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Dems Hot Over Rush's 'Phony Troops' Comment -Talk Show Host Draws Fire
WNBC ^

Posted on 09/28/2007 5:37:09 AM PDT by Sub-Driver

Dems Hot Over Rush's 'Phony Troops' Comment Talk Show Host Draws Fire

POSTED: 7:54 am EDT September 28, 2007 UPDATED: 8:22 am EDT September 28, 2007 The war of words over the conflict in Iraq took a new turn Thursday as Democrats in Congress excoriated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh for calling some soldiers "phony troops."

Limbaugh had argued with a caller on Wednesday about when U.S. troops ought to be brought home. The caller, who identified himself as "Mike" from Chicago and said he was an a Iraq veteran and a Republican, pushed Limbaugh on whether the occupation in Iraq would last forever.

Limbaugh and his next caller, who also said he was in the military, both referred to soldiers who criticize the war and urge that troops be brought home as "phony troops."

The exchange came a week after the Senate passed a resolution condemning the anti-war group MoveOn for an ad in the New York Times that asked whether Gen. David Petraeus, in testimony before Congress, would be "General Betray-us." The House passed a similar resolution this week.

Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., an Iraq veteran critical of the war, scolded Limbaugh in a Thursday column on the HuffingtonPost.com Web site.

"When someone like Rush Limbaugh says that soldiers who disagree with the failed strategies of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are 'phony soldiers,' you have to consider the source," he wrote.

"Rush Limbaugh, who, in January, called Vietnam veteran Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., 'Senator Betrayus' for disagreeing with President Bush, has made no secret of his disdain for those who serve and speak out. Where was Rush Limbaugh when it came time to serve his country?"

(Excerpt) Read more at wnbc.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: rush; talkradio
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To: NeoCaveman

Yes I know yet you have some nasty people on this thread putting down Rush. Everyday Rush goes out of his way for three hours to expose the Party of Evil.


21 posted on 09/28/2007 5:47:59 AM PDT by angcat ("IF YOU DON'T STAND BEHIND OUR TROOPS, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STAND IN FRONT OF THEM")
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To: N. Theknow
Pardon my post as it might be construed that it was directed at you. It was to be ONLY directed to the Dem Iraq vet criticising Rush.
22 posted on 09/28/2007 5:48:52 AM PDT by N. Theknow (Kennedys: Can't drive, can't fly, can't ski, can't skipper a boat; but they know what's best for us)
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To: Sub-Driver
"Where was Rush Limbaugh when it came time to serve his country?"

Here in America willing to serve if asked my guess is. Where were you, Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa? Did you serve or were you available to serve? Do you support our military and their assignment?

23 posted on 09/28/2007 5:49:11 AM PDT by moonman
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To: Sub-Driver

This is classic Dem strategy. They all complained that Republican anger over Gen Betrayus was fabricated as a distraction from the war, the cost of the war, the length of the war, blah, blah, blah. So now they cherrypick some words from a 3 hour program and try and distract with their own feigned outrage. See, see, see Republicans are hypocrites. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


24 posted on 09/28/2007 5:51:02 AM PDT by rhombus
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To: Always Right
There are dozens of these.

Don't forget TNR's Scotty (Or Maybe It Was Kuwait?) Beauchamp.
25 posted on 09/28/2007 5:51:17 AM PDT by Thrownatbirth (.....when the sidewalks are safe for the little guy.)
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To: Sub-Driver
Apologies for my post #16 which might be misconstrued as being directed at you instead of the Dem from PA criticising Rush for not serving in the Armed Forces.

I missed his term serving as President of the United States. Otherwise, to follow his thinking(or lack thereof), he doesn't have any standing to be critical of the President since he never has "served" as one.

