DOD: AP ‘mischaracterized’ Rumsfeld’s speech in report

[TacticalPeek]

DOD: AP ‘mischaracterized’ Rumsfeld’s speech in report

By Patrick Dickson, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, August 31, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department took the unusual step Wednesday of posting a statement saying an Associated Press story had “seriously mischaracterized” aspects of a speech made Tuesday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The AP had written that Rumsfeld had “likened critics of the U.S. war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis” and that Rumsfeld portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral and intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security.

The DOD asked the Associated Press for a correction.

The AP softened its story in later versions, saying that Rumsfeld “alluded to critics of the Bush administration’s war policies in terms associated with the failure to stop Nazism in the 1930s” and added that “aides to Rumsfeld said later he was not accusing the administration’s critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras.”

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=39719


Oh, just cautioning against simpering appeasement, right.

[Monkeyman]

1. He said what he said no cover up now

[saigon68]

2. RumbDum is A WAR CRIMINAL who should be frog marched to the Hague

In Chains Please

[Tellurian]

3. Oh those WILD eyed Republicons..

Mea Culpas and infernal breast beating after they've insulted you up one side and down the other..

Why doesn't Rummy just tell it like it is..

The Big Corporations providing logistics, oil and pipeline management need (your sons and daughters) our troops there to protect their safety and investments in Iraq.

[cboy4]

4. Oh we all know what that piece of shit means. Please.

:eyes:

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Straight from the horse's ...

http://www.defenselink.mil/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1033

...
That year -- 1919 -- turned out to be one of the pivotal junctures in modern history with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the creation of the League of Nations, a treaty and an organization intended to make future wars unnecessary and obsolete. Indeed, 1919 was the beginning of a period where, over time, a very different set of views would come to dominate public discourse and thinking in the West.

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then-recent memory of World War I could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:

“Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!”

I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today -- another enemy, a different kind of enemy -- has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history's lessons.

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

• With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?
• Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
• Can we afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply law enforcement problems, like robbing a bank or stealing a car; rather than threats of a fundamentally different nature requiring fundamentally different approaches?
• And can we really afford to return to the destructive view that America, not the enemy, but America, is the source of the world's troubles?

These are central questions of our time, and we must face them and face them honestly.

...

[Miss Chybil]

12. That's all that needs to be said - what he said. nt

[Rex]

6. No, Alice, we don't live in a dictatorship.

Why would you say such a thing? :sarcasm:

[AlinPA]

7. So the AP buckles in to the DOD and does it their way. Crap. Shows they

are controlled.

[daleo]

8. Like the old Soviet Union

The government "asks the press for a correction", which they duly receive.

[Rose Siding]

9. The DoD is interested in keeping some form of the accusations in the news

The report didn't deviate enough from his actual remarks to warrant a correction. The bushies just want to keep a buzz about dems being soft on terror to stay in the news until Nov, any way they can.

[Supersedeas]

10. ooooooohhhhhhh, he ALLUDED toooooo....how subtle...and laughable

[sutz12]

11. The REAL problem, of course....

is that it is Rummy and his crew that are the Fascists we (our media) are appeasing and enabling.

[seriousstan]

13. Here is the actual quote.......

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then-recent memory of World War I could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else’s problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator’s reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:

“Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!”

I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today — another enemy, a different kind of enemy — has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons.

[Nostradammit]

27. Yeah, and some people, like the Bushes, said: How can I make a buck?

A certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion is about to dump out onto your head, Mr. Rumsfeld.

The Neocons have made clear their intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places.

But some seem not to have learned history's lessons.


Fuck you, Donald Rumsfeld. I will spit on your grave.

[HuffleClaw]

14. just part of a CALCULATED attack on the media

and we've seen far too often how rumsfeld views the media.

[truthisfreedom]

15. the entire administration is on an anti-truth campaign.

it's a horror show.

[Robb]

16. Nice work, AP. Murrow would be proud.

Number one question asked by idiots to reporters: "Can I see the story before it's published?"

The answer is, always, "no."

Of course, if you're going to roll over as the news cycle progresses, you've given up.

Amazing.

[zbdent]

17. Maybe it was just a bad translation from

the original German ...

[librechik]

18. you can't spell appeaser without AP

and they give the best bjs to power in Washington

[Thor_MN]

19. Rummy must be off his Metamucil

He's been blowing a lot of irritable hot air recently. He's either trying desperately to distract or he's gone into full projection mode. Everything he's said recently to attack others is more accurately applicable to the neocons.

[PATRICK]

20. Speaking of the actual quote

"Lord if only I had talked to Hitler" REPUBLICAN Senator Willam Edgar Borah, the Lion of Idaho, RNC member, opponent of the League of nations, isolationist, who no doubt would have switched his sentiments at the drop of a hat if only if it would cause the nation harm. "Strange innocence" indeed. Sound like typical GOP bloviating to me.

And the same RNC types who were holding back Bill from saving anyone a short time ago from facing down terrorists and dictators(The Lion's ghost still stalks the land!) try to pin all their old and news sins on the Democrats- who had non-isolationist solutions the GOP opposed at every turn.

And speaking of Hitler invading Poland and the US invading Iraq, would all this variety of historical allusion like to be fairly or deeply applied to all the important areas where it actually fits?

And the concluding irony is AP getting into the act and acting the part of simpering appeasers themselves. Great re-enactment guys. Can't wait to see you do Gettysburg in Iran this fall, D-Day in November and Nuremberg in the springtime.

on edit. Thanks to Wikipedia.

[Anakin Skywalker]

21. Aww. Poor Widle Wummy. He Gots Miskawhackterize.

[0007]

22. Keith Olbermann knocked Rumsfeld on his ass tonight.

It will be on later this evening, don't miss it! One of the best put downs yet.

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. The Department of Death should shut up and bring it's troops home.

.
.
.

With it's troops in over 120 countries in the world, and all the wars it's proliferated since WW2,

I think I would be safe to say that between the wars, phsyops, coups, slaughter through the use of stuff like agent orange, daisy-cutters, cluster bombs, depleted uranium and so on - and consider the loss of lives to it's own "warriors", in battle and afterwards

The USA has far outdone the amount of death that Hitler caused.

And remember, when Hitler died, the deaths stopped.

When the PNACers are history(and they will be)

The Depleted Uranium they spread around the Middle East will be killing people for centuries.

"The USA WarMachine - gives the gift that keeps on giving"

DEATH

[IndianaGreen]

24. but I saw and heard Rummy saying that on the video

Are they now saying that what we saw and heard was not what we saw and heard. Has the AP's story disappeared into the an Orwellian memory hole?

[MisterP]

25. why is there a Goya painting in the articl--oh my God!

[goforit]

26. So rummy, do yah really wanta stop your Nazzzi ways? You're saying we

are letting nazism take hold?

Hmmmm.....senility creeping up on an old bag of wind.