Rumsfeld Sorry for 'Axis of Weasels' Remark

Rumsfeld Sorry for 'Axis of Weasels' Remark

(2003-01-22) -- U.S. Secretary Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized today for referring to France and Germany as an "Axis of Weasels."

"I'm sorry about that Axis of Weasels remark," said Mr. Rumsfeld. "I didn't mean to dredge up the history France and Germany share of pathetic compliance with ruthless dictators."

The Defense Secretary said he was "way out of bounds" with the comments.

"I should have known better than to remind people that these two nations--which live in freedom thanks only to the righteous might of America, Britain and their allies--that these nations are morally and politically bankrupt, and have failed to learn the lessons of history," he said. "It really was an inappropriate thing to say--you know, the Axis of Weasels thing. I really should not have called them the Axis of Weasels. I think it's the 'Weasels' part that was most offensive...you know, when I said that France and Germany form an Axis of Weasels. Of course, I'm so sorry."

http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archi...

Funny stuff. Damm funny.

Whoa, so true. The Eurocrats in Brussels better start working on the whole unification of Europe thing so we can nationalize our nuclear weapons and face the ''Axis of Corporate Peer-pressure Groups''

Dear World,

Many of us are sorry for having inflicted Donald Rumsfeld on you. Rest assured that everytime he speaks and you roll your eyes in irritation at the categorical arrogance of his narrow vision of the world, many of us share your exasperation. Take heart that, at least, that he''s not helping to actually try and govern your country.

- Elysium

Never forget what country brought you Daikatana.

I think Mr. Rumsfeld is a great source of amusement. Actually, the American government itself is a great source of entertainment. Always threatening other countries/nations, starting wars, bullying everyone around.

Makes for some good Reading/Watching. And there are always the quotes like Mr. Rumsfeld''s.

An example of said humour: Speech Backdrop Snafu Had White House Thinking Out of the Box

me: I''m making fun of the American Government
friend: That''s not hard.

This just in: Donald Rumsfeld supports war on whatever the hell country Cuebert lives in! Claims Cuebert in league with Axis of Beef!

Run for the hills!

- Elysium

Canada must renounce French and all other languages of mass destruction. If you do not cooperate, we will be forced to invade and implement our disastrous health care system upon you. We will allow some concessions because we like your hockey and Mike Myers. You will be allowed to call yourselves Americanadians and your flag will be the good old red, white, and blue leaves and stripes.

This is your final warning.

LOL at Visceral Monkey.

Hey, someone gots to be the bully, and I am glad it is my country. I like my way of life. All you other countries need to stop player-hating, or something.

I understand you Elysium. Don''t worry. I think the world generally likes americans, we just don''t like your government.

Canada must renounce French and all other languages of mass destruction.

hahahahahaha JAMAIS!

I like my way of life too Az.

This just in: Donald Rumsfeld supports war on whatever the hell country Cuebert lives in!

Let them try to find the country I live in. They''ll probably just bomb Australia because Canada is so small and hard to see on a map.

IMAGE(http://www.cyberpresse.ca/reseau/editorial/bloc/caricature/0301/94337.jpg)
Text reads: U.S. will strike mid-february. This is not meant as a flame, I just thought this drawing was funny, in an ironic sort of way.

Boo, bad picture. He looks more like a monkey than an imp.

Hehe, looks like the Axis thing has spread:

http://www.linnwood.org/images/NYP_A...

And another Axis graphic:

http://thecr.blogspot.com

The French will come along when the war happens because they have a lot of oil interests in Iraq, it''s about Oil. The Germans will also come along because they don''t want to be one of the nations that didn''t think Iraqi''s should be free.

I would like to point out the French had no problems with us attacking Serbia which was less of a threat to the United States, and the leader (I can''t spell his name) is less evil than Saddam. None of these huge anti-war protests were happening either.

Here''s an article from my local paper about:
The war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was anything but an intellectual's war. If ever in American history a military response was a no-brainer, this was it. Three words explained why we fought: they attacked us.

