Dems 'Rush' To Patriotic Judgement

Mr. King:
First, if you would read beyond the betrayus part, you would find that everything in the Moveon ad was factual. Surely you must know that Gen. Petraeus' report was thouroughly vetted by the White House. Gen. Petraeus confessed his desire to run for president to his Iraqi counterparts. It is known that the methodology used to compile his statistics was ridiculous. Deaths from car bombings didn't count, being shot in the back of the head did, being shot in the forehead didn't, etc. In short, there are many reasons to question his testimony. He got off easy.
Rush Limbaugh has made a career out of ridiculous hyperbole. Your post reads like it was lifted from his script. Perhaps he used the plural form "soldiers" by mistake and perhaps he was alluding to this MacBeth character but I doubt it. In any case, perhaps some were fooled, but I didn't see anyone quoting him much less making him a hero. You state that Rush is a known supporter of the troops and their mission. Although I am not one of his listeners, I know that he supports the war, but unsure what he does to support the troops, unless one equates the two. I would say that supporting the troops involves removing them from a situation where they are the referees in a civil war that we unleashed.
Many of the troops enlisted at a time when, due to the administration's propaganda, a compliant media, and Democrats afraid of being tarred "soft on terrorism", 70%of the public were fooled into thinking that Sadaam Hussein perpetrated 9/11. I'm sure that you could find plenty of soldiers who either believe or don't believe in their mission. I do know that many accept or request redeployment because they don't want to abandon their comrades.
Limbaugh claims that he was rejected from service in Vietnam because of a pilodinal cyst. This is a simple ingrown hair at the base of the spine which could be repaired with minor surgery and a two week recuperation. He could of easily reapplied. Even while being a drug addict illegally obtaining his pills, he was calling for draconian punishment for drug users. When he was then caught, he used an ACLU type defense of civil liberties and the right to privacy. To me, he is the worst kind of hypocrite.
Instead of debunking the words of the three Democrats who spoke out against Limbaugh, and four who didn't, you chose to slander the three and construct straw man arguments against the four. Rush must be proud of you.
Mr. King, do you really think we are fighting a war on terror?
Cargo comes into our ports unsearched, into our aircraft unsearched, our nuclear and chemical plants are virtually unguarded, the task force to find bin Laden has been disbanded, little has been done to protect public transit. In short, we remain as vulnerable to terrorist attack as on 9/11. Surely by now, you must realize that our actions in Iraq have nothing to do with terrorism. Surely by now, you must be asking why our forces were diverted from their legitimate target to attack Iraq. Surely by now, you must know of the Project for the New American Century and their desire to begin an American hegemony by remaking the middle east and using Iraqi oil as an economic weapon. Surely by now, you must know that PNAC founders Cheney and Rumsfeld filled strategic positions in government with their PNAC acolytes. Surely by now, you must know that bin Laden's desire was to get us bogged in a war that we couldn't win and bleed us dry. Surely by now, you must be questioning the strategic if not the political wisdom of this war. If not, sir, then perhaps you are too naive to be writing this blog.

Frank, you have certainly learned all the liberal talking points about the war. Congrats.
I just can't figure out how any of it mitigates what I wrote about, which is that the Democrats have made up a story here in order to play political games, with the very obvious reason being the political backlash from their calling Petraeus a liar before he ever gave a word of testimony (guess moveon.org has one of those magic 8-balls).
And I apologize for 'slandering' those Democrats by referring to THEIR OWN WORDS AND ACTIONS. Gee, what was I thinking ? I think what you really said there Frank, was that those Democrats slander themselves.

Mr. King:
These are not liberal talking points, they are facts. Do you dispute them, or not? Once again, have you even read the Moveon ad? Calling John Kerry "Hanoi John" is slandering him, the Swift Boat claims have been proven false a long time ago. His protest of the Vietnam was his right and not treason as the "Hanoi" part infers. The Reid and Edwards quotes are not slanderous but are entirely valid. The whole part of the Petraeus "testimony" was an attempt to lend credence to a failed policy. That he lent himself to that speaks to his dishonor. What Limbaugh did was worse than the Moveon ad. As I have said, read the whole ad.

Frank, I had to go attend to some other business, but I want to address some other things you said.

First, you said Rush engages in "ridiculous hyperbole", but then you said you don't listen to his show, so how would you know what Rush does ? You also seem to dislike the guy an awful lot for someone you don't listen to. Could it be you are just blindly accepting the liberal hype ?

