Olbermann Over the Top

MSNBC Countdown's Keith Olbermann is easily outraged. When this happens he does a special commentary, often with bits of spittle flying from his mouth and often containing the words, "How dare you?" A few weeks ago he launched one of these at Condi Rice after she made a Nazi reference to Saddam Husein. Olbermann pointed out that Iraq was no Nazi Germany. Ok, Condi's off-the-cuff statement was a bit of a stretch although not on the scale Olbermann would have it.

Dr. Rice spoke 42 words. She may have made more mistakes in them, than did the President in his State of the Union Address in 2003.

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 annihilate 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.

Saddam Hussein… was not Adolf Hitler.

More recently he wrote about Congress's compromise on the emergency funding resolution for the troops in Iraq. After more than three months of posturing, Congress passed a measure that does not end the war. Everyone should have seen this coming from the beginning. Bush made it clear that he would not accept any bill that set a timetable for withdrawing the troops and the anti-war Democrats do ot have enough votes to override a veto. Congress only had three possible resolutions - continue to stall and be accused of abandoning the troops, refusing to pass legislation without a demand for withdrawal (which again would open them to accusations of abandoning the troops) or to pass the law that Bush asked for from the beginning.

Olberman must have seen this but instead he did a commentary accusing the entire government of betraying the American people.

The interesting part is here:

"We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame," Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. "My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…"

That's what this is for the Democrats, isn't it?

Their "Neville Chamberlain moment" before the Second World War.
All that's missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee "peace in our time," but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

If I read this right, Olbermann is saying that the deal with Bush is comparable to Chamberlain's agreement with Hitler.

I could launch into a "Mr. Olbermann, how dare you?" but the whole Bush/Hitler thing is so widespread that he isn't the slightest bit original. A poster of Bush as Hitler poster was hanging in a BBC newsroom for months.

Never the less, Olbermann's objections to Condi apply to Olbermann himself. Saddam killed thousands of political opponents, some with poison gas and  killed millions more in his war with Iran. Bush has  He openly admired and emulated Hitler. If it is an insult to compare Saddam to Hitler then how can Olbermann compare Bush with Hitler?