Rush Limbaugh calls anti-war troops "phony soldiers." One wonders if he's literally doubting the existence of such people, and thus proving himself to be an idiot, or metaphorically doubting their authenticity as soldiers, thus proving himself to be morally contemptible. Both are, obviously, plausible end-states for Rush.
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Phony Soldiers
28 Sep 2007 01:12 am
Comments (43)
Such a brave chickenhawk isn't he?
Now that MoveOn.com and the Left opened the doors to political attacks on active duty soldiers, why should you be surprised that the Right has joined in? Enjoy.
What do you mean, "opened" it, Harry? See:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/20/ledeen/index.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054108.php
I hope the DNC pays Rush well to continue his caricature portrayal of an over-the-top deranged fellow. Every time he opens his mouth, the GOP loses votes.
Let's see: an overweight, overhyped, drug addicted, multiply married media millionaire who has never worn the uniform of his nation attacks the very existence of soldiers who question the wisdom of their ill-defined mission. How do we react?
Every politician who has appeared on any of Limbaugh's shows should be confronted with the following two questions:
1. Do you condemn Limbaugh's attacks on our troops?
2. Now that Limbaugh has attacked our combat troops, do you pledge never again to appear on any of Limbaugh's programs?
I suppose you could ask him; It's "Open Line Friday", after all.
Reading the transcript it is clear that Limbaugh and the active duty soldier are referring to anti-Americans on the Left that pose as soldiers for what they think will be extra credibility. It's an old game Lefties have engaged in since "Winter Soldiers" where Lefty actors posed as soldiers to a credulous media and began talking about "the horrific atrocities they had witnessed".
Usually to us Vets, the fake soldiers are easy to sniff out unless the Lefty has constructed an elaborate cover..but even then you can usually bore in and catch them on stuff they think is minor detail, but is an instant "flag" to a serving or former soldier they are full of shit. But the game continues today. To anti-Americans, who deep down loath the military, hate ROTC, and see dead soldiers only as useful tools of protest - what is the deterrence to them lying?
Limbaugh, having never served, lacks the fine-tuned military BS detector but his show has no shortage of currently serving of Vets that will call in if Limbaugh misses the Lefty faker..which is what happened in this instance as Mike with 14-years Army called in to say the previous Mike was another fake anti-War Vet.
The actual anti-war contingent in the military tends to be circumspect - only writing the media or expressing dissatisfaction with circumstances like armoring vehicles after they have gone through their chain of command to no avail. THe 101st had 6 soldiers that did a very commendable dissent last spring, though most others in the 101st disagreed with their read. The military is a large organization so you can expect a few malcontents and liars like Scott THomas Beauchamp, JOhn Kerry - that side with the Lefties and anti-War, anti-American factions - but they are rare.
"To anti-Americans, who deep down loath the military, hate ROTC, and see dead soldiers only as useful tools of protest - what is the deterrence to them lying?"
There is none. That's why Rush lies.
shorter Chris Ford: only a right-wing loyalist can be true soldier.
Chris could have theoretically had a point there, but bringing up John Kerry shows his true opinions. Evidentally, guys in combat platoons getting shot at are phony soldiers. You know, I heard that similar arguments brought up by the same folks when one John McCain was running for prez to. THose POWs, real phony soldiers.
I guess having "leftist" opinions just makes you a phony.
Rush Limbaugh calls anti-war troops "phony soldiers."
And in a related story, George Bush calls anti-war college professors "pseudo-intellectuals.""
Chris Ford, you be sayin' da truth! It's like during the Civil Rights movement, when a whole bunch of white actors used to come on TV posing as negroes, and talkin' jive about lynchings and beatings and thangs. Fortunately, real negroes like me can sniff out a fake negro a mile away.
I think Chris Ford's warning that only right-wingers are "real" soldiers should be posted in every military recruitment office. Kids signing up for service ought to know what they are committing themselves to--not just fighting and possibly dying for their country, but handing over their minds to a particular segment of a particular political party.