And all I can say about your statement that "70% of the public were fooled into thinking that Sadaam Hussein perpetrated 9/11", is, that must have been some trick, because Bush never said Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It was known real early on that it was Al Qaeda. It was all over the news. Nearly impossible to miss. I never thought Saddam was responsible, did you ? I know nobody in congress did. Nobody I know thought it was Saddam. We either have a lot of people in america who weren't paying attention, or that poll you're citing may have been a wee bit off. The closest thing I can think of to a statement about Saddam being involved in 9/11 was the statement by the administration that Saddam could pass wmd to terrorists. Now, if that's what you are talking about, I can give you a very long list of Democrats who thought the same thing, and they thought it before Bush ever took office, so I doubt you can use the 'Bush fooled them' argument there, although I did get a laugh out of Hillary pretending she was fooled by Bush, as if anybody is dumb enough to believe that. She was only married to the president for 8 years before Bush took office, and both her and Bill were quoted repeatedly about their belief in Saddam's wmd. I swear, some people will believe anything.

Yes, I really think we are really fighting a war on terror. To think we are not is the ridiculous position. Of course we are fighting terrorism. Perhaps you've noticed the number of terrorist plots around the world that have been disrupted, or the fact that we are fighting terrorists in both Afghanistan and Iraq with our military. That sounds like we're fighting terrorism to me. To point to one or two things, such as the cargo on every ship not being inspected, and then from that reaching the conclusion that there is no war on terror is extremely illogical.

As for my naivete regarding the Iraq war, I don't believe I have stated my position on Iraq yet on this blog, yet you seem to think you already know what it is. Interesting. You must have one of those magic 8-balls too.

Mr. King:
I don't regularly listened to Limbaugh but the times that I have he has always engaged in ridiculous hyperbole. Plus, his bombastic statements have made the news often. My point was that he is a pompous hypocrite.
I shouldn't have used the word "perpetrated". I meant to say that 70% believed that he was in some way connected to 9/11. Bush never claimed that he was, but mentioned Sadaam, 9/11, the war on terror together so often that people inferred that he was. This was purposely done.
The Democrats made those claims of wmds to justify the continuation of the sanctions against Iraq instituted after the Gulf War. Sadaam Hussein was just as useful a boogeyman for the Dems as the Repubs. One of the architects of the war, Paul Wolfowitz has stated that wmds was the issue that they felt they could sell.
What we needed after 9/11 was a war on Al Qaeda. The response should have been swift and overwhelming. We also needed to address the vulnerabilities that make us susceptible to terrorism. After legitimately going into Afghanistan after bin Laden, Bush transferred troops and materiel to Iraq, undercutting the efforts in Afghanistan. bin Laden's bones should have been ground to dust by this time. I gave just a few examples of the failures to make our infrastructure safer from terrorists. I didn't mean them to be all there is.
Several books have shown the Bush administration looking to invade Iraq from the beginning of their term. The Downing st memos indicate that the administration was "fixing the intelligence around the policy". There have been plenty of similar revelations to convince anyone that this war is not legitimate.
We have spent half a trillion dollars, 3700 lives, 20000 injuries, and respect we had in the world in Iraq. The late Pope stated that this was not a just war. It is obvious that this war does nothing to protect us from terrorists. It is obvious that Bush and co. planned on prosecuting this war before 9/11. And it is obvious that we are less safe than before 9/11.

Frank,
Regarding John Kerry: I call him Hanoi John due to the facts. No slander there, and I don't even have to get into the Swift Boat Veterans claims, many of which were true, btw. Kerry wrote a phony book calling his fellow Vietnam soldiers murderers and baby killers, met with the enemy while the war was still going on and he was still in the service, gave bs congressional testimony about his 'murderous' fellow soldiers, and then used the notoriety to launch his political career. What do you want me to call him, a hero ? Not in this lifetime.

Regarding Reid and Edwards: What are you talking about ? You said I slandered them, when all I did was quote them.

Then you lose all credibility by claiming that what Limbaugh did (call phony soldiers like Jesse Macbeth 'phony soldiers') is worse than what moveon.org did (slander general Petraeus, a REAL soldier, before Petraeus ever gave one word of testimony). Only in liberal upside down world could a statement like that be made. Btw, Petraeus' testimony, which could be summarized as 'the surge has made some progress in Iraq, but there's a long way to go' is an accurate representation.

One thing you will not hear me criticize the Democrats for is all those quotes they made about Saddam having wmd back in 1998. That was when Saddam kicked out the UN weapons inspectors after misleading them for so many years. There was no other sane conclusion to reach than that he was still hiding wmd caches. The intelligence agencies reached the same conclusions, and that didn't change the day George W. Bush stepped into office, as so many Democrats now like to pretend. That I WILL criticize them for.

