gtownspur
08-26-2005, 04:29 PM
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_082505/content/able_danger_update_2.guest.html
Washington Elite Protect Their Power
August 25, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I think what's going to drive this is once they get to the hearing stage and if these Able Danger people come out and they're credible and they've got the documentation, it's going to be hard to stop this, because the American people are going to want to know the truth and they're going to be outraged about it, and that could end up driving it. When I said the political class, I don't have anybody particularly in mind. I didn't mean to say it for that reason, and so I don't want to suggest that there is a particular person that I have in mind here. I just know how that world works. It's a business like any other business. They have to be elected to get into the club but it's still a business once they get there -- and it's cutthroat, and it literally is about power, and let me tell you what makes it about power. Forget the ideology for a second, because that's obviously paramount and fundamental. But this is about money. Look at the money these people have control over. Look at the money they spend. Look at the trillion dollars they are in charge of allocating every year and look at the portion of that that they can end up steering their way in any number of ways -- after they leave office; sometimes it's been done while they're in office. You know, that's what I've always laughed when I've heard about how campaign finance reform, "gotta get the money out of politics." That's like saying we've got to get the oxygen out of life! You know, we're never going to get the oxygen out of life -- well, not human life -- and we're not going to get the money out of politics. John Linder and Neil Bortz have got a great book out called The Fair Tax Book. It's absolutely fabulous book; #1 on the New York Times. Steve Forbes has a book out on the flat tax. I love Steve Forbes. I love Bortz. I love these guys. They're great Americans and they care deeply.
But do you know what we're up against here? Do you really think that members of Congress are going to just give up the single greatest power they have -- and that is the social architecture they are able to construct via the tax code? The tax code is as big as it is because that is an illustration of the power these people have. They can determine home ownership. If they take away the home mortgage deduction, what do they do to the homeowners business? What's the homeowners lobby or the home builders lobby going to do about that if they ever tried that? The various ways that different kinds of income are taxed and not taxed and so forth -- and I don't want to be misunderstand. You've got a lot of ideologues who care deeply about all this. They run for office for that reason. I'm not besmirching everybody. I'm just saying this is a business as well and it's about money and power and reputation. So when something like 9/11 comes along, you have to understand: that is a huge failure somewhere. It is a massive failure somewhere, made ever so evident to me by how quickly we as Americans were told who the 19 hijackers were, complete with photographs. I don't want to be a broken record, but didn't it stun any of you that we knew where they went to flight school and all those details about them that night, the next day, two days after? It had to be known. Somewhere, it had to be known. This event, while people have done their best to erase it from our memories, as they conduct modern-day politics and fight Bush on the war on terror and so forth. If you want to put yourself in the minds of those who feel vulnerable on this, go back to that day and remember how you felt, and those people feel that way any time this investigation gets ginned up. Let me illustrate it this way: Does it surprise anybody that not one person, at any level of our government has been fired over what happened at 9/11? Does it surprise you?
It does me. Actually, it doesn't me. That's the point. That's the purpose. The purpose is to absolve blame from an individual. (interruption) What, somebody been fired? (interruption) What are you frowning at me about? (interruption) Well, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. The CIA blew this, and the CIA has been in a CYA mode ever since. The CIA has been trying to blame the FBI. The FBI has been trying to blame the CIA. They both been blaming the wall. Now everybody is blaming a building, the Pentagon, now the Pentagon lawyers. Not one person. Not one! There are people who are put into government, experts. We're the world's superpower. We have the National Security Agency. We have this big listening device. We can intercept any bit of intelligence in the world, and e-mail, cell phones, satellite phones. We have the ability. The NSA has the ability to pull this stuff out of the air. There's so much of it it may be hard to go through, but it's there. Somebody's on the hook here, or some organization is on the hook. Something is on the hook. This is where this is going to be. If it comes out that enough was known to stop this, I am telling you, heads will roll, and the whole purpose -- if somebody already knows that there was information present to stop this, there's been, you know, circling of the wagons going on ever since. And they will continue to circle the wagons to prevent that bit of information from getting out. But even at that, even if it never gets to that, even if that's not the case, nobody's been fired -- and clearly, there was, if not incompetence, there was laxness. Somebody dropped the ball or a group of people dropped the ball somewhere. Somebody wasn't taking something seriously. In fact some of the people that have been closer to this have been given medals.
