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Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis (Set Frank Rich Free!)

As he does week in and week out, Frank Rich has knocked one out of the park with his column: "Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis."

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.
What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn’t recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford.

The whole column is brilliant, and should be read by as many people as possible. So screw Times Select. Read it after the jump.

September 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis
By FRANK RICH

PRESIDENT BUSH came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn’t recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford.

For further proof, read the address Mr. Rumsfeld gave to Pentagon workers on Sept. 10, 2001 — a policy manifesto he regarded as sufficiently important, James Bamford reminds us in his book “A Pretext to War,” that it was disseminated to the press. “The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America” is how the defense secretary began. He then went on to explain that this adversary “crushes new ideas” with “brutal consistency” and “disrupts the defense of the United States.” It is a foe “more subtle and implacable” than the former Soviet Union, he continued, stronger and larger and “closer to home” than “the last decrepit dictators of the world.”

And who might this ominous enemy be? Of that, Mr. Rumsfeld was as certain as he would later be about troop strength in Iraq: “the Pentagon bureaucracy.” In love with the sound of his own voice, he blathered on for almost 4,000 words while Mohamed Atta and the 18 other hijackers fanned out to American airports.

Three months later, Mr. Rumsfeld would still be asleep at the switch, as his war command refused to heed the urgent request by American officers on the ground for the additional troops needed to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in Tora Bora. What would follow in Iraq was also more Chamberlain than Churchill. By failing to secure and rebuild the country after the invasion, he created a terrorist haven where none had been before.

That last story is seeping out in ever more incriminating detail, thanks to well-sourced chronicles like “Fiasco,” “Cobra II” and “Blood Money,” T. Christian Miller’s new account of the billions of dollars squandered and stolen in Iraq reconstruction. Still, Americans have notoriously short memories. The White House hopes that by Election Day it can induce amnesia about its failures in the Middle East as deftly as Mr. Rumsfeld (with an assist from John Mark Karr) helped upstage first-anniversary remembrances of Katrina.

One obstacle is that White House allies, not just Democrats, are sounding the alarm about Iraq. In recent weeks, prominent conservatives, some still war supporters and some not, have steadily broached the dread word Vietnam: Chuck Hagel, William F. Buckley Jr. and the columnists Rich Lowry and Max Boot. A George Will column critical of the war so rattled the White House that it had a flunky release a public 2,400-word response notable for its incoherence.

If even some conservatives are making accurate analogies between Vietnam and Iraq, one way for the administration to drown them out is to step up false historical analogies of its own, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s. In the past the administration has been big on comparisons between Iraq and the American Revolution — the defense secretary once likened “the snows of Valley Forge” to “the sandstorms of central Iraq” — but lately the White House vogue has been for “Islamo-fascism,” which it sees as another rhetorical means to retrofit Iraq to the more salable template of World War II.

“Islamo-fascism” certainly sounds more impressive than such tired buzzwords as “Plan for Victory” or “Stay the Course.” And it serves as a handy substitute for “As the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” That slogan had to be retired abruptly last month after The New York Times reported that violence in Baghdad has statistically increased rather than decreased as American troops handed over responsibilities to Iraqis. Yet the term “Islamo-fascists,” like the bygone “evildoers,” is less telling as a description of the enemy than as a window into the administration’s continued confusion about exactly who the enemy is. As the writer Katha Pollitt asks in The Nation, “Who are the ‘Islamo-fascists’ in Saudi Arabia — the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents?”

Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as “a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites”: All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.

“Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists,” said the congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president’s speech. “It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis.” And with Americans caught in the middle. If we owe anything to those who died on 9/11, it is that we not forget how the administration diverted our blood and treasure from the battle against bin Laden and other stateless Islamic terrorists, fascist or whatever, to this quagmire in a country that did not attack us on 9/11. The number of American dead in Iraq — now more than 2,600 — is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago.

Posted by Clara Jeffery on 09/03/06 at 2:31 PM | E-mail | Print

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Comments

The children in the White House are always up to mischief!According to Webster:to make mischief between to cause dissension between (people or groups). For over 5yrs I have told everyone, if you want the truth just reverse everything they say! If they point ,look in the opposite direction!

Posted by: Ranselar VanDerpoel on 09/04/06 at 11:07 AM

What is corporate fascism? Who is managing the US corporate fascism?

