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RUSH: This is Bruce in Muskegon, Michigan. I’m glad you waited, and it’s great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush, for taking my call. I’ll get right to my point. I’d like you to address a very important point regarding the status-of-force agreement which no one else seems to be talking about. Obama claims that he couldn’t get a status-of-force agreement, but the real question is, did he really want one? It’s my understanding that he, Obama, insisted that the Iraqi parliament approve the agreement, which is contrary to any other status-of-forces agreement we ever had with any other country during any other conflict. He knew that the parliament was dysfunctional and they couldn’t agree on the time of day, let alone a status-of-forces agreement, so it’s my premise and I think other people have said it but no one’s saying it in the media, that was Obama’s out. He really didn’t want it, and by making it a requirement that parliament approve it —


RUSH: He didn’t want to stay. You’re right. He wanted no evidence America had ever been there. He didn’t want to leave a vestige. He didn’t want to leave a single troop. He didn’t want to leave a single reminder. All of this is driven by politics. Folks, the Barack Obama Democrat Party, you name it, media, thinking on Iraq, when it came time to end it, it had nothing to do with strategy. It had nothing to do with preserving what had been won or what might have been won. It had nothing to do with maintaining stability there. All that mattered was getting out, and the reason they had to get out was their fringe base voters and donors.

Folks, everything is political to these people. Everything is a political calculation. There was no way Obama could maintain any credibility with the people who had just elected him if he left troops there. He couldn’t even talk about it. He couldn’t even talk about the possibility of preserving even if you wanted to call it the peace. He couldn’t. The media and the Democrat Party had driven their own base insane over this. What do you think is gonna happen if five years, every day of the year and every hour of the year, somebody in the Democrat Party is ripping Iraq, ripping the Iraq war, ripping president, ripping the United States, ripping the US military?

Five years, every day, multiple time a day, and the way they did it, they were calling Bush a liar. They were saying Cheney only cared about money for Halliburton. It was blood for oil. They told their rabid voters that our troops were raping and maiming Iraqi women and children. They told ’em every day that our troops were destroying civilian targets. They drove their own base insane with rage. They lied to the American people about what was going on in Iraq, what the intention was, how it was being conducted, and their base, which is already fringe kook to begin with on a normal day.

Look, I read the comments that these Looney Tunes posted on the blogs for five years, maybe even longer. Obama could not afford to even speak one positive syllable about Iraq because he and the Democrats had spent five years trashing it. There was no other possibility. So he used — our caller here is right on the money — he said, “I couldn’t get a status-of-forces agreement.” And again, what that really means, if you break it down, status-of-forces, what that means is how are our troops remaining going to be treated vis-a-vis Iraqi law. Unless you indemnify our troops, we’re not leaving any there, is the primary intent of a status-of-forces agreement.

There’s a whole bunch of other things in it, but if the host country will not indemnify troops against war crimes, charges and so forth, then we don’t stay. Obama claimed he couldn’t get one. The caller is right, he didn’t want one. He wanted to be able to blame the Iraqis and Maliki and everybody else for the fact we were getting out of, but he couldn’t stay. For five years they had told everybody how illegitimate the whole thing was. They couldn’t stay. That is why I find what happens now so sweetly ironic. If anybody owns the defeat in Iraq, it’s Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. They wanted it. They’re the ones that secured it.

They’re the ones that fought for it, politically. And they got it. And now look. Because they got what they wanted, because they don’t know crap from Shinola, ISIS was allowed to grow. It was Al-Qaeda in Iraq. We pulled out of there. The Iraqis were not capable of stopping them, and everybody knew this. So we pulled out, and now we have to go back in there for political reasons again. We’re going back in there is because Obama’s poll numbers suck. We’re not going back in there because Obama thinks it’s the right thing to do. We’re going back in there because his poll numbers are in the tank.


So right before the election he’s doing a political move trying to make himself a reluctant warrior using the troops again. I’m gonna tell you, folks, I do not want a reluctant warrior as commander-in-chief. I don’t want a reluctant anything. But, anyway, it is so sweetly ironic ’cause the people who gave us this defeat, who wanted it, who secured it, are now imprisoned by it politically. We’re not going in there ’cause Obama cares to defeat ISIS. If he’s gonna stand there last night and tell us that they’re not Islam and they don’t kill innocent people, then he can’t possibly care about what they’re doing. If he’s not gonna even be honest with the American people about who they are?

We’re doing what we’re doing because poll numbers are in the tank before an election. And poll numbers matter because amnesty’s next, and you don’t want to do amnesty when you’re sitting at 30 in the polls. It’s all political. So the bottom line of status-of-forces agreement is we could have gotten one and the Iraqis would have done anything to get us to stay. That’s the hard, cold reality. Obama didn’t want to.

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