This very first question struck me as strange -- Schieffer and I are roughly the same age, both baby boomers. When I grew up, I seem to recall endless liberal hysteria about imminent nuclear extinction. They talked about constantly and used it to bash conservative politicians, from the famous "daisy-picking" commercial against Goldwater to ridiculing Reagan for his defense build-up.
So when exactly was this idyllic, pastoral Eden that "we all grew up in"?
Truly a strange (and unchallenged) quote about a safe world of the past- I seem to remember growing up in a country that spent hundreds of billions of defense dollars maintaining a nuclear shell game of "mutual assured destruction" which could have occurred with 20 minutes notice... a country where SAC forces went on full alert more than once to launch a nuclear attack and were pulled back within moments of crossing the fail safe line...... a world in which such stalwart nations as India and Pakistan built their own nucs and came perilously close to using them against each other more than once... a world in which starvation and genocide in Africa became a familiar face on Halloween UNICEF boxes .... a world in which a hundred million people disappeared in Russian and Chinese gulags .... a world in which the master of one of those gulags came to the United Nations and told the world he would bury America.... a world in which Israel was at war three times ... a world in which hundreds of Germans were executed by other Germans for trying to climb a wall in Berlin and Russian tanks crushed human beings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia..... a world in which a million Iranians died while repelling an invasion by Saddam Hussein's army.... a world in which Olympic athletes were kidnapped and murdered by terrorists while the games went on ... a world in which airliners were hijacked and blown apart in the air on a regular basis.... a world in which American diplomats, embassies, and mainland buildings became targets for terror bombings
Ah yes, the "Doomsday Clock", always at 5-minutes before mid-night up until the wall came down.....
I remember those days! We had drills for "Duck and Cover!". Good 'ol Days ,yeah! Grade schoolers diving under their desks in case of nuclear attack. In the mean time the flower children were playing jump from the tallest biulding high on LSD, they thought they could fly. Now they want to run the country. I think they had too many bad trips. Somebody ought to pose that question to Kerry.
Senator, do you still have flashbacks from your LSD days? It sure looks like it to us! How else can you explain you and your VP candidates rediculous claims?