Iraq is dicier. On the one hand, Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is self-evidently evil and a menace. Less obvious are the reasons we should go to war with him now as opposed to, say, North Korea, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. Or, as some would have it, with nobody. The rationale behind it is complex and controversial, and it took Clinton Administration official Kenneth Pollack more than 500 pages to explain it all in The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. This is an intellectual's war.

But where are the liberal intellectuals? Some are for it, some strongly against it, but most just grouse about it and wallow in incoherent objectionism. There is a near-religious certainty that Bush is an extremist and an idiot, and therefore wrong about everything. ""A busted watch is right twice a day"" is an insult even by the standard of backhanded compliments. But most liberal intellectuals won't give Bush even that much.

Liberals are not pacifists. The Senate approved the Iraq Liberation Act without dissent when Bill Clinton was president. The overwhelming majority of liberal Democrats approved of the war against Slobodan Milosovic to end his campaign of genocide against the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo. More than ninety percent of Americans supported regime-change in Afghanistan, uniting nearly every conservative and every liberal in the nation. Only the straightjacket-left chose to sit that one out. (It cannot be stated often enough that leftists are not liberals. This is more true now than at any time since 1968, but most Americans still don't make the distinction.)

A December poll showed the majority of registered Democrats approve of Bush's policy on Iraq. Apparently, most of these Democrats are the working-class labor union types, rather than the intellectuals and journalists who so regularly opine against it. (Incidentally, this bolsters George Orwell's axiom that the working class is the group most instinctively and reliably anti-fascist.)

While it is unlikely that leftists would have supported the war against the Taliban if Hillary Clinton waged it, it is almost certainly true that most mainstream liberals would support the war in Iraq if she were leading the charge against Saddam now. With only one exception, every anti-war liberal I have talked to admits this is true.

After weeks of arguing with one of my colleagues, I finally got him to concede that an American military intervention to depose Saddam Hussein is justified and appropriate. I convinced him by sending him reams of information about the brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. He really didn't know, and now he does, and he changed his mind. But with a catch. ""This isn't the right American administration to carry out the invasion,"" he said.

Robert Kagan recently wrote ""Yesterday''s liberal interventionists, in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti, are today''s liberal abstentionists. What changed? Just the man in the White House.""

Exactly.

Anti-war conservatives are much more serious in their opposition. When Brett Scowcroft, for example, defends the Iraqi dictatorship, he means business. He lobbied to prop up the Soviet Union on the eve of its implosion. He wanted to leave Slobodan Milosovic and the Taliban in power. And he is a notorious apologist for the totalitarian regime in Beijing. Scowcroft and his ilk are stability junkies. Liberals place a far higher premium on human rights and democracy than on the supposed upshot of despotism.

That liberals ganged up with Scowcroft, a man they should rightly despise, is partly the fault of the Bush Administration. Bush has not emphasized the humanitarian benefits of regime-change in Iraq nearly enough. (Though you would think the erstwhile liberal hawks could figure this out on their own.) An ever-increasing number of conservative writers are advocating serious human rights abroad, but it remains that most activists and members of human rights organizations are liberals. Bush is squandering the support of these people by making liberalization a footnote in the anti-Saddam campaign.

But Bush has mentioned it. Recently he cited Amnesty International's record on Saddam's history of torture and genocide. Amnesty should have been elated that its work is taken seriously by the adminstration. Instead, Amnsesty's Kamal Samari issued this baffling response: ""There''s no question that the regime has an appalling human rights record. But what we don''t want to see for Iraq or any other country is that the human rights record is used selectively in order to achieve political goals.""

George Orwell once wrote ""The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it"…There was even a tendency to feel that the Nanking atrocities had become, as it were, retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them."" Orwell was a leftist who took a bullet in the neck fighting fascists in Spain. Writing to his appeasement-minded comrades in Britain, he reminded them of the atrocities in Europe and said ""These things really happened, that is the thing to keep one's eye on. They happened even though Lord Halifax said they happened.""

