Rush Limbaugh's interview with President Bush today............

"RUSH: You've riled the press corps at one of the press conferences at the White House when you intimated that their work in Iraq has sometimes advanced the cause of the enemy, and there's a recent example of this. CNN recently aired video that they got from terrorists. They reached out to these terrorists, and according to accounts, the way they got the tape from terrorists was to promise the terrorists a "fair shake." This video showed terrorists taking pot shots, assassinating US soldiers in cold blood. What are your thoughts as the Commander-in-Chief when you see this and when you hear about this?

THE PRESIDENT: My thoughts are that we face an enemy that will kill innocent people. They murder to achieve their objectives, and they use propaganda in order to do two things. One: proclaim their might, and secondly to discourage us. Obviously the idea of their propaganda being displayed is something that bothers me in the sense that I don't want the American people to become discouraged. One: I want them to understand the stakes in this war; and, two, that we're going to win this war and not to be discouraged about the violence and the propaganda that they see. Obviously, some of the violence is not propaganda, but these tapes that they put out are all aimed at shaking our confidence.

Osama Bin Laden himself has said that it's just a matter of time before the United States loses its will and retreats. Give me a second here, Rush, because I want to share something with you. I am deeply concerned about a country, the United States, leaving the Middle East. I am worried that rival forms of extremists will battle for power, obviously creating incredible damage if they do so; that they will topple modern governments, that they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West. People say, "What do you mean by that?" I say, "If they control oil resources, then say they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies. You couple that with a country that doesn't like us with a nuclear weapon and people will look back at this moment and say, 'What happened to those people in 2006?' and those are the stakes in this war we face." On the one hand we've got a plan to make sure we protect you from immediate attack, and on the other hand we've got a long-term strategy to deal with these threats, and part of that strategy is to stay on the offense. Part of the strategy is to help young democracies like Lebanon and Iraq be able to survive against the terrorists and the extremists who are trying to crush their hopes, and part of the democracy is for a freedom movement, which will help create the conditions so that the extremists become marginalized and unable to recruit.

RUSH: Well, that is extremely visionary. One of the things, if I may make this personal, one of the many things I've admired about you is that you see down the road 20 or 30 years. You just illustrated that with your comment. What if down the road 20 years we look back to this time and with 20-20 hindsight realize we blew it. You're not, as far as it sounds to me, you're not going to let that happen. You're going to do whatever it takes to secure victory.

THE PRESIDENT: I am and I fully understand the nature of this enemy. One: they're great propagandists, and two: they truly believe they can cause us to retreat by inflicting enough damage, and three: they're lethal. But I also understand they have no vision; they have no ideology. I mean, they have an ideology, they just can't convince people that their ideology makes sense, and I also understand that we're inflicting damage on them. That we're on the hunt, that we're bringing them to justice; that if you're al-Qaeda you know the United States of America is breathing down your neck, and we will continue to do so so long as I'm the president -- and Iraq is a tough fight. The recent debate here on Iraq, some say Iraq is a "distraction" from the war on terror. My answer to them is, listen to Osama Bin Laden who says: "Our objective is to defeat America, which will disgrace America, which embolden the terrorists," which will then enable them, them being al-Qaeda and extremists, to have safe haven just like they had in Afghanistan -- and we're not going to do let them do it. No matter how tough it gets, the United States of America must remain firm and resolve to protect a generation of young Americans, and that's precisely what I'm going to do as your president and that's precisely what I'm telling the people on the campaign trail."

[President Bush Limbaugh]