"Ecuse me, excuse me..But where are the flies? I need a fly to eat! Ribbit!"
Posted on 04/04/2005 5:29:57 PM PDT by wagglebee
but who thinks reagan was bluffing? ANY democrat who aspires to president can be guaranteed to be bluffing.
I never for one second believed that Reagan was bluffing.
"If Britain and France had half the courage and half the honor of Reagan back in WWII"
A couple of years ago Buchanan was on C Matthews show and mentioned that churchill had sold poland out, and clearly stated why. I know some people have issues with buchanan but he apparently knows more history than any other public figure on tv today and I have yet to hear a compelling argument about why he was wrong.
Can you imagine Carter, Clinton or Kerry in the office at that time ??
We'd be speaking Russian, if we were lucky.
Shades of the Fulda gap.
RE: The clandestine U.S. support using the Vatican's Catholic network grew to $8 million a year during the mid 1980s. High tech communications equipment was smuggled in along with printing equipment, supplies, VCRs and freedom tapes.
Hehehehehe! I helped this in a small way ....
Or Hollywoods "All the Presidents Men part 2"...Funny I can`t seem to recall that movie, can you? 20 plus years of Watergate constantly shoved down the publics throat but when a `Rat does stuff a million times worse year after year we get "comedy with John Travolta" and a book about Bush by Bernstein the second Clintoon leaves office. Bernstein is a toad who needs to crawl back into that scum pond he came from.
"Ecuse me, excuse me..But where are the flies? I need a fly to eat! Ribbit!"
That'll show 'em!
Did you ever read this article by the Toad?
History lesson: GOP must stop Bush
By Carl Bernstein
Thirty years ago, a Republican president, facing impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate, was forced to resign because of unprecedented crimes he and his aides committed against the Constitution and people of the United States. Ultimately, Richard Nixon left office voluntarily because courageous leaders of the Republican Party put principle above party and acted with heroism in defense of the Constitution and rule of law.
"What did the president know and when did he know it?" a Republican senator — Howard Baker of Tennessee — famously asked of Nixon 30 springtimes ago.
Today, confronted by the graphic horrors of Abu Ghraib prison, by ginned-up intelligence to justify war, by 652 American deaths since presidential operatives declared "Mission Accomplished," Republican leaders have yet to suggest that George W. Bush be held responsible for the disaster in Iraq and that perhaps he, not just Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is ill-suited for his job.
Having read the report of Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, I expect Baker's question will resound again in another congressional investigation. The equally relevant question is whether Republicans will, Pavlov-like, continue to defend their president with ideological and partisan reflex, or remember the example of principled predecessors who pursued truth at another dark moment.
Today, the issue may not be high crimes and misdemeanors, but rather Bush's failure, or inability, to lead competently and honestly.
"You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror," Bush told Rumsfeld in a Wizard-of-Oz moment May 10, as Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and senior generals looked on. "You are a strong secretary of Defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude." The scene recalled another Oz moment: Nixon praising his enablers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, as "two of the finest public servants I've ever known."
Sidestepping the Constitution
Like Nixon, this president decided the Constitution could be bent on his watch. Terrorism justified it, and Rumsfeld's Pentagon promoted policies making inevitable what happened at Abu Ghraib — and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The legal justification for ignoring the Geneva Conventions regarding humane treatment of prisoners was enunciated in a memo to Bush, dated Jan. 25, 2002, from the White House counsel.
"As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Alberto Gonzales wrote Bush. "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." Quaint.
Since January, Bush and Rumsfeld have been aware of credible complaints of systematic torture. In March, Taguba's report reached Rumsfeld. Yet neither Bush nor his Defense secretary expressed concern publicly or leveled with Congress until photographic evidence of an American Gulag, possessed for months by the administration, was broadcast to the world.
Rumsfeld then explained, "You read it, as I say, it's one thing. You see these photographs and it's just unbelievable. ... It wasn't three-dimensional. It wasn't video. It wasn't color. It was quite a different thing." But the report also described atrocities never photographed or taped that were, often, even worse than the pictures — just as Nixon's actions were frequently far worse than his tapes recorded.
