RUSH: Megyn Kelly last night on her show on Fox really ripped into the Cheneys. She questioned them from a place that would be close to where the left would question the Cheneys. It was not rude or impolite, but the nature of the questions… well, I’ll just tell you, I had a couple people, “What is happening to Fox? Did you see?”

I said, “No, I didn’t. I didn’t have the TV on.” But I have the sound bites here and I’ve got the transcripts. I’ll give you an example. Grab sound bite number two. That’s where we’ll start. Megyn Kelly with Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz, and her first question — well, I don’t know if it was the first question. The first one we have. “The suggestion is, Mr. Vice President, that you caused this mess in Iraq. What say you?”

CHENEY: Obviously I disagree. I think we went into Iraq for very good reasons. I think when we left office we had a situation in Iraq that was very positive. We made major progress as a result of the decision President Bush made to go with the surge in ’07, ’08. There had been a dramatic reduction in violence in the country. They were prepared for negotiations that would lead to a stay-behind force of American trainers, technical people, intelligence, logistics capability, so that the Iraqi armed forces would be able to defend their own territory. What happened was that Barack Obama came to office and instead of negotiating a stay-behind agreement, he basically walked away from it.

RUSH: Okay. So that’s question and answer number one. The second one we have, we’ll just let you hear. This is the next question Megyn Kelly asked of Vice President Cheney.

KELLY: Time and time again history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir. You said there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the Iraq insurgency was in the last throes back in 2005. And you said that after our intervention extremists would have to, quote, “rethink their strategy of jihad.” Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there, with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?

RUSH: And here’s Cheney’s answer.

CHENEY: I just fundamentally disagree, Megyn. You’ve gotta go back and look at the track record. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind about the extent of Saddam’s involvement in weapons of mass destruction. After 9/11 we were concerned about a follow-on attack that would involve not just airline tickets and box cutters as the weapons, but rather something far deadlier, perhaps even a nuclear weapon. We had an overwhelming vote of approval from the Congress of more votes for the action than we’ve had in Desert Storm some 10 years before. Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, numerous others spoke to the difficulties of the intelligence that all of us saw with respect to the threat that Saddam Hussein represented. It would have been irresponsible for us not to act. We did do the right thing.

RUSH: So then Megyn Kelly said, “Do you think that President Obama is dangerous?”

LIZ: Yes, I’ll answer that one, Megyn. I think there’s no question. I think he is unique in terms of a president who is sitting in the Oval Office who has made very clear that his desire is to weaken the nation. And youÂ’ve got 58% more Al Qaeda, more Salafist jihadist groups now across the globe than we had in 2010.

KELLY: Yep.

LIZ: There’s no question that he’s a dangerous president, and that we’ve got to fight back and we’ve got to ensure that people understand the importance of American power …

KELLY: I got it.

LIZ: … in securing our freedom and security.

RUSH: There is no question that Obama’s a dangerous president. Now, it’s been reported just now that Obama is still meeting with the national security team, still putting together their statement or making up their minds. Whether that’s true or not — and remember, everything is PR, buzz, image, and it could well be he’s always late and they’re just trying to paint this, “He’s so into it, he’s so focused on it, that he and his team are still meeting trying to come to the exact right thing to do,” blah, blah, blah, when in fact lunch may be running late. Who knows. It does seem that everything is just seat of the pants, last minute with this Regime.

Now, get this also from the Wall Street Journal today: “Sunni Extremists in Iraq Occupy Hussein’s Chemical Weapons Facility.” Or try this one from the UK Telegraph: “Iraq Crisis: Isis Jihadists ‘Seize Saddam Hussein’s Chemical Weapons Stockpile.'” I must be dreaming here. I thought Saddam Hussein didn’t have any chemical weapons, or any other weapons of mass destruction.

So we’ve got two reports, Wall Street Journal and the UK Telegraph both saying that the ISIS jihadists have seized Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons facility. Chemical weapons facility? I thought there weren’t any chemical weapons. I thought we didn’t find any, or other weapons of mass destruction.

