RUSH: No, it’s not a press conference, is it? It’s just a statement. Obama at 12:30, it’s not a press conference, right? (interruption) Yeah, just a statement, no questions. Okay, cool. Yeah, ’cause it’s gonna determine here the order in which I do things. I got a whole bunch of stuff on this IRS business, Lois Lerner. Cheney’s on Fox last night, and it’s gonna be a typically loaded day. Folks, just absolutely great to be here. I can’t wait every morning. It’s getting to the point now that I can’t wait to go to bed every night so the morning arrives even sooner so I can start getting ready for each busy broadcast day. Great to have you. The telephone number is 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

So the prepub on this statement at 12:30 today. Of course, he’s never on time, but he’ll wait ’til after our commercial break is over. You wait, this won’t happen before 12:33. That’s my guess. Pretty educated guess.

Anyway, the prepub on this is that the president may send Special Forces into Iraq. Now, I think if he’s gonna do this, it ought to be a full-blown press conference. I mean, if he’s the guy that they’ve always advertised to us, it should be a full-blown press conference. But it isn’t gonna be. I think the president — let me just give you a little prediction what I think this statement is going to attempt to accomplish.

Forget whether there’s announcement about Special Forces or not, there’s gonna be an objective or two that the president wants to leave with everybody here, impressions. And of course number one will be that it’s Bush and Cheney’s fault. And ever since Cheney’s op-ed, Dick Cheney’s and Liz Cheney’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the left has gone bat excrement out there.

In fact, in some places, sports columnists have been asked to write columns in the news section about what a rotten guy Cheney is and about what a liar Cheney is and how this is all Cheney’s fault and Bush’s fault. And poor Obama, all he did was inherit this, and he’s saddled with an unwinnable, untenable situation, and it’s those guys’ fault. This is the meme, the narrative, the theme.

So since that’s already been established by the State-Controlled Media, it’d be quite natural for Obama to glom onto it. A, it’s Bush’s fault and Cheney’s. He may not mention Cheney or Bush by name, wouldn’t have to. Predecessors, any number of ways to do it without mentioning their names. But he might if he really wants to jazz up his base. And not that he needs any cover from the media, but he could do this whether the media was already laying the groundwork for him or not. But since they have, it makes it a little bit easier. And then the big one will be, at the end of everything we are all supposed to see Obama’s good intentions, how he really wants to do whatever he’s going to do for the best.

This is key. This is key to everything the left does: good intentions. Their good intentions cover all of their failures. It doesn’t matter if it’s a domestic policy failure; it doesn’t matter if it’s a foreign policy failure; good intentions are how the left disguises and camouflages all of their failures. So keep some things in mind here, ladies and gentlemen, as this statement comes up. (interruption) No, I don’t know if I’m gonna JIP this or not. I really don’t know. I don’t have enough information on what it is. I’m not gonna commit to carrying something that’s 10 or 15 minutes here. But I know some of our affiliates might want to carry it. I’ll just play it by ear. I’ll make up my mind at some point. I do everything on the fly anyway. Keeps people sharp.

Now, I happen to know one of the most irritating things about me for people who work with me is I give them very little lead time about what I’m gonna do when, ’cause I don’t know. And I hate having to make up my mind. So I do everything seat of the pants, and people that work with me, they want to know sooner than that. If you asked ’em, if you could get ’em closeted quietly and assure them that whatever they said would never be repeated, that would probably be the biggest beef. Maybe the only beef that people have is that “we can’t drag out of the guy when he’s gonna go do what.” That’s right, but it keeps everybody on their toes.

That’s not the reason I do it. It’s just that I don’t like pigeonholing myself. I don’t like telling somebody three weeks out where I’m gonna be. What if I change my mind and don’t want to go two days before? (Laughing)

Anyway, as you listen to the statement and as you already are being told that the current situation Iraq is not Obama’s fault, it’s Bush’s and it’s Cheney’s. In fact, everything Obama is doing is well-intentioned. Remember, we’re talking about the president who released five terrorist masterminds back to the enemy for one of our deserters. We’re talking about a president who erased his own red lines in Syria. We’re talking about a president who has backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and other places in the Middle East. We’re talking about a president who has let Vladimir Putin roll all over him.

