Louis Farrakhan Quotes
Saddam Hussein is no more terrible than Bush. He’s no more terrible than Bush’s father. No more terrible than Clinton.
Louis Eugene Walcott
Louis Farrakhan, Chief Minister, Nation of Islam, Speech, San Diego, August 2002, Quoted on NBC Meet the Press, August 25, 2002
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Khanenei failed to make three important distinctions. First, the crimes committed by American forces in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were NOT the policy of the American government whereas all of Hitler’s crimes were not only government policy but Hitler had laws passed to enable these atrocities. Bush and the American Military command may have not been competent enough to prevent the problems, and may have been too lenient to punish the guilty, but they never intended them to occur. Second is scale. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo illegalities led at most to the deaths of one or two people. Hitler killed over 6 million in his prisons. Third, as soon as Bush found out about the problems, they were stopped whereas Hitler continued until militarily removed from power and neutralized.
This quotation is a good example of how tolerant some nations can be in terms of maintaining diplomatic relations and trade relations with other countries. The American and English governments chose to simply protest and condemn the slanderous statement but decided that the Prime Minister was pandering to his political local Islamic base, so took no further action and kept open diplomatic relations. Mahathir had a history of being very accusatory of the West with respect to anything that affected the Arab Muslims. The number of Muslims killed by the Americans and British in the Iraq War was very small compared to the huge number of Muslims killed by other Muslims in their Sunni Shiite civil war. While Bush and Blair both generated support for the Iraq invasion by making claims of WMD development in Iraq that were false, it is not clear whether or not they knew their statements were false, should have known that they were false, created an atmosphere against Iraq that was likely to produce false accusations, or were simple misled by poor intelligence. Mahathir, of course, chose to assume the worst case, and claim it was true, which is what many people think Bush and Blair did in analyzing the intelligence on Iraq.
[During the Guatemalan Civil War, the military had often tortured, murdered disappeared and sexually enslaved female relatives of men they suspected of being rebel. The object was to humiliate and emasculate the insurrectionists so that others will not join them and they will cease their revolutionary activities to protect their women. The civil war ended in 1996, and although military war criminals had been tried earlier but never for crimes – sexual crimes against women. 20 year had elapsed since the end of the war and this famous trial. The two war criminals were sentenced to 120 and 240 years in prison respectively, but they had escaped justice for more than two decades. The United States, in the middle of the Red Scare was supporting and financing the Guatemalan government and military. In addition America trained many of the military in counter-insurgency which taught some methods that were contrary to International Law and which were illegal for American soldiers to engage in. After official documents of the era were declassified, it became clear that U. S. officials—–especially the CIA--were aware of the excesses and war crimes of the Guatemalan military, but did little to stop it. See Quotes 583699, and 583697 for more on the American involvement.]
Chavez frequently insulted officials and leaders of other countries. See linked quotes for examples.
Louis Farrakhan is an American religious leader, political activist, and anti-Semite who heads the Nation of Islam (NOI). Earlier in his career, he served as the minister of mosques in Boston and Harlem and was appointed National Representative of the Nation of Islam by former NOI leader Elijah Muhammad.