If Donald Rumsfeld's attempt to equate Iraq war critics to Nazi appeasers doesn't quite resonate with you, Condoleezza Rice has another way you might look at it: The people who oppose George W. Bush's war in Iraq may be the same sort who would have allowed slavery to continue in the United States.

In an interview with Essence, coming to us through the New York Daily News via the Carpetbagger Report, Rice says that slavery might have lasted longer in the United States if people in the North had decided to cut and run during the Civil War.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice tells Essence. "I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'"