RUSH: A couple more bites that I want you to hear from President Bush’s speech this morning in Kansas City at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. These are two really powerful bites. These bites represent the president taking the partisan gloves off in his way and using history. These Democrats want to compare Iraq to Vietnam, the president says go ahead and do it, and let’s compare you Democrats and let’s compare — these are my words — but let’s compare the Democrats and the media in all of these historical events and see how little they have actually changed.
THE PRESIDENT: In 1972, one anti-war senator put it this way: ‘What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated, subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they’ve never seen and they never heard of?’ A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists. ‘It’s difficult to imagine,’ he said, ‘how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.’ The headline of that story dated ‘Phnom Phen,’ summed up the argument: ‘Indochina without Americans: For most, a better life.’ The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.
RUSH: And they continue to this day. Anti-war senator, writer for The New York Times. Do you realize the powerful nature of these words from this anti-war Senator in 1972? Keep in mind an anti-war Senator is a liberal, and what is it liberals tell us? They have compassion. They are for the downtrodden. They are for the oppressed. They are people who care about the weak, pitted and victimized by the majority, the strong, and they promise the weak that they will protect them. Then one of those liberals says, ‘What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam…’ these are human beings, Senator, ‘or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal price or some socialist commissar at some distant capital that they’ve never seen and never heard of?’ Okay, so those people don’t count? Those human beings don’t count. They deserve a government that they may not ever see, a leader that they may not ever see that’s basically going to keep them poor forever and in prison and in threat of being assassinated and killed if they get out of line. That’s okay? For what? Keep in mind who these people are, folks.
These are the people who claim, let me go back to that forum with the AFL-CIO and the Democrat presidential candidates, and that endless parade of average, ordinary Americans whining and moaning about their lives. They’ve been voting Democrat for 50 years to get their lives straightened out and fixed rather than doing it themselves — that’s what the Democrats want — and their lives are not improving. These people were miserable, and they still, after 50 years of voting for the people promising to make their lives less miserable, find a way to blame the country and to blame George W. Bush. They are encouraged to do this by the Democrats. The Democrats want them miserable. Those people equal votes to the Democrats. All this gobbledygook and bilge and drivel about Democrats caring for the little guy is one of the biggest crocks.
It’s the same thing as saying that they, the original racists and the ones who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it’s like saying they have always cared for the oppressed minorities in this country, when they were the ones that kept them oppressed, and I would submit to you to this day keep them oppressed still. Just as the oppressed union people whined and moaned before the Democrat presidential candidates, so do the minorities that vote Democrat in this country complain and complain and complain, things never get better, keep voting for the people who promise to get them better, but then ignore them after the election. Of course, the New York Times writer, columnist, whatever it was: ‘Difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.’ It’s just stunning, and that hasn’t changed to this day, that attitude. Here’s the second bite.
THE PRESIDENT: In the aftermath of Japan’s surrender, many thought it naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy. Then, as now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for freedom. It’s interesting what General MacArthur wrote in his memoirs. He wrote, ‘There was much criticism of my support for the enfranchisement of women. Many Americans as well as many other so-called experts expressed the view that Japanese women were too steeped in the tradition of subservience through their husbands to act with any degree of political independence.’ That’s what General MacArthur observed. In the end, Japanese women were given the vote. Thirty-nine women won parliamentary seats in Japan’s first free election. Today, Japan’s minister of defense is a woman. And just last month, a record number of women were elected to Japan’s upper house.
RUSH: And yet back in World War II, the same people as today said it couldn’t happen, said it about Germany, too, and they’re saying it now about Iraq. I want to go back and play this John Kerry sound bite again. It’s from July 19th. He’s on C-SPAN. H e gets a call, and the caller says, ‘I remember the horrible killings after Vietnam when the boat people coming over here, and I really hate to go off and leave our allies over in Iraq and I’m concerned about that.’
