RUSH: For those of you watching on the Dittocam, during the top-of-the-hour break, we placed a plaque here with an American eagle riding atop the Stars and Stripes, the American flag. I did this for a reason, because I want to play for you an audio sound bite from Monday on Capitol Hill. Cybercast News Service interviewed Senator Warner of Virginia, Senator John Warner, about the phony soldier remark, the Jesse MacBeth story. This is what Senator Warner said.
WARNER: I’ve met Rush Limbaugh. I find him to be — to the extent there’s any clear definition — a patriot. I think he would fall in within the various definitions of being a patriot, and I don’t know anything about this incident, and I don’t think he would do anything to malign the men and women of the Armed Forces. That’s my own view.
RUSH: Now, let me tell you why Senator Warner said that, and it is because of this award here. This award is given annually by the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, of which I have been a member of the board. I have raised lots of money for — you have donated lots of money to — the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and I have donated my share as well. Every year they offer this award to someone special. It is the Johnny Mike Spann award. It is the memorial Semper Fidelis Award presented by the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. This was presented to me in March of 2003 at the Plaza Hotel at their annual dinner. In attendance every year is the commandant of the Marine Corps, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That year, Senator Warner presented this award to me. Johnny Mike Spann, of course, was a CIA agent killed in Afghanistan. He was the first. Now, we have this, and I don’t have very many of the awards I’ve been given. I’m not a big award guy anyway, but I don’t have them at home. If you were to walk into my home, you’d see a couple pictures, but that’s it, and you’d see that American flag, if I took you upstairs in my library. You’d see the American flag — flown in my honor, unbeknownst to me, during the original invasion of Iraq on five different aircraft — in a Ziploc bag, folded flawlessly.
I got home one day, and that flag was in a FedEx box with certificates authenticating — pictures of the aircraft authenticating — those flights when they happened, the pilots, and a letter on yellow legal pad paper from Mark Hasara, whose nickname is Sluggo. He has become a very good friend of mine since he organized this. We’ve talked about Tazz, the man who called us from the control tower at Baghdad International, threw the cheap quality French refrigerator off the top. Tazz was part of the group that flew the flag in my honor, unbeknownst to me. That is on display, framed: the flag unfolded and the certificates. But you have to go upstairs to see it. I don’t put this stuff on display often. I don’t talk about it much. This award, most of the awards that I’ve won, are here, the Marconi’s and so forth. I got this from my living room area here of our broadcast complex. I asked Brian to bring it, because it is heavy. I wanted this to be on display because it was presented to me by Senator Warner in the spring of 2003. This award every year is given in honor and recognition of somebody who has done a lot to support the Marine Corps, the law enforcement foundation — which, by the way, raises money for the children of Marines killed in action. It is basically a college scholarship program. The reason it’s called the law enforcement foundation is because in certain disasters, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation also extends college scholarships to other branches of the military as well as other law enforcement agencies of the United States government, such as Customs, the Coast Guard, the FBI.
For example, they went into gear during the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Of course in the Murrah Building, there were a number of federal law enforcement agencies represented who were killed, who had children. So we at the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation went into gear and raised significant amounts of money for the children. This is an ongoing effort, and there’s a new recipient of this award each and every year. I can’t tell you — they spare no expense on this. This is as heavy as it looks. Let me scoot it out of the way so I have access to my mic. In fact, let me move it and just get a shot of it here for those of you watching on the Dittocam to give you an idea. That’s what the eagle looks like. You can see, compared to me, how large this is. I, my friends, am not Tiny Tim sitting here. By the way, speaking of Tiny Tim, I saw Barack Obama a moment ago on television looking as depressed as he could be because his fundraising numbers are out, and Mrs. Clinton is ‘queen of the quarter.’ She crushed Obama in a surprise fundraising surge. What are the numbers, $27 million for Mrs. Clinton, $19 million for Barack Obama? Everybody said, ‘Wow, how did this happen?’ Folks, it’s easily understandable. There are one billion Chinese. For one billion Chinese, it’s not difficult to come up with 27 million even if one of your chief bundlers, Norman Hsu and Winkle Paw can’t make bail or can’t be found.
One other thing to mention. The Adopt-A-Soldier Program here on this program. Because of the negative press coverage that was in abundance during the early years — well, through most of the years of this current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan — we would hear from soldiers saying, ‘We only get one hour of Armed Forces Radio,’ which, by the way, is one of the real targets of Harry Reid and Tom Harkin’s actions on the Senate floor is to try again to get this program taken off Armed Forces Radio. Harkin did it once before a few years ago. So what we did is, we started the Adopt-A-Soldier Program, and there are tens of thousands of US military personal with complimentary access to RushLimbaugh.com so that they can listen to this program via streaming if they are able to connect to a server that permits it, and that was a caller’s suggestion, by the way. We’ve had, since that started, numerous e-mails from soldiers who have thanked us for keeping the flow of positive news, 24/7, their way. So I just wanted to mention these two things and explain Senator Warner’s comments.