RUSH: We start in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Bill, thanks for all your patience. I appreciate it.
CALLER: Mega dittos from the Left Coast, and it’s a real honor to talk to a true American patriot and a great American as yourself.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I am a returning Iraqi war veteran, and I am extremely appalled by everything I hear from the Democrats in Congress and the Senate, and even some Republicans, and I am truly grateful for your support of patriots as ourselves and the ones who truly go out there and fight and separating us from the phonies.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. I’ve been to Afghanistan and I’ve spoken to a number of different assemblies of combat troops, have been to Walter Reed and so forth, and one of the reasons I like going and seeing them is to thank them. And one of the reasons I love having people like you call is to be able to thank you, because you’re getting abused. There’s a whole political movement in this party seeking to demoralize you and to impugn you and to secure your defeat. There is a movement and a political party in this country which impugns you and your fellow warriors by suggesting you only joined the military not because you really want to defend the country, but you have no other options. You come from poor backgrounds, poor neighborhoods, you can’t get an education, your only way out of the ghetto that is America is to join the military. They stop at nothing to impugn you.
CALLER: They lie. They’re willing to say anything to boost their political career. It irks me every time I hear it and every sound bite you’re playing just tears me up inside because they’re truly tearing our country apart, and they don’t understand what they’re doing.
RUSH: Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. This is what everybody must understand. They know exactly what they’re doing. We know why they are doing it. It is reprehensible, but it’s all starting to backfire on them now. Fifty-five resolutions to get out, they failed, the Betray Us ad failed miserably, backfired big time — approval ratings for Petraeus are 61%. The Congress is on the losing end of this because of their treatment of a decorated four-star general sitting before them being accused of lying and being a patsy for George W. Bush. They now have to try to spin this. They’re trying to all of a sudden now make themselves sound like the biggest patriots ever, the biggest supporters of the war, the biggest supporters of the military, because they’ve got to try to reverse the damage that was done to them by the Betray Us ad. So I, and this attack on me, this smear, has become their way of doing it with their base. The base is getting impatient, fit to be tied. Their base needs to be distracted from the failures of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to do what their voters expected them to have accomplished by now. Here’s Emily in Fort Washington, Maryland. Nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush, it’s a privilege and a pleasure —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — to speak to you after all these years. I’ve been with you since back before the famous bake sale, and I want to send my warmest regards to you. We want to tell you that we support you, we love you, and we thank you for all that you have done for us and the audience, and, of course, the military. And nothing that the left is going to do to distort that conversation that you had is going to deter us from listening to you and getting our information from you and spreading your good word to other people that we know. There is nothing that they can do. I also called Senator Harkin’s office, Senator Reid’s office, Hillary Clinton’s office, and I let them have it. I told them flat out that they are wasting their time in the Senate, there are other things that they need to be doing, and if they can’t do it, they need to get the hell out.
RUSH: (clapping) Bravo. Don’t need to add anything to that, other than thank you very much.
CALLER: You’re welcome.
RUSH: I appreciate it. I think what they’re doing is enabling this broadcast and my words to be heard by even more Americans, which they do each and every time they make me the focal point of one of their diatribes. A little mental exercise here for a second, folks. Let’s swerve away from patriotism to morale building, just as an illustration. Who builds morale and who demoralizes? Politicians love polls. Let’s conduct a poll. I’ll pay half of the poll. I’ll let them pick the pollster, within reason. Go to the troops, go to Afghanistan, go to Iraq, go to troops in this country who have returned from service in both theaters, ask them a simple question: Who lifts your morale more: Harry Reid or Rush Limbaugh? I’ll even let them select who goes first, Reid or Rush, doesn’t matter to me. Do they really think that 50 liberal Senators would do more to rally the troops than 50 Rush Limbaughs? These are the people in control of the United States Senate, the people who are responsible for your taxes, your energy production, your security, your country. Are they so out of touch, that out of touch with reality? Sadly, they are.
The left has struggled for years trying to get on the right side of moral values. Now they’ve created a whole new mess for themselves with morale values. Do they really want to make troop morale an issue? Of all the fights they could pick to hush me up, the lamest, the flimsiest, is troop morale. Of all of my strong points — and there are so many of them it’s hard to list them all — but of all of my strong points, is not troop support right up there at the top? And of all of the left’s weaknesses — and there are too many to list here — isn’t undercutting troop morale one of their biggest messes? And yet, here they are attempting to suggest that it is I undercutting troop morale. Let’s do a poll on it and let’s ask the troops. I’ll pay half.
Kenneth, Abilene, Texas, nice to have you on the EIB Network, sir.
CALLER: Rush how are you?
RUSH: Good, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to talk to you, sir. Longtime listener, first-time caller, and I’m angry. I’m angry at the smear campaign that the liberal left has imposed upon you. I’m a real veteran. I’ve served in every war from Vietnam, with the exception of Grenada, to Desert Storm. My son is now serving in Iraq. There are a number of false soldiers, a number of people who like to claim that they were soldiers, claim they were in the military, and were not. You can go to a number of websites to find myth versus fact on our military. I’d like to say, sir, I’d love to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, side by side with you anywhere in the world. You’ve supported the American soldier beyond belief. You supported me through a number of conflicts, and now you’re supporting my son. I love you, Rush.
RUSH: Love you, too, sir. I love all of you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
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RUSH: Michael in Rochelle, Illinois. Thank you for waiting. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just wanted to make a point here as a young Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran and as a young fellow talk show host with a minuscule audience compared to yours. For people outside of the military, there is nothing you can do that supports the troops more than what you do every day, Rush, and that is supporting the mission of the troops — and you do it on the most massive scale. I left the Army in late 2003 after six years in active duty, served in the combat zone of Kuwait and Iraq for a year, and I asked myself: When I got out, what could I do to support this war effort and this mission? And I found my way to talk radio, and you’re the, you know, number-one guy in talk radio. You don’t have to have served in the military to support the troops and their mission, just as you don’t have to have been a policeman or a fireman to support those men and women, who also put themselves in harm’s way for strangers every day.
RUSH: Excellent point.
CALLER: What you do supports the mission, because you explain why it’s so important why this fight is necessary, and I thank you for it, Rush.
RUSH: I appreciate that very much, Mike. He reminds me of another good point. Who is it that’s always having to defend the fact they support the troops? It’s the Harry Reids of the world and it’s Harry Reid’s supporters. ‘Hey, we support the troops, but we don’t support the mission.’ Well, the way you support the troops is supporting the mission. If you have to come out and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute! We support the troops,’ there must be some doubt about your support of the troops, leftists.