RUSH: Let’s play audio sound bite number 16. CNN’s Anderson Cooper 180, with hardly any audience, which is why we’re going to play this bite for you, spoke with the international 
correspondent at CNN, Michael Ware. Cooper said, ‘Everybody seems to admit, look, there’s no military solution, and yet politically there’s hardly any civilians on the ground in a lot of these areas, and the Afghan government is riddled with corruption. We’re trying to bolster in these areas a government which has not represented its people.’
WARE: We’re not at the point where we could lose this war. This Taliban will continue to fight as long as US troops or foreign troops want to be there. So the whole idea is to put enough military pressure on the Taliban war machine to parlay that pressure at the negotiating table or to bring a political solution. Now, President Obama has to man up and decide: is he going to fight this war or is he going to oversee an American defeat.
RUSH: A CNN reporter says to Obama, man up or lose Afghanistan? Man up or lose? Or is he going to oversee an American defeat? What do you think the answer to the question is? He’s willing to oversee an American defeat. He came out and said victory is an uncomfortable word in Afghanistan. So, meanwhile, the general who Obama wants and who Obama appointed and who Obama got confirmed wants some more troops. Mr. President, you are not a state senator from Illinois. You are the commander-in-chief of the US military. Do your job. Drop the politics. We got heroes on the battlefield giving their last full measure of devotion to this country and you’re voting ‘present.’ All because he doesn’t want to upset the applecart, the precious balance in Congress on his health care bill — well, on a health care bill because of the radical left. And now The Politico is fascinated with who leaked this news that Obama’s not gonna come up with the troops that the general wants, who leaked that the general wants the troops. It’s the funniest thing. It’s the most incredible story.
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RUSH: President Obama wants more time to develop a new strategery in Afghanistan. His general wants 40,000 more troops, otherwise the general says we and the allies run the risk of losing the war. Would agreeing to 40,000 more troops jeopardize liberal support for Obamacare? Stop and think about that. The president of the United States is teetering; he’s flirting with the actual concept of defeat in Afghanistan. Forty thousand troops the general says makes the difference. Forty thousand troops in one hand or losing or jeopardizing support of liberals for Obamacare in Congress. What does this tell you about the man? These are the domestic political questions that haunt Barack Obama. He’s playing politics when he ought to be fighting and winning a war and acting like a commander-in-chief who gives a damn about his troops in the field.
He’s playing golf, he’s yucking it up with Letterman, he’s got his stupid Health and Human Services secretary telling people how to sneeze on their sleeves. He’s sitting on a report from his commanding general in Afghanistan that says we either boost troop numbers there or face the distinct possibility of defeat and he wants more time to study a new strategy. He’s doing nothing. He has the reports. He won’t make a decision. He’s voting ‘present.’ It’s a dereliction of duty. What are we going to do in Afghanistan? I thought that was settled now. Now it’s not? Afghanistan was the central theme, that’s where we had to go, that’s where we are gonna beat these guys, Taliban, Al-Qaeda. Bush made a mistake, shoulda gone in there, wasted all this treasure, all these resources, now we’re there and Obama is flirting with defeat, all to make certain his Obamacare is not jeopardized in the House. This is what you get when the radical left runs every branch of the federal government. He’s on the golf course. He’s making jokes on Letterman, lame jokes at that. And now he’s spouting additional lies, threats, end of the world, we’re all going to die, at a climate change conference, which is nothing more than a meeting of worldwide leftists who seek to implement a worldwide government that has control over every aspect of every person’s life on this planet. That’s the endgame.
Now, this Afghanistan report, this is hilarious in The Politico today. ‘Bob Woodward’s Monday-morning exclusive on a 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy was a rite of passage for the new administration: the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration.’ So now the story is who leaked this? Who did it, and why did they do it? ‘The simplest theory — and one most administration officials Monday were endorsing — is that a military or civilian Pentagon official who supports McChrystal’s policy put it out in an attempt to pressure Obama to follow McChrystal’s suggestion and increase troop levels in Afghanistan. But not everyone in Washington is a believer in Occam’s razor, so all manner of other theories flourished. There are believers in the reverse leak, in which the leak itself is meant to damage McChrystal’s position by inducing White House anger at the general. There’s the fake leak, in which the White House may have been trying to back itself into a corner.’ They actually write this. That the White House did this on purpose to back itself into a corner.
