This WikiLeaks business. Look at this. This is from an ebullient, ebullient AP: ‘Huge Leak of Secret Files Sows New Afghan War Doubts.’ Yeah, exactly the purpose. ‘The leak of 90,000 secret military files has emboldened critics of the war in Afghanistan, who raised fresh questions Tuesday about the viability of the increasingly unpopular US-led campaign,’ as if that wasn’t the idea in the first place! And this little willow of a wisp who runs the WikiLeaks outfit working in conjunction with the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UK Guardian, and Gibbs, the White House press secretary yesterday, ‘Yeah, yeah, we knew, we sent a message through the New York Times asking these guys to be careful, but we didn’t try to shut it down.’ They sent a message through the New York Times? You think back, a meaningless, phony, made-up story about the leak of a name, Valerie Plame. Look at the anxiety and the angst, the controversy, the outrage that caused. Here there’s practical celebration. The irony is this is the war the Democrats wanted. Throughout the Iraq war they all said Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan, gotta go to Afghanistan, that’s where you gotta go find Bin Laden. They wanted this war. This is the Democrats’ war. They want out of it. That’s why these leaks.
‘The leak of 90,000 secret military files has emboldened critics of the war –‘ Who are they? Who are the critics? The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Democrats and liberals everywhere. It’s their war. And that’s the whole point. ‘In Berlin, a defense ministry spokesman said releasing the documents ‘could affect the national security of NATO allies and the whole NATO mission.” Again, that is precisely the intention behind the leak. Certainly one of the major results of this leak is that it will disparage any other country in the world or any groups in the immediate area from ever cooperating with the United States because once it’s found out you’re helping us you become the enemy as well, and then when it’s found out we’ll cut-and-run, why would you join us in the first place? Which is the purpose. So we have let — well, wrong way to put it. Rolling Stone took down McChrystal. Rolling Stone, rock ‘n’ roll, longhaired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking magazine gets rid of McChrystal. And now we’ve got this willow of a wisp Julian Assange and some stupidly named website WikiLeaks.
Why does somebody name anything Wiki? What is Wiki in Wikipedia? What does it mean? I look at this thing and I must admit I get curious why and how people name things. WikiLeaks. At any rate, now we’re gonna pull out of Afghanistan. That’s the whole purpose here. It’s going to discourage any other country in the world or other groups in the immediate area from helping us. Since no one will ever be sure that their cooperation won’t appear on the front page of the New York Times at any given moment, ask yourself how after this how any Muslim tribes are going to risk such exposure to sign up with us to fight the Muslim Taliban, which is exactly what the New York Times and the America haters at WikiLeaks want, for whatever purpose.
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RUSH: David, Fort Benning, Georgia, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: (static) Hello, Rush?
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Hey, how’s it going?
RUSH: Very well, sir.
CALLER: First of all, a couple things here. You asked what ‘Wiki’ stood for earlier.
RUSH: I know what it means. It means you can do things on it yourself. You can add to it.
CALLER: Yeah. From what I know is… Anyway, first of all, have you ever actually been to WikiLeaks?
RUSH: Have I been to WikiLeaks? Yeah, I went to WikiLeaks. After this leak I went there tried to find what it’s all about. It’s an unusable website.
CALLER: Okay. Well, um, personally, I’m a libertarian, and I’m calling because I take a little bit of issue with your accusation that WikiLeaks is a left-wing conspiracy. Um, first of all —
RUSH: It’s not a conspiracy.
CALLER: — WikiLeaks is not only leaks —
RUSH: It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just a left-wing bunch of people.
CALLER: Well, but, see what I disagree is you said that it only leaks things about, you know, American corporations and the American government. Well, there’s actually a page on WikiLeaks where it, uh, sorts out the different leaks by country, and there 212 different countries listed on there. I went and did some research on this yesterday. Here’s a few of the, you know, what you might typically call things of the ‘left-wing agenda’ that they leaked. They leaked stuff on the Copenhagen Climate Convention from last year.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: They helped blow the story about the — what is it? — the East Anglia research.
RUSH: Yeah, all for the express purpose of advancing the leftist agenda. But notice nobody knows that. WikiLeaks couldn’t get noticed for doing that stuff, so what did they do to get noticed? They called the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel and said: ‘Guess what? We got 91,000 pages of hate-America stuff here. Will you help us?’ and all three said, ‘Yeah!’ and now everybody is talking about WikiLeaks. They’re on the map hating America. Case closed.