Which takes me back to Dick Cheney’s answer. The second sound bite that we played. After Megyn Kelly asked him this question: “Time and again history’s proven you got it wrong as well, sir. You said there’s no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we’d be greeted as liberators, said the Iraq insurgency was in its last throes. You said that after our intervention extremists would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. What do you say to those who say you were so wrong?” And Cheney said he fundamentally disagrees. He said, “You gotta go back –” and, by the way, everything he says here is right on the money, dead-on true.

“You gotta go back and look at the track record. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind about the extent of Saddam’s involvement in weapons of mass destruction.” If I have to ask Cookie to do this in order to prove this, I will, because we have them. We have sound bites of Bill Clinton in 1998 warning of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, that it’s eerie. It’s almost — not quite; it’s almost word-for-word for what George W. Bush was saying in 2003 and 2004.

And also from 1998 — now, this is the Lewinsky period, so Clinton’s doing a lot of things to distract people — and also from 1998 we have sound bites of every Democrat in Washington agreeing with Clinton that Saddam Hussein posed a terrific threat and precisely because of his weapons of mass destruction.

Now, I don’t expect even the Drive-By Media today to remember that. When we went back and dragged those sound bites out of the archives, everybody had forgotten them. The Drive-Bys didn’t remember them. It was eerie. Clinton warning about Saddam Hussein almost exactly like Bush 43 did, and then every Democrat signing on. And the Democrats getting mad at the Republicans for not signing on. It was only a few short years later that the tables are reversed and it’s Bush doing the warning, except, can I take you back again to 2002?

The Democrats were salivating — remember, we’re still in the Florida aftermath — and the Democrats are still discombobulated over the fact they think the Supreme Court stole the presidency from them. So they’re just filled with outrage and hatred. And Bush is making a move after 9/11 for a use of force piece of legislation, use of force agreement, and he wants to go into Afghanistan, of course, and then Iraq. And the Democrats initially, not all of them voted for the use of force. They had the Wellstone memorial to attend to and opposing Bush. And then public opinion polls came out after the first round of votes and the American people were overwhelmingly — folks, I can go back and look all this up. The American people were overwhelmingly, in 2002 and 2003, in favor of going into Iraq.

It took Bush a year. He went around the country speech after speech building the case. He put together a coalition of nations at the United Nations who also went along. We had intelligence agencies from nation after nation which agreed with everything our CIA said about the weapons of mass destruction. There was a huge worldwide coalition, and so the Democrats asked for another vote on the use of force authorization, because they, after their initial vote, were on the wrong side of the American people.

So Bush magnanimously said, “Okay, we’ll do the vote again,” and every Democrat — including John Kerry and including Hillary Clinton — voted for the use of force in Iraq. And then only a few short years later, they acted like it never happened. Some of them even went so far as to try to deny it. Other Democrats said, “Well, I voted for the use of force, but I never authorized troops. I didn’t vote for starting a war.”

I mean, they always wanted it both ways on this. They wanted to be able to say they had done both, opposed the war or supported it, so that they could follow public opinion. My point here is that Cheney is exactly right when he says there’s no doubt in anybody’s mind about the extent of Saddam’s involvement in weapons of mass destruction. Everybody around the world, including Colin Powell, believed that Saddam had ’em.

There are two newspaper stories today saying that ISIS, the Al-Qaeda group that’s taking over Iraq now, has already commandeered Saddam’s chemical weapons facility. So he obviously had them. Then Cheney said after 9/11, we were concerned about a follow-up attack that would not involve just airline tickets and box cutters. This was another important thing. We had serious people running the country back then.

We had serious people running the country. 9/11 was huge! I think it’s already been forgotten except for the family members. Back then if you’re president of the United States or vice president, and there is any indication that anybody who had anything to do with it or was planning another one, “Well, we’re gonna take ’em out.” Revenge, retribution was on everybody’s mind. Saddam was out bragging about the weapons of mass destruction that he had. We had data intelligence that backed it up.

There was conflicting evidence whether or not he’d had anything to do with 9/11 or offered parts of Iraq as training grounds for the hijackers. It’s any number of things. People have forgotten all this, but everything that we did was justified and public opinion was built for it. They were not renegades who went in in violation of public opinion or anything. These are things that people forget and things the left never really wanted ever admit, but they’re all true.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Everybody wants to sit here and second-guess going into Iraq. What everybody ought to be second-guessing is the election of Barack Obama, if you want to know the truth. That’s what we ought to be second-guessing. Now, look, I’m not gonna sit here and just blindly ignore some things. Cheney was wrong; we were not gonna be greeted as liberators in there. It’s a Shi’a country. It’s an Islamic country.