There were constant leaks during the Bush administration about Iraq war policy, and there was never this hand-wringing, ‘Why, who’s doing this? Why are they doing this? Who wants to damage our beloved President Bush?’ Now, ‘Oh, no, the first major foreign policy leak. Who’s trying to do this and why? For what purpose? Could it be Obama leaked it himself to back himself into a corner?’ It actually says that! Yeah. He wants to back himself into a corner so he’s got his buddies at CNN openly telling him to man up or risk losing the war in Afghanistan. I totally believe, by the way, I totally believe the possibility that somebody in the White House leaked it to discredit McChrystal. Remember, these guys, the left, the far left, they don’t like a victorious America. That’s imperialism. They love it when the US military loses. Look at their efforts to secure defeat during the Iraq war. They’re all about the American military being humbled and being defeated. So it’s entirely possible to me that somebody would leak this to make McChrystal look bad as a way of damaging him and making Obama look good to the left as he’s trying to do by not caring about defeat or victory in military conflict.
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RUSH: We’ll go to Hilliard, Florida, and Roger, thank you for calling, sir, and welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush, how are you?
RUSH: I’m very well. Thanks much.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I think basically what’s happened there is the White House didn’t leak a thing. It was the general himself or one of his staff members to be sure that Obama wasn’t gonna sit on his glutes, because he considers Afghanistan a distraction right now.
RUSH: Well, it’s possible. I’ll tell you what’s fascinating to me about this is that all during, even Watergate, let’s go back to the number one leaker was Deep Throat, and nobody cared what his motivation was, because they all knew he was out to destroy Nixon, which was fine, that was cool. They all focused on the substance of what Deep Throat had to say. You know what Deep Throat really was? I’ll tell you the real lesson that nobody draws, the correct lesson that nobody draws from Deep Throat. Deep Throat was not so much bringing down a president, although he did. What Deep Throat was doing was actually manipulating and controlling media, and he showed how easy it was to do it. Woodward and Bernstein, of course, had these great journalistic reputations as the two kings of investigative journalism, they are the models, they’re what’s taught in journalism school. But Deep Throat manipulated those guys. He had ’em going everywhere he wanted them to go. They found out nothing on their own, or very little, other than what he led them to or fed them. The real lesson of Deep Throat is how leakers can manipulate the media.
But in this case of the leak about the need for more troops in Afghanistan, the Drive-Bys are out there, ‘Who is doing this and what is their motivation, who is tampering with our beloved president?’ You want to hear some of the other theories about this? ‘It’s most likely someone who has or is cultivating a personal relationship with Bob Woodward and positioning himself to look good in Woodward’s next book.’ So the leaker might just be engaging in that because he wants to be a star in Woodward’s mind. ”The Pentagon hasn’t changed and there are a lot of people within the Pentagon who understand the strategic use of the leak,’ said Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the Democratic-leaning National Security Network. One possibility you have to look at is this being leaked by someone who is in league with the neocon assault on Obama, where anything short of ‘all in’ is framed as weak and a defeat.’ So of all the theories three of the four are somebody’s going to nail Obama, and the other theory is Obama is backing himself into a corner.
But here’s the thing you have to remember. Let’s get back to the substance of this. Not only was Afghanistan the war the liberals said we should fight, we are fighting it exactly the way they said we should and the way they wanted us to. That is, we have given charge of the thing essentially to NATO and NATO is now screwing it up. We have begged other countries to go in with us, and very few have. And those who have only have sent trainers or medical or other support personnel. Very few troops. And now most of this wonderful multinational force are pulling out or threatening to. We’re fighting the war with both hands tied behind our backs. We’re not even allowed to attack the enemy near houses. It’s the left’s dream war. This is the prototype. This is the way they wanted us to fight the war. This is where they’ve taken us. How could we possibly lose? The world was asked to participate, a world body or a multinational body, NATO is running the show, not the United States. We’re going to capture Osama and we’re going to kick butt and we’re going to show that Bush was wrong to go into Iraq and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we’re on the verge of defeat, and Obama — I told you yesterday I was in Coach Zorn’s suite at the Redskins-Rams on Sunday, and he had as his guests, he and his wife, Joy, four handsome, young Marines who were being deployed soon.
