Prime Minister, your glider is ready.

Otto Skorzeny: a handy man to have around.

Otto Skorzeny was Nazi SS officer -- Hitler’s favorite commando -- who was asked byDer Fuhrer to lead a very special rescue mission in the Summer of 1943. The war was going badly for Italy and the Fascist Grand Council decided to try to cut a deal with the Allies. Step one: Depose Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and lock his “Il Duce” ass up at Campo Imperatore in the Abruzzi mountains.

Skorzeny came in with a handful of gliders (outfitted with braking rockets so they could stop dead on the small rock ledge) and an aircraft called Fi 156 Storch, and spirited Mussolini away.

Now what in the world spontaneously puts me in mind of an Italian fascist, in the thrall of a foreign master at the expense of his own people, sunk to the hips in a war that has gone very wrong for him?

Funny you should ask.

Italy's Berlusconi Resigns
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer

ROME -- Italy's longest-lasting government since World War II collapsed Wednesday when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned. But the embattled Italian leader vowed to regroup immediately and hold on to power. Reeling from poor local election results, a sluggish economy and protest over Italy's involvement in the war in Iraq, the Berlusconi government has been in crisis for weeks. A parade of coalition partners abandoned Berlusconi and demanded fresh elections...

The prime minister, who is also a billionaire businessman and media tycoon, hopes to avoid elections by handing in his resignation and then forming a new government.

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Under Italy's arcane political system, a prime minister may have to resign and be reappointed to make significant changes in the cabinet. In past decades, Italian governments came and went at a brisk pace, sometimes lasting no more than several months. Berlusconi had prided himself on having broken the pattern.
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Larger issues loom, however.The economy is one of the slowest growing in Europe, and unemployment is high, especially in the south. Italians are also losing patience with Berlusconi's decision to send 3,000 troops to Iraq to join U.S. occupation forces.
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