Randi Rhoades was talking about this yesterday on Air America Radio .She mentioned that according to Rummy and Rush our retired Generals and Al Queda were working together to control our media. And that our Retired Generals were also Anti War.

Randi went on to say that you can't be anti war when you have spent many years in uniform like our Generals have.

Randi said that people like Rummy and Rush want us to believe that our Generals both serving and retired are actually hippies in disguise. And they are helping the terrorists.

She was really hot on this subject. Thanks for people like Randi Rhodes and Ed Schultz for helping counteract these neocon attacks. 

Poor Limbaugh thinks that Ashley Wilkes went to public schools and grew up in a modest home in an ordinary Southern American neighborhood the way that Wesley Clark did.

That's only one of the ways that they differ in the experiences that formed their personalities.

It appears to me that Limbaugh seems to always be getting his FAQs wrong. Especially about Southerners.

And, even good people seem to be in an angr mood toward their family and friends for a period after they've listened to his radio show.
A lot of us move fast to change the station.

Clearsky

in South Louisiana

Tim Russert spoke with IMUS this morning - and had some interesting things to say.

He noted that Rumsfeld had to go on Limbaugh (and some other female's show) because he HAS TO shore up the base. Right now that's all the administration has. And they have to keep them.

Russert also made some interesting comments about the generals, etc. Comments Russert usually doesn't make. He usually doesn't talk from a personal point of view. He noted that after Murtha spoke up he received various calls from people at the Pentagon, speaking off the record, who shared Murtha's opinion. He's received even more calls recently. Russert said there is civil war at the Pentagon.

Leadership means lifting people up. --Wes Clark

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041806/content/eib_interview_.guest.html

Rush Interviews Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We are thrilled and honored to have with us the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, for a few minutes. Mr. Secretary, thank you for making some time available for us.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, thank you! I'm delighted to do it.

RUSH: Well, let me ask you... I've got to remind you of something. You probably won't remember the phone call to this program. It was the first time I spoke to you and it was early on in the first term of President Bush, and at the time, I forget the subject. It might have been the artillery weapon that you had voted down, but --

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: (Laughing.) I remember it well. The Crusader!

RUSH: The Crusader, but at the time it was shortly after a couple of very successful operations militarily. You were being hailed as a sex symbol in Washington, and I asked you about that. You were clearly embarrassed. You laughed and so forth.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: (Laughing.)

RUSH: Today it's a far different circumstance, and it's a great illustration of just how things work inside the Beltway. What does it feel like to you to go through these ups and downs and to have practically the entire media jump on the case of these six generals demanding your ouster?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, you know, "This, too, will pass." I think about it, and I must say, there's always two sides to these things, and the sharper the criticism comes, sometimes the sharper the defense comes from people who don't agree with the critics, and I've been very pleased to see General Dick Myers and General Tommy Franks and General Mike DeLong and so many others -- Admiral Vern Clark -- step up, and people who I have worked very closely with, and they've been terrific. So I'm here at the Pentagon doing my job, working on transformation and seeing that we manage the force in a successful way, and working on things involving Iraq. For example, they just transferred over some important real estate to the Iraqi security forces today, had a ceremony which is a sign of progress there. Now what we need to see is a new government formed in Iraq.

RUSH: Let me ask you about -- before I get to that, you mentioned General Myers and Mike DeLong and others that have come to your defense. They seem to be contradicting point by point the criticism. The criticism of you is that you're autocratic, that you don't listen, that you're inflexible, that you're stubborn, and the details that they're all providing counter that specifically. So why are these guys doing it now? What do you think?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, I just don't know. I can't climb into other people's minds. I was amused that Admiral Vern Clark said, "Yes, he is tough and these are tough times and we need people in government who are tough-minded and feel a sense of urgency." So I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

RUSH: Iraq. Your assessment, obviously, with the news that you just gave us is it's much better there than it's being reported, and I assume that you're optimistic about the final outcome. You say we've just got to get them to create a government. Some people think that it might be better just to launch an all-out assault on the enemy and defeat the enemy and then set up the government so you wouldn't have so many distractions and attempts to oppose that effort.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, of course it would be wonderful if there were an enemy that was in reasonable clusters of people that you could go after them. The problem is that you don't have a big army, navy or air force that you can go after. These are terrorists. These are insurgents. These are people that hide in the shadows. These are people that kill innocent men, women and children. They are not people that confront anybody in a formal way that you could go after. So what you have to do is create a presence, have a lot of tip lines so calls can come in and people who are supportive of the country and the progress that's being made can phone into the Iraqi security forces or our forces and tell them where the bad people are and then you just have to go root 'em out one or two at a time.