Posted by: jorge on 09/04/06 at 2:43 PM

Islamo-fascism: the hyphen has a sneaky affinity to an identity function. Rhetorically, it can produce the same effect as "=." Islam[o]=fascism. If the term becomes current, that's what it will lead listeners and readers to assume, especially if they're motivated by Our Leaders. Is that what we as a nation want Our Leaders to tell the world at (as they say) this point in time? That Islam is a form of fascism? Shouldn't some reporter question that usage and ask folks to knock it off?

Thanks,

Harry Berger

Posted by: Harry Berger Jr on 09/04/06 at 3:21 PM

Correction: the number of Americans killed in Iraq has now surpassed the number killed on 9/11, its over 3,000. Everybody forgets the 400 to 500 American contractors who have beeen killed there.

Posted by: Joe Anonymous on 09/04/06 at 7:32 PM

The Merriam Webster on line dictionary defines fascism as:
1.) A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2.) A tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.

It defines neocon as:
1.) A former liberal espousing political conservatism. (A flip-flopper in neocon terms)
2.) A conservative who advocates the assertive promotion of democracy and U.S. national interest in international affairs including through military means.

No neocon would want to be insulted with the first definition so when I use the term I use the second definition. By this definition you are not considered a neocon unless you advocate the forceful spread of democracy through military means.

Today’s neocon talking points for supporting the war in Iraq include a term, “Islamofascism”, used by Donald Rumsfeld to refer to Islamic extremist terrorists. It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that terrorists are not fascists by Webster’s definition. Islamic extremist terrorism is not a political philosophy. They support Sharia, Islamic law, a religious philosophy not a political philosophy. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are organized movements within Islam but Islam is not a nation or race. Al Qaeda opposes all secular Islamic nations as well as the entire industrialized western democratic world and its value system. They were enemies of Saddam Hussein, a man who studied Nazism and was a fascist dictator. Saddam would have had them killed, not collaborated with them. There is no evidence they stand for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader or that they support severe economic regimentation. They do discriminate against women and forcibly suppress opposition. They are evil people and they do evil things but by definition they are not fascists.

Rumsfeld’s purpose of using the fascism term to describe Islamic extremist terrorists is to equate them, in the minds of the American people, to Hitler and fascist Nazism. He is likening the war in Iraq to World War II. He and neocons like him imply that anyone who does not support the war in Iraq (by logical substitution) would appease Nazism and Hitler. (If you’re not with us you’re against us.) Of course this is all part of Karl Rove’s talking point strategy to portray Democrats as Nazi appeasing cut and run liberals, even worse than your plain old run of the mill cut and run liberal. I can’t help but wonder if they’ll get wife beating and child molesting in there somehow or other as well.

Fascism, more accurately, but not exactly, describes the philosophy of the Bush regime. The “Unitary Executive Doctrine” adopted and adhered to by this administration falls right in line with fascism. Secrecy, wiretaps, spying on citizens without warrants, abduction and imprisonment without charge or access to legal representation and disregard for inconvenient laws are all facets of fascism. Neocon policies and practices cause the economic and social regimentation the definition refers to. Examples of these are gay bashing, liberal demonization and cutting funding for needed social programs that help the poor. Suppression of opposition is evidenced by political attacks portraying as unpatriotic anyone who disagrees with the party line. E.g. the political attack on Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame Wilson. She and untold numbers of CIA agents and contacts were put in jeopardy in order to discredit a man who was defending democracy by telling the truth but also exposing the President as a prevaricator.

These statements made by our President reveal his autocratic and dictatorial tendencies:

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - just so long as I'm the dictator."

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense."

"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law."
(Constitutionally it’s the Executive branch’s job to enforce the law. The judicial branch interprets it.)
"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it."
"I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president."
Is Bush a fascist? Maybe not but he talks and acts like an autocratic dictator and he heads an administration that meets most all the criteria. Maybe we should call neocons “neofascists”. They meet more of the requirements of fascism than “Islamofacists”.
When people write letters and articles like this that expose deception with the well-documented facts and/or are critical of the war in Iraq, the typical neocon response is to call them unpatriotic Bush bashing liberals who appease fascism. They resort to name calling when they can’t support their arguments with fact or they point to something in the past that Clinton did or didn’t do that is somehow by some twisted logic supposed to make their transgression right. They like the “two wrongs make it right” argument. Children do the same thing. If neocons really want to see fascism they should look in the mirror.

Posted by: Harry Hopkins on 09/04/06 at 8:23 PM

Oh how I love Frank Rich. Thank you endlessly.