George Tenet got a medal. Some might say, ''Why?'' I'm not going to speculate on that. I've gone farther than I want to on this. I'm just trying to convey to you an attitude or the way I think that these kinds of things happen. The elite political class in Washington, DC, folks, it's just like trying to take out Enron. It's just like trying to take out, you know, Halliburton. Take your favorite big organization. It's like trying to take it out. Look at the UN. The UN is a classic example of what I'm talking about. Oil-for-food? Even the investigator, Paul Volcker, doesn't seem to be interested in finding out what really happened. It's taking a journalist, Claudia Rosette, to embarrass everybody, and the Wall Street Journal -- and it's taking Senator Norm Coleman to get to the bottom of this. But the UN doesn't anybody to know what really went on there. They're still in a CYA mode -- and Kofi Annan even threw his own son overboard to save his own skin! I'm telling you this is the big time. This is not a principal trying to save his job at a school. This is the big time, and I just think that it's going to be very, very challenging to get to the root of this. But we've got the ingredients for it to happen. We have Curt Weldon, and I talked to him Tuesday, and you'll read this interview. He doesn't care what happens to him as a result of this. He told that he's already been told, "Congressman, you proceed, and you are giving up any chance to head up a more powerful committee as you get reelected. If you do this, if you go through with this, you may not get any reelection funds. You're going to have all kinds of problems," and these are friends of his and advisors of him telling him what the pitfalls are down the road, and he told me he doesn't care about that.
Well, his personal involvement is unquestioned here, but the degree of passion he brings to this is unlike, as I say in the interview, I've ever had with anybody -- and we will, in coming days, share you bits and pieces of this, just to show you what I'm talking about. But already, just with that, if people are already telling Curt Weldon, "You better be careful, congressman. What do you think you're doing?" and I'm not saying been threatened. These are friends of his saying, "If you go through with this, they might shut your career down right where it is." Well, who is the "They"? "Who is the 'They'?" is all I'm saying -- and there's always a They, and the political class in Washington includes the think tankers, includes the media; it includes elected officials, includes their staff. Sometimes staff will be thrown overboard, but it's a close-knit group, folks. It's the power center of the world. You have to understand this. It's not the UN. It's not China. It's not Russia and Moscow. It's not London. It's not Paris. Washington, DC, is the power center of the world, and that's why we're despised and hated because we have so much of it, but the people that have their own little fiefdoms of power. They're not going to say, "For the right thing, I will give up my power." The idea is to keep the right thing away from you, if you're there, if you're incriminated. If it were other than that, somebody would have come forth already say, "You know what? I blew this. My agency blew this. I'm sorry and I'm resigning."
No way. It ain't going to happen.
Washington Elite Protect Their Power
August 25, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I think what's going to drive this is once they get to the hearing stage and if these Able Danger people come out and they're credible and they've got the documentation, it's going to be hard to stop this, because the American people are going to want to know the truth and they're going to be outraged about it, and that could end up driving it. When I said the political class, I don't have anybody particularly in mind. I didn't mean to say it for that reason, and so I don't want to suggest that there is a particular person that I have in mind here. I just know how that world works. It's a business like any other business. They have to be elected to get into the club but it's still a business once they get there -- and it's cutthroat, and it literally is about power, and let me tell you what makes it about power. Forget the ideology for a second, because that's obviously paramount and fundamental. But this is about money. Look at the money these people have control over. Look at the money they spend. Look at the trillion dollars they are in charge of allocating every year and look at the portion of that that they can end up steering their way in any number of ways -- after they leave office; sometimes it's been done while they're in office. You know, that's what I've always laughed when I've heard about how campaign finance reform, "gotta get the money out of politics." That's like saying we've got to get the oxygen out of life! You know, we're never going to get the oxygen out of life -- well, not human life -- and we're not going to get the money out of politics. John Linder and Neil Bortz have got a great book out called The Fair Tax Book. It's absolutely fabulous book; #1 on the New York Times. Steve Forbes has a book out on the flat tax. I love Steve Forbes. I love Bortz. I love these guys. They're great Americans and they care deeply.
But do you know what we're up against here? Do you really think that members of Congress are going to just give up the single greatest power they have -- and that is the social architecture they are able to construct via the tax code? The tax code is as big as it is because that is an illustration of the power these people have. They can determine home ownership. If they take away the home mortgage deduction, what do they do to the homeowners business? What's the homeowners lobby or the home builders lobby going to do about that if they ever tried that? The various ways that different kinds of income are taxed and not taxed and so forth -- and I don't want to be misunderstand. You've got a lot of ideologues who care deeply about all this. They run for office for that reason. I'm not besmirching everybody. I'm just saying this is a business as well and it's about money and power and reputation. So when something like 9/11 comes along, you have to understand: that is a huge failure somewhere. It is a massive failure somewhere, made ever so evident to me by how quickly we as Americans were told who the 19 hijackers were, complete with photographs. I don't want to be a broken record, but didn't it stun any of you that we knew where they went to flight school and all those details about them that night, the next day, two days after? It had to be known. Somewhere, it had to be known. This event, while people have done their best to erase it from our memories, as they conduct modern-day politics and fight Bush on the war on terror and so forth. If you want to put yourself in the minds of those who feel vulnerable on this, go back to that day and remember how you felt, and those people feel that way any time this investigation gets ginned up. Let me illustrate it this way: Does it surprise anybody that not one person, at any level of our government has been fired over what happened at 9/11? Does it surprise you?
