In today’s paper Vincent Carroll, the Rocky Mountain News‘ editorial page editor, strongly criticized President Bush for going too far in equating the Yalta Agreement with the Munich and Molotov-Ribbentrop deals that sold out Europe to Nazi Germany.

The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,” Bush said. “Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable.”

…It is true that Yalta’s promise of free elections for Eastern Europe, given Stalin’s record, amounted to the height of naivete, wishful thinking or cynicism. But even so, there is a vast difference between engineering oppression (Munich and Molotov-Ribbentrop) and sugar-coating its existence on the ground.

Yet President Bush has not hesitated to invoke FDR’s name in a positive light when he wants to legitimize his Social Security plan .

At a time when the world is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the defeat of fascism, why is this President smearing the legacy of the President who led us to that victory?