RUSH: Now, is this not patently absurd on its face? I’m making it up? She doesn’t have a son? She doesn’t have a son who died in Iraq? Begala will read this on some third-rate partisan website and will believe it, will not even check it out? Wolf Blitzer said, “Making what up?” and Begala came back with this:
THE FOREHEAD: You gotta ask Rush. He’s suggested that she’s making it up, that her son died [sic]. They’re attacking her personally instead of attacking her position on the war. You cannot ever win attacking a Gold Star Mother personally.
RUSH: And Bay Buchanan, also clueless, agreed with Begala that you cannot attack a Gold Star Mother personally. Let’s go back. I’m going to play for you the excerpt. I’ve got two excerpts here and then other comments. Let’s go back to August 12th on this program, and when I first discussed Cindy Sheehan. I had not even discussed it prior to then, prior to that moment, because I think it’s a sad situation all the way around what’s happened to her, and the influences that have been exerted on her and the way she is being used. I think it’s despicable on the part of the left the way they’re doing things. I avoided it, but I got a phone call about it. I got a phone call and the guy told me what he thought about Cindy Sheehan and wanted my reaction. This is August 12th, and here’s what I said:
RUSH ARCHIVE: I find it difficult to be critical of Cindy Sheehan. I think she’s a woman who lost her son, and I know there have been a lot of people lose their kids in war, and I don’t care who they are, it’s not easy, and people deal with it in their own ways. I think the real shame here is her exploitation by the Democrats, by John Conyers. John Conyers dragged her to his impeachment meeting over the Downing Street memos. They have made her a star in her own mind and this attention that she’s getting, I’m sure, is helping to assuage her loss. The media is exploiting her like she is a genuine spontaneous eruption. They are not telling the truth about how this woman has been shepherded by Joe Wilson. There are pictures of her with Joseph Wilson — yes, of Valerie Plame fame. She has showed up at all these anti-war rallies. She was an anti-war mother before any of this began to happen — and speaking of Valerie Plame, I think the Valerie Plame story flamed out and they had to have something come up to replace it, just like Richard Clarke failed and he flamed out and then the Jersey Girls flamed out and then after that Valerie Plame flamed out. They had nothing on Rove; they’ve got to fill the vacuum. It’s right out of the playbook. They’ve got to fill the vacuum. Bill Burkett it’s all part of the same playbook. It’s all part of the same strategery out of the left.
RUSH: There you heard it, August 12th: “I think she’s a woman who lost her son, I don’t care who they are, it’s not easy.” Okay, so there it is, August 12th. I find this patently absurd that this is even necessary. Now, here is a bite from August 15th, three days later, and this is the bite that I contend is being taken out of context because I first said on August 12th and in ensuing days, acknowledged she lost her son, talked about it, was even sympathetic and then went on to make the point that all she is, is an opportunity, like Bill Burkett was an opportunity to bash Bush, like the Jersey Girls are an opportunity to bash Bush, like Valerie Plame is an opportunity to bash Bush and bash Rove. Like the Jersey Girls were, she’s just the next in line, and here’s what I said on August 15th.
RUSH ARCHIVE AUGUST 15, 2005: The fact is that they are too eager. I mean, Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There’s nothing about it that’s a real, including the mainstream media’s glomming onto it. It’s not real.
RUSH: Stop the tape. That is what is being taken out of context. When I say, “Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett, her story is nothing more than forged documents, there’s nothing about it that’s real including the mainstream media’s glomming onto it,” meaning the whole thing is staged. The whole event is staged. I have just said three days earlier and every day hence that she lost her son, and anybody who cares to research my website and listen to this program knows it. To then put out a message that I think she’s lying about her son even being alive, that she didn’t have a son, and she didn’t have a son that died in Iraq, shows the desperation and the depths to which the people on the left will go to discredit people like me who they consider are their enemies because they cannot beat us in the arena of ideas. They cannot answer what I am saying about Cindy Sheehan. They can’t answer what my accusations about the way she’s being used are. They don’t dare even go there, so they have to try to discredit me in the eyes of people who may not listen to this program or other people in the media who are supposedly reporters, who are supposedly curious, who supposedly would want to get to the bottom of this. If something like that is really being said, find out about it. But nooooo! Just accept what happens to be written in other places on the World Wide Web. The real interesting thing to me is these people are totally ignoring what Cindy Sheehan is saying. She is, apparently, their story. She is their God’s gift that’s just been handed to them to keep the Bush bash-up and in rhythm, and they ignore what she is saying, and they want to focus on everybody who’s criticizing the whole element of movement that surrounds this Cindy Sheehan story — and to me they’re missing all of that on purpose. They don’t want any scrutiny of what Sheehan is saying.
