RUSH: This is Bill in Hudson Valley, New York. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, sir. Thank you for what you do, number one, before I forget. The reason I’m calling, this Benghazi thing is a total change in our country’s policy of not leaving anyone behind. And as a father of five daughters, two are still in high school, three have joined the service, I’m very, very concerned about that.

RUSH: What concerns you?

CALLER: Their safety. My son-in-law is in Afghanistan, and I just don’t trust this administration —

RUSH: Oh, you said leaving people behind. You’re talking about Benghazi and we got out of there leaving people behind?

CALLER: Yeah, we left those people behind. They knew what was going on, and they were just sacrificed.

RUSH: This is all very troubling. The Reuters story about these e-mails says that they didn’t get them from the State Department, and they didn’t get the e-mails from the intelligence agencies. So, they got ’em somewhere. I don’t know where. Somebody in the government leaked these e-mails. It’s either somebody in the administration or somewhere, but the State Department didn’t, and the intelligence agencies didn’t, but clearly the purpose of this leak — and I don’t know how you can come to any other conclusion — the purpose of the leak is to create the impression that we coulda done something and didn’t, that everybody knew. The State Department knew they had a video. They were watching it real time. There was video from a drone that was showing everybody what was going on. There was video on the ground, somehow they had video, they were watching it.

Now, the story is today that within two hours a group, a terror group, was claiming credit for this. It was a seven-hour attack. Two of the dead four Americans were killed in the last hours. We had hours to get in there. We have assets only one hour away. We have plenty of military assets one hour away. We don’t know if there was a drone up there, and we don’t know if the drone was armed — or do we know that there was a drone? Actually, we do know that there was full motion video from a drone in a combat air patrol station over the consulate in Benghazi. We’re hearing about that. And we had one woman call in, Laurie from Pittsburgh, wanted to know who has trigger authority. This is what everybody’s wanting to know now. So this guy’s got kids in the military, he’s not accustomed to us leaving people behind. People are naturally taken in that direction with this leak.

I’m trying not to overstate this. But it really seems like a huge, big deal to me. When you couple with this the known lies that were constructed and told by the president, by his press secretary, by his United Nations ambassador. For a week, a video was blamed. The guy who produced the video is in jail, and he will not be out until three days after the election, by the way, so we have a purposeful lie constructed and told that is ostensibly to explain what happened, and we now know that the official administration story isn’t true. It is a bald-faced lie. And we know with the release of the e-mails that the people who were lying were lying because they knew what had happened. They knew that a video had nothing to do with this. They knew that there wasn’t a protest that got out of hand. They knew that this was a coordinated terror attack and a group claimed credit for it within the first two hours.

We do not know the true nature of what happened to our people. We know that there were bloody handprints on the walls of the consulate. Foreign press has reported Fox had a great special on this over the weekend where they tried to reconstruct what happened. They had video inside the consulate after the attack showing the ransacking and the destruction, and they showed the pathway, they showed the places where the ambassador had gone for secure safety, and had been corrupted and where he had been gotten to, where he was dragged. They had it all. It is known where what happened, happened in that consulate.

But against all of this, now, is seven or eight days of Barack Obama and Jay Carney and everybody else in the administration lying and blaming it on the video. Now, this is the second call today from somebody who’s expressed concern that we don’t leave people behind. And the only reason people are thinking that, folks, is because the news now is that people at the highest levels of our government knew in real time what was going on, and they didn’t lift a finger to stop it or to do anything about it. Now, you want to talk about hard to process. If people are having a tough time trying to understand that, they’re gonna have an even tougher time being made to understand that that had to happen for a reason.

So up until today, when we got this phone call from Laurie in Pittsburgh, nobody was asking the question about the weapons on the UAV and who had the kill chain authority. Somebody in the Pentagon or the Situation Room in the White House watching that video — and believe me, they were — if the State Department was watching the video, believe me, they were watching it in the Situation Room. There were e-mails, there were phone calls, the people in the White House knew, real time, what was happening. Somebody there, somebody in this mix would know what the rules of engagement are. You and I don’t. We don’t know who has authority to okay a response. You know, authorize deployment of some of the resources and assets that we had, say, in Italy. We don’t know if there were weapons on the drone that could have been fired. We have no idea. But somebody did.

