RUSH: So the president of the United States today at the White House, in an exchange with reporters, was asked about the Somali pirates. The latest on the Somali pirates is — and this is a great example of American can-doism — the crew didn’t wait for anybody to be rescued over there. The captain of the ship is now being held hostage, as was the case yesterday afternoon. The crew is not and we’re now trying to figure out what to do about this. The captain of the ship is being portrayed as a genuine hero, one of the few CEOs in America who is being portrayed as a hero, by the way. Greetings, my friends. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Great to have you with us, as we charge forward for another three hours of broadcast excellence.
This is the exchange that took place with reporters and President Obama. Is very quick, it’s only five seconds.
REPORTER: Can we get a quick reaction to the pirates, the Somali pirates?
OBAMA: Guys, we’re talking about housing right now.
RUSH: The president of the United States declined comment about the situation with the Somali pirates and the captain of the US ship who is being held hostage. If you had trouble understanding this: ‘Can we get a quick reaction to the pirates, the Somali pirates?’ And Obama said, ‘Guys, we’re talking about housing right now.’ This is President Obama voting ‘present,’ declining to comment. This is President Obama not wanting to address anything that is hard. Addressing things that are hard bring your approval numbers down. ‘Iran is now running 7,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, a senior official said on Thursday, an announcement likely to increase Western concerns about the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear plans.’ It doesn’t matter, though, because we’re going to sit down and talk to them. The Europeans are leading some talks and we’re going to sit down and talk to the Iranians. So it doesn’t matter they’re ramping up their nukes, we’re going to sit down and we’re going to talk to them.
Back to the pirate situation, late yesterday afternoon in Washington, press conference with the Moroccan prime minister and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, unidentified reporter says, ‘Madam Secretary, do you have any clarity on the Somali pirate situation?’
HILLARY: We’re deeply concerned and we’re following it very closely. Um… (pause) You know… Specifically we are now focused on this particular act of piracy and the seizure of a ship that, uh, carries 21 American citizens. More generally, we think the world must come together, uhh, to end the scourge of piracy. I think Morocco was the very first country that recognized us, going back a — a — a long time, and, uh, uh, we worked together to end piracy off the coast of Morocco (cackling) all those years ago! (cackling louder) and, uh, we’re going to work together, uh, to end, uh, this kind of criminal activity anywhere on the high seas.
RUSH: Well, this is just incredible. She sits there and laughs about how we worked with Morocco years — ha-ha-ha, we, ha-ha, we came together, ha-ha, very first country that recognizes we, ha-ha, to end piracy off the ha-ha-ha-ha, off the coast of Morocco all those years, ha-ha-ha-ha, and now the world has to come together again. Well, we probably did blow up Morocco, showed them who’s boss. The world has to come together; the world has to do something. Hillary warned us about this! During the presidential campaign, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Clinton kept reminding the United States, the people of this country, about that 3 a.m. phone call. Even the AP writes a story about this today: ‘Hillary Clinton said there would be days — and nights — like this. For the second time in four days and with less than three months in office, President Barack Obama has received the ‘3 a.m. phone call’ that Clinton warned about. In their bitter presidential contest, Clinton suggested that her young rival was not ready for a national security crisis.’ He declined comment when asked about it.
REPORTER: Can we get a quick reaction to the pirates, the Somali pirates?
OBAMA: Guys, we’re talking about housing right now.
RUSH: (impersonating Obama) ‘Guys, we’re talking housing. I haven’t got time to talk about the pirates. Americans, what do you mean? We’re talking about housing right now, guys, thanks very much.’ As the AP says: ‘Obama’s tests are coming early: first from the borderline rogue government in North Korea, then from stateless bandits preying on shipping lanes –‘ Look, the Somali pirates are Muslims. If this has happened in Afghanistan, what would we be doing? If Americans had been taken hostage in Afghanistan, had been attacked there, what would we be doing? Would Hillary Clinton be out there saying, (impersonating Clinton) ‘Well, the, ha-ha-ha-ha, world has to come together just like we did with Morocco way back. We were the first one ones to, they were the first ones, ha-ha-ha-ha.’ What an inept bunch. They don’t know what to do here. The crew took it upon themselves, as did the captain, to take matters into their own hands to try to alleviate the situation that they find themselves in, but Mrs. Clinton warned about this, and even the AP is reminding us that she did.
