When the torture story first broke, Rush Limbaugh made a number of outrageous remarks about the revelations, including calling the abuses by U.S. soldiers "pretty thoughtful" and "a brilliant maneuver." But two of his fellow right-wing shock jocks have since spewed rhetoric on the air waves that makes Limbaugh's comments look like child's play.
The sentiments speak for themselves, but what is perhaps most disturbing is their reach. "Savage Nation's" syndicated radio host Michael Savage, already infamous for telling a gay caller to "get AIDS and die" (MSNBC fired him for that), boasts 6 million American listeners per week, according to the nonprofit watchdog group MediaMatters.org. On May 11, while repeatedly calling Abu Ghraib "Grab-an-Arab" prison, he launched into this little tirade:
"I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour[s] -- a trial and executed. I think they need to be shown that we are not going to roll over to them ... Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes ... They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail."
The next day Savage added that Arabs were "racist, fascist bigots," and purported to speak for a majority of Americans regarding the war. He offered several all-American solutions to our problems in the Middle East.
"Right now, even people sitting on the fence would like George Bush to drop a nuclear weapon on an Arab country. They don't even care which one it would be. I can guarantee you -- I don't need to go to Mr. Schmuck [pollster John] Zogby and ask him his opinion ... The most -- I tell you right now -- the largest percentage of Americans would like to see a nuclear weapon dropped on a major Arab capital. They don't even care which one...
"I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings."
He also made sure to plug his credentials.
"I'm going to give you one further example from my background as an anthropologist just so that you -- I'm trying to put context on this because you can go crazy if you don't have the context on this, because I'm going to lead up to something of what we must do to these primitives. Because these primitives can only be treated in one way, and I don't think smallpox and a blanket is good enough incidentally ... Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people."
full: <http://www.salon.com/opinion/right_hook/2004/05/19/apology/index1.html>
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