Bent Corner

LIMBAUGH: Another Mike, this one in Olympia, Washington. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER 2: Hi Rush, thanks for taking my call.

LIMBAUGH: You bet.

CALLER 2: I have a retort to Mike in Chicago, because I am a serving American military, in the Army. I’ve been serving for 14 years, very proudly.

LIMBAUGH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER 2: And, you know, 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, if we pull — what these people don’t understand is if we pull out of Iraq right now, which is about impossible because of all the stuff that’s over there, it’d 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. And –

LIMBAUGH: There’s a lot more than that that they don’t understand. They can’t even — if — the next guy that calls here, I’m gonna ask him: Why should we pull — what is the imperative for pulling out? What’s in it for the United States to pull out? They can’t — I don’t think they have an answer for that other than, “Well, we just gotta bring the troops home.”

CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what –

LIMBAUGH: “Save the — keep the troops safe” or whatever. I — it’s not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they’re willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined –

CALLER 2: A lot of them — the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you’re going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you’re going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

CALLER 2: Exactly, sir.

Transcript from Media Matters

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A lot has been made of late about something stupid conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said about members of the military that favor leaving Iraq. He referred to them as “phony soldiers”. This comment has got a lot of people upset. So much so that Limbaugh has even gone back and edited the transcript of his show to change the context of what he said.

This is something Limbaugh doesn’t normally do when he says something stupid.

I’m having a hard time understanding all the outrage over this specific comment. Granted, it sounds as though Limbaugh is dishonoring those who serve their country, both past and present, but how is that newsworthy? Why is it so hard to understand that Limbaugh doesn’t have respect for members of the military? What would make anyone think that Limbaugh cares about the troops?

I would think that if Limbaugh really cared about the troops, he would be outraged that so many of them have been killed in a war waged over false pretenses. The last time I checked, George W. Bush went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) and he had ties to al-Qaeda. Things that turned out to be not true. If Limbaugh cared about the troops, he would want them to come home, especially now that it’s clear they were sent to wage a war under false pretenses. If Limbaugh really cared about the troops, he would speak out against the idea of a never ending war. Instead of speaking out against it, he advocates it.

It seems to me that Limbaugh is being criticized for simply being Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh said something stupid. That’s just what he does.