RUSH: Late yesterday afternoon in Santiago, Chile, during a state visit, joint press conference, the Chilean president, along with Obama, Obama says this about what US policy is toward Libya and Colonel Moammar Khadafy — who, if he survives this, can we make him a general, please? It’s been years.
OBAMA: It is US policy that Khadafy needs to go, and we’ve got a wide range of tools in addition to our military efforts to support that policy.
RUSH: Right.
OBAMA: There are a whole range of policies that we are putting in place that has created one of the most powerful international consensuses around the isolation of Mr. Khadafy, and we will continue to pursue those. But when it comes to our military action, we are doing so in support of UN security resolution 1973 that specifically talks about humanitarian efforts, and we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.
RUSH: As we launch the missiles into his compound, in what you might say is a reenactment of Ronald Reagan. So we are launching missiles into the colonel’s compound on a humanitarian mission. Here’s Obama again late yesterday in Santiago during a state visit with the Chilean president whose name is Sebastian Pinera. Obama said this about how long we should expect the attacks on Libya to take place.
OBAMA: Let me emphasize that we anticipate this transition to take place in a matter of days and not a matter of weeks, and so I would expect that, you know, over the next several days we’ll have more information and the Pentagon will be fully briefing the American people as well as the press on that issue.
RUSH: Pentagon will. Okay. Fine. Cool. Neato. I watched television this morning here prepping the show, and the attorney general has weighed in. Did you see that? The attorney general, Eric Holder, said that Khadafy’s a bad guy. He’s a bad guy. He doesn’t deserve to be there. We’ve gotta get rid of Khadafy. What happened to humanitarian? What happened to all the other stuff? It doesn’t matter who you talk to in the regime, you get a different rationale for what we’re doing. Wolf Blitzer is bending over backwards to excuse the fact that Obama has no clue how long this will really take.
BLITZER: Had he been formally finally briefed by his military commanders that there was no way this transition could take place over a few days, it’s gonna take a few weeks, those are questions we’re gonna have to now work on to see if when the president says it will take days, not weeks, then he said several days for the transition to take place, whether he was up to speed on what’s going on —
RUSH: Whoa.
BLITZER: — because earlier in the day we had been getting indications that it was gonna be weeks, no longer days, as Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested yesterday.
RUSH: Oh, oh, we didn’t know whether he was up to speed on what’s going on. Awe, damn, so he’s being sabotaged again by his own people, not bringing him up to speed. Can you believe that? CNN bending over backwards to tell us that, poor Obama, he may not be properly advised here. It isn’t gonna take days. That’s what Wolf wanted to us know. It ain’t gonna take days. Obama said days. Maybe weeks. But it’s gonna take longer than days. “The president says it will take days, not weeks, then he said several days for the transition to take place, whether he was up to speed on what’s going on because earlier in the day –” So you see, no bounds, ladies and, no boundaries to cover for this guy. And yet don’t forget now, we have the story where Obama’s a brilliant multitasker.
In fact, it’s part of who he is. He can have dinner and be informed of the status of the American pilot on a downed jet and still eat, and that has long been Obama’s secret. And yet Wolf Blitzer said he may not have been properly informed here. Gonna be weeks, not days. And then of course Obama talks about our powerful international consensus. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that we have far more countries with us in Iraq, after spending, what, 14 months before the United Nations. Remember George W. Bush went up there, General Powell went up there, Dominique de Villepin, we had everybody at the UN Security Council, and we tried to put together a coalition, and we had one and more countries in Iraq as a coalition than here. And they told us that the Bush coalition was a phony consensus.
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RUSH: Now we’ve told you a little bit about who Samantha Power is. She wrote a book — literally she wrote a book — while at Harvard that impressed Obama. So he hires her, and a woman who writes a book at Harvard becomes one of the top-ranking people in the Obama foreign policy apparatus. But she wrote a book, and that’s who she is, and therefore she’s been with Obama a long time, and here’s a quote of what she said about Hillary Clinton that during the 2008 presidential campaign. Quote: “She’s a monster, too. That’s off the record. She is stooping to anything. If you’re poor and she’s telling you some story about how Obama’s gonna take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she’s put forward is really unattractive.”
