH: And we can’t do anything that’s provocative because it might start a conflict.
CALLER: And we might have to say political correctness.
RUSH: Well, but the conflict’s already started. This is what they missed. The conflict was started by the Iranians in this circumstance.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And we’re not allowed to call them hostages because that might make the Iranians mad, but the second thing that’s at the root of this is we don’t have any right to criticize the Iranians. The Iranians are the minority. The Iranians are a small bunch of backward nomads. I mean, they live over there in squalid conditions and they live in the armpit of the world. They have to live over there in the Middle East, and everybody is gunning for what they’ve got, oil, and anything they do to protect themselves and save themselves against these giant imperialist oppressors like us is justified. They can do anything. They can break any rule. They can take hostages. We need to find out what it feels like, because that’s what the left thinks we do all over the world! This is minor. Fifteen hostages? Why, they’ll cite story after story of how we’ve wiped out millions around the planet in service to our own power and so forth. These people are perverted, and they’re sick. This is why if they ever truly wrest control of the national defense of this country, national security as they are currently constituted, we face huge doo-doo.
RUSH: This is Aaron in the Bay Area, nice to have you on the program with us. Welcome.
CALLER: Hey, how you doing, Rush. This is a long time listener, first-time caller. I want to say mega dittos, too.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: The question that I have is, is the fact that Iran is changing to euros instead of dollars, the reason why we want to start something with Iran, since the euro has a 25% appreciated value relative to the dollar, it’s like a petrodollar war versus the petroeuro. We won’t be able to expand the credit via US Treasury bills.
RUSH: Well, I’ve always said that if you follow the money that you’ll often find the answer to a lot of questions that seem to be hard to answer or have no answer. In this case, I wouldn’t rule it out, but with this administration, I really don’t think that’s the primary factor. I think the fact that the Iranians are nuking up and they’re threatening to blow a bunch of people off the planet and they seem to be unstable and irresponsive, unresponsive to any efforts of the so-called international community to get them to play within the rules of civilized nations, I think that’s the largest factor in animating our policy toward them. As far as whether they switch to the euro rather than the dollar. I really don’t know. It would be a wild guess. Secondary reason, if anything.
CALLER: Okay. Well, that’s just my question, then.
RUSH: I appreciate your calling. I’m happy to answer some of these intricate international finance questions. I, too, by virtue of consensus of the American people, am an expert on everything, and anybody who denies that is a Rush Denier. Well, it’s out there, folks. I’ve got the largest audience. I’ve had it for almost 16 years now and that’s a consensus. The American people have made me their authority in great numbers.