I am so fucking pissed right now, I can barely see straight.
Excuse my language, but this big, fat idiot has pushed me over the edge.
I try not to jump to the conclusion that a blogger (especially a gossip columnist type like Wonkette) has not taken a quote out of context. So, I went looking for evidence of the following statement about the torture of Iraqi prisoners:
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?
I found it. You can hear the audio of the moron at Media Matters for America.
Somehow actually hearing him chuckle his way through a comparison of prison torture to a fraternity prank pissed me off way more than reading it.
I have to stay off the Internet until my blood pressure comes down.
Dude, put the gun away. Don’t go and do anything stupid, he’s just a washed up, old, whiny drug addict.
Limbaugh laughs off Iraqi prison torture as being similar to frat hazing.
I think I now know where Randall got the idea that the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American troops was no more harmful than your average frat initiation hazing. I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the Republican’s biggest blowhard cheerleaders, Rush…
Man, I wish that were true. Oh, he IS a washed-up old whiny drug addict, but for some damn reason people still listen to him. I do computer support on a university campus (!) and about 10% of the offices I go into have that idiot playing on the radio.
When I mention it, they all say, “Oh, I just listen to him for entertainment” but then I hear them quoting him to their friends.
JHFC what an asshole.
There’s a similar discussion, but different Rush Limbaugh quote, at World O Crap.
Did you also get Rumsfeld trying to parse the difference between “abuse” and “torture”? “What has actually been alleged is not torture, but abuse…”
Anyone who tries to justify or rationalize the abuse is an idiot, pure and simple. If U.S. soldiers were captured and treated in the same manner, people would be ready to nuke the Middle East [well…not like these same people aren’t already advocating that].
I think we can all agree that what happened was abusive and wrong.
On one side, some people out there say the sky is falling. That’s painting with an overly broad brush. And then there are those that are under-reacting (is that even a word?). They will (hopefully) be ashamed of their reactions.
As always, the truth-or what we accept as the truth-is generally somewhere in the middle.
To the specific, Rush is a total idiot.
Rush Needs A Smack. Or Three.
Over at Les’s, I read that Rush Limbaugh was saying dumb, dumb things. I’m not shocked, mind you – in…
Finally, He’s Useful!
Tom McMahon has a post about people he calls “Useful Idiots”, by which he seems to mean people who express such egregiously untenable opinions that they become hopeless self-parodies who help the rest of us define the reasonable boundaries of…
You know, you can tell a whole lot about people about where they stand on this issue. There are blogs I read just for the sake of arguement, cause I disagree with absolutly everything that comes out of there mouth and I like to voice that occationally… loudly… however, none of these people have supported what happened. none of them. They are all intellegent, articulate people whose views totally contidict mine, but I completely respect them for their integrity, Rush however is a spineless scary little coward. Scary in the sense that he could prolly rationalise *any* wrongs done by American folk in the name of America. Scary in the sense that people actually listen to this nutjob and might agree with what he has to say… This really does boil the blood doesn’t it.
Cut him some slack… it was the drugs talking 😉
John’s comment about Rummy’s parsing reminded me that after bitting into a pizza and finding a piece of glass as big as the nail on my small toe, I showed the counterman/owner the chunk and was told, “That’s not glass…it’s plastic!”
There is a big difference between what happened in Iraq and what happens at a Skull and Bones initiation. That difference is choice. Persons accepting to be initiated into Skull and Bones make the choice of being exposed to hazing activities. The mistreated Iraqi prisoners of war on the other hand were not given that luxury.
Rush is an arse for making such a parallel.
Big fat hypocrite! Why didn’t he cut Clinton and Monica the same slack? Weren’t they just having a good time and blowing off steam, or something?
Rush is an idiot. ’nuff said
I do think there is a difference between abuse and torture though. To me torture would involve physically hurting the person. Where abuse seems to me to be making them do something humiliating. A fine line, yes, but I think there is a difference.
Obviously whatever you call it, it isn’t ok.
I almost forgot that I hate Rush
I almost – almost – forgot about my Rush Limbaugh fury. Thank goodness I stumbled upon some good links tonight that jogged my memory. Several opinions here, here, and here at Salon. They say it all. I have nothing nice…