The Wacko Left is Happy US Soldiers Were Tortured?

The answer to that question is a BIG FAT YES! according to right wing talk show demagogue, Rush Limbaugh. I won’t refer you to Limbaugh’s pay-per-view site for the transcript, but thankfully, Arthur Silber of Once Upon a Time has the scoop after he listened to Rush on the radio today (sparing the rest of us the agony):

Just a couple of minutes into the program, Limbaugh read an email from a listener, who wondered if “the left will say the soldiers deserved it,” and who went on to say he was “so sick of the cut-and-run liberals.” After reading the email, Limbaugh said he had gone to the “wacko lefty” sites to see what they were saying. Sure enough! “They’re happy these two soldiers got tortured! Good riddance to them!” Limbaugh said the crazed left would use these deaths to say once again that this “war” was going nowhere, that we’re losing, etc. (All paraphrases, but close to fully accurate; I was taking notes, since I knew what would be coming.)

Crooks and Liars has the audio of Limbaugh’s rant if you want to hear it yourself.

Arthur notes he couldn’t find any lefty sites that were happy the soldiers had been tortured. I’ll do him one better. Come with me on a tour of the progressive blogs for what we have really been saying about this story.

Cont. below the fold.
First let’s go to My Left Wing which I’m certain would qualify as a “wacko lefty” site in Limbaugh’s book. What have the followers of all things Mary Scott O’Connor had to say about these poor soldiers who were tortured to death? Well,there is this recommended diary by texas kos titled Bodies of Kidnapped Soldiers Found – One was a Texan

He was only 23. He had his life in front of him. Now his family only has his memories.

I’m so angry right now.

I’m angry at the Al Qaeda terrorists that killed him, but I’m more angry that Kristian was even in Iraq.

I don’t expect shit from terrorists, but I expect competence, security, and the goddamn TRUTH from my government!! […]

My sympathies go out to the Menchaca & Tucker families. I don’t know if we have the same political leaning, but we’re all Americans & in this we all have the same goal: To bring justice to the killers of these two young men.

But that justice will not be complete if the people responsible for sending these men in harm’s way are not held accountable also for their irresponsibility and blind zeal. [emphasis in original]

Nope, not a word about how happy texas kos is that these poor soldiers died under horrible circumstances. Quite the contrary. But yes, angry at the soldiers’ commander in chief and his administration whose mistakes, lies and mendacity put this poor soldier in harm’s way in Iraq in the first place.

Well, lets wander over to Eric Alterman’s blog, Altercation where Jeralyn of TalkLeft fame is filling in. Here’s what she had to say about this tragedy:

There is horrible news today from Iraq. The beheaded and tortured bodies of the two soldiers kidnapped on Friday at a checkpoint in Yusifiyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad were found on a street near the checkpoint. Pending official confirmation by DNA testing, they have been identified as Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, left, 25, of Madras, Ore., and Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston. […]

It’s hard to express the sinking feeling this news brings. What can you say to the families of these young men to help reduce their grief?

Yep. Just shouting for joy is ol’ Jeralyn. Can’t rein in all her glee for the life of her. NOT.

Well let’s see what that bombthrower Kos and his minions have to say. Maybe they’re jumping for joy? Uh, not exactly:

The bodies of the two captured U.S. soldiers were found in Iraq – bearing signs of “barbaric torture.”

How quaint.

I hope Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo will sleep well tonight, with visions of those boys’ bodies and the horrible barbarities inflicted upon them dancing in their heads. Perhaps Gonzales, and Yoo, and Rumsfeld and Bush will be able to envision the same inhumanities being visited upon their family members and loved ones as they drift off to peaceful slumber.

Lot of anger and grief by occams hatchet, but no happy thoughts, that’s for sure. As for Markos himself, the only comment he made was this post criticizing John Hinderaker of Powerline (not providing the link – find it on your own if you wish) for swift boating the family members of one of the soldiers because they dared to criticize the Bush administration. He doesn’t sound real happy either.

In fact, here’s a list of progressive websites and blogs I checked that, for some strange reason, weren’t dong the happy dance over the torture and death of our soldiers in Iraq:

Atrios
Huffington Post
AMERICABlog
Hullabaloo
Juan Cole
ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES
Rising Hegemon
Steve Gilliard
The Next Hurrah
skippy the bush kangeroo
The Sideshow
TBogg
Firedoglake
Jesus’ General
Glenn Greenwald
James Wolcott
First Draft
Laura Rosen
Shakespeare’s Sister
MyDD
ePluribus Media
Buzz Flash
Pandragon
Corrente
Pam’s House Blend
Roger Ailes
Josh Marshall

Well you get the picture. Rush Limbaugh is a BIG FAT LIAR. There is no joy in librulville because two US soldiers were tortured and then murdered. Only sadness and righteous fury at our leaders who have led us down this dark and twisted path to war, and to the immoral practice of torture ourselves.

