RUSH: Yesterday on this program, ladies and gentlemen, I suggested, mark my words, the latest in this Georgia situation, we are going to be blamed. The libs are going to draw a moral equivalence between Georgia and Iraq, and they are going to say, ‘How can we criticize what the Russians have done in Georgia after what we did in Iraq.’ Let’s go to the audio sound bites starting at number 2, Ed. This is Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto. He spoke with Obama supporter Mike Papantonio, and Cavuto said — this is a softball, this question, Cavuto had to be wanting this answer. ‘Vladimir Putin invaded another country and kept his soldiers there. Does that reek of the Cold War to you again?’
PAPANTONIO: You know what’s out there today, how dare you criticize us when you took unilateral approach to Iraq. That’s — we knew they were going to say that when McCain came out with his Rambo language. It’s a problem for McCain in the long run, I think.
RUSH: It’s a problem for McCain? If you look at the three people who have spoken about this, McCain had a statement yesterday, I have the text of the statement, I’m going to share it with you as the program unfolds today, McCain’s the only guy — he’s been there, he’s been to Georgia a number of times, he gave a brief history lesson of Georgia doing a town hall appearance yesterday, he’s the only guy — well, between he and Obama — it’s not a contest. Obama I don’t think knows where Georgia is on the map. ‘Obama, where’s Georgia?’ He’d look for Atlanta and he’d say, ‘It’s right there, it’s where Dr. King’s church is.’ At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, so here we come, the United States is to blame. We can’t criticize this. We can’t criticize naked aggression. If a sovereign nation with a duly elected leadership gets overrun by the Russian bear, hey, hey, we can’t say a word; look at what we did in Iraq.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, a quick question, ‘Did the Russians go to the UN Security Council and show where the Georgians had violated 14 resolutions? Did they spend a year-and-a-half jawboning with the French and others to try to get us some assistance so that we could go in and enforce UN resolutions that Saddam Hussein had broken or that the Georgians in this case,’ no. There is no parallel whatsoever. There’s no moral equivalence, but leave it to the blame-America-first left to come up with it. And last night on America’s home of communism, you almost have to say that, I know it may be a little bold, but right at America’s home of communism on PBS, on the Charlie Rose Show, he interviewed Vitaly Churkin. Do you remember Vitaly Churkin? I will tell you a funny little story about Vitaly Churkin. I have interviewed Vitaly Churkin. Back in the eighties during the Reagan administration with all this glasnost and perestroika and the dying Russian premiers and Reagan refusing to meet and so forth, Vitaly Churkin was a regular on Nightline, and he spoke perfect English. He was treated by the US media as the smartest man in America. He was an attache, obviously KGB, but I even asked if he was KGB and he started chuckling at me.
I interviewed him in Washington when I worked at Sacramento. They set it up with the Russian embassy where he worked. Folks, you’re going to think I’m nuts or crazier than I already am. I’m staying at The Mayflower and I’m in my hotel room the night before, and I’m thinking the room’s bugged by the Russians since they got this guy coming on my show, so I started talking to the bugs. I said, ‘Churkin, don’t chicken out. Please show up.’ Anyway, Vitaly Churkin has survived everything that’s gone on over there. Vitaly Churkin has survived Yeltsin, he has survived Putin. In fact, the very fact that Russia hasn’t changed much to me is proven by the fact that Vitaly Churkin is still around doing everything he’s been doing since the eighties. I asked him when I interviewed him, I said, ‘Vitaly, where do you live?’ ‘I live out in Arlington with the natives.’ I said, ‘You’re kidding! Are you KGB?’ And he just started laughing, and he started defending the committee for state security, which is what KGB stands for. Anyway he was on Charlie Rose last night, and just as I predicted about the American left, a leftist is a leftist and Churkin is a leftist, and so they had this exchange about the whole situation. Churkin now, by the way, permanent representative, that’s ambassador of the Russian Federation.
ROSE: Some would argue that this is about regime change. This is a Russian effort to change the regime in Georgia because they want somebody a little bit more open to the Russian positions.
