Zawahiri: Iraq Is Central Front

RUSH: I want to talk for a minute about the latest tape from Al-Qaeda, because if we lived in a sane political environment, that tape, that message from Ayman al-Zawahiri would put the final nail in the coffin of the Democrat Party. Now, I have an AP story about this. He’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and here’s how this story starts: ‘A new video by Al-Qaeda’s deputy leader left no doubt about what the terror network claims is at stake in Iraq, describing it as a centerpiece of its anti-American fight and insisting the Iraqi insurgency is under its direct leadership.’ So this is not ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq.’ This is a big guy. This is bin Laden’s guy, apparently, saying, ‘Hey, there is no Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Well, there is, but we’re running these guys. That’s our operation,’ and AP then reports what Al-Qaeda’s long-term goals for Iraq are: to make it an Islamic state and to use it — and this a quote — ‘to establish a caliphate of Islamic rule across the region.’ So what do we have here? We have the same terrorists… (Look at that. There’s some dummkopf reporter on MSNBC standing in Las Vegas holding up one of those giant clock thermometers pointing out how ‘hot’ it is. It’s always hot this time of year! I’m sorry for being distracted. It’s a typical Drive-By Media ploy.) Anyway, the same terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are in Iraq, by their own admission.

Remember, there is no Al-Qaeda in Iraq according to the Democrat Party. No Al-Qaeda is there, and if they are, they are there because Bush made ’em go there, because Bush created them. Bush made ’em so mad they recruited all these other terrorists out there. They view Iraq as the centerpiece on the war on terror. The same terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 want to us retreat from Iraq so that they can establish Islamofascist rule across the entire region — which, by the way, is the world’s primary source of oil. The same terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 say the Iraqi insurgency is not a separate entity but under their control, and we also learn in this same AP story that the terrorists are losing. When you read what Zawahiri says, it’s almost as though he goofed up and didn’t intend to say it. He’s having trouble controlling the Sunnis, and he blames us and our military. He says the reason we haven’t won there is because the United States is still there despite intense efforts of Al-Qaeda’s allies in the United States, the Democrat Party and the American left. So here we have Al-Qaeda, via AP, confirming that American Democrats, who spent the last four years essentially lying — not only to us, but to the world — and they’ve put our national security and future at risk by demanding surrender and proclaiming defeat. Here you have number one Al-Qaeda guy saying this is the central front in the war on terror in our fight against America.

The Democrats have been saying there was never a reason to go there, and the only reason that Al-Qaeda is there is because we went there and so forth. Well, what does that tell you? Even if you grant them that last point, what does it tell you that they show up when we go? If Iraq is meaningless, if Iraq was always meaningless, then why does Zawahiri care about it in the first place? Why doesn’t he just go there and fix Iraq and be done with it? Why did he send all his Al-Qaeda buddies in there to try to stop us? I don’t care what point you grant the Democrats, they are embarrassingly, shamelessly wrong, and they have been making it up and lying about it, and we’ve had the number one PR tool of Al-Qaeda in this country, the Drive-By Media, working in concert with the Democrats (strictly for partisan, selfish political purposes), to destroy the Bush administration and get themselves back in power. That’s why I say, in a sane political movement, this single tape, this tape from Zawahiri and this story, would obliterate the Democrat Party and their presidential feud, in a sane political world. It would just destroy every ounce of credibility they’ve got, in a sane political environment. But they’ve had four years of passing on these lies and misrepresentations, and they’ve beat down public support for the war, and so the release of another tape by Ayman al-Zawahiri is sort of a ho-hummer. Nobody is going to really pay much attention, other than people like you and me who follow this on a regular basis and are concerned about it. Ah, people aren’t going to follow it very closely because there’s nothing new in it. A tape from Zawahiri is not an attack.

‘But, Rush! But, Rush! What about the two attempted incidents in the UK?’

A good question. That was UK, and they were both foiled, thwarted — and that was the UK, and it didn’t work anyway — and it was the UK. So since 9/11 there hasn’t really been anything here to disrupt our attempt to return to normalcy in our daily lives. But this is a dramatic story from Ayman al-Zawahiri and his admission that the central front of their fight against America is in Iraq. Again, I want to stress, even if you’re going to buy the Democrat point that they’re only there because we went there. If they didn’t care about it, why did they send troops in there of their own, terrorists of their own? Why did they follow us in there? Why are they taking us on? If they weren’t in Iraq and didn’t care about Iraq and Iraq was worthless and irrelevant, why are they there trying to get it for themselves?