Mrs. Clinton doesn’t sound like she’s any more prepared for this than President Obama is. I mean, she did a scripted appearance with the head honcho from Morocco, and so that’s the script. She gets a question about the pirates. (impersonating Clinton) ‘Ha-ha-ha, well, you know, the Moroccans were the first, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, first to recognize us. We beat the pirates way back then, proves the world has to come together to beat the pirates.’ It reminds me, because of Obama’s disastrous — I mean from my perspective — from this disastrous trip to Europe, I asked Cookie to go back today and get some audio sound bites of Obama’s Berlin speech last summer, when he was citizen of the world, because in that speech he is also very critical of the United States, talks about the imperfections of his own country, talks about how Berliners have probably not seen somebody like him from America running for president, a racial comment. Then he went on to say, notice how the world came together to bring down the Berlin Wall. The world did not come together to bring down the Berlin Wall. The United States and Ronald Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall, working together with Maggie Thatcher and the Brits.
The US Congress, the Democrats in the US Congress were mostly against doing what was necessary, taking the steps that brought down the Berlin Wall. Many of the nations in Europe were scared to death to go along with us. The Pershing missiles in Europe aimed at the Soviet Union, going ahead with plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The world didn’t come together to bring down the end of Soviet communism! But Obama was there, ‘Look how the world came together, we gotta come together.’ Now Hillary is out there with the same mantra, the world came together, must come together to stop piracy.
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RUSH: I want you to go back to audio sound bite number 11 of Mrs. Clinton. We’re having fun here with the cackle with what she said about the pirates, and there’s something far more serious that we need to discuss here. So this is Mrs. Clinton yesterday in Washington, at a press conference with the foreign minister of Morocco, and a reporter said, ‘Madam Secretary, do you have any clarity on the Somali piracy situation?’
HILLARY: We’re deeply concerned and we’re following it very closely. Um… (pause) You know… Specifically we are now focused on this particular act of piracy and the seizure of a ship that, uh, carries 21 American citizens. More generally, we think the world must come together, uhh, to end the scourge of piracy. I think Morocco was the very first country that recognized us, going back a — a — a long time, and, uh, uh, we worked together to end piracy off the coast of Morocco (cackling) all those years ago! (cackling louder) and, uh, we’re going to work together, uh, to end, uh, this kind of criminal activity anywhere on the high seas.
RUSH: The cackle, the laugh here to me it’s just irresponsible. We are in the midst of an American hostage situation, and she is laughing. (Hillary impression) ‘And we worked together to end piracy, ha-ha-ha!’ As though we ended, ha-ha-ha-ha years ago, ha-ha, and, ha-ha-ha, again!’ But then the key to this and what we all need to understand here, the last line: ‘We need to work together to end this kind of criminal activity anywhere on the high seas.’ ‘Criminal activity’ here is the choice of words here that I wish to focus on. Pirates were defeated. Global trade blossomed. She’s laughing about when the Barbary Pirates were defeated. Thomas Jefferson was the first to tackle the Muslims in this country, the — well, the militant Muslims.
Of course, we joined forces — ha-ha-ha-ha! — with Morocco to wipe out the pirates. But the pirates ended up being defeated, global trade blossomed as a result. They were not considered criminals with the same rights as, say, accused tax cheats. The pirates were considered enemies of the human race. In other words, they were alien enemy combatants who were deemed to have no claim on the rights afforded to criminals by the civilized world. When they were dealt with all of these years ago by the authorities in the world back then, they were not dealt with as simple criminals. The reason people, think, ‘Piracy? I mean, that’s so John Paul Jones and Davy Jones’ Locker. Piracy? Where is this coming from? Why is this returning?’
