RUSH: We got a new group. We have a new enemy that we just heard about in the last few hours. The enemy is the Khorasan Group. It’s an offshoot of ISIS. It may be as bad as ISIS. It could be worse than ISIS. It could be ISIS’ brothers. They don’t have any sisters, ’cause they’re chauvinist pigs. It’s a new group, “The Khorasan Group, which the US military struck overnight in Syria actively plotting –” we never heard of this group. Well, we didn’t. I’m sure that the intel agencies have, obviously, but, “– actively plotting against the US homeland target and Western targets, senior US officials said Tuesday.

The threat was imminent.” And then in the next sentence, “The US military also struck ISIS targets in Syria.” ISIS is made to sound like a secondary target now. It could well be that there’s a reasonable and finally an intelligent explanation for this, because Obama and — by the way, hi, folks. Rush Limbaugh. Great to have you here. Just to put steam full speed right into this: A lot of people have been questioning, why in the world are we telegraphing our strategy so far advanced? For example, we’ve been told that last night and today is gonna be the most intense of the air bombardment. Well, if that’s true, why tell ’em that?

I hope we’re faking ’em out. I hope that this is all being done as misdirection. I hope at least if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it with passion and seriousness, in terms of achieving victory, because politics is driving this. But I really hope, I mean, for the sake of our armed forces and us, I really hope that there is a serious component here to achieve victory. So maybe we’ve known about this Khorasan Group for a long time. Nobody’s made it public until the attack on them began.

This is a CNN story: “The US had very good information about the threat from the Khorasan Group. US strikes against the group were planned in advance, not at the last minute.” So the military attacked a terror group in Syria that we haven’t heard of before. Again, it doesn’t mean that they just discovered this. It’s just that we haven’t heard of this before.

In addition to being told that we’ve attacked this group, we’re now told that this new group, the Khorasan Group, poses an even more imminent threat to the US than ISIS. And, in fact, the threat of this group is probably what triggered Obama to attack at this time. If you read this whole CNN story, you find out that this Khorasan Group is actually the focus and it is not ISIS that is responsible for the timing of this mission. But over here we have the political component, which is undeniable. Three weeks ago Obama didn’t care. Then the polls came out and showed how bad they were for him on issues like this and all of a sudden we did a 180 reversal. And now in the mix they throw in this new group.

Again, they say the threat of this group is probably what triggered Obama to attack at this time. Now, in addition to Congress being in recess like it was when Obama attacked Libya, interesting timing. Of course the House Republicans are racing to the microphones to show and shout their support for the mission, because of course the Republican consultants are demanding that you guys not be partisan here. Don’t be partisan ever, but especially not here. The American people want all of us united behind our dear president. And in normal times, that’s usually what happens.

But did it happen during the five years of Iraq? Did the Democrat Party join with the rest of us in the military and hope for victory? No, they didn’t. I’m not suggesting tit-for-tat here. It’s just that here’s so much hypocrisy. In fact, folks, I have to tell you something. Just when I thought I was out, just when I thought I was getting my mind right about this, just when I thought I was ready to finally dial up and connect and be part of this from the good old patriotism American standpoint, the hypocrisy has pulled me back in.

So I started asking myself this morning as I was feverishly preparing the program today, will the media obsess over civilian casualties caused by us? Well, if Israel were involved, that’s the only thing they would cover, right? I just saw before and after pictures of ISIS installations that we’ve hit. Now, I just saw them on television. I haven’t studied them in any more up-close manner than that. There was a military person, I didn’t get his name and I don’t think he’s Air Force or Army. I wasn’t able to tell. I had the sound off. I was reading the closed-captioning. He was not identified. And just like we got in the previous Iraq war, we had before and after pictures of targets.

The two that I saw were ISIS command control centers and a communications center, and in both instances the after-the-attack pictures, there wasn’t much damage done to the structure at large. These were surgical. We took out a couple of maybe four satellite dishes and what was said to be a communications array on top of a building. The building itself remained totally intact, still standing, and it looked like the only damage was that little pinprick, that surgical strike.

I mean, if you didn’t know what you were looking at, you would think there wasn’t any damage at all. You had to have it pointed out to you. And the same thing with the second command-and-control installation. The damage that was done by our attack was minimal. It really was minimal to the naked eye without knowing what was in these installations, without knowing specifically what the targets were.

