RUSH: Down to Gary in Charleston, South Carolina.
CALLER: Rush, good afternoon. Gary up here in Charleston, South Carolina. First-time caller, and I thank you, sir, for being a pulse of America that keeps us conservatives and everybody else abreast of what’s going on.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate that.
CALLER: The reason for my call is I just heard a news commentary by Harry Reid that has me all upset, and being an ex-Marine and knowing a little bit about the CIA, they’re having some kind of a hearing or discussion on the destruction of these tapes. If my memory serves me correct, I believe I heard on a previous newscast, that they had access to this information a couple years ago.
RUSH: Here’s the thing about that. There are two things: the waterboarding and the destruction of the CIA tapes of the incident. And what happened, the waterboarding, Pelosi was told of it. There were four members of Congress bought up there and they were told of it, after 9/11 — this happened in 2002 — and Pelosi and I forget who else was in there, forget the prominent names, but the Democrats: ‘Are you sure this is tough enough?’ The CIA gave them a virtual tour of detention facilities and some of the techniques that were going to be used, and Pelosi and others say, ‘Are you sure this is tough enough?’ Waterboarding was part of it. The destruction of the tapes, that’s got the Democrats on the impeachment warpath all over again, but let me ask you a question before we get to your point, I want to ask everybody in the audience a question.
Were we better off that the pictures from Abu Ghraib got published? Look at how that tore this nation apart. Look at the ammo that gave. The Army was in the process of investigating that. The military was in the process of getting to the nub of it, and they were going to punish whoever did it, and those pictures got leaked to CBS and the New York Times, do we really want to sabotage this country’s efforts in time of war against people whose intentions are no mystery and tie ourselves in knots? I think the CIA and whoever ended up deciding to get rid of these tapes — and there were prominent members, like Jay Rockefeller, who is the Democrat leader of the Intel committee back at that time in the Senate, knew full well that they were going to be destroyed. He didn’t say a word for a year. And that’s what you’re referring to, I think specifically.
CALLER: That’s exactly what I’m specifically referring to, but here’s what grabs my gall. As I listen to this guy who sounds like a milquetoast church mouse with absolutely no authority whatsoever, Nancy Pelosi’s nothing but a lapdog sitting in a chair, they’ve had this information for a number of years and now all of a sudden at election time, well, not election time, but getting close to it where all these candidates are shucking and jiving for a position in Iowa, here comes the Democratic rake, and they’re going to muckrake the integrity of this country. I fought for this country. I have the integrity of this country, and when I see people like this, I cannot understand how these educated, lobotomized morons can be put into the position that they’re in there and stand there with a straight face before that House and question the integrity of this country.
RUSH: I’ll tell you how. I’ll tell you how. They have willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media. I’ve been on sort of this warpath all day today, but they also can rely on the ignorance of their own voters. They have made their own voters feel the same way, this rage and this hatred. They have ginned it up. Look, you shouldn’t be surprised. I understand your disgust at this perversion, but you shouldn’t be surprised. These people have been invested in the defeat of the US military in Iraq and the war on terror since 2004.
CALLER: I watched these hearings on C-SPAN when they had General Petraeus before them — well, I don’t know if Harry Reid, I don’t recall if he’s involved in that, but they take a man of absolute substance and quality, one of the —
RUSH: Right. But it backfired on them. It backfired on them big time. But they accused him of being a liar before he said a word. Mrs. Clinton did the same thing, ‘We’re going to suspend willing disbelief in order to listen to you, General.’ Those people ought to be so shamed that they ought not want to appear in public. But nobody is shaming them. The Republicans are not. Not elected Republicans. And the Drive-By Media is not going to. Look, I appreciate the call, Gary. We’ve got a sound bite here, and you probably heard this, or a portion of the bite from which we have culled this excerpt. This was this morning on the Senate floor, Dingy Harry trashes his own country, calling for an investigation into the destruction of these tapes.
REID: Interrogations were by using water torture, something that originated in 1492, by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in the Inquisition.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Who told him that? I guarantee you he doesn’t know that. Who told him that? Media Matters? Resume tape.
REID: Hundreds and hundreds of years later, the great America has reverted to what took place in the Inquisition? This latest news of destroyed tapes raises far more questions than we have answers. For example, who is responsible for destroying these tapes? Why? Was something being covered up? The possibility of obstruction of justice is very real. The American people deserve a full accounting for what took place, and answers for all these questions.
RUSH: Maybe so, Dingy Harry, but the first guy you need to question is your own Intel committee chairman, Jay Rockefeller, because he knew the tapes existed, he didn’t say a word. He knew they were going to be destroyed. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t know when they were going to be destroyed. They didn’t tell him when they’d been destroyed, but he knew, he didn’t say a word. Then over in the House, Jane Harman, she knew the tapes were going to be destroyed. She knew about them before anybody else did, along with Jay Rockefeller. She didn’t say a word. When she found out the tapes had been destroyed, at least she sent a letter of protest to the CIA, but Jay Rockefeller didn’t. So you better bring those two up and make ’em your first witnesses. How did he describe him, the church mouse, what was his term, the caller? This guy is just insufferable and just loves taking to the Senate floor and trashing his own country, waving the white flag of defeat. ‘The surge won’t work, we’ve already lost.’
