Greatest President ever,Ronald Reagan ends Cold War 20 yrs ago today
Harry Dope
Twenty years ago today in Berlin, Germany President Ronald Reagan called on
Soviet General Secretary Gorbechev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
Reagan was the first US President to stand firm against the Soviet Union and
that stance coupled with his policy of strengthening out military lead
directly to the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall ending
more than forty years of Cold War with the Soviets.
His critics condemned him for his stance against the, "Evil Empire."
Democrats believed that he would bring the ,"wrath, " of the Soviet down on
America. Much of the world protested his stance against the USSR.
But Reagan new that Soviet Communism was weak and that a strong stance
against their expansionist plans and ideals would lead to the end of the ,
"Evil Empire."
He was vilified then, but history has proven him correct and shown that his
strength and steadfastness not only prevailed but brought to an end the
threat of nuclear destruction from the USSR that had dominated US policy
since the early 50's.
Ronald Reagan remembered. A truly great man and leader who lead during and
extremely difficult time. He brought optomism
--
"Saddam Hussein 'is too dangerous of a man to be given carte blanche with
weapons of mass destruction,' he added."
Senator Harry Reid - 12.17.1998
Bugman
"Harry Dope" <HopeHate...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:466f15dc$0$4671$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
> RONALD REAGAN - "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL !"
That's what he's doing in hell. Tearing down walls for eternity
Vid...@tcq.net
wrote:
During his first term few of those close to him dared
confront him with the unpleasant truth that his huge tax
cut and defense buildup, combined with his relatively minor
spending cuts and refusal to consider new taxes, had not
reduced the trillion-dollar debt he inherited but --
amazingly and tragically -- had doubled it. That was the
dirty little secret of the Reagan years. The Great Budget
Balancer of the campaign trail had become the Great Deficit
Spender of the Oval Office. - Warren Rudman, "Combat"
The Ronald Reagan Myth
The Progressive Review
Great Thoughts of Ronald Reagan
"A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"
Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the Sacramento Bee,
opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, March 3, 1966
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored
under a desk."
Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the
Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the
jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put
parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in
the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965
"...the moral equal of our Founding Fathers."
President Reagan, describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976
"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)
"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28,
1966
"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry
every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964
"I never knew anything above Cs."
President Reagan, in a moment of truthfulness, describes his academic
record to Barbara Walters, November 27, 1981
"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President
was.... They said he wouldn't come to work--all he wanted to do was to
watch movies and television at the residence."
Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan's
underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88
"Reagan's only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile]
throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at
midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he gave
us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution."
Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) interviewed by Haynes
Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
"This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if
he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or
economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about
his Hollywood days."
Columnist Richard Cohen
"What planet is he living on?"
President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
"During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press
corps watched him doze off so many times--during speeches by French
President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro
Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope--that
they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'"
Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency
"He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a
smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."
David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist
"an amiable dunce
Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)
"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"...like reinventing the wheel."
Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was
like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The
Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House
"The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a
challenging one for his aides."
Columnist David Broder
"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the
parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father,
The Way I See It
"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any
program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a
money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with
unmatched vigor."
Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error
"President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes
statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that
almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each
day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American
press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no
clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986
*****
Uncommon Wisdom from "The Gipper"
"A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the Sacramento
Bee, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, March 3, 1966
"I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen
them all."
--Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, September 14, 1966
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored
under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the
Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the
average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per
year.)
"I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I
don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little
mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably
released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been
released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that
kind."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (According
to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur
dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per
day produced by cars.)
"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93
percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980.
(According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense
Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and
possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)
"Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons
released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and
enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Sierra, September 10, 1980
"I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey
has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is
greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980.
(According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves of 165.5 billion barrels
are 17 times the proven reserves--9.2 billion barrels--in Alaska.)
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
--Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980
"Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile,
with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1980. (The
U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that a 14-car train
traveling at 80 miles per hour gets 400 passenger miles to the gallon.
A 1980 auto carrying an average of 2.2 people gets 42.6 passenger
miles to the gallon.)
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the
jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put
parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
--Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in
the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965
"I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam]
than the people have been told."
--Ronald Reagan, in the Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1967
"...the moral equal of our Founding Fathers."
--President Reagan, describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976
"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform
four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April
19, 1985. ("In costume" is more like it. Reagan spent World War II
making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)
"They've done away with those committees. That shows the success of
what the Soviets were able to do in this country."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Washington Times, September 30, 1987.
(Reagan longs for the days of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the HCUA witch
hunts.)
"We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education
and the decline in profit over recent years."
--President Reagan, quoted in USA Today, April 26, 1983
"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it
now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and
that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who
are homeless, you might say, by choice."
--President Reagan, defending himself against charges of callousness
on Good Morning America, January 31, 1984
"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the
point of a bayonet, if necessary."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965
"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966
"If there has to be a bloodbath then let's get it over with."
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the San Francisco
Chronicle, May 15, 1969. (Reagan reveals how he intends to deal with
student protesters at the University of California, Berkeley.)
"Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many
aid programs the moment he crosses the border."
--Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor,
January 3, 1966. (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five
years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan acknowledged his
error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.)
"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)
"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
--California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28,
1966
"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry
every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
--Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964
"But I also happen to be someone who believes in tithing--the giving
of a tenth [to charity]."
--Ronald Reagan, from The Weekly Compilation of Presidential
Documents, February 8, 1982. (He may believe in tithing, but he
doesn't practice it. Reagan's total charitable giving of $5,965 did
not approach 10% of total income. It was more like 1.4%.)
"[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the
prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when
people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but
never anything like this."
--President Reagan revealing a disturbing view about the "coming of
Armageddon," December 6, 1983
"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20
percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect
for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase
in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such
thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher
than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)
"Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even
eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or
anything."
--Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980. (Wrong again.)
"Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening,
coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close."
--Ronald Reagan to aide Stuart Spencer, 1966
Quotes are from Reagan's Reign of Error by Mark Green & Gail MacColl,
and The Clothes Have No Emperor by Paul Slansky
*****
REAGAN LIE DETECTOR
Reagan conducted one of the most absurd invasions of American history,
targetting the tiny island of Grenada.
