If any American with a patriotic pulse listened to the Mike Malloy radio show, they would have been shocked on Monday night when Malloy outrageously suggested that Navy SEALs should have shot former president George W. Bush, and not Osama bin Laden. (MP3 audio clip here [1].)
MIKE MALLOY: I have heard some commentators talk about the fact that, all the lives that have been lost in this war on terror, and now the summary execution of the person responsible. But as soon as I heard that, I thought, well, bin Laden really didn't have anything to do - did he? - with Iraq. And I think his only relationship with Afghanistan was geographical.
But Iraq - all the death in Iraq was not caused by bin Laden. The death in Iraq was caused by George W. Bush. Five thousand Americans, tens of thousands permanently damaged and shot to pieces, a million Iraqis dead - that wasn't bin Laden. That was George Bush. So when does Seal Unit 6, or whatever it's called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden. Wasn't he, or am I wrong here?
Will the Secret Service be paying a visit to Malloy's studio for a little talk about inciting assassins?
A million Iraqis dead? Where does that come from? It's not a body count, it's a mathematical guess. From Reuters [2] in 2008:
More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.
The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.
- Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here [3].