Posted by: jdbrooklyn on 09/04/06 at 8:42 PM

I weep for America. I weep for those who died needlessly on September 11, and for our soldiers who needlessly gave their lives to fight in Iraq. But we must not let our anger over the incompetence of this administration cloud our judgment for the future, which will thankfully not be in this president's hands much longer. No matter how badly he has failed us, our leaders still have some difficult decisions to make given the circumstances we are in and what concerns me is that backlash against any political leader with an "R" behind his name will cause us to flounder into yet another series of disastrous mistakes. Iraq was a mistake. Fine. I know that but we don't have a time machine at our disposal, so what do we do now? I am not convinced that simply withdrawing from Iraq just to "serve the Republicans right" is the correct answer. I want more logic and reason than that offered by Bush bashers. And I say all this as someone who voted against him twice.

Posted by: AnonLawyer on 09/05/06 at 12:53 AM

the king fly says to his fellow flies,"today we invade the flypaper and conquer it!". as the king and its army furiously attack the flypaper, the fly paper is overwhelmed with flies. as all the flies stuck to the flypaper desperately try to move, they here the king say," we have successfully invaded the fly paper, well done!"
sound familiar?

Posted by: scott d on 09/05/06 at 3:03 AM

Actually, there is aterm that describes the neocons even more closely.

Christiano-Fascists - which, by definition are fascists who profess to be Christians.

Notice how there is no amiguity in that term.

Neocons fit the fascist billing in some ways. Their authortarian/autocratic tendencies are clear, but it could be argued that they allow the marketplace much more freedom than true fascists. But I like John Dean's label from his new book even better: double-high authoritarians, which means authoritarian-type personalities who have strong social-dominator tendencies.

Anyway, back to Christiano-Fascists, or fascists who profess to be Christians. By the way, most Christians, of course, DO NOT fit this category. But the Neocons do.

Mr. Dean shows in his book that several of the most powerful Neocons (such as Bill Frist and Tom Delay) became Christians AFTER they became politicians when they realized that Christianity could be exploited by them as a means to political power.

So I say they "profess" to be Christian. Being Christian for them accomplishes two major tasks that a ruthless politician (read: social dominator/authoritarian) needs to rise to power. 1. it aligns them with a huge voting bloc, and 2. it sets them up with a nearly infinite base of funding.

So they are Christians of convenience. You can see this with Bush particularly in the Harriett Myers fiasco. After she started getting flogged by fellow Republicans (even other neocons), Bush desperately countered that she was qualified for the job because of her religious faith. This is a prime example of the religion card being played as an attempt to manipulate others.

It failed Bush that time, but unfortunately, Pat Robertson and many others like him have used the same ploy all too successfully on their huge followings.

We may be finally reaching the end of the effectiveness of the selling of Bush as being the right man for the job BECAUSE he's a Christian. After six years, many of the faithful now realize it's possible to be a Christian and still screw up things royally. They might still be inclined to vote for a Christian, but they are going to be seeking a competent Christian this time. We'll see what the GOP throws out for them.

Rummy and W are lame ducks. Cheney, however, may be wily enough to re-invent himself yet again like he did after Watergate. His specialty is running the show behind the scenes, and his main counsel, David Addington, is even better at the strategy of invisible influence than Cheney. So these two may still be destructive forces to be reckoned with after 2008.

The neocons may be doomed to be another failed political movement for a reason that Mr Dean so saliently points out in his book: double-high authoritarians tend to be incompetents. Their specialty is bullying and cheating their way into positions of authority. However, they tend to badly misuse those same positions of authority with disasterous results arising from their leadership style.

We are seeing exactly that dynamic in Washington these days.

Posted by: yogi-one on 09/05/06 at 8:45 AM

This thread progresses from admonishing anyone who uses the term Islamo fascist, lest all muslims be stigmatized as fascists; and goes right into unapologetic rants about christian-fascists.

Fascists that choose an ideology of the German National Socialist Party are Nazi fascists. That doesn't necessarily mean that all Nazis are automatically fascists. Although, in the case of Naziism, fascism is an inherant quality of the ideology. Its nearly impossible to be a Nazi and not be a fascist.

Fascists that choose an ideology of communism are communist fascists. That doesn't necessarily mean that all communistas are automatically fascists. But, to a lesser extent than Naziism, communism favors fascists means and almost inevetably leads to fascism.

Fascists that choose an ideology of christianity are christian fascists. That doesn't necessarily mean that all christians are fascists. One must severly pervert the commonly accepted doctrines of christianity to justify christian fascism but that doesn't mean it hasn't been done.

Fascists that choose an ideology of Islam are Islam-o Fascists. I can chew gum and walk at the same time. I can believe that the message of Islam can be adpted to fascism and also simultaneously at the same time believe that not every Muslim is a fascist.