Of course, I don't know that this will help the Army in meeting its recruitment goals . . .
- that side with the Lefties and anti-War, anti-American factions -
Um, this is probably nothing, but why is the word "war" capitalized? It's not a proper noun, after all. Come to think of it, why is "lefties" capitalized. Is that supposed to signify the "left" as some kind of organized, coherent, mobilized consensus group (and implicitly defined as anti-American, at that)?
Ah.
Of course it is.
Cute. Real cute.
Both are, obviously, plausible end-states for Rush.
And not mutually exclusive!
Re Rush Limbaugh
What else should one expect from a fascist cocksucker like Mr. Limbaugh. Considering that he is a draft dodging drug addict, one should consider his criticisms of serving soldiers rather fine. As for the antisemitic Nazi bastard Chris Ford, he and Limbaugh are two peas in a pod.
Is that supposed to signify the "left" as some kind of organized, coherent, mobilized consensus group
it's a cabal, a conspiracy, a sinister collusion. it's a subversive vermin organization, trying to bring down his pure, honest, noble nation from the inside.
i'm only surprised he didn't find a way to work The Jew into it.
To us Vets, we heard a variety of views in the barracks when the officers weren't around, and while there were few spouting any 'leftist' rhetoric, there was a whole lot of "F*** all this sh*t", or "a lot of these wars are got up to make money" or "I think all these politicians are crooks and I just want to live on a mountain out west and just shoot anyone that comes near".
There were on occasion ideological blowhards who came through, but mostly they were the weekend warriors, especially the weekend warrior officers, who would make all sorts of bullsh*t declarations about the grand nature of their majestic duty, and they were really easy to detect by anyone serving full time active duty.
"...fake soldiers are easy to sniff out..."
I'm smelling somethin', maybe it's a pair of flaming pantaloons...
Yes, all the real soldiers are serving in the 101st Keyboard commandos, or serving their country by working in Dad's campaign. They prove their authenticity as warriors by having the right opinions.
Chris Ford mentions "Winter Soldiers" as his only real world example of anti-war activists ("anti-Americans") posing as veterans. According to Wikipedia (not a perfect source, I know) each speakers background was checked by the organizers, by the Nixon administration and by the media. Got any links Mr. Ford?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Soldier_Investigation
The military is a large organization so you can expect a few malcontents and liars--says Chris Ford.
It has been pointed out before, but bears repeating, on August 19, 7 men from the 82nd Airborne published an op ed in the NY Times strongly criticizing the Bush Adminstration's Iraq policies. Two of those 7 were killed in action on September 12. These are the men that Limbaugh calls "phoney soliders" and Chris Ford calls "malcontents and liars".
They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but of course, the likes of Limbaugh and Ford are shameless . . .
SLC is completely right here, though crude. Chris Ford is beyond degenerate.
REA --
It has been pointed out before, but bears repeating, on August 19, 7 men from the 82nd Airborne published an op ed in the NY Times strongly criticizing the Bush Adminstration's Iraq policies. Two of those 7 were killed in action on September 12. These are the men that Limbaugh calls "phoney soliders" and Chris Ford calls "malcontents and liars".
-- Another of the 7, had already tragically been shot in the head when the article was published. This soldier is fortunately recovering.
"Of course, Linbaugh could be referring to Jesse Macbeth, who most certainly was a phony soldier."
Yes, Al, ONE certainly is a pattern.
actually, al, you could have convinced me that he was referring to that supremely phony soldier, george bush.
Seeing as Limbaugh was referring to MacBeth earlier, and mere sentences after in the transcript, Al has a point. A link to the transcript would have been nice Mr. Yglesias.
Correct me if I am wrong but there have been a couple episodes of "phony Soldiers" in the media. Some were Soldiers with trumped up charges and some who never actually served in Iraq or in the military. I distinctly remember a woman who was in the "never in Iraq" category. Maybe Rush is referring to them.
BTW - I can't stand him and never listen to him.
For Chrissakes, Yglesias, dig a little deeper than Media Matters before you pontificate and slander someone.
