| "What's
a Military Family Worth?" By Rush
Limbaugh |
| April
17, 2003 |
Folks,
please question all of your
news sources. Be especially suspicious of anything
you get forwarded to you in an e-mail - or see on
CNN. An e-mail has been floating around on the
Internet for almost a year now, attributing my
name to some statements I made and some I did not.
The main point is a comparison of the compensation
for victims of the 9/11 attacks and military
families.
The 9/11 victims simply went
to work that fateful day, but our men and women in
uniform choose to put themselves into harm's way.
On Thursday's show, I recounted exactly what I
said about this on March
11, 2002, which forms the kernel of this
e-mail, and what has been added. You can hear me
do exactly that in the Rush audio link. I
originally spoke in response to a March 8, 2002
USA Today story titled, "Why Is One Terrorism
Victim Different From Another?" (Text)
I said that the vast differences in compensation
between 9/11 victims and those who die serving the
country in uniform are profound.
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 I've republished my
exact comments - along with the call from a
military wife - in the audio link below. My point:
"If you lost a family member in the September 11th
attack, you're going to get an average of
$1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of
$250,000 all the way up to $4.7 million. If you
are a surviving family member of an American
soldier killed in action, the first check you get
is a $6,000 direct death benefit - half of which
is taxable. Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs.
If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a
month until you remarry, and there's a payment of
$211 per month for each child under 18. But when
the child hits 18, those payments come to a
screeching halt."
I pointed out that no
one remarks on this point, because it sounds like
you're criticizing the victims of 9/11. A military
man called on Thursday (also below) and
demonstrated another reason why no one thinks
about just what our military families get: they
don't complain. They say they're doing fine, and
ask for little. They remind me that they also get
life insurance. Back in March of last year, we
were hearing from victims of Oklahoma City and the
African embassy bombings asking for similar
compensation.
This is where the e-mail
being circulated under my name diverges from the
truth. The author swerves into talking about the
military pay raise and Congress. The item on
congressional pension is actually a separate Urban
Legend, as covered by the good folks at
Snopes.com. They also cover my accurate statements
and the inaccurate coda attached. The basic facts
of this e-mail do come from my March
11, 2002 program, and the original information
came from USA Today.
Everybody is acting
like they've never heard of this before, but this
is not hard to find. I didn't go through this to
cause grief with people who added their own
editorial comments to what I said. Rather I want
to basically to substantiate the fact that I stand
by my comments in support of our people in
uniform. I think it's amazing that the families of
our 125 soldiers killed in Iraq will get $6,000
(taxable), $1,750 for burial costs - and spouses
will get $833 a month. There is a major disparity
compared with the 9/11 victims. We must remember
all of our heroes and casualties in the war on
terrorism, folks.
=>Click here to see
Snopes verification.<=
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