From Rush Limbaugh:
RUSH: Let's talk about the American Legion convention. I watched your speech there this morning, and the Democrats are harping on something you said yesterday, or that was aired yesterday on the Today Show with Matt Lauer about your comment about we can't win it, meaning the war on terror. I think I know what you meant but John Edwards is out there saying (paraphrased), "A-ha! Bush is now flip-flopping, and we, John Kerry and I, we can win this, and Bush is..." What did you mean by this?Here is the President discussing Iraq:
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate you bringing that up. Listen, I should have made my point more clear about what I meant. What I meant was that this is not a conventional war. It is a different kind of war. We're fighting people who have got a dark ideology who use terrorists, terrorism, as a tool. They're trying to shake our conscience. They're trying to shake our will, and so in the short run the strategy has got to be to find them where they lurk. I tell people all the time, "We will find them on the offense. We will bring them to justice on foreign lands so we don't have to face them here at home," and that's because you cannot negotiate with these people. And in a conventional war there would be a peace treaty or there would be a moment where somebody would sit on the side and say we quit. That's not the kind of war we're in, and that's what I was saying. The kind of war we're in requires, you know, steadfast resolve, and I will continue to be resolved to bring them to justice, but as well as to spread liberty. And this is one of the interesting points of the debate, Rush, is that, you know, I believe societies can be transformed because of liberty, and I believe that Iraq and Afghanistan will be free nations, and I believe that those free nations right there in the heart of the Middle East will begin to transform that region into a more hopeful place, which in itself will be a detriment to the ability to these terrorists to recruit -- and that's what I was saying. I probably needed to be a little more articulate.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, Iraq. You see, one of the lessons of September the 11th is that we gotta deal with threats before they fully materialize, and we saw a threat in Iraq. I say "we." The Congress saw a threat, I saw a threat and the United Nations Security Council saw a threat. In other words, the world took a look and said, "Saddam is a threat," and here's why they thought he was a threat. One, he used weapons of mass destruction, and one of the most dangerous parts of this new war is that if the enemy were ever to acquire the capacity to use a weapon of mass destruction it would make September 11th, you know, pale in comparison, and so we saw that threat.Get mp3 audio here
Secondly, he had ties to terrorists. Abu Nidal was housed in Iraq, his organization. He was the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. He was a known terrorist. Zarqawi -- who's now, you know, the person beheading people in Iraq today -- was in and out of Baghdad and Iraq, as were members of his organization. So he had terrorist ties. As a matter of fact, not only did he have terrorist ties, he used to subsidize families of these suicide bombers, which is a terrorist act.
Thirdly, he invaded his neighbors. Fourthly, he was an enemy of this country, and we had been to war with him once. He had invaded others in the neighborhood. He was a source of great instability. So I saw a threat, and given the lessons of September the 11th, we decided to remove him from power, having tried diplomacy. See, I think it's very important for your listeners to know, Rush, that the commander-in-chief ought to try all avenues of diplomacy prior to committing troops and we did that. And so I'm sitting in the Oval Office, and I've seen a threat. I now see that he's ignoring the demands of the free world, he had no intention of disarming, as a matter of fact was systematically deceiving inspectors, and so I made the decision, a very difficult decision.
The way forward, which was to remove him from power -- and, by the way, we weren't "alone" going in. As a matter of fact, I talked to Tony Blair this morning, which I do on a regular basis, and Tony Blair saw the same threat. And so now the way ahead is this. We will work with Prime Minister Allawi to enable a political process to develop. In other words, we'll provide as much security as we can to help a political process forward which means elections in January, but more importantly we will train Iraqis so that they are capable of providing their own security, and that's an important ingredient about enabling me to say that troops will be there as long as necessary, but not a day longer -- and by that I mean when the Iraqis are capable of defending themselves and as the political process emerges, we will then be in a position to say the mission has been completed, which is a democratic Iraq, an ally in the war on terror and a source of stability in a part of the world that needs stability and freedom.
Mark's Remarks
Partisan Press, take notes. When you actually allow someone to finish answering a question without interrupting or castigating them, you get clear answers. One would think the press would have been taught this, but wait, I forgot--they don't have common sense, much less common decency. President Bush articulated a compassionate, clear strategic vision for the unfolding and unconventional war on terror. One would think liberals would embrace the spread of liberty, but their actions and arrogance in deriding efforts to help the burgeoning democracies reveal their true feelings. History reveals it as well. During the Cold War, liberals advocated letting the Soviet Union repress lovers of liberty in Czecholslavakia, Poland, and all across the Eastern bloc. Ronald Reagan realized the hypocrisy of this and did his utmost to foster love and desire for liberty in the repressed nations, and we all see that today the Soviet Union's brutal totalitarianism is no more. The liberals were wrong then and they are wrong now. They have no vision, they have no clarity, they have no compassion. They crave power because they are bitter about misunderestimating George W. Bush and common Americans.
