RUSH: This morning at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, General Petraeus is delivering his opening statement.
BIDEN: General?
PETRAEUS: Mr. —
CODE PINK CHICK: Peace, not occupation (unintelligible ranting) US diplomat through (yelling) the war in Iraq three and a half years ago, and it’s no better. It’s time to stop the occupation!
BIDEN: Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide my assessment of the security situation in Iraq.
RUSH: For the second day in a row, Code Pink in uniform gets into a congressional hearing. Do we think, ladies and gentlemen, that this is an accident? No way is this an accident. Liberal Democrat Senate staffers had to give them admission tickets to get in there. You don’t just show up and get into these places. There may be a line, but it’s not like trying to get into a courtroom. There aren’t that many seats for the public in there, and these people show up in uniform! Now, yesterday, Ike Skelton was outraged that Code Pink got in. ‘We’re going to prosecute these people the full force of Title 13, section 405, section 69.B,’ whatever he said. ‘We’re going to go after these people with the full force of the law,’ and they’re back! They’re back today doing it again, disrupting this. These are your Democrats of today, exhibiting the indecency which is becoming inseparable from them.
Chuck Hagel, who announced that he’s not going to run for reelection from Nebraska as senator, also said he’s not going to seek the Republican presidential nomination. I think a great way to characterize this is to say that Senator Hagel is a victim of the surge. The surge is working. Senator Hagel, as you know, became known as a maverick Republican. He was known as a maverick with John McCain. Now, may I, in a political observation, point out to you people what happens to Republicans who are called mavericks by the Drive-By Media? What happened to Senator McCain’s presidential candidacy? Pfft. What happened to Senator Hagel’s presidential candidacy, rumored, and his reelection bid? Pfft. Maverick Republican. You ever heard of a maverick Democrat, by the way? You ever heard the Drive-Bys describe some Democrat as a maverick, meaning someone that goes off the reservation and attacks their own party? It doesn’t happen much, but even if it does, they don’t call ’em mavericks. But I’ll tell you, the death knell for a Republican who wants national office is to be called a maverick by the Drive-By Media. And yet, they’re out there, some of them are, actively seeking it. Such is the aphrodisiac, my friends, of love and adoration from the Drive-By Media if you live in Washington. Here is Chuck Hagel questioning General Petraeus.
HAGEL: As you each have responsibilities, we are elected by the people of our states. To question strategy is not unpatriotic. I’ve always found that you want an honest evaluation, not through charts, not through the White House evaluations, you ask a sergeant or a corporal what they think. I’ll bet on them every time. We’ve got too many disconnects here, General, way too many disconnects. Come on! Our national intelligence report earlier this year said we’re in a civil war. It’s sectarian violence. You gave us a great inventory of what a brutal, bloody dictator Saddam was. Well, we know that. That’s not the issue here. Are we going to continue to invest American blood and treasure at the same rate we are doing now? For what? President said, ‘Let’s buy time.’ Buy time? For what?
RUSH: So there’s Hagel ranting patriotically, mind you, at Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, asking what the troops are dying for. For what? For what? No concept of victory, which is what’s missing in these hearings. I’m going to tell you this again. Regardless what you hear these people say, what your reaction is, I want you to understand that the main focus here from all of these elected officials, the left and the Republicans that join them, is not victory. Hagel can’t get it out of his mind this is a civil war. You know, go talk to a corporal or a sergeant. He just called Petraeus a liar! A Republican has now called Petraeus a liar! Bring him up on charges, Senator Hagel, court martial him. He’s lying to the Senate. He’s lying to Congress. Go get us a sergeant, and go get a corporal and bring ’em in there, if you want what you think the truth is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And the hits just keep on coming, ladies and gentlemen, from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning, here is the haughty John Kerry. Well, you may ask, ‘What business does Barbara Boxer have preaching to General Petraeus?’ Well, she’s elected. It’s like what Ted Kennedy can preach to Bork. He’s elected. But even I, when it comes to John Kerry preaching to some highly decorated military person with his track record in Vietnam — and do you know what he used his time for? To discuss Vietnam!
