The Obama administration has soooo many issues and problems and screwups to its credit, that its an easy target for criticism. You don't have to lie about this administration if you want to be critical of it. So I really detest it when fellow conservatives tell an outrageous lie simply to score a political hit on Obama.
Thats exactly what Rush Limbaugh did following the announcement by the administration that they were sending 100 combat troops to Africa to target John Kony and the leadership of the Lord's Resistance Army. Check the headline he runs with on his site.
From the transcript, posted by Rush:
Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That's what the lingo means, "to help regional forces remove from the battlefield," meaning capture or kill. So that's a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda, and -- (interruption) no, I'm not kidding.
Later on in the show, someone must have have informed him of the charges that the LRA are a bunch of murdering, raping scum.
Is that right? The Lord's Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We're gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys -- and they claim to be Christians.He's gonna do his due diligence. Oh, well, gee, maybe thats what you would do before you accuse the President of persecuting Christians to death somewhere. Now you are gonna check the facts, gee thanks for that.
A survivor of the LRA's brutality sends a message to Rush. No one in the GOP or conservative camp will say word boo to Rush about this. Its a lie. He won't retract it or modify it. Hell, its still up on his website for pete's sake and by now, he should have the full brief on the LRA. When liberals do this kind of nonsense, conservatives trash them and rightly so. When Rush does it though, he's not held to any standard. If Rush will get behind a lie as huge and repugnant as this one, then what WON'T he say for the purpose of doing political damage to those on the left.
As I said at the beginning, there is plenty to jam Obama about. But huge whopping repugnant lies like this one that smears Christians (like me) by equating us with child stealing, murderous rapist scum such as Kony and the LRA leaders (less so the abducted children they turned into killing monsters) just so you can criticize the president? Its repugnant that Rush does it and its contemptible that no one of influence in the conservative camp will check him on it. Want to stay up on the antics of those Rush endorsed good Christian soldiers of the LRA, you can follow their kidnapping, killing and raping career at the LRA incident tracker.
You can debate the wisdom of sending our 100 combat troops to hunt the LRA, or whether there is a national security interest to be served here. For the record, whether or not we are pursuing other of the worlds's various and sundry butchers or not, the LRA is a predator group that we know is killing, maiming and raping innocent men, women and children and perpetrating horrific atrocities. We have blown millions and sent our troops into harm's way for far less noble causes than saving the lives of innocent women and children. If 100 of our troops can help hunt down and exterminate Kony and end the LRA's massacres, I'm cool with it. If we're gonna be globo cop, lets terminate a bad guy now and then. To the troops being dispatched on this mission, I say good hunting.
UPDATE: Rush takes official notice that he is "misinformed" on the subject of the LRA, but that seems about all he has to say of his outrageous smearing of Christians and Obama with his reporting. He won't walk any of that back and its pretty pathetic. Pandering to the lowest common demoninator.
Logging you in...
Phelps 76p · 703 weeks ago
My problem with this one is that the Ugandan government doesn't hold up any better than the LRA (we are talking Idi Amin country), and there are lot of more prolific murdering rapist groups in sub-Saharan Africa who could use our attention. Why are we going after one of the few Christian-flavored ones and ignoring the giant network of Muslim-flavored ones with definite Al Queda connections? (And by flavored, I mean that they have the same connection to the real thing as Orange Drink has to Oranges.)
The LRA are bad guys. Their enemy are bad guys also. (Unfortunately, they are rarely their victims, who are usually just uninvolved people trying to live their lives. I'm for us being globo-cop, but it also means picking our battles. Since there was no public discussion and our Decider-In-Chief just up and sent them with no Congressional approval, I have no choice but to question the decision.
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