At one time, the New York Times was known as the paper of record for any significant event. Its coverage of the current brouhaha over Rush Limbaugh makes it clear just how far its standards have descended.

Having abandoned for now their effort to force President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq, Democrats are not giving ground against a lesser nemesis: Rush Limbaugh.

With the help of liberal advocacy groups, the Democrats in Congress are turning Mr. Limbaugh’s insinuation that members of the military who question the Iraq war are “phony soldiers” into the latest war of words over the war.

A resolution introduced by 20 Democrats urges the House to condemn the “unwarranted slur” made by Mr. Limbaugh, though it does not condemn the broadcaster himself.

Right there is the problem. Nowhere in this article is there any indication that the reporter, Carl Hulse, has even gone back and examined the unedited transcripts and audio of the show in question. Indeed, he takes at face value the partisan claims of Media Matters and the Democrats that Limbaugh did, in fact, call any anti-war veteran a “phony soldier”. The only problem, of course, is that Rush Limbaugh did not say that, and one would assume that journalistic ethics, not to mention common decency would require that this be noted somewhere in the article. It isn’t – and indeed, the article dismisses Limbaugh’s defense of himself.

There is even an interesting spin by Media Matters included in the article, one that is contradicted by the transcript itself.

After the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters sounded the alarm about his comments, Mr. Limbaugh said on subsequent shows that he was talking about only one discredited man who claimed to be a wounded veteran. “I was not talking about antiwar, active duty troops,” he insisted.

Yet analysts for Media Matters noted that Mr. Limbaugh’s first reference to the discredited man came nearly two minutes after his plural reference to phony soldiers. That group and like-minded Democrats have refused to back off. More than 40 Democratic senators signed a letter sent Tuesday to the company that syndicates the radio show, asking that Mr. Limbaugh’s remarks be repudiated.

That is true – almost. In that transcript, it is clearly about two minutes before Limbaugh explains the reference to “phony soldiers”. And while he does only talk about one, Jesse Macbeth, though his case is one of a number in which fake vets have lied about serving, or actual vets have been documented to have lied about events. I'd argue that both groups qualify as phonies, wouldn't you?

But look at what Limbaugh said.

Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."

Now, recently, Jesse Macbeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse Macbeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse Macbeth isn't an Army Ranger, never was. He isn't a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven't even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven't heard much about it. This doesn't fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don't look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse Macbeth's lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can't find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.

So it is clear that Rush is referring back to a previous show on another day to make a reference. Given that much of Limbaugh’s audience listens daily, it is likely that they knew what he was referring to. In addition, the Jesse Macbeth story had been in the news only days before, and a reasonably well-informed audience like Limbaugh’s would have been aware of it. But even setting all that aside, the article is so slanted that it is not even funny.

But while we are on the topic of Limbaugh’s comments and the controversy surrounding them, let me note a few things.

1) I find it very interesting that Harry Reid and company will not come off the Senate floor to make these comments. Could it be that they know their statements are false – and so recklessly false as to enable Limbaugh to meet the standard for succeeding in a suit for defamation? Are they, in fact, hiding behind the Speech or Debate Clause of Article I to engage in speech that would be legally actionable if engaged in outside the Senate Chamber?

2) Why wouldn’t many of these same individuals condemn the infamous MoveOn.Org “Betray Us” ad, which accused General Petraeus of treason?

3) Is it only conservative broadcasters that these Senators are prepared to condemn? Will these same individuals condemn these comments from their fellow Democrat politicians (including signers of the Reid letter about Limbaugh)?

While Limbaugh exposed the left's exploitation of a phony, the likes of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., are free to slander the Marines who defended themselves against a jihadist ambush in the Iraqi town of Haditha, claiming they had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Sounds like the phony charges Macbeth made, doesn't it?

No one has been found guilty in the Haditha incident, and there has been no proof of innocent civilians being murdered. Several of the Marines have been found innocent as the case has unraveled. But is Murtha condemned by his colleagues or asked to apologize?

Sen. John Kerry once told Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation" that "there is no reason that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women . . . ." This was a more modest reprise of his post-Vietnam charges that U.S. troops had raped, tortured and pillaged in the tradition of Genghis Khan.

Then there's the famous utterance by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., after the incident at Saddam's Abu Ghraib prison: "We now learn that Saddam's torture chamber (has) reopened under new management."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., once said of our prisoner of war camp at Guantanamo that "describing what Americans had done to prisoners under our control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by the Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

I guess, of course, that attacks on our soldiers, their patriotism, and their decency are just fine – as long as they come from liberals and are aimed at ensuring our defeat in Iraq and the swift implementation of a cut-and-run strategy. So while it is impossible to call our servicemen and women in Iraq "phony soldiers", it is clear that the signers of this letter (along with Media Matters and NY Times reporter Carl Hulse) are phony patriots.

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