That’s why they come up with this asinine indefensible phrase that she has “absolute moral authority.” Because she lost a son in Iraq, she can criticize anybody and lie and say whatever she wants, as can her supporters, but nobody can call attention to her lies or the way she’s being used because she has absolutely moral authority? Is that what we’ve come to now? You lose a son or a daughter in Iraq and you are insulated from criticism and you have a license to lie as long as you’re doing it about George W. Bush? What is this “absolute moral authority” business? These people are tattering, folks. They’re shredding. They’re coming apart intellectually, emotionally, and every which way. They have no substance whatsoever that backs them up. They’re standing in quicksand as I’ve always been saying — and they know it, and they’re lashing out. The thing that’s got them upset is that Sheehan is not working. It’s not affecting anything. It’s not changing public opinion. It is not affecting Bush’s policy one way or another, one iota, and so they just continue to get more extreme and outrageous, and try to discredit the critics. Here’s the latest that we’ve learned about Cindy Sheehan. This is from a speech that she made during a rally at San Francisco State University April 27, 2005. I can’t repeat all of this because it’s profane and obscene. She said, “We’re not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush.” She’s got absolute moral authority, so you can’t question that, folks. Sheehan is demanding a second meeting with Bush. She said, “We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now.” We can’t question this. She has absolute moral authority.
“They’re a bunch of [bleep]ing hypocrites, and we just need to rise up…” Sheehan said of the Bush administration. “If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his b– s—,” and she said the word, “that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he’s spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free? The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a US-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two party-animal girls. They need to go to this war,” and of course the left thinks that’s a brilliant analogy: “[A]ren?t willing to send your own children, or if you’re not willing to go die yourself, then you bring there rest of our kids home now. It is despicable what they’re [blanking] doing.” We can’t question this. She has absolute moral authority. Nobody focuses on what she’s saying. They don’t dare. All they do is tell you she’s an out-of-sorts mom who desperately wants to meet with Bush, but Bush is so mean and insensitive he doesn’t care and he’s avoiding her because he’s afraid of her. But when you get into the specifics of this they don’t hold up and they can’t handle it and so they have to start lying about people like me and discrediting people like me, but they fail each time they do it because they’re lying. Their whole movement, all of their efforts, are based on lies. They can’t even be honest about who they are. They can’t be honest about what their plans for the country are. They can’t be honest about anything, folks, because if they were they’d be finished for good.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: My adopted hometown, Sacramento, California. Hi, Leo. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hey, how are you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Just fine, Leo. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Rush, I just wanted to comment on that situation with Ms. Sheehan. Ms. Sheehan can speak for herself, but Terri Schiavo couldn’t, and I’m just saying politicians will use this, political groups will use any issue that a grieving parent has, depending on which side of the political aisle they’re on, and this is not much different than what happened with Terri Schiavo. It’s just being used. But don’t blame the mother for her grief and that her mindset might be to use any group that she can use to get her point across.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait! Wait a second. Wait a second. Here we go with more left-wing moral equivalence. I thought that you people thought that she was dead anyway? I thought Terri Schiavo was dead and wasn’t worth any of this. I mean, this is absurd. This is classic. I make a point that you can’t defend and you have to come up with Schiavo and then you say, “Don’t be critical of Sheehan and her grief”? Where does she get this immunity? Where in the world did she come up with this immunity? You didn’t give Schiavo immunity. You didn’t have any compassion for Terri Schiavo whatsoever. You can’t cite to me the number of times Republicans do this kind of thing. I’ll tell you the major difference, Leo. When the Republicans tried to defend the life of Terri Schiavo, the media didn’t join them and the media didn’t promote them and the media didn’t give them moral authority. The media was with the Democrats and the rest of you liberals opposing any opportunity to find out if Terri Schiavo had a life that was worth living. You couldn’t care less. You wanted to condemn that woman: She may as well have been dead. You call here and want to draw some kind of comparative analogy to the two things. You know damn well if you have any shred of intellectual honesty in you that this whole Sheehan thing is a setup — and if you listen to me carefully, I have not criticized Sheehan. I have criticized the media for exploiting her. I have been crystal clear on this, and once again the fact that you can’t respond to what’s right in front of your face and going right into your head via your ears is proof positive to me that you guys are actually on the defensive while you think you’re on the offensive in scoring points out here. This is just breathtaking to watch and to listen to this. Give me another example besides Schiavo. Where in the world are these efforts that Republicans use to come up with citizens that are out there telling lies about other people and having it promoted? You know, it’s absurd. If you want to talk about the difference here, look at the people that you champion. Look at the causes that you champion. You’re basically just championing an anti-Bush cause in the case of Cindy Sheehan. Condemning little kids like Elian Gonzales to go back to a Soviet-inspired gulag in Cuba, and you want the mantle of compassion and big-heartedness. You guys think you deserve this. It’s like I said the other day: “This country’s got a big challenge ahead and that’s keeping you people from ever ending up in positions of leadership running this country.”
