{"id":10946,"date":"2007-05-29T15:20:07","date_gmt":"2007-05-29T19:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10946.html"},"modified":"2007-05-29T15:20:07","modified_gmt":"2007-05-29T19:20:07","slug":"rove-advisor-falsely-smears-sheehan-reid-obama-clinton-cult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/rove-advisor-falsely-smears-sheehan-reid-obama-clinton-cult\/","title":{"rendered":"Rove advisor falsely smears ‘Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton cult’"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Review’s Michael Ledeen, who is also an AEI scholar and advisor to Karl Rove, became completely detached from reality today, blasting<\/a> the “Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton cult,” which Ledeen accused of trying to “disrupt military funerals” across the country. (via ThinkProgress<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Even by the National Review’s standards, this is utterly ridiculous. The only coordinated effort to “disrupt military funerals” comes from the much-reviled Westboro Baptist Church, which may be a cult, but is in no way liberal. The “church,” which appears to be little more than one large, twisted family, is led by Fred Phelps, who pickets military funerals with messages such as “Thank God For AIDS” and “God Hates Fags.” (Phelps and his followers disrupt military funerals because they believe U.S. casualties in Iraq are God’s retribution for the U.S. tolerating gay people.)<\/p>\n

In other words, the only cult that travels the nation engaging in this disgusting behavior is on the right<\/i>, not the left. This reality is apparently inconceivable to Ledeen, who felt justified in smearing four completely unrelated war critics. Indeed, “Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton”? Other than opposing Bush’s policy, these four are hardly identical. For that matter, the only military funeral Sheehan attended was her own son’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What’s striking is that Ledeen considers himself a respected professional. Does he believe casually smearing war critics with a bogus attack is acceptable? Did he just assume war protestors were necessarily liberal, so he didn’t feel like he needed to check? <\/p>\n

For that matter, is he so detached from the Iraq debate that he doesn’t realize who’s actually responsible for these disgusting protests?<\/p>\n

The good news is Ledeen ran a correction. The bad news is it was wrong, too.
\n
\nLess than 10 minutes after he smeared the “Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton cult,” Ledeen wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Correction: I was mistaken about the cultists at military funerals. The demonstrators were from a disgusting anti-gay church. The anti-war cultists staged their own mock funerals, led by Sheehan’s followers at Code Pink.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nico explained<\/a> that this is wrong, too.<\/p>\n

This is more intellectual dishonesty. Phelps’ hateful demonstrations have nothing in common with Code Pink’s processions, which feature “mothers grieving the sons and daughters lost to war.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And don’t forget, Leeden, when he’s not smearing liberals for no reason, is a serious player<\/a> in the Bush world.<\/p>\n

One is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that “America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism.”<\/p>\n

The two met after Bush’s election. “He said, ‘Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,’ ” Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove “something you should be thinking about.” More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If only he knew what he was talking about….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Review’s Michael Ledeen, who is also an AEI scholar and advisor to Karl Rove, became completely detached from reality today, blasting the “Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton cult,” which Ledeen accused of trying to “disrupt military funerals” across the country. (via ThinkProgress) Even by the National Review’s standards, this is utterly ridiculous. The only coordinated effort to “disrupt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}