Bush used the prevailing intelligence about Saddam to 'sell' the Iraq war to the american people. No doubt of that. However, that doesn't mean Bush lied about it, to debunk another of the constant drumbeats of the left. Read the NIE and then tell me Bush lied. Read Bush's pre-war speeches about Iraq and then point out to me where Bush lied. Even the famous 16 words are still held as true by the British, who were the source of that intel. Then there's the Downing memo, one opinion by one British agent, which the left disingenuously treats as if it's the end-all be-all last word on intelligence, when nothing could be further from the truth. The very idea is absurd.

Having said that, I thought it was a mistake for Bush to go into Iraq. I can give you 50 reasons why deposing Saddam was the correct thing from both a moral and legal point of view, but tactically, I didn't think it was wise. Once we were in there, once the commitment was made, I think we were/are forced to see it through if at all possible. The consequences of failure seem a lot worse than the consequences of success, if you ask me.

I agree with you that we should have gone after Al Qaeda following 9/11, and that is exactly what we did. We are still doing that, but grinding Bin Laden's bones into dust would require us to blindly invade Pakistan without having any real idea whether he is there or not. Pakistan is an ally who has arrested many Al Qaeda terrorists and sympathizers. If you think Iraq is an illegitimate war, how could you support an invasion of Pakistan ?

We are neither more safe nor less safe as a result of the Iraq war. We were never safe to begin with. We just thought we were. Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996.

As I have often stated…..the lie by the Bush White House media blitz leading up to the launching of a pre-determined war to satisfy the Project for the New American Century's neo-cons, ….was that Saddam 's Iraq posed a direct and immediate threat to the U.S. A threat so immediate, huge amounts of military assets were moved to close proximity to Iraq BEFORE al-Qaeda had been destroyed in Afghanistan.

That was the lie…..WMD discussions are meant to circumvent that lie.

There was NEVER a time when Iraq posed a threat to the U.S.

I realize you agree that the Iraq invasion was a mistake. However, the way you defend Bush about it makes it look like you were for the act of aggression.

Bush is not innocent here. Far from it. He led the cacophony of lies…..the lies that said Iraq posed an immediate and direct threat to America.

Frank has rebutted fairly well, it seems to me, your tentative grasp on empirical facts,….. the Swift Boat shamelessness, GOP winger revisionism, etc.

Reverend, you and Da King both seem like reasonable, open minded fellows so I'll be very surprised if you can't come to some sort of agreed-upon viewpoint here.

Larry, I can see that you don't know Red and the King very well. I can promise you that unlesss Red backs down some they will never come to any agreements on this subject.

Did you manage to miss out on the news that the Carry people lost their case in New Jersey last week that they had going for over 2 years against the Swiftboaters. Larry, most of his stories about his heroism that they disagreed with were involved in that civil case and they lost.

I'll bet that you didn't even know that Carry took his first Purple Heart down from his website before the election in 2004. He didn't say so but he took it down so I guess he was admitting that it was only a self-inflicted wound so large that it took tweezers to get the metal out of the band aid sized gash.

Self-inflicted wounds makes me think of the triple amputee, Max Clelan. The hand grenade that got him did come from his hands, I think. I wonder if he got a Purple Heart for those wounds.

King, where did you get that picture of Dirty Harry Reid? It looks like he is declaring war on poor old Rush.

The other day I read a great thing about how the Senate uses hotlining to do too much of their voting. You need to look into that method of doing business since it is so much against what the framers had in mind when they formed the Senate to be the very deliberative body to consider things that come up from the hot headed House. I really wonder how many bills they have passed the past few months using hotlining. I guess they do this to save more time to allow their committees to investigate those dirty Republicans. Have they found anything in one of those things yet. They need to investigate Dirty Harry's land deals in Nevada to catch someone at something.

Reverend, I hate to disappoint you, but Bush never said Saddam was an immediate threat, nor an imminent threat. The closest thing Bush said was that Saddam was 'a gathering threat', which was based upon many factors; misleading of the wmd inspectors for 11+ years (curious, to say the least, if he had nothing to hide), paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, terrorist training camps in Iraq, meetings with terrorists, harboring terrorists, Saddam's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, shooting at our planes in the no-fly zone, violating 14 UN resolutions (or was it 16 ? I can't remember anymore ), violating nearly every term of his Gulf War surrender, banning the UN weapons inspectors, etc. Not to mention that Saddam was a brutal murderous tyrant who was responsible for hundred of thousands of deaths, terrorized his own people, and that this entire situation got started because he invaded Kuwait. Rev, I guess this is what you term 'no threat whatsoever', but I have to think reasonable people might disagree. Bush said the extent of Saddam's wmd capability was not exactly known, but Saddam was given ample time to come clean, and he never did so. Bill Clinton made regime change the official policy of the USA regarding Iraq back in 1998, so I don't know why that PNAC website was so confusing for you.

