When 380 tons of high explosives
disappeared from U.S. custody following the fall of Baghdad - they blamed the troops. ("Lazy", "Incompetent"?)
When the Abu Ghraib torture story broke - they blamed the troops. ("Bad apples on the night shift")
When one soldier complained to Donald Rumseld about "Hillbilly Armor" they said he was being manipulated by the media to ask the question.
And now after General Eaton has stated that "
Conservatives are the worst thing to ever happen to the military", Gen. Sanchez stated that "
This War is Lost", CBS has
fired Gen. Batiste for criticizing the Iraq War all of the Right-Wing is racing the Rush Limbaugh's defense now that he's been accused of saying veterans who criticize the Iraq War are "phony soldiers."
It's long past time we put this question to them directly.
Why do Rush, Fox and the Right-Wing Hate our Troops?It's not like this is news to anyone that's been paying attention, but the blatantness of it has become truly stunning.
Rush Limbaugh is now claiming that
he's the victim of a smear campaign, that when he said "Phony Soldiers" (not singular, plural - not soldier -
soldierS) he wasn't talking about people like General Eaton, or General Batiste or General Sanchez or General Shinseki or General Zinni - or the
20 retired Generals who've all come out an opposed the surge and our overall strategy in Iraq (not to mention
Admiral Fallon the current head of Centcom) - no, he wasn't talking about any of them. Nah. Don't be silly.
When he said this....
CALLER 2: What's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.
LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.
He didn't mean, y'know,
what he said.You didn't hear or read what you just thought you heard. It's just an illusion. A phantasm. A poltergeist playing tricks on your mind.
Rush meant something else entirely, and you're a fool if you don't know it.
Fox News says so.
Rush originally used this term, "phony soldiers," when he was talking about a guy named Jesse MacBeth. Jesse MacBeth never served in Iraq, says Rush. He claimed to have a Purple Heart; he didn't. This guy was propped up by the left, because he opposes the Iraq war, as some sort of hero, as a talking-points guy, this Jesse MacBeth was, and Rush Limbaugh was making the point that this guy was basically a "phony soldier," and he was trying to say that sometimes people on the left use "phony soldiers" like this to make their points.
So this Jesse MacBeth guy who literally
isn't a soldier and has been convited of fraud is what Limbaugh meant. See, no problem.
Some
Soldiers do be phony.So why is it that Limbaugh didn't mention this Jesse guy until almost
2 minutes later?
I guess that caller just
knew what Rush was going to be thinking in another 1 minute and 50 seconds. Makes perfect sense.
You see, real soldiers - unlike the "phony ones" like Jesse who've never really worn a uniform - are proud of their service.
CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.
LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --
So it's not like you might have one of these "phony soldiers" who might have actually served is it? Never happen.
Ummmm.. how about
John Murtha?
LIMBAUGH: You shouldn't hold your breath because there's no standard to hold me to, in the sense that you're -- I never said what you think I said, Congressman Pallone, Congresswoman Schakowsky , Sen. Kerry , or any of the rest of you in the drive-by media. I was talking about a genuine phony soldier. And by the way, Jesse MacBeth's not the only one. How about this guy Scott Thomas who was writing fraudulent, phony things in The New Republic about atrocities he saw that never happened? How about Jack Murtha blanketly accepting the notion that Marines at Haditha engaged in wanton murder of innocent children and civilians?
So Murtha's apparently a "phony soldier" because he believes that some of our soldiers in Iraq killed innocent civilians at Haditha? (Mirroring false claims made by MacBeth) But Rush - Everyone Believes That because
that's what happened. (via Time)
But one morning last November, some members of Kilo Company apparently didn't attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood.
Blackwater
deja vu anyone?
Others who felt that way? How about
General Batiste.I, however, see a direct link between Haditha, the national embarrassment of Abu Ghraib, going on four years now of uncontrollable chaos in Iraq, with the bad judgment, poor decisions of our secretary of defense back in late 2003 and 2004.
Note that Batiste isn't
blaming the troops here, he's blaming the leadership, of which he was a member. Just as John Kerry didn't blame the troops either back in 1971, he
blamed the leadership and John Murtha didn't blame the troops, he blamed the... oh you get it already.
Murtha's big issue with Haditha besides the massacre itself was actually the
cover-up of that massacre by leaders at the Pentagon.
MURTHA: I can only tell you this, Charles. This is what the Marine Corps told me at the highest level. The Commandant of the Marine Corps was in my office just last week, so you know, I know there was a cover-up someplace. They knew about this a few days afterwards and there’s no question the chain of command tried to stifle the story. I can understand why, but that doesn’t excuse it. Something like this has to be brought out to the public, and the people have to be punished.
GIBSON: The commandant told you that this was a case of murder?