Somebody could have authorized a retaliation here. And nobody did. So these are legitimate questions to have. But it’s inexplicable. There’s no explanation for this that makes rational, common sense. And nobody wants to think the worst, which, unfortunately, is where logic takes you. I mean, let me just run through this again, as any rational person would. Got the attack in Benghazi, took seven hours. We had four Americans dead. There were 30 Americans there under attack, under assault. We know that the ambassador was taken to a safe house or a safe room, actually, in the compound. It was not to a safe house, a safe room that was compromised.

We hired local security, we hired local bodyguards. We did not have professional US military on site. We did not have armed US military on site, didn’t want to offend the Libyans, didn’t want to make the world think that we thought there was still terrorism out there. Barack Obama slayed all the dragons; he killed bin Laden; he killed Al-Qaeda; he got rid of all that, it wasn’t possible, but yet it’s happening. So you got local bodyguards. We know that the local bodyguards told the mob where the ambassador was and that’s how the ambassador was found. We don’t know if the ambassador died from being beaten. We don’t know if he died from smoke inhalation. We don’t know if he died in the fire, but we know he died a brutal death and was raped.

And now we know last night from Reuters and CBS… Here, grab the sound bite. Grab sound bite two. Sharyl Attkisson last night on the CBS Evening News. This is a portion of her report on this. We’ve got two sound bites. This is the first of them.

ATTKISSON: At 4:05 p.m. Eastern time on September 11th, an alert from the State Department Operations Center was issued to a number of government and intelligence agencies. Included were the White House Situation Room, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI. “US diplomatic mission in Benghazi under attack. Approximately 20 armed people fired shots. Explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four chief-of-mission personnel are in the compound safe haven.” At 4:54, less than an hour later, another alert. “The firing in Benghazi has stopped, a response team is on site attempting to locate chief-of-mission personnel.”

RUSH: Then the White House was told at 6:07 p.m. the night of September 11th that it was a terrorist attack.

ATTKISSON: Then at 6:07, State sent out another alert saying the embassy in Tripoli reported the Islamic military group Ansar al-Sharia claims responsibility for Benghazi attack on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli. The e-mails are just a few in what is likely a large number traded throughout the night and are likely to become part of the ongoing political debate over whether the administration attempted to mislead in saying the assault was an outgrowth of a protest rather than a planned attack by terrorists.

RUSH: And that’s where we are. They knew. They couldn’t help knowing! There’s no doubt they knew. They were told what it was. So there are two things. A, there was no assistance offered; B, lies were constructed purposefully and then told for at least eight days, including six times in one speech at the UN. And today the vast majority of the media is aiding in the cover-up here. As I said in the first hour: It’s akin to Woodward and Bernstein helping Nixon cover up Watergate.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You remember also when the president pretended to be offended about a statement of fact during his and Candy Crowley’s second debate with Mitt Romney? The president said, “And the suggestion that anybody on my team — whether the secretary of state, our UN ambassador or anybody on my team — would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive.”

In debate number two Obama said, “Anybody accusing us of lying, anybody saying that we would play politics or mislead…” Well, that’s exactly what happened. It’s worse than misleading. They lied! Folks, I don’t know how else to say it. They knew exactly what happened and who was responsible for it, and they knew what was happening. They knew it was not a video. They knew it was not a protest that had gotten out of hand, some effervescent thing that had bubbled over.

It was a preplanned terrorist attack.

There was real-time video of it.

I’m getting blue in the face repeating the details.

And in the second debate, Obama wants to lay claim to fact he had called it a terrorist attack when he hadn’t? Romney called him on it and Candy Crowley came to Obama’s rescue. She helped Obama carry off another lie in the second debate. Then Obama says (impression), “How dare you! How could anybody say I would lie, mislead! Uhhhh, that’s offensive, Governor.” That’s exactly what happened! (impression) “Well, you know, I must tell you: The loss of American life is not optimal. It’s just isn’t optimal.” Grab sound bite number four. Let’s go the debate on Monday night at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.

Here is Barack Obama.

Keep in mind what you know now.

Here’s the president…

OBAMA: When we received that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one, we did everything we could to secure those Americans who were still in harm’s way.

RUSH: Really?

“When we got that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one, we did everything we could to secure those Americans still in harm’s way.” That doesn’t seem to be the case, Mr. President. When you got the phone call, you were told what was going on! (sigh) This is flat-out not true. Move forward to sound bite seven. John Bolton was on with Greta Van Susteren last night. She’s giving him the details of what is known here. It’s what I’ve been blue in the face telling you. She says, “They knew it that night, Mr. Bolton. I don’t get it. They lied.”

