"We do not need General Clark or any of the rest of you liberals," rabid Republican radio host Rush Limbaugh declared in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. "We don't need to change the definition of patriotism in order to conform to the antiwar, hate-America-first radicalism of the Democrat leadership. And that's what this is all about."

"That was the featured quote last Thursday on the home page of Limbaugh's own Web site," the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg reported in October 2003. "Limbaugh's target this time was Wesley Clark, because Clark is a leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. As a four-star general, Clark led NATO's first and so far only major military action, which put a stop to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; as a combat officer in Vietnam, he was severely wounded and awarded the silver star, the bronze star, and a purple heart. The person impugning his patriotism, Limbaugh, sat out the war in Vietnam -- though not very comfortably, one must assume, since, as Joe Conason noted in Salon, the future scourge of cowards and slackers avoided the draft on account of 'a persistent boil on his backside.'"