That quote got her in trouble with the media. This woman has said so many anti-Israeli things in the course of her career. Since Obama discovered her as an author, and as the press and everybody got to know Samantha Power, she’s really had some virulent things to say about Israel. None of them registered at all, but that quote on Hillary? That got her in trouble. You remember that? Got her big trouble. Yes, sir, it got her in big, big trouble. And, yes, you’re right: I don’t recall Laura Bush being called a fashion plate. You’re right about that. That makes it even more pathetic. Now, I got a note from a friend, just as we talk here about “consensus building” and “coalitions” and all that.
The friend says, “You know, Rush, the fact that the war in Libya is opposed by Minister Farrakhan, Dennis Kucinich, Jerrold Nadler, Michael Kinsley, Ron Paul, and Pat Buchanan proves that Obama knows how to build a consensus.” (laughing) “In a week or two, when the mainstream of both parties fully embrace the anti-war coalition, the president will have ‘forged a wartime national unity not seen since World War II.'” Get ready for it. This is the template that’s being developed. (laughing) Any time you can unite Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan with Minister Farrakhan and Dennis Kucinich, you can put together a consensus. There isn’t anybody like you. Audio sound bites. We continue. October the 2nd of 2002. This is Obama’s famous speech against the Iraq war.
OBAMA OCTOBER 2, 2002: I don’t oppose war in all circumstances, and when I look out over this crowd t’day, I know there is no shortage of patriots or patriot-ism. What I do oppose is a dumb war.
RUSH: A-ha! A-ha! So that must mean that we are in a “smart war,” and isn’t that what the liberals say? They’ll do everything smarter. So we must now be in a smart war. (interruption) That’s right! If you don’t understand the policy, you’re not smart enough. You don’t have Obama’s brains. Well, they have to clarify it because there are too many different policies out there. So they’re having to clarify. And there are too many policies because Obama is SO smart his advisors can’t even keep up with him! He’s so visionary, he sees so much further in the distance, even his best advisors can’t keep up.
So it’s just impossible for the rest of us to keep up. So I’m thinking, “Maybe if he chooses foreign policy advisors by virtue of their books, somebody get Obama the book ‘Foreign Policy for Idiots,’ if there is one, so he can hire the guy,” and while here at it, somebody get him the book “Domestic Policy for Idiots.” Maybe he’ll hire that author, too, if that’s how he’s putting all this together. I don’t know. It may explain why Hillary’s leaving. A lot of people are wondering that because she was pretty definitive.
She didn’t want to be veep, she doesn’t want to be secretary of defense, she doesn’t want to run for president again. She doesn’t want any part of it. Obama, yeah, you go back to all this stuff and it really is interesting because the reason for the dithering in the first place was Obama knew all this stuff that he had said about Iraq could be looked up, and it would be used to remind him and so he would appear hypocritical. That was one of the reasons for the dithering. At some point it was (if we’re to believe David “Rodham” Gergen) the women who said, “You can’t worry about that, man. We got a real problem here.” So, anyway, it’s pathetic, folks.
It’s scary.
It really is.
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RUSH: That 2002 speech, grab audio sound bite number seven again before we move on to number eight. Grab number seven there, Ed, because there are a lot of things Obama said at this speech that I want to remind you of.
OBAMA OCTOBER 2, 2002: I don’t oppose war in all circumstances, and when I look out over this crowd t’day, I know there is no shortage of patriots or patriot-ism. What I do oppose is a dumb war.
“Let’s make sure our so-called allies — the Saudis and the Egyptians — stop…” Speaking of our friends the Saudis, guess who got stoned the other day in Egypt? The estimable Mohamed ElBaradei who we were told was the #1 choice of the freedom fighters, the “democracy movement,” quote, unquote, in Egypt. This guy shows up and he gets stoned. Do we know if that was a democracy movement yet in Egypt? Of course we don’t know yet.
