RUSH: Barack Obama at Walter Reed National Naval Medical Center today said this to wounded soldiers.
OBAMA: Before coming home, I stopped to visit with our men and women who are serving bravely in Iraq. And first and foremost, I wanted to say thank you to them on behalf of a grateful nation. They’ve faced extraordinary challenges, and they have performed brilliantly in every mission that’s been given to them. They have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country, and that is a great gift.
RUSH: My, my, my, how things have changed! Do you know that it was just a year ago and two years ago and three years ago, that the Democrat Party was saying our troops were rapists and murderers, that we were stealing their culture? Remember John Kerry was saying that our troops were knocking down doors in the middle of the night, terrorizing Iraqi women and children in their homes. Just last year, during the presidential campaign. I know Iraq ceased to be a central focus of the campaign, but the Democrats… Jack Murtha! Jack Murtha was accusing them of murder, for crying out loud. Our troops were rapists, torturers and murderers.
Barack Obama had comments during the campaign and prior to the campaign that indicated he agreed with this portrayal of the American military, and then he stops in to see them at Walter Reed and tells them they gave Iraq ‘a great gift.’ But Iraq was ‘the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ wasn’t it? That’s what Obama said. He said he was the only guy in the Democrat Party prescient enough to ‘vote’ against it. Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. American military: rapists, murderers, and thugs, terrorizing Iraqi women and children. Now all of a sudden they gave Iraq ‘a great gift,’ they ‘faced extraordinary challenges, and they performed brilliantly in every mission that’s been given to them’?
This is from the man who joined Harry Reid and said, essentially, the Iraq war was lost. (Harry Reid impression) ‘This war is lost.’ This is a man who said the surge would not work. Sorry. I forgot. I forget the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. Obama, because of being elected, is why our troops changed. Our troops became valorous. Our troops became heroes after he was elected, and they grew in stature even after his immaculation — the immaculation inauguration. So now the troops are all good. It’s like Wall Street today is up 183. Wells Fargo is out with earnings, $3 billion in profit. I love Wells Fargo, by the way. They didn’t want TARP money; they were forced to take it.
This is the first day of earnings reports. This was again ‘unexpected,’ and now, ladies and gentlemen, why, the bank earnings report for Wells Fargo is great. By the way, earnings reporting season goes all the way to the 24th of April. We might just be witnessing here a temporary bear market rally but a lot of people are trying to say, ‘Hey, this is it! We bottomed out. Banks are coming back. Yeah, yeah, yeah!’ Check your credit card balance and see if the banks are coming back. I’m hearing from more and more people who say that the credit limits are sinking to just barely above the balance owed, and that a number of credit card companies are doing this.
They’re reducing the amount you can charge on the card, taking people’s accounts off and so forth. Now, this is not going to create stimulus. This is not going to create stimulus. The banks that run credit card and credit card companies themselves are reducing the credit balance. Some people’s credit cards are being cut up and sliced, their accounts being canceled. In the meantime, here we have one bank reporting big profits, $3 billion, and ‘Yay!’ and guess who’s poised to take credit for it? Barack Obama! He inherited this bank mess. He inherited this bank mess, but now he’s going to get the credit for it.
His policies and his working of magic with the federal government, are bringing all of this back to life. They better be careful because as I say, this may just be a temporary bear market rally, because there are other companies that are going to report earnings from now ’til the 24th of April, they may not have this kind of news. So now our troops — our troops, who were murderers, rapists, and thugs terrorizing Iraqi women and children; wrong war, wrong place, wrong time — now they are heroic and they gave Iraq ‘a great gift,’ and that transformation occurs after The One is elected. The magic of his presence, the power of his aura has totally reshaped and remade the image in the world of the United States military. And then (he just couldn’t stop when he was ahead) he had to go on to trash his own country again.
OBAMA: We have a sacred trust with those who wear the uniform of the United States of America. It’s a commitment that begins at enlistment, and it must never end. But we know that for too long we’ve fallen short of meeting that commitment. Too much wounded warriors go without the care that they need. Too many veterans don’t receive the support that they’ve earned. Too many who once wore our nation’s uniform now sleep in our nation’s streets. It’s time to change all that.
RUSH: Another myth. He told another whopper of a lie yesterday or the day before, about a question that he was asked by the press that he wasn’t asked. He was out there telling some people that the press asked him, ‘Did you solve everything this week?’ and Jake Tapper said, ‘Nobody asked him that.’ So now the nation’s vets are homeless; they’re sleeping under bridges. No pictures of this. America’s vets don’t get the care they need. This country, after producing the greatest heroes that went over and acted as rapists, murderers, thugs, and terrorized women and children, all of a sudden now gave Iraq a great gift. They are the greatest heroes in the world, and our country spits on them. Our country doesn’t take care of them. This from a member of the Democrat Party which tried to secure their defeat in Iraq!
Meanwhile, ‘The $5.7 billion legislation called the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act,’ which, by the way, was proposed by Orrin Hatch… It’s a bill. This bill’s been sent to Obama ‘to boost community service.’ It’s US News & World Report. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, the bill to boost community service. It’s for ‘mandatory service.’ You gotta go out there and work. Now, all of this happening and this is in the swell. The US military, the best of the community service programs we have is getting slashed, Obama goes up to Walter Reed and tells people you are heroes (summarizing, ‘You gave Iraq a great gift. Our country has treated you like dirt. Forget my party. I’m not going to remind you what my party said about you. Our country has treated you like dirt. We love you. We’re gonna make sure you get all the care in the world. We’re going to cut the defense budget, though, and we’re going to expand required volunteer service.’ The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. This was the first of two pieces of legislation that will be named after Senator Kennedy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I also want to go back to this sound bite. Here’s President Obama at Walter Reed National Naval Medical Center speaking to troops.
OBAMA: Before coming home, I stopped to visit with our men and women who are serving bravely in Iraq. And first and foremost, I wanted to say thank you to them on behalf of a grateful nation. They’ve faced extraordinary challenges, and they have performed brilliantly in every mission that’s been given to them. They have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own is a democratic country, and that is a great gift.
RUSH: Again, President Obama is part of the party, the Democrat Party, that tried to secure the defeat of these people; that portrayed them as racists, thugs, and murderers. John Kerry was claiming that they would bash down doors of private homes and terrorize women and children in there. Jack Murtha believed every report he got about Marine murderers in Haditha. Folks, let’s not forget here. Let’s not forget just how outrageously treated the men and women of the US military were by the Democrat Party for the entire duration of the Iraq war, not just the last couple or three years. It was just a year ago that Obama was chiming in on all it is!
In fact, Associated Press, August 14th, 2007: ‘Presidential hopeful Barack Obama was warned by a friendly voter Monday to avoid public spats with his Democratic rivals — but remarks he made later could add fuel to the criticism against him. … Asked whether he would move US troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere, he brought up Afghanistan and said, ‘We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians…” So here is our president in the campaign, August 2007, saying we gotta do more than kill civilians. Now, of course, they’re great! These heroes are heroes. They gave Iraq a great gift because they have magically transformed themselves from rapists, thugs, and murderers to great heroes simply because Barack Obama was elected president and then immaculately inaugurated on the 20th of January.