They put a fifth buddy of theirs on the phone with me in Twentynine Palms, California. Some of them are going to the hellhole areas of Afghanistan; some of them are going to Camp Lejeune. These people volunteered. They’re out there defending and protecting the US Constitution and this government and the people of this country. They’re fighting for freedom. We got this guy fighting the perfect war the way the left said we should do it and we’re on the verge of defeat and the balance here is, ‘Oh, gosh, do I send 40,000 more troops and risk losing my base in the health care debate? Or do I not send 40,000, lose in Afghanistan but get health care.’ That’s the question our commander-in-chief is asking himself. Meanwhile, the media is obsessed with who leaked this and why are they out there trying to damage our beloved young president? In the Washington Post, get this. This is an editorial. ‘Wavering on Afghanistan?’ That’s the headline. Now, get this subhead, Washington Post: ‘President Obama seems to have forgotten his own arguments for a counterinsurgency campaign.’
Obama forgot his position? This is constructive criticism? Obama seems to have forgotten his own arguments? Why, yes, ‘It was only last March 27 that President Obama outlined in a major speech what he called ‘a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan’ that, he added, ‘marks the conclusion of a careful policy review.’ That strategy unambiguously stated that the United States would prevent the return of a Taliban government and ‘enhance the military, governance and economic capacity’ of the country. We strongly supported the president’s conclusion that those goals were essential. … So it was a little startling to hear Mr. Obama suggest in several televised interviews on Sunday that he had second thoughts. ‘We are in the process of working through that strategy,’ he said on CNN. ‘The first question is . . . are we pursuing the right strategy?’ On NBC he said, ‘if supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy’ of defeating al-Qaeda, ‘then we’ll move forward. But if it doesn’t, then I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan.” By the way, I’m not thumping the table. My arm is just hitting it. Are you hearing it? I’m not thumping the table. I’ve been very good about this.
So basically we have incompetence on parade. We have indecision on parade. We have inexperience on parade. We’ve got a man with a five-minute career who has no experience running anything but a bunch of community agitators and organizers now in charge of victory or defeat in Afghanistan, and he has forgotten, the Washington Post allows that he has forgotten his own argument. Forgotten his own argument? Not only is it naive, it is dangerously generous and will encourage more of this kind of indecision. If the media says, ‘I guess he just forgot his policies, we’re a little troubled by this but maybe he’ll end up doing the right thing.’ AP and USA Today: ‘Obama May Change Afghanistan Course Again.’ Now, the headline suggests that Obama changed policy from Bush and has to change again. ‘The White House is looking at expanding counterterror operations in Pakistan as an alternative to a major military escalation in Afghanistan.’ Oh. So I guess the March policy which Obama has forgotten according to the Washington Post is already a failure, so now we gotta go to a different policy, this one counterintelligence insurgencies in Pakistan. They’re going to branch out. Don’t forget, during the campaign, am I the only one that remembered this? Obama said he’d nuke ’em over there, even if the Pakistani government didn’t know about it. He had to dial that back. Folks, the man is a walking threat to this country as we’ve known it in every way possible: domestic, foreign policy. This is incompetent boobism on parade.
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RUSH: Elaine in Babylon, New York. Thanks, and welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Just fine, thanks.
CALLER: I wanted to go back to the leaking problem from the White House, if you might.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I think it’s obvious who’s doing the leaking, I think it’s the White House itself ’cause they can’t come out and say, ‘America, what should we do?’ because he’s so indecisive that he has to try to — it’s a roundabout way of polling the public to see what the reaction will be.
RUSH: So a trial balloon, put the —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — leak out to see if the American people even care about Afghanistan?
CALLER: Well, to see how mad the left is going to get, if they’ll let him do it or not.
