Leahy blasts Rumsfeld remark on Iraq war critics

08/31/2006

By Sam Hemingway
Burlington Free Press

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., lashed out Wednesday at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, criticizing him for comparing Iraq war critics to appeasers of fascists and Nazis in the years leading up to World War II.

Leahy, appearing at a joint news conference with Bernie San- ders, the Democratic-backed candidate for Senate, and Democratic House candidate Peter Welch, said he was outraged by Rumsfeld's comments at an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City.

"I wish somebody in the Bush administration would actually read a history book," Leahy said. "This was pretty stupid, to suggest, as this administration does over and over again, that if people question what they're doing, then somehow we're unpatriotic."

Rumsfeld told the American Legion convention attendees Tuesday that terrorism is a "new type of fascism" and, without specifically referring to Iraq war critics, remarked that "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons."

Leahy, Sanders and Welch staged the news conference at the Radio Deli and Grocery in Burlington to repeat their call for increasing the federal minimum wage.

Sanders said 15 million people who now live in poverty would benefit from an increase in the wage, now at $5.15 per hour. He also said it was time to end "one-party government" in Washington.

Welch said it was wrong that Congress had voted to give its members nine raises since the federal minimum wage was last raised, in 1997. Welch said if he's elected, he will introduce legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25, the state minimum wage in effect in Vermont.

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