RUSH: How would you describe the process and the progress there?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, the progress has been good. I mean, we are now up to a quarter of a million Iraqi security forces and they're, as I say, taking over more and more bases and real estate all the time -- and we're able to transfer responsibility to them. The biggest problem we've got right now is that the people that were the people who voted in the last election, on December 15th, are now waiting for the results of that election to be manifested in a new government, and the politicians over there are struggling with that. They're trying to figure out who should be prime minister and who should be the president and who should be the various ministers, and it's taken from December 15th until today, and we're hopeful that in the next period of days, they'll pull it together. More and more, the leadership in the Kurdish community, the Sunni community and now in the Shi'a community are saying, "Let's get it done." I think it's important that the security forces that we've trained and equip have a government that they can report to and look up to and receive guidance and leadership from.

RUSH: So is there an organized opposition within those three groups to prevent this government from being formed that has a chance of succeeding?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, I mean, there's no question. You're quite right. The insurgents do not want the government formed, and there are elements in the country that are actively trying to prevent that, just as they tried to prevent the election last, a year ago January. They've tried to prevent the referendum on the constitution, and they tried to prevent the December elections -- and now they're trying to prevent the government from being formed. But they failed the first three times, and they're going to fail this time. We're going to get it done.

RUSH: Let me ask you this question. You've been in the private sector and you've had plenty of public service in various positions in our government, and you've devoted your life largely to public service, and you're very much aware of our representative republic and democratic process here. We have people in the country who have been attempting, ever since shortly after the war with Iraq commenced, that are trying to gin up as many anti-war support amongst the American population as possible. Yet here you are as a member of this administration with a stated goal where Iraq and the war on terror is concerned. You have to be aware of it anti-war opinion of those in the country who have it and you're aware of the people who are trying to foment it and make it larger. How do you as a public servant square the attitude of the anti-war people if you think it's a large group of people with what are your stated goals and what the president stated goals are? How do you put those two together and end up formulating a policy and sticking to it?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: That's a very important question, and I guess only someone who's rooted in the history of our country, I think, could accept the kinds of comments that are being made -- and if we recognize that the same kinds of criticism that occurred in the Revolutionary War and World War I and World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, it's not new. There have always been people who have opposed wars. Wars are terrible things. On the other hand, if every time there were critics and opponents to war, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War and we wouldn't have been involved in World War I or II, and if we had we would have failed, and our country would be a totally different place if it existed at all, if every time there were some critics that we tossed in the towel. I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees.

They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. They're much better at (laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are, and we have to recognize that we're not going to lose any battles out in the global war on terror out in Iraq or Afghanistan. The center of gravity of that war is right here, and in the capital of the United States of America and other Western capitals, in London, they're trying. It's a test of wills, and what's at stake for our country is our way of life. They want to strike at the very essence what we are. We're free people, and our task in government, by golly, is to help protect the American people from people who killed 3,000 people here on September 11th and killed people in London and Madrid and Bali, and country after country around the world who have no problems beheading people and murdering innocent men, women and children.

RUSH: Well, it's gotta be tough, I would imagine, because I'm aware of it and I try to share with my audience as often as possible that people like you and the president know far more than the public knows about any number of events simply because it's not possible for the information that you learn to be shared nor should most of it, and yet that would have to force you at some point to say, "You know, we do have an anti-war crowd and they're loud and they're being affected by our enemy. But the American people, some of them, just don't know what we know," and you have to stick with what you think is right, and that's where the whole democratic process I would think becomes challenging for you because you have to make a judgment: Do what's right or we listen to the people?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Yeah. Of course if you started chasing, running around chasing public opinion polls or a handful of people who are critics of this or critics on that, you wouldn't get anywhere in this world. We need people like President Bush who are serious people, who spend a great deal of time thinking through direction for our country, set us on that course and then have the courage and the perseverance to stay on that course.

