RUSH: The president vetoed the Iraq surrender bill, 6:10 last night, chose the timing to make sure he was on some newscast in the Eastern and Central Time Zones. Here’s a portion of what he said.
THE PRESIDENT: The bill would mandate a rigid and artificial deadline for American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send the signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible.
RUSH: Another portion of the president’s remarks after he vetoed the Democrats’ Iraq Surrender Bill.
THE PRESIDENT: After forcing most of our troops to withdraw, the bill would dictate the terms under which the remaining commanders and troops could engage the enemy. That means America’s commanders in the middle of the combat zone, would have to take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, DC. This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops.
RUSH: Can anybody say ‘Vietnam’? I mean, the Democrats keep harping, ‘We got another Vietnam going on in Iraq,’ and they author a bill in which they determine when the troops can fire, how they can fire, where they can fire, on what circumstances they can return fire. It’s patently absurd! This thing was asking for a veto. The thing was begging for a veto, especially with all the pork in it. Now, the president interestingly did not use the word ‘pork.’ This is how he described it.
THE PRESIDENT: The bill is loaded with billions of dollars in non-emergency spending that has nothing to do with fighting the war on terror. Congress should debate these spending measures on their own merits and not as a part of an emergency funding bill for our troops.
RUSH: Now, that’s very eloquently stated. I think if he would have put the word pork in there, it would have connected with people. It’s not a major criticism. We just think about words and their communicative power. But Bush, as usual, has high respect for the office, very deep reverence and doesn’t want to sully it. That’s why he doesn’t get partisan very often. That’s why he doesn’t attack Democrats in a partisan way, which also shuts down other Republicans from doing so because he’s the top, and if he’s not going to do it, they’re not going to engage in it. Let’s move on to the Democrat response. One of the things I told you yesterday that the Democrats are trying to do with this is get this war out of their hands. They have told lie after lie after lie. I have a little monologue coming up on this. Lie after lie after lie. There are so many lies that have been told about this war, and for so long now that so many people believe the lies are true. The Democrats have succeeded now in large measure in convincing a majority of Americans that they were tricked, ‘faulty intelligence that was ginned up and cooked,’ and that Bush lied and there was never any reason to go to Iraq in terms of the war on terror — and that, after four years of a daily pummeling of that kind of thing, just like four years of daily pummeling of how we’re losing and nothing’s being done in Iraq that’s making progress, you’re going to have, just by virtue of the daily pounding, have people believe it.
Their resistance is going to break down. They’re finally going to say, ‘Ah, all right. Fine. It’s true,’ and so the Democrats, in addition now to convincing everybody that, well, their votes were obtained under trickery. They were deceived. These brilliant, brilliant Democrats were deceived by this idiot cowboy! They are asking us to believe that this dunce, George W. Bush — how do they characterize him? Frat boy? This dunce, this barbecue expert from Texas, blah, blah, blah, just outmaneuvered them and tricked them, these good, honest, decent Democrats. Why, it was just a breathtaking thing to watch how these guys got tricked! Now, since he lied to ’em and he tricked ’em (so goes the tale), they’ve finally taken the war off of their hands and they’ve given it totally back. It is ‘Bush’s war,’ and I told you yesterday that that’s what this was about, because they’re still trying to engineer defeat. He vetoed it, and they’re going out there and saying — and their buddies in the press are out there saying — ‘Bush voted against funding. Bush doesn’t support the troops. Bush is the one!’ That’s their tactic here, and they know that they’ve got cover in the Drive-By press. Here is Dingy Harry after the president addressed the nation.
REID: The president refused to sign this bill. That’s his right, but now he has an obligation to explain his plan to responsibly end this war. If the president thinks by vetoing this bill he’ll stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq, he is mistaken.
RUSH: Next up is the speakerette, Nancy Pelosi. She says that Bush ‘disrespected’ their bill.
PELOSI: We had hoped that the president would have treated it with the respect that a bipartisan legislation supported overwhelmingly by the American people, deserved. Instead the president vetoed the bill outright, and, frankly, misrepresented what this legislation does. The president wants a blank check. The Congress is not going to give it to him.
