He was ridiculed as a "drifter" -- a disgruntled veteran of a misbegotten war, the victim of an economy that abandoned him. Holding law enforcement officers at bay with an M-16 and a belt-fed machine gun, he shouted, "I just wanted something to eat, but they provoked me. … They shot first not me!"

Sound familiar? No, this is not a returning Soldier from his third year-long tour in Iraq reacting to a foreclosed home, no job prospects and the perception of increased government restrictions on his daily life.

Nope, these are the words of the fictional war hero John J. Rambo from the 1982 film "First Blood." But after reading it's nine incendiary pages, the dialogue could have come straight out of the latest Department of Homeland Security threat assessment titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

The report is so embarrassingly thin it's not surprising the department marked it as "For Official Use Only" -- restricting it from full public disclosure -- and at its essence lends credence to those wondering whether the Homeland Security department should exist at all.

And it would be fine if the report were just a silly reminder of bureaucratic inertia and paper pushing. But, it's unfortunately more than that.

Citing "a prominent civil rights organization," the DHS report claimed that "large numbers" of racist, militia types are "learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces" and warned that "the willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today."

To call this argument insulting doesn't do it justice -- "betrayal" might be a better term.

Aside from the question why on Earth an official government report would even suggest that the armed forces are a breeding ground for white supremacists by citing some obscure, unnamed "civil rights" organization's claims and bringing up that kook Timothy McVeigh again, the report makes you wonder if left-wing political hacks were at the helm when this thing went to the government printing office.

Like the "lone wolf" domestic terrorist in the Rambo stereotype, this report -- which argues that disgruntled veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will join right wing terrorist groups who are hoarding their guns and ammunition to overthrow the first black (left-wing) president because they don't have jobs -- plays into all the myths of the fringiest of liberal political fringes.

A misbegotten, unwinnable war? Check. A (previous) government that abandoned that war's veterans? Check. Knuckle-dragging automatons trained for violence in a rigidly conservative military culture? Check. An economy that forces these mindlessly violent veterans to "cling to their guns?" Check.

Then it just obviously leads to these folks joining groups to overthrow that pro-abortion, anti-gun, socialist government which has the added insult of being led by a minority, right?

Wrong.

Aside from the insinuation that the military is infiltrated with Democrat haters who can't abide the current president, DHS seems to have tone deafness to the type of people who serve in America's military.

Today's is not the military of Rambo's Vietnam, and since that's way before my time, I can't speak for its virtues. But I can say that after three trips to Iraq, two to Afghanistan and nearly ten years of running around countless war zones, bases, training ranges and barracks with troops from every service in the U.S. military, the Department of Homeland Security couldn't be farther off the map on this one.

It would be difficult to find a more loyal, law abiding, respectful and morally sound group of government servants in any branch than our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coastguardsmen. The idea that they could somehow contribute to what DHS calls "the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States" is so preposterous it smacks of a B-rate storyline in a season of "24."

And let's not forget the rousing ovation President Obama received from troops meeting their new president for the first time in Iraq last week.

The DHS secretary, Janet Napolitano, vigorously defended the report a day after it was leaked to the press. And only after pressed by veterans groups did she issue a tepid apology, saying she was sorry veterans "read [it] as an accusation."

But it was more than just a misreading of the report, and vets should be rightly outraged by the intellectual laziness and thinly-veiled political pandering of the DHS "intelligence" analysts. More needs to be done to find out who was behind this report and upon what "rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources" it was based. The secretary owes that to the "thousands" of vets serving in her department, and to the millions who fought and died fighting America's enemies foreign -- and domestic.