RUSH: Hi. How are you? Welcome back. El Rushbo, the EIB Network. We go to Clinton, New Jersey. This is Sylvia. Sylvia, thank you for calling. It’s great to have you on the program with us.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. You know, I feel kind of sorry for George Tenet right now because he’s getting blasted both from the right and from the left, based on this book, as you probably know.
RUSH: I know, just talked about that.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: But I just think that, you know, this just bears out what we all knew, that this intelligence was cooked going in, and, you know, you always talk all the time about —
RUSH: Wait a minute. Tell me what was cooked. What is in the Tenet book that convinces you the intelligence was cooked?
CALLER: Rush, I mean I haven’t read the Tenet book at all, but his — you know, I guess —
RUSH: No, no, no —
CALLER: — what I’ve heard on the media.
RUSH: That doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. That’s not good enough. What you’ve heard in the media. The media isn’t objective. They’ve got an agenda.
CALLER: What are you saying?
RUSH: Sylvia, are you listening to the program?
CALLER: Well, I just got in the car, I couldn’t believe I got through, you know —
RUSH: Yeah, right.
CALLER: — because I was so interested about this —
RUSH: What website did you visit that gave out the phone number and the marching orders to call here and say the Tenet book proves that intelligence —
CALLER: I listen to you every day. I mean I listen to conservative talk radio more than anything that I ever hear. Once in a while I hear Hardball while I’m cooking dinner, and this is just — this is — Rush —
RUSH: But you haven’t read the book. And if you haven’t read the book, even if you haven’t read any excerpts, you’re going to tell me it proves intelligence was cooked?
CALLER: Well, Rush, what I’ll just say is that you always say — Rush, can I say one thing?
RUSH: Well, okay, I guess.
CALLER: You always say that the Democrats have been wrong about everything, and I tune in to you and I say my gosh, this administration, I’m willing to give them a pass on weapons of mass destruction, but they knew darn well that he had nothing — that Saddam, who hated fundamentalist extremists, he was just a secular dictatorship who had patience for Al-Qaeda.
RUSH: This is why I am frustrated with you, Sylvia, because we’re going to have a new rule on this program, and we’re going to call it the Sylvia rule. You have to be listening to the program to call. I just talked about the weapons of mass destruction. If you think that everybody knew that there were no WMDs —
CALLER: I don’t. I think that that was the one honest mistake that they made. What was dishonest was to try to link Saddam Hussein to the events of 9/11.
RUSH: They never did. I just got through talking about it! I am getting frustrated, Sylvia.
CALLER: Please don’t get frustrated, but you know what, Dick Cheney was on TV every time —
RUSH: All right, that’s it. Sylvia, thank you for the call. Now I’m going to have to repeat this whole thing that I just did. Nobody ever said in the administration that Saddam had operational control over 9/11. All they ever said, Sylvia, was that Iraq had members of Al-Qaeda roaming the countryside. They were in northern Iraq, they were even in Baghdad. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It’s in Tenet’s book that you haven’t read. There was no intelligence cooked here. If you go back and look at what the president said, weapons of mass destruction were not the only reason for going to Iraq, that there were Al-Qaeda members there. But they never claimed that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. But there were Al-Qaeda members there, and the president said we’re going to go wherever they are, and we finally did after a number of years kill Zarqawi, and we may have killed al-Masri, his backup. But, look, I am sorry for my frustration, folks, I really am.
It’s bad enough when people listening to the program don’t get it. But then to have to talk to somebody that hasn’t listened to it act like the expert. The description of Zarqawi, as a threat, with Al-Qaeda links, and enjoying sanctuary in Iraq without being under the control of Saddam Hussein seems borne out by two things: what Tenet has written in his book and also his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. So what’s changed, what’s new? Al-Qaeda was responsible for killing 3,000 Americans, and one of its worst terrorists was freely enjoying sanctuary in Iraq. Now, what’s changed about this? What’s changed about it is that the Drive-By Media and the Democrats have sought to pollute your mind with a lie, that Iraq was not hosting Al-Qaeda, and furthermore, that Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein worked together on 9/11. When Cheney never said it, Rumsfeld never said it, the president never said it. All they ever said was that Al-Qaeda was in a Iraq, and we were going after Al-Qaeda.
Now we got Tenet’s book out there pretty much confirming all this. Nothing has changed. Now, I love Sylvia, she’s obviously a hack, but I love her, but she epitomizes a problem that we’ve got, and that is ignorant citizens who think that they’re informed. I’m not calling her stupid. She’s just convinced, because she’s heard it in the Drive-Bys, that this administration said Saddam had operational involvement in 9/11. And they never did. The administration never, ever said it. I feel like doing a Howard Dean scream here, folks, but I won’t.