KERRY: Let me just say to the first part of your question, with respect to boat people and killing, everybody predicted a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There was not a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There were reeducation camps, and they weren’t pretty and, you know, nobody likes that kind of outcome, but on the other hand I’ve met a lot of people today who were in those education camps, who are thriving in the Vietnam of today.
RUSH: This is simply unbelievable. No massive bloodbath in Vietnam. No massive bloodbath in Cambodia, and of course no massive bloodbath, folks, in China or the Soviet Union. No massive bloodbath in Cuba, and more recently, no massive bloodbath in Rwanda. The level of tolerance for bloodbaths exhibited by John Kerry and his pals in the Democrat Party is truly amazing. But don’t worry about it, folks, don’t worry about it, liberals care for people more than anybody else does, and we know this because they repeatedly tell us. No bloodbath in Vietnam. But, wow, the reeducation camps, why, I know some people that went to those things and they’re thriving. Let me give you a little history. There’s a story out that two-thirds of the adults of the world have no clue about world events or national events in their own country. That’s not true of you, but I’m going to give you some history here, and Senator Kerry, too. We lost 50,000 American lives in Vietnam, fighting who? Communists! Fifty-thousand is not a blood bath, huh, Senator? We’ve lost how many thousands all over the world fighting communists? North Korea. South Korea. People all over this world have been murdered in genocidal fashion by communists. We have been fighting them most of last century, and we finally beat them.
Life in this country would not exist today as we know it were we still fighting the Cold War. People born in the late eighties, early nineties, have no clue about this. There hasn’t been a Soviet Union in their lives. Forty million were wiped out in Russia and China. Forty million deaths from communists, and here is John Kerry, and he’s not alone, defending the reeducation camps. They defend Fidel Castro. They defend Hugo Chavez. They did everything they could to cast a policy of appeasement, of coexistence with the Soviet Union, rather than defeat them. Meanwhile, we have lost American lives in the struggle against communism. We have an idiot like Kerry saying what he’s saying, who ends up being the Democrat presidential nominee. We have John Edwards, a genuine blithering idiot, who says publicly he doesn’t know whether the Cuban health care system is state run or not. These people somehow remain viable and their party somehow remains a major political operation in this country. It should have been shamed into nonexistence.
It ought not have anywhere near the number of voters and supporters it’s got. And it probably makes some of you mad that there are this many people, in this country, who don’t see who these people are and will vote for them. Well, we know why. People will take anything if you give it to them enough times, and they’ll come to depend on it. But it’s breathtaking here to listen to somebody like Kerry, who was said to be a brilliant man, as is John Edwards, as is Hillary. And you listen to Bush, who is said to be just a hayseed, tobacco-chewing rube from Texas. The contrast in the sound bites here today are just breathtaking. You’ve heard President Bush addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Here is a portion of remarks made by Barack Obama.
OBAMA: There is no military solution in Iraq. No military surge can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Iraq’s leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks. The only thing that they seem to have agreed on is to take a vacation. That is why I’ve pushed for a careful and responsible redeployment of troops engaged in combat operations out of Iraq, joined with direct and sustained diplomacy in the region.
RUSH: Yeah, now, that was last night. Then the members of the VFW got to hear President Bush today with putting things in historical perspective. Barack says they can’t do it; they can’t get out; they can’t reconcile, and if they can’t do that, then our surge is meaningless. Oh, woe is us. All is lost. It can’t be won. It’s already lost. I’m in the Harry Reid camp on this, he says, essentially. You listen to this stuff, and you wonder how in the world anybody considers any of these people presidential in the one area that matters most, and that’s the defense of this country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mr. Snerdley said to me during the break, ‘You know, JFK was one of these guys trying to fight communists. JFK was built on fighting communists. He was a liberal Democrat back then. He’d be a hawk today. He wouldn’t be welcome in today’s Democrat Party.’ I said, ‘You know what’s ironic about that? What’s ironic about it is who killed Kennedy? Who killed JFK?’ Communists! I don’t care who Oswald was working for, he was a communist. The communists killed Kennedy, the beloved communists that people like John Kerry would want to grow up and strike deals with and all these other liberal Democrats. To me, it was one of the most amazing things. I think there’s a book out, can’t remember the name of the author of the book nor the title, Rich Lowry wrote a column about it. But the theory of this book is that the Kennedy assassination was the beginning of the end of the old Democrat Party, and it gave rise to the Democrat Party that exists today. After the communists killed their president, they ended up embracing communists around the world, if not embracing them, certainly not wanting to oppose them, standing in the way of opposing them. In fact, they were assisting them.