RUSH: We’ll have some comments on this. I just wanted to get the sound bites in and out of the way. Last Friday, I want to go back, South Carolina, at Jim Clyburn’s annual fish fry. Senator Biden, Democrat, Delaware, was mingling with audience members. An unidentified audience member said, ‘When the president vetoes the bill, what’s going to be the next version of the bill that you will send him?’
BIDEN: Actually, we’re not. The idea that we’re not building these new Humvees with the V shaped thing is just crap, man! Kids are dying that don’t have to die, and the second thing is we’re going to shove it down his throat.
RUSH: Do you understand him? Let me read that. It’s Internet quality. Somebody probably recorded it on a cheap cell phone. But what he said was, ‘The idea that we’re not building these new Humvees with the V shaped thing is just crap, man! Kids are dying that don’t have to die, and the second thing is we’re going to shove it down his throat,’ and then later on Meet the Press on Sunday, Biden was talking about the ‘lack of civility’ that exists in American culture today. Here’s Barbara Boxer, whining about Bush’s ‘macho’ veto on the Senate floor yesterday.
BOXER: Doesn’t this president understand it’s time for a
RUSH: You people need to be happy. Exactly what you want has happened, because now you’re going to be able to go out and say this is Bush’s war. Bush owns it entirely. You Democrats voted to get out, but the president wouldn’t follow your estimable advice. The president disrespected you! He’s out there acting too macho, and I’ll prove this whole thing I said yesterday about the press, the willing accomplices of the Democrats, who will turn this into totally Bush’s war. It’s not even really new. They’ve been calling it Bush’s war for a while, but now it’s official in the inner sanctum of DC liberalism.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I said yesterday, ‘This is about ‘Bush’s war.” This whole piece of legislation that the president vetoed was about getting the Democrats now totally off the hook, and they — in their minds — now have no accountability. When we lose, everything is going to be Bush’s fault and they think they can make the case via this legislation that he vetoed yesterday. Yesterday on MSNBC, the anchorette Mika Brzezinski (I think she’s the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski) talked to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, and Mika Brzezinski said, ‘It took the Democrats 94 votes over six years to end the funding for the Vietnam War. My question to you is, ‘Do you think history will repeat itself?”
ALTER: The Congress today is not ready to cut off funding yet, but it is sending other signals, putting down markers that say, ‘This is Bush’s war. It’s not our war.’ They know that right now polls show the public is with the Congress and not the president.
RUSH: There you have it. I wanted to play that bite for you (clearing throat) just to illustrate that that was in the game plan. I mean, Alter didn’t come up with this. This is a product of a strategery session that happened long ago in putting all this together. Now moving on, Wesley Clark (affectionately known here as ‘Ashley Wilkes’) was on Fox and Friends this morning, and the sports guy, Brian Kilmeade, said, ‘How would Wesley Clark do all this?’
CLARK: You have to have a diplomatic strategy —
RUSH: Yeah?
CLARK: — a political strategy —
RUSH: Yeah?
CLARK: — and a military strategy.
RUSH: Right.
CLARK: And you have to be able to talk to Iraq’s neighbors.
RUSH: Right!
CLARK: The administration has basically played this as a war.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
CLARK: It’s emphasized the military component —
RUSH: Yeah, it has.
CLARK: — and we’re still fighting about troops and tactics when what we really ought to be fighting about is strategy.
RUSH: The administration is calling it a war? They don’t even think it is a war! There is no war! John Edwards has said it. Now Wesley Clark, ‘Ashley Wilkes,’ is saying it. Do I know these people or do I know these people? You don’t even need to spend any time watching the media — and I don’t, either. I know what they’re going to do before they do it, and I’m going to tell you what they do, and you can make book on the fact that I’m right. This is so much psychobabble. ‘Well, you have to have a diplomatic strategy! You’ve gotta have a political strategy, gotta have a military strategy. You have to be able to talk to Iraq’s neighbors. The administration basically played this as a war.’