RUSH: Before you go -- and I know time is short and I've got to break, too -- but I know you're very supportive of a website that DOD has put up, "America Supports You" dot military, dot mil. What does that website help people do?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: You know we've got such wonderful men and women out there, troops out there serving our country. They're all volunteers. So what we did is we put together a website whereby anyone who wants to can get on it and find out what other people are doing to be supportive of the troops and their families, and you can learn what school groups are doing, what corporations are doing, families, nongovernmental organizations. They are just hundreds of people who are out there doing things that are supportive of the troops and letting them know that we appreciate their service, their noble service, for our country.

RUSH: Okay, terrific. Well, we'll continue to plug that here. Let me amend it. Let me ask you one final question. Somebody on my staff is curious to know what your opinion is of embedding reporters with the military. Has that worked? Has that worked as you had hoped?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, it has. It worked during the Iraq conflict, and a lot of people who are reporters and journalists were able to work with our troops and see precisely how terrific they are, the wonderful job they do, the kinds of people they are, how professional they are -- and the rest of their lives they're going to have an impression of the American military that will be good for journalism, in my view. Furthermore, they were able, because they were embedded, to see and then give the world and the people of the United States a slice of what was actually happening, real reality, and it was a good thing. More recently, very few people had been being embedded. We're still offering that opportunity, but there have been far fewer journalists who have stepped up to become embedded.

RUSH: Why do you think that is (story)?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, it's a funny thing. I asked one reporter about that, and there was kind of the impression left that, "Well, if you got embedded then you were really part of the problem instead of part of the solution and you were almost going over to the other side," argument. I think that's an inexcusable thought, and I don't know if that's the case.

RUSH: That's outrageous.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: It is. (Laughing.)

RUSH: It's outrageous. I'll say it.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: (Laughing.)

RUSH: I can't believe that. Well, look, I thank you so much for your time. I don't want to cause your schedule to get backlogged anymore. We always appreciate whatever time you have for us. I met you a couple weeks ago in New York and I forgot to tell you something. I had so many people -- as I mentioned I was going to be at the Marine dinner, and I had so many people -- in my audience tell me to be sure to tell you how much they love and respect what you're doing. So let me do it now.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: That means a lot to me and I thank you so much, and I thank you for what you do.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate it. That's Secretary -- It embarrasses me when I get thanked. That's Secretary Rumsfeld, at the Pentagon, the Department of Defense.

END TRANSCRIPT

Background Material Regarding
Rumsfeld's Answer on Embedded Reporters...
(Weekly Standard: The Know-Nothing Press)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=508&R=9FDE2F1A 

EIB Interviews and Profiles...
(Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -05.16.02) 
 

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

Below is Rush Limbaugh's propaganda and spin to try and get attention off of Rumsfeld and blame the problem on the media that reports the news.

Limbaugh has declared an all out war on all credible news sources calling them the "Drive-By Media" in his efforts to promote spin, lies, and propaganda.

While we all know this, the problem is that 25 to 30 million people do not know this and they just mostly believe what he says because they PERCEIVE him as being credible.  

Democrats and moderate Republicans have nothing in place to deal with him so he is just getting away with this nonsense and he is growing his listening audience in the process almost like a cult following!

The only way to stop this nonsense and to help contain Limbaugh's heavy influence over so many people is to stand up to him and fight back as I have previously suggested:

http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/5353#comment-90888

The answer is NOT to do nothing about this problem because if that happens, then Limbaugh will only get stronger and win over more impressionable followers. 

He will also convince many disillusioned Republicans who may want to stay at home on election day to give the GOP a free pass on their problems and go to the polls and vote which is a threat to us taking back power in Congress in November.  Taking back power is the only way to hold Bush and the Neocons accountable for their behavior!   

We will eventually have to deal with Limbaugh sooner or later if Gen. Clark runs for President in 2008 because he will start throwing more crooked and lying attacks on Gen. Clark if he perceives him as being a serious threat!

If we do nothing about this, then please tell me what we are going to do to defend Gen. Clark's good name and reputation when Limbaugh smears and misrepresents him to over 25 million people?  That is the question that we all have to be asking and seriously thinking about now!     
 