It was Barry Goldwater, the revered conservative, who convinced Nixon that he must resign or face certain conviction by the Senate — and perhaps jail. Goldwater delivered his message in person, at the White House, accompanied by Republican congressional leaders.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee likewise put principle above party to cast votes for articles of impeachment. On the eve of his mission, Goldwater told his wife that it might cost him his Senate seat on Election Day. Instead, the courage of Republicans willing to dissociate their party from Nixon helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency six years later, unencumbered by Watergate.
Another precedent is apt: In 1968, a few Democratic senators — J. William Fulbright, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert F. Kennedy — challenged their party's torpor and insisted that President Lyndon Johnson be held accountable for his disastrous and disingenuous conduct of the Vietnam War, adding weight to public pressure, which, eventually, forced Johnson not to seek re-election.
Today, the United States is confronted by another ill-considered war, conceived in ideological zeal and pursued with contempt for truth, disregard of history and an arrogant assertion of American power that has stunned and alienated much of the world, including traditional allies. At a juncture in history when the United States needed a president to intelligently and forcefully lead a real international campaign against terrorism and its causes, Bush decided instead to unilaterally declare war on a totalitarian state that never represented a terrorist threat; to claim exemption from international law regarding the treatment of prisoners; to suspend constitutional guarantees even to non-combatants at home and abroad; and to ignore sound military advice from the only member of his Cabinet — Powell — with the most requisite experience. Instead of using America's moral authority to lead a great global cause, Bush squandered it.
In Republican cloakrooms, as in the Oval Office, response to catastrophe these days is more concerned with politics and PR than principle. Said Tom DeLay, House majority leader: "A full-fledged congressional investigation — that's like saying we need an investigation every time there's police brutality on the street."
When politics topples principles
To curtail any hint of dissension in the ranks, Bush scheduled a "pep rally" with congressional Republicans — speaking 35 minutes, after which, characteristically, he took no questions and lawmakers dutifully circled the wagons.
What did George W. Bush know and when did he know it? Another wartime president, Harry Truman, observed that the buck stops at the president's desk, not the Pentagon.
But among Republicans today, there seems to be scant interest in asking tough questions — or honoring the example of courageous leaders of Congress who, not long ago, stepped forward, setting principle before party, to hold accountable presidents who put their country in peril.
Carl Bernstein's most recent book is a biography of John Paul II, His Holiness. He is co-author, with Bob Woodward, of All the President's Men and The Final Days.
Thank you for your service.
Thank you God for giving us these brave leaders.
I love the comment attributed to our current President.
Reagan did not ask Gorbachev to put a gate in the Berlin wall. He told him to tear it down.
Fortune favors the brave.
Please elaborate
What I'm talking about is 1939. If Britain and France had done as they should have, and attacked Germany, WWII would have been settled really quickly, and I don't think that the soviets would have invaded Poland from the other side.
I think that if Britain and France had both done what they should have, there would be great relations between France, Britain, America, and Poland today, not just between some of us. Who knows, France might have been so proud of doing the right thing that it would be a conservative contry today.
Anyways, history is history, and I'm glad it's over. I am very thankful for the Pope and for Reagan.
God bless
BUmp for later read.
This I believe to be true. There was quite a bit of talk back then in the Army to be possibly prepared for action if the USSR invaded Poland and few of us believed Reagan was joking or bluffing.
I realize that. It was then brought up that the Warsaw Pact had a huge numerical advantage over NATO so Reagan wouldn't possibly have done this.
I simply asked a question: Why did the Warsaw Pact stare us down over 50 years if they simply could have invaded and steamrollered over us? Which is precisely what some have said they would've done anyhow if Reagan had really threatened them over Poland.
And why do people insist we have (had) to drive through East Germany and Poland to get to the Soviet Union? Ya'll think you're Guderian? Patton? Large tank armies bursting over the border to go toe-to-toe with the Russian hordes?
The Soviets also had their own problems back then. They couldn't keep a Premier around for more than a few days without kicking the bucket. I'm sure the last thing they wanted to do was to worry about Poland with the leadership of the USSR in such disarray.
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