The Rush/Cheney Interview the way it OUGHT to be I will now post the Rush Limbaugh interview with Dick Cheney the way I think it ought to have been, with remarkable candor from both men, if men they be. In order to make this fair, while I must have both hands to type, I will do so with one lobe of my brain behind my back. I know this sounds dangerous, but a highly qualified animal veterinarian from Iowa State University of Animal Husbandry and Consumation is here to do exactly that. Please engage... apsydfff asioyu lssjn sorus zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Excuse me, it appears that disabling half of what I have for higher functions impedes my motor skills, so we will have to go back to normal. I don't know how Limbaugh does it, because clearly he has been hosting a radio show without higher functions for years -- behold the power of oxycontin. In any case below is the interview the way it OUGHT to be, the original interview can be found here (if you dare): http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site__032204/content/stack_a.guest.html RUSH LIMBAUGH: We are always happy to be able to talk to Vice President Dick Cheney who joins us now on the phone. Vice President Cheney, thank you for making time. It's great to have you with us once again. VICE PRESIDENT DICK: Well, thanks, Rush, it's good to talk to you. RUSH: All right, let's get straight to what the news is all about now before we branch out to things. Why did the administration keep Richard Clarke on the counterterrorism team when you all assumed office in January of 2001? DICK: Well, I wasn't directly involved in that decision, inspite of the fact I was intimately involved in every facet of the transition team. I was busy meeting with several campaign contributors studying high-definition relief maps of the Iraqi Oil Fields with Scooter, Paul and Steve Hadley. Eventually, Mr. Clarke was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things. Of course, that was a couple of months after September 11th, so my point is really pure unadulterated crap, but still for the purposes of your listenership it will suffice. RUSH: Cybersecurity? Meaning Internet security? DICK: Yeah, worried about attacks on computer systems and sophisticated information technology systems we have these days that an adversary would use or try use. Although I believe he primarily wanted to focus in on the internet sale of illegal and prescription drugs and porn. RUSH: Well, now, that explains a lot, that answer right there. Good thing for me he's gone. DICK: Well, he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff, and I saw part of his interview last night. At least that is what I am telling you and the overstated, uncritical group of lemmings and shut-ins that comprise your listenership. RUSH: He was demoted. DICK: Well for our campaigns purpose, Rush, I'll say that he clearly missed a lot of what was going on, though the truth is the guy was always considered an over the top worry wart about Al Queda even during the Clinton years. Say, you folks remember that Clinton got a blowjob and then lied about it right? For example, in spite of the fact that I was busy contemplating the sweet sweet oil of Kirkuk early on in the Administration, I do remember that just three weeks after we got here, there was communication, well really there wasn't, but I'm just saying...with the president of Pakistan laying out our concerns about Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda and the importance of going after the Taliban and getting them to end their support for the Al-Qaeda. This was, I'd say, within three weeks of our arrival here, or eight months or so, its so hard to remember -- I mean not even I can look at my notes from that period. So the only thing I can say about Dick Clarke is he was here throughout those eight years going back to 1993, and the first attack on the World Trade Center in '98 when the embassies were hit in east Africa, in 2000 when the USS Cole was hit, and the question that out to be asked is, what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts? Frankly, Rush it's obvious, like all problems foreign and domestic it all falls squarely at the feet of the Clinton Administration. If I wasn't a pork chop short of a heart attack, I'd get really upset about this complete and utter lie, but as it is, I'll just calm down thinking about the lesbian love scene that Lynne wrote of in her masterpiece "Sisters", available through Amazon.com RUSH: Well, you know, the media finally has what it wants, I'm talking the partisan media has what it wants. But when will I get what I want? More of those beautiful beautiful pills, so tiny, so smooth, so comforting....oh, sorry, anyway the media now has got an independent contractor, man who's worked for both administrations now launching full barrels of rich rich crude at the president, and one of the claims that Clark is making is, and you just countered it, he said the president didn't treat Al-Qaeda as a serious threat before September 11th. He keeps harping on the fact that even before your administration assumed office you guys wanted to go in and level