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RUSH: Many of you in the e-mail said, “Rush! Rush! Rush! What about Benghazi?” We spent a lot of time on Benghazi yesterday, and we told you practically every powerful detail. We had the sound bites of every powerful detail. Those of you who listened to this program know exactly what happened in Benghazi, and you know exactly why the White House didn’t want anybody to know about it. There’s just one remaining question that I have been asking for weeks.

No, in fact, I’ve been asking this question for months: “Where was Obama during all of it?” That’s the one thing that nobody knows. Where was Obama when four Americans were under assault and ultimately being killed? And there doesn’t seem to be any curiosity inside official Washington. But the reason that we’re not spending a lot of time on it today is that we did yesterday, and you in this audience know everything about it that there is to know.


The media today is treating it as a nonevent or as a Republican political effort to embarrass our delightful president and our future president, Hillary Clinton. Look, Dana Milbank in the Washington Post headline: “Whistleblower’s Yarn Fails to Tie Benghazi Lapses to Politics.” He claims that what happened yesterday was a bunch of storytelling, that the witnesses spun a “yarn.” They were great lines for a movie, maybe, but really nothing to see here.

Now, to everybody who had their hopes up that this was gonna mean something, I warned you: If the media doesn’t get behind this, if it only last night one day, it’s gonna come and go and become a nonevent. The Republicans basically launched everything they had in one day, and that’s it. So now the media is spinning it as a Republican political effort that failed. The whistleblowers, you heard them. You heard them choking up and crying. You heard their testimony. We played it yesterday.

I’m sure if you watched some cable news last night, you got snippets of it. You saw the pain, the tears, the choke-up, the suffering, the disbelief, the incredulity when they were told that this was the result of a video. Basically, in this audience, you know what the truth was or is. You also know that the administration’s gotten away with it. Now it’s old news. They have gotten away with the cover-up; they’ve gotten away with mischaracterizing it.

They’ve gotten away with spinning it as another failed, inept Republican political effort.

“Whistleblower’s Yarn Fails to Tie Benghazi Lapses to Politics.” Milbank says, of course the State Department would try to block this testimony. Of course! It makes perfect sense that the State Department would try to block this testimony. Milbank is saying (summarized): “You think I’m gonna join you people in trying to harm Obama? Who do you think I am? Do you think I’m nuts? I’m not gonna do that! I’m here to protect Obama. That’s what my piece is all about here.”

Now, Milbank does concede that Greg Hicks “did have some damning things to say about the State Department trying to block him from cooperating with IssaÂ’s committee. But that wasn’t quite the evidence Issa had promised…” In fact, Milbank says here, “Hicks was of little use to Republicans in their efforts to connect the lapses in the Benghazi response to Clinton or to the Obama White House,” as though that’s what they were trying to do.

Yeah. Greg Hicks, he didn’t help. He didn’t help the Republicans.

I told you, the Democrats look at everything politically, everything. In this case they’re judging this simply as, “Did anybody land a blow on Obama?” and their verdict is, “No. That didn’t happen. All we got yesterday was basically bunch of great lines for a movie and a bunch of storytelling.” Now, the New York Times is a little different. The New York Times story: “Diplomat Says Questions Over Benghazi Led to Demotion.”

They talk about Greg Hicks speaking to a congressman without a State Department lawyer being present. Hillary’s chief of staff reamed him, and then he got demoted. The New York Times does say that this is not really cool, but that’s about it. That’s the only thing to see here. But essentially, folks, there’s nothing new here. That’s it. That’s the New York Times. That’s the Washington Post. I told you what Yahoo News reported on this.

Yahoo News basically says it’s a failed Republican political effort.

They didn’t land a blow on Obama.

So that’s it.

(interruption) Yeah, I know. Remember in 1972 or ’73, whenever the Watergate hearings were? Can you imagine that old Washington Post headline: “John Dean’s Yarn Fails to Tie Watergate Lapses to Nixon”? Imagine that headline? Remember that headline? Remember the stories in the Washington Post, “Nothing to see here! The Democrats tried to attach this Watergate thing to Nixon, but they didn’t land a blow. We maybe got some yarns here, maybe some good lines for a movie, but nothing happened here.”

You remember all of that during Watergate?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: David in Fort Worth, Texas. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.