We got more of this during the Cold War. Ronald Reagan was laughed out of the room for denouncing the Soviet Union as the ""Evil Empire."" That the Soviet Union was an empire is without question. It was animated by an expansionist ideology, it invaded and conquered its neighbors, and it fomented revolutions abroad to drag more countries into its orbit. That the Soviet Union was evil is crashingly obvious, given that its victims outnumber Hitler's by an order of magnitude. But even Reagan's staunchest anti-communist opponents yammered on about his ""simplistic"" characterization of the Soviets.

If Hillary Clinton were to go on television tomorrow and refer to the former Stalinist state as evil, would any liberal intellectual denounce her as a loose cannon or a wing nut? Of course not.

I can't count the number of conversations I have with liberal friends and colleagues that go something like this:

Him or Her: Isn't it strange that you're a liberal and you agree with Bush on the war?

Me: Well, what are you doing on the same side as Pat Buchanan?

Him or Her: (Laughs)

They laugh because they know I've got them. No matter your opinion on Iraq, you have unlikely allies. On the one hand, so what? You're either right or you aren't, regardless of who else agrees. On the other hand, if this sort of thing matters to you, isn't it better to have the so-called lesser evil as your unlikely bedfellow than the greater evil? Isn't Bush preferable to Buchanan? And wouldn't you rather have the Iraqi revolutionaries on your side than the fascist tyrant himself?

For decades now, Western liberals and leftists were the strongest and often only advocates of Kurdish liberation in the Middle East. Today – finally! – conservative Americans are taking an interest in liberating the Kurds, and the rest of the Iraqis, both for national security reasons and as a good cause in its own right. And the hard left, reactionary as it is, forgets the Kurds even exist. Whatever America touches is befouled, leftists think, so they're out.

Unlike leftists, liberals know better. They supported, nay agitated, for invasion and regime-change in Serbia. Without American liberals, Slobo's rampage would have exterminated the Muslims of Europe. The American intervention in the Balkans was launched unilaterally, without UN authorization, while nuanced European sophisticates scrambled to Slobo's defense. Europe still thinks it impolite to root out the thugs in their bolt-holes in the Balkans.

Barham Salih, Prime Minister of the precarious Kurdish government in Northern Iraq, recently told Salon magazine, ""I hope many of my human-rights activists and liberal friends who were on our side will engage in this debate and articulate their vision as forcefully as some of the other friends."" Note the phrase ""were on our side."" He still calls these people his friends. Mr. Salih is too polite. His ""friends"" sold him out to Saddam for low-rent back-alley partisan points at home, and he's okay with that. Actually, he's not okay with it, but he is awfully gracious about it, especially since this is part of a larger pattern of betrayal.

The first president Bush was rightly criticized for abandoning the Iraqis to their deaths at the hands of Saddam after the Gulf War. And rather than side with the current Bush Administration, the American left tragically and stupidly replicates the first President Bush's error. They will let their old friends be massacred before even quietly going along with the Bush Administration.

Mainstream liberals not mired in the fever swamps of hate-America leftism have no business chumming it up with this crowd. The Bush Administration and the liberal human rights organizations have much more in common with each other than either will admit. Each may scoff at the suggestion, and counter with the claim that the human rights organizations are opposed to the unilateral use of force. But this is nonsense. They weren't opposed to a unilateral war against Slobo; they rightly demanded it.

Many liberal intellectuals are natural allies of the Bush Adminstration, and they know it. Paul Berman says ""If their language is sincere and there is an idealism among the neo-cons that echoes and reflects in some way the language of the liberal interventionists of the 90''s, well, that would be a good thing.""

This is what separates grown-up liberals from reactionaries and partisan opportunists, who still see America as engaging in a trivial struggle between Democrats and Republicans, rather than America itself engaging in a titanic struggle against theocratic fascism. But Berman still won't get on board, even though he wants to. Why? ""Because,"" he says, ""I don''t actually know -- I believe that no one actually knows -- what is the actual White House policy."" In the New York Times George Packer describes Berman as being ""in the familiar position of intellectuals, with an arsenal of ideas and no way to deploy them.""