CHURKIN: You know, we — we are not about changing regimes. Some other countries have invented this saying, you know, removing people, putting people in office and palace — we don’t do that.
RUSH: (laughing) So even the Russians say, hey, don’t talk to us, we don’t do regime change like you do, we don’t throw people out of office. No, you just kill them. You poison them with radioactive polonium. I’m sorry for laughing. Folks, sometimes all you can do is laugh at this. They did. They made it clear they want Saakashvili out. But they’re saying they’re not going to go kill him. But they want him out of office. They want him in exile. They want him out of power, there’s no question. But again, Churkin lied, Russians are lying, it’s our fault. What have we done to so destabilize the world? By the way, we have a statement from Vladimir Putin exclusively for you and the EIB Network audience.
(playing of spoof Putin statement)
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, here is Dimitri Simes. Dimitri Simes is a good guy. Don’t misunderstand here. I love Dimitri Simes. If you’re old enough, you probably remember him being on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour a lot, and Nightline a lot. I love the guy. I loved hearing him speak as you will hear him speak in a moment. I loved the way he pronounced President Bush — Bush 41 is the Bush he was always commenting on — ‘Boooosh.’ Anyway, he’s also on PBS, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night, and he’s from the Nixon Center, and this is what Dimitri Simes says about Russia invasion of Georgia.
SIMES: This is not black and white. There are no good guys in this situation, and we have to be very careful not to allow the participation like with Iraq. When we don’t care about the facts, when we say Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and then it doesn’t matter. Are there weapons of mass destruction? Is he supporting terrorists? These things are very important.
RUSH: So what is it, the mantra now, the narrative, the template? ‘Hey, we have no room to talk here, because look what we did in Iraq, and facts didn’t matter in Iraq. There weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam wasn’t helping terrorists and we went in there anyway, and we did regime change. We have nothing to say to Vladimir Putin about this. We have no moral authority whatsoever.’ This seems to be the pattern here. Let’s go to Richard Holbrooke who has just — this guy has craved, he has coveted secretary of state in every presidential election since 1996. Co-host Margaret Warner talking to Holbrooke, and she said, ‘Do you think that there’s been a rush to judgment in the West here about Russia being the bad guy and Georgia being the good guy victim?’
HOLBROOKE: Quite the contrary. The Russians have succeeded in disseminating confusion about what happened. The Bush administration’s response here has been wholly inadequate until today.
RUSH: Of course, of course. Oh, yeah.
HOLBROOKE: Ten years ago there was a similar crisis between Russia and Georgia over the two enclaves. President Clinton dispatched the deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott — who was also well-known as one of his closest friends — who shuttled back and forth between Moscow and Tbilisi, who calmed it down and resolved it for the time being. This time around, this administration sent no one to Moscow. It was Sarkozy who did the good job today.
RUSH: Oh, okay! Now it gets even thicker. The plot thickens. Now we get on the official home of liberalism and communism in American media, PBS, Richard Holbrooke saying, ‘If only Clinton were still president with Strobe Talbott going over to Moscow. Nothing good happened until Sarkozy went there.’ Hey, I’m not buying any of this. The Clinton administration did not take on any major initiatives. They were afraid of harming their precious little approval rating and so forth. I guess Clinton’s efforts here as described by Richard Holbrooke to make sure that violence did not break out between Russia and Georgia, that happened the same time that Clinton was devoting every ounce of his energy to getting Bin Laden, right? (doing Clinton impression) ‘That’s right. I — I — I never worked harder on anything in my life than to get Bin Laden, and then when they gave him to me I said (sigh), ‘Well, I don’t have any legal basis of holding him.’ I had to let him go, but I still kept trying to get him. I bombed those janitors over there Saturday night in Baghdad. I did everything I could, but I — I — I didn’t get him. Afghanistan. But I stopped that thing from breaking out over there. I sure did. Holbrooke’s right about that.’ Mmm-hmm. So you can see how this is shaping out. The US is to blame. It’s just utterly predictable. It is utterly predictable that in the Drive-By Media it’s all our fault, and if we only had Bill Clinton back.