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041806/content/america_s_anchorman.guest.html

Rumsfeld Story Heads for Drive-By Media Morgue

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, now the audio sound bites from this afternoon with Donald Rumsfeld. Unidentified reporter says, "The outpouring of criticism of you suggests there's a great deal of dissatisfaction within the office with your leadership. So how can you lead the department effectively if that's the case and what are you doing personally to address the concerns that they have?"

RUMSFELD: I don't know that that's the case. They're always... You know, we've got, what, six thousand, seven thousand retired admirals and generals? Anyone who thinks that they're going to be unanimous on anything, look at the votes in the House of Representatives, it's 51-49, 55-45, same thing in the Senate. Look at our country when we vote. There's always differences of opinion. That's a healthy thing in this country. We ought to respect it and get about our business. But if it paralyzes people because someone doesn't agree with them, my goodness gracious, we wouldn't be able to do anything.

RUSH: Okay, that's Rumsfeld. Now we move on to Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He added this to that question.

PACE: It's unfair to leave that statement the way it is. It is not my experience that that's true. General Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, just came back from I think it was a week in Iraq. He got exactly zero questions about leadership in the department. Last week while all this is going on back here, guess what they're focused on out there? They're focused on the mission, getting the job done. The sergeant major, my sergeant major, Sergeant Major Gainey just got back from the Gulf region himself and he received no questions like that, even though he did a lot of probing. The fact of the matter is that the folks who are out doing this nation's business are appreciative of the leadership that's being provided and understand the missions they have and the value of what they're doing.

RUSH: Interesting answer. It illustrates exactly what we've been saying for a long time here. We're winning the war over there, we're losing it here. Here you have these six or seven generals, whatever it is, I guess seven if you throw Ashley Wilkes in there, and the drive-by media template and action line is established: "Rumsfeld's gotta go! Rumsfeld sucks! Rumsfeld stinks! Nobody likes Rumsfeld. Everybody hates Rumsfeld! The troops are demoralized," blah, blah, blah, blah. Pace says it would be unfair to leave that statement -- the statement by the reporter -- the way it is. It's not my experience that that's true. The Commandant of the Marine Corps came back. Nobody talked to him about the plan. Nobody questioned the mission. Nobody expressed any resolve or upset about this. Some of you might be saying, "Of course not, they're enlisted grunts! They're not going to tell these people anything." Not in my experience. I've seen town meetings with Rumsfeld and military personnel, enlisted. They asked him pointed questions. Anyway, quick time-out. We will be back. I want you to hear what President Bush said today in the Rose Garden about Rumsfeld and what kind of response it created in the drive-by media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Audio sound bite #2. Mike, this is the president today in the Rose Garden. CNN's Ed Henry says, "What do you say to critics who believe that you're ignoring the advice of retired--" (laughing). This is like the question Rumsfeld got the other day. "Oh, you know, a couple books have been out two or three years stating things in there that you haven't disputed," blah, blah, blah, and Rumsfeld said (paraphrased), "I don't have time to dispute books. I've got a real job. I've got a day job here. I don't have all my time to run around disputing what people in this group," meaning the media, "have to say." So: "What do you say to critics who believe you're ignoring the advice of retired generals, military commanders who say that there needs to be a change?"

THE PRESIDENT: I say I listen to all voices, but mine is the final decision, and Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job. He's not only transforming the military; he's fighting a war on terror. He's helping us fight a war on terror. I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld. I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider and I decide what is best, and what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.

RUSH: Exclamation point. But what about the question, "What do you say to critics who believe you're ignoring...?" What he supposed to do, respond to every bit of criticism he gets from a minority of any group and do what they say? Yes, because that's the media action line. That's where the story will be advanced. So now the media knows that Rumsfeld's not leaving. So the talking points of the drive-by media are shifting. The talking point has gone from Rumsfeld must go to it doesn't matter if Rumsfeld goes because even if he did go it wouldn't make any difference because Bush is the problem.

FINEMAN: George Bush's basic policies are not only set in stone, they are set in titanium.

LIASSON: What difference would it make? The policy is unlikely to change. I don't know what would be any different.

CARVILLE: We're three Defense Secretaries away from doing well in Iraq. It's more governed by what is happening on the ground in Iraq than what is happening in the Defense Secretary's chair.

