RUSH: Let’s go to sound bite 14, Kerry and McCain. John Kerry, served in Vietnam, John McCain yesterday on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. There’s a little who’s on first routine about Iraq and a number of other things.
KERRY: This administration took their eye off of him and chose to go to war in a place that had nothing to do with the war on terror, and the fact is, as I said before, Al-Qaeda loves our being in Iraq. If you want to put Al-Qaeda off balance —
KERRY: — then change the equation. And Iran loves the fact that we’re in Iraq.
MCCAIN: And Iran —
KERRY: And Iran is getting stronger — excuse me?
MCCAIN: And Iran loves to be in Iraq, and they are.
KERRY: Well, Iran is in Iraq —
MCCAIN: And Al-Qaeda is in Iraq, and Al-Qaeda is — if we don’t continue to beat them back, will be a major influence —
KERRY: John, you are debating with yourself.
MCCAIN: — and have training bases, because they will have — no.
KERRY: Yes, you are, because we’ve said, we’re going to continue —
MCCAIN: You are asking to go back to a failed strategy that failed for nearly four years, that many of us —
KERRY: And you’re asking —
MCCAIN: — and you voted for, by the way. So I hope that we will have the patience and the understanding on the part of the American people that they’ve made great sacrifice, and all of us are saddened by it. But I hope we can also point out the consequences of failure, which is what the Democrats are proposing now.
RUSH: McCain taking it to Senator Kerry, who served in Vietnam. Let’s go grab sound bite 13, because they’re frustrated. Bush basically said, ‘We’re going to hang on, and we’re going to go until we win this thing,’ and the Democrats wanted the war to be solved and off the table and the troops brought home before their president is inaugurated in 2009. So Russert says to Kerry: ‘Kerry, what will the Democrats do now? If you want to stop the war, you have one choice, and that’s in effect to stop the funding, close down the government, say not one more penny for the war in Iraq, Mr. President, otherwise this war is going to go forward as President Bush intends it to.’
KERRY: Everything depends on having 60 votes or 67 votes to override a veto. So any law that we pass, the president has the power from a pen to be able to negate. That is what the 2008 election will be significantly about: How do you make America stronger? I believe the president’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of those who talk about surrender and talk about the Democrats choosing to lose is insulting and incorrect. We’re choosing to win for America.
RUSH: You are not choosing to win for America, and everybody knows it. From the Chicago Sun-Times, a column by Steve Huntley: ‘Iraq Promises Could Haunt a Democrat President.’ This column is another one of these Rush is Right things, even though Mr. Huntley may not know it. ‘Would a President Hillary Clinton, as the first woman commander in chief, or a President Barack Obama, as the first African-American chief executive, want to begin work in the White House by ordering an American army to retreat from the field of battle? That doesn’t exactly sound like the way you’d want to start a historic presidency.’ He goes on to say, ‘They’re not going to pull out of there.’ His point is exactly what I have made to you. They want Bush to surrender so that they don’t have to be the ones to surrender, because they’re not going to surrender.