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Rangel in 'Holocaust' firestorm
Keep digging, boys!
Powerful lawmaker Charlie Rangel has provoked the ire of the Anti-Defamation League by likening U.S. military action in Iraq to the Holocaust of World War II. The Iraq war "is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. ... This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," the 74-year-old Harlem Democrat insisted during a Monday radio appearance on the WWRL-AM morning show with Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter. "The whole world knew and they were quiet about it because it wasn't their ox being gored."
Nice to be in a bulletproof district, huh Charlie? You can spout whatever you want and they can't lay a glove on you.
When interviewer Malzberg challenged Rangel's analogy, the congressman replied: "I am saying that people's silence when they know things terrible are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust." Yesterday, after Malzberg sent me an audiotape of Rangel's appearance, ADL President Abraham Foxman responded: "It is so outrageous that a leader of Congress would compare one thing to the other. Sometimes we say it's ignorance. Charlie Rangel is not ignorant. Charlie Rangel has been there."
That's right. And he knows he'll always get away with it.
On the radio show, Rangel also suggested that proponents of military action - namely Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's former deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle - don't worry about the Americans in Iraq because they're "black and poor white soldiers" from "the lower economic class. They had a plan to put our kids in harm's way long before 9/11," Rangel said. "Because it's not their kids ... that's exactly why. They go and pick a fight, and then say, 'I'll hold your coat.'"
You left out Latinos, Charlie. They'll be pissed.
Foxman retorted: "It is so outrageous that I think he owes an apology not only to the families of the victims of the Shoah, but he also owes an apology to the soldiers who are fighting for freedom. If the world had recognized the evil of Hitler early enough - just like we're confronting the evil of terrorism and fundamentalism now - then maybe the 6 million wouldn't have died."
Don't hold your breath waiting for that apology.
Posted by: tu3031 2005-06-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=121208