ROLLINS: Is the president going to change his policies? I doubt that.

OLBERMANN: What's the difference who is there to implement the policies?

SHEINKOPF: It's going the take a lot more than cosmetics.

RUSH: So a little bit of disappointment: "Oh, well, it doesn't matter anyway because nothing is going to change because Bush is the Neanderthal. Bush is the problem. Screw Bush! We hate Bush anyway!" Here's a little Richard Holbrooke, and he was on Hardball last night with Chris Matthews, and Matthews says, "Explain if you could, Richard, what is the 'long screwdriver' metaphor that you see? Rumsfeld is the long screwdriver. What does that mean?"

HOLBROOKE: The long screwdriver is an extraordinarily vivid metaphor used in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan for the 9,000-mile length of the micromanagement, this is their words, not mine, of the secretary of defense. You can see this on specific programs like training of the Afghan army, training of the Iraqi army. He sticks to it and he has not allowed the people in the field to get it right, and he needs to move on so that somebody else can rethink the programs from the bottom up. The long screwdriver is the military's phrase for the way he operates.

RUSH: This sounds to me like Holbrooke's involved in all this, doesn't it? "He's gotta go," and Holbrooke wrote this op-ed piece in the Washington Post on Sunday predicting that there will be more generals and even some that are currently active to come forth. So it's possible that there's an organized movement here despite the protests to the contrary. Next question from Matthews: "You just said something very interesting a couple minutes ago, Richard, that it could well be that we will have troops in Afghanistan longer than we will have them in Iraq."

HOLBROOKE: We cannot afford to leave Afghanistan and we are going to have to get it right and it is a long-term prospect and I think the administration does not want to say that publicly, because it casts an additional shadow on the problem in Iraq. But in retrospect it's clear that General Franks and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made a historic error when they began to strip the forces out of Afghanistan in 2003 to get ready to attack -- excuse me, 2002, when they got ready to attack Iraq before they finished the job in Afghanistan. We discussed this on your program and elsewhere at the time, but the full cost of it is only clear now.

RUSH: All right. Now, this is another popular myth, and I'm so tired of this. The myth is that we pulled troops out of Afghanistan to go into Iraq. We did not. It didn't happen. After Holbrooke appeared with Matthews, Retired Marine Lieutenant General Mike DeLong showed up. He wrote the supportive op-ed of Rummy that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday. Matthews says, "What about that critical decision to send troops down to Iraq before the job was done in Afghanistan? Whose decision was that?"

DeLONG: I listened to Ambassador Holbrooke, and I disagree. At the same time, now did we take some people out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq? Yes, we did, but before they went out, we replaced them. We had more people in Afghanistan as the war kicked off in Iraq than we had the previous year and on the same day, March 19, 2003, at that time the largest operation that was conducted in Afghanistan went down that day.

RUSH: So yeah, we took some people out, we replaced them. We did not reduce troop strength in Afghanistan. This is Mike DeLong, who was at Centcom at the time, the #2 guy there under Tommy Franks, and he's telling these people I don't know how many times this has had to be repeated, but it's one of these drive-by myths, these popular myths that, "Well, we left Afghanistan. Bush abandoned the war on terror to go after Saddam," for whatever nefarious, stupid reason these people keep advancing. But the problem is they don't have facts on their side. So the drive-by media, where are all the dead bodies buried? There is a morgue. There's a drive-by media morgue. Well, there is, folks, and I think we need to create this morgue and put it in my newsletter, put it on the website, to constantly remind you of the drive-by media stories that prove to be nothing but wrong, created chaos.

Here are just some examples. Remember this?

Our equipment will not function in Iraqi sandstorms.

Our troops are barely getting one meal a day.

Urban warfare will result in 20,000 troop deaths.

We don't know how to fight a guerrilla war, we're not trained for it.

There's going to be a giant Ring of Fire in Iraq. Saddam is going to burn the city. He is going to set a giant ring of oil and petroleum and explosives on fire, kill all of our troops once we enter Baghdad.

And of course the classic: "It's a bad war plan," which out of necessity had to be reintroduced as a bad "postwar" plan because the bad war plan got rid of Saddam inside of a week.

The invasion of Iraq was a remarkable success. So that bad war plan had to be rewritten as a bad postwar plan, and that is still out there, not in the morgue yet.

