GEN. BATISTE RESPONDS TO LIMBAUGH

This is from the Friday, Sept. 28, 2007 edition of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Gen. Batiste has spoken out on Iraq several times before (here, here and here) so he may fall under Fats Limbaugh's definition of "phony soldier."


GENERAL JOHN BATISTE, ADVISOR, VETVOTE.ORG & U.S. ARMY, RETIRED: Good evening.

OLBERMANN: How do you respond to the Limbaugh comment, and we‘re going with the original one from yesterday that service members who advocate are, quote, “phony soldiers”?

BATISTE: If a two-time combat veteran, first Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, one of the two U.S. brigade commanders in Bosnia, 12 months that began in December of 1995, 33-month commander of the 1st Infantry Division with duty in Kosovo, Turkey, and 13 months combat operations in Iraq, West Point graduate, son of a career infantry soldier and son-in-law of a career special forces soldier, if that‘s the definition of a phony, I don‘t get it.

You know, the fact is that more than 70 percent of this nation does not agree with the current strategy in Iraq and I‘m here to tell you that our Army and Marine Corps are a reflection of the society from which they came and the same percentages exist there.

OLBERMANN: General, if Mr. Limbaugh was trying to be genuine when he claimed he had been referring to the one actual phony soldier guy, pretending to be a soldier, did he not sort of dismiss any validity to the argument when he added more actual soldiers including Congressman Murtha, the decorated Vietnam vet, to his list?

BATISTE: Absolutely. That‘s exactly what he did and Congressman John Murtha joins a whole range of great elected officials like Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska. And Congressman Walter Jones from North Carolina who understand that this nation right now does not have a focused regional or global strategy to defeat worldwide Islamic extremism and they understand that this nation is not mobilized in any dimension to accomplish what we have to do.