As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan informed on
fellow actors to the FBI.
The Reagan admininstration was one of the most corrupt in American
history, including by one estimate 31 Reagan era convictions,
including 14 because of Iran-Contra and 16 in the Department of
Housing & Urban Development scandal. By comparison 40 government
officials were indicted or convicted in the wake of Watergate. 47
individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were
convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring
during the Clinton administration itself. There were in addition 61
indictments or misdemeanor charges. 14 persons were imprisoned.
Using a looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and
D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the
Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were
criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but
with a different standard in "Sleep-Walking Through History: America
in the Reagan Years: "By the end of his term, 138 administration
officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the
subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or
criminal violations."
Four members of the Reagan cabinet came under criminal investiation,
as compared with five in the Clinton cabinet. Three top officials of
the Harding administration were in indicted in the Teapot Dome
scandal.
The Reagan administration had secret plans for an unconstitutional
takeover of the federal government under an ill-defined national
emergency. Members of the government created by the coup had been
selected and included Richard Cheney.
Reagan's decision to send troops to Lebanon cost 241 lives. As the NY
Times noted recently, "Mr. Reagan's decision to send marines to
Lebanon was disastrous and his invasion of Grenada pure melodrama."
During the Reagan administration the number of families living below
the poverty line increased by one-third.
Reagan's policies led to the greatest financial scandal in American
history: the Savings & Loan debacle which cost taxpayers billions of
dollars.
Julian Bond, president of the NAACP: "He was a polarizing figure in
black America. He was hostile to the generally accepted remedies for
discrimination. His appointments were of people as equally hostile. I
can't think of any Reagan policy that African Americans would
embrace."
Reagan made major cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with
dependent children, and school lunch programs.
Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers in a devasting blow to
government union members from which the labor movement never
recovered.
The national debt tripled under Reagan
The AIDS crisis exploded (with 20,000 deaths) before Reagan could even
bring himself to address the issue six years later. In his authorized
biography he is quoted as saying that "maybe the Lord brought down
this plague," because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
Washington Post: "The administration in 1984 secretly sold arms to
Iran -- which the United States considered a supporter of terrorism --
to raise cash for Nicaraguan contra rebels, despite a congressional
ban on support for the Latin American insurgency. An independent
investigation concluded that the arms sales to Iran operations "were
carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald
Reagan [and] Vice President George Bush," and that "large volumes of
highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were
systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several
Reagan Administration officials." . . . Lawrence E. Walsh, the
independent counsel who ran the inquiry, said there was "no credible
evidence" that Reagan broke the law, but he set the stage for the
illegal activities of others. Impeachment, Walsh said, "certainly
should have been considered."
His administration was responsible for numerous brutal actions in
Latin America, including massacres in El Salvador and the war against
Nicaragua.
The claim that Reagan won the Cold War is pure rightwing propaganda.
The Soviet Union had long been far weaker than many American leaders
knew, or wished to acknowledge, thanks to CIA gross overestimates of
its economy. The Soviet Union was brought down by a number of factors
including the inherent weaknesses of dictatorship and ethnic divides
that eventually forced its breakup.
William Blum: "[George Kennan], the former US ambassador to the Soviet
Union, and father of the theory of 'containment' of the same country,
asserts that 'the suggestion that any United States administration had
the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic
political upheaval in another great country on another side of the
globe is simply childish.' He contends that the extreme militarization
of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. 'Thus
the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than
hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.'"
After a major tax cut, there was a long recession and unemployment
that hit ten percent.
Bill Press - "It was Reagan who first proposed a missile defense
system -- immediately dubbed "Star Wars" by skeptical reporters -- in
a March 23, 1983 speech from the Oval Office. However, as Frances
Fitzgerald reveals in her brilliant history "Way Out There in the
Blue," Reagan didn't get his plan from the scientists or the generals.
The Pentagon wasn't even notified of his speech ahead of time. Reagan
stole Star Wars directly from -- the movies.
In 1940, appearing in the Warner Brothers thriller "Murder in the
Air," Reagan played an American secret agent charged with protecting a
super weapon that could strike all enemy planes from the air. Seed
planted in Reagan's brain. Then in 1966, Alfred Hitchcock released a
Reagan favorite, "Torn Curtain," in which American agent Paul Newman
works on developing an anti-missile missile. In words that must have
made Ronnie tingle, Newman's character asserts: "We will produce a
defensive weapon that will make all nuclear weapons obsolete, and
thereby abolish the terror of nuclear warfare." Sound familiar? Reagan
used almost the exact words in selling missile defense from the
office, 17 years later.
*****
REAGAN'S SECRET COUP PLANS
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - With few exceptions, the media ignored what well
could be the most startling revelation to have come out of the Iran/
Contra affair, namely that high officials of the US government were
planning a possible military/civilian coup. First among the exceptions
was the Miami Herald, which on July 5, 1987, ran the story to which
Jack Brooks referred. The article, by Alfonzo Chardy, revealed Oliver
North's involvement in plans for the Federal Emergency Management
Agency to take over federal, state and local functions during an ill-
defined national emergency. . .
According to Chardy, the plan called for 'suspension of the
Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal
Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run
state and local governments and declaration of martial law.' The
proposal appears to have forgotten that Congress, legislatures and the
judiciary even existed.
In a November 18, 1991 story, the New York Times elaborated:
"Acting outside the Constitution in the early 1980s, a secret federal
agency established a line of succession to the presidency to assure
continued government in the event of a devastating nuclear attack,
current and former United States officials said today."
The program was called "Continuity of Government." In the words of a
report by the Fund for Constitutional Government, "succession or
succession-by-designation would be implemented by unknown and perhaps
unelected persons who would pick three potential successor presidents
in advance of an emergency. These potential successors to the Oval
Office may not be elected, and they are not confirmed by Congress.
According to CNN, the list eventually grew to 17 names and included
Howard Baker, Richard Helms, Jeanne Kirkpatrick James Schlesinger,
Richard Thornberg, Edwin Meese, Tip O'Neil, and Richard Cheney.