Oh, yes! Oil-for-food is a brilliant UN solution to relieve hunger in Iraq -- and let's not forget George Bush and the Texas National Guard, Cindy Sheehan. There are so many stories in the drive-by media morgue, and they have at times killed people, they have destroyed reputations. The drive-by media morgue and the Rumsfeld story is going to soon be in the drive-by media morgue as well.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

(NY Times: A General Misunderstanding - General Mike DeLong)
(James Pinkerton: A New Storm on the Pentagon's Horizon?)
(New York Times: Rumsfeld Says Calls for Ouster ''Will Pass'')
(NewsMax: Rumsfeld Bashing: Media Love ''Liberals in Uniform'')
(WSJ: The Generals War. What's behind the attacks against Rumsfeld)
(RCP: Record Re-Enlistment Rates vs. Widespread Dissatisfaction - Jack Kelly)
(NYPost: John Podhoretz: Rumsfeld's Job Security)
(American Thinker: The Generals are Revolting)
" target="_blank">(American Thinker: Rumsfeld's Enemies and the White Flag of Surrender)
(ABC: Military Official Talks to Rush Limbaugh About Dissent From Generals)
(American Thinker: The Hidden History of the Iraq War Critics)
(NRO: Victor Davis Hanson: We’re having too many dead-end debates)
(American Thinker: General Zinni and Pre-War Intelligence)

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

  Mitch's education department .......opposition research

  Hello Mitch, you know I have been thinking about this Limbaugh stuff for awhile and I wanted to say something more.  When you first posted about it some time agoI used the GOP choice of image and language to illustrate neuro linguistic programming but I didn't address the common sense issue of dealing with aggression and attacks. I felt Wes' behavior  would show us how to deal with it; as we all can see he doesn't rise to the bait of a international school yard bully with a world wide megaphone being piped in directly to US military radio/television communications. He deals with the reckless opposition and  media straight on.  One of the things I first noticed about Wes Clark washis integrity. When the military was at it lowest after Vietnamhe stayed with the force; he lived the description of 'honorable.' The military rebuilt itself with men like him. Doesn't it strike you how well and true-ly he lives his spiritual beliefs as a reality in this age of posers and pretenders.  And he exemplifies a powerful leader; he has gone to war with the greatest lethal force the world has ever known and he respects that power. His depth scope and understanding of the right use force and power is amazing. He is unwavering in his bravery  he looks at the deadly anger  passionate revengefear and anguish of the people caught up in the worlds conflicts and he sees how to make the chaos better. He seems to will his way to the next level to bring clarity and calm to situations. Isn't that what a real leader/guardian in charge of national security must do to handle these dangerous world situations?  We  were not able to see him in a situation war room when lives were at stake and security has to be won but what we have seen of his character isso strong and steady; you can imagine what he has done to shape himself into the warrior that leads troops through a battle.  Nobody is going to confuse the story book Wilkes for Wesley. Even peoplewho have/are being conditioned to confuse reality with fantasy won't go for this virtual tar and feathering. He simply rises above it. He is the leaderwe have all been waiting for don't worry about Limbaugh. 

I do appreciate all of your comments very much and I completely agree with you about how great that Gen. Clark is.  That is not in any question at all as far as I am concerned. 

What we have to be very concerned about is being able to effectively communicate Gen. Clark's message to the entire country by about next year if he decides to run for President again in 2008 and Limbaugh will do everything in his power  to try and stop us from doing that if he views Gen. Clark as being a serious threat to him and to the Neocon GOP agenda!  

I really hate to quote this but unfortunately "the Pew Research Center Biennial News Consumption Survey, and if you go to page 28" verifies that Limbaugh ranked number one as the chart below shows in "Proportion of Regular Audiences Following Hard News Closely" so I really do think that we have to worry about Limbaugh!

Page 28 of this PDF link from Pew Research does verify Limbaugh's claim below on the chart where he claims to rank number one:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/pdf/215.pdf

I am sure that this is not the only survey that was ever done but it does at least have to be taken into serious consideration in my opinion! 

I am sorry about the bad news but this is really how serious of an issue that Rush Limbaugh is as far as I can objectively see by the overall amount of evidence that I am seeing!

