Several members of Congress had been urging Rumsfeld's resignation before he asserted to the American Legion that opponents displayed the kind of thinking that delayed military action against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Rumsfeld said the world faces "a new type of fascism." And he warned against repeating the pre-World War II mistake of appeasement.

Rumsfeld's speech in Salt Lake City Tuesday, in which he also said that administration critics suffered from "moral confusion," prompted angry reactions from Democrats hoping to win back the majority in Congress.

"It is a dangerous business to accuse those who disagree with you of moral and intellectual confusion," [that's politics!] said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. "Debate in our democracy is based upon respect, not vilification." [ah, yes. the whole "shut up!" rebuttal]

Said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi: "If Mr. Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been fighting in Iraq longer than it took our forces to defeat the Nazis in Europe." [can she explain why our forces are STILL in Germany 60 years later?]

Rumsfeld said it "was apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." Aides later said he was not accusing the administration's critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras.

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld's remarks were seen by many Democrats in Congress as fighting words.

Sen. Jack Reed, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Rumsfeld has been "substituting sloganing for strategy" [and "substitution sloganing for strategy" isn't a slogan???] and delivered a "calculated political argument" to make people believe that to support a war against terror requires support of the administration's policies.