Have you heard about the latest "controversy" involving Rush Limbaugh that has been made up from scratch by Media Matters and relentlessly promoted by the left side of the blogosphere?

Well, no worries, I'll tell you all about it.

Here's what Media Matters is claiming Rush Limbaugh said, Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers."

Now, you might actually conclude from reading that headline that Rush Limbaugh said that, Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers."

Actually, he didn't.

Once again, here's the headline, from Media Matters,

Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers."

Now, here's what Rush Limbaugh actually said, during a conversation with a caller,

LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

...

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

...

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

...

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

So yes, Rush did say the words "phony soldiers," but you can't point out where Rush Limbaugh said or implied that, Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers."

Now, here's Rush and the caller...

LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

Again, as you've seen, you can see that Rush Limbaugh didn't say that, Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers."

Additionally, while he did mention phony soldiers, the reference was a bit ambiguous. However, it seems likely that he was referring to liberals like Jessie McBeth & Micah Wright, who made up wild stories out of whole cloth about the war.

Unfortunately, because there is less honesty on the left side of the blogosphere than you'll find at the average minimum security prison, liberal bloggers simply parrot what Media Matters says on stories like this instead of having enough integrity to point out that they're deliberately lying about what Limbaugh said.

PS: If you want to know why the internet has such a reputation for being unreliable, stories like this one that are pushed by habitually dishonest liberal organizations like Media Matters have a lot to do with it....well, that and all the kook sites that claim George Bush was told to fly planes into the WTC by the Illuminati so that they could further their mutual goal of secretly merging the US, Canada, and Mexico.

RWN reader Johnny Dollar sent me an email in response to this post saying,

"Well, it was selectively edited anyhow. You don't have to infer, or guess, what was meant by "phony soldiers". Look at the complete
transcript...

Now see what Rush said right after that call ended.

Why do you suppose Media Matters left that part out?

Bingo. Media Matters lies again."

He's spot-on. From the transcript,

RUSH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country.

RUSH: They joined to be in Iraq.

CALLER: A lot of people.

RUSH: You know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you sign up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan, or somewhere.

CALLER: Exactly, sir. My other comment, my original comment, was a retort to Jill about the fact we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction. Actually, we have found weapons of mass destruction in chemical agents that terrorists have been using against us for a while now. I've done two tours in Iraq, I just got back in June, and there are many instances of insurgents not knowing what they're using in their IEDs. They're using mustard artillery rounds, VX artillery rounds in their IEDs. Because they didn't know what they were using, they didn't do it right, and so it didn't really hurt anybody. But those munitions are over there. It's a huge desert. If they bury it somewhere, we're never going to find it.

RUSH: Well, that's a moot point for me right now.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: The weapons of mass destruction. We gotta get beyond that. We're there. We all know they were there, and Mahmoud even admitted it in one of his speeches here talking about Saddam using the poison mustard gas or whatever it is on his own people. But that's moot. What's more important is all this is taking place now in the midst of the surge working, and all of these anti-war Democrats are getting even more hell-bent on pulling out of there, which means that success on the part of you and your colleagues over there is a great threat to them. It's frustrating and maddening, and why they must be kept in the minority. I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much.

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.

Why did media matters leave that part of the transcipt out, a part that makes it crystal clear that when Rush Limbaugh was talking about phony soldiers, he meant people like Jesse Macbeth?

For no other reason that because they habitually, deliberately lie about conservatives. Media Matters is two steps up from the Weekly World News on the credibility scale and quite frankly, most of the netroots isn't much better.