Month: October 2007

Snoozing On The Casting Couch

by digby

Christy at FDL runs down the latest news that Frederick of Hollywood is a total snoozer on the trail. It reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to mention to the Republicans: Thompson isn’t leading man material, never has been. He’s a character actor. He plays the avuncular southern lawyer or the … avuncular southern politician. He has played the president or head of the CIA or whatnot from time to time, but they were all small featured parts. There’s a reason for this — he’s not believable in the lead. He has the charisma of a number 2 pencil.

They should have consulted some of their successful show business friends about this before putting so much hope into their Ronald Reagan sequel. (I’m sure their A-list — Shannon Doherty, Bo Derek and Patricia Heaton — would have been happy to consult.) Note to GOP: if you are going to keep “casting” your presidents, hire a casting director.

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Dear Roger Cohen

by tristero

Dear Roger Cohen,

I find it hard to maintain my composure when confronted by your blatantly misleading, self-serving, and malicious essay.

Neocon, for many, has become shorthand for neocon-Zionist conspiracy, whatever that may be, although probably involving some combination of plans to exploit Iraqi oil, bomb Iran and apply U.S. power to Israel’s benefit.

Beyond that, neocon has morphed into an all-purpose insult for anyone who still believes that American power is inextricable from global stability and still thinks the muscular anti-totalitarian U.S. interventionism that brought down Slobodan Milosevic has a place, and still argues, like Christopher Hitchens, that ousting Saddam Hussein put the United States “on the right side of history.”

Let’s stop right there. “Ousting Saddam Hussein” is not, and never was the issue. Roger, my friend, the world knows the truth: Iraq was invaded and conquered by the United States (with the help of a few British and the indispensible 4 soldiers from Palau). As a by-product of that utterly illegal, utterly immoral, and utterly stupid invasion, Saddam Hussein fled, was eventually captured, and killed. Few people mourn his death.

However, if the “ouster” of Saddam Hussein was Bush’s real goal, it could have been achieved by many other means short of invasion. Recently, for example, there have been news reports that for 1 billion bucks, Saddam would have happily retired .That, dear Roger, truly was an irresistible bargain (note to self: Borrow 2 billion from Bill Gates and offer Bush and Cheney the same deal).** But the invasion of Iraq was Bush’s goal, not Saddam’s ouster and so here we are, spending what? 1 1/2 billion dollars a week – a week ! – partly because you and Hitchens and so many others were too intellectually sloppy to make the distinction between removing an odious dictator from power and destroying a country’s government, infrastructure, and culture. Illegally, immorally, and for no good reason whatsoever that anyone can discern.

But being intellectually sloppy seems to be a problem common to liberal hawks:

In short, neoconitis, a condition as rampant as liberal-lampooning a few years back, has left scant room for liberal hawks. “Neocon is an insult used to obliterate the existence of this liberal position,” says Paul Berman, a writer often so insulted.

Roger, Roger Roger…There’s a wonderful Gary Larson cartoon where a bunch of psychiatrists are peering into roomful of lunatics and one of the doctors says something like, “We know they’re all nuts, but WHAT kind of nuts are they?”

They both may have the same first name and that surely is confusing for a world-class pinhead like Douglas Feith, say. But I assure you, we liberals are smart enough to know that Berman is not Wolfowitz. No one, except for you,Berman, and other liberal hawks is confused about this (and Feith, but he’s confused about everything). Certainly your critics aren’t, because if they were, you’d give an example, and you don’t:

For this left, anyone who supported the Iraq invasion, or sees merits to it despite the catastrophic Bush-Rumsfeld bungling, is a neocon.

No, Roger, I honestly don’t think you’re a neocon. I just think you’re a goddammed fool.

And you’re a fool who still doesn’t understand that only incompetents who rose to unimaginable power, like Bush and Rumsfeld, would ever have thought the invasion of Iraq was a good idea in the first place.