It does me. Actually, it doesn't me. That's the point. That's the purpose. The purpose is to absolve blame from an individual. (interruption) What, somebody been fired? (interruption) What are you frowning at me about? (interruption) Well, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. The CIA blew this, and the CIA has been in a CYA mode ever since. The CIA has been trying to blame the FBI. The FBI has been trying to blame the CIA. They both been blaming the wall. Now everybody is blaming a building, the Pentagon, now the Pentagon lawyers. Not one person. Not one! There are people who are put into government, experts. We're the world's superpower. We have the National Security Agency. We have this big listening device. We can intercept any bit of intelligence in the world, and e-mail, cell phones, satellite phones. We have the ability. The NSA has the ability to pull this stuff out of the air. There's so much of it it may be hard to go through, but it's there. Somebody's on the hook here, or some organization is on the hook. Something is on the hook. This is where this is going to be. If it comes out that enough was known to stop this, I am telling you, heads will roll, and the whole purpose -- if somebody already knows that there was information present to stop this, there's been, you know, circling of the wagons going on ever since. And they will continue to circle the wagons to prevent that bit of information from getting out. But even at that, even if it never gets to that, even if that's not the case, nobody's been fired -- and clearly, there was, if not incompetence, there was laxness. Somebody dropped the ball or a group of people dropped the ball somewhere. Somebody wasn't taking something seriously. In fact some of the people that have been closer to this have been given medals.
George Tenet got a medal. Some might say, ''Why?'' I'm not going to speculate on that. I've gone farther than I want to on this. I'm just trying to convey to you an attitude or the way I think that these kinds of things happen. The elite political class in Washington, DC, folks, it's just like trying to take out Enron. It's just like trying to take out, you know, Halliburton. Take your favorite big organization. It's like trying to take it out. Look at the UN. The UN is a classic example of what I'm talking about. Oil-for-food? Even the investigator, Paul Volcker, doesn't seem to be interested in finding out what really happened. It's taking a journalist, Claudia Rosette, to embarrass everybody, and the Wall Street Journal -- and it's taking Senator Norm Coleman to get to the bottom of this. But the UN doesn't anybody to know what really went on there. They're still in a CYA mode -- and Kofi Annan even threw his own son overboard to save his own skin! I'm telling you this is the big time. This is not a principal trying to save his job at a school. This is the big time, and I just think that it's going to be very, very challenging to get to the root of this. But we've got the ingredients for it to happen. We have Curt Weldon, and I talked to him Tuesday, and you'll read this interview. He doesn't care what happens to him as a result of this. He told that he's already been told, "Congressman, you proceed, and you are giving up any chance to head up a more powerful committee as you get reelected. If you do this, if you go through with this, you may not get any reelection funds. You're going to have all kinds of problems," and these are friends of his and advisors of him telling him what the pitfalls are down the road, and he told me he doesn't care about that.
Well, his personal involvement is unquestioned here, but the degree of passion he brings to this is unlike, as I say in the interview, I've ever had with anybody -- and we will, in coming days, share you bits and pieces of this, just to show you what I'm talking about. But already, just with that, if people are already telling Curt Weldon, "You better be careful, congressman. What do you think you're doing?" and I'm not saying been threatened. These are friends of his saying, "If you go through with this, they might shut your career down right where it is." Well, who is the "They"? "Who is the 'They'?" is all I'm saying -- and there's always a They, and the political class in Washington includes the think tankers, includes the media; it includes elected officials, includes their staff. Sometimes staff will be thrown overboard, but it's a close-knit group, folks. It's the power center of the world. You have to understand this. It's not the UN. It's not China. It's not Russia and Moscow. It's not London. It's not Paris. Washington, DC, is the power center of the world, and that's why we're despised and hated because we have so much of it, but the people that have their own little fiefdoms of power. They're not going to say, "For the right thing, I will give up my power." The idea is to keep the right thing away from you, if you're there, if you're incriminated. If it were other than that, somebody would have come forth already say, "You know what? I blew this. My agency blew this. I'm sorry and I'm resigning."
No way. It ain't going to happen.