Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (Full Version)

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farglebargle -> Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 8:25:19 AM)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17351284/

ONCE AGAIN, Keith Olbermann proves himself up there with Clemens and Orwell for political commentary and analysis.

quote:


But Secretary of State Rice may have now taken the cake. On the Sunday morning interview show “Of Broken Record” on Fox, Dr. Rice spoke a paragraph, which if it had been included in a remedial history paper at the weakest high school in the nation would've gotten the writer an "F" — maybe an expulsion.

If Congress were now to revise the Iraq authorization, she said, out loud, with an adult present: "… it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change, then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."


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quote:


But, Secretary Rice, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was akin to overthrowing Adolf Hitler? Are you kidding? Did you want to provoke the world's laughter?

And, please, Madame Secretary, if you are going to make that most implausible, subjective, dubious, ridiculous comparison; if you want to be as far off the mark about the Second World War as, say, the pathetic Holocaust-denier from Iran, Ahmadinejad — at least get the easily verifiable facts right: the facts whose home through history lies in your own department.

"The resolution that allowed the United States to" overthrow Hitler?

On the 11th of December, 1941, at 8 o'clock in the morning, two of Hitler's diplomats walked up to the State Department — your office, Secretary Rice -- and 90 minutes later they were handing a declaration of war to the chief of the department's European Division.


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quote:


Your predecessors, Dr. Rice, didn't spend a year making up phony evidence and mistaking German balloon-inflating trucks for mobile germ warfare labs. They didn't pretend the world was ending because a tin-pot tyrant couldn't hand over the chemical weapons it turned out he'd destroyed a decade earlier. The Germans walked up to the front door of our State Department and said, "We're at war." It was in all the papers. And when that war ended, more than three horrible years later, our troops and the Russians were in Berlin. And we stayed, as an occupying force, well into the 1950s. As an occupying force, Madam Secretary!


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quote:


We already have a subjectively false comparison between Hitler and Saddam. We already have a historically false comparison between Germany and Iraq. We already have blissful ignorance by our secretary of state about how this country got into the war against Hitler. But then there's this part about changing "the resolution" about Iraq; that it would be as ridiculous in the secretary's eyes as saying that after Hitler was defeated, we needed to go back to Congress to "deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

Oh, good grief, Secretary Rice, that's exactly what we did do! We went back to Congress to deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after Hitler was overthrown! It was called the Marshall Plan.

Marshall!

Gen. George Catlett Marshall!

Secretary of state!

The job you have now!

C’mon!


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quote:


Get your facts straight. Use the Google!

You've been on Fox News Sunday, Secretary Rice. The Fox network has got another show premiering Tuesday night. You could go on that one, too. It might be a better fit. It's called "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?"




sleazy -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 9:17:38 AM)

Hitler made a big deal about internal enemies, the jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals and had a good number of them killed off
Saddam killed of a good number of people who were citizens with differing viewpoints to his own.

Hitler invaded foriegn nations and ignored international treaties regarding armanents
Saddam...... Well I guess he did the same too

Hitler had short range ballistic weapons that could carry some truly nasty payloads
Saddam had those too

Hitler came to power by a roundabout route, not far removed from a coup
Saddam came to power.........

Hitler created special regiments of "politically reliable" troops and called them the SS, gave them the best in food, training and equipment
Saddam created regiments of trustworthy troops and gave them the best weaponry and training and all the trappings of being the best and called them the republican guard

Hitler supported another nations war
You can guess who else did that too

Hitler was born a nobody
Saddam was from a similar background

Hitler tried to modernise and nationalise industry and finance
Guess who

Hitler made some improvements to the life of the average joe
You know

Hitler was thought of as subversive when he started in politics, but actually became reasonably popular as a result of some policies when he had power
Yup, so did the other

Hitler was paranoid about enemies in his midst
As was someone else

I'm bored of this now, I think there are enough similarities there to get a good discussion going




farglebargle -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 9:27:16 AM)

Perhaps you should have READ the source, so that you would have seen Olbermann's thorough debunking of that erroneous line of thought:

quote:


There is, obviously, no mistaking Saddam Hussein for a human being. But nor is there any mistaking him for Adolf Hitler.