The plan was not even limited to a nuclear attack but included any
"national security emergency" which was defined as:
"Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack,
technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously
threatens the national security of the United States."
This bizarre scheme was dismissed in many Washington quarters as
further evidence of the loony quality of the whole Iran/contra affair.
One FEMA official called it a lot of crap while a representative for
Attorney General Meese described it as 'bullshit.". . .
At least one high government official took the plan seriously enough
to vigorously oppose it. In a August 1984 letter to NSC chair Robert
McFarlane, Attorney General William French Smith wrote:
"I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management
Agency in the revised Executive Order exceeds its proper function as a
coordinating agency for emergency preparedness . . . This department
and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections
to the creation of an 'emergency czar' role for FEMA."
FEMA was clearly out of control. Another memo, written in 1982 to then
FEMA director Louis Giuffrida and given only tightly restricted
circulation even within the agency, made this astonishing assertion:
"Over the long term, the peacetime action programs of FEMA and other
departments and agencies have the effect of making the conceivable
need for military takeover less and less as time goes by. A fully
implemented civil defense program may not now be regarded as a
substitute for martial law, nor could it be so marketed, but if
successful in its execution it could have that effect."
The memo essentially proposed that the American people would rather be
taken over by FEMA than by the military. When those are the options on
the table, you know you're in trouble.
The head of FEMA until 1985, Giuffrida also once wrote a paper on the
Legal Aspects of Managing Disorders. Here is some of what he said:
"No constitution, no statute or ordinance can authorize Martial Rule.
[It commences] upon a determination (not a declaration) by the senior
military commander that the civil government must be replaced because
it is no longer functioning anyway . . . The significance of Martial
Rule in civil disorders is that it shifts control from civilians and
to the military completely and without the necessity of a declaration,
proclamation or other form of public manifestation . . . As stated
above, Martial Rule is limited only by the principle of necessary
force."
Those words come from a time when Giuffrida was the head of then-
Governor Reagan's California Specialized Training Institute, a
National Guard school. It was not, for Giuffrida, a new thought. In
1970 he had written a paper for the Army War College in which he
called for martial law in case of a national uprising by black
militants. Among his ideas were "assembly centers or relocation camps"
for at least 21 million "American Negroes."
During 1968 and 1972, Reagan ran a series of war games in California
called Cable Splicer, which involved the Guard, state and local
police, and the US Sixth Army. Details of this operation were reported
in 1975 in a story by Ron Ridenour of the New Times, an Arizona
alternative paper, and later exhumed by Dave Lindorff in the Village
Voice.
Cable Splicer, it turned out, was a training exercise for martial law.
The man in charge was none other than Edwin Meese, then Reagan's
executive secretary. At one point, Meese told the Cable Splicer
combatants:
"This is an operation, this is an exercise, this is an objective which
is going forward because in the long run . . . it is the only way that
will be able to prevail [against anti-war protests.]"
Addressing the kickoff of Cable Splicer, Governor Reagan told some 500
military and police officers:
"You know, there are people in the state who, if they could see this
gathering right now and my presence here, would decide their worst
fears and convictions had been realized -- I was planning a military
takeover."
*****
REAGAN'S HEART OF DARKNESS
DERRICK Z. JACKSON BOSTON GLOBE - In the weeks leading up to his
appearance on Capitol Hill, [Desmond] Tutu said in speeches that it
seemed that the Reagan White House saw "blacks as expendable" in South
Africa. . . On Capitol Hill, Tutu became a public relations disaster
for Reagan. Tutu started off the hearing by saying apartheid itself
"is evil, is immoral, is un- Christian, without remainder." I was
there, and all breathing stopped, without remainder. Tutu continued:
"In my view, the Reagan administration's support and collaboration
with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian. . . . You
are either for or against apartheid and not by rhetoric. You are
either in favor of evil or you are in favor of good. You are either on
the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't
be neutral."
Tutu received an unprecedented standing ovation by the committee. Even
Reagan's Republican allies told the South African Embassy they would
reluctantly support sanctions if Pretoria did not move to end
apartheid.
Reagan was not moved. Over the remainder of his presidency, at least
3,000 people would die, mostly at the hands of the South African
police and military. Another 20,000, including 6,000 children,
according to one estimate by a human rights group, would be arrested
under "state of emergency" decrees.
Yet Reagan had the gall to say in 1985 that the "reformist
administration" of South Africa had "eliminated the segregation that
we once had in our own country." In 1986, Reagan gave a speech where
he said Mandela should be released but denounced sanctions with
crocodile tears, claiming that they would hurt black workers, who were
already ridiculously impoverished. Reagan's go-slow speech was
denounced by Tutu, who said: "I found it quite nauseating. I think the
West, for my part, can go to hell. . . . Your president is the pits as
far as blacks are concerned. He sits there like the great, big white
chief of old."
*****
TEFLON UNTO DEATH
JOE STRUPP, EDITOR & PUBLISHER - The death of Ronald Reagan has become
yet another reminder that news organizations often turn sentimental at
the death of a former leader, no matter what legacy he or she leaves
behind. . .
The overwhelming praise for a president who plunged the nation into
its worst deficit ever, ignored and cut public money for the poor,
while also ignoring the AIDS crisis, is a bit tough to take. During my
years at Brooklyn College, between 1984 and 1988, countless classmates
had to drop out or find other ways to pay for school because of
Reagan's policies, which included slashing federal grants for poor
students and cutting survivor benefits for families of the disabled.
Not to mention the Iran-contra scandal, failed 'supply-side
economics,' the ludicrous invasion of Grenada, 241 dead Marines in
Lebanon, and a costly military buildup that may have contributed to
the breakup of the Soviet Union (there were plenty of other reasons
too) but also kept us closer to nuclear war than at any time since the
Cuban Missile Crisis, besides leaving us billions of dollars in debt.
And should we even mention the many senior Reagan officials, including
ex-White House aide Michael Deaver and national security adviser
Robert McFarlane, convicted of various offenses? What about Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger indicted but later pardoned by the first
President Bush?
Paying respect is one thing, and well deserved, but the way the press
is gushing over Reagan is too much to take, sparking renewed talk of
putting him on the $10 bill or Mount Rushmore. . .