26 posted on 09/28/2007 5:52:16 AM PDT by N. Theknow (Kennedys: Can't drive, can't fly, can't ski, can't skipper a boat; but they know what's best for us)
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To: rhombus
Its a complete non-issue. Unless you consider people washed out of boot camp training to be military heroes.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

27 posted on 09/28/2007 5:52:46 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Always Right

B. G. Burkett is a myth-buster, a truth-teller, and a hero.(veteran exposes false media reports, news, related to Vietnam War veterans, events)(Interview)

From: National Review  |  Date: 10/11/2004  |  Author: O'Beirne, Kate

OVER the past 20 years, determined Vietnam veteran B. G. "Jug" Burkett has succeeded in challenging hundreds of phony military records--but he has not succeeded in holding the media accountable when they carelessly rely on bogus service stories to make political points. Burkett is now getting some welcome reinforcements: the corps of amateur experts whose instant analysis demolished the credibility of CBS's purported Bush National Guard records. (B. G. Burkett is not to be confused with Bill Burkett, the man who gave the phony documents to CBS.) "The Dan Rathers of the world can no longer put up a story and have everyone nod approvingly," he declares. "The Internet has changed the landscape."

Burkett's crusade to debunk pervasive myths about his fellow veterans has made him a post-Vietnam War hero. In 1986, he fired off a letter to his local TV station--and to the chairman of the board of CBS--to protest the affiliate's egregious failure to correct the record about a mass killer's purported Vietnam service; he received no reply. It was Burkett's first experience with the media's stubborn disregard for the truth when it conflicted with their preferred storyline. Over the next two decades, such blow-offs would become a routine occurrence for this dedicated one-man truth squad.

A month before Burkett's first letter, he had agreed to help raise money for a memorial to honor the Texans who were killed or missing in action in Vietnam. One veteran warned him that it wouldn't be easy, recounting that when he had approached one of the wealthiest men in Dallas for a donation, the response was, "Why the hell should I give any money to those bums?" Burkett himself is a successful financial adviser, and the veterans of his acquaintance are equally successful in life; but he quickly learned that the Vietnam veteran of national stereotype was a far different creature. In his 1998 book, Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, he recounts that "the public's perception of Vietnam veterans became abundantly clear. They were losers, bums, drug addicts, drunks, derelicts--societal offal who had come back from the war plagued by nightmares and flashbacks that left them with the potential to go berserk at any moment." They were like Patrick Henry Sherrill.

On August 20, 1986, Sherrill killed 14 employees in a post office in Edmond, Okla., before turning the gun on himself. The local news reported that Sherrill was a Vietnam veteran, and repeated that assertion even after a Navy spokesman had said it wasn't true and Burkett had contacted the news room and told them about the Navy's statement. Sherrill had served stateside in the Marine Corps in the mid-Sixties. Burkett concluded that the only thing most people would likely remember was that a "Vietnam vet" had killed 14 people, and noted the terrible irony that went largely unreported: Two of the seven men killed by Sherrill were real Vietnam veterans, one the grandson of Knute Rockne.

Two years later, another "violent Vietnam veteran kills" story exploded in Texas and Burkett filed a FOIA request for the killer's records. He learned that he had entered the service 17 months after the last combat troops had left Vietnam. This information was available to any reporter who cared to check but, as Burkett was also learning, reporters didn't care. The local paper's publisher responded to Burkett's letter pointing out the error with a condescending note about the "special problems" faced by Vietnam veterans and refused to correct the story. The refusal launched Burkett on a mission that would result in his becoming an expert witness in military-criminal cases, an indispensable research asset for academics and journalists, a uniquely knowledgeable media critic, and, with Texas journalist Glenna Whitley, coauthor of the acclaimed Stolen Valor.

To assist in his fundraising for the Texas memorial, Burkett bought computer tapes listing all American casualties and POWs in Vietnam from the National Archives. He was told that no one had ever requested these data before. By 1989, the Texas memorial had been funded and Burkett was embarked on a far bigger project. He was filing daily FOIA requests and had become an informal clearinghouse with nationwide contacts who shared information on phony war stories. When he found documentation that veterans cited in news stories had lied about their war service, he would contact the journalist and offer to provide a copy of the veteran's military record. "Whether they were with the New York Times or the Podunk Press," Burkett recalls, "journalists rarely attempted to verify the stories they wrote on veterans' personal histories. Few wanted to acknowledge they had been fooled."

