RUSH: Now, a question, ladies and gentlemen: Has the United States been attacked in a major terrorist plot since 9/11? It has not. Who do we need to thank for that? (interruption) You don’t think that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Democrat staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee? In other words, you think that we owe a debt of gratitude to Bush, Cheney, the CIA, the interrogators, the agents, people on the ground, Special Forces that have been trying to weed out terrorism and foil plots and attacks. The military, that’s who we need to thank? (interruption) Really? Okay.

So what you’re saying is that we haven’t been attacked, despite the Democrats in Congress. The Democrats in Congress and the staff of this committee have actually put this country at greater risk now. I think they have really put us at greater risk than we otherwise would have been, and we’re supposed to believe after all of this — by the way, one of the greatest pieces about this is from a former member of this committee, Bob Kerrey, not related to the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, although Bob Kerrey did, but he doesn’t talk about it much.

Bob Kerrey’s a former senator from Nebraska, many of you may know him as the guy who dated Debra Winger. That’s how most people know him in the low-information community. He has an op-ed just ripping this committee to shreds, just ripping the committee staff to shreds for this report that they came out with yesterday, and he gives the reasons why, and he’s right on the money. They didn’t even interview anybody. They didn’t talk to anybody. It’s an opinion piece, and it is a get-even piece. It’s because the CIA and others thought there might be some serious intel leaks on the Democrat side of the intelligence economy and their staff. And so earlier this year there were clandestine investigations of people like Di Fi and others, and, boy, when they found out were they fit to be tied and that’s why this thing happened.

But we are supposed to believe that the enhanced interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay was of absolutely no value whatsoever, and of course we know just the opposite to be true. We learned a lot in the interrogation process about attacks that had happened and about future attacks. There’s a reason why we have not yet been hit again in a major attack since 9/11, and that’s because we have foiled a number of them, but we can’t ever announce the details. To do so would give away techniques.

So, once again here riding to the rescue a bunch of namby-pamby Senate staffers who have in their minds a political score to settle. Internal strife on display is what this report is. In the meantime, as they attempt to add credibility to their report, they try to tell us that there’s not one shred of information that was useful or worthwhile that was obtained as a result of these enhanced interrogation techniques.

But again, how many successful Al-Qaeda attacks on the US have there been in the 13 years since 9/11? The answer is zero. Probably just a coincidence, though, right? Probably just luck. And never mind that Barack Obama was able to personally hunt down Osama Bin Laden from the golf course. Barack Obama was able to personally hunt down and shoot Osama Bin Laden because of the enhanced interrogation of Guantanamo detainees.

RUSH: Palm Bay, Florida. This is Keith. Thank you for the call, sir. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, it’s great to be here. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Rush.

RUSH: Same to you, sir.

CALLER: Thank you. Hey, you know, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but doesn’t it seem like all authority is being undermined? The CIA, the Secret Service, our police. At the beginning, it was the ATF. Where we going with this? Is the FBI next?

RUSH: I can understand your point of view.

CALLER: SEAL Team Six was a failure, you know, trying to get the guy back and killing the guy that was supposed to released the next day.

RUSH: Right, right. A la Jimmy Carter.

CALLER: Right. All our authority seems to be getting undermined during this administration.

RUSH: And do you think that this is purposeful?

CALLER: You know, I don’t see why. Because if he undermines all the authority, what would he use for his authority?

RUSH: Oh, believe me, he’s got plenty of power that he can project if he wants to. I think your way of describing this is intriguing. Is Obama undermining all authority — calling into question the moral and legal authority of, say, the police, the Secret Service, CIA? Clearly, a number of these institutions that are charged with protecting the public and defending property, public safety, are constantly under siege. Clearly they’re under assault.

I think you have to look at this cumulatively, if you want to understand, if you are of the opinion that all of this authority is being undermined. If you take it all together as I say, cumulatively, you may have a point. Then you would have to ask, “Okay, why? Who benefits from that? Who benefits from the CIA not being trusted? Who benefits from the cops being thought of as enemies? Who benefits from the FBI or any other law enforcement…? Who benefits from the Border Patrol being, for the most part, worthless?

Who benefits from all this?

I think to answer the question, you have to view the impact on people such as you. You’ve noticed it, and if you are thinking it and if you’re asking about it, it’s obviously harrowing. It’s upsetting. It’s frightening. If all of these institutions that are designed to defend and protect us are in the process of being undermined and rendered almost — depending on who you listen to — as engaging in criminal activity themselves… If they are not trusted or trustworthy, I think the overall impact that may be desired (if this is part of a plan) is to simply continue the whole assault on the psyche of the American people.

It’s to create attitudes of utter futility and worthlessness and to make it appear that trying to stop this onslaught is pointless because there’s no way we can, because every day there’s something new. So the short is it could be… Well, it does. I think it’s accomplishing it. I think it is reducing the spirit of a lot of people to object to it, and most people are now reaching a point where they’re just trying to stay unaffected by it all.

