Reject the Premise That Bush Lied About Iraq.

RUSH: It's Josh in Williamsburg, Virginia. Great to have you, sir. Hello. Appreciate your patience.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. So I want to do two things. The first is to say that Jeb Bush's answer to Megyn Kelly's initial question was not necessarily wrong. He could validly have that answer to her question. The second is to --

RUSH: Just refresh people's -- what did he say? What was his answer to that first question? He would do it all over again, right?

CALLER: Yeah. So the question was that, knowing what you know now, would you do what was done then. He answered yes, but he answered it to a question of "with the same facts then, would you do the same thing." So that's basically what he said. My argument is that his answer is not necessarily incorrect regardless of the question. It would be valid -- it could have been just as valid and just as justified, knowing what we know now, to go into Iraq back then.

RUSH: Except -- see, here's the thing. Republican candidates are gonna have to figure this out, and I think Jeb sooner than the others. He's got to figure out that no matter what he says to this question, the media has already concluded that Iraq was a mistake, it was a debacle, it was a total mistake. The media thinks everybody else thinks that, and --

CALLER: That's true. But let me address that point and address the caller that you had a couple callers ago --

CALLER: Number one, I don't think he knows what neocon really means as a international relations paradigm. Number two, Saddam Hussein was not a good man. He was not, as you caricatured the opposition, he was not a bumbling dope, he was not a bumbling idiot. He was a murderer. He was a psychopath. He repressed his people politically and physically. He committed genocide against his own people, and, you know, that caller is falling into the same trap as Rand Paul did when he criticized Jeb Bush, and that's the trap of time travel. Just because we say that hindsight is 20/20, it doesn't mean that if we change some facts in the past, that we will get a different result.

CALLER: No question about it. But the fallacy that everybody falls into, that if we wouldn't have gone into Iraq in 2003, then today's facts would be as if it was 2003, and that's not true at all. In fact, if you look at the toppling of Saddam that let directly to the Arab Spring to probably one of the weakest moments in Iran's history, which was the Green Revolution in 2009, you can't blame Iranian strength on us going into Iraq. You can blame that squarely on us not intervening in 2009 when Iran was --

RUSH: Right. Okay. Now, I've gotta reserve my comment for after the break here because we've just reached it, but I appreciate the call, and I acknowledge your points with a "but."

RUSH: Yeah, so Jeb Bush is between a rock and a hard place. So here comes the totality of the Drive-By Media with a single question: "Would you invade Iraq like your brother did, knowing what you know now, knowing what you know now, would you invade Iraq like your brother did?" And Jeb says (paraphrasing), "I can't throw my brother overboard. I can't throw my brother under the bus." So he says, "Yes." But he means "yes" for a whole host of reasons, as those outlined by our previous caller. But the reasons, the fact that they're factual kind of misses the point because that's not why the question was asked.

The question was not asked to elucidate a thorough foreign policy explanation answer. The question was asked to trip up and disqualify Jeb Bush. The question was asked to once again caricature George W. Bush as a failure. I think the Republican establishment is the last bunch of people to realize that the mainstream is not necessary and certainly is not going to work to get their message out. Because I think the establishment of the Republican Party -- when you believe that you can't criticize Obama because the independents won't like it; when you believe that you've got to be for amnesty to get the Hispanics on your side; when you believe that you have to say things like you want to be bipartisan, you want to work together with the Democrats, if you believe that that's what you have to say, then you're also going to believe that you can convince the mainstream media that you are worth supporting, and that's what I don't think is possible.

And I think they're living an illusion and they are not coming to grips, maybe because they don't want to, with the fact that the media is every bit the enemy as is any Democrat candidate. Whoever it was, Megyn Kelly, it gets picked up, and he's asked this question by a lot of people. The reason for asking the question is not to produce an enlightened foreign policy answer, because there were a whole lot of the reasons beyond weapons of mass destruction that we went into Iraq, but nobody remembers them and nobody's talking about them. And if you're not gonna bring them up in that answer, they may as well not have been relevant.

There are ways of doing this. As I said, look, I outlined it a moment ago. I would simply refuse to accept the premise of the question. That, to me, seems like the number one thing to teach every Republican officeholder and candidate. I don't care if it's for the town council, you learn to identify the premise of the question, and you learn to instinctively reject the premise. And in this case, in this question, "knowing what you know now, would you do it again? Was it a mistake?" You refuse to accept the premise.

The premise is, "Iraq was a total Bush failure. Iraq was a total Republican failure." And you have to not accept that and turn it around, if you're gonna answer the question. "Well, had I known that the Democrat Party was going to attempt to divide this country by sabotaging the war effort. Had I known the lengths to which Harry Reid would proclaim the Iraq war a loss, then I might have rethought it. If I had known that the Democrats was going to be every bit the enemy in the war in Iraq that Saddam was, then, yeah, I might." Get it out there. Get it out there that these things we're living with today are the result of Democrat Party policy. They are the result of the Barack Obama presidency. It takes two to tango.

Bush hasn't been president in six years. Iraq was stable. Obama took credit for it. Remind them of that. Remind them that Barack Obama and Joe Biden claimed credit for a successful Iraq war policy back in the days when it was stable and there were elections pre-ISIS. There's any number of ways of doing this. If you're gonna do it from the standpoint of giving an enlightened foreign policy answer, then you better give all of the enlightened aspects of the answer in the answer.

