Stephanopoulos this morning repeated a lie that the White House has been putting out to the media - a lie the media knows to be a lie. Steph said that the White House denies that Bush was talking about Obama when he talked about Hitler appeasers before the Knesset. I've heard other journalists say the same thing. But the White House confirmed to multiple media sources that Obama is exactly who they meant. Here's John Yang at NBC (video link):
Mr. Bush didn't name any names. Privately, white house officials said the shoe fits the democratic front-runner.
While the president didn't name names, administration officials are privately acknowledging that this was a shot at Barack Obama and other Democrats.
Why didn't Stephanopoulos know that? Why did he repeat the White House CYA line that this wasn't about Obama when the White House has already admitted it was? It's not journalism when you simply repeat their lies.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel, who is Jewish himself, weighs in on George Bush's personal attack on Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Bush compared Obama to Nazi sympathizers in Israel in a speech before the Knesset. Here is what Rahm had to say:
The tradition has always been that when a U.S. President is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water's edge. President Bush has now taken that principle and turned it on its head: for this White House, partisan politics now begins at the water's edge, no matter the seriousness and gravity of the occasion. Does the president have no shame?
Wow. Losing a congressional race in Mississippi and being the most hated president in American history makes a guy say crazy things. Not to mention, John McCain must be in real trouble if Bush had to stoop this low to help him. This is so inappropriate in so many ways. Bush's own staff admitted that he meant Obama. I'm hoping the ADL, which always weighs in when Democrats say such things, will be blasting our president for invoking Hitler in our presidential race. Not to mention, doing it in Israel? How tacky can you get.
Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. After likening Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama bin Laden, Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Obama himself quickly responded to the comparison, calling it a false attack and listing past presidents who didn't think that diplomacy was such a bad idea:
"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel."
"Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy -- to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."
The United States should construct a combination of incentives and threats to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.
"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."
These people use techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame, all the time. So it’s not surprising that MoveOn objected to a debate sponsored by Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Party.