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RUSH: Tom in Metro, New Jersey. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush, and thanks for having me on. I think the stuff coming out of the White House on this whole issue in the Middle East and north Africa is pathetic, and all I think this administration really needed to do was to understand why George Bush and Dick Cheney went to such efforts in 2001 and ‘3 to establish democracies in that area, hoping that other countries who were being run by a dictator would follow suit. It’s not like somebody beginning in Egypt, a couple guys sitting around in a coffee shop said, “Hey, let’s go knock off Mubarak.” This was something that George Bush and Dick Cheney hoped for, and I think even predicted would happen. And now I don’t think the White House understands that and is following up on it. I think he needs to do everything he can to support those who do seek such Democratic moves and I don’t think they’re doing it.
RUSH: Well, now, I don’t know. Is it clear yet that we do have an actual pro-democracy uprising in Egypt? It was last week sometime that the rebels, quote, unquote, in Libya may in fact be Al-Qaeda, and there’s two sets of ’em. The others are Shi’ites that are sponsored by Iran. So we don’t really know who these uprisings are being sponsored for and for what purpose.
CALLER: But that’s why I think it’s even more important for this administration to be involved with those countries to see that that kind of democracy that we would then hope for can proceed and —
RUSH: Well, they thought so in Egypt. I mean clearly, you know, Obama went out and got in front of it and tried to, as I say in my own inimitable way, own the mob. It wasn’t Obama alone. There was some conservative intelligentsia thinkers who portrayed this as a democracy movement from the get-go. It’s still not clear.
CALLER: I agree with you, and I don’t think it is clear, but the fact of the matter is I think there is a group, a large group of people over there who are not connected to any of those Al-Qaeda groups who really do see what’s going on in Afghanistan and Iraq and want to be like that.
RUSH: Well, some of them are in Iran. And in 2009 they rose up but we didn’t help ’em.
CALLER: Absolutely and you got the guy down in Zimbabwe, old Bob down there killing people every day, and soon I think it’s gonna spread that far.
RUSH: Well, sometimes I use humor to make a point but if we’re going in to help mistreated citizens… Mugabe, Darfur? There’s a lot more of them in Zimbabwe and Darfur than Libya. Arizona. Yeah, that’s true there’s no oil in Arizona. There’s no oil in Darfur. I just love tweaking the libs on this. I just love it. Look, Tom, I’m glad you called. I don’t know why we don’t know. Somebody is asking me, “Why don’t we know who these people are?” Because CNN hasn’t identified them yet. Remember, Leon Panetta who runs the CIA told us he found out what was going on in Egypt by watching CNN. And when CNN tells us who these people are then we’ll know. That apparently is the extent of our intel.
RUSH: Richard in Port Angeles, Washington, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush, from a military retiree and longtime listener.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: My question is do you think the Europeans might have launched the action in Libya to prevent refuges from flooding into their countries and into their social systems?
RUSH: Well, that’s possible. Anything is possible. I think they realize their open borders have — multiculturalism — both the UK and French prime ministers, presidents, have said multiculturalism is a failure. So you may have a point.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But I also think, Richard, that they did because we didn’t do anything. We were dithering, and they decided action needed to be taken for one reason or another.
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RUSH: In Delaware, this is Mary Ann. Mary Ann, is it “Louis” or “Lose,” Delaware?
CALLER: (chimes) “Louis.”
RUSH: Lewes, Delaware. It’s great to have you on the program.
CALLER: (chimes) Lewes, Delaware.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Joe Biden country. (laughing) I called to mention about the president of Chile. (chimes) He didn’t leave the country when the miners were trapped down there in the mines, but (chimes) Obama seems to think the world’s on fire here and he can just travel around wherever he wants and (chimes), you know, plan summer vacations and spring break for the girls and Mrs. Obama.
RUSH: You see, you are forgetting the admonition we all got earlier from Politico: Obama can multitask! You and I can’t really relate to it or even hope to understand it. We just have to accept that he has pragmatism; he has the ability to multitask. He can do all of these things — many different things — at one time and still stay on top of all of them.
