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RUSH: We have a call from Iraq from Tallil Air Force Base. Lieutenant Colonel Luke Fitzpatrick somehow got through. Lieutenant Colonel, this is an honor to have you on the phone with us while you're in Iraq -- at any time, actually. Thank you for calling.
CALLER: Good afternoon, I believe it is your time, Rush, and major dittos here from the sandbox.
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate that.
CALLER: I wanted to let you know that you and your cohort, Mr. Hannity, are the only two that I allow to get broadcast across our ready room. The rest of the liberals can go listen on their Walkmans if they so choose.
RUSH: Are you free to say all this? That's cool.
CALLER: Yes, I am. Well, what are they going to do, Rush, send me to Iraq?
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: I mean, honestly. I'm here. I do want to take the time, though, to thank you and everybody else who is back behind us for the support you have given us. This is, let me stress, an all volunteer military. So when you take that into account, all the across-the-aisle bickering as to whether or not we need to be here or not be here, whether we should go home or stay and more force, it really is irrelevant. Every one of us, when we signed the papers, we knew what was going to be asked of us in the worst-case scenario. We are here. We are the best trained standing military force in the world, and I only ask one of two things: either unlock our cage and let us do what we are trained to do better than anyone else in the world, or send us home.
RUSH: Do you feel you're being --
CALLER: I'm a single father, Rush. I lost my wife about 15 years ago. I have two children, and I volunteered to come back here because I live and breathe our country. It is not "land of the free and home of the brave." It is land of the free because of the brave.
RUSH: Profound. That is a profundity, Luke.
CALLER: And that is something that I think a majority of our listeners, whether or not you sit on the left side or the right side of the aisle, you could pass me in the supermarket, at the gas station paying $3 a gallon --
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: -- and not know whom I was, the sacrifices I've made, nor do I want accolades for that, nor do any of my brethren -- brothers and sisters. And this is the first major conflict where there are women in combat fighting roles. And you can talk all you want about Jessica Lynch, and... That was not a combat role. There are women in combat here today, in Baghdad, in Kut, in Mosul, in Basra, in Yusufia, that hold the same responsibilities and the heavy burden on our shoulders, and I -- it's hard to say, Rush, but it starts to feel like Vietnamization, when we can key into our mainstream media. I happen to be from northern Minnesota.
RUSH: Say, Lieutenant Colonel Fitzpatrick, can you hang on? I'm really late on the commercial break, and I have to take it.
CALLER: Absolutely, Rush. Take your time, please, sir.
RUSH: If you can hang on, I'll be right to you right after this. Don't lose your train of thought there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And we are back with Lieutenant Colonel Luke Fitzpatrick from Tallil Air Force Base in Iraq. You were talking about the Vietnamization when you key into the Drive-By Media here and watch their reports on what you're doing.
CALLER: Absolutely, sir. We're just... We're a little concerned as to the fallout, for lack of a better term, of the extended nature of the conflict here -- and we hate to call it a "conflict," because, Rush, somebody shoots at me every night. Every night on combat air patrol, regardless, we get shot at.
RUSH: Let me tell you something, lieutenant colonel. We know what happened when we left Mogadishu, when we left Somalia with victory in our hands, and Clinton decided to pull out --
CALLER: He castrated us, Rush.
RUSH: If we quit in Iraq, we cannot imagine the -- and so a lot of us are sensitive to your concerns with the Drive-By Media. We battle it every day here.
CALLER: In terms of the drive-by, Rush, I was here originally from Shield. I was the second division applied here from Shield, from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, the Fourth Fighter Wing. I was here from Shield through Storm through Enduring Freedom, now Operation OIF, Iraqi Freedom. The reason I came back is because I felt that the job was not finished, and it's not finished. Yes, we have a standing government, but I get shot at every night. I come home with holes in my airplane, Rush. Granted they're not critical.
RUSH: What do you fly?
CALLER: One day it may be, and you will read about me on CNN, and I will be that blurb, and I will show up in that 2600-some-odd casualty figure that the Drive-By Media is obsessed with of how many people have died over here, because we are an all-volunteer force -- and that is the main reason that we called in today. I'm calling in, I just happened to be the mouthpiece for the squadron here, the 336th Tactical Fighter Wing from Seymour Johnson, the Rocketeers. We're an F-15E Strike Eagle squadron. We fly-by-night. Our motto is, "Raining fire from above for the freedom that we love."
RUSH: Wow. Wow! (Laughing.)
CALLER: And, you know, a little short of the death-from-above syndrome, but we're here to do a job, and I'm tired of being handcuffed and the guys I command and constantly send into battle every day knowing that they could not come back and I'll have to write that you letter to their significant others, to their moms, to their dads.
RUSH: Lieutenant colonel, I hate to have to do this. I have to stop you because I'm out of time here, but let me just --
CALLER: That's fine, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you so much. You have made the program today. You have brought tears to people's eyes. I've been reading e-mail from them about it, and just know that everybody in this audience and the vast majority of the American people, love you and support what you're doing and wish you the best, and thank you.
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