They ‘played this as a war.’ Now, yesterday, I said to you, in a quite provocative monologue based on the e-mail I received that the dirty little secret is that the Democrats are not going to leave Iraq if we’re still there and they win the White House. They’re not going to get out of there. They’re not going to have defeat hung around their necks. They’ll be glad to do that when Bush is in the White House, but they’re not going to have that happen to them. They’re not going to do it, and they’re between a rock and a hard place on this. Here is Senator Kerry last night with Wolf Blitzer who said, ‘Why not simply stop the funding for the war? Put a specific hard timeline, get the votes and bring the troops home as a result of that?’
VIETNAM VETERAN JOHN KERRY: I don’t think it’s that simple. I think every one of us has an understanding of the complexity of the region and the dangers in the region. We’re not trying to be irresponsible. Even under our plan, we maintain some troops regionally in order to buffer against Iran and continue the process of prosecuting Al-Qaeda.
RUSH: Really? So they’re going to keep troops in the region to make sure that Iran doesn’t move in there and take over, and the only place the troops can prevent that is in Iraq. They’re not going to take ’em out of there, folks. The press and all these liberal kooks out there getting all jazzed up about this. ‘Hey, going to bring ’em home! They’re finally going to bring ’em home,’ and then you’ve got Kerry saying it. You have Carl Levin saying it and a number of other Democrats, ‘We’re not going to bring ’em out of there,’ especially if they win. If they win the White House, it ain’t going to happen. I’m just telling you. Now, you just heard Kerry — who, by the way, served in Vietnam — say that they need ‘troops in that region to buffer against Iran and continue the process of prosecuting Al-Qaeda.’ Let’s go to Hardball last night, Chris Matthews talking to — I actually want to say this as politely as I can, but I’m wondering about the Constitution and quality of the brain cells remaining, those that remain functioning in the mind of Jack Murtha. Well, you listen to these two bites and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Chris Matthews said, ‘Hey, General Petraeus says that we’re fighting the central front against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Is that true?’
MURTHA: That’s absolutely not true. That’s an exaggeration and — and — and —
MATTHEWS: That’s Petraeus saying that!
MURTHA: That’s Petraeus saying it. These comments that General Petraeus made are absolutely inaccurate, according to the intelligence we have.
RUSH: But he never produces any! He never produces any intelligence. So Petraeus is exaggerating. We’re supposed to listen to Murtha. Kerry just said, ‘Well, we gotta prosecute Al-Qaeda over there.’ Now, Matthews, he’s getting all excited at this, now. You know the spittle starts coming out of both corners of his mouth. ‘Well, why wouldn’t Petraeus tell the truth? I mean, why is he blaming it all on Al-Qaeda, the people who blew up the World Trade Center? Why is he doing that?’
MURTHA: This whole — whole war, ever since they diverted the attention away from where Al-Qaeda started, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan, where we should have stayed. Ever since that time, they were — they were trying to tie this in to terrorism. All of us know that — that there’s — terrorism all over the world.
MATTHEWS: But he’s not — but congressman, he’s not a PR man. He’s not a flack for the White House. He’s a general in the field. Why would he be –?
MURTHA: Wait — wait — wait a minute.
MATTHEWS: Why would he be lying?
MURTHA: (Gurgling.)
MATTHEWS: You’re saying he’s singing this song of the ideologues!
MURTHA: I’m saying he came back here at the White House’s request to purely make, err, political statements. That’s what I’m saying, there’s no question in my mind about it.
RUSH: So the White House told Petraeus to lie and Petraeus is out there lying, and Jack Murtha knows the truth. Petraeus is lying about it. By the way, congressman, we’re still in Afghanistan. He killed 125 Taliban earlier this week or over the weekend. You haven’t seen that in the Drive-By Media because you never see stories about the enemy deaths, but we whacked a whole bunch of them. We’re still in Afghanistan. We didn’t leave Afghanistan to go to Iraq. We got the Tenet book. We know that Al-Qaeda was there prior to 9/11. Nobody has ever asserted that Al-Qaeda was in cahoots with Saddam when it comes to 9/11. That’s just one of the many myths and lies that have been steadily broadcast for four years now and the American people have lost the resistance factor necessary to resist it, because you’ve been barraged daily with this. Goebbels said if you keep pounding a lie, people will believe it. Now, this Ted Koppel piece from National Public Radio, aired yesterday.
