Somewhere in heaven, Murrow is smiling

From da Olber-Mann himself:

It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

These "loyal Americans" that Olbermann speaks of are, by now, about about two-thirds of the population.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

Which has been par the course for the radical right since 9/11. Instead of clamoring for bin Laden's head on a platter, they've been screaming and pointing fingers at fellow Americans in newsrooms, on college campuses, on the streets--hey, just about anywhere. David Neiwert has been tracking this for years. And the wingnuts have had the quiet approval of their Dear Leader and his administration.

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

Actually, Bushco has led about 30 percent of the American populace to tables stacked with cups of Kool-Aid. But I suspect Olbermann's too nice to use that terminology.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

“In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.”

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.

Jibes very nicely with Neiwert's Orcinus Principum No. 1:

Americans who accuse their fellow citizens of sympathizing with the enemy merely for dissenting from the nation's war aims are objectively anti-democratic....

It's quite clear that those who accuse dissenters of "aiding the enemy" are interested primarily in quieting any dissent, and shutting down any kind of thoughtful debate. They argue, like football cheerleaders, that it's more important to present a unified front than it is to keep core democratic principles alive and vibrant. (At least, this is their argument, though in the case of Bush supporters, one can't help but believe their core motives are base partisanship.) They're the same kind of folk who try to claim that "America is a republic, not a democracy" -- thereby revealing their own animosity to democracy itself.

Put another way, they are actually aiding and abetting those terrorists who hope to destroy America's democratic institutions.

Back to KO...

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.

But Godwin's Law doesn't seem to apply to Bushco. Right, 30 percenters?

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?”

Edward Murrow would be proud.