FNC's John Gibson opened Tuesday's The Big Story by looking at the “gall” of liberal Democrats condemning Rush Limbaugh for supposedly insulting as “phony soldiers” Iraq war veterans who oppose the war. During a segment with former Republican Senator Rick Santorum and Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online, on how liberals have deliberately misconstrued Limbaugh's remark, Gibson played soundbites, critical of troop performance, from Senator Harry Reid, Senator John Kerry, Congressman John Murtha and Senator Dick Durbin. Following each clip, FNC displayed a bumper with a sound effect: “Who said that? Not Rush Limbaugh!” Gibson explained after the four videos aired: “None of those things were uttered by Rush Limbaugh. I mean, in a way you wonder where do they get the, I don't know, gall to be going after him over this?”
Video clip (1:20): Real (2.2 Mb) or Windows Media (2.6 Mb), plus MP3 audio (450 Kb)
The four soundbites in the posted video:
Senator Harry Reid: “That this war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything.”
John Kerry: “If you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.”
Congressman John Murtha: “Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”
Senator Dick Durbin: “If I read this to you and didn't tell you it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others that had no concern for human beings.”