RUSH: Well, it could be. That’s always a possibility. But frankly, I think they already know. I mean John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi last week and a couple others, some of the California congressional delegation, I think week or two before that, warned Obama, ‘If you ramp up troop levels, we may not pay for it. No more expansion in Afghanistan.’ That’s what preceded it. Now the leak comes, and it could be a trial balloon, who knows. It’s one of two things. Obama is trying to help his position of not expanding, sitting tight, rethinking the strategy, or the leak is to embarrass Obama and protect the military here. People’s lives are on the line. We’re not playing beanbag here. We’re not leaking about a proposed new piece of legislation on the snail darter. Well, hell even if we do it we’re going to ruin peoples lives, peoples lives in California being ruined because of attention to animals, the waters been shut off, the farmers in the Central Valley. I mean it’s crazy. So, you know, the leak probably purposeful. Well, no doubt it was purposeful. The end result is still unknown. Watching the media coverage is still what’s laughable. ‘Oh Obama forgot, apparently forgot his previous position on Afghanistan that he announced in March. And maybe Obama’s trying to back himself into a corner here by leaking his own indecision on what to do about whether or not we win.’ How silly is all this?
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RUSH: Daytona Beach, Florida. This is Friend. Great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush? Thanks for having me on.
RUSH: Very well, thank you.
CALLER: I just want to make a quick point about this whole who sent the memo, why they sent the memo. To me it’s a nonissue. And as a United States Army veteran, it outrages me that people see this situation, they see we need to 40,000 more troops, we need more supplies, and it’s even a decision to them. There is no decision. Our general on the ground has said, ‘We may suffer a loss, we may fail this war effort if we do not get this support.’ There’s no issue. There is no decision. The only decision that needs to be made is what units get a phone call to start the duffel bag draft.
RUSH: Wait a minute. In the America you and I grew up in, in the America your parents, my parents and grandparents grew up in, of course, but that’s not America right now. This country’s being led by people to whom victory in foreign conflict sometimes is a sin, sometimes it’s imperialism.
CALLER: Ouch.
RUSH: It is what it is.
CALLER: It’s infuriating though.
RUSH: Bill Parcells used to say of a football team, ‘You are what you are. If you’re 4-12, you’re 4-12,’ and there weren’t any moral victories in there. It is what it is. Obama has got a request from the general on the ground, ‘40,000 troops or I don’t think we can win this.’ And Obama, ‘Well, let me reexamine the strategy,’ and worry about the left-wing base voting on his domestic policy. He’s dialing back our nuke arsenal; he withdrew the missile shield that was going to be placed in Europe to defend the Czech Republic in Poland; he’s making deals with Russia; he’s propping up dictatorships in Central and South America. It is what it is, Friend.
CALLER: I agree with you a hundred percent, and it infuriates the heck out of me like you don’t even know, Rush.
RUSH: I think it infuriates the heck out of millions of Americans that we don’t yet know are infuriated because nobody’s covering them, nobody’s talking about them. We still get these mythical polls where Obama is 54% approval or 52% approval. I don’t believe it’s anywhere near that high. I think people are shocked, I think people are outraged. When Biden speaks up and says, ‘If we lose 35 seats in the house in 2010, that’s the end of the road for what Barack and I have planned.’ They know. They were counting on ACORN to be the balance in fraudulent elections, and now ACORN’s been exposed. I mean they know the problem that they’re in. And yet their arrogance is such, it’s not going to take ’em off their game at all. They’re going to ram whatever they want down our throats whether we want it or not because that’s who they are. Now, you couldn’t have said it better. There’s no question. The general says we need 40,000 troops or we lose. Okay. But remember, for the first time in my lifetime — maybe not in the country’s history, I don’t know, I haven’t been alive for the entire 200-plus years — but in my lifetime I have never seen a political party spend years trying to secure defeat in a military conflict like the Democrats did in Iraq.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: So it shouldn’t surprise you at all that now that they’re running the show, that victory is not a big deal. Remember Obama said in Afghanistan the whole concept of victory troubles him.
CALLER: Yeah, but up until now was we need to get out of Iraq because Afghanistan’s the big issue and now it looks like Obama wants to turn tail and run from that and I’m red, white, and blue to the bone. And we don’t run. And a president that lets us run and secures a defeat in Afghanistan, whew, I feel sorry for his chances coming up in 2012.
RUSH: (laughing) Well, we don’t have time to wait ’til 2012. We gotta rebound in 2010 in the midterm congressional elections.
