On May 7 -- while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered his personal apology for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on Capitol Hill, saying that the wrongdoings were “fundamentally un-American” -- radio host Rush Limbaugh defended the prison abuse for the fifth straight day and attacked media coverage of the controversial remarks Limbaugh made on May 3, May 4, May 5, and May 6.

Limbaugh on the May 7 Rush Limbaugh Show:

Now why -- why on the NBC Nightly News and why on Crossfire does my name come up, and why do I have to be challenged? Don't - don't misunderstand - I don't mind that I am. Don't misunderstand that, I said, but “Do you condemn Limbaugh?” “Do you - ?” “I condemn Limbaugh! [mocking CNN Crossfire co-host Paul Begala and guest Representative Robert Wexler (D-FL)]” ...

I think the reason that I have to be condemned and they've got to play sound bites from this show and have everybody pooh-pooh it is because it's effective -- it's because there's one voice in this country that's contrary to the herd, to the to the to the mentality here that has -- that has picked up steam. And everybody is in that herd and everybody's making a rush in that certain direction, and there's one voice out there that's saying “Hey wait a minute! This is not what everyone's saying it is.” ...

I'm not an elected official. I'm not part of the Joint Chiefs. I'm not in the command structure. I'm not in the chain of command at all, and yet I have to somehow be condemned. It proves it's politics, folks! ...

Who died? Who, who died here? What are we, what are we investigating? We haven't learned anything here. In fact, this is not about learning what happened, this is about these senators. ...

If you people in the media want to continue to characterize what I said, you can at least put it in context. You could say that it also reminds me of things I've seen at a Britney Spears or Madonna concert and on the MTV music awards. And if you're gonna do this let's just go ahead and get it right. ...

[We did.]

I do not subscribe to the theory that the American military is a bunch of idiots, I don't subscribe to the theory the American military is a bunch of boobs. .... The whole thing here just troubles me because what could have been or what could be actually something pretty smart is being cast now as one of the biggest most egregious mistakes that's ever been made. ... It could well be that the whole purpose here, which has been said, was to humiliate these prisoners. And there's no better way of doing it than what was done. These are Arab males -- what better way to humiliate them than to have a woman have authority over them? What's the purpose here? What's the objective of this? The objective is to soften them up for interrogation later, later on. As I said, there was no horror, there was no terror there was no death, there was no injuries, nothing. And given the profound fear of these jihadists and these prisoners, if you confront them with that fear, if you humiliate them that way, it might open them up, you might get keys to unlock what it is that have that they're not coming forward with. ...

If you look at these pictures you cannot deny that there are elements of homoeroticism and as was stated by a woman -- and I forget her name [Donna M. Hughes] -- column on National Review Online yesterday, her point was, -- yeah, I've seen things like this on American websites. You can find these if you have the passwords to these various porn sites, you can see things like this. And her point was maybe these kids -- the soldiers, the guards whoever, who are of a certain age group, who've grown up with access to this -- are simply acting out what they've on these websites or something, just for the fun of it. Or maybe other reasons.