Rumsfeld: U.S. is fighting "new type of fascism"


U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the country was confronting "the rising of a new type of fascism."

In a speech to the national convention of the American Legion, a veterans' group, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Rumsfeld cited "lessons" of history, including the failure to confront Hitler in the 1930s, and recalled a string of recent terrorist attacks, saying that terrorists must be confronted, not appeased.

"I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," he said.

He asked the audience, consisting of thousands of veterans, whether the United States could "truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased," and "to return to the destructive view that American, not the enemy, is the real source of the world's troubles."

Rumsfeld blamed the media for not giving a full picture of the war on terror. The American media, he said, had tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive.

More media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that one soldier, Paul Ray Smith, received the Medal of Honor, he said.

U.S. media reports said the defense chief's remarks were part of the White House's strategy, in advance of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to take the offensive against administration critics at a time of doubt about the Iraq war and growing calls to withdraw U.S. troops from the Middle East country.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to address the American Legion convention later Tuesday, and President George W. Bush was also to speak at the convention this week.

english.people.com.cn/200608/30/eng20060830_298002.html