RUSH: This is Rick in Hannibal, Missouri. Rick, I’m glad you waited, sir. You are on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Mega Steeler fan dittos here in the Show-Me State.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: Yesterday you were talking about Obama, and his response to the surge on how I think he said we don’t know how that would have happened because we didn’t use his plan or something. That’s just… When you pointed him out to be a jerk, I was like, pumping my fist and saying, ‘right on,’ because I can’t believe he’s getting away with not as much scrutiny as he should be.
RUSH: No, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute. He is getting scrutiny and I want to show it. It’s happening in small doses. Mike, run the sound bites 9, 10 and 11 here, maybe even 12. He is getting some scrutiny on this. There are people talking about it, but most in the media are trying to undercut it and ignore it and throw everybody else who’s criticizing him under the bus because it’s not about what Obama says. He’s tripping up all over the place. He is rambling and incoherent in these answers, and yet they just stand there and fawn. But Katie Couric, of all people, really bore in on this surge business. So I want you to listen to this, Rick. This is last night. Now, not all of this aired on the CBS evening news. We were very resourceful. We found where CBS hid this. CBS hid this on their news site, their website: CBSnews.com. Now, some of this aired on the Evening News with Katie Couric or whatever it’s called, but not all of it. Here’s the first portion of her interview.
COURIC: You raised a lot of eyebrows on this trip saying even knowing what you know now, you still would not have supported the surge. People may be scratching their heads and saying, ‘Why?’
OBAMA: Well, uh, er, ka, uh — because uh, eh, er, what I, uhhh. What I was referring to and I consistently referred to is the need for a strategy that actually concludes our involvement in Iraq and moves Iraqis to take responsibility for the country, uh, and —
COURIC: But didn’t the surge do that?
OBAMA: L-l-l-et me — Let me finish, Katie. The, uh — What happens if we continue to put $10 to $12 billion a month into Iraq, if we are willing to send as many troops, uh, as we can muster continuing into Iraq, uh, there’s no doubt that that’s going to have an impact. But it doesn’t meet our long-term strategic goal which is to make the American people safer over the long term.
RUSH: Once again, random incoherence here, putting down the surge. It worked. She wasn’t satisfied. She continued on this same theme.
COURIC: Do you not give the surge any credit for decreasing violence?
OBAMA: No, no. Of course — of course I have. There is no doubt that the extraordinary work of our US forces has contributed to a lessening of the violence. Just as making sure that, uh, uh, the Sadr militia stood down or the fact that the Sunni tribes, uh, decided to flip and work with us instead of with, uh, Al-Qa-e-da, something that we hadn’t anticipated happening. All those things have contributed to a reduction in violence.
RUSH: All those things that we didn’t expect to happen? We didn’t anticipate this happening? ‘All those things have contributed to a reduction in violence.’ You take the surge out of that and none of this would have happened — and once again he’s a Democrat admitting that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq. He’s been saying Al-Qaeda’s in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda’s not in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s in Afghanistan. Rambling incoherence.
COURIC: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 —
OBAMA: Heh, heh.
COURIC: — additional troops —
OBAMA: Katie?
COURIC: — help the situation in Iraq?
OBAMA: Katie, the — the — the — Uh, you’ve asked me three different times and, eh, eh, I said repeatedly that there is no doubt that, uh, our troops helped to reduce violence.
COURIC: But yet —
OBAMA: There’s no doubt.
COURIC: — you are saying if you knew —
OBAMA: But, duh —
COURIC: Given what you know now, you still wouldn’t support it.
OBAMA: Because the — Because the —
COURIC: So I’m just trying to understand this.
OBAMA: Because — because, uh, uh, i-i-it’s pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 to $12 billion a month — $200 billion — that’s money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up, uh, a declining economic situation in the United States.
RUSH: Pure pap. This is pure pap. Take the money and put it in Afghanistan? The war was in Iraq. Who cares why? This guy, he was honest yesterday. He said (paraphrased), ‘I needed something to disagree with Bush on! I needed something to get nominated to my party’s presidential ticket. I needed to disagree with Bush. I needed, if I had to,’ like McCain said, ‘I needed to lose the war if I had to in order to get the nomination.’ That’s what he’s saying. He’s getting really testy. The Messiah is getting very, very upset at Katie Couric, and yet she tried one more time.
COURIC: I really don’t mean to belabor this, senator, because I’m really trying to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq would exist today without the surge?
OBAMA: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals.
RUSH: None of it is hypothetical! You blooming… You are glittering jewel of colossal ignorance, Obama! You wanted us to try surrender, dunce! You wanted us to try to surrender! That’s what he was after. That’s what his party was after. They met the political benchmarks. The surge worked every which way it was designed to work. And he’s lamenting we never got a chance to try his plan? His plan was surrender! Beef up the political circumstance? We did that. In fact, I would suggest that the Iranian congress of parliament, is probably meeting more benchmarks for performance than the US Congress is. Katie interviewed McCain, too. Let’s go ahead and do those now since we’re on it. Why wait? I’ve got time before the commercial break. Let’s go to audio sound bite 13. Here is, again for the website, CBSnews.com, Katie Couric talking to McCain said, ‘Prime Minister Maliki and Senator Obama seemed to be on the same page when it comes to a timetable to get out of Iraq, 2010. Are you feeling like the odd man out here?’
