From The Wallstreet Journal:

Rumsfeld Handshake Proves Popular
September 8, 2006, 4:24 pm

With Defense Secretary Rumsfeld making “appeasement” the big buzzword of the month, the George Washington University’s National Security Archive notes that its single most-downloaded file is now the once-classified batch of documents, photos and video documenting Rumsfeld’s handshake and meeting with Saddam Hussein in December 1983. President Reagan had sent Rumsfeld to Baghdad to help restore diplomatic ties with Iraq and aid Baghdad in its fight against Iran.

“Rumsfeld meeting Saddam has now far outpaced the previous winner, which was Elvis meeting Nixon,” says Thomas Blanton, director of the archive, which collects and posts significant declassified documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Rumsfeld last week warned of a rise of Islamic fascism and said that people should not fall into the trap of appeasement as did those who tried to accommodate the Nazis in the 1930s. The remarks led many pundits to compare Rumsfeld’s 1983 meeting with Hussein to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1938. One liberal hawker of political posters is now offering one that features photos of the two meetings with the caption “Appeased to meet you… hope you guessed my name.” – Neil King Jr.

You can see more of Rumsfeld’s "moral confusion" here.

[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.

[...]

I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism.

[...]

But this is still not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters there’s more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

And, given the Bush administration’s, and its supporters, efforts to paint Saddam Hussein as the next Hitler (just Google the two) during the run up to the 2003 invasion, how does Rumsfeld and the other Bush supporters make sense of this:

Frank Rich provides the caption, courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

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.

And now, thanks to YouTube.com, we can see the video, too:

Now, who more likely resembles Nazi appeasers, those that point out that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with the so-called war on terror, or those that shake the hands of known human rights violators?

PS: Please click-through to YouTube.com to get this video on the the "most viewed" list.

Update: I couldn’t link to Frank Rich’s original column because it’s behind the NYTime’s paid service. However, thanks to MotherJones.com, I’ve now been able to read Rich’s complete column on Rumsfeld’s handshake with "Hitler." This is how MotherJones.com introduced Rich’s column to the masses:

The whole column is brilliant, and should be read by as many people as possible. So screw Times Select. Read it after the jump.

September 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis
By FRANK RICH

PRESIDENT BUSH came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

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.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn’t recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford.

For further proof, read the address Mr. Rumsfeld gave to Pentagon workers on Sept. 10, 2001 — a policy manifesto he regarded as sufficiently important, James Bamford reminds us in his book “A Pretext to War,” that it was disseminated to the press. “The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America” is how the defense secretary began. He then went on to explain that this adversary “crushes new ideas” with “brutal consistency” and “disrupts the defense of the United States.” It is a foe “more subtle and implacable” than the former Soviet Union, he continued, stronger and larger and “closer to home” than “the last decrepit dictators of the world.”

And who might this ominous enemy be? Of that, Mr. Rumsfeld was as certain as he would later be about troop strength in Iraq: “the Pentagon bureaucracy.” In love with the sound of his own voice, he blathered on for almost 4,000 words while Mohamed Atta and the 18 other hijackers fanned out to American airports.

Three months later, Mr. Rumsfeld would still be asleep at the switch, as his war command refused to heed the urgent request by American officers on the ground for the additional troops needed to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in Tora Bora. What would follow in Iraq was also more Chamberlain than Churchill. By failing to secure and rebuild the country after the invasion, he created a terrorist haven where none had been before.

That last story is seeping out in ever more incriminating detail, thanks to well-sourced chronicles like “Fiasco,” “Cobra II” and “Blood Money,” T. Christian Miller’s new account of the billions of dollars squandered and stolen in Iraq reconstruction. Still, Americans have notoriously short memories. The White House hopes that by Election Day it can induce amnesia about its failures in the Middle East as deftly as Mr. Rumsfeld (with an assist from John Mark Karr) helped upstage first-anniversary remembrances of Katrina.

One obstacle is that White House allies, not just Democrats, are sounding the alarm about Iraq. In recent weeks, prominent conservatives, some still war supporters and some not, have steadily broached the dread word Vietnam: Chuck Hagel, William F. Buckley Jr. and the columnists Rich Lowry and Max Boot. A George Will column critical of the war so rattled the White House that it had a flunky release a public 2,400-word response notable for its incoherence.

If even some conservatives are making accurate analogies between Vietnam and Iraq, one way for the administration to drown them out is to step up false historical analogies of its own, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s. In the past the administration has been big on comparisons between Iraq and the American Revolution — the defense secretary once likened “the snows of Valley Forge” to “the sandstorms of central Iraq” — but lately the White House vogue has been for “Islamo-fascism,” which it sees as another rhetorical means to retrofit Iraq to the more salable template of World War II.