You had all these Democrats from the Jim Wright era flying down to Nicaragua to help shore up a communist regime down there that the Soviets were sponsoring, the Sandinistas, under the direction of Daniel Ortega. It’s a very striking irony. Then liberal movie makers go out and start doing these conspiracy theory movies on the assassination of JFK, and of course somebody in New Orleans, some hick, hayseed or somebody else, the Mafia was involved in all this. Could not have been communists, no, no, no, no, could not have been communists. Communists wouldn’t kill our president, no, no, no, no, the communists are not like that. Oh, of course not. This business of comparing Iraq and Vietnam, let’s count the ways, shall we, that the situations are in fact exact opposites. During Vietnam, an American, Jane Fonda, tried to discourage the American people and US troops. In Iraq, our politicians are trying to encourage our enemy. In Vietnam, body counts of the enemy were used to rally our spirits. In Iraq, body counts of our troops are used to demoralize our spirits. In Vietnam, the media fed negative stories to the politicians. In Iraq, the politicians are feeding negative stories to the media, and both are lapping them all up. They say in Vietnam that JFK didn’t get us into Vietnam, but he would have gotten us out. In Iraq, you have to say Al-Qaeda is in 60 countries — this is what they say — but they weren’t in Iraq. They were everywhere, even in Florida, but they weren’t in Iraq.
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RUSH: Gary, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. It’s nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Fine, sir.
CALLER: Mega dittos from Pittsburgh here.
RUSH: It’s great to have you with us.
CALLER: We could sure use you to come up here about once a week. We’re in desperate straits up here.
RUSH: (laughing) How so?
CALLER: (laughing) I live in a neighborhood up here, Beachy right outside of Pittsburgh, and it is so Democratic, I put up a couple signs last election, they spit on my house, eggs at my house, ripped the signs down.
RUSH: You mean these compassionate, tolerant, understanding liberals, the people who tell us they love people like you?
CALLER: Yeah, exactly.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But get to my point —
RUSH: Just understand out there, Gary.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: You represent a bigger threat to them than bin Laden or Al-Qaeda.
CALLER: It’s proved by them tearing my signs down.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: They’re afraid of it. But as the president’s speech went this morning, I watched the whole thing, and boy, I wish it was on primetime, Rush. That was one of the best speeches I ever heard him give, you know, and all he does is stating facts. That’s what’s so brutal about it to the Democrats, you know? It wasn’t minutes later Mike Weir was on there attacking them as quick as you can get there. But my point is, is on this Iraq war. I’ve noticed for the last couple days here and the president’s comparison to Vietnam. These left-wingers drove us out of Vietnam and caused a lot of civilian casualties. I mean, massive casualties over here. But I believe that the Democrats — and I don’t understand why nobody it says; maybe you did and I didn’t hear you, but I believe — they have blood of our soldiers on their hands already.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad you said. I didn’t use those words, but in the monologue segment of this hour, the first segment, I essentially said that and much worse. They defends bloodbaths. They deny they exist. Fifty-thousand American troops dead in Vietnam is not a bloodbath, and Kerry has to go out and praise the reeducation camps because he’s known some people in Vietnam that got through them okay. Those are simply mind-control camps. Those ‘reeducation camps,’ that means to turn you into a communist after the Americans had come and soiled the great people’s paradise with their notions of freedom. Yeah, when you say that the Democrats give aid and comfort to the enemy, they encourage them. In fact, I’ll tell you what. It’s starting to bothersome Democrats, Mike. Let me find the sound bites. We’ve been talking about this guy, Brian Baird. He’s a Democrat from Washington. He’s on the Democrat House steering committee, so he’s in Pelosi’s leadership cluster there. He was on PMSNBC last night. Tucker Carlson said, ‘Why is it considered wrong for Democrats to concede the surge is going okay? Democrats don’t want to admit that there’s any progress there. Why?’