In a sane world, this man would have been so shamed over just the last six months. He hasn’t succeeded in one thing in terms of legislation in the Senate. He’s offered, along with Pelosi, something like 60 resolutions to stop funding and get us out of Iraq. He has lost every one of them. He lost trying to repay the Alternative Minimum Tax loss by having it reformed or suspended for a year, whatever they did. He is the most ineffective leader of the Senate in my lifetime and Pelosi is the most ineffective speaker of the House in my lifetime and beyond. They are walking jokes. The fact that they walk around and hold their heads high is an indictment of the demands and standards that their own voters ought to have for them. Now, John Kiriakou is a former CIA agent. He was interviewed this morning on CNN by John Roberts. ‘So this was performed on Abu Zubaydah . To the best of your knowledge, how long did he last?’
KIRIAKOU: It’s my understanding he lasted 30 or 35 seconds, which is quite remarkable.
ROBERTS: He had been resisting all of this time. Then within 30 to 35 seconds, he suddenly folded up and said, ‘I’ll give you anything you want’?
KIRIAKOU: The next day he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because it would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured.
RUSH: It works, is the bottom line. Thirty to 35 seconds. It works. Roberts said, ‘Well, the big argument with torture is the suspect will tell you anything you want just to stop the torture. Was that true in this case?’
KIRIAKOU: No. We were concerned about that. But the information that he provided was vetted, and it was corroborated. So we were able to point to specific cases where we were able to disrupt terrorist attacks based solely on the information that he provided. I have no doubt that the information gleaned from Abu Zubaydah in his early days stopped terrorist attacks and saved lives. He talked a lot about Al-Qaeda’s leadership structure and mentioned people who we really didn’t have any familiarization with, told us who we should be thinking about, who we should be looking at, who was important in the organization, so we were able to focus our investigations.
RUSH: Yeah, it works. Democrats say it doesn’t matter. By the way, how come nobody asked Bill Clinton to get the CIA to stop waterboarding when he was president during the nineties? See how he always escapes this stuff?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Thirty-five seconds, and Abu Zubaydah caved, and the information worked, and the Democrats and the liberals tell us that torture is ineffective because people say anything to get out of it and to stop it from happening. And, of course, waterboarding is horrible, just absolutely terrible, terrible, terrible. How come nobody cared about whether this was going on during the nineties? How come Bill Clinton didn’t tell the CIA to stop it? Because there’s no accountability for those people, because they were soap opera figures, and that was their value — (interruption) Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Well, Mr. Snerdley, the official program observer, rudely interrupting a brilliant point being made by me, has asked a question. The question being, ‘Would these protesters, as in Dingy Harry and others, would they rather have had the country attacked than the waterboarding occur and the attacks prevented?’ It’s an excellent question in a sane world. But who’s going to ask them that? Nobody’s going to ask them that that matters. Well, I can ask them, but they’re not going to answer me.
In fact, you know what I wish? I wish the CIA secretly had some of those tapes, could send me up, I’d put it up on eBay and auction it off again. But it’s a wise question. Would they rather have us be attacked? The past is irrelevant. Remember, they’re trying to erase from everybody’s memory the fact that 9/11 even happened. This is all about caricaturing George Bush as the modern equivalent of Hitler and Satan, and it’s about nothing more than that, and they have the freedom and the confidence that they are not going to be asked questions like that by anybody that they will have to answer. I can ask it here; they’ll never hear about it, and if they do hear about it, they’ll just ignore it. Jane Harman, she was on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzed last night on the Clinton News Network. Remember, now, Jane Harman was one of the people that knew of the existence of the tapes and also knew that the waterboarding was being used. She was one of the people that was brought up there along with Pelosi by the CIA, they said, (paraphrasing) ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’ A virtual tour of the detention facilities and techniques and the people in room that said, ‘Are you sure that all this,’ including the waterboarding, ‘is that enough to get these people?’ That was in the year of 9/11.
So Blitzer says, ‘One final question, Nancy Pelosi, she put out a statement yesterday in the aftermath of the Washington Post story when she was the ranking member in 2002, once these videotapes are actually made, that she was told about, apparently in these closed door briefings, about waterboarding and other harsh techniques. The Post did a whole piece yesterday saying maybe one member complained. Did she drop the ball, Nancy Pelosi, when she was a ranking Democrat in the House Intelligence Committee?’
HARMAN: I don’t think so. And she’s speaking for herself. I wasn’t in the meeting she attended, but she says that she has complained about this. I want to make it very clear. I thought that the videotape, destroying videotapes was wrong, and I spoke out in 2003. I think that waterboarding constitutes torture. I buy John McCain’s view of that.
RUSH: Less than a ringing endorsement for her rival, Nancy Pelosi, on the CIA tape. Anyway, it’s the Queen Bee Syndrome in Washington, and according to the Queen Bee Syndrome, ladies and gentlemen, women take out potential threats to their power to secure their role as the only female at the top. That’s not my theory. That’s an actual syndrome that’s been advanced here by scientists. The Queen Bee Syndrome. There’s no power sharing with women. Eh, eh, eh, eh, which takes us to Pelosi and two other women in Washington. Harman was in line here to become the chairman of the Intel committee in the House when the Democrats won it, and Pelosi kicked her off, said she wasn’t going to get it. She passed over Harman, and Harman didn’t get even, she gets mad — first evidence of Queen Bee Syndrome. But now this is her chance to do a little reciprocity. It was not a total disavowal, but it was a less than ringing endorsement of what Pelosi did.