Frank Rich: Warm handshakes of Chamberlain-Hitler & Rumsfeld-Saddam

[Human Torch]

Frank Rich: Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis
By: John Amato on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 8:28 PM - PDT

Adolf Hitler greets Neville Chamberlain upon the British Prime Minister's arrival in Munich. (September 29, 1938)



Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad in 1983

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/02/frank-rich-donald-rumsfelds-dance-with-the-nazis/

Frank Rich (reg req, NYT Select)

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.

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…read on

Rich’s two page column says it all.

[AX10]

1. K & R!

[Stinky The Clown]

2. K&R for this eloquent snapshot of the hypocrisy that is this adminstration

[Human Torch]

3. I'd like to see K.O. show these side-by-side on "Countdown"...

...and, given his shows from last week, it just might happen. I'm sure that he and/or his staff reads the NYT...

:patriot:

[Stinky The Clown]

5. I'm sure they also read ....

.... DU! :)

[Human Torch]

6. I forgot DU...and Poland!

:evilgrin:

:toast:

[WhiteTara]

4. Great Post! Thanks K&R

:kick:

[Nozebro]

7. Hussein has become "our" Noriega. No longer useful, now "dangerous"

to have around and must be silenced. Interesting (to me, anyhow) how both Hussein AND Noriega have both been subjected to the Bush way of treating people that can no longer be of use to them. (not that other Presidents haven't done the same thing)

[msongs]

8. i wish the democratic party INC USA would promote these pics instead of

refusing to use appropriate language and images, words such as tyrant, tyranny, dictatorship, and so on.

an ad showing these 2 pics would be cheap, short, and say far more than any DINO talking heads could say in 100 years of
sunday show blathering.

wish I could afford to run tv ads on the dems behalf :-(

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[ovidsen]

9. Geniuses think alike

Mark Streeter, the genius cartoonist with the Savannah Morning News has an offering in today's (Sunday 9/3) paper with exactly the same message... complete with caricatures of the Chamberlain-Hitler handshake and the Saddam-Rummy handshake.

Unfortunately, I can't find it at his site or anywhere else on the web, or I'd post it here.

[stopbush]

10. "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."

Funny how the RWNM says that Joe Wilson couldn't have been sent to Niger by the bush administration because he was out of
government at the time, ergo, it musta been his wife who sent him. But here we have Rummy visiting Saddam as a private citizen
at the request of Raygun. Oh. I forgot. We don't talk about that.

Dontcha love hypocrisy?

[Joanne98]

11. 'beating, burning, sexual abuse' We're all Saddam now.

[Straight Shooter]

12. You can bet Rumsfeld got a kick out of shaking Saddam's hand.

That close to evil, he must have gotten all giddy inside, the way he does whenever he's in the presence of bush and cheney. Or when he sees his face in the mirror.

[sundancekid]

13. well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit ...the side by side = priceless

sent this to MoveOn too ... deserves at minimum an internet ad spot

[democrank]

14. Terrific post.

Wish this photo was plastered all over the world.

[robbedvoter]

15. It was Rummy on PBS talking of a planned blitzkrieg - how he

planned to streamline the army to accomplish that (and we know the results).

[yorkiemommie1]

16. sent to bushbot dh

to counter the rw emails he gets from his buddies.

[Joe Bacon]

17. Frank Rich was one of the folks who got us in this mess

See the Daily Howler which documented his endless bashing of Al Gore in 2000. The elegantly-mounted lies he wrote were beyond contempt.

Until Frank Rich apologizes to Al Gore, I don't give a damn what he writes.

[Supersedeas]

18. the Corp Media has a memory hole that the refuse to acknowledge