VIETNAM VETERAN JOHN KERRY: Almost half the names that found their way to the Vietnam wall, after that testimony, found their way there when our leaders had acknowledged in retrospect that they knew the policy was not working and would not work — and all you have to do is go back and read Defense Secretary McNamara’s books and other histories of that period. Our troops are owed a policy that is worthy of their sacrifice, and our country is owed a policy that meets our needs, our national interests, and that can ultimately get the job done. Is it acceptable —
RUSH: Stop the tape. I want to know what your national interests are. You know, it’s one thing to come around here and say that the country is on a policy of X, Y and Z, that the troops are owed a policy of their sacrifice. What are ‘the country’s needs,’ senator, in your view? It sounds to me like we need to lose this! In fact, it sounds to me like you think we already have. What are our ‘national interests,’ Senator Kerry? I wish you liberals would enunciate. You know, I’m getting tired of having to tell people what you stand for. I wish you’d do it. You’ve admitted that you’re invested in defeat. We know you want to lose this. We know we’re going to have to win the war on terror without you. In fact, we’re going to have to beat you as well as Bin Laden’s boys in order to win the war on terror. So I’d like to know from Senator Kerry, what are this country’s national interests? What are our needs as defined by you? We never seem to hear this, do we? Not in understandable lingo. Barbara Boxer tells Petraeus (sobbing), ‘We had the whole world at our hands after 9/11 and now the world hates us.’
BOXER: I get letter after letter asking me how long we’ll be in Iraq. I tell them it depends on who the president is and how many votes there are in the Congress to change course — and as for my own views, I tell them this war is the biggest foreign policy mistake ever. It took our eye off defeating the terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden who killed our people six years ago today; the greatest mistake because it strained our military, our National Guard. In California, gentlemen, we are short 50% in our equipment to respond to an earthquake, and the secretary of the army said we’d be in trouble if there was a major earthquake. The greatest mistake because we’ve lost so many of our own and so many are wounded who we will be dealing with for years and years. It breaks our hearts, all of our hearts. The biggest mistake, because we’ve lost the support of the world — when we had the whole world in our hand after 9/11.
RUSH: Really? Now, see, that is quite telling. The biggest mistake — and she saved it for last. The biggest mistake is that the world doesn’t wuv us anymore. (singing) ‘We had the whole world in our hand! We had the whole wide world in our hand! We had whole world in our hands,’ and that’s what bugs her the most, that now the whole world is not in our hands. (sniffle) ‘The world doesn’t wuv us anymore! (long sniffle) It just does not wuv us,’ and, of course, this is psychobabble. What does that matter when US national security interests are at stake? Of course, ladies and gentlemen, we can’t handle an earthquake in California now because of the war in Iraq. Yeah, right. Go ahead, Miss Boxer.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m getting some e-mails from people: ‘Would you stop playing these sound bites of these Democrats?’ I will not stop playing the sound bites of these Democrats! We are going to have to win the war without them. We are going to have to win the war against Osama and we’re going to have to beat the Democrats in the process, folks. You’ve got to know this. Well, you do, but there are fringe undecideds that listen to this program as well, and many Democrats, and many libs also tune in on a daily basis. They don’t admit it, but we know that they are out there. They’ve gotta hear this. We have an endless parade, starting yesterday in the House, of the lack of decency like I haven’t seen in my covering of current events as a broadcast specialist before. It’s startling here. It’s vulgar. I know it’s infuriating and enrages you, and it should. So let’s now go to the disgusting Robert Wexler. By the way, to tell you who he is, Robert Wexler was instrumental in the Florida recount in the 2000 elections. Let me tell you what happened here, just to rehash this, because the Democrats, they are mad. They think an election they were trying to steal in 2000, was stolen from them. You remember the famous butterfly ballot. This is a ballot designed by Theresa LePore, the elections official here in Palm Beach County, and she was a Democrat.
