Sunday, March 19, 2006

Rumsfeld: leaving Iraq like giving Nazis Germany
Don then broke into the chorus of "They're Coming to Take Me Away" and had to be restrained.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaving Iraq now would be like handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a column published on Sunday, the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

"Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," he wrote in an essay in The Washington Post.

Rumsfeld said "the terrorists" were trying to fuel sectarian tensions to spark a civil war, but they must be "watching with fear" the progress in the country over the past three years.

In London, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Sunday that Iraq is in a civil war and is nearing the point of no return when the sectarian violence will spill over throughout the Middle East.

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is," he told BBC television.

Rumsfeld's view was that the Iraqi insurgency was failing.

"The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case," he wrote.

I'm afraid Godwin's Law now applies to Don. Thanks for playing!