The whole reason that there is a resurgence of piracy, which is something that was thought to have been stamped out a couple of hundred years ago, is precisely because idiots like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama think pirates and terrorists — and this is terrorism — are criminals, not enemies. This goes back to Jamie Gorelick and the wall and the Clinton administration wanting to prosecute terrorists as though they are citizens of America with constitutional rights. Prosecute them as criminals, the same as bank robbers. Of course, the leftist takeover — or majority population, if you will — of the US judicial system, is seen to be just that, when discussing, say, the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay or anybody else.
They gotta be released, and released within the United States! Lawyers must defend them, as though they are criminals, not battlefield enemy combatants. So now the Obama administration and Clinton herself is looking at these people not as terrorists but as criminals, not enemies. If you start talking about these people being criminals then you gotta Mirandize them. Have the pirates been Mirandized? Have they been given their Miranda warnings? No! They need to be wiped out. This administration does not get it. The left in this country does not understand the concept that this country has enemies. Well, they might understand that we have enemies. What they’re wrong about is why. They believe — and I am not exaggerating this an iota. I firmly believe this.
Hillary Clinton — the Clintons; the left; the Democrat Party, most of it, the elected Democrat Party — fervently believe we have enemies because it’s our fault. We have made enemies by virtue of our own existence. We have made enemies because we are braggadocios. We swagger. We’re the only superpower. We’re too big. We steal and we plunder all of the rich resources of the world and the treasure, and we bring those resources home and we live a lifestyle unlike anywhere else in the world and we are stealing from the world’s poor. This is what Obama believes. It is what Hillary believes. That is why throughout the G20 and Obama’s disastrous tour, the whole point was to cut the United States down to size. So these pirates, in a way, it’s brothers in arms. We don’t understand. They’re mad. They have a poor country. We don’t. We gotta understand ’em.
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RUSH: Now, you know, I may need to be corrected here, ladies and gentlemen. I just identified the Somali pirates as ‘Muslim.’ I could be wrong about this. The president said that we are not at war with Islam. He said it in Turkey. He said it, I think, a couple of times on his trip to Europe. He said, ‘We are not at war with Islam.’ Now, apparently elements of Islam are at war with us, but we are not at war with them. So if we’re not at war with Islam, then it must mean the Somali pirates are not Muslim, right? ‘Cause we’re not at war with them! I hope you’re following me on this. I’m just describing what the president said while overseas on the Cut America Down to Size Tour. We’re not at war with Islam. We’re not at war with it. So the pirates must obviously be something other than Muslim.
Maybe they’re Orthodox Jews! Well, if they aren’t Muslim, they gotta be something. If it’s not Orthodox Jews, maybe it’s reformed Jews. Maybe it’s evangelicals. Everybody knows the evangelicals are mad as hell these days about a whole bunch of things. Maybe the Somali pirates are actually evangelicals! Maybe they’re Southern Baptists. Who knows? But they can’t be Muslim because we’re not at war with Islam. I suppose they could be a rogue band — a very, very, very tiny, small, infinitesimal minority of Islam. But we’re not at war with Islam. The president said so. So the Somali pirates, the story is they’re Muslim, but that can’t be, because we’re not at war with them. My guess is it’s the Orthodox Jews. It’s Orthodox Jews committing piracy in the open seas off Somalia. There’s no question in my mind.
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RUSH: This is Sherry, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, great to have you. I’m glad you waited. Nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. The clip that you played at the beginning of the first hour, Obama, somebody asked him a question about the pirates while he was talking about housing or something like that, had me really confused because what happened to these great multitasking skills that he could deal with more than one thing at a time? I guess that doesn’t happen, does it?
RUSH: Well, that has to do with the teleprompter. The teleprompter wasn’t there when he was asked the question about the pirates. Obama may not be multitasking, but Biden is. This is what the vice president said this afternoon.
BIDEN: I think what you should do is, uh, contact, uh, the, uh, uh, Jim Jones and — and — and the White House. This is being worked on, uh, around the clock.
RUSH: So there you have it, Sherry, feel better? The vice president told reporters there that if they want to know anything about the pirates, call Jim Jones over at the White House, it’s being worked on around the clock. But Obama, you know, multitasking depends on what’s on the teleprompter. I know Obama did give Bush grief because he was unable to do two things or three at one time, but here’s the sound bite where Obama declines to comment on the pirate situation that she’s referring to.
