Baghdad Betty can be distinguished from Tokyo Rose for one very salient reason. Baghdad Betty does not broadcast from Iraq –she broadcasts from New York City.
World War II gave us Tokyo Rose, the Japanese radio broadcaster whose job it was to demoralize American troops. Seoul City Sue did the same thing for the North Korean communists during the Korean War. Hanoi Hanna was the Vietnamese communist version.
Today we have Baghdad Betty. However, Baghdad Betty can be distinguished from the aforementioned for one very salient reason. Baghdad Betty does not broadcast from Iraq — she broadcasts from New York.
Baghdad Betty aka Randi Rhodes is one of Air America’s premier talk show hosts. Actually, Randi Rhodes is a nome de microphone. According to a recent Ann Coulter column, her real name is a secret.
I first heard Rhodes about a year ago during a trip to Fort Lauderdale. After about twenty minutes of her repeating Bush and Nazi I realized she was incapable of an original thought so I changed the station.
I have not listened to Air America since I wrote about the network when it first began broadcasting. I felt it might be interesting to get their current perspective. So I tuned in recently to listen.
I began with the 10 AM show of Lizz Winsted and Rachel Maddow. I skipped the noontime Al Franken show and returned for Baghdad Betty/Randi Rhodes. What I heard was a rebroadcast of her show of several weeks earlier. Listening to Baghdad Betty’s dialogue with a caller named Dave and her subsequent monologue I learned:
“We (the United States) invaded an unarmed country (Iraq).”
“We (US) bombed the hell out of “unarmed country ( Iraq).”
“They (Iraq) had no air force”
“We (US military) are torturing the people we went to liberate (Iraqis).”
“They (the Iraqi people) waited a year for us to take care of them. We didn’t. Then they found out about us torturing people that is what created the insurgency.”
“Every single solitary military guy,” said there were not sufficient troops in Iraq.
Just imagine: all this disinformation was from just one show. One can only imagine what Baghdad Betty says on a regular basis. Her rant was pure propaganda. One only wonders if she is a dupe of the antiwar crowd or intentionally deceiving people.
Whichever it is none of what she said was true. For example:
If Iraq were an “unarmed country” as she said, then maybe she could explain how Lance Corporal Andrew Julian Aviles was killed when an Iraqi artillery round struck his amphibious assault vehicle on April 7, 2003.
If we did “bomb the hell out of an unarmed country” then she should explain the December 1998 CNN report stating, “Iraqi forces would shoot at warplanes patrolling the no-fly zones.”
If Iraq did not have an air force as Baghdad Betty says, then why did the December 2002 Daily Telegraph say, “An Iraqi warplane shot down an unmanned US surveillance drone yesterday, threatening to escalate the tension in the region as America builds up its forces for a possible war early next year. Why did a 2001 UPI story claim, “Since December 1998… [there are] more than 160 incidents of Iraqi aircraft violating the zones.”
Baghdad Betty claimed the Iraqi people waited for a year for us to do something to help them then, when we did not help them, and seeing the photographs from Abu Ghraib, the insurgency began. If this were true why is it that the November 13, 2004 New York Times reported, “nearly 18 months after the Iraq insurgency began in May 2003.” (italics mine) Why is it that the nonprofit think tank Jamestown Foundation wrote on June 17, 2004, “insurgency began in May 2003 with the outbreak of violence by the Sunni Arab population.”
According to Baghdad Betty, we are torturing the people we were liberating.
Does she think SSGT Joseph Darby was torturing prisoners? He was the person who told officials about the illegal conduct by guards at Abu Ghraib. What about all the other troops who investigated and prosecuted these abuses? Are they all guilty of torturing innocent Iraqis or Iraqi prisoners.
She also said that “every single solitary military person, “said more troops were needed. Yet, General Tommy Franks was quoted as saying July 7, 2003, “more troops not needed for Iraq.”
Baghdad Betty said we do not have any trouble murdering people in this country, while drawing the parallel to capital punishment here and the snuff films broadcast by the terrorists.
There is a report that she once advocated the assassination of President Bush during her broadcast.
Her biography says she was in the Air Force. If this is to be believed her insulting of the military is outrageous. Her biography also says she is a “smoky-voiced Brooklyn native” (This explains why I thought she was merely doing a bad imitation of Barbra Streisand).
She is completely without credibility. Randi “Baghdad Betty” Rhodes is to talk radio what “Tikrit” Teddy Rall, who said Pat Tillman was an idiot, is to newspaper cartoons.
They are fools.
** An earlier version of this article stated that Randi Rhodes broadcasts from Florida. IC regrets the error.
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