Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Anon-Voter wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

DrewDad wrote:

Anon-Voter wrote:

That quote from Rush is fanstastic. It's shows where the rightwingers live!!

It's an urban legend.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/limbaugh2.asp

Thanks, DD.

At the top of this page Magginkat wrote:

Who, in their right mind, would repeat the garbage they spew as the absolute truth ...

Yes thanks DD, and thanks Tico.

This is why I ask for links. I expect verification of things like this BEFORE I repeat them. I don't care who puts them forth. I'm glad to know it's wrong! Now I won't make the mistake of repeating something that is incorrect!!

Anon

Yet you just posted...

Quote:

That quote from Rush is fanstastic. It's shows where the rightwingers live!!

Where is that, I want the link so that I can shove this up their butts whenever they start whining about Saddam!
Anon

So,if you had not known it was incorrect,you would have used it?
Or,if someone had told you it was wrong,without the snopes link,you would have still used it?

This is almost as good as Ray Nagin trying to talk his way out of his "New Orleans as a Chocolate City" speech yesterday.

Anon-Voter wrote:

That quote from Rush is fanstastic. It's shows where the rightwingers live!!

It's an urban legend.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/limbaugh2.asp

Whatever opinions Mr. Limbaugh may have expressed on his radio program over the years regarding arms sales to Saddam Hussein and the social issue of drug addiction, the item cited at the head of this page is not a genuine transcript

NOTE: Those serving now know that they don't have to wait 20 yrs to see how much bu$h & Thugs, Inc. care about them. They sit waiting to see doctors for months on end after returning home and have to fight the entire system to get the medical & financial help they have earned. This disgusting administration does the same as some we see in this thread. Start a pile of BS then whine to their mommies when it backfires in their faces. Surprise! Surprise! NOT.

After brief stints as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington and county attorney in Indiana, he made a failed bid for a U.S. House seat from Indiana in 1968. Barrett subsequently labored as a GOP fund-raiser, organizer and activist, volunteering for Lawyers for Reagan in 1980. The group's chairman, Edward L. Weidenfeld, remembers that Barrett was "politically seasoned and seemed to know a lot of people."

The Reagan administration seriously considered Barrett for a federal judgeship, but he "could not afford to take it," according to Fred Fielding, Ronald Reagan's White House counsel. Instead, Barrett threw himself into lobbying, law and business, concentrating heavily on HUD. In 1988, he was well-heeled enough to lay out $500,000 as a one-time premium for a life insurance policy, according to his financial disclosure reports.

Information gathered during the investigation of Reagan administration HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., along with inquiries by congressional committees and the HUD inspector general, shows that Barrett was part of an interconnected group of lobbyists, consultants, and current and former HUD officials who benefited from high-level access to HUD at a time when corruption in the department was rampant.

There's an emerging 'story' involving the decade-long and 21 Million dollar price tag Special Counsel inquiry into former Clinton housing secretary Henry Cisneros which, we can guarantee with 100% certainty will quickly become a loud echo in the right wing media and, thus on this thread as well. story here

So, let's just get somethings out of the way right off the bat.

The special prosecutor was/is David M. Barrett.

Quote:

After brief stints as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington and county attorney in Indiana, he made a failed bid for a U.S. House seat from Indiana in 1968. Barrett subsequently labored as a GOP fund-raiser, organizer and activist, volunteering for Lawyers for Reagan in 1980. The group's chairman, Edward L. Weidenfeld, remembers that Barrett was "politically seasoned and seemed to know a lot of people."

The Reagan administration seriously considered Barrett for a federal judgeship, but he "could not afford to take it," according to Fred Fielding, Ronald Reagan's White House counsel. Instead, Barrett threw himself into lobbying, law and business, concentrating heavily on HUD. In 1988, he was well-heeled enough to lay out $500,000 as a one-time premium for a life insurance policy, according to his financial disclosure reports.

Information gathered during the investigation of Reagan administration HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., along with inquiries by congressional committees and the HUD inspector general, shows that Barrett was part of an interconnected group of lobbyists, consultants, and current and former HUD officials who benefited from high-level access to HUD at a time when corruption in the department was rampant.

full Barrett bio here

The long-awaited final report by Independent Counsel David Barrett, to be released today [Thursday], was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration's Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The question is what was contained in 120 pages removed by the judges.

Source

Purple Heartbreakers

By JAMES WEBB
Published: January 18, 2006
Arlington, Va.

IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!