Suzanne in Bloomfield, New Jersey, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: You know, I just wanted to say that as a fan of the show, when I hear the lies about you in the mainstream media, it doesn’t make me mad; it makes me smile because it just proves to me once again over and over every single time that lies and deception are all they have. Never — never once — have I heard anything that was attempting to represent your position that was accurate, and people that listen to the show should just sit back and think it’s funny and say, “See, all they’ve got are deception.”
RUSH: You know, I have the same attitude you do 99% of the time. I think it’s just a testament to the effectiveness of this program, quite frankly, when they have to go lying about it and distorting it and I sit back and smile, and I was telling some people last night, “You know, the current media stories are that I am somehow fading away now. The arrival of liberal talk radio has caused the bloom to come off the Limbaugh rose,” and yet you cannot read a major newspaper or watch a cable news network without my name being mentioned, and I am the gold standard for apparently what the right-wing thinks and says — and they have to lie about what I’m saying. It’s just a testament to my effectiveness, is how I look at it, but I can also understand people watching this getting fed up at it, and so now and then it is time to respond to some of it — especially something as egregious as this, being accused of saying she’s lying about having a son who didn’t die in Iraq. I mean, at some point you can’t let certain things stand, and you pick your spots, as I just did.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Richard Dreyfuss, the actor — yip yip yip yip yahoo, yes — and he was in California at a protest supporting Cindy Sheehan, and here is a small portion. It’s all you need to hear, to get the gist of it.
DREYFUSS: No one should come for my son and tell my son to go and kill someone or put himself in harm’s way unless I understand and agree to the need.
RUSH: Hey, Richard, what do you think is going on out there, the draft? You think people are stealing into your backyard under cover of darkness and knocking on your door when nobody is home and going in and stealing your son? What a blithering idiot. You know, these people think they’re brilliant and they think they’re making these sentimental and very serious, deep thoughts and points, and they just don’t get it. They don’t see how they’re perceived; they continue to just make absolute idiots of themselves. Now, this morning — back to CNN — on their morning show, Miles O’Brien, talked to Debbie Argel Bastian. Her son, Captain Derek Argel, died in Iraq. The question was, “What concerns did you have when you heard that your son’s name was on one of those crosses — not down in Crawford, a different location, but similar kind of thing. What were your concerns about that?”
MOTHER BASTIAN: My son Derek fully believed that everyone has the right to protest and express their opinion, but our family very much objects to the fact that, you know, after my son’s death that his name be used in this way. He would never have participated in any sort of an anti-war protest, and it’s our understanding that there is a name on a cross in Crawford, Texas, as well. It came up on a website. My son was very much in favor of President Bush and the Bush administration and had great respect for him as commander-in-chief. Derek was a special escort for Mrs. Bush when she made her trip to Iraq and Afghanistan and for the president and for the US ambassador to Iraq, and it’s just inappropriate not to ask the families.
RUSH: They don’t care about the families. That’s the whole point! They don’t care a whit about the families, folks. They don’t care about Cindy Sheehan’s son, and they don’t really care about her. They care about the opportunity. You know who these people are? They are just plain miserable and unhappy. They get up every day and they are miserable. They only make themselves feel good by sharing their misery with others and spreading it around. They are made to feel good when they make other people feel miserable. They have to go out and lie as this woman has pointed out, and appropriate members of their so-called protest that would not choose to be if they had a voice — and a little side note: What is this about crosses? I thought these people were against religious symbols being posted anywhere on public land, and yet here they come. When they want to bash Bush, when they want to take the opportunity here to try to move the bar a little bit and gin up anti-war support in America, what do they do? They go out and use a bunch of crosses and act like they’re religious, and act like this is solemn. Well, you put a cross in your yard or erect a Nativity scene in these people’s neighborhood and you see what happens to it. I mean, the hypocrisy and the shame here, is off the charts. Last night, Christopher Hitchens — this was sort of funny — was on Hardball. Norah O’Donnell (she of the bathwater that you probably would drink), was co-hosting for Chris Matthews, and Christopher Hitchens who has written about the folly of this whole argument that people who lose sons and daughters in war have some sort of moral authority. one) He fired both barrels last night. Howard Fineman was also on the panel along with Norah O’Donnell, and it was plain — and we can’t show you this because it’s audio — but when Hitchens launched into some of his comments about Cindy Sheehan, you could see the blank looks of stunned shock and surprise on the faces of Norah O’Donnell and Fineman. It was like either they can’t believe he’s saying this or they don’t know this about Sheehan. I assume that it’s the latter. Here’s the first question. “Cindy Sheehan, been camped outside Bush’s ranch now demanding a meeting with the president, saying she won’t leave ’til that happens. Christopher, do you think that this represents and that she represents some sort of tipping point in public opinion in America?”