Start here. We await your retraction.
Actually, the Winter Soldier hearings were important to get out the message about the way the American military had embarked on a campaign of systematic war crimes to liquidate an indigenous rebellion against a phony entity, i.e the state of South Vietnam. There were no actors playing soldiers involved, and in fact, the stories they told (some exaggerated, some not) are found again and again when researchers actually talk to soldiers who did fight in Vietnam. The Toledo Blade won a pulitzer prize, recently, for its investigation of the Tiger Force in Vietnam, talking to veterans about what happened in 1965 and 1966. Here's an excerpt:
"It would be 36 years before the American public would learn of the elite unit known as Tiger Force, and its unprovoked attacks on Vietnamese villagers.
The platoon’s war crimes were revealed in a recent Blade series, "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths," which described the slaughter of unarmed civilians by the soldiers between May and November, 1967.
The Army investigated the case for 4 1/2 years, substantiating 20 war crimes involving 18 soldiers. But no one was charged.
As a public information officer who moved among fighting units, Mr. Stout said he watched the platoon soldiers routinely kill men, women, and children, but was unable to stop the brutality.
"I knew what they were doing was wrong - this unit was out of control," said the former sergeant, who wrote for the Screaming Eagle, the newspaper of the 1st Battalion/327th Infantry. "There was no reason for what they did. No reason at all."
It wasn’t just Tiger Force.
During his five months as a press officer, he said soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division - the larger unit that included Tiger Force -were committing atrocities.
He watched 22 paratroopers rape and execute a woman, he said, and a medic pump swamp water into the heart of a prisoner before he was fatally shot by soldiers.
Mr. Stout said he told a master sergeant, but was ordered to forget the
killings. He confided to a chaplain but was warned to keep quiet.
After leaving the Army in 1969, he complained to Army officials who promised to investigate.
But for three decades, the Pentagon refused to say what happened to his case - and the detailed records he provided to agents."
This isn't because the army enlists moral cretins - in fact, I'd guess the army's appeal is often to people who are more sensitive to honor and justice - but because fighting in the cause of injustice ultimately leads to unjust strategies that have to be implemented by someone.
Of course, Vietnam was fought, ultimately, using a draft. Iraq is a visibly cleaner war, which is to be expected from a volunteer force - while the Americans have committed terrible war crimes in, say, the sacking of Fallujah, on the whole the military is much more disciplined now, and its worst side almost always comes out only by way of top level encouragement, as in Abu Ghraib. Still, since the invasion was unjust and the occupation is unjust and incompetent, its day to day operation will become more and more cruel and inhuman. Unsurprisingly, just as the return of veterans from Vietnam fed into a spike in violent crime rates, the Iraq war is leading us to another spike in violent crime rates.
"Of course, Limbaugh could be referring to Jesse Macbeth, who most certainly was a phony soldier."
I caught a few minutes of Rush's show today, and he said as much. He wasn't calling anti-war soldiers phony, he was calling anti-war lefties who impersonate combat veterans phony. Jesse Macbeth did join the Army, but he washed out of basic training and was discharged. He then claimed to be an Army Ranger/Iraq War veteran and described lurid atrocities he "committed" in Iraq. He is the sort of phony Rush was referring to.
You can hear this on the link Matthew Dallman provided here.
To recap: there are 3 categories of anti-war soldiers:
1. THe real ones who try working the problem through the chain-of-command and who then honorably take their dissent from the prevailing opinion of their peers to Congress in letters, or open public letters - like 6 in the 82nd Airborne, not 101st...They do this openly and inform their commanders they are in dissent - a very honorable thing. And a path where they may take consequences..
2. Malcontents and liars who are actual soldiers intent on subverting from within. Scott Thomas Beauchamp is in that group, a few deserters that went over and served the enemy side. John Kerry is in this category for meeting with N Vietnamese and VC in Paris while still a serving Naval officer, lying about his exploits, and sliming his fellow officers and enlisted men as Ghengis Khans.
