CALLER: I’m one of the few that joined the Army to serve my country, I’m proud to say, not for the money or anything like that. What I would like to retort to is that, what these people don’t understand, is if we pull out of Iraq right now, which is not possible because of all the stuff that’s over there, it would take us at least a year to pull everything back out of Iraq, then Iraq itself would collapse and we’d have to go right back over there within a year or so.RUSH: There’s a lot more than that that they don’t understand. The next guy that calls here I’m going to ask them, "What is the imperative of pulling out? What’s in it for the United States to pull out?" I don’t think they have an answer for that other than, "When’s he going to bring the troops home? Keep the troops safe," whatever.CALLER: Yeah.RUSH: It’s not possible intellectually to follow these people.CALLER: No, it’s not. And what’s really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.RUSH: The phony soldiers.CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they’re proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they’re willing to sacrifice for the country.RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.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.
Thus, the phoney soldier is one who joins the Army for the wrong reasons ["money" rather than patriotism]. This same soldier in equated with soldiers who "spout to the media." RUSH and CALLER don’t care much for that kind of soldier, it seems – grandstanding money-grubbing soldiers.
The folks on the Left are beside themselves today–thinking that by dint of a truncated quote, they will succeed in shutting down Rush Limbaugh and taking him off the air. Before lining up next to the folks from Crooks and Liars, FireDogLake, Media Matters, ThinkProgress, Huffington Post, [1boringoldman], and the rest, at least read the full transcript. In Limbaugh’s comments after the exchange quoted by the left, he makes clear he is referring to people like Jesse MacBeth–a ‘phony soldier’ the left would understandably like to forget.
Limbaugh’s offhand comment was poorly chosen. It’s clear that there are ‘real soldiers’–real by anyone’s criteria–who oppose the war in Iraq and they’re entitled to their views. But much like the recently manufactured controversies over Bill O’Reilly’s comments, and President Bush’s comment about Saddam having killed "all the Mandelas," the left is trying to pull a fast-one by taking Rush’s statement out of context.
It’s also clear and undeniable that the political left has eagerly stood behind fakers who spout tales about Iraq that are at times false, or ridiculous, or both. From Jesse MacBeth to Scott Thomas Beauchamp, liberals and anti-war moonbats have suspended logic and reason to embrace people because they liked what they had to say, regardless of whether the tales made sense, or their credentials were as they claimed.
Limbaugh is big enough to defend himself and his healthy ego. But his attackers ought to render his comments honestly and own up to their own embarrassing record.
I see it now clearly. He wasn’t maligning soldiers who speak out against the war, he was maligning non-soldiers who speak out against the war. It is, however, okay for non-soldiers like RUSH, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condi Rice, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, etc to speak out for the war because …
Well, maybe they’ll explain that to us tomorrow. Their Theater of the Absurd spin machine is still cranking out that malarkey daily…
If you call Rush and talk to him on the air aren’t you spouting off to the media? Whether you like him or not he’s still part of the media. And how many of the soldiers that joined for the “right” reasons are refusing their monthly check or the bonuses they might receive for re-enlisting? And whether a soldier joined for the “right” reasons or for money when they die, they are still just another statistic in Bush’s lust for oil and power.
excellent point! CALLER is a non-money-grubbing grandstanding “real soldier.”