Phony Politicians

This past week has produced one of the strangest (and frightening) spectacles in the long and sordid history of the US Congress. The Democrat majority in the House of Representatives and the US Senate have the lowest job approval rating in the history of the United States, and for good reason. The latest in a series of ever lower lows manifested itself in the haranguing of a talk radio show host, a private citizen, from the once hallowed floor of the US Senate.

Lead by Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, forty-one Democrat Senators and a mob of wild-eyed, foaming mouthed anti-war activists tried to silence talk show host Rush Limbaugh because of his reference to “phony” anti-war soldiers. Limbaugh’s comments, taken in context, referred to one Jesse Macbeth, a confessed and convicted phony, who’s faked war crimes confessions, received wide media coverage. Much more coverage than his conviction. He claimed to be an Army Ranger who had served in Iraq, when in truth, he was never an Army Ranger nor had he ever been in Iraq. He washed out of boot camp after only forty days! Senator Reid (of questionable ethics involving land deals in Nevada) purposely took Limbaugh’s comments out of context and tried to apply the “phony soldiers” phrase to all military who criticize the Iraq War. Smearing Mr. Limbaugh as unpatriotic and claiming a long history of disparaging the troops, Reid engaged in one of the most outrageous examples of personal destruction against a private citizen in history. All from the floor of the US Senate! Reid had to know he was lying for the truth was out there, on tape and transcript, for anyone to hear and read. Something the Democrats were obviously not interested in doing.

The use of ‘phony soldiers” to advance the liberal Democrat agenda is a long and disgraceful tradition of the party to slander the service of our troops. For example, Micah Ian Wright, author of the 2003 anti-war best seller “You Back the Attack,” was feted at the USC’s Annenberg School as an Army Ranger and Combat Veteran until he was finally exposed as a complete fake! Many similar examples of “phony soldiers” used by the Left and their Democrat puppets for war crimes confessions are documented in B.G. Burkett’s bestseller “Stolen Valor.” Indeed, the problem was so endemic that Republican Congress in 2005, at the urging of many veterans, passed ‘The Stolen Valor Act” finally criminalizing the activities such as those of Macbeth.

There is no one more injured by “phony” war crimes charges lodged by “phony soldiers” than veterans themselves whose service is dishonored by the slander of these pieces of human debris. We heard this slander from John Kerry in 1971 falsely compare our forces in Viet Nam to “the Army of Jhengiz Khan.” Kerry appeared several times with a man named Al Hubbard in such forums as Meet the Press and before Congress confess to war crimes such as bombing innocent villages. Hubbard was an Air Force pilot, who appeared on national television wearing the Distinguished Flying Cross and many other medals while confessing our guilt in Viet Nam. Except he was none of these things, having left the Air Force as a Sergeant, never serving in Viet Nam at all! Of course, we all know that John Kerry himself had a problem with exaggerating his military credentials.

US Military personnel all over the world thank God for men like Rush Limbaugh steadfastly defending our military from these fakes. Mr. Limbaugh has a twenty year history of supporting our troops by shining the light of truth on the Left and their attempts to destroy the America we love and by raising and donating millions to charities benefiting the families of our fallen Heroes.

It is not the likes of Rush Limbaugh that should be condemned from the floor of the Senate, but the Senate itself and its Democrat leaders. It is a body whose failure to condemn Hubbard’s and Kerry’s 1971 libels is deafening. It is also a place on whose floor active duty soldiers have been compared to the assassins of the Khmer Rough by Senator Dick Durbin (d) of Illinois; people who terrorize women and children in the dark of night by Senator John Kerry (d) of Mass.; and called cold blooded murderers by Representative John Murtha (d). Hypocrisy and cowardice are terms too kind for those who demean our soldiers without regard to the consequences; all to advance their own personal political agenda. This conduct, when coupled with the effort to silence Limbaugh, a steadfast defender of the troops, can be best described with two words” Phony Politicians."