Some newspapers, at least, have readily acknowledged some of his many
shortcomings in editorials, even if it's only a fraction of their
overall rosy review. The Philadelphia Inquirer stated, "Yes, he
butchered facts, invented anecdotes, indulged White House chaos, and
seemed dreamily unaware of the illegal deeds done during Iran-contra.
He was guilty of all that, as well as union-busting, callousness to
the poor, a failure to grasp America's multicultural destiny." The
Boston Globe, meanwhile, declared the "Reagan legacy also includes the
improbable Star Wars' missile defense proposal and the shameful Iran-
Contra scandal. And the humming economy was energized in large part by
deep tax cuts and heavy military spending that together produced
crippling budget deficits. Reagan did little to advance such goals as
education or civil rights."
The New York Times recalled, "Mr. Reagan's decision to send marines to
Lebanon was disastrous, however, and his invasion of Grenada pure
melodrama. His most reckless episode involved the scheme to supply
weapons to Iran as ransom for Americans who were being held hostage in
Lebanon, and to use the proceeds to illegally finance contra
insurgents in Nicaragua."
Had you read the Washington Post, you would have found, "A lot of
people were hurt by these policies, a fact that in our view did not
weigh heavily enough on this president. His intermittent denigration
of government, and of people who depended on government services, fed
into and bolstered hurtful and unfair stereotypes.". . .
The L.A. Times [said], "Hero though Reagan was to so many Americans,
his legacy is marred. Economically, the Reagan years were epitomized
by a freewheeling entrepreneurialism and free spending. But the
affluent got more affluent and the poor got poorer. The number of
families living below the poverty line increased by one-third. The
Reagan administration's zeal for deregulation of industry helped
create the savings and loan debacle, which left taxpayers holding the
bag for billions of dollars in losses."
*****
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
TOM CARSON, VILLAGE VOICE - Ronald Reagan is the man who destroyed
America's sense of reality - a paltry target, all in all, given our
predilections. It only took an actor: the real successor to John
Wilkes Booth. In our bones, we had always been this sort of bullshit-
craving country anyhow, founded on abstractions: not land (somebody
else's), not people (Red Rover, Red Rover, send Emma Lazarus right
over), not even shared history (nostalgia isn't the same thing, and
try pulling that Civil War Shinola anywhere west of the Rio Grande).
Just monumental words and wordy monuments, with two convenient oceans
between them and circumstance; from Nat Turner's status as three-
fifths of a man-even though we ended up hanging all of him-to Reagan's
child Lynndie England (b. 1983, the year we invaded Grenada and lost
241 Marines in Lebanon), any shortfall could be blamed on something
lost in translation. But it was Reagan, whose most profound Freudian
slip was the immortal "Facts are stupid things," who beguiled us into
living in the theme park full-time.
*****
ERIC PIANIN AND THOMAS B. EDSALL WASHINGTON POST - The lavish praise
obscures that much of Reagan's record through eight years in office
was highly controversial and intensified social and political
divisions. . .
"For many Americans, this was a time best forgotten," said Julian
Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a longtime civil rights activist. "He
was a polarizing figure in black America. He was hostile to the
generally accepted remedies for discrimination. His appointments were
of people as equally hostile. I can't think of any Reagan policy that
African Americans would embrace."
*****
The former actor and California governor offended blacks when he
kicked off his 1980 general election campaign by promoting "states
rights" -- once southern code for segregation -- in Philadelphia,
Miss., scene of the murder of three civil rights workers 16 years
before. Early in his first term, Reagan ordered some of his toughest
budget cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent
children and other "means tested" programs that were critical to large
numbers of lower-income black families. Until a public protest forced
Reagan to back away, his Agriculture Department sought to cut the
school lunch program and redefine ketchup and relish as vegetables.
Reagan had vowed to protect the "social safety net" of programs for
the poor, the disabled and the elderly when he unveiled his economic
recovery plan on Feb. 18, 1981. But two years later, White House
budget director David A. Stockman said in an interview that the
safety-
net assurances were "just a spur-of-the-moment thing that the press
office wanted to put out." . . .
There were other controversies:
Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 after they staged
a work stoppage, and he appointed members of the National Labor
Relations Board who were hostile to union organizing. His interior
secretary, James G. Watt, and senior Environmental Protection Agency
officials infuriated environmentalists by assaulting safeguards and
aggressively attempting to open public lands in the West to private
developers. Reagan, during his 1980 campaign, blamed trees for
emitting 93 percent of the nation's nitrogen oxide pollution -- giving
rise to jokes about "killer trees."
The combination of a huge "supply-side" tax cut, a historic military
buildup and a painful two-year recession produced huge budget deficits
and a near tripling of the national debt that haunted the country and
policymakers for years and drained resources from social programs. And
the administration showed indifference to an emerging AIDS crisis in
the early 1980s. By the time Reagan delivered his first speech on the
epidemic in May 1988 [1] -- about eight months before he left office
-- the disease had been diagnosed in more than 36,000 Americans, and
20,849 had died. . .
The administration in 1984 secretly sold arms to Iran -- which the
United States considered a supporter of terrorism -- to raise cash for
Nicaraguan contra rebels, despite a congressional ban on support for
the Latin American insurgency. An independent investigation concluded
that the arms sales to Iran operations "were carried out with the
knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan [and] Vice
President George Bush," and that "large volumes of highly relevant,
contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully
withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration
officials."
Fourteen officials were criminally charged and 11 convicted, although
many were later pardoned. Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel
who ran the inquiry, said there was "no credible evidence" that Reagan
broke the law, but he set the stage for the illegal activities of
others. Impeachment, Walsh said, "certainly should have been
considered."
Watt was forced to resign from his Cabinet post after a series of
controversies, including the uproar that followed his portrayal of
five members of an advisory panel as "every kind of mix you can have.
I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have
talent."
On Sept. 23, 1988, Deaver was sentenced to three years of probation
and fined $100,000 for lying to a congressional subcommittee and
federal grand jury about his lobbying activities after he left his
White House post.