CALLER: Yeah, well, that’s the point I think we tried to get across when President Bush would vacation — and when he would vacation, he went to his own ranch or the family home up in Kennebunkport. But when the Clintons and the Obamas go on vacation, it’s at our expense. They have to rent from very expensive donors, and, it’s our expense. But that’s okay. And they never —
RUSH: Well, that’s —
CALLER: — return to their homes —
RUSH: Hold on a second. Let’s be fair. The Clintons never had a house.
CALLER: (chuckles) Well, they do now at our expense up there in New York. We’re paying for that, I’m sure.
RUSH: Well, no, they bought it with book money in Chappaqua.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: But while they were president, the Clintons, they never had a house. They had always lived in government housing.
CALLER: Yeah. Yes.
RUSH: Obama’s place is in Chicago, and you don’t go there in snowstorms, in the winter and that kind of stuff. So…
CALLER: No. Has he been back other than to campaign for somebody? You know, I don’t think he’s been back since.
RUSH: Uhhh.
CALLER: I just thought the president of Chile stuck with his people in time of crisis and was concerned, and President Obama just feels like he can just be the world traveler when the world is in chaos, and especially our country with the economic situation we’re under. He just, you know, votes “present” and then leaves.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. I think you got it.
CALLER: It’s been good talking to you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I’ve been a lot of years trying to get through and I’m glad I did.
RUSH: I’m glad you made it through, Mary Ann, and you pretty much got it sized up. What else is there to say on that topic? I appreciate the call.
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RUSH: Fred in Ontario, California. You’re next, and it’s great to have you here.
CALLER: Oh! Gee! Rush! This is great, and an honor.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I just came up with an idea that nobody’s mentioned the fact that it’s about time Khadafy answered for his effort in the PanAm bombing.
RUSH: Oh, yes, the Lockerbie bombing. Well…
CALLER: Lockerbie bombing, yeah.
RUSH: Yeah. That would be reason enough, I would think, to go after him — and also that other fellow they let outta jail, fraudulently, because he had, ahhh, ahhh, ahhhh —
RUSH: Cancer.
CALLER: He was supposed to have had prostate cancer.
RUSH: He had cancer out there. Now it’s gone away.
CALLER: Yeah. Wouldn’t you think that’s reason enough to go after him?
RUSH: Well, it was enough for Reagan. It was enough for Reagan to go after him when Khadafy engaged in terrorist activity in a nightclub and killed Americans, but that’s clearly not why we did this. If that was the reason, they would say it. (interruption) Yeah, they would. If they had conclusive evidence that Khadafy was behind that, they’d hide behind that or do something. No, this is… The bottom line is Obama didn’t want to do it. He just didn’t want to do it. (interruption) Well, it supposedly is against the law to target leaders, but you can get exceptions to it. But establishing the fact that Khadafy is a bad guy has long ago been done. Anyway I appreciate the call out there, Fred.
Thanks. Thanks much. It was, by the way, Khadafy on November 30th last year who “warned that his country will no longer be a coastguard for Europe as he reiterated his demand for $6.5 billion [$6.5 billion] a year from the EU to stop ‘black’ migrants from overwhelming Europe.” He told them. He said, “We should stop this illegal immigration. If we don’t, Europe will become black, it will be overcome by people with different religions, it will change.” He was “speaking at the opening of the third EU-Africa summit being held in Tripoli, he went a step further. Only Italy had understood the situation, he said, pointing out that because it had cooperated with Libya, it managed to ‘delay’ illegal immigration.”
So Khadafy has tried to warn the Europeans, and now who is it that’s turned on him here?
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RUSH: You know what? Just imagine… (laughing) Imagine how nuts the left will go if Khadafy’s weapons of mass destruction aren’t found. (laughing) Anyway, we got some funny left-wing sound bites of people angry at Obama. All that coming up plus much more in our remaining broadcast hour.
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