I also know that it does not make much sense for so many people to think like that but they are.  The evidence below and in some of my other posts shows it!

I have to ask what are we going to do to defend Gen. Clark from Rush Limbaugh's constant attacks and smears to over 25 million people if he targets Gen. Clark like how he has done to Kerry in 2004 and to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who loudly speak out now?

I would say that we all need to be thinking very seriously about the answer to that question now! 

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_032106/content/america_s_anchorman.guest.html

Rush Limbaugh Leads in "Hard News" Audience

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I don't know how we missed this. I really don't -- well, other than it's on page 28 of the report, but nobody talked about this, and I understand why now that I see it, and I also understand why this program is continually despised by elements of the drive-by media. My friends, I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a copy of a report by the Pew Research Center for the peoples and the press that was released on Tuesday, June 8th, of 2004, almost two years ago. "Online news audiences larger, more diverse. News audiences increasingly politicized." This is the Pew Research Center Biennial News Consumption Survey, and if you go to page 28, there is this chart, and it is titled, "Proportion of Regular Audiences Following Hard News Closely."

Now, before I give you the results of the chart, let me read to you the accompanying paragraph that is published just to the left entitled, "Where Hard News Consumers Go -- Most news organizations attract a wide range of news consumers, including the hard-news core and those who are less interested in such news, but some stand out for their high proportion of hard-news viewers and readers. Among the regular audiences for broadcast programs, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, 56% attentive, the Sunday morning interview programs, 52%, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 52%, and Larry King Live, 48%, have especially large numbers of hard-news consumers."

So at the top of the list: Rush Limbaugh's radio show 56%, as the most often cited source where consumers of hard news go. Here is the list in descending order. This show is at the top of the list, and this is the first I've heard about this. They did not publicize this. "Rush Limbaugh's radio show, 56%. Sunday morning news shows, 52%. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 52%. O'Reilly's show, 49%. Larry King Live, 48%, PMSNBC, C-SPAN, 45%. ABC World News Tonight, 44%. Fox News, 43. TV news magazines, 42. CNN, 42. NBC Nightly News, 42. CBS Evening News, 41. The morning news shows, 40. NPR, 40. ESPN, 35. The Daily Show, 23," and that's what the libs think is shaping public opinion in this country is The Daily Show.

So when you boil all this down, what it adds up to is that the largest percentage of consumers of hard news listen to this radio program more so than they do the nightly news programs, and our audience is larger on a daily basis than theirs are. The Sunday morning news shows, and this is the first we've heard of it. You know what? I'm going to scan this. We need to scan this and send it up there to Koko.

Do you have the whole report? You do. It's a pdf file. Get the pdf file for Koko, and I just read page 28 here, plus the cover pages. I'm sure there's a lot of other data in here, but I just don't remember this being reported at all. Hubba hubba. It doesn't surprise me. It explains a whole lot of things. I'll tell you what, it was after the Democrats... but it was a little bit later than this survey.

It was in November of 2004 when the Democrats had again failed, or was it '02 after the Wellstone memorial? Which was it, '02 or '04? Whenever, it was one of those two years, and the Democrats had failed to take back the House, take back the Senate, and they were stunned because, like now, they thought then that it was automatic -- and the Puffster, who was the Senate majority leader at the time, Tom Daschle, said, "Our focus groups have..." and I forget his exact quote. "Our focus groups research indicates that Rush Limbaugh has more people than just conservatives listening. He's not just preaching to the choir," and they were shocked and they were stunned because they've all assumed all this time that the only people who listen to this program are conservative, mind-numbed robots, and they were blown away.

That's when their plans to coalesce behind their own silly little inconsequential liberal radio network started effervescing, if you will, bubbling up. Well, this explains a lot. It does. It explains why this program is so maligned and impugned, because they are jealous. They are just beside themselves, and they can't believe it, and they can't get away with it anymore. They can't. Well, no, they think they can. They think they've actually shaped public opinion on the war and so forth. But that's why I said yesterday, "They think they shape public opinion on the war, but we had all these protests on Sunday and nobody went out there." I mean, piddly little numbers, embarrassing little numbers here for the anti-war crowd.

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Read the Background Material...

(News Audiences Increasingly Politicized Online News Audience Larger, More Diverse)

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=833 

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