RUSH: This is Brian in Kansas City. I’m glad you waited, Brian.
CALLER: Hey, Rush.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: You probably don’t remember me. I talked to you last summer. I was the Democrat who called in and said, when you had said that all Democrats are bad people, and I had an issue with that, so —
RUSH: Okay, and I remember I said: just most of them.
CALLER: Well, I appreciate the chance to talk to you. I just have a question. It seems to me that you’re implying about all this Pollack-New York Times article people, that Pollack — and I can’t remember the other guy he was with, they were these tree hugging liberals before the war and everything, and didn’t — He was an advocate of the war. He was saying, you know, the United States had no other option than a full-scale invasion, so it would seem to me that when he comes out with a report that says progress is being made — and then please don’t misunderstand me. I want us to succeed, definitely. But it just seems —
RUSH: Well, but not all Democrats do.
CALLER: Oh, I understand that.
RUSH: The elected Democrats in Congress don’t want us to succeed.
CALLER: I understand that. My only point in calling was that it seems to me that it seems to me that you’re — Unless I missed your discussion of this, that, you know, he was an advocate of the war, and the implication that I’m getting from listening to you is that he made this — you know, he had this come-to-Jesus conversion here and, you know, said —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — I was against it and now I’m for it. That’s all I’m saying. I think I —
RUSH: These guys were advocates of the original invasion. Since then, they have been ardent critics. One of these guys worked in the Clinton National Security Agency.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: The other was on Kerry’s campaign. After the invasion, after victory there, the ensuing three and a half years, they have been highly critical. They have suggested it isn’t working, that this is a lost cause, blah, blah, blah. That’s why what they said at the Times on Monday was striking for everybody, is because they have not been gung-ho about all of this since the beginning.
CALLER: Alright. I have one other question. You know, because everybody, you know, when this report comes out and everybody is, you know, on the right seems to be saying, ‘See? It’s working. It’s working,’ what I haven’t heard on any of the talk shows: what happens, since we’re dealing in hypotheticals here, what happens if Petraeus comes in September and says, ‘Well, hey, I don’t think it is going to work.’ Has anybody ever discussed that?
RUSH: Yeah. The Democrats are setting up a scenario for that even now, to make sure that that’s what the report says even when it doesn’t say it.
CALLER: What if that is what happens? What do you think the Republicans will say, if he says, you know, ‘Hey, I don’t think we can do this’? Because, you know, obviously we all were there — whether right or wrong, I don’t want to get into that. We’re there. We need to win.
RUSH: Let me — let me —
CALLER: What are you all going to say?
RUSH: Let me give you a little hint. The report isn’t going to say that.
CALLER: If it does —
RUSH: It can’t say it, because the report’s only a month away.
CALLER: It can say it.
RUSH: This thing September 15th, a month and a half away. The report’s not going to be written the night before. The preliminaries on this, that’s why there was a preliminary in July. That’s why the Democrats are so insistent that we not even wait for September, they don’t want to wait for the good news. Look, the desire you have and the quest that some in your camp have for defeat here is breathtaking to me. We can’t afford lose it. We can’t afford lose it. The energy that people are expending and the emotion that they are investing here in loss, in defeat, just so they can be right about it, just so we pull the troops out…? The whole notion of losing this is just not something that can even be considered, and that’s what so offends me about this. ‘Well, what if we lose? What if the report’s bad? What if it’s not working and so forth?’ That’s not a nation of greatness. That’s not how anybody accomplishes anything. I don’t care if it’s war, getting a job, getting a promotion, getting a raise, starting a business, ‘Oh, what if it doesn’t work? Well, what if it falls apart?’ People have these doubts and so forth, but that’s not the energy that creates success, and to have so much of this floating around out here in the form of a desire for it to fail, is breathtaking — and, frankly, it saddens me. It’s disappointing to me that there are so many people or at least a significant number of people in this country, who would embrace defeat, particularly in the midst of success. Here we have demonstrable success from two independent leftist scholars that go over there, and it’s asked, ‘Well, what if the final report comes out to be bad?’ What kind of people look forward to the day the news is bad? What kind of politicians force their armies off the battlefield against an enemy that killed 3,000 of us and wants to kill a million more of us, while we’re succeeding? What kind of American wants to do this? People I don’t understand. Well, that’s not true. I do understand them, and that makes it even worse.