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Bush compares Islamic radicals to Nazis and communists

President Bush on Thursday predicted victory in the war on terror at a time of increasing public anxiety at home, likening the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism with the fight against Nazis and communists.

“As veterans you have seen this kind of enemy before,” Bush said. “They are successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be.

“This war will be difficult. This war will be long. And this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists,” Bush said.

He acknowledged the unsettling times – marked by sectarian violence in Iraq, war along the Israel-Lebanon border and terrorists allegedly plotting to blow up planes between Britain and the United States.

“The images that come back from the front lines are striking and sometimes unsettling,” Bush said. “When you see innocent civilians ripped apart by suicide bombs or families buried inside their homes, the world can seem engulfed in purposeless violence.”

But he also said that those responsible for bringing down the World Trade Center are united with car bombers in Baghdad, Hezbollah militants who shoot rockets into Israel and terrorists who wanted to bring down the flights between Britain and the United States.

“Despite their differences, these groups form the outline of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology,” he said. “And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam.”

Read entire article at AP