‘The Democrats especially their presidential candidates are painting themselves into a corner. Their determination to force an early troop withdrawal from Iraq may put the men in harmony with the majority of American public opinion. But what are they going to do if they win the White House and the bulk of American forces are still in Iraq? That is not an unlikely scenario. This may be a particularly awkward day for President Bush receiving that tainted military spending bill on the fourth anniversary of his mission accomplished moment, but if the Democrats think that they’re even close to accomplishing their mission they have another think coming. The president has no particular incentive to begin substantive troop withdrawals while conditions in Iraq remain this uncertain. There is, first of all, a very real danger that Iraq’s civil war will spill over into the rest of the Persian Gulf interrupting the flow of oil and natural gas. If anything is going to have a disastrous impact on the U.S. economy that would. Both for purely political reasons, the president will also be incline to keep significant U.S. forces in Iraq until the end of his term. If he withdraws all or even a majority of those troops while he’s still in office, what happens next in Iraq and throughout the region can be placed directly at his feet.’
That’s exactly what the Democrats are trying to do! It’s exactly what I told you yesterday. ‘If on the other hand, the Democrats win the White House and most U.S. troops are still in Iraq, what do they do?’ Well, we addressed this yesterday. They will stay. Koppel says, do the Democrats, ‘Keep them in place and they validated the Bush policy and broken their commitment to the American public. Pull them out and suddenly the Democrats are responsible for the chaos that ensues. There really are U.S. interests at stake in the creation of a relatively stable Iraq,’ writes Koppel, and if the Democrats pull those troops out of there, they are the ones responsible for the chaos that ensues. It’s exactly what I told you yesterday. This is why they’re not going to pull the troops out of there, and Bush isn’t going to pull ’em out of there before his term is expired, so the Democrats are painting themselves into a corner. It’s like almost every bit of legislation the liberals come up with. It’s got an immediate feel-good aspect to it, but all of the unintended consequences down the road are
They have painted themselves into a huge corner. He says, ‘[E]ven from the purely partisan point of view the Democrats are making a mistake. They should depoliticize the Iraq issue. If anything, they should publicly hope for the success of the president’s policies. If he wins, we all win. We don’t want either our friends or our enemies in Iraq calculating their strategies on the premise of a divided and weakened America.’ Three cheers for Ted Koppel here. I know it’s a little late. Well, I know he’s using the ‘we’ here, but what he has written is not what the Democrats have said. The Democrats cannot all of a sudden depoliticize this. It’s the reason they think they won the election. They’re wrong, but it’s the reason they think they won the election in November. They can’t depoliticize it and they can’t come back off the cliff now and join the chorus for victory. They own defeat, particularly now with that piece of legislation they sent up that the president vetoed. They own it. So Ted’s wish here is a pipe dream. He concludes with this:
‘[I]t bears repeating, if George Bush doesn’t succeed in Iraq and the Democrats win the White House in 2008, guess who inherits the problem? And you know how this works. After a few months, it will be their war. And if they have any strategy beyond simply pulling the troops out, wouldn’t this be a useful time to put aside politics and start talking about it. This is Ted Koppel,’ is how he ended it. We addressed so much of this stuff yesterday. It’s why it’s great to see this here today. Actually, it aired yesterday morning on NPR. I just got the transcript of it today. Frankly, I’m stunned. You don’t see this. You don’t hear this kind of analysis in the Drive-By Media. But he nailed it. They’re in trouble. That’s what I was trying to tell you yesterday. And they can’t afford to pull out. They’re not going to have defeat saddled around their shoulders and around their neck, and they can’t come out and articulate a plan for victory because they’ve already said and Dingy Harry’s said it: we’ve lost. We’ve already lost. This why, folks, you gotta be patient and you have to trust me. They are sowing the seeds of their eventual landslide defeat. I keep qualifying this, because it may not be in 2008. But I’m telling you, this is the kind of thing, if they win in 2008, could give us the equivalent of four years of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter led to their landslide defeat. McGovern set him up with Nixon in between.