Invoking the German dictator who subjugated Europe; who tried to exterminate the Jews; who sought to overtake the world is not just in the poorest of taste, but in its hyperbole, it insults not merely the victims of the Third Reich, but those in this country who fought it and defeated it.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement

Saddam Hussein was not Adolf Hitler. And George W. Bush is not Franklin D. Roosevelt — nor Dwight D. Eisenhower. He isn't even George H.W. Bush, who fought in that war.




sleazy -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 9:37:47 AM)

quote:

But, Secretary Rice, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was akin to overthrowing Adolf Hitler? Are you kidding? Did you want to provoke the world's laughter?


quote:

We already have a subjectively false comparison between Hitler and Saddam. We already have a historically false comparison between Germany and Iraq.


Your quotes seemed to me to claim that the two were NOT similar, wheras they clearly are. Not on the same scale certainly, but then if Hitler had has is ass seriously kicked the first time he marched into another nation state perhaps there would have been no Pearl Harbour, no Dunkirk, no Belsen, no Enola Gay.




farglebargle -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 9:43:11 AM)

Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather was making too much money working with the Nazis to have been interested in stopping them at all. Yeah, pushing back early on would have been good, but what was it Burt Lancaster's character said in Judgment at Nuremberg?

quote:

Ernst Janning:

There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within.

Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that - can you understand what Hitler meant to us.

Because he said to us: 'Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb.

What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part?

Because we loved our country!

What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights?
What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?
It is only a passing phase.
It is only a stage we are going through.
It will be discarded sooner or later.
Hitler himself will be discarded... sooner or later.
The country is in danger.
We will march out of the shadows.
We will go forward.

Forward is the great password.

And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies.

Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said 'go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland - remilitarize it - take all of Austria, take it!

And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtoom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life.

Your honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again.

You have seen him do it - he has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people.

He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the sixteen year old girl, after all. Once more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it... whatever the pain and humiliation.






DomKen -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 9:54:10 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: sleazy
Not on the same scale certainly, but then if Hitler had has is ass seriously kicked the first time he marched into another nation state perhaps there would have been no Pearl Harbour, no Dunkirk, no Belsen, no Enola Gay.


How would opposing the Nazi's in 39 or even in 36 have prevented Imperial Japan from attacking Pearl Harbor?

What happened in Europe and the Pacific were conincidently at the same time but ultimately had very little to do with each other. Japan was not a fascist state and only vaguely friendly with the fascist states of Europe. It had invaded China and Korea before Hitler started attacking his neighbors and was intent on building an empire throughout the Pacific. Conflict between the US and Japan was virtually inevitable after Japan defeated the Russians in 1905.




caitlyn -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 10:01:11 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen
How would opposing the Nazi's in 39 or even in 36 have prevented Imperial Japan from attacking Pearl Harbor? 


German success as the time Japan made it's decision to attack the Unted States, may have contributed. It is possible that they thought to be casting on the winning side.
 
While American industry, over the course of the war, wasn't that major a factor, it certainly was in 1941. At that time, America was providing tons of war material to Britain and the Soviets ... fronting it, and delivering it over water. Japan may have felt that the Eastern and Western theaters could feed off each other's success.




DomKen -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 10:15:54 AM)

Caitlyn, you need to look into the primary sources both for Hitler's reaction to the Japanese attack, he wasn't happy, as well as for Japanese high commands thinking on the attack.

Japan attacked because the US had embargoed them and they wanted to force the US out of the Pacific so they could grab the resources the US was denying them from the essentially defenseless nations inside the so called co prosperity sphere. It is quite arguable, Yamamoto did so at the time, that attacking the US when the nation was already essentially in a war footing was foolish but the embargo of oil and rubber left the Japanese with few options.




Zensee -> RE: Olbermann asks Is 5th Grader smarter than Rice? (2/27/2007 11:40:29 AM)

Sleazy - most of your Hitler / Saddam comparisons can quite neatly flip over into Hitler / G.W. Bush of course or Saddam / GWB. Comparisons are slippery things that way.

Z.




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