MCCAIN: Senator Obama said the surge would fail, said that it couldn’t succeed. He was wrong. He said he still doesn’t agree that the surge has succeeded, when everybody knows that it has succeeded. I said at the time that I supported the surge that I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war. Senator Obama has indicated by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.
RUSH: All right. It’s about time for that. Of course, the left is all over this. That’s what happens. When you say the truth about these people, they accuse you of engaging in a personal attack. Katie’s next question, ‘Senator Obama says while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security, he also credits the Sunni awakening.’ By the way, this Sunni awakening, again we can find in the Washington Post today. I have it right here (shuffling papers) in my formerly nicotine stained fingers. ‘In Ramadi, Obama saw firsthand Iraq’s bitter political rivalries. Ali Hatem Suleiman, a top Awakening tribal leader who was at the meeting, said they asked Obama to support the tribes — and not the Sunni Islamic parties that rejoined Iraq’s government over the weekend. … ‘You can pull out and withdraw all the forces in Iraq, but you have to keep the Marines in our province because we still have problems with the Islamic parties and we can face a bad situation at any moment,’ Suleiman said they told Obama.’
So even the Sunni awakening said ‘keep the Marines here’! These guys Obama fell in love with, the Sunni Awakening, asked if they could go it alone, said look at all your other forces out there but you keep the Marines here. So everybody involved in Iraq’s security on the ground as a commander wants the American troops there — some of them up to 2018, up to 2020, 2012 — and even Obama’s most favored nation status here to the Sunni awakening doesn’t want the Marines out of there. So back to the question to McCain which was, ‘He credits the Sunni Awakening and the Shiite government going after militias and says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?’
MCCAIN: I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheikhs. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheikh and others and it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn’t make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think does a great disservice to the young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.
RUSH: Now they are out there saying McCain’s all frustrated, and people are saying that he shouldn’t react this way; he shouldn’t get frustrated. I can understand him being frustrated, but I don’t think he’s frustrated so much at Obama because anybody can run around and say what they want. It’s the fact that aside from — of all people Katie Couric and the Washington Post — don’t care what Obama’s saying. They are passing it off as somehow enlightened, even anointed, because he is The Messiah; when he’s making juvenile statements! He’s answering questions with the recitation of history that everybody knows. He’s just trying to tell how difficult all their problems are and how special the attention is going to have to be paid and blah, blah, blah. Here’s the last bit with McCain. Katie says, ‘You sound very frustrated with Obama’s perspective.’
MCCAIN: No, I’m not at all. I respect Senator Obama. I admire his success.
RUSH: You’ve gotta stop this.
MCCAIN: He won a very tough primary campaign. I respect him.
RUSH: Gotta stop this.
MCCAIN: I look forward to debating these issues. He just has been wrong and is wrong, and therefore I strongly disagree and I think the American people will make a judgment about who was right.
RUSH: Look, I understand that no presidential candidate is ever going to admit being frustrated. That’s not the thing to do. I understand that. But you don’t have to sit there and talk about how much you respect Obama when you just got through saying he’s lying, when you just got through saying he’s wrong! You sit there and say you respect what he’s done or this or that? You don’t have to say that. But that’s the defensiveness. That’s the racial aspect of this. McCain’s frustrated that Obama’s getting away with this. This is sort of like how we were all frustrated back in the nineties when Clinton got away with it. In that sense nothing’s changed. And so calling Obama a liar, we found out that that doesn’t affect how Democrats vote for their candidates. You can sit there and call him a liar all day long. I’m not even going there. He’s incompetent as far as I’m concerned. He is inexperienced, incompetent, and he’s dangerous.
He’s a con man. Whether he’s lying or not, who knows. All I know is that the kind of people who support him don’t care. He doesn’t have supporters. The people who support him don’t think. He doesn’t think. You know, they are all a bunch of reactors. You know, they’re just sitting around thinking they got some guy who will snap his fingers and fix all the problems that they have in their lives. They are not interested in specifics. They are interested in how he makes them feel. If he lies, big deal. They don’t take it personally because they don’t think he’s lying to them personally. So, that’s the wrong way to go with it but at the same time having to sit there and, ‘I admire his success. He had a very tough primary campaign.’
I’d just carry forth a theme. ‘I’m not frustrated, but I think, Katie, what this proves is that he is just not qualified for this job. He is just not qualified for it, Katie.’
‘Well, what do you mean by that?’
‘Well, look, Katie, the facts on the ground are what they are. He doesn’t seem to be able to comprehend it, something like that.’
But who am I? A mere mortal talk show guy on the radio.