At a conference in the spring of 2000, Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, was incredulous when he heard Burkett's accounts of the media hostility he routinely encountered when he attempted to correct the kind of reporting that contributed to the slander of Vietnam veterans. Bowden found it hard to believe that his fellow journalists would ignore Burkett's documented facts, thereby helping to spread "enduring falsehoods about the Vietnam War." But--in an article titled "Lies and More Lies," in the October 2000 issue of Brill's Content--Bowden concluded that was exactly what had happened.

In addition to debunking individual stories, Burkett also began collecting research data to counter the media's stereotype of Vietnam veterans. "The press portrayed us as victims, marched off to war, maimed, poisoned, drug-ridden from our trauma, then dumped back on society." Referring to the anti-war protests in the early 1970s, Burkett notes that "John Kerry did more than anybody to create that image when he brought those bums to Washington."

Burkett's exhaustive research thoroughly debunked the myth represented by Kerry's ragtag band of angry, disaffected protesters. When compared with their non-veteran peers, Vietnam veterans do not have higher incidences of drug abuse, unemployment, suicide, divorce, or homelessness. "In every category for which I could find statistics," writes Burkett, "Vietnam veterans were as successful or more successful than men their age who did not go to Vietnam." Vietnam veterans on average have higher incomes than non-veterans and are more likely to have a college education and own a home. In contrast to John Kerry's portrayal of disillusioned victims, a Washington Post survey taken in 1985--the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon--found that 91 percent of those who served in Vietnam were "glad they served their country."

Burkett thought he was signing on for a short project, but he ended up exposing more than 1,200 bogus Vietnam War records, including those of prominent activists, celebrated war heroes, criminals, politicians, and even a well-known actor. For years, Brian Dennehy publicly maintained he was a Vietnam combat veteran, telling a New York Times reporter in 1989 about his combat wounds, and holding forth about the brutal realities of combat in a 1993 Playboy interview. Burkett's examination of Dennehy's military records showed that during his four years on active duty his only overseas assignment was in Okinawa in 1962, and there was no record of his having ever been wounded.

Last year, Burkett was awarded the Army's highest decoration for civilians, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award. The decoration represents the debt owed Burkett by the 2.7 million veterans who served in Vietnam whose honorable records and reputations he has tirelessly defended. At the award ceremony, an undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs explained that in addition to restoring their good name to Vietnam veterans, Burkett "exposed a mass distortion of history that cost taxpayers billions of dollars" in undeserved veterans benefits. The government pays up to $3,000 a month to Vietnam veterans with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and bogus documents have qualified an unknown number of phony veterans for these benefits. Burkett explains that he recently helped conduct a VA study of 100 such alleged PTSD victims chosen at random. They found that "only 39 percent were in remotely close contact with combat, and some were never in the military." Over a lifetime, phonies can collect a million dollars each in VA benefits.

One of Burkett's most shocking accounts of the media bias responsible for the distorted image of Vietnam veterans involves a 1988 CBS documentary, The Wall Within, hosted by Dan Rather. The hour-long special featured horrific accounts of murder and mayhem witnessed by six purported Vietnam veterans with post-war histories of drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, and despair. The atrocities and ruined lives were apparently "too good to check": By consulting records that CBS failed to research, Burkett found that only one of the veterans had actually served in combat. Burkett contacted CBS with his documentation and the Veterans Administration shared its data refuting CBS's assertions about the high incidence of homelessness and mental illness among Vietnam veterans. The producers defiantly stood by their bogus story and the president of CBS defended the broadcast. After recounting the sorry episode of journalistic malpractice, Burkett wrote: "Why won't Rather and CBS admit their 'documentary' was a fraud, that it perpetuated an unwarranted, false picture of men who fought in Vietnam?"