That’s why it’s screwed up, from our perspective. But everything else about this? Bush put together this coalition; everybody was in favor of it. Every Democrat in Washington demanded another vote on the use-of-force authorization — demanded it so that they could be on record as supporting it — and then they cut and ran shortly after. They… They’re… I don’t know. It’s just amazing what they get away with.

They voted against it. Public opinion excoriated them and they demanded a revote so that they could all be on the same side as the American people. Two years later they started to disrupt and tear down public opinion on this. Then Cheney said, “Look, after 9/11 we were concerned about a follow-on attack that would not just be airline tickets and box cutters, but maybe nuclear weapons.” They had to be concerned about everything.

9/11 was huge. It was the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor, and the threats were all over the place that more were coming. It couldn’t be treated as a one off. Any responsible adult in leadership in this country had to take things seriously. Going into Iraq, there were two things in mind: Prevention and then the democratization, hoping to establish a beacon of freedom. This was always a long shot.

But preventative action, this is always a debate. Wouldn’t you rather the cops stop a crime against you than have to wait ’til afterwards to punish somebody? That’s what we were talking about here after 9/11. If we had evidence that one was coming, another, we were gonna prevent it from happening. That’s what this was all about. Cheney is exactly right, and he said to Megyn Kelly:

“We had an overwhelming vote of approval from Congress twice, more votes for the action than we’d had in Desert Storm 10 years ago.” True. “Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, numerous others spoke to the difficulties the intelligence that all of us saw with respect to the threat, but in ’98 they were all in favor of just this exact thing” that Bush and Cheney did. He said, “It would have been irresponsible for us not to act. We did do the right thing.”

In their view, they left circumstances where there was a possibility for American an presence on the ground to stabilize, to keep the place stabilized and keep it relatively peaceful, to prevent an outbreak of what’s happening. It was Obama couldn’t wait to get us out of there to placate his pacifist, childish, immature, selfish base, which is why we are where we are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jim in Palm Coast, Florida. Jim, thank you for waiting. Great to have you here on the show.

CALLER: Yes, I was wondering. Since the Iraqi weapons stockpile is back in the news, did anybody ever ask a question: How did Syria get their chemical weapons?

RUSH: A lot of people asked that. You know, there were all kinds of reports that people saw trucks leaving Iraq for Syria during the early days of the invasion and right before it. People have been… Look, Saddam did have chemical weapons. He used them on the Kurds. He’s still got ’em. I mean, ISIS has taken over his chemical weapons facilitates, say two separate news accounts today. In fact, Saddam bragged about the weapons of mass destruction he had.

That was explained later by saying, “Well, he was just huffing and puffing and trying to act like the biggest, toughest guy in the Middle East, when he really had nothing. He was just bluffing and so forth.” We didn’t find anything, or if we did, we chose not to announce it. But Bashar Assad… Well, somebody, Al-Qaeda is using chemical weapons against people in Syria, so your question is valid, I think. Do you think they came from Iraq?

CALLER: I have a sneaking suspicion that’s where they came from.

RUSH: Yeah. What’s the last bit of news you recall about the use of those weapons in Syria?

CALLER: Oh, it’s been a couple months now. They had that one attack not too long ago.

RUSH: Right. Again, the conventional wisdom had Bashar Assad attacking his own people, and there’s nothing in it for him to do that. I always thought… I remember saying at the time that I was dubious. I always thought it was these protest groups, the Al-Qaeda types in Syria, attacking innocents and trying to make it look like Assad was doing it.

Anyway, Obama drew a red line and told whoever not to cross it, and they did, and then Obama said, “I never said I drew a red line.” He said, “Conservatives drew the red. I never drew a red line.” By the way, remember Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson? They, too, said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I know Joe Wilson did, at one time.

The latest news on weapons of mass destruction in Syria is that the deadline to get rid of them has been once again been delayed. That’s the latest news about WMD in Syria, which means that everybody thinks that there are weapons of mass destruction in Syria. And so the question is, where did whoever who has them get them?