Get over it, Paul! Roosevelt and Churchill were willing to work with Stalin, of all people, to take down Hitler's Germany. And you think Bush is beyond the pale? The White House policy could not possibly be more clear to anyone paying attention. And if the Administration has other ideas which you don't share, so what? How important do you think such philosophical abstractions are to an Iraqi peasant, desperate for intervention, whose family was gassed by Saddam?

It seems that liberal intellectuals need permission or ideological cover to agree with Bush on anything. If enough others go along, as they did in support of the war in Afghanistan, it's okay. They won't feel like partisan traitors, and their liberal credentials won't be questioned.

So, here here, folks. All you Bosnia interventionists, hawkish anti-Taliban feminists, grown-up human rights activists, and would-be hawks-if-only-Gore-were-leading-the-charge, listen up. Like you, I'm a registered Democrat. And I stand unflinchingly against Saddam and with all the democratic forces in the world poised to depose him. Have a stiff drink, give the Bushophobia a break, and get over here. It really is okay. Only the jerks on the fringe will call you a traitor or a right-wing extremist. There are plenty of others from the Democratic Party and the left here already. Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Ron Rosenbaum, Thomas Friedman, Steven Spielberg, Camile Paglia, Arianna Fallaci, Oprah Winfrey, Dan Savage, the ""War Liberal"" blogger, Bob Kerrey, Gary Hart, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Zell Miller, Kenneth Pollack, the staff of The New Republic magazine, and even last year's Al Gore model. If foreigners count, throw in Vaclav Havel, Shimon Peres, and Tony Blair as well.

You folks just can't get over the fact that Bush is unsophisticated. You dug yourselves a mighty deep hole in the ground. I understand the dilemma. If you change your mind on Iraq now, it raises an awkward question. How could a dumb guy like Bush figure it out before the smart set? This is a good time to remember the First Rule of Holes. When you're in one, stop digging.

If you don't join us now, when Saddam's regime falls and Iraqis cheer the US Marines, you are really going to feel like a jackass. And your jackassery will be exposed beneath klieg lights for all to see. Remember the Chomskyites who got everything wrong in Afghanistan? Remember the Europeans who wanted to give the Butcher in Belgrade one more chance? That is not where you want to be right now. The liberation of Iraq and the democratic transformation of the Middle East is the most progressive cause in the world today. It is the right side of history, and if you stand in the way or sit on the sidelines, your liberal humanitarian credentials are toast.

"Visceral Monkey" wrote:

And another Axis graphic:

http://thecr.blogspot.com

It''s the weasel! Where''s Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dog to protect the hens?

Goddamn Ulairi. Goddamn.

If political discussions aren''t cool here, Ill come back and delete my post. God knows I dont like to talk about it much, so I can understand if nobody else wants to hear it.

Im a pretty simple guy, I have only two real concerns in this whole matter. One, I dont wanna die. I am about to graduate, and dont want to get anywhere near the armed forces. So if theres any kind of draft at all, Im out. End of story. Not that I think there will be, but thats my main concern.

Second, I dont follow this whole humanitarian vibe. Sure it will help them, but thats not enough reason for me to endorse our soldiers getting killed. Its thier country after all.
I look at it this way, if we got in another civil war, I wouldn''t expect other countries to come help the losing side because we are so starved/oppressed/helpless. If we can give them something, like oil, then yeah, okay, you can help, but I dont expect them to help because they like us.
In the same vein, I don''t want to go get some Americans killed to help these guys because theyre oppressed.