HITCHENS: Certainly not. She has, just today, lied about a statement that she made several times before to the effect that her son was killed in a war run by a secret Jewish cabal within the administration. She now says she didn’t make that statement. She did make that statement. So as well as being a hysterical paranoid ideologist, or at least being manipulated by people who are, she turned this into camp fruit-bag and camp nut-bag. She has decided not to have the courage, or maybe the cowardice of her convictions. She now says she didn’t make a statement that she definitely did.
RUSH: When Hitchens mentioned the fact that she’s accused “a secret Jewish cabal” of running the war, that’s when everybody else on the panel’s faces fell. Like, “We didn’t know that! We didn’t!” Of course, you don’t know that, you’re reporters! You don’t know diddlysquat. You reporters couldn’t have any less knowledge when you were trying to be ignorant about things. I don’t know where it is you get your information, but it’s all over the place. It’s in countless places on the Internet, for example, that you apparently never go. I think news has become something nothing other, actually, than a giant… I’ve gotta watch my language. The first word is “circle;” the second word begins with a “J.” They’re sitting around talking to each other. They’re sitting around trying to impress each other, and they all think the same thing. They all say the same thing. They’re trying to say it in more creative, different ways, and they’re all trying to get to the head of the class by being the one that moves the ball forward. There’s so much out there. That’s why they’re losing audience. There’s so much news that they don’t even know. They come to the Sheehan story; she’s the latest Jersey Girl, the latest Bill Burkett. “She is infallible! She has moral authority. You can’t criticize her,” and of course nothing she says is to be held against her because she is in the throes of grief. “How dare you, Christopher, say this!” What they do is they end up embarrassing themselves. They end up being uninformed, unaware — and more than that, uncaring when they find out that there are some bits of information contradictory to what they are saying. One more bite. O’Donnell says, “So, you think there’s going to be a huge backlash against Cindy Sheehan?”
HITCHENS: Well, I think there should be. I think our profession should stop acting as her megaphone. Until I published her real political opinions in Slate yesterday, she had to answer no more questions than, “How does it feel?” OK? I object. I shouldn’t have had to do that. I said, “This woman is mouthing the most sinister piffle from Michael Moore and David Duke. She should be held responsible for what she thinks.”
RUSH: Christopher, what makes you think your pals on the left are going to do this? She’s too valuable to discredit. Doing what you suggest would be to blow her up and blow up the whole opportunity, would cause her to flame out. They can’t afford that. They’ve got to get Bush somehow. They’ve got to move the ball. They’ve got to create all this anti-war sentiment. She’s the latest vehicle to do so. There is a backlash, and it’s already happening. I talked about it yesterday, and the backlash is being caused by saturation coverage. The American people are fed up with it. They don’t want to hear it, not in that context. I’m sure this audience loves all this being nuked to smithereens, as it should be, and put in its proper context and perspective. But they don’t want to hear the media’s idolatry. They don’t want to hear the media talking about this woman has God’s gift to humanity and America and she should run for office. It’s not what the American people want to hear. The American people don’t want us to lose the war in Iraq. The American people want us to be dishonored. The American people don’t think a Jewish cabal is running anything. The American people don’t think this is a war about oil. If this were a war for oil you know how easy it would be, ladies and gentlemen, for George Bush to get oil? We’re in Qatar, right? We have an airbase in Qatar. That’s where the actual theater of operations is being run. We just claim it! We just say, “Qatar is ours.” I’m sorry, “Cutter,” for those of you in the mainstream press. “Cutter is ours.” What are the imams and the leaders of Qatar going to do? We just take it.
Same thing with Kuwait: “Hey, Kuwait, you know we bailed you out of the fire enough times. We’re taking your oil,” and we wouldn’t have to go to war at all to get it. It’s so patently absurd. The intellectual absurdity of all these arguments never once analyzed, thought of, or challenged by the people who are indeed acting as the megaphone and that’s why they’re losing their credibility left and right, and that’s why in the face of genuine, legitimate criticism such as from me or Hitchens, they have to then resort by discrediting the critic, lying about the critic, taking things the critic didn’t say, amplifying them as lies, to try to distort the message of truth that is being said — and it’s been their line of attack with me for 15 years, and of course we’d have to say, based on election results and other obvious factors that their effort to nail me has failed every which way from Sunday that they’ve tried, and it will fail here as it always has in the last say ten to 15 years. The gig’s up for these guys and they just don’t know it. Eh, maybe they do and they’re trying to stop it and forestall it which causes them to get even more extreme and just continue to shout the same things, figuring we’re too stupid to figure it out and that’s how they cause the backlash.
END TRANSCRIPT