Oh, this column just wins for the day based on the use of "Wayback Machine" in the headline. (10 points to those of you who know the origin of the Wayback Machine - points are doubled if you know the names of those who used the machine).
Exceprts are printed below - but the article focuses on the Administration's linking of the Iraq war to WWI (and anywhere else we fought "The Commies") The idea is, he suggests, to motivate the hard-core war veterans to get out and vote because this conflict is just like fighting Hitler. My favorite point from the article?
To those who point out that Iraq wasn't a nexus of terrorism until we invaded, Cheney responds, "They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway."
Huh? The terrorists who attacked on Sept. 11 didn't come from Iraq. Except in Cheney's mind, I don't know where the fact that we were attacked by terrorists trained in Afghanistan (and sent by Osama bin Laden, who's probably now in Pakistan) somehow mitigates the fact that we've made Iraq a hotbed of terrorism.
Here's the intro and a link to the article!
With George W. Bush talking so much about Nazis and fascism, Donald Rumsfeld warning ominously against lily-livered appeasement and Dick Cheney quoting Franklin Roosevelt on the "dirty business" of war, one might worry that this direction-challenged administration has wandered into some sort of time warp. Somebody's going to have to break it to them that Churchill and Stalin are gone and the Dodgers don't play in Brooklyn anymore.
Condi Rice seems to be the only one of the so-called Vulcans who missed the memo that it's 1939. When she made her obligatory pilgrimage to the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City last week, she referred to the enemy in the war on terrorism as "violent extremists," which sounds so 2006.
and the article's conclusion, just for kicks...
Rumsfeld went furthest of all in claiming that it is, in fact, 1939 -- that the jihadist terror movement presents the same kind of threat to the world that Hitler did when he invaded Poland. He set up a straw man, warning that those who do not see the threat as clearly as he does are as blind as those who tried to appease Hitler. But he doesn't specify who he's talking about. Who wants to appease terrorists? Is it Democrats? Nervous Republicans who've seen the latest polls?
Nobody wants to appease terrorists. But some people have a different idea of how to fight them. The president is right when he says this conflict is unlike other wars, but he seems to miss the essential difference: It has to be fought in a way that doesn't create two new terrorists for each one who is killed.
That's not what the president wants to talk about, though. Between now and November, he wants to talk about a war that we can all agree on, even if it has no bearing on the war being fought today. Yes, Mr. President, Hitler was bad. And your point would be?
Lastly, for those wondered - The Wayback Machine is from Rocky & Bullwinkle. It was used by Sherman and the lovable, brainy, white dog Mr. Sherman.