RUSH: This is Mike in Dayton, Ohio. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Good afternoon. It’s a real privilege for me to talk to you.
RUSH: Appreciate that. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Dittos from a graduate student of the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies and a retired Air Force pilot. I was gonna correct a slight oversight. It’s been pretty emotional for me to listen to the last few segments you had, because I actually lived through the Iraq stuff. I was there in 2007 and 2008 as an advisor to the Iraqi Air Force, and you understated the amount of damage that the lying about what we were doing over there has done. Not only did they lie about us — and I was in a chow hall in Baghdad when Harry Reid said what he said about us — it’s over and the surge has failed, but they also lied about the Iraqis.
And I’d be more than happy to amplify that, but Mr. Snerdley wanted me to get to my point. There is one person who is repudiating the Democrats’ position on Middle East policy and is actually adopting all of George Bush’s policies on the Middle East, and I think it’s Barack Obama. Not only is he completely overthrowing what the Democrats had done all through Bush’s presidency — and again, I got the end of that because I was in Baghdad during that time advising these young men and women for the Iraqi Air Force. So we had to deal with their harping and lying and degrading our efforts there, it actually affected them a great deal. But now, if you think about it, President Obama is citing the 2001 and 2002 authorization for use-of-force that Bush came up with —
RUSH: Yes, he is. And, by the way, that one, the Democrats on that use-of-force authorization, the first time voted “no.”
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: And Bush let them have a do-over. They saw public opinion, the Democrats wanted to vote a second time in favor, and Bush, rather than play politics and make them live with their embarrassment, he allowed them to come back and vote again so we could — the illusion of a unified country and mission.
CALLER: Well, and it gets even better than that. If you recognize what he’s doing, he has whipped out the old Bush Doctrine against ISIS, and we’re doing preemptive strikes. They haven’t struck the homeland yet, so we’re doing preemptive strikes against ISIS, and, to me, the icing on the cake is, do you know what carrier was being used for the very first strikes against ISIS?
RUSH: What carrier was being used? No.
CALLER: Yeah, you know it. It’s George H. W. Bush.
RUSH: Oh, oh, I thought you mean disease carrier. I’m sorry. You meant aircraft carrier. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. George H. W. Bush. Well, you’re absolutely right. Everything Obama’s doing is the result of Bush putting in place, he’s implementing preemptive strikes, everything they tore into Bush for, everything they accused him of violating the law and the Constitution over. But the people that were driven to insane hatred over this are not being told that Obama’s doing exactly what Bush did. See, his base, his base is not holding him accountable for this.
CALLER: They never do, and we shouldn’t expect them to. Can I give you a vignette to tell you exactly how much we’ve been misled, or you guys have been misled about the progress that was made in the Iraqi war? I can explain why they’re collapsing the way they are and the struggle that they’re having, but here’s a really good example of what we did over there. I worked every day with generals and colonels —
RUSH: Hang on. Hang on. I’ve only got like eight seconds here. That’s not enough time for you to tell a story, so let me hold you through the break and we’ll take it and we’ll come back and pick up right where you left off, when we get back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And back to Mike in Dayton. You were saying, sir.
CALLER: Oh, yes, sir. From 2007-2008 my job was to work with the Iraqis each and every day —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — helping them set up the training and all that kind of stuff for their Air Force. And the guys that I worked with were clearly guys that we had either tried to kill or bomb or shoot or something during the course of, you know, decade-long war.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I actually worked with one colonel who had been shot down by one of our guys, and so that made for some interesting conversations. But do you know what they called us collectively, when they’re referring to all the Americans? And this was critical to me. They called us the friendly side. When you talk about all the stuff they had been through and all the things that had been done to them in the course of combat, they trusted us, the United States of America and our allies, more than they trusted each other, more than they trusted the various factions that they had. It was unbelievable to me that just wearing the flag on my flight suit, they didn’t know me personally, but they knew when that flag meant.
RUSH: You’re saying that all of that was undermined by the incessant five years of attacks that the Democrats and the media made on the whole effort?
CALLER: Oh, absolutely. For example, the Abu Ghraib thing. Of course that was a terrible thing, but when they came to me, they said, “Do you realize, Major, that this is a terrible thing, that now the bad guys,” they called the bad guys collectively, said, “Now they have more ammunition to use against us.” It made it more dangerous for them. But I’ll bet you what, I’ll bet you don’t know when the first class of Iraqi pilot trainings graduated or how many there were. That wasn’t talked about.
There was a tiny bit on CNN International when something good would happen. And I’ll tell you, the Iraqis desperately needed to have good things talked about. An insurgency warfare is a PA effort, it’s a public affairs effort, and so the more bad stuff that got talked about, and Harry Reid said we lost and we were losers and the surge had failed, I was in a Baghdad chow hall that day, and not only did I get questioned on that when I went back to my Iraqi friends, but you could have heard a pin drop. When all those 203 hundred marines and Army guys and Air Force guys were told that they sucked and then put your equipment back on, and go back outside and try to keep the Iraqi’s safe for another night. It was infuriating. And I don’t know if it was intentional to tube the Iraqi effort, too, but that’s exactly why they’re collapsing. We couldn’t — I know I’m going long —
RUSH: Well, okay, fine and dandy. Look, how did you feel when nobody on your side defended you?
CALLER: Well, that was infuriating. I actually took steps against that — and don’t worry, Mr. Snerdley, I won’t say it. I actually wrote an article from Baghdad that said, “Hey, how come only half of this is getting covered?” I had one of the advisees, he was a high-ranking general, and he actually was moving his family back into Baghdad because it was so safe about the same time, and I think you may have brought it up, they said Baghdad is so dangerous, it’s so bad that the undertakers don’t have enough work to do. It affected the Iraqis —
RUSH: Oh, I remember that. Baghdad was so dangerous that not even the Green Zone was safe. Baghdad was so dangerous that American troops wanted out. I remember all of this. I remember every word of this. I remember every lie that was told in the American media about what was going on over there, about our military, about the Iraqi military. They were inept and they were competent, and furthermore they didn’t even want us there. That was another thing that was going around.
I can imagine this guy is suited up and ready to go and he comes out and he hears Harry Reid, “This war is lost. The surge has no chance.” This is unacceptable and I cringe that there have been no consequences for this. Pure political effort. But look, it boils down, let’s not lose sight of something here. The Democrats are just being who they are, and the media was just being who they are. And the Bush administration had a calculated philosophy to not refute any of it. I don’t need to repeat it anymore. They thought responding to it would prolong its life span as a news story. How’s five years for you? Is that long enough? Anyway, Mike I appreciate the call, I really do. Thank you very much.