BOLTON: These e-mails say to me that if anybody at the White House thought they could cover this story up by referring to the Mohammed video, with this documentary evidence in real time, then it wasn’t just a cover-up. It was an incredibly stupid cover-up. This may be further proof of the ideology explanation, that there’s this screen over consciousness that prevents them from seeing reality when it’s put right in front of ’em. They picked a line that was politically convenient for them regardless of the evidence, in the teeth of the evidence. And the fact they pursued it up to and including the president speaking to the world (chuckles) at the United Nations General Assembly, when there was just precious little to go on, really speaks, to me, of willful blindness.

RUSH: So Greta can’t believe this. She says, “Wait a minute, now. Can’t you just interpret this as they’re lying?”

BOLTON: How foolish can you be to think that this is not gonna come out at some point? I’m probably the person least able to come up with reasons why the Obama administration thinks the way it does. But I believe the ideology explanation is the most powerful because it also explains why they refused repeated requests for security enhancements for the embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi before September the 11th.

They just didn’t want to acknowledge that Al-Qaeda was resurgent in Libya because it undercut the storyline that the War on Terror is over, Al-Qaeda’s on the run, the Arab Spring has been a success. That led to the denials of the requests for security enhancement, that led to the tragedy in Benghazi, and I think that then led to this ridiculous story that it was caused by some YouTube video.

RUSH: So to translate what Bolton is saying when he says it’s their ideology, it’s that they live in a bubble. They create this artificial reality where they really believe that they got bin Laden and that’s the end of Al-Qaeda. There is no terrorism! And so whatever happened there can’t be terrorism. They have just decided there isn’t! They defeated it. This is what’s hard for people to understand about ideology.

I understand what Bolton is saying. It makes perfect sense to me. He’s saying they are denying what really happened so that their ideology doesn’t take a hit. They’re denying what happened so that their construction of reality doesn’t take a hit. He’s not saying they’re really lying; he’s saying that it’s even worse. They’re in this bubble of an alternate universe that has no reference to fact or truth whatsoever.

But they believe it because that’s what they want everybody else to believe. They think they’re that good. They think they’re that pure, that they’re that decent, and therefore there can’t be any terrorism. So what’s happening there, whatever it is, isn’t terrorism. It’s gotta be this video. “America has to be at fault!” is the ideology. “It’s got to be America’s fault somehow,” and from that you construct the story. That’s Bolton’s point.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Hey, there’s another possibility here, folks. It could be very simple. Obama simply wasn’t engaged when this was going on. He wasn’t around. He didn’t want to be engaged. He didn’t want to be told. He didn’t want to have to do anything, and therefore they were paralyzed. Nobody knew what to do because he didn’t care. He couldn’t be found. He wasn’t engaged.

It’s entirely possible.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Everybody is trying to understand this. It defies understanding. It defies explanation. So let’s throw something else into the mix here that is possible. It’s gonna sound just as implausible. You can’t imagine it being the case. But what if during all of this hellfire in Benghazi, State Department, CIA station chief sending e-mails, real-time video to the Situation Room in the White House, within two hours of the attack the White House knows it’s going on, can watch video in the Situation Room, knows that a terror group is claiming credit for it, knows that it’s not a protest, knows that it has nothing to do with the video. They know exactly what’s going on and who’s claiming to be responsible.

They know that 30 Americans are under attack. They know that the attack went on for seven hours, and nothing was done about it, and then a giant lie was constructed to say that it was a video in June, an anti-Mohammed video that had everybody riled up in the Middle East. Obama told that lie and his surrogates told the lie, and you know the drill. What if during all of this Obama just wasn’t engaged? “What do you mean by that, Mr. Limbaugh? The president of the United States not engaged?” I know, folks, I know it’s tough. Not engaged. Just have the “do not disturb” sign on the door. Just don’t bug me.

Folks, understand, he’s the president of the United States. Everybody works for him. If he doesn’t want to be bothered, they’re not gonna bother him. Somebody might try, but the three a.m. phone call, maybe nobody made the call. Maybe it wasn’t a question of getting and waking up and dealing with. Maybe nobody made the call. Maybe Obama was voting “present.” I’m trying to be charitable here. And maybe by not being engaged, maybe his mind wasn’t there, he’s totally focused on something else, don’t bother me with this, let somebody else handle it. After all, he did get on the plane and fly to Las Vegas the next day, and he did get engaged with Letterman, and he got engaged with Jay-Z. We know he was fully engaged in his reelection effort.