We’re talking about a president who had a secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton, who made an embarrassing reset with Russia complete with a cheesy Lego-type reset button toy. You remember that little Lego-looking toy that she gave to Putin. He didn’t know what to do here. (interruption) No, it didn’t say “reset.” It was just a red button, which is actually a panic button in most circles.

So, anyway, we have a president and secretary of state who did that. We have a president who has left his consulate in Benghazi unprotected and undefended where four people died. And we have a president who runs around the world acknowledging to our enemies that we, the United States, are also flawed, and therefore we’re no better than you, and we’re gonna stop flexing our moral authority, ’cause we don’t have any.

It’s been one of the hallmarks of the Obama presidency to travel around the world or make speeches, most recently to Native Americans in North Dakota. “No, I’m just like you. I grew up a minority, and the deck was stacked against me. It’s an unfair, unjust country. I know exactly what it’s like.” He runs around the world apologizing, acknowledging the United States’ defects.

So just keep all this in mind as he announces in his statement today what his decisions are on Iraq. So now we’re gonna enter… Oh, and how about sending Lurch out there to say that we might enter into an agreement with Iran to defend Iraq? Now, Kerry, by the way, is denying that. He’s denying he ever said it. “Well, I didn’t say that before I said it,” is his defense. But we have it on tape, him saying it.

So here’s the point: In my humble estimation, Barack Obama invited this day. And now, ladies and gentlemen, you probably have heard there is a movement on that we need to get rid of Maliki. He’s gotta go. Let’s see, who else had to go? The Shah had to go. How did that work out for us? A couple of guys in Vietnam we said had to go way back then. How did that work out for us?

There are any number of examples where we have been told or decided on our own that existing leadership in certain countries had to go because they were a problem. Jimmy Carter sending the Shah of Iran packing, giving the world the Ayatollah Khomeini — or the Ayatollah Hominy, as pronounced by Pierre Salinger. This is the president who has willingly overseen the IRS targeting of political opponents.

This is the president of the United States who has willingly approved, and probably privately applauded, Lois Lerner and all the IRS people who targeted Tea Party nonprofit groups, groups consisting of nothing more than people who wanted to practice the art of dissent — the time-honored art of dissent. This is the president who has presided over the absolute disaster that is now at the VA.

This president — who has presided over the opening of the Southern border to tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands now) illegal aliens and children, not just from Mexico, but from other Central American countries — is going to come before you today and present himself as an expert and eminently qualified to detail for us our future policy in Iraq.

And it is my humble estimation that the guiding experience and intelligence we have tells us that there is no example of competence in the past to give us any comfort that a correct foreign policy implementation will be forthcoming. (interruption) That’s right. We had to get rid of Mubarak in Egypt, and how has that worked out for us? We had to get rid of Khadafy in Libya, and how has that worked out?

Bashar Assad had to go. Now, Bashar hung on because he’s got a supermodel-type wife and the pop culture kind of likes him. So Bashar was able to hang on. Even in Syria the pop culture reigns supreme. The Saudis, Saudi Arabia has given an apparent warning to Iran, saying, “outside powers should not intervene in the conflict in neighboring Iraq.” We haven’t said that. Our secretary of state has welcomed Iran to the table.

Now he’s denying it, but he did say that we are thinking of reaching out or might reach out or did (I don’t know) to Iran. But the Saudis are warning Iran like we haven’t done, to stay out. Foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal also said that Iraq was facing “a full-scale civil war with grave consequences for the wider region,” which, of course, leads to some confusion, because the news media have told us for years that it was the presence of US troops in the Middle East that was the cause of all the violence there.

Did they not?

The Drive-Bys told us that it was our presence that was destabilizing the region. Madeleine Albright and any number of leftists were upset at our superpower status, particularly after the Soviet Union was dismantled, and there was no superpower left but us. They wrung their hands in despair, and they worried that the world was now forever destabilized because the United States was the only superpower remaining.

