{"id":22465,"date":"2005-02-18T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:55:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-04-26T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T16:00:47","slug":"rush_to_visit_troops_in_afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2005\/02\/18\/rush_to_visit_troops_in_afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush to Visit Troops in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, let me tell you where I\u2019m going to be next week. I had not intended to make this public for a host of reasons until it was all over, but the thing that I\u2019m going to do next week has leaked. It leaked yesterday. I think it leaked from people who were trying to undermine it, and enough said about that. They are not going to succeed in undermining it, but I think that was one of the attempts, one of the reasons why it was leaked. Now, you do not know this, but for the past year and a half or two years, I have been asking both the State Department and the Department of Defense to go on a troop visit to either Iraq or Afghanistan, and in some cases I was denied, in some cases I was ignored, and in all cases they were thankful and they said, “We\u2019ll get back to you,” and sometimes I heard from them, sometimes I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But about three months ago, I heard from the State Department that there would be an opportunity to visit Afghanistan in the first quarter of this year, so I said, “Well, count me in, pending what it is and when it is and what the agenda is.”\"\"So three weeks ago now, I met with members of the US Agency for International Development, which is an agency of the State Department, and put together the itinerary. The trip to Afghanistan is next week. I will not be broadcasting from there because remotes are not simple things anymore for me to do with my cochlear implant and hearing problems, but I will have a satellite phone and it is my intention to phone in when I can to the program and our guest hosts next week, to give on-the-spot foreign correspondent reports as to what I\u2019ve seen. Now, the primary reason that I wanted to go was to visit the troops, and I want to carry a message to them from all of you — and I\u2019ve wanted to do this, as I say, for a year and a half or two years.<\/p>\n

You know, the USO does these trips but I look at who the USO takes and I realize I don\u2019t have a prayer to go on a USO trip. I have yet to see a conservative commentator on a USO trip. I see a bunch of liberals and leftists, which is fine. So I didn\u2019t even bother with the USO, and so the trip has been put together. It\u2019s going to be basically five days in country with three troop visits, one of them a town meeting -type affair, and I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. (Interruption) What, Mr. Snerdley? Oh, I\u2019m going to set that up. I\u2019m going to set up a troop asking a question that a reporter has fed them. I\u2019m going to have fun with this — and there are going to be three troop visits. I have a meeting with some high government officials in Afghanistan, and I\u2019m going to see some examples of reconstruction that have gone on. It\u2019s going to be a great trip.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an adventure. It\u2019s a tremendous opportunity. But for a whole host of reasons, I didn\u2019t want to talk about this till it was over. Now it\u2019s out. Reuters has the story, and a couple of other places have snarky little stories about this, and it has been posted on Matt Drudge\u2019s website and at NewsMax.com, so I thought it would be sort of silly for me to ignore it here on the radio and act like it\u2019s not happening. I\u2019m getting e-mails, “Is this really true?” and this is a great question, folks! You see a Reuters story and you don\u2019t trust it. We\u2019re making great progress out there. I want to applaud all of you who have written me and said, “Hey, Rush, I see this story on Reuters about you and Afghanistan. Is this true?” Great, great question — and since so many people are sending me these requests wanting to know if the news stories are accurate, I thought that I would confirm them.<\/p>\n

There are elements of the story that are BS, as is the case in every story. Just so you know, I am paying for the trip. I\u2019m paying my way over there and back. I\u2019m reimbursing when possible. This is a thing I have requested and for security reasons I\u2019m going with the US Aid people, but I wasn\u2019t, you know, sitting around minding my own business waiting for the weekend to go play golf and got a phone call from somebody that said, “Hey, we\u2019d like you to go to Afghanistan.” It\u2019s the exact opposite of that and it\u2019s something that I have been trying to do for, as I say, a year and a half or two years. And so it\u2019s finally come to pass, and it\u2019s going to be next week.<\/p>\n

Who are the guest hosts next week? We\u2019ve got Hedgecock in here on Monday and Tuesday. Tom Sullivan — he\u2019ll be in L.A., right, that day? — from Sacramento. He\u2019ll be in L.A. He\u2019ll be on Wednesday. Who is…? Oh, yeah. Oh, that\u2019s right! Mike Rosen from KOA in Denver. Yeah, he\u2019ll be here Thursday and Friday. He\u2019s on our 50,000-watt blowtorch affiliate out in the Rocky Mountains, in Denver. So that\u2019s just to confirm what many of you were asking me about in the media today about the trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nSo it\u2019s going to be cool. It\u2019s going to be an adventure. It\u2019s going to be eye opening, I am certain, and I\u2019ll tell you, one of the reasons — some people say, “Well, wouldn\u2019t you rather it be Iraq?” Actually, no preference here. Afghanistan actually, as I thought about it: Do you know there\u2019s no news coming out of there? We\u2019re not being told of anything. Everything is Iraq — and I think one of the reasons that we\u2019re not being told anything coming out of Afghanistan is because the news is mostly good. I think the very fact that there\u2019s not a whole lot of reporting out of there means the news is good. So I want to go over there and see if that\u2019s true and confirm it. You know, the Afghan elections came off and they happened just as well and as efficiently as the Iraqi elections and nobody talked about it after it happened much. Not at all. There was no big run-up to it. There was no coverage it. There was no coverage after the fact.<\/p>\n

Then the Iraqi elections came and that occupied the whole foreign news cycle last fall in the campaign up till January 30th — and yet Afghanistan is where we first went. Afghanistan, we routed the Taliban out of there, and more and more Taliban people are turning themselves in, saying they\u2019re tired of the life and they want to join the good guys. I have seen sporadic reports of that sort of thing, so I just want to go see this for myself and that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do and I wanted to pass it on to you — and in case any of you are wondering, no, I am not taking my golf clubs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, let me tell you where I\u2019m going to be next week. I had not intended to make this public for a host of reasons until it was all over, but the thing that I\u2019m going to do next week has leaked. It leaked yesterday. I think it leaked from people who were trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRush to Visit Troops in Afghanistan - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2005\/02\/18\/rush_to_visit_troops_in_afghanistan\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Rush to Visit Troops in Afghanistan - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Now, let me tell you where I\u2019m going to be next week. 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