Bush Criticizes FDR Over Yalta

AP Via Yahoo News ^ | Sat May 7, 5:53 PM ET | TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

[upcountryhorseman]

I' glad the President brought this up: it needed to be said.
In fact, FDR was advised by communists, communist sympathizers and even a "mole" working for the Soviets.

[Jimmyclyde]

bump

[Jimmyclyde]

ping

[NeoCaveman]

Much like Hillary!ous likes to compare herself to Eleanor Roosevelt, the darling of the Pink Left, Bush is fairly clearly renouncing the communist past of both the USSR, and the US. (Hopkins, Hiss, FDR....)

This is the kind of thing I like to see. It is something you'd never see from the likes of Chuck Hagel

[GarySpFc]

It was also after the Yalta agreement that the system of gulags really got going. We agreed to send Soviet POWs we rescued from the Nazis directly to Siberia.

I don't doubt part of this is true, but not all.
My Russian wife's father was captured at Stalingrad by the Germans, and was a POW until he was liberated by the Americans. He returned to his home in Russia and never spent one day in the gulag. No, he was not a communist. Additionally, he taught his children that Stalin was an evil monster.

[usa1776]

Did you know that 2 million Russians switched sides to fight with the Germans during the war. The only reason it wasn't more was because Hitler put a limit how how many Russians the Germans would take. This was even with the atrocities the Germans committed on the Russians. The Russians wanted the Communist out as much as anybody.

As for wanting to bring the boys home, most Americans didn't want to go to war in the first place either. The case could have been made and Americans of the time would have accepted it.

Also, you could have brought the boys home anyway, Patton was ready to lead Germans back into Russia.

Another thing, exactly which nations had the Atomic bomb at the end of WWII?

It is a real stretch to say the US couldn't have ended communism in both Russia and China. Instead, we got the United Nations.

Yes, we lost WWII. If you don't realize it, your grandchildren will.

[usa1776]

Wilson throw out the ideas, FDR funded them. It wasn't until WWII that taxes were withheld from your paycheck. Americans had opposed such an absurd idea before, but with the war it was the only "patriotic" thing to do. Additionally, it was promoted as a way to make sure the rich paid. Just another reason the USA and freedom did not win WWII.

[TBP]

Harry "The Hop" Hopkins was the program's director at the time, and known now via the VENONA decrypts, to be Soviet agent "No. 19"

Do you have a link for this?

[TBP]

FDR was one of the most overrated of Presidents - a defective individual who tried unsuccessfully to achieve the glory of his illustrious relative Teddy Roosevelt.

A defective individual who tried unsuccessfully to establish a dictatorship in America.

[ZULU]

Had he not died in Office he would have been another Franco or Stalin - leader for life. Just talk to some old foggies who were around when he was President.

They act like he was the Second Coming.

[nopardons]

FDR was dying and Hiss ran Yalta. Churchill was adamantly against EVERYTHING that FDR was saying and doing. He was the only one who shown brightly there.

And it's a very good thing that President Bush brought this up. :-)

[CharlieOK1]

read later

[TBP]

Actually, he was President for Life.

[ZULU]

Touche.

Fortunately it wasn't longer.

[RJS1950]

This is all what my grandfather (died in 1986 one month short of 100) always said. He despised FDR and had little doubt that FDR prolonged the depression with his policies and that he sold out eastern Europe, generating the cold war. He was from Missouri and bore a resemblance to Truman. I remarked on that once as a kid and my mom told me in no uncertain terms to never repeat that to grandpa. He disliked Truman, FDR and all democrats. He considered them the party of corruption and the party of the KKK. He saw it all first hand and I'd say he had it right.

[SkoalBandit]

I am sure everything would of been alot better if we fought the Russians and kicked them out of europe after we beat the germans. /sarcasm off

[TBP]

Everything would have been a lot better longterm if we had pushed them back behind their own borders. And in any event, we didn't have to ratify their conquests and the borders agreed to in the Stalin-Hitler pact.

[SkoalBandit]

You have a massive Soviet army in control of all of Eastern Europe and a person with even perfect hindsite is supposed to tell them to get out?

A war at that point between the U.S. and the Soviets would have made the rest of WW2 seem like a tea party. The best that could of happened would be a stalemate.

[logician2u]

It wasn't until WWII that taxes were withheld from your paycheck.

Quite true.

When people have to sit down and write a check to the government for their taxes, they tend to know how much they're paying. It generally causes some amount of dismay when people see their taxes going up.

As a wartime measure, the federal government instituted paycheck witholding to soften the blow for the millions of Americans who had, up until then, never had to pay. Also, to speed up tax collection to pay for the war.

Among the proponents of the new witholding tax was a young official in the Treasury Department named Milton Friedman.

He now, of course, regrets it deeply.

The lesson: It is far easier to introduce a government program than to get rid of it.

[logician2u]

Thanks for posting the transcript of Rush's show.

I happened to be listening on my car radio that day and about drove off the road when Felix brought up the "repatriation" issue. Nobody but Birchers ever talks about the forced return of millions of Russians, Ukranians, and other Eastern Europeans after the war had ended to work as forced labor in Stalin's gulag. I was eagerly anticipating what would be coming next.

To preserve Rush's stature as a conservative spokesman, he prattled about gulags and shut down the caller before Felix could continue to educate his audience.

Operation Keelhaul was a disgraceful action which few Americans know about, and those that do did not learn of it in the publik skools, you can be assured.