Give people a little bit of fucking credit.

Do you know what Islam0-fascists do to gays? The same that the Nazis did to gays. The US's (relative?) acceptance of homosexuality is one of Osama's stated reasons for wanting to kill us all. It makes Religous Right "gay bashing" look like a pride parade.

What do Islam0fascists do to christians who happen to NOT be christian fascists? Look at sharia law, dhimmitude, Sudan. Hell, look in the Qaran and find one single sentence that says Muslims should cut christians some slack.

What do Islam0fascists do to neo-cons? To anti-war peaceniks?

For christsake, what do Islam0fascists do to other muslims who are from a different sect or country? Or have different skin color? 200,000 dark african muslims killed by slightly less dark arab muslims in Sudan. Over 250,000 shiites and kurds killed by Baathist Sunnis in Iraq. The US would have to continue the Iraq war for 100 years to do to Muslims what Saddam managed in less than 20 years.

If christian fascists stopped killing muslims right now, there would be less than a 1% drop in the world-wide slaughter of muslims.

And I'd hate to think how many jews and christians would then be slaughtered when Islam0fascists knew they could slaughter us unopposed.

Posted by: ddubb on 09/06/06 at 12:10 AM

Islamo Fascist has to be said in the texas/southern drawl that spits it out laterally in
between teeth not opened more than 1/4" and one squinted eye not tracking the other
in just the same way their fathers and grandfathers said Commie Pinko Faggots and
many other racial and politcal epithets 40+years ago.It was bullshit then and it's
bigger bullshit now as they were on the far fringe in those days.It's a tactic that got
their poison to much more of the country especially when the Fairness Doctrine was
allowed to expire. What exactly is that they have built? Absolutely nothing except the
selling out of our manufacturing base while simultaneously dismantling institutions
that enabled our middle class to grow and thrive. We have network talking heads who
will refer to themsleves as middle class. Earning multipuls of the median income .

Posted by: anambrose on 09/06/06 at 12:45 AM

Donald Rumsfield is right. American successes at shutting down terrorism is evident and plain as we now go 5 years without a terrorism attack on U.S. soil or property. Under the Clinton administration, 20 months was as long as the U.S. was safe from terrorists.
The track record of success in stopping not only terrorism but also handing over the reigns of a new goverment in Iraq are all the evidence we need that cut and run is not the answer as some would want. Indeed, there are great similarities between German sympathizers and terrorist sympathizers who want the U.S. to cut and run.
Yes, indeed, the term Islamo-facism is a wasted term. The Islamic religion as espoused by the Quaran makes facism seem like a playground bully. No need to make facism seem worse than it is by comparing it to Islam.

Posted by: Mike on 09/07/06 at 12:01 PM

There is an old vaudville line that goes: Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Bush is trying to convince us to believe him and not our own eyes. The war on Iraq was and is NOT a war on terroism. Bush is a con man.

But, the Iraq war has fueled world wide terrorism. The recent plot by British nationals of Pakistani heritage to blow up ten air planes headed for the US is evidence that we are not winning the war on terroism. The Madrid train station bombing, the bombng of buses in London, the bombing in Riyad, Bali, India are all triggered by the hate in part fueled by the unjustified war on Iraq.

The American public have finally learned to trust their own eyes. They now see that there is no connection between the war in Iraq and fighting the terroism of 9/11.

Posted by: Gail Wilhelm on 09/08/06 at 10:54 AM

Rumselfd is either so addled he can't remember what he said or did, and therefore it isn't a lie, or he lies and lies, as proven time and again by his revisionist statements. Jon Steward has had a field day with him (and Cheney and or current President) showing their lies. Either way, Rumsfeld must go and is a liability that Bush refuses to acknowledge.

Posted by: OCPatriot on 09/08/06 at 4:13 PM

-
'Islamofascist' has been plagiarized from Dave Emory's coining of it and his use to mean: BUSH FASCISTS.

Here's the archives. Most all of it is audio that has been broadcast. Could Mother Jones spread a bit more word of him and his work ....

http://www.spitfirelist.com/

Emory is to Rash Lamebrain and such psychofascist-radio as matter is to anti-matter.

Posted by: Meremark on 09/09/06 at 10:48 AM

The only difference between a Nazi and a Fascist is;a Fascist claims to be religious! I find it appalling that this group was allowed to usurp the constitutional government, establish a Fascist oligarchy operating under quasi military rule. Thereby turning this country into the "Land of Lies" !

Posted by: Ranselar VanDerpoel on 09/20/06 at 9:06 AM