Olbermann Puts Rumsfeld to Shame

Keith Olbermann delivered a masterful retort on Wednesday to Donald Rumsfeld’s recent diatribe on fascism.  With a commentary as apt as it was eloquent, Olbermann excoriated the defense secretary’s very patriotism: “In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?  As a child, of whose heroism did he read?  On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight?  With what country has he confused… the United States of America?”

Video & Transcript

Partial Transcript (from Crooks and Liars):

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

Crooks and Liars