You deplore the lack of “nuance” amongst those of us who were right about Iraq from the beginning. And yet, you lump us together into some amorphous category called “the left.” Really, now? Is Paul Krugman a leftist to anyone except the clinically paranoid O’Reilly and his pals? Is Al Gore? Feingold? Rush Holt? Barack Obama? Jessica Mathews? Joseph Cirinncione? They are not. They are all centrist liberals. Would that there were genuinely leftist voices in mainstream American politics, not because I agree with many of their positions, necessarily, but simply because the breadth of “acceptable” public discourse in this country is dangerously claustrophobic. And it leads precisely to the kind of mistake you and your liberal hawk pals made: mistaking the likes of Wolfowitz, and Perle for serious thinkers. And more tragically, mistaking Bush/Iraq for a good idea.

In your wrap-up, you assert that “MoveOn.org is the Petraeus-insulting face of never-set-foot-in-a-war-zone liberalism.” Let’s ignore the Petraeus-bashing bashing – we both have more important things to do, like watch glue set on a broken pot. No, I’ve never been in a war zone, thank God, and I won’t pretend that being in Manhattan on 9/11 means I was, as some rightwingers have. But it doesn’t take that experience to know that what everyone sane who HAS been in a war zone says is the truth: War is a horrible tragedy, a failure of civilization, to be avoided whenever possible, and to be undertaken with reluctance, with an awesome sense of responsibility, and with a willingness to make every effort to end it quickly on those occasions when it is unavoidable. This is not hippie pacifism. Nor is it a position of “liberal interventionism,” which is just Rambo justified with big words.* No, it is the basic tenet of a realistic (in the everyday sense) approach to international relations.

And that, Roger, is the kind of liberalism that warned you and warned you and warned you that Bush/Iraq was a catastrophe. And warned you in 2002! And you wouldn’t listen. And Berman wouldn’t listen. And so many others, who should have known better.

And the war came. And here we are. You were dead wrong about Bush/Iraq, and you are dead wrong now about the liberals who were absolutely right. Roger, let me ask you a question:

In 2002, your hero, Kanan Makiya, once declared that the conquest of Iraq would succeed as a “triumph of hope over experience”. And you still want to stand by that schmuck? Really? What kind of nut are you?

—

*Well, what about Serbia? Ok, what about it? Nothing about it the Balkans justifies reifying the reasons for that particular situation into a foreigh policy position, let alone an entire ideology.

**[UPDATE: One implication of what I wrote is that the US would have bribed Saddam. Not so, as ecoast pointed out in comments: He wanted to take a billion dollars of his own money. Still, it’s a bargain and I still should get in touch with Bill Gates…]

Sociopathic Governance

by digby

The NY Times:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.

What a surprise. They’re still doing it.

When Bush said, “a dictatorship would be easier — as long as I’m the dictator” he wasn’t joking. They simply do not believe that they have to adhere to the rule of law — it’s awe-inspiring in its pathology. And the rest of us are like a bunch of frightened townspeople, hovering behind the curtains just hoping these drunken louts will pass out or leave town before they take a match to the place.

I am still stunned that we are talking about the United States of America issuing dry legal opinions about how much torture you are allowed to inflict on prisoners. Stories like this one are the very definition of the banality of evil — a bunch of ideologues and bureaucrats blithely committing morally reprehensible acts apparently without conscience or regret.

And as much as I admire James Comey for his internal dissent, he could have resigned earlier and blown the whistle on these unamerican acts. I appreciate that this is a hard thing to do, but he’s the one who said:

“It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say ‘no’ when it matters most,” he said. “It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country.”

Perhaps he thought he could do more good on the inside. But as with so many members of the Bush administration who have recently revealed their terrible misgivings about what was going on, I wonder if things could have been different if enough of them had quit and told the American people what they knew before the 2004 election.

The American Freedom Campaign sent this around today:

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) signed the American Freedom Pledge yesterday, expressing his commitment to protecting and defending the Constitution. With Senator Obama’s pledge, all of the Democratic presidential candidates except Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have now either signed the pledge or have provided the American Freedom Campaign Action Fund with a detailed statement addressing the issues described in the American Freedom Campaign Agenda. (The full agenda is included at the bottom of this release.)

The American Freedom Campaign (AFC) Action Fund is encouraging all candidates to sign this pledge, the text of which is as follows:

“We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people’s phones and emails without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power.

