Go Rummy!!!

Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech at the American Legion convention and based on the response from the lefties, he hit a homerun!!! I'm trying to track down a link to the full transcript, but the internet here isn't cooperating. As soon as I find it, I'll post it. The telling point is the outrage is directed at Rummy, but not a single word on the points he made.

Update: Here is a link to the whole speech...It is definitely a MUST read!!!
Hat Tip Mike's America (I've added him to my blogroll)

In the meantime here are a couple of lines from his speech that have them all in a hissy fit:

In the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated--or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace--even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence in views of the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. Senator's reaction in September 1939, upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed: "Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

Think of that!

I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today, another enemy--a different kind of enemy--has also made clear its intentions--in places like New York, Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, and Moscow. But it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons.

We need to face the following questions:

-With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?

-Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

-Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?

-And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America--not the enemy--is the real source of the world's trouble?

These are central questions of our time. And we must face them. . . .

But this is still--even in 2006--not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters there is more of a focus on dividing our country, than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

We find ourselves in a strange time:

-When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who were punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;

-When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army";

-When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq;

-and it is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare, as "the gulag of our times."

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths, and distortions being told about our troops and about our country.

The struggle we are in is too important--the consequences too severe--to have the luxury of returning to the old mentality of "Blame America First."