Phoney heroes, phony cotroversy

Byron York:

On Monday evening, September 24, Rush Limbaugh was struck by a story that appeared on ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson. “A closer look tonight at phony heroes,” Gibson said in his introduction to the report, which was about men who claim to be veterans but are not. In the story, reporter Brian Ross discussed two men who claimed to have served in wartime, possibly to receive free veterans’ hospital and other benefits.

And then this: “Authorities say the most disturbing case involves this man, 23 year-old Jesse Macbeth,” Ross continued. “In a YouTube video seen around the world, Macbeth became a rallying point for anti-war groups, as he talked of the Purple Heart he received in Iraq and described how he and other U.S. Army Rangers killed innocent civilians at a Baghdad mosque.” Ross played video of Macbeth saying, “Women and men, you know — while in their prayer, we started slaughtering them.”

As it turns out, none of that happened. Macbeth was in the Army for just six weeks, was discharged before completing basic training, and was never in Iraq. “Last week in federal court in Seattle,” Ross concluded, “Macbeth offered an apology for defaming the real American heroes as he admitted to lying about his service record and his supposed atrocities.” Ross’ story was headlined “Phony War Vets” on the ABC News website.

Among the viewers that night was a person who works for Limbaugh’s radio program. “My call screener saw the ABC News report and he told me about it,” Limbaugh told me yesterday. Limbaugh decided to make the story the subject of his commentary for Tuesday, September 25, a commentary that played in the morning on the 600 stations that carry Limbaugh’s show. “We researched it and put the commentary together,” Limbaugh continued. “In our research, we also found a story on FoxNews.com from, I believe, May 20th on Macbeth that had ‘Phony Soldier’ in the headline. We also found a press release from the U.S. Attorney, Western District of Washington, on 9/21, who had successfully prosecuted eight of what he called ‘Fake Soldiers’ who had defrauded the VA system.”

So Limbaugh told Macbeth’s story in the commentary and added his own words about the people who had made Macbeth a hero. “They have to lie about such atrocities because they can’t find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military,” Limbaugh said. “In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.

During his program the next day, Wednesday, September 26, Limbaugh spoke to a somewhat emotional caller who claimed to be a Republican fed up with the war in Iraq. After a long and sometimes testy exchange, Limbaugh cut to another caller, a man named Mike in Olympia, Washington who said he had served two tours in Iraq. Discussing war critics on the left, the caller said, “What’s really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue — “

“The phony soldiers,” Limbaugh said.

“The phony soldiers,” the caller repeated. “If you talk to any real soldier and they’re proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they’re willing to sacrifice for the country.”

“I was thinking of Macbeth when I said ‘phony soldiers,’“ Limbaugh told me. As the caller talked, Limbaugh told a staff member to print out the previous day’s commentary on the ABC “Phony Heroes” story. After “vamping” a bit while the commentary printed out, Limbaugh moved on.

“I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much. I gotta — here is a morning update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers...."

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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 of the attacks on Limbaugh demonstrate the Democrats' commitment to the politics of fraud. Anyone who regularly listens to Rush Limbaugh knew the context of the statements. What Media Mutters did was deeply dishonest and if they were selling securities rather than politics would have been considered fraudulent. The omission of a material fact needed to put a statement in context is a violation of securities law. Politicians should be held to the same standard. There should be no doubt that Media Mutters is a political organization that Hillary Clinton says she helped organized and that is funded by George Soros.

Andrew McCarthy also discusses the phony charges by the Democrats.