“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. As the writer Katha Pollitt asks in The Nation, “Who are the ‘Islamo-fascists’ in Saudi Arabia — the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents?”

Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as “a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites”: All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.

“Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists,” said the congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president’s speech. “It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis.” And with Americans caught in the middle. If we owe anything to those who died on 9/11, it is that we not forget how the administration diverted our blood and treasure from the battle against bin Laden and other stateless Islamic terrorists, fascist or whatever, to this quagmire in a country that did not attack us on 9/11. The number of American dead in Iraq — now more than 2,600 — is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago.

Of course, the real aim of such criticism coming from this republican administration and its supporters is to distract the American public from the utter mess that Bush’s war of choice in Iraq has wrought in that country. Aside from the 2,325 American and the over 30,000 Iraqi dead since the start of the war, daily life in Iraq has been anything but the la la-land that that Cheney painted before the start of the war. Just to give you a taste what Liberated Iraq™ looks like see this video here and this other one here.

The videos show one side of the story, a side of the story that the Bush White House and his conservative supporters don’t want Americans to even think about. Meanwhile, half way around the world, Iraqis in their now liberated country must deal with disconcerting messages like this streaming across their TVs:

Here’s the translation:

“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

The source of this message is Riverbed, a girl living in Iraq that’s maintained a blog since the start of the war, where she routinely posts what daily life is like in Iraq.

In the post where she provides the message quoted above, she goes on to describe what she and her cousin did after they read that message as it scrolled across the bottom of their TV:

We discussed it today as it was repeated on another channel.

“So what does it mean?” My cousin’s wife asked as we sat gathered at lunch.

“It means if they come at night and want to raid the house, we don’t have to let them in.” I answered.

“They’re not exactly asking your permission,” E. pointed out. “They break the door down and take people away- or have you forgotten?”

“Well according to the Ministry of Defense, we can shoot at them, right? It’s trespassing-they can be considered burglars or abductors…” I replied.

The cousin shook his head, “If your family is inside the house- you’re not going to shoot at them. They come in groups, remember? They come armed and in large groups- shooting at them or resisting them would endanger people inside of the house.”

“Besides that, when they first attack, how can you be sure they DON’T have Americans with them?” E. asked.

We sat drinking tea, mulling over the possibilities. It confirmed what has been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning- the Iraqi security forces are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.

But it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of Defense can’t even trust its own personnel, unless they are “accompanied by American coalition forces”.

It really is difficult to understand what is happening lately. We hear about talks between Americans and Iran over security in Iraq, and then American ambassador in Iraq accuses Iran of funding militias inside of the country. Today there are claims that Americans killed between 20 to 30 men from Sadr’s militia in an attack on a husseiniya yesterday. The Americans are claiming that responsibility for the attack should be placed on Iraqi security forces (the same security forces they are constantly commending).

All of this directly contradicts claims by Bush and other American politicians that Iraqi troops and security forces are in control of the situation. Or maybe they are in control- just not in a good way.

Of course, to hear the Bush Administration tell it, Iraq is just fine, nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Of course, the latest finding on the lack of WMD in Iraq will not stop the Bush & Co. supporters, the Republican loyalists and other fellow Chickenhawks* from continuing to support their lame duck president’s war of choice in Iraq.

Finally, I agree with Kos, it’s time for the Chickenhawk Bush loyalists to atone:

* Chickenhawk n. A person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

That line is purposely crafted to: (1) Give credibility to the claim that Iraq had “recently” reconstituted its nuclear program, (2) all the while giving Bush the ability to distance himself from a claim that was known (by his administration) to be false; since, (3) Bush could factually (even if dishonestly) claim that he had been relying on “British government intelligence” (i.e., the forged Nigerian uranium document) whose veracity he could not control.

For now leave aside the fact that the Bush administration had been informed that the claims made in the “British government intelligence” brief were not true; we’re then left with an administration that relied on the advice of a foreign government (i.e., Britain) to formulate our national defense strategy. Moreover, if Bush’s defense is, When I made that statement I thought it to be true. Then I ask, When we ask our fellow citizens to make the ultimate sacrifice, shouldn’t the standard be a tad higher?

The Bush Apologists will never admit that their man mislead and lied to us all; so am not at all surprised at how stubbornly they cling on to the “plausible deniability” defense. Think of it, if these Bush apologists were to ever acknowledge and recognize that Bush & Co. lied our country into a war, why it would totally shake their foundation — it would be akin to admitting that the earth is, in fact, round. If the Bush apologists ever admitted that their man lied, they would have to face the ugly truth that their unabashed support for Bush & Co. facilitated Bush’s war of choice.

I’ll spare you all an already long post, and not reproduce the entire chronology of when Bush & Co. knew what, which you can read here; however, let me leave you with the following:

“March 1, 2002: The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) sends a memorandum to Secretary of State Colin Powell stating that claims regarding Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Niger are not credible, according to a knowledgeable government official.”