Sixteen years ago, the indefatigable B. G. Burkett was fighting a lonely battle to hold the media accountable. With reinforcements in the blogosphere and new media, CBS finally has to say, "We're sorry."


28 posted on 09/28/2007 5:53:20 AM PDT by Always Right
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To: humblegunner

Good luck staying pure if you ever have to take heavy duty pain killers for a long period of time.


29 posted on 09/28/2007 5:53:48 AM PDT by rhombus
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To: moonman

Murphy is an Iraq war veteran.


30 posted on 09/28/2007 5:55:09 AM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (IF TREASON IS THE QUESTION, THEN MOVEON.ORG IS THE ANSWER!)
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To: humblegunner
Getting high on oxycontin?

I like to think of him as the Jack Baur of politics ;o)

31 posted on 09/28/2007 5:55:31 AM PDT by papertyger
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To: goldstategop

Not me. This is typical democrat nonsense.


32 posted on 09/28/2007 5:55:48 AM PDT by rhombus
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To: Sub-Driver

’ “Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said, “How dare he say that his views on Iraq formed in the comfort of his radio studio are legitimate while the views of those whose opinions were forged on the battlefield are not?’ “

THIS coming from the mouth of a Democrat? How dare Schakowsky and the libs say THEIR views on Iraq are legitimate and not those of the men in Iraq - that’s all we’ve been hearing from their filthy mouths.


33 posted on 09/28/2007 5:56:59 AM PDT by peggybac (Tolerance is the virtue of believing in nothing)
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To: papertyger
I like to think of him as the Jack Baur of politics ;o)

Rush once stopped illegal immigration for a day by just standing at the border.

34 posted on 09/28/2007 5:59:11 AM PDT by NeoCaveman (Hillary 2008: "The willing suspension of disbelief")
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To: MrB
What is to stop a caller from id'ing him/herself as a member of the military who served in Iraq and then taking off on a rant against the war, Bush, etc.

What Rush ought to do is after they have id’d themselves as military,but before they begin there statement, ask them for their MOS and rating. Anyone really in the military will instantly know what that means and will answer. Any stumbling and stuttering will out the caller as a fraud and Rush could then call the phony out.

35 posted on 09/28/2007 5:59:49 AM PDT by Eagles Talon IV
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To: Sub-Driver

No bias in that article. Did you see the phrasing of the question in that poll? LoL.

Do you agree with all the democratic candidates that saving the entire U.S. from a nuclear attack isn’t worth tapping the phone conversation of one person?


36 posted on 09/28/2007 6:01:28 AM PDT by nuconvert ("Terrorism is not the enemy. It is a means to the ends of militant Islamism." MZJ)
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To: NeoCaveman
If you want to judge the effectiveness of Rush, Hannity, Coulter or anyone else who takes on the libs just watch their frothing at the mouth at the mention of their name.
37 posted on 09/28/2007 6:02:56 AM PDT by Eagles Talon IV
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To: scooby321

Benedict Arnold served didnt he?

Yes indeed.


38 posted on 09/28/2007 6:04:37 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: angcat
Yes I know yet you have some nasty people on this thread putting down Rush.

2 kinds of freepers attack Rsuh:
1. liberals

2. holy rollers who never do anything wrong, the "darn right I'll cast the first stone" types.
3. And I just thought of a third - Members of the Weiner Nation.

39 posted on 09/28/2007 6:05:32 AM PDT by NeoCaveman (Hillary 2008: "The willing suspension of disbelief")
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To: Eagles Talon IV

“What Rush ought to do is after they have id’d themselves as military,but before they begin there statement, ask them for their MOS and rating. Anyone really in the military will instantly know what that means and will answer.”

Excellent suggestion. Please post that to Rush’s site. He is pretty adept at identifying bogus seminar callers after all these years, impaired hearing or not.


40 posted on 09/28/2007 6:08:31 AM PDT by kittymyrib
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