Now I Know that some of you object to stories like this one. Why give gasbags like Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, etc., any more attention? you might say to me. Just ignore them. Well, with all due respect to those of you who sincerely profess that position, let me tell you why I think you are wrong.

No, better yet, I’ll let the far more articulate Glenn Greenwald tell you why we absolutely must continue to contest the lies and slanders of these right wing extremists:

But almost every time that I write about Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter or others like them, I receive e-mail telling me that I should just ignore them, that they are too petty to bother with. […]

For multiple reasons, I could not disagree more with that view. People like Instapundit and Michelle Malkin have a daily readership which exceeds that of most American daily newspapers. Millions of people buy and read Ann Coulter’s books and the national media repeatedly give her a platform. They represent the views of millions of Bush followers. To believe that they will just quietly fade away if they are ignored is pure wishful thinking, dangerous fantasy. The same thing was said two decades ago about Rush Limbaugh and, all that time, he has been pumping his hate-mongering into the heads of 20 million listeners on a daily basis.

Ignoring extremists is the worst possible thing one could do, and it is the biggest favor that could be done for them. The dishonest claims and manipulative tactics in which the likes of Instapundit and Michelle Malkin traffic are heard by enormous numbers of individuals and all sorts of influential people. To ignore them and to fail to respond to what they say — to fail to expose their dishonesty and radicalism — is to allow them to speak without challenge. The only result that will produce is to enhance their credibility and allow them to conceal their deceit. What possible rationale exists for that course of action?

More importantly, it is incomparably beneficial to expose the extremist, dishonest underbelly of the pro-Bush movement. They have made great political strides by focusing as much as possible on easily disliked political figures on the Left who are susceptible to being depicted (rightly or wrongly) as extremists (Ward Churchill, Harry Belafonte, Michael Moore, etc.) and then turning them into illustrative symbols of Democrats generally.

But while they do this, they also form highly beneficial alliances with the most extreme and radical elements in the political spectrum. Ann Coulter attends their most important political events and urges the murder of Supreme Court Justices and uses hateful epithets, prompting standing ovations. Dick Cheney’s favorite place to express his political ideas is the radio shows of right-wing radio talk show hosts who spew eliminationist and extremists rhetoric on a daily basis. […]

But because many people believe that individuals such as Malkin, Coulter, Reynolds, and Limbaugh are so vile that they ought to be “ignored,” Bush followers never have to pay a price for these alliances. They are allowed to milk the benefits of their confederations with extremists while deceitfully presenting a moderate, mainstream face to the country. They should not be allowed to get away with that. The more these extremists are focused on, the more attention they receive, the better it is. It is a good thing for Americans to know that the real face of Bush followers is Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Ann Coulter and Jim Dobson, and to see clearly what that face really looks like.

Moreover, the blogosphere provides a unique opportunity to expose the true deceit and the real impulses which underlie most Bush followers’ allegiance to that movement. Because people like Instapundit and Malkin post every day, and those posts remain there forever for anyone to read, a record is compiled of what they think and how they “reason.” When the dishonesty of Instapundit’s tactics is exposed, it matters not because it matters whether Instapundit himself is dishonest, but because the dishonest tactics he employs are employed widely and then become echoed by the national media. The benefits of exposing that dishonesty ought to be self-evident. When Instapundit is exposed for his deceitful use of the “fringe” smear, it weakens the credibility of that smear generally. That is why it is worth doing.

It would be nice and all if we had a political culture where extremists and those who traffic in character smears in lieu of substantive political arguments could simply be ignored, so that they would disappear. But the reality is the opposite. Our political dialogue, especially over the last five years, has been shaped primarily by those who specialize in demonizing political opponents as fringe lunatics, depicting disagreement as treason, and deliberately papering over complexities in order to spew misleading political slogans designed to propagandize rather than persuade. The lesson of the Swift Boat debacle, more than anything else, was that to ignore those individuals and those tactics is the best thing one can do . . . for them. It is surprising how many people seem not to have learned that lesson. [empahsis supplied]