Harry reed and the boys are liers. Again they have taken a talk show host out of context. The real cowards are the democratic left including reed, pelosi, harkin, kennedy, hillery clinton etc etc. At least 56 bills or resolutions to pull the troops out or cut their funds. These democrats listed are truly traitors and should be charged with treason. Rush Limbaugh should be given a medal for telling the truth about the liberal liers and their lies. The real threat are the liberals and their socialist agenda. Liberals will tax and spend your last dime. All they want is power. Sick bastards.
WASHINGTON — Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh stepped up his criticism of Democratic lawmakers Tuesday, saying efforts by Democrats in Congress to target him are merely diversions meant to distract supporters from their failed efforts to get out of Iraq.
In an attack that began with the first words of the show and continued throughout his daily three-hour broadcast Tuesday, Limbaugh compared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is using a liberal media watchdog to suppress her opposition and said he feels sorry for Sen. Tom Harkin's family for having to be associated with the Iowa Democrat's statements on the Senate floor a day earlier.
He then said the attacks aren't really about him personally.
"It's about them and they are desperately trying to salvage themselves with their own lunatic fringe base who they are not only disappointing but they are deceiving because the dirty, little secret, as I also predicted, was that if the Democrats win the White House in '08 they are not pulling out of Iraq. All the top tier Democrats have said so," Limbaugh told his audience.
"Time to distract those peasants with pitchforks out there who are fit to be tied over being betrayed by Harry Reid, (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats," he said.
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The conservative talk radio host was fighting back after Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate lambasted him over remarks he made last week suggesting veterans who oppose the Iraq war are "phony soldiers."
In the House, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who is running for the open Senate seat in his state, has authored a resolution condemning the host. Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has not decided whether or not he'll bring it up for a vote, his staff told FOX News.
On Tuesday, Hoyer tried to draw comparisons between the Limbaugh attack and GOP efforts last week to condemn ads by MoveOn.org that suggested Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq, had betrayed the United States by giving Congress a semi-positive report on the result of the troop surge there.
"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," Hoyer said, adding that everyone should try to show "restraint from condemning all that we disagree with."
Senate Democrats say they plan no similar resolution of to Udall's because, as one Senate Democratic leadership aide said, to do so would only give Limbaugh "the kind of attention he craves."
But a letter to Mark Mays, president of Clear Channel, the parent company of Limbaugh's broadcast, was signed by 41 Democrats. It called on the network "to publicly repudiate these comments that call into question ('antiwar soldiers') service and sacrifice, and ask Mr. Limbaugh to apologize for his comments."
"Rush Limbaugh took it upon himself to attack the courage and character of those fighting and dying for him and for all of us. Rush Limbaugh got himself a deferment from serving when he was a young man. He never served in uniform. He never saw in person the extreme difficulty of maintaining peace in a foreign country engaged in a civil war. He never saw a person in combat. Yet, that he thinks his opinion on the war is worth more than those who have been on the front lines," Reid said.
"Rush Limbaugh owes the men and women of our armed forces an apology," he said.
Harkin followed Reid, saying: "Maybe he was just high on his drugs. I don't know." In 2003, Limbaugh admitted a dependency on pain medication, but three years later reached a plea deal that cleared him of prescription shopping for Oxycontin.
"I feel like apologizing for his family for what he said yesterday," Limbaugh said of Harkin. "Such a demeaning thing he did and so below the decorum and stature of (a member) in the United States Senate.
"It's unconscionable what Sen. Reid and Sen. Harkin and these other Democrats are doing. And again I want to apologize today to all of you in the United States military — active duty and retired — for this smear. I am not apologizing for myself. I am apologizing for Media Matters.org, for Hillary Clinton, for Harry Reid. I am apologizing for all of these groups that are undertaking efforts to demoralize you. ... I want to apologize to you on their behalf for this storm having been created out of thin air out of a total lie."
Limbaugh has vehemently denied a wholesale attack on antiwar servicemen and women. A literal reading of the Sept. 26 show in question shows that the controversial host did not in fact say that soldiers opposing the war are "phony," but his remarks have left confusion as to whom he is referring when he used the phrase.
The offense came up when a caller named Mike, who said he is currently serving in the Army, described his anger about talk of a pull-out from Iraq. Limbaugh readily agrees, according to the recorded exchange:
CALLER 2 (Mike): ...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 has since said on his show that he was referring only to one soldier: disgraced, convicted former Army soldier-turned-antiwar-activist Jesse Macbeth. Macbeth falsely claimed to have participated in war crimes in Iraq and received a Purple Heart, but in reality, he was discharged after only 44 days of service, never placing a foot in Iraq.
Macbeth was sentenced to five months in prison for fraudulently collecting more than $10,000 in benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The problem with the exchange, say critics, is that Limbaugh refers to multiple "soldiers." He gets to a conversation about Macbeth about two minutes after referring to "phony soldiers." In subsequent radio shows, Limbaugh attempted to clarify his position, but muddied the waters by editing out a portion of it, prompting outrage from the liberal media watchdog Media Matters, which has been driving this latest controversy.
In edited form, the discussion of Macbeth comes much more quickly after the reference to "phony soldiers."
On Tuesday, Limbaugh returned to Macbeth, noting that the convicted soldier's false accounts were merely the latest in a string of reports that Limbaugh has covered on his show.
"This is a willful and purposeful missing of the context of this program," Limbaugh said of arguments regarding his use of the plural to describe the Macbeth story. "We have discussed many of these phony soldiers over the course of the last few months. We discuss them constantly. Macbeth was just the latest."
He then quoted a Sept. 21 release from the U.S. Attorneys Office from the Western District of Washington state referring to eight "phony vets" who had scammed more than $1.4 million by lying about their military service for financial gain.
