RADIO TIDBITS

Rummy has come under criticism for this remark in a WaPo op-ed:

Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.

The criticism is not just from liberals but also from notable conservatives such as William Kritstol and Henry Kissinger. Naturally, Slots Bennett attacks Kissinger for making what Slots believes is an irrelevant point, that there was no significant insurgency in post-war Germany: (From CNN's Late Edition)

BLITZER: I want to take a quick break. But I want you to respond to the specific point that Secretary Rumsfeld wrote in the Washington Post today in that op-ed piece. He said, if the U.S. were to leave, in effect, to accept the challenge that you're putting forward right now, it would, sort of, be like handing Germany back to the Nazis after World War II.

KISSINGER: In Germany, the opposition was completely crushed. There was no significance resistance movement.

Slots forgot to tell his audience the rest of Dr. K's remarks:

KISSINGER: But as I understand, what Secretary Rumsfeld is saying is this, that if we withdraw unilaterally from Iraq, it will start at least two kinds of conflict.

One is that the insurgents that are now attacking us will be dominant, at least in some of the areas and that, secondly, a civil war will start or may start between the various sectarian groups and that, therefore, these ideas of unilateral withdrawal, without leaving a political framework are extremely dangerous.

Now, whether that political framework can be the ideal democracy that is often described or whether there have to be some intermediary steps, that is a subject about which we should discuss, but a simple unilateral withdrawal and to gear their whole policy (ph) to a schedule for withdrawing American forces and leaving a vacuum is much too dangerous.

To a normal mind not wrapped up in propaganda, Dr. K was supportive of Rummy but you'd never know that if you relied only on Slots.