Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently accused those who would dissent or disagree with the government of suffering from “moral or intellectual confusion about what is right or wrong.”

In a toughly worded speech to the American Legion’s national convention in Salt Lake City, Rumsfeld compared the current period to the 1930s, when the world failed to act against the growing menace of the Nazi movement.

“Once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism,” Rumsfeld said. “It seems that in some quarters, there is more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.”

His comparison to the Nazi movement is correct, but he’s confused on who in our country most resembles that racist and power hungry disaster of political machinery.  Instead of endorsing and encouraging one of our nation’s most cherished and sacred rights — that of free speech, not to mention the spirit of our Founding Fathers in the heart of dissent and skepticism towards government, Rumsfeld instead continues to support the premise that anyone who does not blindly follow the policies of this wayward group of violent brutes must somehow be guilty of sedition or treason.

As if seeing our democracy at work through debate will somehow weaken us, the entire administration is now of the mind that disagreement must be crushed at all costs in order to ensure our security.  In other words, kill what makes America great in order to save it.  What a clueless bunch of un-American assholes.  They sully the very spirit of our great nation by stealing away from us all that so many died to protect and provide: freedom, liberty, and justice.  What they are trying to erect in its place is the new Nazi state borne of Taliban-like theocratic fascism that suckles at the teat of FUD.

Rather than addressing problems and concerns, and rather than engaging critics in constructive dialogue, the only intent of this régime is to steal power from anywhere it can while subjugating the populace with screeching declarations of impending doom if people do not give up more rights and stop fighting for the American way of life.

But this particular idiot wasn’t done chewing on his shoe.

Rumsfeld also criticized the American media for what he characterized as a preoccupation with reporting only the negative aspects of the conflict in Iraq and the larger war against terrorism.

He said a database search of leading newspapers turned up 10 times more mentions of abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith was awarded the Medal of Honor.

“It’s inexcusable,” Rumsfeld said. “Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and our country.”

Do you get what he’s laying down?  When the press reports on bad news, especially when there’s so much of it, it’s “myths and distortions” instead of truth.  We know our soldiers were pushed into horrific acts of barbarity at Abu Ghraib.  We’ve seen the photos.  We’ve seen the bodies.  We’ve heard the admissions of guilt.  We’ve seen the squirming attempts to shrug off responsibility by both administration officials and the military itself.  Somehow we’re now to believe all of this is nothing more than machinations of a press gone wild and focusing on lies?

Again, Mr. Rumsfeld is quite confused and mistakenly accusing the press of the crimes of which he himself is guilty.  What a pitifully lost little man whose hunger for power has destroyed all traces of his humanity, decency, honesty, integrity, sincerity, and Americanism.  Welcome to the Fourth Reich, poppets.

But let’s not assume no one called him to the carpet for this atrocity and affront.  Many have.  The best is from Keith Olbermann at MSNBC.  I’ve included the full text of his remarks below the fold and strongly suggest you read them.  In the meantime, the video is below and should be required viewing for all Americans — even those like Rumsfeld and the rest of Dubya’s evil empire who have forgotten completely what it means to be an American.

By the way, Mr. Rumsfeld, it’s time for you to go.  It’s been time for quite a while.

From Keith Olbermann at MSNBC:

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence — indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants — our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s — questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute — and exclusive — in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count — not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we — as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note — with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism – indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.