“I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any President.”

The Campaign also sent letters in August to the announced Republican presidential candidates. None of the Republican candidates have provided AFC with a response. Earlier this year, however, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) signed a similar pledge circulated by the American Freedom Agenda, an organization formed by conservative leaders, including former Reagan official Bruce Fein and former congressman Bob Barr.

For more details about the American Freedom Campaign Action Fund’s presidential pledge campaign, including the written responses from two of the candidates, please visit this page.

The mission of the American Freedom Campaign is to preserve the vision of the nation’s Founders — that no President shall be above the law. As part of this mission, it seeks to make the issue of defending the Constitution a prominent part of the 2008 presidential campaign. Later this fall, with a grassroots army to call on, the Campaign intends to turn up the heat on candidates who have not made their commitment to defending the Constitution clear.

You can sign the pledge too. It doesn’t seem like much, but perhaps if enough people sign on we can persuade the congress and the rest of the country that this is important.

I’m not holding my breath.

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Don’t Forget Poland

by digby

From the great patriots in the White House who called the MoveOn ad “disgusting” we have this lovely statement about our staunchest allies in Iraq, via Think Progress

In response to the withdrawal announcement, the White House has decided to slander Britain. The Daily Telegraph reports today that a senior White House official has revoked Britain’s status of being “the closest Bush ally“:

“There’s concern about Brown,” a senior White House foreign policy official told The Daily Telegraph. “But this is compensated by the fact that Paris and Berlin are much less of a headache. The need to hinge everything on London as the guarantor of European security has gone.” The White House official added that Britain would always be “the cornerstone” of US policy towards Europe but there was “a lot of unhappiness” about how British forces had performed in Basra and an acceptance that Mr Brown would pull the remaining 4,500 troops out of Iraq next year. “Operationally, British forces have performed poorly in Basra,” said the official. “Maybe it’s best that they leave. Now we will have a clear field in southern Iraq.”

The administration isn’t getting the kind of doglike devotion they are accustomed to from the British PM so have turned to … France and Germany.

What will the little wingnuts do without the tops of their heads?

Exploiting The Kids

by digby

Via Media Matters I see that Neil Cavuto is worried about the Democrats exploiting children — to pass health care coverage for children:

CAVUTO: …Remember that picture of Saddam posing with a little boy right before the start of the first Gulf War? Now, some Democrats are using kids to strong-arm President Bush into approving a very costly health care bill.

Nice. They juxtaposed the picture of Saddam with a picture of some kids and red wagons in front of the white house, too.

I think we can all agree that both parties have kissed babies since time began, as Julian Epstein went on to point out in that segment. But you’d have to search long and hard for a more exploitative use of a kid than this rank piece of treacly emotional manipulation from the 2004 election.

That’s the picture that should have been juxtaposed with Saddam’s.

Update: From Southern Beale in the comments:

Snowflake Babies

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Better Than “The Prince”

by digby

I’m sure everyone has seen the Chris Matthews interview on The Daily Show last night by now. (If not, here it is.) Stewart took Matthews to task for writing a book all about how you can strategize yourself to success like a politician, saying that it didn’t say anything about “doing the right thing” or having principles and values. Matthews was clearly flummoxed by the criticism. He is a Villager, after all. Why anyone would think that the current political system might not be the best model for success seemed beyond him.

Today, Matthews appeared on WNYC complaining that the White House press corps had been too easy on the Bush administration but admitting that it’s hard to be critical about all the nice people you know and run into socially.

The man who said that, also said this

MATTHEWS: Let’s go to this sub–what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo op in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I’ve got to say.

Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on–onboard that ship loved this guy.

Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I’m not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn’t do it for me personally, especially not when he’s in a suit, but he arrived there…

MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.

Ms. KAY: …he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn’t he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.

MATTHEWS: I want him to wa–I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.