REPORTER: Can we get a quick reaction to the pirates, the Somali pirates?
OBAMA: Guys, we’re talking about housing right now.
RUSH: (impersonating Obama) ‘Guys, we’re talking about housing right now, not the pirates.’ Translation: There’s nothing on my teleprompter about pirates right now, Jim Jones is working on that ’round the clock. So Biden is the guy that’s comforting people on the work being done to deal with the pirate situation. Again, as I said, I remain perplexed. The president of the United States said we’re not at war with Islam, and the Somali pirates, everybody has assumed are Islamic, they’re Muslims, so maybe they’re not, if we’re not at war with Islam. So who would be on those pirate ships? Maybe it’s the Orthodox Jews; maybe Southern Baptists; but it can’t be the Muslims.
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RUSH: Topeka, Kansas. Lucas, your turn. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Good to be here. Mega dittos from flyover country.
RUSH: Appreciate that.
CALLER: First, I have to say, I’ve had a lot of professors in my day. I’m an attorney now, but I remember my school days, they aren’t far off, but you’ve easily been the best professor I’ve ever had.
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, very much. I not only appreciate that, I understand it.
CALLER: Ha-ha. Hey, I called because you were talking about, and you were getting really close to a legal principle there earlier in your first hour of the show talking about this piracy issue. There’s a legal principle called — I hope I’m pronouncing it right, but it’s jus cogens. It’s spelled j-u-s, c-o-g-e-n-s for anybody that wants to look it up out there. Essentially, it’s a universal moral norm that if it’s violated, it basically grants anybody in the entire world sort of a universal jurisdiction —
RUSH: Are you referring to hostis humani generis, which is enemies to the human race?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Yeah, okay.
CALLER: Exactly. And, you know, it’s got categories: piracy, slave trade, war crimes, and that kind of thing.
RUSH: Right, and this is why they are not considered criminal. They are considered enemies of the human race.
CALLER: Exactly, and for the longest time, there’s been sort of a push, sort of behind the scenes, you know, in the courts to classify terrorism along those lines, and I think my fellow listeners out there probably would be pretty surprised to hear that it’s still quite a ways away from getting to the point where terrorists are considered enemies of the entire human race, right along with pirates and others, and it’s simply because, while the courts seem to be right in line with it, politicians — and the top two that come to mind are the Clintons, who have both now successfully referred to both pirates and terrorists as criminals, not enemies of the human race, but simple criminals, and it really gets to me. I have a friend who is a former Special Ops Marine, who’s in law school right now writing a paper with the question, ‘Does terrorism violate jus cogens?’ And, you know, initially right off the bat I thought, of course, it has to. Well, it would, except there are still a lot of people on the left who seem to sympathize with the motives and the motivations behind terrorists, and I think that’s our problem.
RUSH: It is. The Clinton administration — I mentioned this in the first hour. I hate to disagree with you. I think a lot of Americans understand the error in approaching these people as criminals. That’s one of the reasons 9/11 happened is that the Clinton administration didn’t deal with them as enemies, enemy combatants, enemies of the human race, enemies of America, they’re just criminals, and they need to be prosecuted criminally, need to go out and collect evidence on them, turn the evidence over to grand juries, grand jury testimony is secret so whatever you discover there can’t be shared with intelligence agencies. This is widely known. Mrs. Clinton — and that’s why I brought this all up today — she did declare in the cackling sound bite with the defense minister of Morocco that these are criminals of the high seas. They are not criminals. They are enemies of the human race, that’s how they’ve always been treated. And people ask, ‘How come piracy is rebounding?’ Piracy is rebounding precisely because of the American left and the European left’s lack of intestinal fortitude, gonads, if you will, to categorize these people as they really are and to pursue them on that basis. ‘We can’t torture them,’ when we don’t torture.
