RUSH: This is Jason in Lake City, Florida. Hi, Jason. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Appreciate it. Hey, quick question. I was wondering if there’s any correlation with any of the Gitmo detainees up there fighting with ISIS, and the reason why I’m thinking that is weren’t there just five major Gitmo detainees released that were head of Al-Qaeda?
RUSH: Not sure. Recently released, you mean?
CALLER: Couple months ago.
RUSH: Couple months ago. Well, I know that there have been releases somewhat frequently over the past couple of years. I haven’t seen anything definitive, but I know what you’re talking about. “Okay, we’ve got these detainees. We’re letting them go. There are clear examples in the past of this happening, detainees being let go and returning to the battlefield.” It’s been common.
CALLER: Yeah, so I wonder if they’re releasing these detainees while we’re fighting a typical Democrat war.
RUSH: Look, I’m gonna have to check to see if you’re right. I don’t mean to insult you by not believing you.
CALLER: Oh, no. No worries.
RUSH: I just want to confirm it.
CALLER: I’m just happy I’m talking to you. (laughter)
RUSH: But the problem here is Obama wants to close Club Gitmo. The whole umbrella under which all of this is happening is: “Obama beat the terrorists! There aren’t any. Al-Qaeda was decimated. We killed bin Laden! Obama, the valiant gladiator, he finally did it! Bush couldn’t do it, nobody could, but Obama came along and did it.” By the way, closing Guantanamo Bay, that’s a promise to his extremist lunatic fringe base from way back when.
There have been reports that three of the five Taliban released for Bergdahl are now fighting with ISIS. I know I’ve heard that. You remember Bergdahl? He was the deserter that we negotiated an exchange for, and we got him back and we released five Taliban. I don’t know how reliable this is, but I’ve seen reports that some of the people we released in exchange for Bergdahl are now fighting with ISIS.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if that’s the case. But clearly there’s a an attitude about Islam. It’s not just this administration. This goes back even to the Bush State Department after 9/11, convening that forum: What did we do to make them hate us? It’s like this penalty in the NFL last night, Husain Abdullah, not to be confused with the king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. He’s a safety for the Chiefs, intercepts a pass from Brady, scores a touchdown.
He gets a 15-yard penalty, unsportsmanlike conduct for praying in the end zone. He slid in there, got down on all fours, dipped his head to the turf and the prayed. He got 15 yards, and the NFL was out of the gate today saying (summarized), “Whoa, whoa! That shouldn’t have happened. There was shouldn’t any penalty whatsoever! We don’t have any penalty for those kinds of displays.
Even the blogs that I look at, the sports blogs make mention. They don’t just say, “Chiefs player Husein shouldn’t have been penalized.” The headline starts with “Muslim Husain Abdullah…” I think there’s a general fear that permeates much of our government here in the way that they deal with this reality, and in many ways try to deny the various realities that we face.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, just to be clear, there are conflicting reports on whether anybody from Club Gitmo has ended up at ISIS. The report that three of the five Taliban swapped for Bowe Bergdahl are fighting for ISIS comes from a website called PoliticalFears.com. They ran a post in September 15th, a couple of weeks ago. The headline was: “Three of Five Detainees Swapped are Now ISIS Leaders.”
But there’s some fact-checkers out there at PolitiFact who say the report is untrue, that all the detainees are still in Qatar. “Qatar,” for you traditionalists. Now, never mind that Qatar is or was one of the major supporters and funders of ISIS. But PolitiFact is denying it. So they’re unconfirmed reports, and I just wanted to make that clear.
Breitbart.com is reporting: “A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014,” yesterday. Only 42% of them. “The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second.”
The Daily Mail has a story which we quoted earlier. I just want to remind you. An Obama national security advisor or staffer said it’s pretty well known the president hasn’t taken in-person intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009. He gets them in writing. The presidential brief is also in writings every day, and that’s how he takes it. He does not get personnel briefed. Now, just to contrast, the first guy that Jimmy Carter met with every day was his national security guy, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The first person practically every day that Carter met –for all the good it did him, but nevertheless he did, and it was pretty much true of Reagan, and it’s been true of pretty much every president. I don’t know about Clinton, but what’s happening in the world as the president starts the day is a pretty relevant thing and it’s generally one of the first items of the busy presidential days.
But only 42% of these briefings have been delivered in person. The other times they’ve been given in writing, and no one knows obviously if Obama’s reading it. I forget who was it. There was somebody in the intelligence community in the first term that said Obama is intimately aware of our briefing, some such thing. They made it sound like Obama’s so smart, he knows what’s in the brief before he’s told. That was the kind of stuff they were reporting about him in the first term.
“He’s so smart. He’s so up to speed. He’s so far ahead of the rest of us mortals. He knows what he’s gonna be told before they walk in the room! So don’t worry about Obama and intel.” The bottom line here is nobody knows if he’s actually reading what would be the most useful and important daily summary of the threats that we face. What we do know is that the commander-in-chief has intentionally eliminated the opportunity to discuss the intelligence findings with the, quote/unquote, “experts” who present it to him.
That’s a safe assumption.
If he’s only attending 42% of the briefings, then he’s not able to engage in conversation with them, ask them questions, get further information. He’s just reading it, and we don’t know if he’s even doing that. We’re told that’s because Obama’s smarter and he’s more informed than everybody else in the room. No can even keep up with him! So (sigh) that’s not comforting, and now he’s throwing the intel people overboard. “Because even they admit they knew a lot of this for a year, even two years, and they didn’t tell me.”
That’s essentially what he’s saying. How brazen is that? “Oh, yeah, they knew it, and even Jim Clapper will agree,” before Jim Clapper even knows he’s agreeing. “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They knew about it. We’ve known. They did. The news just didn’t get to me,” or some such convoluted explanation. It’s clear that Obama is relying on what he still thinks people think of him, which is the first-term viewpoint that he’s unassailable, messianic, brighter, smarter.
He’s just loved and adored, respected, feared. People hold him in awe. He still has that view, that that’s how he’s looked at. I think the guy is dangerously out of touch in a lot of ways. Now, Jonathan Karl,ABC reporter. We don’t know for how much longer. They’re not using his stuff. Jonathan Karl actually had the audacity to ask, “Well, okay. Who was it, precisely, who underestimated ISIS? Was it US intelligence, or was it a guy who was briefed on the threat repeatedly for more than a year but chose not to make a move until most you will had fallen this summer? ISIS was threatening Baghdad as far back as last December.”
So people want to know; Jonathan Karl’s out there asking, “Well, who was it specifically who underestimated this?” He’s getting answers, but ABC’s not running his stuff. The other networks are alluding to it, but ABC isn’t running their own reporter’s stuff on this, because it is. It’s circle-the-wagons time now, around Obama. Look, folks, I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but this is what you get when you’re unserious.
This is the kind of stuff that happens, these are the kind of things that take place when you’re engaging in something for reasons that are not genuine. In this case, just to get poll numbers up. This is purely a for-show operation. The real thing that was for show was Obama’s speech to the nation announcing this military action. That alone was supposed to drive the poll numbers up.
Now people are starting to ask questions. “Well, what led into this?” These are the questions nobody thought would be ask and for which there really aren’t any satisfying answers. So now we’ve got a cluster, because the operation is not really the operation. It’s a political move designed to raise numbers in the polling data. It’s not happening.