Robert in Staten Island, I’m glad you waited, sir. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: How are you?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: Listen, I have a dilemma, a parent dilemma. So here I am, my son has joined the military, and I was an ex-Marine — well, former Marine, never an ex-Marine. I was all for it, you know, I think it would be good for him. But right now I feel like they’re going to do to these boys what they did to them in Vietnam, and the same party that was in charge then is in charge now, and I just see that there’s 55,000 American boys died in vain over there because of their shenanigans that they told over there, and I see history repeating itself and as a father I don’t know what to tell my son. It’s like, I’m proud of him, but I’m like, ‘Rob, you sure you want to do this at this point in time?’ I don’t know what to do. It’s really bothering me inside as a very patriotic person.
RUSH: I’m sure that probably a lot of military families with family members en route or already in Afghanistan or scratching their heads over this and saying, ‘Well, if we’re not going to have the backing of the commander-in-chief, you know, is it worth it?’ I think, frankly, a lot of people are asking that question about Obama on everything. Is this worth it? Is the historical relevance of this president, the first black president worth all this? Because clearly there are designs on the traditions and institutions that have defined this country’s greatness and one of those is the United States military. I think this is even worse than Vietnam. In Vietnam they were trying to win, they were bumbling around, they were incompetent micromanaging everything, but even when we did win, we let Walter Klondike talk us out of it. In this situation I don’t think there’s even any pretense of trying to win.
In fact, I think Obama ramped up Afghanistan simply to follow through on what he was talking about during the campaign: ripping Bush, ripping the surge, ripping Iraq. ‘Well, it’s a bad move, we need to have focusing on Afghanistan, that’s where we need to go. We need to capture Osama, and that’s where we need to go.’ Okay, so put some troops in there, announce a big, bold policy, appoint a new general, and this is the left’s dream war. You got NATO running things, you’ve got a few other nations participating, we’ve got rules of engagement that penalize our own troops, can’t hit the enemy if they’re in houses and so forth. It’s a perfect war, and what does it get us? It gets us on the brink of defeat. So it’s just another in a long line of illustrations of what happens when these people end up in charge.
Steven in New Orleans, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Rush, what an honor. I’m listening to all this and I can’t believe we’ve got the general on the ground asking for more troops, and they’re doing the two step, the Potomac Two Step. I mean if they’re not going to send them why don’t we get them the hell out of there? That’s pretty much my comment.
RUSH: But that’s a mistake, too. I know what you’re saying. If we’re not going to win, get out of there. By the way, there are a lot of people who look at Afghanistan as the place empires die. A lot of people think Afghanistan is the armpit of the world and is not worth going in there. ‘Well, look, the Soviet Red Army, the only place they ever lost was in Afghanistan, we’re going to lose, we need to get out of there, Rush.’ I get e-mails from people like this all the time, ‘We’re going to get mired in there, we’re going to lose, we’re going to ruin our empire.’ We are not the Soviet Union. Well, we may be closer to it than we ever thought we would be. But traditionally, you know, this is the United States of America. We don’t lose. But this is certainly not how you engage in war. If you show up, you don’t cut tail and run. That’s not who we are, that’s not what we are, and that’s not who we’ve been.
So it’s a little late to say, ‘Well, if we’re not going to win let’s get out.’ That’s, to me, not the question. Unfortunately, it is with this administration. But it’s the wrong question. Can you actually believe that 
we’re discussing whether or not we can win? I mean who are the enemy, who are we fighting? Al-Qaeda? The Taliban? 9/11 ring a bell? We just had this big terror bust in New York. They’re still out there. They’re plotting future attacks. That’s who we’re fighting. Oh, we’re going to quit? We’re going to pull back so we can do health care, and so we can do global warming cap and tax, and so we can do all this other rigmarole, nonsensical left-wing radical crap that is not at all what it pretends to be. It’s just the opposite. It’s a crying shame. It is a crying shame what is happening to this country under the leadership of these boobs.
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RUSH: I have an idea, I have a way that Obama can maybe pull his… out of the fire on this Afghanistan thing. Rather than call a troop buildup a surge, call it a stimulus. Maybe that will fly with people.