Like I Said About Rolling Up Your Sleeves...

September signaled the start of the fall campaign season. Here's a choice bit from September 1, wherein Newt Gingrich (who sent me a campaign email today, the first of many, I hope) decides calling your opponent an appeaser to Nazis is no big deal:

COLMES: We were just talking about [House Democratic Leader] Nancy Pelosi [CA] and what she wants to do in this effort to perhaps get Rumsfeld removed. He recently made some very controversial comments, basically suggesting that critics of the Iraq war are tantamount to Hitler's appeasers. Do you agree with him on those comments?

GINGRICH: Essentially, sure. I mean, I think you've got to say that --

COLMES: You're calling appeasers people who disagree with the Bush policy administration --

GINGRICH: Look --

COLMES: -- comparing them to those who enabled Hitler?

GINGRICH: Yes.

COLMES: That's an astounding comment --

GINGRICH: GINGRICH: What's your -- what's your -- why? Why is it astounding?

COLMES: -- that's a very insulting comment --

GINGRICH: It's not an insulting comment.

Gingrich went on to tout the unexploded sarin gas shells, buried remnants from the Iran-Iraq war that are best described as
"weapons of minor discomfort," as if they were "chemical warheads."

And today we got this amazing speech from the President:

Quoting repeatedly from Osama bin Laden, President Bush said Tuesday that pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq would fulfill the terrorist leader's wishes and propel him into a more powerful global threat in the mold of Adolf Hitler [...]

"History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake," the president said. "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?"

Yes, we should definitely make sure that we listen and study and maybe put up a chart about bin Laden's words, instead of actually finding him and bringing him to justice. John Kerry made exactly the right statement.

"If President Bush had unleashed the American military to do the job at Tora Bora four years ago and killed Osama bin Laden, he wouldn't have to quote this barbarian's words today," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "Because President Bush lost focus on the killers who attacked us and instead launched a disastrous war in Iraq, today Osama bin Laden and his henchmen still find sanctuary in the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they still plot attacks against America."

In fact, he's not only finding sanctuary, he's being shielded. By our friends in Pakistan.

Mind you, this is only September 5. It's going to get even nastier. We're not going to get reasonable debate from the cornered animal that is the Republican Party, so let me lay it out. The question is tactical. Nobody thinks bin Laden is a paper tiger, but we think he should be captured by now. We know that Afghanistan is still a mess five years on, that Iraq is in civil war, that Iran is at the height of its power, and that the homeland is not secure. More terrorist attacks occurred in 2005 than any year in history. This is a question of tactics. And right now, we're using the wrong ones. So you can keep studying words, or shrugging shoulders as you call your opponents fascist appeasers. But make no mistake: only one party in this country is actually committed to fighting terror. Sorry, it's true. If you want a safer America, vote Democratic.

P.S. Go read Howie Klein's piece at the if you want a safer America link, it has some great first-hand accounts with national security Democrats running in races all over the country. And none of them are about to back down in the face of this scaremongering and demonizing.

UPDATE: Olbermann goes after Bush's ridiculous speech again with another commentary that makes him a credit to his profession:

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek--a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.
And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"