3. The fakers on the Left who masquerade as soldiers or Vets because, though they personally loath the military and loath the idea of risking their asses for the most evil country on the planet. To oppress innocent Jihadis, Commies, etc.
But from Winter Soldier on, they think that claiming to be a Military person gives them authority and credibility. Most of these buffoons claim to be combat Vets, officers, and from some elite unit..which makes them fairly easy for actual Vets to sniff out but swallowed hook line and sinker by guillable college women...NPR femmes...and to their professional embarassment....journalists.
A subspecies is the Lefty who actually was a soldier, but who exaggerate their role. The Ward Churchill type - an audiovisual projectionist and base newspaper writer who morphed into a deady recon platoon member using his Indian skills to unwittingly serve evil capitalist oil interests.
Seeing as Limbaugh was referring to MacBeth earlier, and mere sentences after in the transcript, Al has a point. A link to the transcript would have been nice Mr. Yglesias.
Posted by Clovis
MY was dishonest. Limbaugh was clearly referring to anti-American Lefties like MacBeth who pose as soldiers or Vets for added "creds" when they call in, post Blog comments, or stupidly do so in public meetings like MacBeth did where he could be checked out..
Jennifer appears to be an ignorant, silly twat who writes emotional one-liner rants.
To recap...Posted by Chris Ford
My crazy right wing talking points have not carried the day!!! My labels of traitors & cowards have not been adopted!!! Maybe if I keep repeating myself I'll finally be admired by my FrontPageMag stinkoe friends!!! Please listen!!!
Roger - Actually, the Winter Soldier hearings were important to get out the message about the way the American military had embarked on a campaign of systematic war crimes to liquidate an indigenous rebellion against a phony entity, i.e the state of South Vietnam. There were no actors playing soldiers involved, and in fact, the stories they told (some exaggerated, some not) are found again and again
1. Winter Soldier was not "hearings", it was Agitprop Theater where Lefties called left-leaning journalists in to hear "atrocity stories" from "actual soldiers".
2. The exaggeration Roger claims was from soldiers who had never been in combat who were AWOL or drummed out of the military claiming to have committed atrocities in Vietnam when they never got past being a gate guard at Ft Ord Colorado or a blacl AF mechanic in Germany drummed out with a bad conduct discharge for heroin use.
3. Years after Winter Soldier, fact-checkers were unable to verify the existence in military records of half the Winter Soldiers. Some participants admitted that they had drama students pose as Vets and claim atrocities to advance the cause of Peace.
4. a campaign of systematic war crimes to liquidate an indigenous rebellion against a phony entity, i.e the state of South Vietnam.
Spoken like a true anti-American.
S Vietnam was a recognized state. We fought communists backed by the Soviets and Chicoms. After the Left stabbed S Vietnam in the back and lost the war, 2 million were truly "liquidated" in Cambodia, 160,000 in Laos, and 100,000 in Vietnam.
Ah, if Rush really was talking about ths McBeth guy instead of people like Gen. Wes Clark, or Gen. Abazaid both of whom are a bit more prominent soldier war-opponents than this McBeth fellow), it sounds like Rush is getting a taste of his own medicine --- e.g., the "Durbin compared our troops to Nazis" or the fake controversy over Kerry's alleged joke mocking the troops as poor students.
Poetic injustice, I guess.
Among the problems with Limbaugh's, "I was talking about one specific guy" defense are his actual words. You see, Limbaugh clearly spoke of "the phony soldiers", i.e. plural. Even Limbaugh understands that one soldier would be referred to in the singular.
Gee, it really is awful when your post-hoc rationalizations do not line up with the prior evidence.
Chris, let's see how many points you can get wrong. If you get all of them wrong, you win - the dunce prize again! I'm on your side here. You've won the dunce prize in every comment thread you've ever been part of, but now it is getting tricky. You have the right wing psycho esprit, but do you really have the that deep, lobotomized mind set that will believe anything, as long as it is racist, quasi serial killerish, and completely without logic? Let's see.