Mr. DOBBS: Well, it was just–I can’t think of any, any stunt by the White House–and I’ll call it a stunt–that has come close. I mean, this is not only a home run; the ball is still flying out beyond the park.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know what, it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It’s not a stunt if it works and it’s real. And I felt the faces of those guys–I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

Mr. GIGOT: The reason it works is because of–the reason it works is because Bush looks authentic and he felt that he–you could feel the connection with the troops. He looked like he was sincere. People trust him. That’s what he has going for him.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you’re watching that from–say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We’re coming.’ Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not–we’ve allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it’s time to tell them, you know what, `You’re going to be help accountable for this.’

MATTHEWS: Well, it was a powerful statement and picture as well.

The man who said those things has just written a book noisily kissing the ass of every politician in DC which he is hyping by saying that he agrees with Village shaman David Broder that you shouldn’t get too close to those you cover and that the media has been too easy on Bush.

You cannot make this stuff up.

H/T to JR

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Great Resource On Intelligent Design Creationism

by tristero

Through a series of posts by PZ Myers and the good people at The Panda’s Thumb I was led to this excellent, and brief, pdf by Paul R. Gross on “intelligent design” creationism. For those of you new to the subject, this is a great place to start, and it is chock-a-block with links if you want to follow-up.

If you want a more detailed treatment of the subject, both scientific and historical, pick up the book Dr. Gross wrote with Barbara Forrest called Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. The paperback edition of the book updates the story to post-Kitzmiller, the big trial that, imho, is far more important than the Scopes Monkey Trial of “Inherit the Wind” fame.

A word of advice to newbies to the subject: trust no one. First of all, you cannot trust the creationists because they lie, distort, and cherrypick quotations to an extent that is simply breathtaking. Both PZ’s site and Panda’s Thumb have numerous examples and, in fact, the lying of the creationists became an important issue in the decision handed down against them by Judge Jones in the Kitzmiller case. Therefore, anytime a creationist quotes a reference – anytime – don’t you believe it unless you’ve looked it up yourself. Yes, they really are that bad.

Nor should you trust the scientists on the science because of their reputation, as, I assume (or hope), they would be the first to tell you. Their authority as figures to respect is as worthless as their data are essential. It’s not that “The Great Charles Darwin says it, so it must be so,” but rather, “What does Darwin say, what’s his evidence, do his conclusions follow, are there valid alternatives to the interpretation of the data?”

Follow the arguments and be critical: ask questions, pose objections, think. I suspect you will discover that evolution by natural selection is as easy a major scientific theory to grasp as they come (but its implications are extraordinary subtle and far-reaching). There are, I’m sure, many good intros to evolution, but, imo, the first edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species will do quite nicely.* You may need to skip around a bit – there’s a lot more information about pigeons in the beginning than most sane people need to know – but you will find succinct definitions of natural selection, a carefully marshalled argument, and a frank discussion of the objections to the theory.

And if you do take the time to read this book, or others by Darwin, you may come to the same conclusion that I did. It’s not only that the evidence is simply overwhelming for evolution by natural selection. Nor that it is simply outrageous that such a beautiful theory should be witheld, as it is,** from schoolchildren. It’s also that the more you learn about Darwin and his exemplary life, the more you realize what a terrible cultural loss it is that young people are denied the opportunity to meet this extraordinary person and learn who he was.

Darwin’s not a stuff-shirted Nigel Bruce pip-pipping his way across the Empire. He is a young kid on a ship who once had the gall to grab a sailor’s dinner from his plate because he (the sailor) was about to eat a very rare ostrich Darwin had been searching for in vain for months. He’s a fellow who, when learning to use the bolas from Argentinian gauchos, managed to lasso his own horse, and he’s willing to write about it. Later, as he worked through his theory, which took him over 20 years to announce, he was tormented by the implications if it was misconstrued (as it was, right from the beginning). He developed a cautious style that is a model of arguing and inferring from the evidence. And, by all accounts, Darwin was a man devoted to his family and friends, deeply considerate and generous.

Yes, Darwin had his faults. But anyone with ten times his faults and one tenth of his talent would easily win a Nobel or Macarthur. That kids don’t have a chance to learn who this guy was – that’s a real crime.

—-

[Slightly updated after the original posting.]