Roy, I don't know when that picture of Harry Reid was taken, but it looked like Reid's phony 'phony soldiers' scowl to me. Either that or he was just constipated.

I don't think the Democrats have found anything on the Republicans yet with all their investigating, but it's only been 9 months and hundred of thousands of pages of documents. You gotta give them time (and taxpayer dollars, of course). I'm sure that if they keep going for another year, that they will come up with at least one example of something as egregious and horrible as Rush Limbaugh's 'phony soldiers' comment. Well worth the expense. It's not like congress has anything else to do. In fact, they are so laid back that the House majority voted yesterday to delay the vote on overriding the Bush veto of the SCHIP expansion for two weeks. I guess they forgot to hotline that 'for the children'. That congressional approval rating of 11% might soon be dropping even lower.

THEY will justify all that spending with the argument concerning all the hunting for things to hang the Clintons with. They don't see that there is any difference.

The best part of the money they say was spent digging into the Clinton's background comes from those who will continue to say that Scaife spent all kinds of money in that search. If they can't make it with using government money as an excuse they will say that Scaife did it. They do this one defending Moveon.org and its ridiculous ad in the al Times.

Do you really believe that they will manage to find one thing with another year of investigating? Sure you don't. They don't care if they do as long as they have the media running along with them in their attempts.

Tax and spend on investigations is their motto, it seems.

Reverend Red, have you seen that Rush Limbaugh has called for the resignation of Dirty Harry Reid? Well of course not since I doubt the left blogosphere talks a lot about that. Newsmax had an interesting article about this yesterday. Look it up.

When I said they would find something with another year of investigating, I meant one more phony thing that they can try to turn into another fake scandal, like they are trying to do with Rush's 'phony soldiers' comment.

I didn't even like that congress took the time to condemn and vote on that moveon.org ad about Petraeus. They should have better things to do. This Rush thing is way more pathetic though, because Rush didn't even mean what they are trying to say he meant. Moveon.org DID mean it. Now the morons are trying to get Rush kicked off of Armed Forces Radio. What a bunch of nazis, trying to suppress a private citizen's free speech rights. Yet, once again, their pet mainstream media doesn't call them on it. Unbelievable.

They don't intend to find anything to pin on Republicans. They are just acting out the play that the far left has forced them to do to make the left voters think they are really trying. They are all enjoying their "face" time and playing a game to fool those voters.

The vote on the condemnation of Moveon was a total waste of time but both parties had their own little deals that I guess if one is doing it you may as well do it, also.

The politics of today are getting worse all the time. Somehow those of us who know what is going on have to help the rest of the voters see the truth. Tough job with the money that is being spent on political pandering, etc.

Fellows, I heard some sad news today listening to O'Reilly on the radio. A fellow from Belgium called and reported that George Soros is setting up a think tank in Europe as soon as possible. It is these think tanks that lefties keep saying are the worst thing about the right. One I know of says in every post that Scaife financed think tanks are so bad.

The saddest thing about Soros is that he wants the world patterned after what he thinks we need. Then the saddest thing is that he has all that money and all those foundations to funnel it through to the think tanks.

Red, am I wrong about this?

I should of known better than to have attempted an conversation with a member of the Bush cult. So, Mr. rat who would be king, you and old Roy continue your mutual mental masturbation. Ciao

Frank: As soon as your ideas are challenged the least bit, you go run and hide. How sad for you.

Yeah, but he is hiding behind the left talking point about mental masturbation. I wonder if Frank could be who that sounds so much like.

I neither run nor hide. I simply don't care to waste my time. But Roy, tell me where I can find this left talking point and explain your last sentence. It didn't make much sense.

Frank, you are the one who used the term. Surely you know what it means. I outgrew all forms of masturbation long ago but it seems you think it goes on forever.

Whatever you say, Frank. Thanks for stopping in and wasting a little of your time anyhow. This old rat sho' do appreciate it.

Roy: It does have a familiar ring, doesn't it ?

The familiarity of that ring is so strong that it really points to something that we surely know about Frank, I think.