RUSH: We have a montage, ladies and gentlemen, of State-Controlled Media comparing Obama to Harry Truman. They can’t compare Obama to Obama. They have to compare Obama to other great presidents — Lincoln, you name it.
ANDERSON COOPER: The last time this happened, President Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: …Truman-dumping-Douglas MacArthur moment here.
DIANNE SAWYER: Echoing back to 1951: President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur.
JONATHAN ALTER: …since Truman fired MacArthur.
TARA MERGENER: The biggest showdown between a president and a wartime commander since Harry Truman stripped General MacArthur.
JACK JACOBS: After Truman fired MacArthur, MacArthur became even more publicly popular.
EUGENE ROBINSON: Harry Truman didn’t need Douglas MacArthur, and, uh, I think this is that situation.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: I had to go back to Truman and MacArthur for such an example.
CHUCK TODD: There’s a lot of comparisons here that people are trying to make to Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: What happened with MacArthur was that he made public statements that actually threatened the mission.
RUSH: So they’re just doing everything they can to elevate the status of our young Boy Wonder president. ‘It’s like Lincoln, like Truman, McClellan with Lincoln and MacArthur. Yeah, was really great.’ (sigh) It’s inept. There’s nobody to compare this guy to other than Jimmy Carter. That’s the closest comparison there is. By the way, the Denver Post today: ‘President Should Let Drilling Moratorium Die.’ There’s a reason for everything, folks. It’s puzzling. Why would a militantly pro-union president shut down oil rigs that have mostly nonunion jobs? Did you know that? Most of the rigs are nonunion. This president doesn’t have the oil companies under his union-loving thumb yet. That may be an issue with him, who knows. Denver Post reports: ‘President Barack Obama has been given a chance to avert a second and possibly larger disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that he ought to take.
‘Tuesday, a federal judge rightly rejected the ill-advised moratorium the Obama administration placed on deepwater drilling projects that imperils tens of thousands of jobs in the region. Drilling interests, with the support of the state of Louisiana, had sought the injunction. Regrettably, the White House has said it will immediately appeal. Why is the president so bent on sending those jobs elsewhere?’ The Denver Post. This is an editorial. ‘Why is the president so bent on sending those [Gulf] jobs elsewhere? … [S]ome 38,000 jobs are related to drilling projects in the Gulf.’ ‘Why is he so bent on sending them elsewhere?’
NBC News is reporting that McChrystal has been relieved of his command. We were told yesterday he had tendered his resignation. So… You know, frankly, I’m surprised. I thought Obama wouldn’t do it. I thought that… Yeah, I made a mistake. I should have realized immediately that he would can this guy. I shoulda realized it immediately. This is the only get a rise out of this guy. All these people losing jobs? The oil spill? It took him 50 days to give a rat’s rear end about that, but this Rolling Stone article comes out? And, by the way, read it. You will not find one quotable quote of Obama from McChrystal. You will not read one. You’ll find one snarky little comment about Biden. But even that is more of an, ‘I’m not going there. I got in trouble once by talking about these guys. I’m not going to do it.’ The Rolling Stone piece is a hit job on the US military, it’s a hit job on the war, and now as a result of this the media is going to be able to claim they have altered the course of a war and the war strategy. What’s at stake?
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RUSH: We’re still waiting on the president. We’re still waiting on the president to show up in the Rose Garden with the godlike echo in the speeches to announce that McChrystal has been relieved of command and General David Petraeus is going to take over. Now, don’t the Democrats and the liberals consider Petraeus a liar? Or has that and the ‘General Betray Us’ ads been forgotten now? Remember, Petraeus was going to show up on Capitol Hill, did show up, to talk about the surge in Iraq. Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, all these people, before he said a word, called him a liar. ‘This war is lost,’ said Harry Reid. Now all of a sudden the guy they called a liar… Obama did not have any good words for Petraeus when he was a senator. Now all of a sudden this guy who was so horrible and rotten, and was a liar — we couldn’t trust him, his plan in Iraq wouldn’t work — is the guy to take over? Petraeus?
I got this note from a high-ranking military guy. ‘Hey, Rush, since when can some slime bag from Rolling Stone magazine rewrite our wartime strategy? There’s no way to compare this to General MacArthur’s firing by President Truman. No way! Is this today’s version of Hanoi Jane Fonda? With General McChrystal’s firing the media wins this round. So does Al-Qaeda. I think they’re both dancing in the streets. As a military guy, I just don’t get it.’ A high-ranking man — who served with great honor in Iraq, by the way, and continues to go back wherever he’s needed on various tours of duty.
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RUSH: We’re working on getting some audio of Joe Biden ripping Petraeus and saying his surge plan was stupid and idiotic. Vanity Fair magazine: ‘When his turn came, Obama lectured Petraeus on the futility of his mission…’ meaning the surge in Iraq ‘…using up the full seven minutes allocated to him and giving the general no chance to respond. ‘We have now set the bar so low,’ said Obama, ‘that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation … is considered success. And it’s not. This continues to be a disastrous foreign-policy mistake.” That’s what Obama said to Petraeus when he was up being dissed by Hillary and Harry Reid as a liar. And now he’s hired Petraeus to take over for McChrystal; is making the announcement right now. He just got through praising McChrystal and asked us all to give him a couple attaboys, but he’s history now.
Now, you got Hillary over there at state, and now you got Petraeus. I don’t know if you’ve heard, Petraeus has been mentioned, it’s kind of underneath the radar, Petraeus has been mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate 2012. There’s some people in the Republican Party who think that we need somebody like a Petraeus, military hero, successful general. Well, I don’t know how that works now since Obama, after ripping this guy a new one to his face for seven minutes when he was a senator during the Petraeus hearings, has now hired him.
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RUSH: Matt in Atlanta, I’m glad you waited. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I’m calling about MacArthur. I don’t think there’s really a good comparison here at all because MacArthur was fired. He wanted to take on the Chinese in China, he wanted to defeat the North Koreans, and he disagreed with the policy of the president, and the reason why he was fired, he even talked to Republican leadership in the House to get that job done. So there was really no comparison. I mean you got McChrystal handing a resignation versus MacArthur actively trying to forward the —
RUSH: I know. Look, what’s going on here is real simple. We have a man-child incompetent in the White House. The media who helped put him there are fully aware of it. He’s gotta be propped up and be compared favorably to all these great presidents of the past. They did it to Clinton, too. They’re always trying to give these guys credibility by saying they are walking in the footsteps, in this case, of Harry Truman. Yeah, well, let’s see how quickly they like it when people remind Obama and the media Harry Truman dropped a couple nuclear weapons on Japan. Is that Obamaesque?