Because, you see, in their view, we can’t be. We are not the good guys. No superpower is good guys. But as long as we were a superpower with a competing superpower keep us honest (i.e., the Soviet Union) then that was okay — and I’m not exaggerating. The Soviet Union was a justified superpower. We are not. We are an unjust, immoral superpower to the left, because of the way we have acquired our power.

We’ve stolen it and we’ve conquered and all these other horrible, rotten attributes that we don’t do but they attach to us. But now that we are the only superpower, that’s destabilizing. I was frequently reading over the last few years how it was the US that was destabilizing that region. The US was destabilizing the Middle East with our support for Israel, with our entrance into Iraq.

Yet the Saudis are claiming that a civil war in Iraq is the destabilizing agent and needs to be dealt with. “The Saudi foreign minister’s remarks coincided with an Iranian warning that Tehran would not hesitate to defend Shi’ite Muslim holy sites in Iraq against killers and terrorists, following advances by Sunni militants there.” So that’s where we are vis-a-vis Iraq.

We have a president, again, who has released five terrorist masterminds back to the enemy, replenished them in exchange for one of our observers being given back to us. A president who has erased his own red lines in Syria. A president who has gotten rid of Khadafy, gotten rid of Mubarak — all of these situations resulting in the further advance of militant Islamists, which destabilizes the region.

The president has backed the Muslim Brotherhood. He has let Vladimir Putin roll over him. He had Hillary Clinton go over to the Soviet Union with this new reset button, which was a laughingstock of the world. He left his consulate in Benghazi unprotected, undefended, resulting in four American deaths.

He has apologized as often as he can for the transgressions and the presumptive moral authority this country does not have to anybody who will listen. He has applauded — and encouraged, no doubt — the IRS targeting of his political opponents. He has presided over the VA, an absolute disaster, a human disaster and debacle. And, of course, the open borders. So now this same president is going to guide us to the next phase of Iraq.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, Nouri al-Maliki serves in office in Iraq because he was elected. He was made prime minister by a democratically elected parliament. But that don’t matter. He’s the problem; we gotta get rid of him. You know, even the AP… I don’t know how they let this slip by the other day, but even the AP made a point that it was only the United States presence in Iraq that was keeping the peace.

You know, it’s important. Everybody’s trying to glom onto this notion that we are the destabilizing agent there, starting with Cheney and Bush. We had no business going. We had no business being there in the first place. We went on false pretenses. There weren’t any weapons of mass destruction and all kinds of people died, and there was all kinds of destruction. We’re the ones that destabilize the region and so forth.

That simply is the opposite of the truth, and even the AP says (and they said it in passing, but I’ll not forget it) that only the US presence in Iraq was keeping the peace. And as we continued to withdraw with date certain for leaving — like is happening in Afghanistan now — we were sending signals to the bad guys: “Just be patient.

“Sit around and wait for your time, because pretty soon you’re not gonna have any serious opposition.” We, the United States, were keeping the peace between the various Muslim sects, basically the Shi’ites and the Sunnis. Now Algore, you might be interested know, is blaming global warming for the civil war in Iraq. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m still waiting for Obama… It was scheduled for 12:30. These poor Drive-Bys. You should see this. All of these White House correspondents have been standing in the White House pressroom in front of their cameras since about 12:15, almost for an hour, breathlessly waiting for Obama to show.

They’re breathlessly waiting for their networks to go to them for their breathless reports about how Obama’s on his way to the podium to issue his statement on Iraq, and they have been standing there for an hour. Now, to me, this is rude. It’s arrogant, and it’s rude. Nobody else is gonna look at it that way, of course, but he tells these people he’s gonna be how there at 12:30. Here it is 1:12.

There’s no sign of him, and the news is that he’s still meeting with the national security team. And, of course, that’s probably an image attempt. They’re feverishly working, desperately thinking about everything, applying the best minds in the room to come up with the defensive policy and statement to announce to the American people. And, of course, the Drive-Bys are carrying that message.

Again just want to remind you: He’s gonna come out and there are gonna be two basic points here. He inherited this, but he’s gonna roll up his sleeves. He inherited this, but that doesn’t matter. After he whines and moans and throws out a couple of straw men, it isn’t gonna matter, and then it’s all gonna come down to his good intentions.