Media Matters for America has previously noted how, during the September 28 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, in response to Media Matters' documentation of his recent characterization of service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as “phony soldiers,” Rush Limbaugh selectively edited an audio clip of the September 26 exchange while calling it “the entire transcript” of the segment. Limbaugh claimed that "Media Matters had the transcript, but they selectively choose what they want to make their point. Here is, it runs about 3 minutes and 13 seconds, the entire transcript, in context, that led to this so-called controversy." Excised from the clip, however, was a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's original “phony soldiers” comment and his subsequent reference to “one soldier ... Jesse MacBeth.”
The transcript (subscription required) of the first segment of the first hour of his September 28 broadcast posted on Limbaugh's website, which Limbaugh described as being the “anatomy of a smear,” does not make clear how much time elapsed between Limbaugh's “phony soldiers” remark and his discussion of MacBeth -- or even that any time did elapse: Limbaugh's transcript does not provide any notation or ellipsis to indicate that there is, in fact, a break in the transcript of the September 26 clip he used.
From the RushLimbaugh.com transcript of the September 28 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, with the addition (in boldface) of the 1 minute and 35 seconds of discussion that was omitted:
RUSH: That's really rich. John Kerry, whose own soldiers, his own personnel, fellow soldiers in those swift boats, at least many of them who said he was lying about his supposed heroics, this is the same John Kerry who went out and insulted the intelligence of the troops, thereby torpedoing his own 2008 presidential candidacy. His statement includes these words: This disgusting attack from Rush Limbaugh, cheerleader for the chicken hawk wing of the far right is an insult to American troops. I was not talking as Contessa Brewer said here about the anti-war movement generally. I was talking about one soldier with that phony soldier comment, Jesse MacBeth. They had exactly what I'm going to play for you. It's Michael J. Fox all over again. Media Matters had the transcript. But they selectively choose what they want to make their point. It runs about three minutes and 13 seconds, the entire transcript, in context, that led to this so-called controversy:
RUSH ARCHIVE: It's not possible intellectually to follow these people.
CALLER: 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 spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER: The phony soldiers. 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.
RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.
[begin Limbaugh edit]
CALLER: 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: Exactly, sir. And, and my other comment was -- and the reason I was calling for -- was to report to Jill about the fact that we didn't, didn't find any weapons of mass destruction. Actually, we have found weapons of mass destruction in chemical agents that [inaudible] been using against us for awhile now.
I've done two tours in Iraq. I just got back in June and there were many instances of -- since [inaudible] not know what they're using in their IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. They're using mustard artillery rounds. The ex-artillery rounds in their IEDs.
Because they didn't know what they were using, they didn't do it right, and so it just kind of -- it, it didn't really hurt anybody but there are -- those munitions are over there, it's just -- it's a huge desert. If they've buried it somewhere, we're never gonna find it.
LIMBAUGH: Well, you know, that's a moot point for me right now --
MIKE: Rush --
LIMBAUGH: -- the weapons of mass destruction. We gotta get beyond that. We're, we're there. What -- who cares if, if -- we all know they were there and, and Mahmoud [Ahmadinejad, Iranian president] even admitted it in one of his speeches here about -- talkin' about Saddam using the poison mustard gas or whatever it is on his own people -- but that, that's moot, right? What, what's more important is all this is taking place now in the midst of the surge working.
And all of these anti-war Democrats are getting even more hell-bent on pulling out of there, which means that success on the part of you and, and your colleagues over there is, is a great threat to them.
[end Limbaugh edit]
RUSH: It's frustrating and maddening, and why they must be kept in the minority. I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much.
Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse MacBeth. Now, he was a “corporal.” I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse MacBeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse MacBeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse MacBeth describes the horrors this way: “We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque.”
Now, recently, Jesse MacBeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse MacBeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse MacBeth isn't an Army Ranger, never was. He isn't a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven't even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven't heard much about it. This doesn't fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don't look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse MacBeth's lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. 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. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.
RUSH: That was the transcript from yesterday's program, talking about one phony soldier. The truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose, which is exactly the way the website, Media Matters, generated this story, fiction, out of context, did so knowingly. What is amazing is that after all of the examples of how this organization is simply a Democrat Party Hillary Clinton front group; how they constantly do this; how they take things out of context and embarrass themselves and get things wrong; they still have credible so-called journalists and others, members of Congress, Democrat Party, who treat what they say as gospel. Not one member of the media, not one congressman, nobody has called our office to ask, “Did you really say this? And what did you mean by it?” The reason this does not work, ladies and gentlemen, is that I have a 19-and-a-half-year record on this program of being one of the most devoted supporters of US military personnel in uniform that there is.