Whatever we do is called torture. Everything we did to get answers is called torture. We can’t do that. We’re mean. We’re the bad guys. We put ’em up in a hellhole called Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We’re the bad guys. We’re setting a bad example for the world. These people are just from an oppressed minority. We’re too big. It’s totally understandable why these people would hate us. We’re the world’s superpower. We steal the resources of the world to enrich ourselves, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Enemies of America are friends of the Democrat Party. This was never more evident than during the Bush administration, Bill Clinton, Algore, number of Democrats that go across the oceans, make speeches condemning American foreign policy, war policy, condemning the Bush administration, criticizing their own country to build themselves up among a bunch of limp wrists in the European and world communities.
I think the Somali pirates and their emergence — and you might want to say reemergence — is a clear indication that, despite all, they do not consider themselves under a severe threat. Look at what’s happened. In practically every one of these hijackings they’ve been paid the ransom. They’ve been paid. Of course they’re going to keep it up. They have been paid. There have been some accidents, sometimes the Saudis air dropped their ransom in a parachute and they missed the boat and some of the pirates went out there in a little speedboat and it capsized, some of the money went overboard with them, but they’re being paid. Now, a lot of people ask, ‘Rush, how come these ships aren’t armed?’ Everybody says just give some machine guns to the crew when you see the pirates showing up, wipe ’em out. You maritime captains out there can back me up on this, but the historical reason why you don’t arm the crew on a cargo vessel is to guard against mutiny against the captain and the ship, ’cause you know how CEOs are hated today, and the captain of the ship is a CEO, and employees resent and they’re being told to resent the boss.
So the boss makes you do some things on board, if you’ve got machine guns ostensibly to gun down the Somali pirates, you could conduct a mutiny. So that’s one of the reasons that they aren’t armed. Why they don’t go out and hire private security that is armed, I don’t know enough. I’m not informed enough to be able to answer the question, especially when they’re going to be traversing waters where they know that piracy is taking place, and the pirates are active. But, at any rate, you’re right in the sense that the Somali pirates, they’re being paid, why stop? They’re not being treated as enemies of the human race, as they were in the past, 200 years ago when they were wiped out. They were considered hostis humani generis, which is enemies of the human race. In other words, they were alien enemy combatants deemed to have no claim on the rights afforded to criminals by the civilized world. Clearly they’re not being viewed or treated in that manner any longer, and as human nature would tell us, if they’re going to get paid, and if they’re going to get away with it, and even if they get caught they’re just going to slap on the wrist, what’s the downside to them?
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RUSH: Oklahoma City. Kyle, nice to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Rush.
RUSH: It’s great to have you on the program, Kyle, from Oklahoma.
CALLER: Thank you very much. If only Hillary would have warned you there would be days like this. One thing I wanted to point out here that I think has political implications to really help out Obama is, you know, he’s being touted right now as the great peacemaker but he has to flex his political muscle on the war front. And right now you can’t take credit for the success in Iraq as he had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. But if he brings back the so-called ‘war on terror,’ which I predict he will, in regards to Iran —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — in regards to the piracy.
RUSH: No, no, no, no. The ‘war on terror’ is gone from the lexicon.
CALLER: Right, yeah.
RUSH: Now we have ‘manmade contingencies.’ This is not even piracy. This is a high seas contingency.
CALLER: But that’s my whole point. Who came up with that? That was Hillary who brought that about. If he brings it back… See, Hillary already warned us that there would be days like this. But if he brings back ‘the war on terror,’ Obama takes away the credibility from her and gives it back to himself. In that process, and all of a sudden he’s the wartime hero we’ve been looking for, he’s the superhero in America, and he’s the one that we want. And last thing — I’ll just wrap this up here; I want you to respond to that but lastly — I want to make a special invitation to you, sir.
RUSH: It isn’t going to happen. He said we’re not at war with Islam.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: By the way, he is taking credit for the success in Iraq by going to Walter Reed and praising the valor of the troops there!
CALLER: All in hindsight, right? I understand. But what I’m trying to point out is that when he comes back, whenever he goes up and stands in front of the podium and the teleprompter tells him, ‘Put on the war on terror. Bring it back in full force,’ he’s the wartime superhero we’ve been waiting for, and that’s what I predict will come about. That’s because he’s falling flat in this big issue of national security. Nobody trusts the guy.
RUSH: He intends to. There is… US national security is going to be improved by making us weaker. That way we’ll be less of a threat.