[...]

“September 24, 2002: The United Kingdom issues a report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program stating “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civil nuclear power programme or nuclear power plants, and therefore has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium.”

September/October 2002: U.S. intelligence officials tell Senate committees about their differences with the British report regarding the Iraq/uranium claim, according to Tenet (July 11, 2003).”

[...]

“January 28, 2003: President Bush asserts that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” during his State of the Union address.”

The Bush Apologists’ argument rests solely on the factual claim that Bush merely cited “British government intelligence;” however, shouldn’t the standard be just a tad higher? Shouldn’t we also expect honesty and unmitigated truthfulness from our leaders before committing our nation to war?

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is composed of a group of men (I frankly don’t know whether there are any women in it) that had long advocated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein for various reasons, including oil, the necessity to project American power in the Middle East, the need to protect an ally (Israel), and to prevent Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction. On January of 1998 the group sent a letter to president Clinton urging him to remove Saddam Hussein:

“In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.” [letter]

Moreover, the same group sent another letter to the then majority leader in the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, urging that Congress exert pressure on the White House to persue the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Please note that this is five years before Mr. Bush warned us of the “grave and gathering danger in Iraq” if we did not do something soon. Now, if you scroll down, you’ll see the list of signatories on the letter addressed to president Clinton. If you’ve followed the events and players surrounding the Bush White House over the past couple of years, there ought to be a couple of names that immediately jump out at you, for example: Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld & Paul Wolfowitz — just to name some of major players.

Furthermore, if you were to do a search on the signatories to the letter, you’d find that many of them ended up working in the Bush administration, in various governmental positions*:

Elliott Abrams
http://uscirf.gov/cirfPages/bio_Abrams.php3?scale=1152s

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Elliott_Abrams

Richard L. Armitage
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/2991.htm

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Richard_L._Armitage

William J. Bennett
http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/wbennett.htm

Jeffrey Bergner
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Jeffrey_Bergner&redirect=no

John Bolton
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/02/20010221-6.html

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=John_Bolton

Paula Dobriansky
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/03/20010312-9.html

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Paula_Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama
http://www.bioethics.gov/about/fukuyama.html

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Francis_Fukuyama

Robert Kagan

Zalmay Khalilzad
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010523-7.html

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Zalmay_Khalilzad

William Kristol
http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/bill_kristol.htm

Richard Perle
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/04/text/20010406-7.html

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Richard_Perle

Peter W. Rodman
http://www.dod.mil/policy/isa/bios/peter_w_rodman.html

Donald Rumsfeld
http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/secdef_bio.html

William Schneider, Jr.

Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz
http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/depsecdef_bio.html

R. James Woolsey

Robert B. Zoellick
http://us-mission.ch/BIOS/Zoellick.htm

(*Note that for those individuals without links I could not find any relevant information.)

Moreover, some — here and elsewhere — contend (me among them) that the Bush administration exploited 9/11 and exaggerated the threat that Saddam Hussein posed in order to pursue an elective war against Iraq. Many point to the Bush administration’s appointment of many of the above individuals to key posts, as a sign that there existed in the administration a predisposition to see Iraq as an enemy — even when it did not pose a threat to the US. Futhermore, many point to a document published by PNAC, which hints at a “larger plan” involving Iraq, the Middle East and the US military. That document includes this graft:

“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event � like a new Pearl Harbor.” [Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, p. 51. PDF]

The above statement is offered in the context of “transforming” the US military into a more “mobile” and “nimble” fighting force; however, when placed in the context on 9/11 and its Pearl Harbor like psychological affect on the nation, one can understand how the authors of the document — that is, the members of PNAC — saw 9/11 as the opportunity to enact their plans for the Middle East, Iraq and the US military. For example, one of PNAC’s goals was to transform the military, and to do so they needed to illustrate how a more “mobile” and “nimble” force could be effectively used in combat. Now, if you recall, before going into Iraq the administration (namely, Rumsfeld) argued that we would need less troops than what the Pentagon was asking for. Now, the Pentagon lost that argument, so we went into Iraq with a lot less troops than was required to secure the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Of course, we’re now paying for this blunder. However, Mr. Rumsfeld, as a member of and signatory to the PNAC letter, for ideological reasons, chose to go into Iraq with less troops than what the Pentagon had originally requested.

Finally, the signatories to PNAC’s Statement of Principles include the following: Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and others.

To say that the Bush administration did not have plans for Iraq long before 9/11 is simply not borne out by the record. Now, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event � like a new Pearl Harbor” who knows when the Bush administration would’ve invaded Iraq; however, it’s clear that 9/11 presented the Bush administration the perfect rationale to go into Iraq and then enact the plans laid out by PNAC to remove Hussein, transform the military and project US power in the Middle East.

Visit for the video http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/