The ballots are sent to all of us voters. There’s a booklet that comes in with all of the issues, and the ballot is in there and it explains how to use it and so forth. So what happened? A bunch of people in southern Palm Beach County and northern Broward go to the polls, and they end up claiming — claiming! — that they were confused by the ballot, and that they actually ended up voting for Pat Buchanan when they intended to vote for Algore. This took real effort, folks. I used that same butterfly ballot, and I, El Rushbo, was nowhere near confused. Well, it turns out that there was a little strategy in place. A PR firm had cooked up a scheme to make these people widely known. Wexler claimed that he got an incredible number of phone calls in his office during Election Day from people who were scared, because they had inadvertently voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Algore. At the time, I said, ‘Who in the hell calls their congressmen on Election Day? This just doesn’t happen, not in hundreds or thousands of people. It just doesn’t happen — and if it did, that’s even scarier, folks, because look at how dependent those people are. The first person they think to call when they got a problem is their congressman, not somebody at the polling place?’ Anyway, it turned out that this was a scheme put in place to get this whole process of counting the chads and all that going. That’s who Robert Wexler is, among many other things. So let’s go to the audio sound bites. Here is a portion of his questioning yesterday of General Petraeus.
WEXLER: The surge has failed based on most parameters. In truth, war-related deaths have doubled in Iraq in 2007, compared to last year. Tragically it is my understanding that seven more American troops have died while we’ve been talking today. Cherry-picking statistics or selectively massaging information will not change the basic truth. It is my patriotic duty to represent my constituents and ask you — question you — about your argument that the surge in troops be extended until next year, next summer. I am skeptical, general — more importantly, the American people are skeptical — because four years ago very credible people, both in uniform and not in uniform, came before this Congress and sold us a bill of goods that turned out to be false!
RUSH: Now, you have to understand Wexler’s constituency to understand this. Robert Wexler is talking to the relatively few number of people in his district down here and making it sound like he’s representing the United States of America. If you want to know how kooky they are, you ought to pick up any south Florida paper. You can do it online. Read the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Read the Palm Beach Post. Read the Miami Herald. Just go to the letters to the editor, and you will swear you’re at Daily Kos! You will swear you’re at the Democrat Underground. You will swear you’re at MoveOn.org. They are deranged — and, yes, they are listening to me right now. You people down here, you are deranged. You Democrats down here are absolutely delusional, devoid of any rationality or reason. So he’s addressing his constituents here, folks. He wants to get reelected. He knows how wacko they are, and he’s gotta represent them — and he does so with pride, does he not? So here he just said that they got lied to, four years ago. Once again, Congressman, call this man up on charges! Bring him up on charges. He’s lying to Congress! You’re saying he’s massaging statistics, ‘cherry-picking statistics, selectively massaging information. That won’t change the basic truth,’ meaning he’s not telling you the truth. He’s lying to Congress. Of course, if you read the letters to the editor down here, it’s amazing. It really is, folks, to read these things. It’s one of the reasons I don’t cross the bridge here much, except they didn’t have to like go to the airport and get out. These people, you’ll find two or three a day: Bush lied! There was a letter to the editor today. ‘Bush is phony baloney for going to Iraq. It was unnecessary. He was just doing a show. Bush needs to be impeached!’ You’ll have two or three of those every day. Still, that’s who Wexler is talking to. So I just want you to understand that. I’m not trying to cut him some slack here, but you have to understand it. Go ahead and play the next Wexler now.
WEXLER: This testimony today is eerily similar to the testimony the American people heard on April 28th, 1967, from General William Westmoreland when he told the American people America was making progress in Vietnam.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Stop the tape. This is the attempt to continue to associate Iraq and Vietnam, and that’s something else that you’ll find that these lunatics down there are constantly harping on, because they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid down here, folks, and they drink it each and every day, and they’re fed this Kool-Aid by the editorial writers at these rags. He continued.
