So basically what’s happening here is that Lockhart is basically saying the Democrats are being suffocated. Bush — this unfair, unfeeling, insensitive president — knows full well that this is Pelosi’s day to shine. It’s her time, the first hundred hours, domestic issue after domestic issue, and he’s Bush doing? He’s gumming up the works by suffocating the Democrats. So the Democrats, in order to not be suffocated are going to come out with their positions on Iraq, which is — remember Dingy Harry said he would support a temporary troop surge? That’s off the table now, ladies and gentlemen. It’s not going to happen. By the weekend, Rahm Emanuel had “acknowledged that Democrats’ strategeric shift here in the first hundred hours from domestic issues to Iraq was a necessity, but Emanuel said he’s not worried that Bush might be scoring points, but he said the Democrats do have to respond.”
Well, I thought there was a new bipartisanship, a new centrism here where we take the best of both? Only in today’s Democrat Party would winning the war in Iraq be a provocative idea! Only to the Democrat Party today would winning the war be something confrontational and something they have to fight back against, something they have to respond to. Only in today’s Democrat Party. Emanuel said, “This isn’t a surge, it’s an escalation, and we want to make sure the definition is correct. When the American people voted for change in November, this is not what they had in mind.” So we’re going to have a fight on semantics? Where did this word “escalation” come from, I wonder? Let’s listen to Nancy Pelosi here. This is a montage. She’s on Slay the Nation yesterday with Bob Schieffer.
PELOSI: If the president chooses to escalate the war. If the president chooses to escalate the war. The president wants to escalate the war. Escalation of the war is opposed by the Democrats. Escalation? What is the justification for that. The generals on the ground had said that the escalation, the increased number of troops.
RUSH: All right, so we’ve got a new buzzword out there: escalation, escalation, escalation. Where did we first hear this? Well, yes. The modern incarnation, I’m sorry, folks, but we’ve gotta give the credit to Cindy Sheehan. Cindy Sheehan at her press conference where they totally disrupted Rahm Emanuel, tried to announce all their great things, shut Emanuel down, and they had to send Emanuel back behind closed doors with his group of people to get anything done. This was last Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
EMANUEL: At every step of the —
KOOKS: (screaming) Deescalate! Investigate! Troops home now!
EMANUEL: Okay. At every —
KOOKS: (screaming) Deescalate! Investigate! Troops home now!
EMANUEL: All right, why don’t you let…?
KOOKS: (screaming) Deescalate! Investigate! Troops home now!
EMANUEL: We’re going to keep going here.
KOOKS: (screaming)
EMAUEL We’re going to have a…
KOOKS: (screaming) Deescalate! Investigate! Troops home now!
EMANUEL: Thank you. We’re going to come back right after our meeting, okay?
RUSH: It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen, Cindy Sheehan says, “Jump,” and Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats ask, “How high?” Here’s more from Nancy Pelosi with Bob Schieffer on Slay the Nation Sunday. His question: “But you will not vote any more money to expand the size of the force there? Is that what you’re telling us?”
PELOSI: I’m saying two things. We will always support the troops who are there. If the president wants to expand the mission, that’s a conversation he has to have with the Congress of the United States. But there’s not a carte blanche, a blank check to him to do whatever he wishes there.
RUSH: Really? That’s not what Joe Biden says. Joe Biden is saying the president, this is his responsibility. In fact, Pelosi said it, too! Pelosi last week said it’s his responsibility to fix this Iraq mess. Biden went further and said there’s not really much we can do about it, and they’re not going to cut the funding so he doesn’t have to have a conversation with Congress. He does not. I’m not saying he won’t. Those are two different things, but he doesn’t have to. He’s not required. He’s the commander-in-chief. He doesn’t have to go consult with these people. He can negotiate with him whenever he wants to increase funding and so forth and that sort of thing, but on policy, giving them a say-so in this? That’s something he doesn’t have to do. She went further. Schieffer said, “So, at this point, the Democrats in Congress are not prepared to pay for or to fund an additional number of troops in Iraq.”
PELOSI: We have to see what the president has to say. It’s not an open-ended commitment anymore. But we will always be there to protect our troops and to support our troops. The burden is on the president to justify any additional resources for a mission. The president is going to have to engage with Congress in the justification for any additional troops he may wish, but escalation of the war is opposed by the Democrats.
RUSH: Again, Cindy Sheehan creates a new word, the Democrats — Nancy Pelosi particularly — picks it right up. Sheehan says, “Jump;” Pelosi says, “How high?” Of course the bottom line is, when you strip this all away, nothing’s changed from before the election to today. The Democrats regard victory in Iraq as a problem. They regard victory in Iraq as being “provoked.” When you start talking victory in Iraq, you may as well be punching them in the eye and they’re not going to sit there and take it. They’re going to fight back. They want to withdraw. It’s back to the John Murtha argument, we want to “redeploy.” We want to redeploy. Just get ’em out of Iraq.
If we get out of Iraq, it’s going to be a cesspool, and if they’re worried about body counts and death now — which I maintain to you they are not, if they are worried about it now — they’re not going to have enough calculators to count ’em all up after we pull out of there before this is completed. By the way, this new general that’s been appointed to deal with this is a really, really smart and tough guy. His last name escapes me at the moment. Petraeus, exactly. This guy served two tours over there. He is exactly what this mission calls for at this time. I told you a couple weeks ago, and you looked at me like I was some kind of arrival from Mars when I told you he was going to get rid of George Casey, and you looked at me… You hadn’t seen anything where, and George Casey will soon be gone and Petraeus will be taking over, and he’s not taking over to lose. This current crop is not taking over to lose, and just stop and think: the Democrats find that something to fight about!