Rush Limbaugh didn’t make up the term “phony soldier”.

And he definitely wasn’t referring to any Soldier who disagrees with him or opposes the war on terror (which is how the Left-o-sphere and other assorted Leftards are spinning it).

Instead, Rush was referring to actual phony soldiers who are using phony atrocities to denounce war.

• Go read Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History by B.G. Burkett, which is filled with account after account of phony soldiers. And more so, how these phony soldiers really do steal the valor of the men and women who did fight that war and win that glory.
• Or read Fake Warriors by Henry Mark Holzer, which is filled with even more stories from the Vietnam War.

But phony soldiers are not confined to the Vietnam War, as this list compiled by Dafydd at BigLizard illustrates:

Democrats and their willing accomplices in the elite media have been belching forth such slanders of our military for, quite literally, decades now. Here are just a few of the lowlights in the Liberal Hall of Shame:

• Jesse Macbeth, who billed himself as a “Special Forces Ranger” (don’t ask!) and claimed that he and his SFR pals had butchered “thousands” of innocent Moslems, mostly while they prayed peacefully in mosques. In reality, he served for 44 days, then was discharged without finishing basic training. Needless to say, he not only had not witnessed any war crimes in Iraq, he hadn’t even been there.
• Jeff Engelhardt, who claimed to have been an eye- and earwitness to American forces deliberately massacring thousands of civilians in Fallujah, under orders from Command, by burning them to death with white phosphorus. But his own contemporaneous account of his brief time at Fallujah never mentions any atrocity, and it makes clear he was never close enough to be able to observe the “burned bodies” of “children” and “women” that he claimed, in an Italian TV documentary, to have examined.
• Josh Lansdale. Alas, we never reported on Lansdale; but Michelle Malkin did. Lansdale, a medic in the Army Reserve who was in Iraq for a year, claimed to have spent much time in Baghdad, where he said he pulled people out of burning buildings and was wounded in heavy combat. Back home, he cut ads with retired Gen. Wesley Clark, claiming that he (Lansdale) was treated horribly by the VA, whose negligence turned his ankle wound into a permanent disability.Alas for Lansdale, subsequent investigation showed that he had never sought treatment through the VA; that he was not wounded; that his unit was never in Baghdad; that they rarely came under any sort of fire; that they were never in combat; and that neither Joshua Lansdale nor anybody else in the unit had ever even seen a burning building in Iraq, let alone pulled anyone out of such a fire.
• Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the New Republic’s dastardly diarist, about whom the less said, the better. (Say — whatever happened to that in-depth investigation TNR was conducting on Beauchamp’s now thoroughly discredited claims?)
• Edward Daily — who claimed to have been a machine-gunner who witnessed an alleged American massacre of Korean civilians in July 1950 at the Bridge of No Gun Ri. Daily was the cornerstone of a 1999 AP series of articles “documenting” this “war crime.” But subsequent investigation showed that he was not a machine-gunner but a mechanic; he was never at No Gun Ri and witnessed no massacres, war crimes, or atrocities; and in fact, he was not even deployed to Korea until 1951, long after the supposed incident.
• John Kerry, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the “Winter Soldier” project; again, the basics of this story should be well known to all of our readers.

I’ve noticed there is a taxonomy of phony soldiers:

• Some are literally lifelong civilians who have never been in the service (as some in the “Winter Soldier” project), but pretend to have been — either to tell fake war-hero stories about themselves… or else fake atrocity stories to attack the service.
• Another group were technically in the military, but they exaggerate their careers to make themselves appear far more important and credible than they actually were. Examples include Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA, 100%; for years, he claimed to have been a combat pilot in Vietnam… until he was forced to admit he was a ferry pilot who never saw a day of combat), Jeff Engelhardt, Josh Lansdale, and Jesse MacBeth.
• A third group comprises real servicemen who really held the ranks they claimed, were members of the units they claimed, and performed the duties they claimed… but who nevertheless tell fabricated tales of nonexistent war crimes: John Kerry and others of his VVAW co-conspirators are good examples.

Go read the rest, as — shamefully — there is much, much more.

IF the Democrats are really eager to demonize someone over being a “phony soldier”, they have to look no further than the Democratic Mayor of Atlantic City, Bob Levy — a man who was a very real Soldier (20 year veteran), but who nonetheless still found it necessary to inflate his service (claimed to have served in the Special Forces, when he didn’t) and also claimed the Combat Infantryman Badge (which he did not earn) in order to help secure him additional VA benefits and money that he was not entitled too.

Apparently Bob is in hiding after his lies have been exposed.

I have a feeling he’s hiding, not so much from the shame he’s hopefully feeling right about now — but out of fear of what a bunch of men who really did serve in the Special Forces and men who really did earn the CIB might have to say to him if they could find him…

These are the phony soldiers that Rush Limbaugh was referring to.