In december 2008, Silvio Berlusconi, a renowned rake, business tycoon and at the time, the President of Italy, had this to say about the newly elected Prime Minister of Russia and President Obama. "I don't see problems for Medvedev to establish good relations with
Obama, who is also handsome, young and suntanned."
This week Berlusconi surpassed even that bizarre comment when he attended a ceremony to commemorate the Holocaust.
He praised Benito Mussolini for "having done good" despite the Fascist dictator's anti-Jewish laws. "It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then," Berlusconi said of Mussolini's support for Hitler. "Certainly the (Italian) government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler's Germany rather than oppose it."
Berlusconi added that "within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good."
Could he have possibly chosen a more fitting time to extol the virtues of Mussolini than a commemoration of the Holocaust.
Silvio has now firmly established himself as one of the great egomaniacs of all time.