RUSH: Here’s the prediction that I made on this program yesterday about the president.
RUSH ARCHIVE: When Obama’s in the White House, oh, it’s understandable that we’ve got intel that may not be quite up to snuff. Oh, it’s so sad. We’re so sorry. (crying) they’re so overworked and they have such a vast bureaucracy, and there’s an overwhelming flow of information, and they’re just under utter pressure. They’re hampered. People ask me, ‘Why is Obama being so blunt here? Why is he saying it’s a second strike and there aren’t going to be three strikes, and why is he saying that this is a screw up?’ Look, here’s your answer. ‘Cause he can once again dump on Bush, and the Drive-By State-Controlled World Media is helping right along. (imitating media) ‘President Obama has now discovered that he has inherited an intelligence community which is bloated, bureaucratic, and even with the best of intentions has become so large. It’s very hard to put together the pieces.’
RUSH: And, true to form, the State-Controlled Media pushes the idea this was Bush’s fault, Obama saddled with a bureaucracy left over from Bush. This is a montage of a bunch of them.
DEFAZIO: We set up the terrorist information center to overcome the failures of the Bush/Cheney administration.
SHRUM: These procedures were put in place by the Bush administration.
COOPER: The problems that existed now which are, the president says he’s trying to fix today, did they exist years ago and we just didn’t know about them?
GERGEN: We’ve been hearing from the government that they’re going to close these gaps now for over eight years.
OLBERMANN: Bush’s reforms of the intelligence system might not have changed things for the better.
RICE: The Bush team has made it much worse.
SHUSTER: The Bush administration let guys go from Guantanamo. These were the guys who helped Abdulmutallab in Yemen.
PAGE: Certainly things that the Bush administration did are affecting what’s happening now.
FUENTES: Systems have been put in place in the previous administration.
MACCALLUM: This is pretty much a holdover from the previous administration.
MCMAHON: Let’s not lay this at the feet of a guy who’s been there for 10 months and not at the feet of the people who built this security apparatus. It was Bush bureaucrats.
TUCKER: We saw a lot of belligerence from Dick Cheney. We saw a lot of swagger from George Bush. Where did that get us?
RUSH: Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I want to go back to one line here, David Shuster, one of the hapless, genuinely ignorant schlubs over at MSNBC. He said, ‘The Bush administration let guys go from Guantanamo. These were the guys who helped Abdulmutallab in Yemen.’ Yeah, I can’t deny Bush let ’em go. But, Mr. Shuster, do you know why? People like you were demanding it! The ACLU and a bunch of lawyers and a bunch of people in Congress, because was it not fair to hold these people who hadn’t done anything. You’re the ones who wanted them released from the damn place. You’re the ones who want to close the place down and you turn around now and blame Bush? It’s just breathtaking to behold all of this. But we’re on the case here, folks, and they no longer, ever again get away with this combination of ignorance, bias, prejudice, propaganda, and destruction.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, I don’t want to hear ‘Bush did it’ from you liberals. I don’t want to hear the first thing about it. George Bush was dragged kicking and screaming into creating a brand-new bureaucracy: Homeland Security. We already had a Homeland Security department: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House. That’s where Homeland Security is. Bush got dragged kicking and screaming. He didn’t want to release anybody from Guantanamo Bay. For crying out loud, you people, Barack Obama wants to investigate the CIA over how they interrogated the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks! He wants them prosecuted. Barack Obama and Eric Holder want Bush and Cheney to face war crimes charges by international courts. That’s what the public trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is all about.
They want this country ripped to shreds. They’re investigating the CIA. They’re going to prosecute CIA agents and name their names over how they interrogated. But yet he doesn’t want to investigate the CIA or anybody else for lapses with the underwear bomber or any of the other lapses of late? ‘Oh, no, no, no. It was a systemic failure. The buck stops with me. It’s never going to happen again,’ blah, blah, blah. By the way, how’s that investigation going on the CIA agents who waterboarded KSM? How is that going? I want those guys named and I want them behind bars.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A couple more things here on this brave speech yesterday by the president. The media is twisting and turning, doing exactly as I predicted: Blaming everything here on Bush, systems that Bush and Cheney put into place. ‘It can’t be our new young president. He’s only been there ten months!’ Remember, though, Bush had been there ten months and they tried to blame him for 9/11. At any rate, there’s a story here at Politico.com from yesterday: ‘White House Security Report was Further Redacted Before Release.’ Yeah, it was. ‘He [an administration official] said it was further redacted over concerns that any information divulged not reveal sources and methods. ‘One has to be extremely careful what is made public. It can provide knowledge to your enemies.” Now, I don’t think they care about that. You know why? There’s a very simple reason why they don’t care about that.
It’s this upcoming show trial in New York City of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his henchmen, that’s budgeted $206 million a year. New York wants the feds to pay them $206 million a year for security for that trial. A year! How long does that tell you it’s going to go on? If we are really worried about not making public information that will give knowledge to our enemies then why in the name of hell are we going to conduct a public show trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and give him a forum to rip up and beat up this country and make speeches? By the way, discovery? He’s going to be able to see all the evidence that we’ve collected? It’s an absolute disaster. And if we’re so concerned about not divulging sources and methods, then why the hell did the State Department announce that they screwed up identifying Abdul Mutallab because his name was misspelled in their database and so he didn’t show up as a terrorist?