The rest of the whole thing I still haven''t decided. Still seems sorta iffy to me, I dont like Bush because of the restrictions hes placed on protests that happen when he visits a city, and the way he has caved in to big business on several issues, so hes not exactly someone whos decisions I respect. However, if they find weapons of mass destruction, its a whole new ballgame. ::shrug::

You have an excellent local paper Ulairi, to sum it up, the only reason most liberals oppose the war is because of Bush being in office. Seems like a logical explanation to me, the hatred has gone too far now I think.

the only reason most liberals oppose the war is because of Bush being in office.

Without getting drawn into the debate, that''s patently untrue. That''s not to say most ""liberals"" have a good reason for opposing war, just as most ""conservatives"" don''t have a good reason to go to war. My experience has been more that people will make up reasons and then spout them as fact.

We have to go to war because of Saddam''s OompaLoompa atrocities!

We can''t go to war because the Earth''s mantle is unstable and all those tanks could cause a fissure in the Crust.

And so forth. Trying to distill any intelligible argument out of the high-tide of mongering and reactionism has been difficult. Yes, many passionate but less reasonable liberals oppose the war simply because of George. Others have legitimate concerns about our world image, the cost of such an effort in a time of economic crisis, the legality of doing so without UN sanction, the consequences for Iraqi people, the potentially unnecessary casualties to Allied forces, questions of our commitment to post-war Iraq, the potential backlash of terrorist activity, issues regarding the administration''s and inspector''s lack of hard evidence supporting claims of WoMD, the potential for further Middle East instability, the dangers to our allies in the Middle East such as Jordan and Israel, and so on and so on. I''m not actually holding up these positions (like I said, I''m keeping my personal opinions out of this), but I think ""liberals"" have a much stronger and varied argument than some people would have you believe. Conversely ""conservatives"" also have a stronger argument than some would have you believe.

- Elysium

IMO it seams as if the US is pushing hard twoard invading IRAQ.

Not what worries me is that I can not figure out what is making the U.S. push.

Do we know something awful about Sadam that has not been anounced yet?

Or is it corprate America pushing for cheaper OIL and easier access?

I was trying to sum the article up there Elysium, I know it was a somewhat hasty conclusion but I partially agree with it.

Koesj, I wasn''t really arguing at you. Just summing up a few feelings, and riffing off your comments.

8)

I have yet to experience the first antagonizing experience here at GWJ.

Give it time, Koe. We''re building up for a good one.

- Elysium

I have yet to experience the first antagonizing experience here at GWJ.

Stupid Jerk! Shut your big fat dumb piehole!!!

There, I know I feel better.

Yeah I could have known with you guys

Personally, I''m getting tired of the contention that ""Liberals"" are opposed to the war because of George Bush. It''s as if the Regressives (Extreme Conservatives, not a majority, but damn vocal) are so confounded by the fact that there is opposition to war that they are on a quest to demonize all who are opposed.

How bad is it? Rush Limbaugh (Regressive Mouthpiece) stated: ""It''s beyond me how anybody can look at these protesters and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist Marxists and communists."" Could someone explain to me how being opposed to war is tied to any of these political views? Yesterday on my commute home the local talk show was talking about how Liberals hate George Bush because he''s like the rich popular kid in high school that always got the cute girl without deserving it, while the nerds worked away without reaping any awards. They actually went so far as to call Laura Bush a ""babe."" That my friends, is beyond scary; it''s delusional. I keep hearing the argument over and over again that all of those opposed to the war are defending Saddam. This simply isn''t the case. I have yet to hear from one person who thinks Hussein is good for Iraq. Those opposed to the war simply think that either the U.S. hasn''t justified it''s case or needs to build a strong international coalition to pull it off.

Classifying those opposed to the war as Liberals, Communists, Marxists, and anti-American is childish, ignorant, and wrong.

I am opposed a war at this point. I am not a liberal, I''m a moderate. And the more I hear about how the evil ""Liberals"" are opposed to the war, the more I think the administration and the regressive mouthpieces are out of touch.

For my reasons against going to war, see the following post:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/phpBB2...

I have yet to see any coherent answers to the questions in that post, and they''d be greatly appreciated.