Now, the military guy did explain that and he was very proud showing his pictures. (imitating military guy) “Here you see the before picture and here is after our F-22 Raptors went in there and raised shock and awe.” I’m looking at ’em and the damage to the naked eye is minimal. But he pointed out that we took out rooftop communication arrays in one instance and a corner of a command-and-control center in another instance. I mean, these were surgical strikes.

But you have to figure — given where ISIS is and this new group, the Khorasan — they have to be hiding with women and children, right? I mean, they’re cowards. It’s what they do. They have to be hiding in mosques. I mean, there wasn’t a sign that said, “ISIS Command-and-Control Center,” and it wasn’t painted on the roof like a billboard.

So we just have to trust that they had ID’d the target with Special Forces and intel. But I… (interruption) Obama won’t hit civilians? You know, that’s right. (laughing) I forgot! It’s Obama. There won’t be any civilian casualties. Exactly. What am I thinking here? See how easy it is to get caught up in this? See how easy it is to lose focus of what you know? There won’t be any civilian casualties, because Obama is running the operation.

Now… (interruption) What coalition partners? Snerdley just said the coalition partners might accidentally hit some civilian targets. What coalition partners? The UK’s not there, Europe isn’t there, the Germans aren’t there. Who’s there? Turkey’s not there. Who’s there? Jordan’s there? (interruption) Oh. (interruption) Jordan. Okay, so we have the United Arab Emirates. What are they, attacking in gold-plated F-22s?

You know in the United Arab Emirates… (interruption) Snerdley is laughing. In the United Arab Emirates, you can buy a 14-karat gold-plated iPhone 6 for $100,000 right now in the United Arab Emirates. So that’s why I asked if the F-22s are gold-plated. (interruption) Okay, so the United… (interruption) No (laughing), “16-gig?” (laughing) No, probably 128. So the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar.

These are countries you could put on thimble. (interruption) Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia is in the coalition? That’s crazy. For Saudi Arabia to be in this coalition, they’d have to bomb themselves because they are the headquarters for all of this activity. Well, I’m not… (interruption) Look, this is one of the things. There are more beheadings in Saudi Arabia in a month than ISIS has committed in its lifetime.

Wahhabi Islam has as its home Saudi Arabia. So if Saudi Arabia’s in a coalition, they’re not gonna bomb themselves. They should. Okay so we got Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan that are in the coalition. Well, yeah, we’ll probably got some civilian casualties there. “Will there be body counts?” These are the tings I started asking myself this morning.

The hypocrisy and my memory of the way previous wars have been covered, they just suck me right in there. Will there be body counts of American troops? Well, I know there aren’t any American boots on the ground yet. Rudy Giuliani on TV says there are gonna have to be. If we’re serious, there are gonna be boots on the ground, ours. How many Korans have been destroyed so far in the bombing? (interruption)

Well, I mean, it was a relevant question at Club Gitmo when it opened.

Will there be any questions asked by the media about how much this war is costing us in “treasure,” blood and treasure? Will there be any of these questions? I’m just asking. Will the media cover this the way they covered the five years of Iraq? Will we be told that this air strike campaign is out there creating brand-new ISIS terrorists left and right, as we were told the Iraq war was the best recruitment agent for terrorism that Al-Qaeda ever had, right? (interruption)

“Does the bombing have to do with the November elections?” Will the media ask that question like they did during the Iraq campaign and the surge? Just some observations. Anyway, the new group, the Khorasan, is apparently the reason we are doing this. ISIS… (interruption) The Khorasan. It’s K-h-o-r-a-s-a-n, the Khorasan Group. You know, like The Carlisle Group, like the leveraged-buyout kings.

They like hedge funds. The Khorasan Group. Not to be confused with the Carlyle Group. Not to be confused with Blackstone. Khorasan operatives were coming closer to the ‘end of their planning,'” and so we had to move fast. “The United States hoped to surprise the group by mixing strikes against it with strikes against ISIS targets. …

“Khorasan’s existence was publicly acknowledged only last week, when US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said it was operating in Iraq and Syria, with a focus on exporting terror to the West. ‘There is potentially yet another threat to the homeland, yes,’ he told an intelligence conference in Washington,” when he first mentioned this group.

“CENTCOM’s statement spoke of “action to disrupt the imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests” by al Qaeda veterans in Khorasan, who had ‘established a safe haven in Syria to develop external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit Westerners to conduct operations.'”

So the US attacked a terrorist group in Syria that we haven’t heard about before, and we’re told they now pose an even more imminent threat to us than ISIS. So that’s what we have learned today.