CALLER: My comment is this: The statement that military assets were not going to be able to get to Benghazi in time could only have been made retrospectively. For those in Rio Linda, that means “after the fact.” There was absolutely no way to know how long that siege would last, whether it’s two hours or 20 hours, to get military assets to that location. The statement that we just didn’t have time to get things there could only be made retrospectively.

RUSH: Right, as a flimsy excuse. You are exactly right. It just so happens, I happen to have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a doubtlessly little-seen post from PJMedia.com. The title of the post is: “Seven Things We Learned from the Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing.” Now, I don’t think even very many people on our side have picked this up. Here it is. It dovetails with what you were talking about. “There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one.”

Now, remember, during the attack, the order was given to stand down. And, by the way, Ann Wagner, who is a member of Congress from Missouri and a former ambassador, said yesterday on St. Louis radio: The only person in the United States of America who can issue an order to stand down is the president. That order was given — we thought one time. It turns out we learn from the testimony yesterday that there were multiple stand-down orders.

“Special operations forces were told, twice, by their chain of command not to board aircraft to Benghazi to rescue the Americans then under attack. The US deputy diplomat, Greg Hicks, testified that the military commander, Lt. Col. Gibson, had his team ready to go twice. They were on the runway about to board a flight to Benghazi in the middle of the attack. They were ordered to stand down and remain in Tripoli…”

They weren’t in Italy. They weren’t in Spain. They were in Libya. They were in Tripoli. They were on the runway. They were twice told to stand down. “They were ordered to stand down and remain in Tripoli to receive wounded who would be coming out of Benghazi.” They were told to stand down twice and not go. Now, up until yesterday, we knew of one order to stand down. It turns out there were two, and “One of the orders came in the middle of the attack, the other came toward the end after HicksÂ’ team had traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi.”

Now, here’s the point of this, and it goes right to what David in Fort Worth just said.

The fact that Greg Hicks’ team was able to get to Benghazi before the end of the assault strongly suggests that the special operations team could have made a real difference. Now, the regime has said repeatedly, “There wasn’t time. We couldn’t have gotten anybody there.” That came out, the Democrats made sure everybody heard that yesterday. That was one of their few points that they kept pounding. “There wasn’t time to get there. It would have been a futile exercise. We couldn’t have gotten there in time.”

And David from Fort Worth’s point is, you can only conclude that after the attack, because in the middle of it you don’t know how long it’s gonna go. When it starts, you don’t know how long it’s gonna go. This went on for seven or eight hours. So what we know now from Greg Hicks — and, by the way, Dana Milbank essentially says this guy’s telling stories. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post (paraphrasing), “Yeah, you’re spinning a bunch of yarn, telling some stories that make good movie lines.” It’s right out Milbank’s piece. Hicks, is who he’s talking about, Hicks said they’re on the runway, they are ready to go to Benghazi. They’re told to stand down twice. Stay in Tripoli to accept and receive the wounded.

But Hicks’ team went anyway. That’s how we had three Americans, in addition to the ambassador, die. Hicks’ team was able to get to Benghazi before the assault ended. So this idea that we couldn’t have gotten there in time was disproven by reality. We had a team that did get there in time. They were just very small and they didn’t have any air support.

Now, at the same time, the State Department’s commander on the scene, Hicks, ordered his personnel into Benghazi, and he went there himself. Hicks testified Lieutenant Colonel Gibson never told him who issued the stand-down orders. He commented that Gibson told him the military stand-down was a shock, and he quoted Gibson: “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.” That’s Hicks.

“This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.” ‘Cause the military was told to stand down. Now, Ann Wagner, just reminding you again, a former ambassador, she’s now out of St. Louis, she said yesterday that there’s only one person who can issue such an order to stand down, and that’s POTUS. So somebody was able to reach him after five o’clock. Somebody was able to reach him and tell him what was going on and he said, “Stand down.”

Now people called here yesterday, wanted to know my opinion why we would stand down. I don’t know, folks. We went through the possibilities: didn’t want to offend the Libyans. We didn’t want to create the idea that Al-Qaeda was real, that we had this false story it was just a random protest, can’t respond to something like that with military force, would look bad, whatever. We could come up with any number of excuses, reasons that are plausible. But we don’t know. All we know is that Hicks testified under oath, there were two stand-down orders, and diplomats went in anyway after the military would not.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Grab sound bites 11 and 12. John Boehner — and CNN just broke in with this. Now, this is interesting. We have these two sound bites. Boehner has been trying to keep Benghazi going in the face of the total media shutdown. He wants Obama to release an e-mail from the State Department to Rice before her Sunday show appearances. He wants a massive e-mail release.

