RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned at a prior moment in the program that the president of Libya is a relevant player in this Benghazi stuff. I want to get to that now. I want to go back to me — the archives, the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites of this program — back to September 17th of last year. And, yeah, this is kind of patting myself on the back, I’ll admit it, but today the Drive-By Media is all agog with what they have learned about all the talking points being rewritten and reedited 12 times.
They’ve come to the realization that the regime is covering something up, and I just want to remind you. It’s one thing to sit here and say, “You remember! You knew all this back when it happened, because I was telling you about it.” I want to go back and demonstrate that. We have to replay this. It’s just two sound bites I want to play from this program on September 17th of last year, just days after the attack in Benghazi.
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RUSH SEPTEMBER 17, 2012: Last Thursday and Friday we’re sitting here making jokes as the regime pitifully and pathetically tries to blame an outbreak of violence all around the Middle East on this guy, on a YouTube video that nobody saw other than 12 people at a screening in June. And of course Mrs. Clinton’s out there trumpeting this. Jay Carney said, (imitating Carney) “Of course this is no protest against the US or US policy. It’s simply the video.” It was ridiculous. It was laughably ridiculous.
Then we learn that the president of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood guy, Mr. Morsi, had commanded Obama to dissuade people from criticizing Islam. Then this guy gets rounded up. All he did was exercise his First Amendment rights. That’s all he did. Now, the pretext is that it is a parole violation or something connected to parole because he was convicted of bank fraud. But I thought of that picture of Elian Gonzalez and the armed agent storming in that little house down at Little Havana with Janet Reno downstairs outside waiting to take the kid back to Cuba.
This was far worse. After the sheriff’s office brought the guy in, Nakoula, the filmmaker, was interviewed by federal parole officers, agents of the regime. That’s police state power. That’s brownshirt stuff, folks. And it was all for the photo-op. It was all to further this absurd lie, that what happened last Tuesday, 9/11, or Monday, in the Middle East had nothing to do with 9/11. It had nothing to do with Obama. It had nothing to do with the United States. It had nothing to do with militant Islam. It had to do with this idiot who made this little video.
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RUSH: That’s just a portion of the program that day where we laid out what was known and the warnings and the realization that the State Department knew before the attacks that Al-Qaeda’s Ansar al-Sharia was planning an attack. Later in the program, after we played the Susan Rice sound bites where she was on TV five times blaming the video, I pointed this out. Because the president of Libya ended up being cut off at the knees by Obama and the administration.
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RUSH SEPTEMBER 17, 2012: [T]he Libyan president is saying the exact opposite. The Libyan president is saying it was premeditated. There were 400 people. They had rockets, mortars, grenades, rocket-propelled grenades. They had stuff that you don’t just pick up in the street or have in your closet. It was premeditated, it was set up, and it was designed to get that ambassador. It was designed to! It was designed to precisely because of what we did in taking out Khadafy, which Hillary was out laughing about and bragging about.
Snerdley said, “Why’d they sent send her out there? Why’d they send her out there to look like an idiot?” Her purpose is not to be judged against the Libyan president. Her purpose is to continue with the narrative that it’s this video and the guy that produced it that did all this, and that’s why she keeps sticking with this “spontaneous” business. The political objective is to have this guy, this Coptic Christian, that nobody’s ever seen… (laughs) It’s a mind-boggling thing when you stop and think about it.
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RUSH: Now, the Libyan president. If you recall Greg Hicks, during his testimony before the committee, was asked what he thought when he heard Susan Rice’s assertions that it was the video, this obscure video made by this Coptic Christian that had everybody in the Middle East all worked up and is what caused the attack in Benghazi. Hicks said that it was jaw dropping — jaw dropping — and that he could not believe it; that he was embarrassed for our country.
Now, let me tell you why he was embarrassed. It wasn’t just that this answer was so absurd. It wasn’t just that this excuse was so ridiculous. Remember, Greg Hicks and the State Department people are there for a reason. There’s diplomacy. They’re there to build successful relationships with their host country — and it turns out that the Libyan president is, in comparative terms, a moderate Muslim. He is not a jihadist, at least as analyzed by people I know who are experts in this.
