Rush Limbaugh on the hot seat
So, what did Rush Limbaugh say? There has been an uproar over Limbaugh’s comments. Personally, Rush is being Rush. He has always degraded anyone who disagreed with him. Always. He doesn’t care if they are politicians, the pope or veterans.
Well, he’s what he said. (BTW, he has scrubbed his web site of the original audio.)
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CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and 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.
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
And now the rest of the transcript:
CALLER: A lot of people.
RUSH: You know where you’re going these days, the last four years, if you sign up. The odds are you’re going there or Afghanistan, or somewhere.
CALLER: Exactly, sir. My other comment, my original comment, was a retort to Jill about the fact we didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction. Actually, we have found weapons of mass destruction in chemical agents that terrorists have been using against us for a while now. I’ve done two tours in Iraq, I just got back in June, and there are many instances of insurgents not knowing what they’re using in their IEDs. They’re using mustard artillery rounds, VX artillery rounds in their IEDs. Because they didn’t know what they were using, they didn’t do it right, and so it didn’t really hurt anybody. But those munitions are over there. It’s a huge desert. If they bury it somewhere, we’re never going to find it.
RUSH: Well, that’s a moot point for me right now.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: The weapons of mass destruction. We gotta get beyond that. We’re there. We all know they were there, and Mahmoud even admitted it in one of his speeches here talking about Saddam using the poison mustard gas or whatever it is on his own people. But that’s moot. What’s more important is all this is taking place now in the midst of the surge working, and all of these anti-war Democrats are getting even more hell-bent on pulling out of there, which means that success on the part of you and your colleagues over there is a great threat to them. It’s frustrating and maddening, and why they must be kept in the minority. I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much.
Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a “corporal.” I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn’t his Purple Heart; it wasn’t his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: “We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque.”
Now, recently, Jesse Macbeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse Macbeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse Macbeth isn’t an Army Ranger, never was. He isn’t a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven’t even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven’t heard much about it. This doesn’t fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don’t look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse Macbeth’s lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can’t find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
TCB -
Did you get the transcript before or after is was edited because it was altered.
BTW, what is here doesn’t change the original meaning of phony soldiers.
I had never heard of Jesse MacBeth before Rush has mentioned him. Maybe Rush is holding him up as a “great” example from the left. I’ll stick with folks that I have mentioned on my radio show - General John Bastiste, General Wesley Clark, Jon Soltz, General Paul Eaton, Tammy Duckworth and Paul Hackett.
Scrubbed?
Don’t know about that. I’ve heard the audio tape and the transcript seems the same as far as I remember. Apparently, I understand that the tape was edited but no one claims that there was any substantial information edited out.
Media Matters failed to print the full transcript and now they acknowledge that Rush did talk about MacBeth but claimed that he really wasn’t talking about MacBeth because his name wasn’t mentioned until 1:50 seconds into the conversation. Pretty thin string to hang an accusation that Rush wasn’t really talking about MacBeth because he mentioned the guy at 1:50 seconds into a conversation instead of 1:40 seconds or 58 seconds.
Media Matters also makes a big deal of the fact the Limbaugh’s comment on Jesse MacBeth was after the phony soldier comment. I assume that they believe that no one understands basic rhetoric. Start with the general then give specific examples to clarify a point. Unfortunately for MM, Rush did clarify the issue during that phone call. MM hearts must have really sank when MacBeth was discussed.
The issue with MacBeth was that there have been several incidences about people (sometimes soldiers) creating stories about Iraq and their roles. MacBeth did not get a lot of notoriety because many military exposed him. I think that locally he is small potatoes compared to The New Republics Scott Thomas who also fabricated some stories. However, MacBeth’s lies were a big hit on Al Jazeera.
Now, all that MM has left is that others journalistic organizations (eg AP) “misrepresented” their attack for not echoing their specious and tendentious arguments.
The saddest aspect of all this was Wesley Clark calling for Congress to create a rating system for political speech. His organization, VoteVets place ran an ad with a vet (Josh Lansdale) who had lied about his involvement in the war. VoteVets scrubbed Lansdale from the ad without explanation. So, I guess Clark might be sensitive about this issue.
ET: BTW, what is here doesn’t change the original meaning of phony soldiers.
Of course, it doesn’t change the meaning. The rest of the story only clarifies the meaning.
Let’s see. In the flow of the conversation, you have Rush responding to a caller. The caller is trying to separate soldiers who support the war and those that don’t. I think that we can agree on this.
Next, Rush responds to his statement. He is categorizing the group of soldiers as phony. Then he reallizes that he has said something that is just hanging out there. So, he pulls in a “phony” soldier to wrap his comments.
This is just one incident. If you want to pretend that Rush doesn’t bash those that disagree with him then that’s fine.
Rush has a history of ugly remarks - Halfrican. Oh, then he groups Halle Berry and Barack Obama in the Halfrican group. What? That not offensive enough for ya’? What about Rush wiggling back and forth in his chair as he makes fun of Michael J Fox? Whether you think that Fox was over the top or not that doesn’t excuse Rush Limbaugh’s actions. What about when Limbaugh said that All Liberals don’t go to church? Or when the only reason that Liberals supported some type of intervention in the Sudan was to lock up the Black vote.
Limbaugh is a talented radio guy who is a blow hard. He says a ton of stuff that is just off the cuff. It is designed to create an emotional response. He will have no data to back up his claims. He is just running his lips.
I don’t think that Rush should be Censured by the Senate or House. I don’t think that he should be pulled off the air. I do think that every time he says something that is racist,sexist or false, he should be called out on it.