Classifying those opposed to the war as Liberals, Communists, Marxists, and anti-American is childish, ignorant, and wrong.
Regressive Mouthpiece)

Ironic. You just insult people who say that anyone who is against the war is some ""name"" and yet you do the same thing. I have a funny feeling that you didn''t disagree with Clinton regime changing in Serbia. I''m not a republican but I''m against Fascists.

My problem with the peace movement is who is running it and behind it. I went to the rally here at my school (great place to pick up chicks) and the majority of people (I go to school in Madison Wisconsin so it''s more to the left anyway) were useful-idiots.

http://www.authoritarianopportunists...

The word you''re looking for is hypocrisy, not irony. In any event, what word do you find to be offense, regressive or mouthpiece? Either way arguments can be made which connect both words to Limbaugh. The same is not true for those who protest the war and failed political systems such as communism.

What do you mean by ""running"" the peace movement? That''s like someone who claims to be a ""leader"" of the black community. Was there an election that I missed? Should I be sending dues to somebody?

People are opposed to this war for many reasons. Some are professional protesters (and I agree with you this point--those people are for the most part idiots) but the much quieter majority have other reasons. If the administration could simply provide the evidence that is often claims to have, quite a bit of this dissent would go away. Otherwise it just smacks of McCarthyism.

I find it humorous that you site the operation to overthrow Milosevic and call it ""Clinton regime changing."" In reality it was a NATO operation; it was a coalition, not a unilateral action. A major concern that most people have (including myself) is that we''re looking to invade Iraq without such a coalition.

""The word you''re looking for is hypocrisy, not irony. In any event, what word do you find to be offense, regressive or mouthpiece? Either way arguments can be made which connect both words to Limbaugh. The same is not true for those who protest the war and failed political systems such as communism.""

Mouthpiece is fine. I don''t know how he''s regressive anymore than anyone else.

""What do you mean by ""running"" the peace movement? That''s like someone who claims to be a ""leader"" of the black community. Was there an election that I missed? Should I be sending dues to somebody?""

Funding, started, making money on.

""People are opposed to this war for many reasons. Some are professional protesters (and I agree with you this point--those people are for the most part idiots) but the much quieter majority have other reasons. If the administration could simply provide the evidence that is often claims to have, quite a bit of this dissent would go away. Otherwise it just smacks of McCarthyism.""

I saw a poll on CNN saying that 77% agree with Bush. That''s pretty good. The most normal anti-war people don''t go out and scream and name call. They can argue without being a dumbass.

:I find it humorous that you site the operation to overthrow Milosevic and call it ""Clinton regime changing."" In reality it was a NATO operation; it was a coalition, not a unilateral action. A major concern that most people have (including myself) is that we''re looking to invade Iraq without such a coalition.""

NATO voted 15-4 infavour of the United States. Only the French and Germans are really against it. I don''t know where this unilateral BS comes from. I can count off 15 nations.

How can something be morally right with the U.N or NATO and morally wrong without it?

The policies (and culture) that Limbaugh advocates is regressive. He''s a big fan of cutting taxes to the wealthiest (Of which he is a member). He rarely supports any form of social programs. He tends to have chauvinistic views. I hope to god he''s more regressive than most people.

The NATO vote did not include military actions, only the resumption of inspections. And keep in mind that Bush didn''t intend to go before NATO in the first place but only did so under intense pressure. The ""Unilateral BS"" comes from things like the State of the Union last night. We''re going to war (it''s inevitable at this point) and it doesn''t look like anybody but the the UK will be supporting us from a troop standpoint. That''s assuming that the British public doesn''t demand Blair''s head.

My main concern is the proper employment of our military, not the morallity of it. See my posts on the other thread to see what I''m talking about.

The funny thing is I keep reading your posts and I think for the most part we''re in agreement with each other and may just be arguing for the hell of it.

Somewhat Off Topic: Regardless of whether you support the war or not, I hope all Americans support our troops when it starts. To do otherwise is the ultimate in treachery.