RUSH: Here’s John in Rochester, New York. Great to have you, sir. Glad you waited.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I’m a longtime listener and first-time caller, and I wanted to bring up the Karl Rove scandal or controversy about the weapons of mass destruction.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: If the administration knew about this — and believe me, I’m a big Dick Cheney fan. He’s a staunch conservative, as am I, and I’ve always been a big fan of his, but, I hate to say it, I think he’s got some explaining to do, too. I really do on this. I think that if he knew and for him not to say anything even now about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq —
RUSH: Now, wait.
CALLER: — I think he’s definitely got some explaining to do.
RUSH: Dick Cheney is never, I don’t care, I can’t imagine a circumstance where Dick Cheney would break chain. Dick Cheney, I’ll just tell you, in the midst of all of this last week, I got a note. It had three words. It was from a person I know, and the e-mail said, “Cheney really tried.” It’s all the note said. It told me that Cheney disagreed with the political decision to stand mute about it, but his loyalty is such — I mean, the Democrat Party and people like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill, dumped on George W. Bush, Republicans, the Iraq war for five, six years. Cheney’s not gonna join them. His loyalty is such that — and he was vice president.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: He’s not gonna jump chain of command. I’d be shocked if he did.
CALLER: What do you think the New York Times’ motivation is for putting the story out now, and how many other news outlets, liberal news outlets —
RUSH: I tell you what I think the story was. If you go back, the original New York Times story that you asked me about, was actually about weapons of mass destruction, sarin and mustard gas from the first Gulf War. That is what was found. The purpose of that story, just to show you how New York Times didn’t even know what they were doing, the purpose of that story was to, again, dump on the Bush administration for subjecting American troops to chemical weapons when nobody knew they were there. It was a story which basically challenged Bush’s responsibility and his cavalier attitude in deploying soldiers into such circumstances. The whole notion of WMD that had been discovered totally missed the New York Times because it was chemical weapons from prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: So they didn’t even know what they were doing. But I’m out of time. I’ll finish the thought here we get back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, what I was gonna say was the New York Times story last week that mentioned the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2004, 2005, remember — and I made it very clear back then — the weapons that were discovered were mustard gas and sarin gas, and they were deployed and used by Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War back in 1990-’91, gassed the Kurds, did that kind of thing. It was those weapons stocks that were found. And the New York Times story had nothing to do with, “Oh, my God, there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?”
No. They were trying to once again rip Bush for being incompetent, uncaring about the warfare of American military men and women. It was a hit piece on Bush. It totally escaped them that others would see in their story a blockbuster, and the blockbuster was that the White House, when they were told of these weapons of mass destruction, didn’t want to make news of it. The New York Times totally missed what the blockbuster nature of their own story was ’cause they were so focused on beating Bush over the head again. That’s the original germination of that story.
Again, as to Dick Cheney, hell, I don’t know, but my guess is that if he did fight for the news to be released and to be used, and if he was overruled, he’s not going to say so. I just don’t think he would break chain like that. He’s loyal, especially now. If he was gonna do it, he would have done it in his book, and he didn’t. It’s just not who he is. Cheney’s a genuine true definition of a patriot and firmly believes the chain of command and would not undermine the president with whom he had served. He may fight for it behind closed doors, but he’d live with the decision. That’s his job, pure and simple.