By admitting that all we gotta do now is tell terrorists to add a couple vowels to their names when they register and then use their real names when they show up and they won’t show up on the list. So I don’t believe this for a moment: ‘One has to be extremely careful what’s made public. It can provide knowledge to your enemies.’ Something in that report was going to be ‘shocking’ and nothing was. Whatever it was was redacted and it was redacted I think not because it was shocking, but because it was going to be harmful to somebody, and I think that’s why it was redacted. Now, let’s listen to the Drive-Bys in the State-Controlled Media last night. This is a montage of Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos, David ‘Rodham’ Gergen, Bob Shrum and Pat Buchanan all talking about Obama and his remarks on the Fruit of Kaboom Bomber.
SAWYER: ‘The buck stops here.’ It’s an echo of another young president at another time.
STEPHANOPOULOS: …John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. The president took responsibility.
GERGEN: …take personal responsibility for this just as John F. Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs.
BUCHANAN: Remember Jack Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs…
SHRUM: Presidents who are willing to do this — JFK! — presidents who are willing to say this sort of thing when something bad happens, the country tends to respond.
RUSH: Just amazing. (chuckling) They all say the same thing, and they all compare him to JFK when it was Harry Truman who said it! But they don’t want to compare him to Truman because Truman nuked the Japanese. And why compare him to JFK? The Bay of Pigs was an absolute disaster. It was a flop. By the way, speaking of the Bay of Pigs and Cuba, I have a story down in the stack here. Do you know that doctors are defecting from Cuba? Doctors are defecting from the best health care system in the world, folks. That’s what the American left tells us, and that’s what Hollywood tells you. ‘Oh, yeah, the health care down there is better than anybody else’s.’ They never send their kids down there, they never go for health treatment themselves, but it’s the best health care in the world because it doesn’t cost anybody anything. Ahem! So doctors are defecting from the best health care system in the world. Last night on the Situation Room Wolf Blitzer spoke with the former Clinton advisor David ‘Rodham’ Gergen who… David ‘Rodham’ Gergen personifies conventional wisdom in Washington. If you want to know what everybody else is thinking, you listen to David Gergen. If you want to know what everybody’s similar take is on anything that happens in that town, you listen to David ‘Rodham’ Gergen. So Blitzer asked David ‘Rodham’ Gergen about Obama and his remarks on the attempted Christmas Day attacks. David Gergen served four presidents. ‘What do you think, David? What do you think of what he said?’
GERGEN: It’s going to take a while to, uh, digest this one, Wolf. It was, uh, complex. I think the president taking personal responsibility, ‘the buck stops here,’ was, uh, forthright and good. Welcome. I think it was harder to understand the intelligence failures, and General Jones spoke that we would have a certain shock about what went wrong. I thought what he described about what — what happened and what went wrong in intelligence was sort of — had sort of a bureaucratic language to it that was hard to penetrate what he is really saying here about what went wrong and therefore it’s a little hard to understand what he’s doing that’s gonna correct it, especially on the intelligence side. I thought it was clearer about the screening.
RUSH: Unlike JFK, it sounds like David ‘Rodham’ Gergen had no idea what Obama was saying. And this is his initial response. This is initial response before he threw in the JFK reference. Somebody sent the memo out ‘It’s JFK! JFK! JFK!’ and all the Drive-Bys got it. They all started repeating it, ‘JFK! JFK! JFK!’ But he made this comment before the JFK memo went out, and his initial response tells you all you need to know. He has no idea what Obama is talking about. ‘It was complex.’ It’s complex. Of course everything intellectuals say is complex and we’re not meant to really understand what they say. We’re supposed to just be in awe. It’s not what they say; it’s how they say it. Because, you know, they’re so much smarter than we are. They have to speak this way. In other words, if we really know what they were saying we couldn’t handle it anyway. I mean, the shock and awe to our own brains about how insignificant we are would send us into suicidal notions.
We shouldn’t even try to understand. We’re not capable of it, see? That’s the way it goes. Now, yesterday afternoon on this show… You know, Cookie, I’m actually seriously thinking here of no more sound bites from MSNBC. I mean it’s not even worth it. It’s not worth giving these people the time, and it’s not even funny anymore, unless it’s genuinely funny. But this is the height of irresponsibility and journalistic malpractice. The latest example here is Norah O’Donnell and David Shuster. This is a guy who blamed Bush for letting people out of Guantanamo Bay to go to Yemen and come back and commit terrorist acts. (snorts) After David Shuster and his crowd demanding the place be closed and that those poor terrorists be released, ‘Because nobody has charged them with anything and they’re probably innocent young children. Bush and Cheney, they just put them in there to be mean. They don’t have any evidence so we gotta let them go. This is trashing America’s values and making the world hate us,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. Now you turn around and blame Bush for letting people out of there? Anyway, David Shuster says to Norah O’Donnell, ‘Norah, as far as the politics of the policy of Obama’s speech, what’s your reaction?’