Iraq. DICK: Yeah, well that pretty much is the case, but inspite of the truth of Mr. Clarke's factual assertions -- his remarkably detailed factual assertions, we are still going to tell you and your dupes that what the president did not want to do is to have an ineffective response with respect to Al-Qaeda and the only possible way to do that was to attack Iraq. I mean, obviously we knew they were in Afghanistan, but they might have expected us there. They NEVER would have expected us to attack Iraq at that time. But damn this tricky international law and stuff, we had to go into Afghanistan first. RUSH: Why do you think -- and he's not the first, Clarke is not the first -- why do you think so many opponents of the president, what do they hope to achieve by continually attacking Condoleezza Rice? The whole world knows that I love the black people. Most of my quality drug runners were black people -- and I tipped them, why do they pick on poor oppressed Ms. Butterworths, I mean Ms. Rice? DICK: Well, I think it's shortsighted. Condie is well able to defend herself, she's done a superb job for us and extremely knowledgeable about the Cold War and the history of the Soviet Union. And the fact that neither of those items really applies anymore is beside the point when you are running against a guy who looks like a Frenchman. RUSH: Well I guess -- DICK: I've worked with a lot of them over the years. Black people that is. I suppose he may have a grudge to bear there since he probably wanted a more prominent position than she was prepared to give him, I mean I know that isn't true and so do you, but who is to say your listeners can even clamp their jaws shut, let alone figure stuff like that out? I think its really unfortunate in that its been known since we came into office in January 2001, that only the President, myself and Karl Rove are entitled to hold grudges in America. RUSH: I guess what I'm getting at is whenever it comes to the counterterrorism efforts, foreign policy in general, it seems that elements of the Democratic Party today and their allies attack Condoleezza Rice, which is a matter of real curiosity to me, and of course she can defend herself, as she did today in the Washington Post, but it's just part of what appears to me an obvious attack machine at full throttle. You have this book coming out while John Kerry is on vacation, so he doesn't have to say this stuff. Have I mentioned explicitly that she is black yet? The author of this book is associated with Kerry's foreign policy advisor up at the Kennedy school. You've got a Bob Woodward book that's coming in a few weeks from the same publisher. Despite all of these attacks, and by the way, I actually think Mr. Vice President if you'll permit me an editorial comment here, you have the Clinton administration, if they defended the country as eagerly and with as much fervor as they are attempting to defend themselves in all this, we might have -- I don't expect you to comment -- we might have escaped some of the attacks that we've had. But with this frontal assault, the president's poll numbers remain up, the administration remains focused, they haven't taken you off your game. What effect, both in a governing sense and in a political sense, is this full frontal assault having on all of you in the White House? Oh man, it's like I'm back on the Hillbilly Heroin that diatribe was so very sweet. What do you think Mr. Vice President? DICK: Well, we've got to get on with our business. There's plenty work to be done, there are other nation's to invade, other patriotic liberals to debase, ethnic foods to rename with the word "Freedom". The terrorist threat is very real, and we will keep saying so until our perpetual war policy becomes enacted into the fiber of the American spirit. It continues out there every day. The president and I and Condie Rice, Andy Card, begin our day six days a week meeting with the director of the CIA and the director of the FBI and reviewing intelligence and working these problems, and at the end of every meeting we tell them the same thing, it is all either Saddam's fault, Clinton's fault or both. And I think we've done that fairly well. We can't let our guard down, we've got to remain vigilant, we've still got major issues, obviously, in the sense that terrorists have launched many attacks around the world since 9/11 in places like Madrid most recently, but Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali, Jakarta, Mombassa, it's a worldwide global problem and it's got to be dealt with I think very aggressive just the way the president's dealt with it. And the Supreme Court willing, we will do so for another four and a half years. RUSH: Mr. Clarke, to get back to him for a moment, I know that he actually doesn't say anything at all like this, but I'm going to allege that he is saying this anyway -- that if we would just take some more time and talk to these people, understand why they hate us, we might be able to forge some kind of peace with them. CHENEY: I think that's totally inaccurate. But you know, I've never let falsity or errors deter me from my tasks Rush, nor prevent me from staying on message.