[1]Sean Strub of POZ Magazine writes, "Actually, May 31, 1987 at an
Amfar benefit. It was also the first time he ever voluntarily spoke
the word AIDS in public. He had spoken it before, but it was in
response to a question at a press conference."]
*****
SAM SMITH - Ronald Regan has carried out his last con. The first
occupant of the White House to make politics just another form of show
business is being buried as a hero despite having been one of the
worst presidents America ever had.
True, he was not as corrupt as Nixon or Clinton, nor as gleefully
imperial as George Bush the Lesser, and the damage he did was largely
unintentional, the fatal mischief of a small minded man granted too
much power.
But the result was to begin the decline and fall of the first American
republic by convincing its leaders, media, and citizens that the main
thing they needed for happiness was a free, unfettered market
accompanied by sufficient faux cowboy rhetoric. That there was never
any empirical evidence for the absurd economic assumptions didn't
matter; his charm sufficed where logic failed.
A quarter century later we are left with a middle class with
substantially greater problems, a lower class far more ignored, an
ecology far more damaged, a much larger gap between rich and poor and
between CEO and employee, Medicare and Social Security in danger, and
a culture of greed and narcissism that has buried ideals of democracy,
community, and cooperation.
The nausea-inducing elevation of Reagan into someone he never was is
another triumph of rightwing spin being swallowed whole by a media
that not only doesn't know the facts, it doesn't even think it has to,
for it, too, has become just another part of show business.
PHIL GASPER, COUNTERPUNCH - Reagan refused to mention AIDS publicly
for six years, under-funded federal programs dealing with the disease
and, according to his authorized biography, said, "Maybe the Lord
brought down this plague," because "illicit sex is against the Ten
Commandments."
DAVID CORN, NATION - The firing of the air traffic controllers,
winnable nuclear war, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying
to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, public housing cutbacks, getting
cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated
schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel
Noriega, falling wages, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South
Africa, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, drug tests,
the S&L scandal, silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Ed Meese
("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"),
massacres in El Salvador, $640 Pentagon toilet seats, William Casey,
Iran/contra, Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.
JUAN COLE - I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California
from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was
hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, "Sure there is;
they're dieting!" or words to that effect
GLENN KESSLER WASHINGTON POST - Reagan's spending cuts barely nicked
the fastest-growing parts of government, his tax cuts reduced revenue
so much that later in his tenure taxes had to be raised repeatedly,
his regulatory approach was criticized for leading to the savings and
loan crisis and his unbalanced budgets to a near-tripling of the
federal debt in eight years.
BILL MON - The legacy of Reagan's policies in the Middle East,
meanwhile, are still being paid for - in blood. The cynical promotion
of Islamic fundamentalism as a weapon against the Soviets in
Afghanistan, the alliance of convenience with Saddam Hussein against
Iran, the forging of a new "strategic relationship" with Israel, the
corrupt dealings with the House of Saud, and (perhaps most ironic,
given Reagan's tough guy image) the weakness and indecision of his
disastrous intervention in Beruit - all of these helped set the stage
for what the neo-cons now like to call World War IV, and badly
weakened the geopolitical ability of the United States to wage that
war.
MICHAEL BRONSKI, Z MAGAZINE - The most memorable Reagan AIDS moment
was at the 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty. The
Reagan's were there sitting next to the French Prime Minister and his
wife, Francois and Danielle Mitterrand. Bob Hope was on stage
entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-
liners, Hope quipped, "I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has
AIDS, but she doesn't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson
or the Staten Island Fairy." As the television camera panned the
audience, the Mitterrands looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing.
By the end of 1989, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS
in the United States-more then 70,000 of them had died.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, SLATE - Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian
language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite
well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that
intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-
ballistic missiles-a corruption of language that isn't his fault)
could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a
"Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the
tyrants of the U.S.S.R. . . Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet
counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an
invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies
by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In
the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon
Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted
personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps. . .
GREG PALAST - In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in
Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though
hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of
tuberculosis. People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But
Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down
embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government
that the people there had elected.
*****
THE BIGGEST REAGAN LIE
THE BIGGEST REAGAN lie is that he won the Cold War by terrifying the
Soviets with Star Wars, upping defense expenditures, and generally
being such a tough guy. The myth, though basically just GOP campaign
spin, has been widely promulgated in current news coverage. The facts
of the matter are quite different.
FOR EXAMPLE, two years before the breakup, the Progressive Review ran
an article by Thomas S. Martin - Devolution, Soviet Style, that
reported that "Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika, or
restructuring, has opened a Pandora's box of separatist and
devolutionary movements in the Soviety Union. The article went through
the union, state by state, and spoke of the "the last desperate cry of
Soviet statism." Thanks to the American right's distortion of the
issue, Americans to this day have little idea of what really was
happening in the Soviet Union. Besides, it's part of the delusional
American creed that good things in the world only happen because we
will them.
ARCHIE BROWN, BBC, 2001 - The Soviet Union on the eve of Gorbachev's
perestroika (reconstruction) had serious political and economic
problems. Technologically, it was falling behind not only Western
countries but also the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Its
foreign policy evinced a declining capacity to win friends and
influence people. Yet there was no political instability within the
country, no unrest, and no crisis. This was not a case of economic and
political crisis producing liberalization and democratization. Rather,
it was liberalization and democratization that brought the regime to
crisis point. . .
SOUTH ASIA ANALYST GROUP - The Congressional Quarterly Researcher
wrote on December 11,1992: "After the Soviet break-up, economists were
amazed at the extent to which the CIA had overestimated the
performance of the Soviet economy, leading many to speculate that the
numbers were hyped to fuel the arms race." Mr. Allan Goodman, Dean of
Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, described the CIA's
economic intelligence performance as "between abysmal and mediocre."
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former Vice-Chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said after the Soviet break-up: " For a
quarter century, they (the CIA) told the President everything there
was to know about the Soviet Union, excepting the fact that it was
collapsing (due to a bad economy). They missed that detail."
FAREED ZAKARIA, NEWSWEEK - During the early 1970s, hard-line
conservatives pilloried the CIA for being soft on the Soviets. As a
result, CIA Director George Bush agreed to allow a team of outside
experts to look at the intelligence and come to their own conclusions.