*The 1st edition is considered by scholars better than the revisions, where Darwin, in response to critics who were themselves mistaken, added material that muddled the argument. The edition I’ve linked to has the text of the first, with some additional material, such as a glossary, that was introduced in the sixth edition.

**One of the lesser noticed upshots of Scopes was that references to evolution all but disappeared from high school biology texts for some thirty years. At the beginning of the Space Age, with the US anxious to encourage kids to pursue science careers, evolution made a comeback of sorts. Today, as I understand it, many high school teachers once again try to avoid or minimize the subject of evolution. How it is possible to teach biology without putting evolution at the center of it genuinely escapes me, even if I’m a layperson.

Hersh

by tristero

On the Olbermann show via WaPo:

“You heard the White House spokeswoman say today we’re interested in a diplomatic track. Well, all [Bush] has to do is start talking to them, and then you get diplomacy. And he’s not talking to them. He has no interest in talking to people he doesn’t like. He doesn’t want to talk to the Syrians, the Iranians, Hamas. . . . If he would talk to them, I could say to you that there was some reason we might not go to war. But the only thing you hear, from inside, is that these guys really want to do it.”

If there are any grownups in Washington, please, please, please start talking sense and doing so VERY LOUDLY.

Village Parties

by digby

Both Atrios and Kos flagged this poll this morning, so I hardly need to join in. But I think it’s worth discussing a little bit how this fetish for bipartisanship is a Village construct. They all live together. They want everyone to get along, like back in the good old days when Tip and Bob would fight it out on the floor and then head out and get shitfaced with Wilbur Mills and John Tower. In those days the parties were not aligned ideologically and there was great political utility in having an open line of communication.

We are in a different time, in which the parties have realigned along some old traditional lines. We are also dealing with the fact that one party was hijacked by a radical political movement that sought to take the country back to a 19th century economic system, an 18th century social system and a 1st century Imperial system. Many Americans disagree with that plan and are trying to bring the nation back to the present.

The political system in this country is roiling right now and it is not going to be nice and friendly for a while. We disagree on some fundamental issues and we’re going to have to hash them out. I’m sorry that makes it hard for Village hostesses to put together a congenial dinner party, but they’re just going to have to adjust.

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Killing The King

by digby

I just watched Bill Bennett quivering with outrage that Media Matters has “smeared” Rush Limbaugh; according to him Rush didn’t actually say that soldiers who spoke out against the war were “phony soldiers.” Wolf, uninformed about the details as usual,looked taken aback and somewhat frightened by Bennett’s wild-eyed defense, and left it up to Donna Brazile to present the facts. (She did quite well although she would have been better if armed with the details on this one.) What was interesting is that Bennett then more or less issued a veiled threat that they’d better be careful not to push this thing too far or the “betrayus” thing would haunt the Democrats forever. He was more animated than I’ve seen him in years.

The Republicans are going into full defense on Rush, which is what any smart organization does when its valuable assets are threatened. But Rush not only said what he said, he since edited his transcripts and lied repeatedly on the air. (You know what they say about it’s not the crime it’s the cover up…) His supporters will defend him against anything (and often have) but this one is documented — he got caught.

Media Matters has a Fact Check, with links and documentation, that lays out the whole sordid case, in case any journalist wants to actually get the story. (I’ve seen little evidence of any desire to do so, so far.)

General Wes Clark (who Limbaugh has repeatedly slandered) has started a drive to force congress to remove Limbaugh from Armed Forces Radio, a move I’ve been in favor of for years. I urge you to sign up for this one. Limbaugh is a cancer on the body politic and we have to stop being afraid of him — or being above these “petty squabbles.” One of the main sources of Republican power is their ability to gin up controversies like this latest MoveOn thing and it behooves us to go after them with the same amount of fervor when the opportunity presents itself. They will keep doing it until the price becomes too high.

Bennett said today that the Democrats had erred because if they were going to try to kill the king, they’d better succeed, and Rush is the king of talk radio. He’s right. And the Democrats should have been working to take him down long ago. It’s my belief that the conservative movement of the past decade or so was a three headed hydra: Newt, Delay and Rush. Sure, there are others, including Bush’s brain, and Grover Norquist (whom I have sometimes included as the fourth head of the hydra) but those three stood for different things that were hugely important to the success of the movement. Newt was the visionary. Delay was the congressional enforcer. And Rush was the voice, screaming out violent hatred for liberals and Democrats day after day, decade after decade. It took its toll, to the point where we can hardly even stand ourselves.

