Now we can interpret this any number of ways. They’re trying to hide it. Diane Sawyer gets Woodward here. She gets the runner-up honors on this. 60 Minutes, The Today Show are taking a pass on Bob Woodward’s book. And they pushed all of his Bush books. If you look at this book, I think the attempt here — I mean Woodward’s Woodward — the attempt here was to make Obama look good. The attempt has backfired. Just like that town meeting at CNBC a couple days ago. That was meant to make Obama look good but it backfired because he backfired because he stumbled. This is meant to make Obama look good because they know going in this guy’s not competent, he hates the military, doesn’t know anything about it, and now he’s commander-in-chief.
So they’re portraying him as a real tough guy; he knows more than the generals; he’s not going to pay any attention to the generals, he’s going to do what he wants to do, and he’s gotta do it for the Democrat Party. This is supposed to make him look good, but, instead, raging incompetence. I’m going to go through this, not quite line by line but it’s interesting, folks, and we must do it because it’s an eye opener and it confirms pretty much every instinct that we had about this guy, raging incompetence. After what I’ve read of this Woodward book, the way it describes Obama and his whole regime, you have to ask, do they even care? It’s meant to make Obama look strong and tough on Afghanistan and at the end of the day you don’t even get the impression that they care, either about Afghanistan or how this book is being interpreted. The Woodward book, I think, is meant to explain to the Democrat base that Obama really is and always was trying to get us out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. That’s what the purpose here is, and in doing that they have portrayed this guy as out of touch, unconcerned, and incompetent.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to the Woodward book for a second, shall we? A lot of people are making comparisons now — after I did it. You know, I made the comparison to Jimmy Carter long ago saying that Obama would be Carter’s second term, only worse. Where Carter was a bumbling old fool, this guy’s doing it on purpose. So now you have people making the comparison and finding it to be a good thing. Now, I want to ask you if you remember something. The issue of capital punishment came up at the October 13, 1988 debate between the presidential nominees, George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. Bernard Shaw, the moderator of the debate and the (at that time) face of CNN, asked Dukakis: ‘Governor, if ‘Kitty’ Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?’
And Dukakis didn’t bat an eye. Dukakis did not betray one ounce of emotion in his reply. He said very coolly, ‘No, Bernard, I don’t — and I think you know I have opposed the death penalty during all of my life.’ So it was more important… Here’s a personal question: ‘Governor, your wife has been raped and murdered. Do you favor the death penalty for the killer?’ ‘No, no, Bernard, and let me tell you something else: You know…’ Except he wasn’t this passionate. ‘You know I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.’ It was more important for him to be very cool, calm, and collected in the face of that example, and everybody after the debate was over, was kind of curious. ‘This guy’s so cool. This guy’s so calm. He had no emotional attachment to the question whatsoever.’ Well, let’s go to the Woodward’s book.
A response to you question from Woodward by Obama. Woodward asks about terrorism, terror attacks, and so forth. Obama says, ‘We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, we absorbed it, and we’re stronger.’ That, to me, is the equivalent of Dukakis being asked, ‘If your wife were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?’ So Woodward says, ‘What about terrorism?’ Obama figures, ‘Ah, we can handle it. We can absorb it. We’re even stronger.’ That’s not cool. That is cold, and it reminded me of something. One of my all-time favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove. A Stanley Kubrick movie. And one of the characters in this movie is General Buck Turgidson.
General Buck Turgidson is played by George C. Scott. And if you haven’t seen the movie, if you’re relatively young and haven’t seen this, this is worth renting and looking at because it’s from 1962, ’63, somewhere in that era, where we were in the height of fear over a Soviet nuclear attack, and we accidentally send a B-52 over to Moscow to bomb ’em to nuke ’em, and we can’t call it back. So we’re having a meeting in the War Room, The Situation Room of the White House with the president. Peter Sellers plays three or four different characters, including Strangelove and the president. And they bring in the Russian ambassador to explain what’s happened. They’re trying to convince the Russians not to retaliate ’cause it’s a horrible mistake.
And Buck Turgidson is one of these stereotypical generals. He just wants to nuke the world. He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies. He just wants to nuke everything. And Buck Turgidson said, ‘Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching the moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always pleasant thing. But it’s necessary now to make a choice: To choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments, one where you get 20 million people killed, the other where you’d get 150 million people killed.’ Turgidson was saying, ‘Let’s send more B-52s! Let’s just wipe these people out while we’re at it, since we can’t call this one back. Let’s just be rid of them. We’ll kill 20 million of them and that’s it. They can’t kill any of ours. It’s a livable situation, Mr. President.’
Peter Sellers playing President Merkin Muffley says, ‘You’re talking about mass murder, general, not war,’ and Turgidson replies, ‘Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed but I do say no more than ten to 20 million killed tops, depending on the breaks.’ Here’s a guy totally cold and unaffected by the possibility of ten to 20 million people being killed in an accident and wants to say, ‘Let’s go wipe ’em out even further.’ The president can’t believe what he’s hearing. You have Dukakis, ‘If your wife was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?’ ‘No, Bernard. As you know, I’ve long and consistently opposed the death penalty during all my life.’ Obama is asked, ‘Mr. President, what is your attitude on terrorism?’
‘Well, we could absorb one of those, a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it but even a 9/11, but even the biggest attack ever we absorbed it and we’re stronger. We can deal with it.’ All these examples are of leftists, and they are cold, removed, unemotional, unaffected, uninvolved — and when you go through the excerpts that we have of the Woodward book, which we’ll do here in due course, you’ll find detachment. You find a lack of interest. You find resentment of the generals; Obama resents them. After he’s promised parents that he will do whatever it takes to win this thing, you find he doesn’t care about victory — which we’ve known. I mean, he’s said that previously. He doesn’t even like talking about it. This Afghanistan thing is a purely political event.
At one point Petraeus tells another general, General Lute, ‘Look, all we have to do in Afghanistan is show some progress, and then we can get the president to relax this withdrawal timeline.’ General Lute says, ‘No, General Petraeus. We’re not dealing with that in this president.’ Meaning he’s going to pull us out of there no matter what’s going on because he’s gotta save the Democrat Party. It’s a political calculation. It’s not about victory, it’s not about wiping out the enemy, none of that. Just as, ‘Ah, we can absorb a terror attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it. Even in 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, we absorbed it and we’re stronger.’ Yeah, we’ll put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in New York City. We’ll show what a great country we are! Folks, this is a beanbag. We really are faced here with dire, dire consequences. We’ve got enemies around the world that hate our guts and want to wipe us out. He doesn’t care! Now we compound that or add to it with internal enemies which for the first time pose a significant threat because they have power. In our own government.