RUSH: We have to talk about what’s going on in London. We’ve had a number of near-misses over there with cars that are planted with explosives. The law enforcement authorities over there are doing yeoman’s work. They’ve evacuated Hyde Park. It’s just a reminder, folks, of the world in which we live. Of course they’re saying international elements are involved. That’s right, international elements. Can’t bring ourselves to say what’s on everybody’s mind, and that is that this is the religion of peace, Al-Qaeda or a related group. Now, I’ll tell you, there’s a little story. I just found this out this morning. For example, things have been going on here while we’ve been focused on the amnesty bill. The House of Representatives passed legislation, I guess it’s legislation. They passed a bill on Wednesday affirming that global warming exists. So now legislation can apparently supersede science. Global warming exists. The House of Representatives has said so. But another thing that that went on, the US Supreme Court has decided to hear arguments from inmates at Club Gitmo who want to challenge their detentions in federal court. ‘The Supreme Court’s agreed to hear a pair of cases that it had rejected in April. The justices over the objections of the Bush administration agreed to review a lower court decision that said a 2006 law validly barring federal judges considering so-called habeas corpus petitions filed by prisoners,’ at Club Gitmo. So the court is going to hear the cases in its next term, which begins in October. First time in recent memory the court has reversed itself and agreed to hear a case that it rejected earlier.
Now, you talk to anybody that watches the court, talk to anybody in the legal profession and they’ll probably all tell you that the court probably would not have reversed itself on this and agreed to hear the case unless something had happened behind closed doors to make people think they’re going to reverse themselves and they’re going to do this. What’s amazing about this, when we’re going to give them habeas corpus, we’re going to essentially give them US constitutional rights. These are prisoners of war at Club Gitmo. On the day that London is going through what it’s going through and reminding all of us of the never ending possibility that something like that can happen here again, it’s mind-boggling. Of course, we can trace one of the problems of this to something that’s as simple as public relations. What a friend of mine is speculating here is that the John Paul Stevens has convinced Anthony Kennedy to come all the way on board on this, and that’s why the court has agreed to hear this case.
Now, you maybe saying, ‘So what, Rush?’ Well, these are not US citizens, and if you bring them into the United States legal system, then once again you’re prosecuting the war on terror as a crime rather than as a war. It takes us back to the way the Clinton administration was dealing with this. Club Gitmo is a good story to tell, the way it has helped us gather intelligence on people who are hell-bent on killing. But we’ve allowed the Club Gitmo story to be the legal straits of the detainees, not the intel that’s saving Americans. Once again, the people at Club Gitmo are almost being treated like illegal immigrants. For some reason we feel a need to apologize for them, for some reason we feel that we’ve gotta make it right with them, so the story line, the action line on what’s going on at Club Gitmo has focused on, ‘Oh, how sorry we must be; how unfortunate it must be. Oh, this is bad; how could we do this to these wonderful little people?’ One of the questions that people probably ask — and this leads to the PR problem — okay, we’ve had these people down there for a number of years. Club Gitmo’s been open and has served as a resort escape from jihad for many, many moons that’s giving me a thriving merchandise business down there. But people even on our side occasionally will say, ‘What do you say to the argument that after several years we’ve probably gotten all the intelligence we could wring out of these guys, and the need for intel is no longer a good reason to hold ’em, so why are we holding them?’ What that indicates is a totally flawed understanding of how intelligence gathering works.
It’s not the fault of people who ask that question. It’s a perfectly reasonable question. They’ve been down there for years. If we had them that long we’re probably going to get everything from them we’re going to get. The reason this question sounds reasonable is because there hasn’t been a proper explanation of how intelligence gathering works from either the people at Gitmo or in the administration. The war on terror goes on whether you want to be involved in it or not and whether you want to admit it or not. Military people, intelligence operations people, law enforcement people, continue to capture new terrorists, seize new evidence. If you have cooperative intelligence sources, and many of these Gitmo detainees have become cooperative. Don’t believe all these stories about torture and duress, you keep going back to them, ‘Okay, who’s this? Explain to me what this document means, does this new stuff that we found indicate the planning of attack,’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This isn’t brain surgery or limited to the world of counterterrorism.