WEXLER: General, there are 58,195 names etched into the Vietnam War memorial! Twenty years from now, when we build the Iraq war memorial on the National Mall, how many more men and women will have been sacrificed to protect our so-called credibility. How many more names will be added to the wall before we admit we need to leave? How many more names, General?
RUSH: Here’s General Petraeus.
PETRAEUS: Congressman, first of all I have not said that the surge should be extended. In fact, my recommendations are that the surge be curtailed earlier than it would have been. My recommendations, in fact, include the withdrawal of the Marine Expeditionary Unit this month without replacement, and then a brigade starting in mid-December, and then about every 45 days. That’s a considerable amount prior to, in fact, how far the surge could have run if we’d just pushed for every 15 months. And with respect to the facts that I have laid out today, I very much stand by those.
RUSH: Okay. So Wexler just got swatted away like a troublesome fly, and what’s obvious here is Wexler hasn’t listened to what he’s been told. Wexler hasn’t listened. He’s asking these questions and making these pontificating speeches purely and simply for the newspapers and radio and TV station coverage down here for his constituents. He’s not listening to what Petraeus is saying. This is really aimed at Bush, what Wexler said. That’s who they hate down here and that’s Wexler’s district. One more from Petraeus. See what you think of this.
PETRAEUS: And lastly, I would say, Congressman, that no one is more conscious of the loss of life than the commander of the forces. That is something I take and feel very deeply, and if I did not think that this was a hugely important endeavor and if I did not think that it was an endeavor in which we could succeed, I would not have testified as I did to you all here today.
RUSH: You know, I’ll bet it was everything Petraeus could do to not reach across that table and start strangling this little guy. I’ll just bet you. He’s sitting there, Wexler, making it sound like nobody cares these 3700 deaths matter. He’s telling that to a four-star general in dress uniform! But again, that’s Wexler representing his district. He’s pontificating and making speeches for the media down here to show him on TV and so forth, because that’s what they think. Folks, this is not far off from the rest of the kook, liberal population throughout this country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We roll on with the audio sound bites, ladies and gentlemen. Difficult though it must be to hear, it is something you must subject yourself to. This is a little exchange, unbelievable exchange, in which General Petraeus has to explain to a US congressman that Al-Qaeda really is in Iraq, and that they’re the same Al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11, and that they are still a threat to us. It is Congressman Gary Ackerman of New York.
ACKERMAN: Isn’t it true, General, Al-Qaeda in Iraq formed in 2005?
PETRAEUS: Senator, I’m not saying when it started. I’m saying merely that Al-Qaeda/Iraq clearly is part of the overall greater Al-Qaeda network.
ACKERMAN: But they didn’t exist —
PETRAEUS: — first communications, and there is no question also but that Al-Qaeda/Iraq is a key element in igniting the ethnic sectarian violence.
RUSH: Yes! Yes!
PETRAEUS: They have been, in effect, an element that has poured gas on burning embers with the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque, for example, and with efforts that they have tried recently, for example, bombing the poor Yazidi villages in northwestern Iraq and so forth.
ACKERMAN: Are they a threat to us?
PETRAEUS: Al-Qaeda central is a threat to us.
RUSH: Are they a threat to us? He asks him this on the day before the sixth anniversary of 9/11! Are they a threat to us? Now, ladies and gentlemen, we all know how smart I am. You know it. I know it. I don’t say it. You know it. You can’t believe, though, that something I know is not known by a congressman from New York named Gary Ackerman, who I’ve met at a wedding. Same place I met Mrs. Clinton. That’s beside the point. We killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they appointed some other guy to head up Al-Qaeda in Iraq. We captured the guy. The guy started singing, and he said Al-Qaeda in Iraq is not a homegrown insurgency. It is Al-Qaeda from the Zawahiri-Bin Laden front. It is there specifically to make it look like there’s a civil war in Iraq when there is not. These insurgents that they are recruiting are coming from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, some from Jordan, and they are all part of the larger Al-Qaeda network. This was told to us by a captured leader. Even I, ladies and gentlemen, know this. I can’t believe Ackerman doesn’t. That’s what Petraeus was talking about here.