1. Hearings. They were not hearings in the sense of senatorial hearings, and never so advertised themselves. Nor were they agitprop theater, although there is nothing wrong with that. I called them hearings since they were set up on the pattern established by Congressman Ron Dellums, who held similar hearings in the formal sense in a number of cities. So lets see, I'll give you a .05 here.
2. Incoherent. You get the full 0.0 here. Again, you are showing what you are made of. In the race against Fred, I am seeing extra effort here, and I appreciate it.
3. Fact checkers? Uh, I don't exactly know what you mean by fact checkers, C.F. Gerald Nicosia wrote the best oral history of the anti-war movement, and according to him, 100 soldiers testified in Detroit - which was filmed - and five hundred others showed up to testify. There were testimonies from veterans in other cities too. Since you name neither one fact checker nor one soldier, I assume that, as usual, you don't know what you are talking about, and I give you a fabulous 0.0 for that. On the other hand, anytime there is an informal gathering like the Winter Soldier investigation, you can be sure there will be a competition, sooner or later, to remember the most gruesome things. The soldiers were screened for their service records by the organizers, Scott Moore, Mike Oliver, and a few others. The newspaper that did investigate the testifiers - the Detroit news - did not come up with any evidence that the testifiers weren't soldiers.
So - so far you are doing good. Of course, if you win this trial, you will next have to compete with something inanimate to prove that you are, in fact, terminally brain dead. Some have suggested a dead cockroach, others an old piece of bologna, and others something found on a sidewalk that has gradually become unidentifiable. But as we near no. 4, this is naturally a tense moment for you. I know you exercize by banging your head against a brick wall, and you've really worked up for this heat by watching hours of tv with the set turned off. Everybody knows how hard you work. But can you achieve true imbecility? Do you have what it takes, Chris Ford?
4. Anti-americanism. My god, you have won again! A predictable and tedious insult, so on the originality test you score 0.0, plus, of course, the mistaking of your own psychotic ego - nourished by years of consuming flakes of lead paint - for a whole country! That's off the narcissism scales, there. I think it is our first negative. Maybe -0.5? You sweep, with a 0.0 score! And, I'm told on good authority - one of your fact checkers - that a dead cockroach could score 0.75 in the 'stupidest in the comments thread', which makes you a special guy. I hope your parents, when they visit you in the ward, are awful proud.
Notice that even to this day, right wing warhawk guilt over having handed power in Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge by carpet bombing the population into its hands still drives them to blame "the left" for their crimes.
Nevertheless, the Scooby Doo Warriors / Disguised Former Amusement Park Owners still proclaim, "And we would have freed them, too, if those meddlin' kids hadn't stopped our awewsomely liberatory carpet bombing!!"
After the Left stabbed S Vietnam in the back and lost the war
No matter how many times I put the phrase "after Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger devised, approved and implemented the policy of 'Vietnamization', followed by Richard Nixon, Commander in Chief of the armed forced of the United States of America, ordering the withdrawal of American soldiers from South Vietnam" through the babelfish or Google Translate, I cannot get it to spit out the above phrase. So I give up, Roger, what language are you speaking? Because it certainly isn't English.
(Either that or Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were actually communist stooges, which I guess makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it.)
After the Left stabbed S Vietnam in the back and lost the war
No matter how many times I put the phrase "after Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger devised, approved and implemented the policy of 'Vietnamization', followed by Gerald Ford, Commander in Chief of the armed forced of the United States of America, ordering the withdrawal of American soldiers from South Vietnam" through the babelfish or Google Translate, I cannot get it to spit out the above phrase. So I give up, Roger, what language are you speaking? Because it certainly isn't English.
(Either that or Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger were actually communist stooges, which I guess makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it.)
(Sadly, I am far less funny when I mistake the 'post' button for the 'preview' button.)
Comments closed October 12, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Morally contemptible, without a doubt. I know you weren't fishing for an actual answer, but there it is.
Posted by JA | September 28, 2007 2:31 AM