Phony outrage at Rush Limbaugh

All this outrage being ginned up by the Democrats and Media Matters over a badly edited report that Rush Limbaugh referred to soldiers who criticize the war as phony soldiers is just funny. When the full context of Limbaugh's comments are played, it's clear that he was talking about people such as those exposed in an ABC news report who claim to have served in the military, yet really didn't. He wasn't criticizing real soldiers who have criticisms of the war.

Jesse Adam Macbeth was a hero of leftist blogs after he claimed in 2005 to have been awarded a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq that he said included slaughtering innocent civilians in a Fallujah mosque.

Iraq Veterans Against The War and other leftist groups trumpeted his charges as proof we were no better than Saddam Hussein.

When his true discharge papers were released, they contradicted his story. They said Macbeth was kicked out of the Army after six weeks at Fort Benning, Ga., in 2003 because of his "entry-level performance and conduct." He didn't serve in Iraq. He didn't win a Purple Heart. And neither he nor any other U.S. soldier massacred civilians in a mosque.

The hypocrisy of all these Democrats who have made their own accusations against our soldiers of much worse actions is quite striking.

While Limbaugh exposed the left's exploitation of a phony, the likes of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., are free to slander the Marines who defended themselves against a jihadist ambush in the Iraqi town of Haditha, claiming they had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Sounds like the phony charges Macbeth made, doesn't it?

No one has been found guilty in the Haditha incident, and there has been no proof of innocent civilians being murdered. Several of the Marines have been found innocent as the case has unraveled. But is Murtha condemned by his colleagues or asked to apologize?

Sen. John Kerry once told Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation" that "there is no reason that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women . . . ." This was a more modest reprise of his post-Vietnam charges that U.S. troops had raped, tortured and pillaged in the tradition of Genghis Khan.

Then there's the famous utterance by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., after the incident at Saddam's Abu Ghraib prison: "We now learn that Saddam's torture chamber (has) reopened under new management."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., once said of our prisoner of war camp at Guantanamo that "describing what Americans had done to prisoners under our control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by the Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

When the Democrats are reduced to editing a Limbaugh quote so that they can pretend to be all outraged they just expose the hollowness of their own support for our troops.

And funniest of all is Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa running to the microphone to condemn Rush for making fun of phony soldiers when Harkin himself has been exposed as lying about his own military record. And Harkin, the classy guy that he is, brings up Limbaugh's addiction to painkillers.

Well, I don’t know. Maybe he was just high on his drugs again. I don’t know whether he was or not. If so, he ought to let us know. But that shouldn’t be an excuse.

As Instapundit reminds us, Tom Harkin campaigned in the 1990s as a former combat air pilot from the Vietnam War. But it turned out, as James Taranto reported a few years ago, that his service was limited to flying ferry flights in Japan during the war.

In Mr. Harkin's case, the questions that have lingered longest concern his Navy record. Mr. Harkin did serve in the Navy during the Vietnam era, but exactly what he did, and for how long, remain a matter of some dispute.

"After I got out of college," he says in his standard stump speech, "I spent eight years, eight months and eight days as a Navy pilot." His military record, though, shows he served five years on active duty, from Nov. 21, 1962, until Nov. 30, 1967. The senator arrives at the eight-year figure by adding on three years in the ready reserve. Mr. Harkin's military record, acquired by The Wall Street Journal through a Freedom of Information request, shows he remained active in the reserves, ready or not, until Oct. 1, 1989, retiring with the rank of commander.

"I'm right," Mr. Harkin says. "I was a Navy flyer for eight years, eight months and eight days. I have a certificate to prove it."

What he did while on active duty is even more confusing. In 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus. "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962," Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book, Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder. "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I did no bombing."

That clearly is not an accurate picture of his Navy service. Though Mr. Harkin stresses he is proud of his Navy record--"I put my ass on the line day after day"--he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam.

He was stationed at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Atsugi, Japan. Damaged aircraft were flown into Atsugi for repairs or sometimes flown out of Atsugi to the Philippines for more substantial work. Mr. Harkin says he and three other Navy pilots flew these ferry flights. And, when the planes had been repaired, he and his fellow pilots took them up on test flights. "I had always wanted to be a test pilot," he says. "It was damned demanding work."

Yet Harkin is so confident that the press either doesn't know his record of stretching the truth about his military record or that they know and won't report on it, that he's one of their lead accusers against Rush Limbaugh.

Let's poll the military about who they think has shown them more support: Rush Limbaugh or congressional Democrats.

Hat tips to Michelle Malkinand Instapundit. If you want a clear summary of what Limbaugh said and didn't say and how Media Matters was able to pull the strings of the congressional Democrats, go read Byron York's report on the matter. And you'll see the role of the George Soros-funded Media Matters to supply a fake outrageous story for the Democrats to run with in order to try and distract from the Moveon.org ad on General Petraeus.

Where the controversy goes now is not clear. Democrats, and particularly their supporters in the left-wing blogosphere, are pressing for payback over the MoveOn.org affair. But Limbaugh’s explanation will likely make it harder to make the clear-cut case against him that Republicans, and some Democrats, made against MoveOn. The fact that Limbaugh, on the original September 26 program, brought up the ABC report, unbidden, to explain the “phony soldiers” remark suggests that that indeed was what he had in mind at the time he said it. That’s also supported by the fact that he had recorded a commentary on the story the day before, and that he printed out and re-read that commentary on September 26 as he explained “phony soldiers.” It was clearly on his mind.

And even though there are political arguments on all sides of this controversy, independent-minded critics who look at Media Matters might conclude that its political motivations are simply too strong to merit serious consideration. In addition to its ties to major Democratic donors and to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Media Matters is a deeply politicized organization down to its lowest levels. In the past few days, it has posted eleven stories on the Limbaugh matter. Those postings were written by, among others, Julie Millican, a veteran of the Kerry campaign, MoveOn.org, and the Democratic turnout organization America Coming Together; Sarah Pavlus, formerly of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Andrew Ironside, who worked for the Howard Dean campaign; Adam Shah, a lawyer who worked for the Alliance for Justice, the organization best known for opposing President Bush’s judicial nominees; Jeremy Schulman, a former spokesman for Colorado Democratic congressional candidate Dave Thomas; and Matthew Gertz, former deputy campaign manager for Connecticut Democratic congressional candidate Diane Farrell, as well as intern for New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer.

All quite cozy, isn't it?