They’re trying to make it look like a civil war; they’re trying to make it look like a sectarian war, and they know they can make it work because they’ve got the Democrat Party in this country, and the Drive-By Media, wanting to push that narrative! They know how to feed the Democrats what they want, the terrorists do. They know how to feed the Drive-By Media in this country what they want. So Petraeus swats another guy down. Let’s go to last night’s Fox News Channel, Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume for a Limbaugh Echo. It is from none other than Mort Kondracke; the fill-in host is Jim Angle. He says, ‘Mort, an ad that appeared in the New York Times today, obviously an attempt to impugn his integrity, and a pretty harsh attack on General Petraeus, one that Democrats flirted with on Friday, but they weren’t nearly this pointed.’
KONDRACKE: Every time they kind of leaned toward the center, Harry Reid or somebody like that, MoveOn.org has gone after them and blasted them, and sure enough they go back into line. And the problem for the Democratic Party is that they’re always siding with their left wing on nuclear freezes and nuclear disarmament and all that kind of stuff. And that’s why nobody trusts them on foreign policy.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s 80% right. Where is Mort wrong, Mr. Snerdley? Did you listen to the bite, were you screening calls? Okay, where is Mr. Kondracke in error in what he said? When is the last time Democrats moved to the damn center? They’re no different than MoveOn.org. They’re no different than Daily Kos. This is another one of these myths that’s being perpetrated out there, that these Democrats are harmless, they just desperately want to be centrists; they just want to be right in the middle. But they’re being dragged to this ultra-extreme liberalism by a bunch of kooks? They are this! They are this. They don’t have to get dragged that far. In some cases, some Democrats may not be as kook fringe as the MoveOn.orgs, the Daily Kos and all these other clowns out there, but they don’t have to get moved far to be in bed with them. Look at it this way. They’re in twin beds. The far left is on the left twin bed. The distance between two twin beds is not that far away, unless it’s your first date, then it’s the longest distance in the world.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Jack in La Mesa, California. Hi, Jack, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. Nice to talk to you today.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: A day without Rush is a like a day without sunshine.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Okay, to test your fertile mind here — I’ve got three names I want to throw at you and you can correlate them.
RUSH: Go ahead.
CALLER: General David Petraeus, Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, Craig Livingstone.
RUSH: (Laughing) Let’s see, a little host test here. I think the fourth name in this little quadrangle that you’ve given me here would be Tom Lantos.
CALLER: Correct, professor. And what did Lantos even go over the line on with Livingstone?
RUSH: Yeah — this is funny. I’ll never forget this. Thanks for reminding me of this. I should have mentioned this yesterday. Craig Livingstone, the guy with the 500 FBI files in the Clinton White House and for a long time nobody knew who hired him, nobody would admit it, he’s just there every day. So finally he gets his moment. They bring him up to testify before a committee that Lantos sits on, I forget which. And not long before that, Admiral Boorda had committed suicide because David Hackworth had done a story for Newsweek saying that Boorda had faked a bunch of things to get his medals. Boorda was embarrassed and shamed by this and took his life. So you got Livingstone up there, and Tom Lantos is talking to him, and he said, ‘At least Admiral Boorda committed
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s what Lantos said to Craig Livingstone. He said, ‘At least Admiral Boorda committed suicide for far less than what Livingstone had done.’ And Livingstone’s face just could not believe it. He was another Clinton dupe just doing the dirty work and got caught.