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got a question. Folks, how can you lose a war that you’re not even in? You have John Edwards, the Breck Girl, saying there’s no war. We just played the sound bite of Ashley Wilkes saying, there’s no war here — and Dingy Harry is out saying we’ve lost the war. Now, how do you lose a war you’re not in? The point is the Democrats are changing their verbiage, their talking points consistently. Bush is not. His talking points are consistent. The Democrats change them consistently. Snerdley is still a holdout, still thinks that I’m nuts, and he said I thought about it all night, that he thinks I’m nuts when I say the Democrats, if they win the White House in ’08 and we’re still in Iraq (as we will be) he thinks there’s no way they can’t pull out. That would be the biggest act of political suicide in the world, Snerdley thinks. He told me there would be riots in the streets just like 1968 again. I said, ‘Yes, that’s what I’m talking about.’ That’s Koppel’s point. They’re painting themselves into a corner here. They’ve done this to themselves — and, by the way, those riots in the streets in ’68 were at the Democrat convention, and it was a Republican that, quote, unquote, ‘ended the war.’ The Democrats never pulled us out of there. They didn’t pull us out of there. They kept escalating it.
First JFK, then LBJ, and then when Cronkite said, ‘We’ve lost,’ Johnson said, ‘Hell, I can’t even win the war. I can’t even win reelection. I’m going back to Texas and sip some mint juleps there with Lady Bird,’ and of course then Nixon comes along. Peace with honor. Kissinger is flitting off to China, setting up the grand strategy there. This is my whole point. They box themselves in here, so that if they don’t pull out, there is going to be hell to pay in their party. Look, here’s the dirty little secret. Despite the rhetoric from these people — and this is going to anger you even further if you already think I’m off my rocker. But the dirty little secret is that there are some adults in the Democrat Party who fully well understand their party is headed down a suicide hole, and that suicide hole would be closed up on them and they’d lose their air to breathe if they pull out of Iraq in the midst of defeat. They would love for Bush to surrender. You can’t forget that. They would love to lose, don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that they have given up on their idea of owning defeat. They just don’t want to own it themselves. They want to transfer it. They want Bush to surrender so that they don’t have to surrender, and they won’t surrender when the time comes. There will be big arguments. There may be riots in the streets. That’s what I mean!
They are sowing the seeds of their eventual demise somewhere down the road with all of this. Democrats keep saying the election ‘expressed the will of the people’ and their piece of legislation the president vetoed yesterday expressed the will of the people. Well, if that was the case, why did they need $24 billion in pork to buy votes from Congress? They needed $24 billion to pass this legislation. They needed pork in this bill to get the votes on the Democrat side for this legislation. Now, where is the will of the people here? There isn’t any will of the people. President Bush did not veto a military spending bill. He vetoed a ‘lose the war bill.’ He vetoed a $24 billion ‘bribes for support bill.’ Dingy Harry, Harry Reid, keeps saying, ‘We’re expressing the will of the people. We are again expressing the will of the people. We are expressing the will of the people, again,’ and I respond not with your host’s words but with Algore’s words. ‘He lied! He lied to the American people!’
I want to see a poll where the American people want to lose the war. I want to see that poll. That poll does not exist. The American people do not want to lose. The American people do not want defeat, and the Democrats are essentially trying to say that that’s what they do want, and they’re doing it with polls — and what are polls but the opinions of uninformed, non-experts on issues who then, because they say it, become experts! So, polling this is an intricate part of the strategery. I want to see the poll where the American people want $24 billion in bribes for Democrats in Congress to support the troops. I want to see that poll. So Dingy Harry, Speaker Pelosi, if you are ‘expressing the will of the people,’ why do we need $24 billion in bribes to get the votes you needed to pass your little bill? As Joe Biden says: tell the truth to the American people.