RUSH: Drive-By Media, Russia and Georgia, perhaps the most idiotic, stupid question yet was asked by CNN info babe Suzanne Malveaux. Last night, The Situation Room, she was talking with the Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.
SAAKASHVILI: Well, we did our best. So far we’ve done — we’ve done our best but so far the only thing we’ve been getting from that is bombs, is killings, is attacks on civilians, is looting; and is very, very offensive, angry rhetoric basically about killing our independence. And this is absolutely not acceptable.
RUSH: So Suzanne Malveaux of CNN, talking to the beleaguered Georgian president whose country is being overrun (laughing), asks, ‘Have you reached out? Have you tried to talk to them yet, a dialogue? Have you begun a dialogue?’ (laughing) He’s too busy dodging bullets! This is late yesterday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had a press conference, and an unidentified Russian reporter asks this question. ‘Madam Secretary, many people in Russia would say what you did after 9/11 was really disproportionate to the threat and the actual loss that you incurred. So the Russians are trying to ensure the security of their forces and their citizens and their peacekeepers. And they are moving, and they are creating a buffer zone. What’s wrong with that? Why can you do this in Iraq?
RICE: I am not going to sit here and judge each Russian military operation.
RUSKIE: Mmm-hmm.
RICE: I am going to say that when you start bombing ports and threatening to bomb airfields and bombing a city like Gori —
RUSKIE: Mmm-hmm.
RICE: — and bringing troops in a flanking maneuver on the western flank of Georgia and tying up the main roads between Tbilisi and Gori, that’s well beyond anything that is needed to protect Russian peacekeepers. And that is why Russia is starting to face international condemnation for what it is doing. This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed.
RUSH: Really? Have they? I don’t see much evidence that things have changed. But did you notice a Russian journalist actually acting like he’s a patriot for his country, asking the secretary of state, ‘What do you mean? We’re just trying to protect ourselves over there! Why, why, we’re just trying to create a buffer zone for our peacekeepers.’ That’s so laughable. Russian troops are peacekeepers? Fine! Let the raping of the women and children begin, then! That’s what UN peacekeepers do in Africa. But this Russian journalist says (doing Ruskie impression), ‘How dare you criticize Russia after what you did in Iraq.’ So the Russian journalist is picking up our Drive-By journalist refrain. But the important thing here is the answer. ‘This is not 1968 and an invasion of Czechoslovakia. You can’t, in the Twenty-First Century, go invade another country. Things have changed.’ Have they? What is anybody doing to stop this? We got a negotiated peace deal. The Russians are still bombing the airports after they threatened to. They followed through on the threat to bomb the airports; now they’re doing it. The Drive-Bys are now openly making the point for the Russians that we have no reason to oppose this because of our outrageous invasion of Iraq. Here is an exchange last night between Campbell Brown and Ed Henry of CNN.
BROWN: John McCain says he didn’t want to reignite the Cold War, but then he added that ‘in the Twenty-First Century nations don’t invade other nations.’ (snidely) Yeah! He said that, though he did not mention how the US invasion of Iraq quite fits into this thinking.
HENRY: What’s the difference here between the Russians doing what the United States did after 9/11, moving into a sovereign country like Iraq?
BROWN: Questions like that do illustrate some of the difficulty that the US is now facing trying to execute foreign policy, right?
HENRY: It does. It shows the administration has a credibility problem on the world stage right now.
RUSH: No. It doesn’t show that at all. It shows that you people have lost your souls in the Drive-By Media to try to establish a moral equivalence between us ousting a murderous thug dictator — who was paying terrorists and families of terrorists to blow themselves up in Israel, and was fomenting terrorist activity as best he could all over the world. To say that us going in and stopping that, after 9/11, is akin to a Democratic country being invaded by Russia? This is just… These people have lost their souls. Anything they can do to rip this country, is what excites them, what makes them want to go on the air, what makes them want to talk to each other, anything they can do to rip this country and rip President Bush. John McCain said he didn’t want to ‘reignite the Cold War.’ He was in Birmingham, Michigan, yesterday, and he had a little press conference and a Drive-By reporter said, ‘You said that heightened security for the Baltic states and Poland might be in order. Could you talk a little bit more about what shape that might take?’
MCCAIN: It’s important that everyone recognize throughout the world that in the NATO alliance an attack on one is vowed as an attack on all, but I don’t think we’re going to reignite the Cold War here with Russia. I think this is a very serious situation, but I don’t see this as a return to nuclear standoffs, et cetera, et cetera. In the Twenty-First century, nations don’t invade other nations.
MCCAIN: This isn’t a time for partisanship and sniping between campaigns. This is about hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people whose lives are either being taken or they’re rendered homeless, wounded. This is no time for that, to start with. Second of all, if I may be so bold, there was another president — at one time, there was a president — named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America’s advocacy for democracy and freedom. He was criticized at that time.
RUSH: Yeah, well, the thing about Reagan was there was action following it up: the deployment of missiles, the real threat to up our defenses in a way that the Russians, at that time, could not keep up with. But Senator McCain, it may not ‘be time for partisanship and sniping between the campaigns,’ but it’s time to get real and understand that that’s all the Democrats have. Every issue is going to be partisan, and the fact that you’re having to sit there and answer the second stupidest question of the day — that you created the controversy, that you’re exacerbating tensions by talking tough — this is a sorry, sorry day for our media. It just gets worse with each passing day.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
As terms of the ceasefire, Campbell Brown and Ed Henry, we resume the right to resume kicking their asses at any point if they did not live up to the terms of the surrender agreement. Shockingly, Saddam Hussein did not live up to those terms and continued in wanton violation of 15 Security Council resolutions. You covered all of this, Campbell Brown and Ed Henry, you covered it all. For you to compare Saddam Hussein to the president of Georgia, a democratic and elected president amongst a free people, if you want to start making comparisons, Putin is closer to Saddam Hussein than Saakashvili. These are our best and brightest trained journalists, ladies and gentlemen, covering the stories and then forgetting that they were even there. I doubt that they forgot. They’re just pushing the agenda anyway. They willingly sacrifice their credibility, all in the pursuit of an agenda.