MURTHA: Charlie, don’t mince words here. The commandant said it was a very serious incident. He was not going to tell me it was murder, but everything looked to him just like it looks to me. He didn’t say that in so many words, but he told me exactly what happened.
So yeah, Murtha's deserves to be associated with a liar and petty crook who tried to rip off the VA - but Rush wasn't like calling him a "
Phony" or anything. Except like when he was.
And it's not like Rush has ever called other servicemen phonies or anything. It's not like he's ever said that about John Kerr...
oops.
(Reading From Washington Post article by Richard Cohen) "...during the campaign, the Republican ticket and its allies in the Swift Boat Veterans movement managed to paint Kerry as a quivering liar. The character attack was so bold, so outrageous, that it of course worked."
Rush: No, it worked because it was true! The guy's a fraud! He's a total phony, and people were able to see it!
Ok, so the only "phonies" are MacBeth, Scott Thomas, John Murtha and John Kerry.
That's not so bad, right? None of them actually served
in IRAQ. It's not like anyone has taken up Rush's mantle and used it against troops who've actually
served in the current war or anything. Anyone except
Melanie Morgan that is.
A number of, of, soldiers who are fake, or who are embellishers, or who are posers. Who go out there, or soldiers like Jon Soltz from VoteVet.org who go out there and use their far left, anti-America agenda. Political agenda to undermine the real mission of our troops, our heros who are out there.
Thanks Melanie, you've really made Rush's point that he was only talking about Jesse MacBeth (and Scott Thomas, and John Murtha and John Kerry - and via proxy - Jon Soltz).
Then there's
Tucker Carlson who said in response to an op-ed by 7 members of the 82nd Airborne who criticized the war...
Carlson: How the hell to know, (if the vast majority of Iraqis want the U.S. in their country?)
Well, gee, I don't know maybe they got the hint after a few dozen IED attacks. And maybe that view was somewhat reenforced after two more of them were
killed in action.But nevermind them, let's get back to the
real victim here. Poor Rush.
It's all been so unfair to Rush, I mean he's be so
taken out of context that's why he's had to
re-edit his own transcript to remove the comments just to make sure that's his real (edited) comments are properly understood.
And then when Capt. Jon Soltz of VoteVets got a
might bit peeved with Limbaugh and launched an ad campaign against his comments...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKM_NsTswcoRush of course accused Brian McGough, the wounded soldier featured in the ad, of being used as a
suicide bomb-thrower.
This is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said and then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media and a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into.
So tastefully stated, considering that particular vet was wounded by an
actual suicide bomber. And who might that person who "armed this valiant soldier with lies" be?
Might it perhaps be Iraq War Vet Capt. Jon Soltz?
Time and time again, people like Rush, Morgan and Tucker demean exactly what it is our troops are fighting for - protecting our freedom. Our freedom to think for ourselves and speak our minds openly while their corporate overloads quiet look the other way, like Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays says he
refuses to condemn Rush for his comments although Senator Webb, Senator Reid, Senator Harkin, Rep. Pallone, Rep. Udall and General Wesley Clark have.
After that big MoveOn kerfuffle about not "insulting the troops" not one single Republican Senator has signed on to the Reid Letter to Clear Channel against Limbaugh's comments.
NOT ONE. Y'know with Rush being
so misunderstood all all...
Since Rudy Guinliani thought it was perfectly fine to attack Hilliary Clinton
for Not Attacking Move On, clearly they must think it's perfectly ok to
accuse soldiers of being fake and phony liars (especially if they happen to support Democrats or simply oppose Republican positions or gasp - oppose our current war strategy). I mean c'mon, Democrats are "traitors" by definition right? Just ask Ann Coulter.
We can't like, have soldiers who
think for themselves! How can we properly implement a Myanmar-styled
military junta under the guise of a never-ending state of perpetual emergency and suppress all dissent and opposition to the current regime that way?
In their world the "real soldiers" are the ones willing to used as cannon fodder in a failed war, using a failed strategy with
no questions asked. They fight without proper gear, in unarmed vehicles, have to drink contaminated water and then if they happen to be wounded instead of killed - have to live in rat infested squalor while government contractors from KBR to Blackwater cash-in to the tune of Billions.
They're nothing more than
Sheeple ready for the slaughter.
In the real world, real soldiers who are certainly willing to fight and die for our rights when required, like those 20 Generals, like Jack Murtha, John Kerry, those seven members of the 82nd Airborne, Jon Soltz, Brian McGough and literally a million others have
absolutely every right to question why their being asked to make these sacrifices, and every right - no, a RESPONSIBLITY - to say so when they think that
we're going the wrong way.And that's exactly why the right-wing hates our troops. Because all of them just might not be the unthinking lemming zombie jack-booted neo-facists that they might dream for...
...some of them, those willing to speak Truth to Power, are True American Heroes.
Vyan
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