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From Capitol Hill Blue

The Rant
Comparing Bush to Hitler
By DOUG THOMPSON
May 4, 2006, 06:56

Compare George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler and you piss off some people,
inflame others who either agree or disagree, and start a debate over when
criticism of a public official goes too far.

"You go too far with the Hitler comparison," reads a typical email from one
of the Republican lemmings who still think Bush has some redeeming
qualities. "It's unfair."

Perhaps, but unfair to whom?  I'm not sure it's possible to be unfair to
Bush, the man who promised "the most ethical administration in history" but
delivered, instead, the most corrupt, scandal-ridden, dishonest government
I've seen in 40 years of writing about, or working in, politics.

Perhaps it is unfair to Hitler. Adolph was, after all, a powerful public
speaker with an incredible command of his native language.  Dubya is a
pathetic speaker who has trouble stringing enough words together to form a
simple declarative sentence.

Yet such comparisons become more and more evident. Hitler rode roughshod
over the laws of his country, ignored civil liberties, called those who
opposed him "unpatriotic," and created a powerful secret police that spied
on citizens of Germany.

Sound familiar? It should. Bush routinely ignores the laws of the land,
tramples on civil liberties, calls those who oppose him "unpatriotic," and
has created the powerful, secretive Department of Homeland Security to spy
on citizens of his country.

The few, remaining, brain-dead die hards who still defend Bush decry
comparisons with Hitler because, they say, Hitler killed millions upon
millions of Jews to become the greatest mass murderer in history.

True, and while Bush has not yet killed millions of Muslims, he is doing
his best to up the body count with his lies-based invasion of Iraq and his
politicized "war on terrorism." I doubt the thousands upon thousands of
Iraqi civilians who have died at the hands of American soldiers and bombs
consider our President a liberator. The word you hear most often on the
streets is Baghdad is "murderer."

When the invasion toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, Bush declared
the rule of "the Butcher of Baghdad" over and said "there's a new sheriff
in town." Actually, he should have said "there's a new butcher in town"
because more innocent Iraqis now die on a daily basis than during Saddam's
reign of terror (although Saddam still holds the body count lead with his
periodic purges).

Hitler had Auschwitz, Bush had Abu Ghraib and other prisons that reasonable
people call deplorable. We don't know yet how many Iraqis have died at the
hands of American soldiers at that hellhole and others but British prime
minister Tony Blair's own human rights envoy calls American detention of
Iraqis a "black hole" where countless numbers of innocent civilians
disappear and are never heard from again.

"What concerns me at the moment is that there are so many people in
detention. There are thousands and thousands of people, and the numbers
seem to be going up instead of down," says Ann Clwyd, who is also a Labor
member of Parliament

Clwyd, who Blair sent to Iraq to monitor the number and condition of
detainees in Iraq, told a BBC interviewer there was a "black hole" of
missing prisoners and said that if the scandal had been taken more
seriously from the start by the US, it could have helped prevent the abuse
and deaths of detainees in their jails.

While I certainly hope the death count of Iraqis never reaches the
horrendous numbers of deaths at Hitler's detention camps, murder is still
murder and the death of even one innocent civilian because of the actions
of a despot should never be condoned.

Yes, it might be unfair to compare George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler. Unfair
to Hitler because the German madman was a better at his job in so many ways
- including mass murder.

But I learned long ago that Bush is an ambitious man with lofty goals and
he still has more than 36 months left in his reign of terror as President
of the United States.

Don't count him out.

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue


The Consumate Corruptables, the conservative (nee anti-constitution) wing
of the Republican party.
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