Team B--which included Paul Wolfowitz--produced a scathing report,
claiming that the Soviet threat had been badly underestimated. In
retrospect, Team B's conclusions were wildly off the mark. Describing
the Soviet Union, in 1976, as having "a large and expanding Gross
National Product," it predicted that it would modernize and expand its
military at an awesome pace. For example, it predicted that the
Backfire bomber "probably will be produced in substantial numbers,
with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984." In fact, the
Soviets had 235 in 1984.
BILL BLUM, KILLING HOPE - It has become conventional wisdom that it
was the relentlessly tough anti-communist policies of the Reagan
Administration, with its heated-up arms race, that led to the collapse
and reformation of the Soviet Union and its satellites. American
history books may have already begun to chisel this thesis into
marble. The Tories in Great Britain say that Margaret Thatcher and her
unflinching policies contributed to the miracle as well. The East
Germans were believers too. When Ronald Reagan visited East Berlin,
the people there cheered him and thanked him "for his role in
liberating the East". Even many leftist analysts, particularly those
of a conspiracy bent, are believers. But this view is not universally
held; nor should it be. Long the leading Soviet expert on the United
States, Georgi Arbatov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for the
Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, wrote his memoirs in 1992. A Los
Angeles Times book review by Robert Scheer summed up a portion of it:
"Arbatov understood all too well the failings of Soviet
totalitarianism in comparison to the economy and politics of the
West. . . Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the
controversial notion that this change would have come about without
foreign pressure, he insists that the U.S. military buildup during the
Reagan years actually impeded this development."
George F. Kennan agrees. The former US ambassador to the Soviet Union,
and father of the theory of "containment" of the same country, asserts
that "the suggestion that any United States administration had the
power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic
political upheaval in another great country on another side of the
globe is simply childish." He contends that the extreme militarization
of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. "Thus
the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than
hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union."
Though the arms-race spending undoubtedly damaged the fabric of the
Soviet civilian economy and society even more than it did in the
United States, this had been going on for 40 years by the time Mikhail
Gorbachev came to power without the slightest hint of impending doom.
Gorbachev's close adviser, Aleksandr Yakovlev, when asked whether the
Reagan administration's higher military spending, combined with its
"Evil Empire" rhetoric, forced the Soviet Union into a more
conciliatory position, responded:
"It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest
responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy
regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy,
or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending
was enormous and we had to reduce it.". . .
ORDER
ARCHIE BROWN, BBC, 2001 - The Soviet Union on the eve of Gorbachev's
perestroika (reconstruction) had serious political and economic
problems. Technologically, it was falling behind not only Western
countries but also the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Its
foreign policy evinced a declining capacity to win friends and
influence people. Yet there was no political instability within the
country, no unrest, and no crisis. This was not a case of economic and
political crisis producing liberalization and democratization. Rather,
it was liberalization and democratization that brought the regime to
crisis point. . .
The Soviet economy was in limbo in the last two years of the Soviet
Union's existence - no longer a command economy but not yet a market
system. Significant reforms, such as permitting individual enterprise
(1986), devolving more powers to factories (1987), and legalising co-
operatives (1988), which were to become thinly disguised private
enterprises, had undermined the old institutional structures and
produced unintended consequences, but no viable alternative economic
system had been put in their place. . .
Changes in foreign and domestic policy were closely interlinked in the
second half of the 1980s. Gorbachev pursued a concessionary foreign
policy on the basis of what was called the 'new political thinking'.
The ideas were certainly new in the Soviet context and included the
belief that the world had become interdependent, that there were
universal interests and values that should prevail over class
interests and the old East-West divide, and that all countries had the
right to decide for themselves the nature of their political and
economic systems. . .
When Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and others successfully claimed
independent statehood, this had a destabilizing effect within the
Soviet Union itself. The expectations of, again most notably,
Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians were enormously enhanced by what
they saw happening in the 'outer empire' and they began to believe
that they could remove themselves from the 'inner empire'. In truth, a
democratized Soviet Union was incompatible with denial of the Baltic
states' independence for, to the extent that those Soviet republics
became democratic, their opposition to remaining in a political entity
whose centre was Moscow would become increasingly evident. . .
Neither the system nor the Union had to disappear in this particular
way. Before liberalization and democratization from above, only a
handful of dissidents dared voice their grievances and demands in
public. A different leader from Gorbachev might have resorted to old-
style coercion the moment he saw that reform was leading to loss of
control. A different leader from Yeltsin might have strived to
preserve the boundaries of a 'greater Russia' rather than accept
borders that had never, historically, been those of his country and
which, moreover, meant that 25 million Russians found themselves all
of a sudden living 'abroad'. . .
'Fifteen new states stood where one mighty superpower had recently
held sway.' But the sequence was that the Soviet Union was first
reformed, then transformed, and then disintegrated all within the
space of six-and-a-half years. It had ceased to be a communist system
in any meaningful sense from the time of the state-wide contested
elections of the spring of 1989. . . Seldom, if ever, has a highly
authoritarian political system, deploying military means sufficient to
destroy life on earth, been dismantled so peacefully. Never has an
empire disintegrated with so little bloodshed.
SOUTH ASIA ANALYST GROUP - The Congressional Quarterly Researcher
wrote on December 11,1992: "After the Soviet break-up, economists were
amazed at the extent to which the CIA had overestimated the
performance of the Soviet economy, leading many to speculate that the
numbers were hyped to fuel the arms race." Mr. Allan Goodman, Dean of
Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, described the CIA's
economic intelligence performance as "between abysmal and mediocre."
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former Vice-Chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said after the Soviet break-up: " For a
quarter century, they (the CIA) told the President everything there
was to know about the Soviet Union, excepting the fact that it was
collapsing (due to a bad economy). They missed that detail."
KEVIN BRENNAN - Sovietology failed because it operated in an
environment that encouraged failure. Sovietologists of all political
stripes were given strong incentives to ignore certain facts and focus
their interest in other areas. I don't mean to suggest that there was
a giant conspiracy at work; there wasn't. It was just that there were
no careers to be had in questioning the conventional wisdom.