O’DONNELL: The president said, ‘This is not a time for partisanship, this is a time for citizenship,’ and this baloney, essentially, he said about this finger pointing and saying we’re not at war is not appropriate when the enemy is who it is and is trying to, uh, kill Americans. I think that was a very strong message and I think it was implicitly a very strong push-back, uh, to the former vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been the most vociferous critic of this president.
RUSH: Ohhhh, that’s why she’s squealing with delight! Norah O’Donnell is squealing with delight as though Bill Clinton had walked in the room and undressed. ‘Oh, he blamed Cheney!’ She’s so excited, it was near orgasmic on MSNBC. She blamed Cheney. He obviously was blaming Cheney. ‘Not a time for partisanship, a time for citizenship.’ No. It’s a time for stepping up and accepting the constitutional role of commander-in-chief and protecting and defending the people of this country and the Constitution, none of which is happening right now.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Up first today from Sierra Vista, Arizona, Rich, nice to have you here, sir. Welcome to Open Line Friday.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Dittos from the desert and quite an honor being first up today.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, I’m supposed to sarcastically thank you a little bit for ruining a little bit of our Hawaii vacation also. We were there at the same time.
RUSH: Were you?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I’m sorry about that.
CALLER: We thought it was going to be Obama trashing our travel plans, but as soon as the word got out that you were in the hospital, I kind of glued to the Internet and the television trying to figure out what was going on, so —
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, but I’m very sorry.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, I’ll get over it. Hey, I’ll tell you what, there was one thing I was shocked about with hearing Obama speak yesterday. I didn’t hear any will in his words whatsoever. I was listening to how he was speaking, and I heard somebody that was beating on his chest and somebody that was maybe a little bit desperate because he’s probably heard some of the initial reactions from the press on his additional reactions to this thing and he realized that he already has two strikes with Fort Hood and the panty bomber.
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s three. There’s the Army recruiter in Arkansas. There’s the near-disaster at Fort Dix. New York just arrested a couple of guys today. I think that may be the FBI arrested a couple of guys today that they’ve been surveilling for six months, that could be on orders from the White House to show tougheness here.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: Certainly been more than three strikes.
CALLER: Sure but I’m speaking specifically since he took office. You know, we had 9/11 with Bush and that started the whole thing but nothing happened here in the states after that. This has all happened in the one year since he’s actually taken office. And I think he sees the writing on the wall that he’s either gotta do something to prove to the people that he can be the commander-in-chief or else the people are going to rise up against him and say, hey, screw you, we’ve had enough of this. Your primary job is to protect us, not to take care of us, you know, out of your pocket.
RUSH: Yeah, out of our pocket.
CALLER: Okay, our pocket.
RUSH: There was a masterful plot from Great Britain, Al-Qaeda terrorists were gonna blow up a bunch of airplanes en route from the UK to the United States. That plot was hatched, it was caught and observed and stopped by British authorities during the Bush administration, working with I think the FBI and probably the CIA. There were attempts made during the Bush administration. We don’t know how many because you don’t ever advertise the things you stop. Only your failures get noticed. But that one was a big one. Your point is well taken. This kind of stuff did not happen in eight years with George W. Bush. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, say whatever you want, kept the people of this country safe. Great call. Great to hear from you, Rich.
This is Jen in Detroit. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Hi. I’m so glad that you’re doing well.
RUSH: Thank you so much.
CALLER: Well, it’s just nice to talk to you, and my point is that, well, you know, I don’t even listen to this person’s speeches. I listen to him vicariously through the sound bites because I can’t stand him, okay, I’m talking about Obama.
RUSH: Hm-hm.
CALLER: Anyway, you know, this thing that he did yesterday, it was just more of his own garbage again, because I’m bringing up the point you were saying about he finally said we were at war with Al-Qaeda. Well, you know what, he doesn’t believe that because if he did, we would not be trying all these terrorists in the regular courts. We would be using the military courts.
RUSH: Exactly right. Exactly right, especially the show trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed —
CALLER: Amen.
RUSH: — and his three henchmen. I mean, if we’re really concerned about not divulging our intelligence methods and secrets and so forth, then there’s no way we’d be doing this trial. This trial is going to expose everything, and it is going to be the largest anti-American rant ever to take place on American soil in a courtroom for the longest sustained time. It’s going to go on for years. And these people have to know that. They claim theory out for a conviction, and even if they don’t get a conviction — by the way, in New York, after all this time has passed, you get a jury from the Upper West Side and down in the Village, and I can see finding two or three people who think the US made this happen. Look at how many idiots believed that there was a conspiracy theory that Bush knew and was involved in blowing up the twin towers! And a lot of people are in New York. You’re not going to have trouble finding a jury that thinks these guys are the victims of an evil, imperialistic United States. At least a hung jury, anything’s possible. That’s why they said, ‘Even if that happens they’re not being released.’ So what are you putting them on trial for? This is an utter disaster. I cannot escape the conclusion that it’s purposeful.