The Libyan president is a Sunni Muslim. He is from Benghazi. He lived for decades in the United States. He was among Khadafy’s most prominent enemies. He’s said to be a liberal, in the classic sense. He supports free elections and free speech as well as equality among citizens and between the sexists, and he has been the target of multiple assassination attempts by other Islamists. The most recent one was in January.
So, through this, the Libyan president, the guy that replaced Khadafy (his name is Magarief) is exactly the kind of ally that the policy that took us into Iraq seeks to have: A moderate Islamist who is open to democracy and Democratic institutions, free elections, free speech. Remember one of the reasons we went into Iraq was to build democracy there and to have it as an outpost of democracy that might then have tentacles that would influence rest of that region.
Well, this guy is that.
By reputation this guy is that, and we just cut him off at the knees. So when Hicks said that his jaw dropped and he found what Susan Rice said embarrassing, it was because they were calling this guy a liar. They were undercutting a guy who could have been and should be an ally in the region. This guy is the reason we got rid of Khadafy. He’s the antithesis of Khadafy, and he contradicted Susan Rice on every point.
No, this was Al-Qaeda. This was an attack that was premeditated. They had 400 people involved in it. They had rockets, mortars, grenades, rocket-propelled grenades. They had stuff that you don’t just pick up, you know, off the shelf or in a catalog for a random protest. This was a serious military action. He was out saying this the day of and the days after, and Hillary and Obama and Susan Rice are effectively calling him a Nimrod and a liar.
This guy, the Libyan president, said that the video’s got nothing to do with this. He was trying to help us, trying to warn everybody of the truth, and they basically threw him under the bus and that’s why Hicks said his jaw dropped. Because in his world, this guy, this Libyan president, is exactly the kind of guy we want to forge relationships with in that part of the world, and he saw his administration throwing this guy overboard. So that’s why he was embarrassed, and that’s why he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That’s in addition to the absolute folly of what she was saying about it being a video.
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RUSH: Paula in Roanoke, Virginia, thank you for calling, thanks for waiting, great to have you here.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. I have an observation on the Benghazi thing. I know you wanted to move on, but this is where Mr. Snerdley put me, so.
RUSH: No, no, you can, callers on Friday, whatever you want to talk about is hunky-dory.
CALLER: All right, thanks. I have an observation in that I believe the administration played the affair card on General Petraeus. They didn’t fire him. They just demoted him, and they still have their thumb on him.
RUSH: Well, it’s interesting because Petraeus did not sign off on these talking points at the CIA. As far as I’ve been able to determine, Petraeus was not at all part and parcel of this. And I guess your theory is that somebody there leaked the knowledge of his affair so as to shut him up.
CALLER: I think they already knew about it.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I think they’ve known about it for quite some time.
RUSH: Oh, gosh, they had to know about it. She’s a journalist, for crying out loud.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: A lot of people knew about it, yep. Well, it’s entirely possible. It is clear that the regime was now covering this up. Look, this Libyan president, folks, was more honest about what happened in Benghazi than our own administration. An Islamist president, in this case of Libya, was more honest than our own administration about what happened in Benghazi. In fact, he was trying to help us. This guy was telling us what we were up against and what had happened, and he has to sit around and watch all this bunk being spread.
Now, imagine if you’re this guy. He’s been installed, elected to replace Khadafy. Don’t doubt me on this. He’s exactly the kind of Muslim leader the Democracy Project had in mind when we go in and get rid of Saddam Hussein, and we try to democratize Iraq. The guy that runs Libya is exactly what we had in mind, free elections, free speech, all that kind of stuff. And I think he appreciated what we had done in ridding that country of Khadafy, so he’s trying to help us. And he has to watch this absolute ridiculous display of deceit, this intricately woven web of deceit by Obama and Susan Rice and whoever else was involved in this. I think the guy would just be scratching his head livid.