On the April 25 broadcast of his Newsradio 850 KOA show, “Gunny” Bob Newman made three false or dubious statements to attack three prominent Democrats. He falsely asserted that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) “call[ed] our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines losers”; he dubiously charged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) with being “in violation of the Logan Act”; and he claimed without substantiation that former President Bill Clinton declined to attack Osama bin Laden when "[w]e had in the sights of naval fighter aircraft ... while he was flying on a plane from Africa ... to the Middle East."

1. Reid called “our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines losers.”

From the April 25 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show:

NEWMAN: Speaking of ugly, Harry Reid -- Senate majority leader, Democratic senator of Nevada, who loves to get into real estate scandals -- well, he's in another ethics scandal for calling our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines losers. He called them losers! And refuses to apologize or retract his statement. And now he's getting email from people in the military, and people in the military are writing on blogs, and they have something to say about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Newman's attack on Reid appears to refer to a statement that Reid made at an April 19 press conference:

“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and -- you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -- (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid.

During the same press conference, Reid clarified his statement, adding, "[T]he war, at this stage, can only be won diplomatically, politically, and economically," as Media Matters for America noted.

Contrary to Newman's assertion, Reid's statement did not contain any criticism of U.S. military forces operating in Iraq. Moreover, as Colorado Media Matters has noted, far from being an “ethics scandal,” his statement appears to mirror the majority of the American people who agree with him, according to recent public opinion polls. For example, a CBS News poll, conducted April 9-10 and released on April 11, showed 54 percent of those surveyed responded that it was "[n]ot likely" that “the U.S. can succeed in Iraq”; 44 percent thought it was "[l]ikely." An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted April 20-23 and released on April 25 found that 55 percent of respondents indicated that they did not “think the U.S. goal of achieving victory in Iraq is still possible,” compared with 36 percent who did.

2. Pelosi is “in violation of the Logan Act”

Newman repeated a dubious claim that, as Colorado Media Matters has noted, appears to have originated with an April 6 op-ed by former Reagan administration State Department official Robert F. Turner in The Wall Street Journal, following Pelosi's April 4 meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As Colorado Media Matters noted, conservatives criticized Pelosi for meeting with Assad while routinely failing to mention either that a Republican congressional delegation had met with Assad just days before Pelosi's visit or that a Republican congressman was a member of the Pelosi delegation. Furthermore, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (CA) met with Assad on April 5.

CALLER: The thing with Nancy Pelosi, you know, treason. I mean, why, why has she been allowed, you know, why is it OK for her to go to --

NEWMAN: Oh, yeah, well, she's in violation of the Logan Act, passed I think in 1798 by, by President Adams, I believe. But, but she can't be charged -- or she could be charged, but she won't be because she would immediately turn around and follow up on [Rep.] Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) introduction of the articles of impeachment. And so, you know -- she knows she's in a position of safety right now, regardless of what crimes, what felonies she does commit.

Contrary to Newman's claim, the Logan Act (000-.html" target="_new" title="blocked::http://colorado.mediamatters.org/rd?http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000953000-.html This external link will open in a new window">18 U.S.C. 953) does not appear to bar members of Congress from speaking with foreign leaders. According to a 1975 State Department statement, which was noted in a February 1, 2006, report on the Logan Act by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service: “The clear intent of this provision ... is to prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments.” Nothing in [the law], however, would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution." Turner claimed to know the scope of a member of Congress' legislative duties for purposes of the Logan Act, and to know that Pelosi has acted outside that scope. But he cited no judicial authority for that specific position -- nor could he, because apparently there are no court decisions interpreting that statute as it might apply to actions by members of Congress.

3. Clinton declined to attack Osama bin Laden when "[w]e had him in the sights of naval fighter aircraft."

NEWMAN: Many who, who are not troubled by their politics, who will look at the facts first and let the facts form their opinion, realize they know exactly what Clinton did and did not do. We know for a fact -- we have all of the documentation -- that Bill Clinton was offered the opportunity by the U.S. military to kill Osama bin Laden. We had him in the sights of naval fighter aircraft and -- while he was flying on a plane from Africa over to, over to the Middle East. We knew the plane he was on, we had -- we had him literally in the gun sights, and, and Bill Clinton said no. And, and when Al Qaeda blew up our embassies in Ken, in Kenya and Tanzania, did he, did he really go after Al Qaeda? No, he sent a few, a handful of cruise missiles into some, into the mountainsides of Afghanistan and that was, and that was that. And of course, and he bombed, and he bombed a, a -- some sort of a plant in Sudan. But he did have plenty of time to, you know, to do Monica right.

Newman's unsubstantiated claim of a documented case in which U.S. naval fighter aircraft targeted bin Laden while he was in flight is supported neither by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report nor by the joint Congressional intelligence inquiry into the September 11 attacks, both of which contained sections examining U.S. military actions against bin Laden before the 9-11 attacks. Newman did not identify the alleged “documentation” substantiating his assertion.

Colorado Media Matters also has noted (here and here) similar unsubstantiated and dubious claims against Clinton made by conservative commentators.