Laura Ingraham drove home the point this morning that Kerry's remark should have more resonance, not only because of his slurs on American soldiers going back to 1971, but also a pronounced liberal tendency to equate the military with the proverbial poor, uneducated, and easy to command, as the Washington Post once described the religious right. She cited (and Brent Baker originally reported) actor Richard Belzer on the Bill Maher show on HBO in March, who said it was "BS" to ask the soldiers their opinion on Iraq:
Belzer: They're not, they don't read twenty newspapers a day. They're under the threat of death every minute. They're not the best people to ask about the war because they're gonna die any second.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: “Wait a minute! You are talking about my stepson, my stepson who just finished last week eight months of duty-”
Belzer: “God bless your stepson. Doesn't mean he's a brilliant scholar about the war because he's there. (applause) And God bless him.”
As Ros-Lehtinen noted the stepson's a college graduate, Belzer later added: "You know, the soldiers are not scholars, they're not war experts.”
