All you Iraq war opposers, you are Hitler Era Appeasers

Keith Olbermann's WOW editorial re Rumsfeld
Keith Olbermann Countdown show - MSNBC
8.30.06
Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once again attacked Administration critics, asserting those questioning its Iraq and anti-terror policies are trying to appease "a new type of fascism," calling them sufferers of "moral or intellectual confusion."

Tonight, Keith Olbermann returns to "Countdown" with a special commentary on Rumsfeld's remarks. You can catch Olbermann's full response at 8 p.m. ET on MSNBC, but here's a sneak peek:


"It demands the deep analysis?-and the sober contemplation?-of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty?-of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees?-with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom;

And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it is right?-and the power to which it speaks, is wrong."

The dumbasses don't know the difference between using sound judgement and being an appeaser, is all I can say.

Amazes me that your politicians and your child star "president" manage to talk sooo much sh$t, whilst having both feet in their mouths. Suppose it's all the practice they get.

Letter From Donald Rumsfeld
HEIL ME! An Open Letter From Donald Rumsfeld Mein Fellow Master Racers,
by Steve Young
08.31.2006

I believe some of you may have misinterpreted my remarks to American veterans this week.

As we know, there are known knowns and there are things we know we know but also things we know what we don't know. But most of all there are things I know that you don't know even though you think you do.


Like when I said that critics of our Iraqi war policy were comparable to Adolf Hitler appeasers prior to World War II, I didn't mean that Democrats or liberals or, for that matter, Republicans whose campaign coffers might weigh in a bit light next election, would let Hitler get away with his shenanigans today. Goodness gracious, no. He'd be over a hundred and quite frail by now.

And I certainly didn't mean that if today's Democrats had lived in the late thirties, Howard Dean would have probably written propaganda for Josef Goebbels, John Murtha would have loaded the rifles for the Gestapo or Russ Feingold would be pointing out the homes of Jews and gays to the SS; that they would have thought the Third Reich a groovy place to raise your kids and swastikas would have made a hot tattoo right above your girlfriend's ass; that it would be super neat for Brown Shirts to shove their awesome jack boots down the throat of every innocent woman and child in Treblinka while Richard Wagner plays a stirring waltz medley during Hillary Clinton's reading of "Mein Kampf," which may or may not be the greatest book ever written.

So, go ahead and feel (kind of) free to dissent. But if you're going to report that this administration is playing the Nazi card, make sure you get it right. We wouldn't want to have you end up having to defend yourself for libel at some kind of future Nuremberg Trial.

Sieg Heil! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!

Rummy out.

LOS ANGELES TIMES EDITORIAL
Pipe Down, Rummy
August 31, 2006

Rumsfeld's cranky outburst mangles a historical analogy, bad-mouths legitimate critics, and illustrates once again why the defense secretary should resign.

TWO REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATIONS ago, the mantra of conservatives was "Let Reagan be Reagan." Apparently President Bush has decided to let Rumsfeld be Rumsfeld ?- even when Bush himself is no longer the Bush who taunted Iraqi insurgents with "Bring 'em on!" and posed in front of a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."

In a cranky speech Tuesday to an American Legion audience, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld compared critics of U.S. policy in Iraq to those who sought to appease Hitler before World War II. For good measure, Rumsfeld suggested (echoing Jeane Kirkpatrick's liberal-bashing speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention) that those same critics "blame America first."

One effect of Rumsfeld's outburst was to serve as a reminder that he is still in office. Once the public face of the war in Iraq, he lately has been AWOL from the administration's public advocacy, ceding the spotlight to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The assumption was that, although Rumsfeld remained fireproof, his cocksure contempt for criticism was out of favor now that Bush has acknowledged that the prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq is "straining the psyche of our country."

Maybe Rumsfeld never got the memo, or, if he did, he crumpled it up. His speech was vintage Rumsfeld. It was also unfair and, in places, inane.

Take the suggestion that critics of Bush's Iraq policy are the moral equivalent of those who refused to stop Hitler. There's a reason why high school debaters are warned away from Nazi analogies: They're almost always disproportionate. Even Bush, who recently raised eyebrows by identifying "Islamic fascism" as America's enemy, stopped short of referring to critics of his policies as latter-day Neville Chamberlains.

Even more offensive is Rumsfeld's "blame America first" canard. Who exactly has been pushing what he called "the destructive view that America ?- not the enemy ?- is the real source of the world's troubles"? Certainly no one in mainstream American political discourse, not even those members of Congress who want to set a date for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Their argument, right or wrong, is that Iraq is descending into civil war and that the U.S. presence there is unavailing and a drain on resources better expended elsewhere, including on counter-terrorism at home.

The Bush administration can and should respond to that argument without recourse to overheated analogies and straw men like the "blame America first" crowd. Rumsfeld is obviously unwilling to step down. Could he at least pipe down?