BAIRD: I think if more people could go to the region as I have recently a couple of times, and meet with the soldiers on the ground — you know, when you visit a unit says, ‘Look, congressman, a few months back we were taking incoming every day and every time we went out of the perimeter we were hit and hit hard, that has stopped in recent months,’ and when they tell you that the sheiks and others who used to side with the insurgents are now siding with our side and you meet those sheiks in a public market where they embrace openly our military personnel, you’ve got real signs of progress on the ground.
RUSH: Right, and he went out and talked to the soldiers, and then, ‘Well, how was your last trip?’ I actually should have played this bite first. It’s my mistake. This is what he said first about it.
BAIRD: I think we’re making progress. When I spoke with the generals and the troops on the ground and Ambassador Crocker, there’s still a lot of challenges, but noticeable and important progress, and I think we need to try to work together to make this thing a success. I really believe what we need to do now is stop looking at backwards and look at where we are today. We have a strategic interest in seeing that this mission succeeds. We have a moral responsibility to the Iraqi people and the region, and I think we’re seeing signs of progress, and it is worth letting Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus have the time and breathing room.
RUSH: Yeah, exactly. Others are saying — we had this yesterday — that the political turmoil in the parliament is due in part to the Democrats’ and the Republicans’ debate about the future of our presence in Iraq and that one of the reasons that some of the members of parliament are inclined to go back to their secretary leaders — which, you know, that would foment the possibility of civil war — is because they see the debate going on over here. They see one of the major political parties in this country trying to get us out of Iraq. The people over there know it would be the worst thing that could happen for them if we were to leave, and they gotta hedge their bets. ‘Okay, if these Democrats win and they pull outta here, then I gotta my buds lined up behind me.’ It was a Democrat that said this. His name might be McInerney. He said, ‘If we just solved the debate and got on one page here, that would inspire a whole lot of confidence among the Iraqis that we’re trying to help.’ Amen! It would, and would inspire confidence in this country all over the places, too, if there were unity on this — and why not unity on the issue of US national security? Why not unity on that? How in the world can you not have that? But, folks, throughout my life, the Democrats have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to be up front on that issue. They didn’t want to deal with the Soviet threat; they wanted to appease it. They want to appease Al-Qaeda. They want to appease Iran. They want to appease everybody. They wanted to appease Hitle! They just don’t have the stomach for it, no matter what lessons of history have taught them. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming. But it’s never been this bad. This is the first time in my life. Vietnam was not this bad in terms of the Democrats literally trying to engineer defeat for their own country and for the US military, and that is leading to the conclusion that the blood of many American deaths is on the hands of a lot of Democrats.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Who’s next on this show? Rick in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Thank you for calling, sir.
CALLER: Rush are you there?
RUSH: Yeah, right here Rick.
CALLER: This is like a hoot great talking with you.
RUSH: Appreciate it.
CALLER: I just wanted to express that maybe you could explain to John Kerry that Guantanamo would be our ‘reeducation camp’ and that possibly in 30 years or so, those detainees will be thriving citizens of the US.
RUSH: Well, no, no, no, no. We want thriving citizens of Iraq! Thriving citizens of Afghanistan, when we have reeducated them, quote, unquote, and sent them back. This is a great example. I’m glad you mentioned this. Club Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, horrible, absolutely horrible, inhuman, civil rights violations! Geneva Convention violations! Bad, very bad United States equals evil. Reeducation camps in Vietnam? Well, yeah, they’re not pretty but I’ve known some people that come out of there, and they’re really thriving now. Good point out there, Rick.