Rush Limbaugh is nothing if not stubborn. He’s now obstinately resisting an international outcry over his incendiary comments about Africa’s Lord’s Resistance Army.
This band of child-abductors, rapists and killers is acknowledged as bad news by pretty much everyone. Everyone, that is, except for Limbaugh, who took to the air shortly after President Obama announced he was dispatching 100 military advisers to help take them on.
“Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the Lord’s Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord’s Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan.”
Much to Limbaugh’s amusement, this passage is now part of the Congressional Record, as last week Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) quoted it on the Senate floor. Inhofe cited this exchange between Limbaugh and his helpers, and then moved on to tackle Limbaugh for taking the vicious LRA’s religious claims at face value.
“I want to make sure everyone knows that [the LRA’s leader] was officially disavowed by the Catholic Church in Uganda,” Inhofe said.
Limbaugh did not respond to this part of the criticism. Instead he tried to wriggle his way out. He completely ignored the dressing-down about the LRA’s well documented brutality, and instead conceded that he had been “misinformed” about whether the advisers President Obama deployed were intended for active combat.
The radio host then noted that Inhofe’s smack-down had included a mention of Limbaugh’s studio assistants, Dawn, Brian, and Snerdley. He transformed this into one big joke, while also implying that Inhofe’s umbrage had come from the fact the crew had never heard of the LRA, rather than the fact that they had fallen for the group’s propaganda hook, line, and sinker. From Limbaugh’s transcript:
“I wanted to play the sound bites primarily ’cause you three are now in the Congressional Record. All three of you. And you’re in the Congressional Record because you didn’t know something. How does it feel?”
At no point did Limbaugh address the fact that he had in effect defended a reviled group first listed as terrorists by President George W. Bush.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this wasn’t enough to stop the story from spreading. On Monday the Times of London ran an article about a young woman, Evelyn Apoko, who it said had been “horribly mutilated while working as a human ‘mule’ for the LRA.” The paper wrote that the 22 year-old “demanded an apology” from Limbaugh, but that none had so far been forthcoming.
A group representing Ms. Apoko also wrote to TPM with a link to the video where she asked for that apology, while also detailing what she suffered at the hands of the LRA.
Limbaugh has not yet responded to that. You can watch her video below.