I know, look, it's easy to sit here and suggest how to do things when you're not in the fire itself, and I understand that. All of this is hindsight, and hindsight makes everything much easier.

RUSH: I went back to the archives of the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound bite favorites, and I want you to hear Bill Clinton talking about Saddam Hussein. I mentioned this earlier in the program, and I just wanted to give you the backup. Bill Clinton in 1998 (trying to make everybody forget about Lewinsky) was threatening to go to war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein was preparing weapons of mass destruction. The UN and everybody knew about it. All the intelligence services knew about it.

Because the Democrats today (led by Maureen Dowd yesterday) are trying to create a new narrative, which is: "All the world's intelligence services knew Saddam did not have WMD, and they all tried to warn Bush, but Cheney wouldn't listen, because Cheney's bloodthirsty Darth Vader. He wanted to go in there just to be Mr. Tough Guy, and he walked and talked Bush into it," and it's a lie.

All the intel services told us, along with our own, that Saddam was building and developing WMD. He had gassed the Kurds previously. The story today is that that wasn't true. They're coming up with a new narrative, that the intel services of the world knew Saddam had nothing and tried to warn us and we wouldn't listen. So if the intel services were lying to Bush in 2001 and 2002, then why were they telling Clinton the truth in 1998? Here's Bill Clinton, February 17th, 1998, speaking to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon about Saddam Hussein.

CLINTON 1998: His Regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. Someday, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. Let there be no doubt: We are prepared to act. I know that the people we may call upon in uniform are ready. The American people have to be ready as well.

RUSH: That's 1998, in the thick of Lewinsky stuff, and he's trying to get the world prepared that we might have go take out Saddam. And you should hear the Democrats supporting this! Every Democrat senator is echoing this and more. Dianne Feinstein, John Kerry, they're all beating up on Saddam like you've never heard anybody beat up on Saddam. Here's more from Clinton. This February 20th. This is three days later in a video message to Saddam entitled, "We'll do what we have to do."

CLINTON 1998: Nobody wants to use force. But if Saddam refuses to keep his commitments to the international community, we must be prepared to deal directly with the threat these weapons pose to the Iraqi people, to Iraq's neighbors, and to the rest of the world. Either Saddam acts or we will have to.

RUSH: That's a video message Clinton made to the Iraqi people and Saddam, "We'll do what we have to do. We'll take you out." This all about his weapons of mass destruction in 1998. When you heard Bush talk about it three or four years later -- using the same words, practically. It was uncanny, in fact. People forget this. Ah, now our intel services were lying to Bush. But apparently were telling the truth to Clinton back in 1998! I just wanted you to hear it, just wanted you to hear this.

I've got a transcript here of Clinton's remarks on December 16th, 1998, when he was facing impeachment for perjury and stuff. Let me just read this to you very quickly. This is Clinton. Remarks on Wednesday, December 16th, 1998. "Good evening. Earlier today I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined today by British forces.

"Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose is to protect the national interests of the United States and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world. Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threat his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons."

That's a Clinton address to the nation in December 1998, and he launched an attack. He killed a janitor. No, that was in the Sudan. The aspirin factory, the Tylenol factory he blew up was in Sudan. This was a Saturday bombing run into Baghdad. He attacked a central office building there and killed a janitor. I'm not making that up. He sent a warning shot into Iraq, and a janitor died -- a custodian, a vision-control coordinator, window washer, whatever it was -- in 1998.

Clinton was warning everybody about how bad Hussein was, the weapons of mass. "Nuclear," he said. Did you just hear that? Nuclear. Yet they say, "Cheney lied and Bush lied! There were no WMD!" But somehow Clinton was telling the truth. And again, the Democrats of that era -- in the Senate and the House -- oh, man, you should have heard them running to the microphones to say they'd be the first in line to vote to authorize Clinton to do this. And then five short years later, there they are trying to undermine it when George W. Bush is doing it.

I heard this and agree we should not pander over Iraq

Except all NeoCons are not Jewish

But a lot of the originals were

Strong on Israel and nation building

Weak on culture war

Not unexpected really

But Rush took the leftist tactic

Smear rather than refute

You’re better than that Rush

Presidents, and that includes Bush, purposely only internalize the facts that support their position. You could put them through a lie detector test and they would pass if asked direct questions. With that said, we were manipulated into going to battle for purposes different than stated which is, stabilizing the region and defeating our enemies. The reason I say this is that the only way to defeat your enemy is to totally crush him. This leads to a rebuilding on principles of law and order to stabilize a country around a Constitution and the will of the people to live freely.

The vast majority of people in the world and especially in the ME want a strong man dictator. Even in America, a slim majority want a strong man in charge.

We should have never interfered other than to destroy and send the message that we can do so at will if messed with.

As America has show over the centuries, we kill a “bad guy” then install our own “good guy” who is only different from the previous ruler in that he initially conforms to our wishes. We call this “bringing freedom” to the “oppressed”. When the new guy T’s us off, we install another “good/bad guy”...infinity... Not since WW II have we had success with this strategy and only then because we had the only working nuclear weapons, the most powerful military, and an intact industrial powerhouse to impose our will on countries that already had been ordered societies for centuries. None of the above facts apply to Afghanistan, Crapistan, Iraq or Libya. They simply do not wish to base their lives around Liberty.

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