They’re just trying to stay out of the way. Don’t do anything, say anything, go anywhere. Don’t do anything where you might run into any of this. Just keep your distance, because all of these public institutions and government institution are under assault. There’s no question about that. It’s an interesting point, Keith, and I do think it has an overall psychological impact on people. It may not be something that they realize in the forefront like you have. It just may be a creeping, slowly evolving realization that people have.

By the way, where are the attacks on all of these institutions coming from? They’re coming from positions of greatest power in this country. The Obama Regime is assaulting all of these institutions. Here in the case of the CIA, it’s the Democrat staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Now, attacks on the CIA are nothing new. That’s been part of the CIA. But this is an effort to undermine and expose the country to greater risk.

I think this has also another purpose, and that is don’t you dare — Don’t you dare! — try to do any more than you’re already doing in trying to ferret out future attacks because we’re not gonna put up with it. This is all coming from people that think the US is the problem now. You have to keep that in mind. All of this is happening as corrective measures. The people behind this… I’ll tell you, I was thinking about liberalism the other day. Look at this, folks. Look at it this way.

What does liberalism ask us to do? What are the Democrat Party today, Barack Obama, asking of us? They’re essentially asking us to set aside our survival instincts, and they are asking us to set aside mechanisms and institutions that have been devised to help us survive. Liberalism is asking us not to use effective interrogation techniques to save American lives. Liberalism is asking us to look the other way. Liberalism is asking us to be empathetic.

You know what torture is to me? Can I tell you what torture is to me? Torture to me is not all this waterboarding stuff. You know what torture is? Torture is trying to go to sleep every night with pictures in your head that your wife, your husband, your son, your daughter jumped from a top floor at the World Trade Center to his or her death rather than burn alive. That’s torture.

You know what’s torture to me?

Torture to me is being a family member of somebody who died in 9/11, either in the Twin Towers, the field in Pennsylvania, or the Pentagon. It’s trying to go to bed every night thinking about what they experienced at that moment when the planes hit the towers. Torture, to me, is what you go through each and every day trying to go to sleep as you think about the last moments of the lives of your loved ones or family members on 9/11.

Torture is being a family member of an American beheaded on television by Al-Qaeda or ISIS or you name it — Islamic jihadists — and wondering what was going through their mind at that moment. Torture is then having that be the first thing on my mind when I wake up every day. That’s torture. And it’s every day. And it is every night. Torture is being the family member of a first responder on 9/11 as they gallantly, valiantly, courageously walked and ran into those Twin Towers looking for survivors, hoping to drag people out — and they never came out.

Torture every day is wondering what they went through.

I’ll tell you, there’s something else that’s torture to me, and that is knowing all of that, trying to go to sleep every night with those thoughts in my head — and then having to get up and listen to the news in this country: A CIA report, intelligence report from the Senate intel committee which blames Americans for this. I try to go to sleep every night and I can’t get the picture out of my head of my family member jumping out of those buildings or burning alive.

I get up and I get to listen to how we’re mistreating — by depriving them of sleep — the people who did it. Torture, to me, is the utter frustration involved in watching various elements of our government bend over backwards to be nice, to have empathy, to be respectful to the people who did this to people I loved or members of my family. That’s torture to me. What’s torture to me is to get up every day after having not been able to forget any of that and to listen to one American after another essentially find ways to blame the United States for what happened.

There’s all kinds of torture out there.

But what the left wants us to do is set aside our survival instincts.

They ask us not to use effective interrogation techniques to save lives. They ask us to gut the military. They ask us to downsize the military so that we can pay for ever-expanding dependency benefit programs. Liberalism asks us to set aside our survival instincts by doing nothing as we dismantle our nuclear capabilities. In other words, liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts while we reduce our ability to project our power, either offensively or defensively.

Then liberalism asks us to forgo affordable energy. Liberalism asks us to stop using efficient, cheap, plentiful energy, and instead turn to a bunch of new things that don’t work, never will work, and are only profiting a few select Democrat donors. Liberalism today is asking us to accept unaffordable health insurance premiums and unaffordable health insurance deductibles. Liberalism is asking us to pay more for everything!

Liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts and to accept unaffordable health insurance premiums and deductibles, which is resulting in people forgoing medical treatment because they can’t afford it. Liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts by demanding we leave our borders wide open and unprotected. Liberalism is asking us set aside our survival instincts while those borders are overrun.

Just recently, liberalism told us that we should welcome known criminals from all over the world entering our country, because it’s judgmental to deny them. Liberalism is asking us at the same time — while all this is going on — to bankrupt our country. We have $18 trillion in national debt, and I think $11 or $10 trillion of that has been added in just the six years of Barack Obama. Liberalism is trying as hard as they can to get us to set aside our survival instincts by surrendering our Second Amendment rights to self-defense.

