The slanderous "General Betray Us" ad by the Soros-funded MoveOn.org backfired badly and was widely condemned, so the left went into damage-control mode. Yesterday, the Soros-funded Media Matters launched a counter-attack. According to this "media watchdog" organization, Rush Limbaugh, who criticized the MoveOn.org ad, was guilty of even worse slander:
During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq "phony soldiers."
The media have been quick to parrot the Media Matters claim (without any attempt to verify it or contact Limbaugh, naturally). Members of Congress have denounced Limbaugh and demanded that Republicans and the President condemn his remarks just as they did the MoveOn.org ad.
There's only one problem with this Soros counter-attack: it's false. Rush Limbaugh didn't call soldiers who criticized the war "phony," he called soldiers who are, well, phony "phony." Phony soldiers like Jesse MacBeth, who was just sentenced to prison for lying about his military service. Who, like the Winter Soldiers promoted by Sen. John Effin' Kerry in 1971, lied about atrocities and slandered the U.S. military for political purposes.
Media Matters posted almost the whole transcript of the show segment during which Limbaugh and Mike in Olympia, WA, talked about "phony soldiers." But they omitted the relatively short portion following the line they misrepresented. Susan Duclos has the complete transcript (the public post at Rush's site will probably disappear after a few days). Here's the end of the segment (emphasis added):
RUSH: … 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 TRANSCRIPT
Jesse MacBeth was sentenced on the 21st, and Limbaugh has talked about the case several times since. So Limbaugh didn't attack "our troops in Iraq" — he attacked frauds and liars like Jesse MacBeth and "Scott Thomas" who smear our troops, falsely painting them as depraved monsters who routinely commit atrocities and behave "in a manner reminiscent of Jenn-Jiss Kaaaahn," to quote John Effin' Kerry.
But don't expect the media to offer corrections or outraged Democrats to retract their denunciations. You can expect to hear about how "that chicken hawk Rush insulted the troops" for a long time. Hell, I'm still waiting for John Murtha to apologize for calling the Haditha Marines "cold-blooded murderers." Maybe he'll be ordered to do so when Sgt. Frank Wuterich wins his defamation suit.