A good example of this was the nationalism that helped to bring about
the downfall of the USSR -- something that was overlooked by
Westerners. You see, the USSR used to claim that socialist amity had
made nationalism irrelevant. Nobody quite bought that, but
Sovietologists did think that the Soviets had managed to mostly
eliminate nationalism, because after all they never saw any evidence
of it. How could they? Anyone who wanted to pursue a career in Soviet
Studies had to be able to get into the Soviet Union to do their
research, after all. Without doing research, you didn't get tenure,
and the Soviets made sure you didn't get to do research on that topic
by simply denying you access to the country. Even if you thought it
might be a bigger problem then the Soviets let on, you'd never be able
to prove it. So you found other things to work on, and eventually you
got onto other topics that kept you busy.
There were other kinds of institutional biases as well, such as those
that led to the now-infamous "Team B" Report:
"During the early 1970s, hard-line conservatives pilloried the CIA for
being soft on the Soviets. As a result, CIA Director George Bush
agreed to allow a team of outside experts to look at the intelligence
and come to their own conclusions. Team B--which included Paul
Wolfowitz--produced a scathing report, claiming that the Soviet threat
had been badly underestimated.
"In retrospect, Team B's conclusions were wildly off the mark.
Describing the Soviet Union, in 1976, as having "a large and expanding
Gross National Product," it predicted that it would modernize and
expand its military at an awesome pace. For example, it predicted that
the Backfire bomber "probably will be produced in substantial numbers,
with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984." In fact, the
Soviets had 235 in 1984.
"The reality was that even the CIA's own estimates--savaged as too low
by Team B--were, in retrospect, gross exaggerations. In 1989, the CIA
published an internal review of its threat assessments from 1974 to
1986 and came to the conclusion that every year it had "substantially
overestimated" the Soviet threat along all dimensions. For example, in
1975 the CIA forecast that within 10 years the Soviet Union would
replace 90 percent of its long-range bombers and missiles. In fact, by
1985, the Soviet Union had been able to replace less than 60 percent
of them." - Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
In short, Team B . . . brought a substantial set of preconceived
notions about the nature and functioning of Soviet Russia to the task
of evaluating the CIA assessments and any data that contradicted those
conceptions was summarily discarded. No doubt it was easy enough to
justify--after all, the data was flawed, just not flawed in the way
that Team B assumed. So they went looking for things that would let
them discount the data, and found them in the rhetoric of their
opponents. It's an error in judgment that Wolfowitz seemed destined to
repeat.
*****
HOW THE MEDIA USED TO COVER REAGAN
HOWARD KURTZ, WASHINGTON, POST - Most reporters liked the Gipper
personally -- it was hard not to -- but often depicted him as
detached, out of touch, a stubborn ideologue. Sam Donaldson, Helen
Thomas and company would do battle in those prime-time East Room news
conferences that Reagan relished, and he would deflect their toughest
questions with an aw-shucks grin and a shake of the head. Major
newspapers would run stories on all the facts he had mangled, a
practice that faded as it became clear that most Americans weren't
terribly concerned.
The media dubbed him the Teflon president, and it was not meant as a
compliment. Reagan was, quite simply, a far more controversial figure
in his time than the largely gushing obits on television would
suggest.
He took a pounding in the press after his first tax cut when a deep
recession pushed unemployment to 10 percent and drowned the budget in
red ink.
He was widely portrayed as uninformed and uninterested in details, the
man who said trees cause pollution and once failed to recognize his
own housing secretary.
He was often described as lazy, "just an actor," a man who'd rather be
clearing brush at his California ranch and loved a good midday nap.
His 1983 invasion of Grenada was not universally applauded --
especially after his spokesman told the press the day before that the
idea was "preposterous" -- and his withdrawal of the Marines from
Lebanon after 241 were killed in a bombing brought blistering
editorials.
He was often depicted as a rich man's president with little feeling
for the poor, as symbolized by the administration's "ketchup is a
vegetable" school lunch debacle. Detractors said he was presiding over
the "greed decade." During the 1984 campaign, Reagan stood in front of
a senior citizens' project built under a program he tried to kill --
but his aides didn't care, concluding that the pictures were more
important than the reporters' contrary words.
Journalists had a field day digging into administration corruption.
Senior officials in the Environmental Protection Agency and Housing
and Urban Development Department, along with ex-White House aide
Michael Deaver and national security adviser Robert McFarlane, were
convicted of various offenses. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was
indicted but later pardoned by the first President Bush. Reagan's
siding with the Nicaraguan rebels was enormously divisive, and
negative coverage of the Iran-contra scandal devoured much of his
second term.
JAMES RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE - The elaborate Reagan state funeral may
well prove a satisfying goodbye for Nancy, relatives, and close
friends. For the Bush re-election campaign managers, it comes as an
unexpected gift. This shouldn't surprise us in an era in which D-Day
is compared to the war on terror, Bush Junior (by inference) to
Eisenhower, and the occupation of Baghdad to the liberation of
Paris. . .
The Democrats who voted for Reagan abandoned the sour, nitpicking
Jimmy Carter for the cheerful Hollywood figure, but they also did what
the political pros and historians still don't get. Led by the
determined cadres of the "New Right," they supported a candidate and a
plan for a new America with an ideological agenda. That agenda called
for doing the unthinkable: grabbing control of Congress and smashing
the New Deal, while leaving a token "safety net" in its place. It was
in the early days of Reagan that the homeless began to appear in
growing numbers on the streets of American cities, an early sign of
the slow process of turning over the functions of the federal
government to companies through such ideas as privatization. Reagan
practically initiated the concept of turning social welfare over to
charitable foundations. All of this was accomplished with the glue of
anti-Communism, a shared bond that tied otherwise quarreling factions
togetherâ¤"the libertarian-minded Republicans, the anti-feminist
crusaders, the Christian fundamentalists. Under Reagan, the government
borrowed the concept of guerrilla warfare from the winning side in
Vietnam and used it to win a victory over the Sandinistas. Reagan
escaped the Iran-Contra scandal without a scratch. For some, Reagan
spelled the turning point in the death of the first American republic.
fuckyourfakewarforoilcorporations
>
> read more »
reagan was only good with respect to russia, all else he was a dismal
failure, not as bad as bush but pretty bad, one of the worst
president, but never as bad as bush
Phlip
Even then, you haven't been paying attention.