Liberalism never stops in attempting to get you separated from your gun. They’re asking all of us to set aside our survival instincts, all the while trusting them to protect us. Except the problem is, liberals think that we are the problem, not Al-Qaeda, not Islamic Jihad, not the Taliban, not the Iranians. No! The Israelis and domestic Americans, particularly the Tea Party and conservative Republicans, that’s who Americans need to fear and be on the lookout for. Liberals are asking us to set aside our survival instincts, and they call that progress.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Monmouth, Oregon, this is Jim. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s good to talk with you. I appreciate the chance to talk with you.

RUSH: You bet, sir. Great that you called.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, I wanted to just comment on what you were just saying about lawlessness and what it’s doing. You talked about torture for you being the people at Ground Zero and what happened to them, and it kind of triggered something in me. I was a chaplain, and I was actually back at Ground Zero working with the families and the people that were trying to find body parts and the horror of all of that. And I’ve thought about it often since then, and that you’re tying it today with the discussion of lawlessness and how people are getting desensitized. I was telling Mr. Snerdley that the very word “apathy,” it’s a Greek word, apatheo, it means you can’t feel it anymore. And I think people are becoming sort of numbed by all this lawlessness and the increase of lawlessness. And because I was a pastor, I know that verse that says because there’s an increase in lawlessness, the direct result will be the love of the many would begin to wax cold, and I’m starting to see that. I’m starting to see it at all sorts of levels where people are apathetic in the true sense, they don’t feel it anymore.

RUSH: Well, is it that they’re apathetic and frustrated that nothing seems to work to stop it?

CALLER: Exactly. I’ve met a lot of people who have lost heart to the point of not addressing little lawlessness, but it’s starting to add up, and what we’re seeing on a massive scale nationally now is —

RUSH: You know where this leads? I’ll tell you where this leads. If what you say is right, if there is a creeping national attitude of apathy rooted in frustration over the inability to stop this downward spiral, then people are gonna be wide open to massive tyranny. If lawlessness, as you describe it, if order breaks down and there is no common sense in matters of law and order, then eventually people are going to accept some form of total authoritarianism as a solution, as something that will work to restore peace, to restore order. If that takes tyranny, then they’ll gladly sign up for it. I know that’s where you’re leading with this and it is a flash point to be concerned about. It’s a great call.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It would be great to know the names of the Senate Democrat staffers who put together this report on torture and the CIA, but we will never know their names. Their names never get published. They get to work in complete anonymity. We’ll never know who they are. At least I don’t know a way of finding out who they are, not all of them. People may know them individually.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To Waverly, Ohio. It’s Billy. Glad you called, sir. Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, it’s absolutely an honor to speak with you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I can’t thank you enough for everything that you do. The books that you’ve written, Rush Revere, we use in our homeschool. But the reason I called today, one, it’s my birthday, it just so happens I got through. But mainly, I’ve listened to you for years, I’ve listened to you be right on about our country, our government, but today you really hit a chord. When you talked about torture, in 2007, February 14th, my oldest son was killed in Iraq. And ever since then I listen to what the government says, how they run down the troops, how they run down their efforts —

RUSH: Oh, I can only imagine the mixture of emotions you go through. Your son killed in 2007, you get to listen to a Democrat essentially agree with the premise that our soldiers are rapists and terrorizing women and children in Iraq. And now you get to hear how their work was irrelevant and unnecessary because it was all illegitimate. I’d be out of my mind if I were you.

CALLER: Yes, sir. It does. It scares you inside. You know, they don’t understand sacrifice. They don’t understand service. But they don’t mind living under the liberty, they don’t mind using that.

RUSH: Sir, it’s not that. It’s that they’re just selfish. The world —

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: — revolves around them. They’re narcissists and they are entirely self-devoted and self-focused. They’re concerned only with people’s perception of them, either in the upcoming poll or in an upcoming election or what have you. And I guarantee you, that Dianne Feinstein or Dick Durbin, none of the others, they don’t even stop to think what their words might mean to people like you, the parents and family members of people who are volunteering to defend this country.

They don’t even stop to think about it. Not that it would stop them if they do, don’t misunderstand, but I don’t even think they get to the point of stopping to think about it. In fact, these are the people that impugn military people by claiming they only sign up because there’s no decent economic opportunity in this country for them, that if they had their brains about them, they wouldn’t sign up. That’s John Kerry. I tell you, I would be at my wits’ end if I were in your shoes.

CALLER: Well, I’ll tell you honestly, Rush, it’s you and others like you that understand, that put it out there for others to hear and to understand. So that makes the difference. That makes the difference and worthwhile.

RUSH: Does it really?

CALLER: I really appreciate what you’re doing.

RUSH: Well, I’m flattered to hear that. I appreciate that. It seems like so little compared to — you call here, you’ve lost your son, and you have to listen to all this go on and on about how the effort he was involved in was illegitimate, the victory that we had or the loss that we had, it doesn’t mean anything. I feel for you, sir. It makes me mad as I stop and think about it.