What if he just wasn’t engaged? And what if the reason for the leak of this is because somebody’s really worried in the White House that the guy wasn’t engaged? There could be any number of explanations. But the fact that we’re trying to come up with one that’s plausible — we don’t have one that satisfies. There’s not one that excuses what happened. There isn’t one that justifies the lie. There is no explanation that does that. And let’s just review. Here’s our montage. These e-mails prove the White House knew as it happened it was a terror attack, unrelated to a video, and yesterday the regime and everybody in it lied for weeks about it.

OBAMA 09.25.12: I don’t care how offensive this video was — and it was terribly offensive, and we should shun it.

HILLARY 09.13.12: This video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.

CARNEY 09.14.12: Let’s be clear: These protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.

OBAMA 09.18.12: You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character who is (sic) extremely offensive video.

CARNEY 09.14.12: The unrest we’ve seen has been in reaction to a video.

OBAMA 09.25.12: It’s a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.

SUSAN RICE 09.16.12: It was a spontaneous, not a premeditated, response — a direct result of a heinous and offensive video.

OBAMA 09.25.12: I know there are some who ask, “Why don’t we just ban such a video?” The answer is enshrined in our laws. Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

RUSH: By the way, that has always bothered me. This is just an ancillary point. But to go to the United Nations knowing full well he’s got an audience of dictators who are saying, “Well, if it’s a guy with a video, why is he still alive?” In their world this guy would be in some dungeon someplace or already been taken care of with a firing squad. And Obama, talking to fellow dictators — uh, world leaders, says, (imitating Obama) “Why can’t we do what you would do? Because of our laws.” That just rubs me raw every time. It’s almost like he’s making a freaking excuse for not being able to deal with the guy. (imitating Obama) “Don’t blame me. I got a Constitution here. It’s in our law.” That just bugs me. That whole thing bugs me, out there telling lies about this video. And don’t forget this ad Obama and Hillary produced that ran in Pakistan.

OBAMA: Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence, none.

HILLARY: Let me state very clearly, and I hope it is obvious, that the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video.

RUSH: Make me puke.

HILLARY: We absolutely reject its content and message. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.

RUSH: Jack and Jill went up the hill. Jill was a feminist. Jack went back castrated. What, is she talking to a bunch of three year olds in Pakistan? (imitating Obama) “Why can’t we do with this guy what you would do? Because I am bound, I am shackled by the Constitution. It’s enshrined in our laws. I can’t kill this guy like you would.” No, I’m joking. Anyway, the possibility here is that Obama’s not engaged, just wasn’t attached to this, didn’t want to deal with it. Back to Bolton’s ideological explanation. This can’t be happening. We wiped out terrorism. I know people can’t believe this. This is why I always say if you could just learn liberalism, just understand who they are, so much of your world would open up and so much that seems perplexing would make sense.

(interruption)

Well, Lyndon Johnson was a social liberal and so forth, but these guys are radical leftists. You know, liberal, is not the right word. We need to go further. Progressive, socialist, Marxist, these guys are statist authoritarian type people, really more so than liberals. But the ideology is still a leftist ideology.

(interruption)

I’m just trying to help people understand here. I’m coming up with possible explanations based on what we now know the facts to be. You got some better explanation? I’ve got three thin possible explanations. The president wasn’t engaged. The president and his administration are entirely over their head, so incompetent that it’s corrupt, or, three, they’re big liars, just lying through their teeth, or Obama’s making ’em lie. Somebody doesn’t want to lie, though, somebody leaked all this. Somebody not at the State Department. The State Department or intelligence agency did not leak this. Reuters says that whoever gave them this does not come from the State Department or intelligence groups, so it has to be somebody else.

So those are the three possibilities: Lying through their teeth on purpose, incompetent (and then have to tell a lie to cover up the incompetence), or… Well, let’s throw a fourth one in, Bolton’s ideological explanation: There’s no terrorism! We killed Al-Qaeda with bin Laden. This has gotta be America’s fault somehow, some way. It had to be the video.

You believe it. You really, pathologically, psychologically, sickly believe it! Or, the fourth thing is: He just wasn’t engaged. (interruption) You can yell at me all you want, Snerdley. I’m just trying to come up with explanations here because I don’t care what you come up with, none of it’s satisfying and none of it is legitimate.

There isn’t really anything that excuses this.