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RUSH: Speaking of the WikiLeaks documents, Obama also addressed them at this little statement he made at the Oval Office today, or outside the Oval Office. Basically he said, ‘WikiLeaks doesn’t matter. We didn’t learn anything new here. We always knew that Bush sucked and ran the war wrong, and this is what has informed my decision.’ There’s nothing new here, is what Obama basically says. If you want to hear it, I’ll play it for you when we get back. If not, I won’t. Decide in a minute.
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RUSH: Daniel Ellsberg on Larry King Alive last night, Larry King: ‘How do you respond to the White House assertion that this leak on that Wiki website puts our forces in danger?’
ELLSBERG: I think it takes a lot of — I don’t know what to say, chutzpah, effrontery for people who made the reckless, foolish, and I would say irresponsible decisions to escalate a war that I’m sure they know internally is as hopeless as these new revelations reveal it to be. I’d say that was exactly the same as the boss I served in 1965, Lyndon Johnson. He didn’t want General Johnson, the chief of staff of the Army, and others to resign if he didn’t give them enough of what they were asking for. I think President Obama has made the same terrible error.
RUSH: Oh, no! Obama’s made the same terrible error as LBJ. And Larry King says, ‘Daniel, do you understand why Mr. Gibbs representing the president, do you understand why he’s so upset?’ I didn’t think Gibbs was upset, did you? Gibbs was not upset. The White House is not upset about this. Anyway, here’s Ellsberg’s answer.
ELLSBERG: Well, he’s very upset in part because he’s working for a president who has indicted more people now for leaks than all previous presidents put together. This is an administration that’s more concerned about preventing transparency I would say than its predators, which I’m very sorry to hear as somebody who voted for Obama, and expect to vote for him again, despite all this.
RUSH: So a socialist, a neo whatever, Daniel Ellsberg, can see the Obama double standard on leaks, but he’s going to vote for him again anyway. He’s worse than any president we’ve ever had on leaks and transparency, but he’s going to vote for him again anyway. I only play the Ellsberg cuts because Obama is one of Ellsberg’s admirers. Obama loved Ellsberg when he was leaking the Pentagon Papers. He was holding truth to power.
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RUSH: And back to the phones we go to Illinois. This is Tim. It’s nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. Nice to talk to you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Hey, I just got back from Afghanistan here a few months ago and —
RUSH: Welcome home, sir.
CALLER: Well, thank you very much.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I actually have two comments if I have time. But the first one is: I might have to disagree with you a little bit and go along with Obama to pull us out of Afghanistan. Because the way it is, they won’t let us fight. You got your hands tied so tight that you can’t do anything.
RUSH: You disagree with me on…?
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: What did I say? I said we should stay no matter what?
CALLER: No. I was just… The point I was making was, the Rules of Engagement while I was there were tight, so tight in some areas that in town you couldn’t even point a weapon.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You had to point a laser and wave ’em off — and, you know, if you have a VBIED [Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Device] or something drive up on you, by the time you get your weapon you’re already done. So either let us fight or pull us out.
RUSH: Well, that’s my fear is that we’re gonna pull out and that these leaks are oriented toward pulling us out under the idea that we can’t win, which is silly. We are the United States of America. Look, I know what you’re saying: ‘Why tie our hands behind our backs?’
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Political correctness has taken over the Rules of Engagement. There’s no question about it.
CALLER: Yes, they have.
RUSH: You look at the projection of power we are capable of (it was true in Iraq; it’s true here) and people — average, ordinary Americans — say, ‘What the hell are we doing pussyfooting around here? Look at the power we’re able to project. Why are we handcuffing our people?’ I know some people say, ‘Look, if you’re going to do it this way, don’t even do it. Just get out of there. It’s senseless,’ but then pulling out of there you admit defeat, and this is something that frightens me, too. Because with these WikiLeaks and the way we’re fighting the war, how are we ever going to get allies? Tim, you tell me. How are we ever going to get allies to join us if we’re going to sell out and we’re not gonna fight things to win? If we’re gonna allow leaks to occur which basically compromise everybody helping us, how the hell are we going to get people to join us?
CALLER: I don’t think we can because we actually support a lot of our allies that are there.
RUSH: Yeah, exactly, and you have a president who has openly said about Afghanistan he’s ‘not comfortable with the concept of victory.’ Yet you have Democrats that said, ‘Afghanistan’s the war. That’s where we need to be,’ all the time we were in Iraq. ‘Iraq was an elective war. Bush went in there for whatever reason. We need to go to Afghanistan.’ Now we’re in Afghanistan and we’re ho-humming around. And we’ve let a magazine get rid of the commanding officer, McChrystal. And now a bunch of waif-y little wimps who run a ‘Wiki’ website might get us out of the country altogether. And if we get out of there with circumstances as they are, the left and the rest of the world is proudly going to announce that we’re losing and that we are getting out of there having been defeated, which is what they want.