A friend of mine was doing Mafia cases in New York in the eighties and nineties. They had mob turncoats who continued to be used as sources for information for over ten years. It’s like they become your expert sources for explaining how things work from the outside. In fact, they’re the best experts, because they really were inside. So is the case with these Al-Qaeda types down at Club Gitmo. I think if somebody would just take the time to explain how this works, explain how intelligence gathering works, that it never ends. And that as a add new people to population, you’ve got people that you’ve converted, you’ve spun, whatever you’ve got them on your side, you’re acting as informants, who is this guy, who is that guy? So they question, ‘Okay, let ’em go or give ’em their rights or whatever, we’ve had them down there for too long,’ misunderstands the whole process, but it’s understandable people would misunderstand the process because it’s not being explained. Instead, Club Gitmo is a legal black hole, or it’s presented as a torture chamber, rather than an intelligence success story.
It’s one of the frustrating things about this administration. They’ve had a lot of success stories that they just don’t publicize or explain. This story would not have been anywhere near the top of the stack today were it not for what’s going on in London today. The idea that the Supreme Court may now grant these guys habeas corpus in the midst of what’s happening in London today can drive you nuts.
RUSH: We have some audio sound bites here from the Drive-By Media, explaining what’s going on in London today and why. We have three of them. First up is the Pentagon correspondent for CNN, Barbara Starr.
STARR: You know, since Iraq, it’s really the case that this type of very basic bomb technology has really spread around the world.
RUSH: Really? Iraq is where this started? I shoulda known. Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize to you, it’s because I’m exhausted and tired today. I should have known that what’s going on in London today has to do with our presence in Iraq. Why, if we had never gone to Iraq these clowns would have never invented the bomb. Do you realize that? This is the first time these kinds of bombs, these IEDs are being used. Oh, I know terrorists have been strapping themselves with explosives for decades and blowing themselves and other people up, but did you know that since we went into Iraq is when this stuff really started happening? I should have known this. Why, what’s happening in London today would not be happening if we had not gone into Iraq. Up next, ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross.
ROSS: All of this comes just three weeks after what was described as an Al-Qaeda terrorist graduation ceremony, with suicide bomb teams dispatched to the United States and Europe. Based on the earlier sketchy details from Scotland Yard, this car bomb was potentially lethal but relatively crude. The great concern now is if it is Al-Qaeda, something which is still not known, but if it is, there would likely be other vehicle bombs in the works.
RUSH: Oh, I have no doubt that there are other vehicle bombs in the works, here, there and everywhere. Just weeks after an Al-Qaeda terrorist graduation ceremony. And of course Al-Qaeda wouldn’t be recruiting new terrorists if we weren’t in Iraq. Al-Qaeda would have just gone away and been hunky-dory about the situation they find themselves in the world. But it’s because we were in Iraq and we are in Iraq, ladies and gentlemen, that all this came up. It won’t be long, I will bet you before the end of the day, that some kook either on cable TV or some blog actually says this whole thing was a stunt, that Bush set this up in order to distract people’s attention and to set up the idea that we’re still in the war on terror, because Reid and Pelosi, by the way, are going to introduce another get-out-of-Iraq bill soon. They’re just relentless. They don’t go away. Finally, Jeanne Meserve, CNN Newsroom this morning with Tony Harris, who said, ‘As we continue to watch this situation in the Park Lane area of London, the Department of Homeland Security, how concerned is that department over the possible threat that terrorist groups might turn to car bombs as a way to target some of these what we call soft targets like nightclubs in the United States?’
MESERVE: I’ll tell you, frankly, Tony, there’s a great deal of surprise that it hasn’t happened already. Likewise, surprise that there haven’t been suicide bombers in this country already. Of course, as has been mentioned repeatedly, these techniques have been perfected in Iraq. There’s been concern that they would migrate from there elsewhere. Also there’s the fact of the Internet. The fact that you can log on and get very specific information about how to do all sorts of nasty things, and that has allowed people elsewhere on the globe to benefit from the knowledge being gained in Iraq.
RUSH: These things are being made in Iran. We all know this.
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