Newtie’s now irrelevant. Delay is gone. Only Rush remains and he is probably the biggest prize. On a purely practical, hardball political basis, the Democrats should have been working to take him out for years. Now is their chance to turn the Republicans’ patented hissy kabuki back on them and hoist an avowed political enemy with his own poisonous petard at the same time. There are many others who will happily take his place, no doubt about it. But his voice is uniquely associated with the radical wingnuts, and it is an important symbolic message to the country if they can finally make an example of him.

But it is more than just a political knife fight. It’s principle. After all, the man was fired from ESPN for his racist statements. He talks about any women who don’t worship him like they are either whores or doormats. He has been spewing dangerous eliminationist bile about liberals in general for years and he tells our troops in Iraq every single day on Armed Forces Radio, paid for by you and me, that the Democrats are unpatriotic traitors, which really is reprehensible.

There are a lot of public affairs programs. And yet they pipe this hateful, radical gasbag into the war zone while sanctimoniously exhorting everyone else to support the troops. Troops who, according to Rush, can’t disagree with him without being “phony soldiers.” It is an insult to large numbers of Americans, including many in the military, who aren’t Republicans, that they are forced to pay for Rush Limbaugh to spew his disgusting partisan rhetoric into Iraq and Afghanistan — and then lie to the troops when it comes back to haunt him. It’s just wrong and if the Democratic congress can’t do even one other thing, the least they could do is put an end to this.

Here’s Clark’s petition.

Update: I see congressional candidate — and career Naval officer — Eric Massa, has called out Limbaugh in a very satisfactory way.

Excerpt:

“You’re a pompous coward and it’s about time someone called you out on it and that someone is me…My name is Eric Massa and you know where to find me.”

Update: VoteVets released a new ad on the controversy today, which you can see here, featuring an injured combat veteran calling Rush to task. Rush disgustingly replied on his show as if the man was so brain damaged he didn’t know what he was saying (similar to what the right wingers always say about women who have had an abortion, I might add):

“This is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said and then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media and a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into. This man will always be a hero to this country with everyone. Whoever pumped him full of these lies about what I said and embarrassed him with this ad has betrayed him, they aren’t hurting me they are betraying this soldier,” Limbaugh said.

Shades of Michael J. Fox. He’s a poor, damaged combat veteran who doesn’t have full control of his own mind.

Here’s the little guy’s response:

So, Rush Limbaugh called me a “suicide bomber.” More slander from the high and mighty sitting in his chair nursing the boils on his ass. I can assure you that I am no suicide bomber and that I can think for myself.

Rush, your phony soldier comments pissed me off. The audacity of someone like you who never had the courage to stand and fight for what you believe in makes my head spin. That is what made me stand up and state my convictions in front of a camera. I wanted to point out that you are wrong. I am not a phony soldier. I believe that we are not doing the right thing for national security by staying in Iraq. We are putting too much strain on our military by extending tours and not giving people enough time at home to rest. We have taken our eye off of the real Al-Qaeda and let them regroup to their pre-9/11 strength. We have not developed a political system in Iraq that would enable the country to stand on its own.

I stood in the sand, snow, dirt, mud and dust of both Afghanistan and Iraq. I spent over a week on a side of a mountain in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda. I received The Bronze Star medal for my actions during that battle. I crossed the border into Iraq with the first wave of the 101st Airborne. I sustained an open head injury on the streets of Mosul after a vehicle borne IED exploded next to the vehicle I was riding in. I have seen the aftermath of a real suicide bomber. I had loved ones who died in the 9/11 attacks. I have friends and colleagues who returned from the war in body bags.

How dare you call someone like me a phony soldier and a suicide bomber? In the commercial I just taped, I told you unless you had the guts to say something to my face, stop telling lies about my service. Well you haven’t had the guts to say it to my face, but I am waiting and the offer is still on the table.

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