CNN just broke into the Jodi Arias coverage with this story. It’s two hours old now. But they just broke in with it.

You know the thing about Benghazi, there’s no sex in it, and that apparently is why the Drive-Bys aren’t interested. We had sex with Jodi Arias. We had sex with the Castro brothers in Cleveland. We had sex with Amanda Knox. No sex in Benghazi. No wonder it’s not interesting to people. Anyway, here is Boehner. This was this morning on Capitol Hill.

BOEHNER: Four days before Susan Rice’s TV appearances a senior State Department official e-mailed her superiors to relay that the Libyan ambassador — she had told the Libyan ambassador that the attack was conducted by Islamic terrorists. The State Department would not allow our committees to keep copies of this e-mail when it was reviewed, and I would call on the president to order the State Department to release this e-mail so that the American people can see it.

RUSH: Now, obviously the importance here is that Rice was blaming a video. There is an e-mail four days before she went on TV, an e-mail, a senior State Department official e-mailed Susan Rice’s superiors to relay that the Libyan ambassador that she had told, Susan Rice told the Libyan ambassador that the attack was conducted by Islamic terrorists. Four days before she goes on TV and says it was a video she’s telling people in an e-mail that she told the Libyan ambassador it was terrorism. And so Boehner said, “Would you release that e-mail?” Here’s the next bite.

BOEHNER: Our committee’s interim report quotes specific e-mails where the White House and State Department insisted on removing all references to the terrorist attack to protect the State Department from criticism for providing inadequate security. While a few of our members were able to review these e-mails, they were not allowed to keep them or to share them with others. I would call on the president to release these unclassified interagency e-mails so that the American people can see them.

RUSH: Now, Boehner’s being characterized as a cheap theatrics Speaker, simply trying to embarrass the president with another political tactic here. Nothing to see here. And Boehner is asking (paraphrasing), “Look, we’ve seen these e-mails, but you wouldn’t let ’em be used nor kept. Release them.” Now, we know this isn’t gonna happen. The White House is not gonna release these e-mails that show Susan Rice knowing full well it was a terror attack four days before she goes on five Sunday shows and blames the video.

They’re not gonna release the e-mails. Boehner knows that. He’s simply trying, via his appearance here, to let everybody know the e-mails exist. But again, he made this appearance before the cameras two hours ago. CNN just now broke into Cleveland and Jodi Arias coverage to report Boehner’s demand or request.

The New York Times today says that we will never know who changed the talking points or why, from “it was a terror attack” to the video. We’ll never know. Now, in the old days during Watergate, the New York Times, “Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? We’ll never know? You watch us, we’re gonna find out.” Today the New York Times says, “No, we can’t tell you,” and they say, “Okay, fine, we’ll stop asking.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Wesley in Asheville, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Absolutely. Thank you. Hey, I want to make a comparison with Benghazi. An American consulate under attack, four Americans die, the president is MIA for seven hours. To me, that’s a big story. Now, let’s go back to 2001. I’ll try to recall the story as best I can. During the 9/11 attacks, President George Bush was reading a book or telling a story to elementary schoolchildren. Now, when he initially found out about the attacks, it was reported that supposedly he sat in that classroom for an additional seven minutes before he took action, and the media, Rush, had a field day with it. They went crazy over it, lack of leadership, deer caught in the headlights.

RUSH: Wesley, it’s even worse that then. Yeah, Bush sat there, continuing to read to the kids because he didn’t want the kids to know that a massive emergency has happened.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: But then, he got aboard Air Force One and didn’t come back to Washington. They called him a coward.

CALLER: That’s true. Snerdley and I were talking about that.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: That’s exactly right.

RUSH: And Peter Jennings — I’ll never forget — Peter Jennings of ABC News, after inferring, implying that Bush is a coward for staying aboard Air Force One and not landing in Washington, then said (paraphrasing), “Some presidents are just better at this kind of thing than others.” And he was talking about Bill Clinton. But we knew where Bush was every moment on 9/11. And he was ripped to shreds for it.

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