Powerful lawmaker Charlie Rangel has provoked the ire of the Anti-Defamation League by likening U.S. military action in Iraq to the Holocaust of World War II.

The Iraq war "is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. ... This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," the 74-year-old Harlem Democrat insisted during a Monday radio appearance on the WWRL-AM morning show with Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter. "The whole world knew and they were quiet about it because it wasn't their ox being gored."

When interviewer Malzberg challenged Rangel's analogy, the congressman replied: "I am saying that people's silence when they know things terrible are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust."

Is there any other way to read this other than suggesting American soldiers are just following orders like the Nazis? Are we looking to destroy Iraq or is it my imagination that we are spending billions to rebuild it? Are the members of the Iraqi parliament all kapos, dancing to the whim of Bushitler?

In reality, I don't think this is that big a deal and that it falls in the "bad analogy from a Congressman with diarrhea of the mouth" category along with Senator Santorum's remarks that the Democratic leadership were acting like the Nazi leadership. Santorum apologized even though what he said was meant to be a reflection on a handful of people and not every American that supports the war. I'll be waiting for a similar mea culpa from Rangel.