A> Russia's fall was a surprise to the proto-NeoCons. They didn't realize
Reagan's excessive spending had driven them broke, trying to keep up. Then
Republican spokesmodels conveniently retrofitted the facts, as if this had
been Reagan's strategy all along.
B> Russia today is a kleptocracy run by organized crime bosses who have
nukes. Does that make you feel any safer? The Soviet Union was stable and
relatively compliant with treaties...
--
Phlip
http://flea.sourceforge.net/PiglegToo_1.html
Vid...@tcq.net
that is all true. we reap what we sow.
David R
"Harry Dope" <HopeHate...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:466f15dc$0$4671$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>
the best thing the retarded drooling ray gun imbecile ever did was
croak,
and damn it, we had to pay for his funeral, and now you have to stand in
line to
piss on his grave
David R
"Bugman" <jmpo...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:toGdnQN-Uo0-gvLb...@giganews.com...
>
> "Harry Dope" <HopeHate...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:466f15dc$0$4671$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>> RONALD REAGAN - "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL !"
>
> That's what he's doing in hell. Tearing down walls for eternity
the devil is having to put a foot in that gomer's ass every day, lazy
fucking
conservative, no account hillbilly,
tote them damn bales goober, afore I light a fire under yer ass
David R
<Vid...@tcq.net> wrote in message
news:1181709375.0...@j4g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
*****
*****
REAGAN LIE DETECTOR
*****
*****
*****
TEFLON UNTO DEATH
*****
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
*****
*****
There were other controversies:
*****
*****
THE BIGGEST REAGAN LIE
ORDER
*****
togetherโค"the libertarian-minded Republicans, the anti-feminist
Achan...@hotmail.com
What happened on March 8th, 1985 ?
Surely you remember.
Ronald Reagan set off a bomb outside of a mosque.
This was an Oklahoma City sized bomb.
Bob Woodward low balls the number: killed 80 people and wounded 256.
I have read elsewhere that 92 died.
(Whoa! We have become jaded by the death reports we hear
coming out of Iraq almost daily. Reagan's terrorist act was,
at that time, the largest of the decade!)
"About 250 girls and women in flowing black chadors, pouring out of
Friday prayers at the Imam Rida Mosque, took the brunt of the blast,"
Nora Boustany reported. The bomb also "burned babies in their beds,"
killed children "as they walked home from the mosque," and
"devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut
suburb. The target was a Shi'ite leader accused of complicity in
terrorism, but he escaped. The crime was organized by the CIA
and its Saudi clients with the assistance of British intelligence.
NOTE{Boustany, _Washington Post Weekly_, March 14, 1988;
Bob Woodward, _Veil_ (Simon & Schuster, 1987, 396f.).}
Two months after IX XI
George Bush spoke these words before the United Nations
General Assembly:
"In this world, there are good causes and bad causes, and
we may disagree on where that line is drawn. Yet, there is no
such thing as a good terrorist. No national aspiration, no
remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of
the innocent. Any government that rejects this principle,
trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends, will know
the consequences."
Reagan was a terrorist - rightards don't give a shit.
A.G.
Dr. Barry Worthington
> RONALD REAGAN - "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL !"
>
> Twenty years ago today in Berlin, Germany President Ronald Reagan called on
> Soviet General Secretary Gorbechev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
>
> Reagan was the first US President to stand firm against the Soviet Union
Well, if you discout Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.....
>and
> that stance coupled with his policy of strengthening out military lead
> directly to the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall ending
> more than forty years of Cold War with the Soviets.
Of course, most historians and political scientists, people who
ctually know something about the Soviet Union, say the exact opposite.
It was internal developments within that country that resulted in the
Gorbachev's policies and the ultimate collapse. And Reagan wasn't even
in office when that event occured.
> His critics condemned him for his stance against the, "Evil Empire."
> Democrats believed that he would bring the ,"wrath, " of the Soviet down on
> America. Much of the world protested his stance against the USSR.
Largely because of its political consequences, in Europe and elswhere.
And in one place, Afghanistan, well, the consequences still continue
to haunt you and everyone...
>
> But Reagan new that Soviet Communism was weak and that a strong stance
> against their expansionist plans and ideals would lead to the end of the ,
> "Evil Empire."
What expansionist plans?
>
> He was vilified then, but history has proven him correct and shown that his
> strength and steadfastness not only prevailed but brought to an end the
> threat of nuclear destruction from the USSR that had dominated US policy
> since the early 50's.
But only a dedicated band of hagiographers and American fruit cakes
continue to believe that!
>
> Ronald Reagan remembered. A truly great man and leader who lead during and
> extremely difficult time. He brought optomism
As I remember it, he was (sadly, inview of his later medical
condition) a figure of fun...
Dr. Barry Worthington
zzpat
> RONALD REAGAN - "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL !"
>
>
Only a complete idiot things four words cause the Soviets to tear down
the wall. These idiots are the same people who thought Saddam had WMD
and thought we had trillions of dollars of surpluses.
Reality never enters their mind - they are completely delusional.
--
Impeach Bush
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/
zzpat
>
>
> "About 250 girls and women in flowing black chadors, pouring out of
> Friday prayers at the Imam Rida Mosque, took the brunt of the blast,"
> Nora Boustany reported. The bomb also "burned babies in their beds,"
> killed children "as they walked home from the mosque," and
> "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut
> suburb. The target was a Shi'ite leader accused of complicity in
> terrorism, but he escaped. The crime was organized by the CIA
> and its Saudi clients with the assistance of British intelligence.
> NOTE{Boustany, _Washington Post Weekly_, March 14, 1988;
> Bob Woodward, _Veil_ (Simon & Schuster, 1987, 396f.).}
>
Reagan's Navy shot down an Iranian airliner and killed hundreds of
innocent men, women and children.
"A U.S. warship fighting gunboats in the Persian Gulf yesterday mistook
an Iranian civilian jetliner for an attacking Iranian F14 fighter plane
and blew it out of the hazy sky with a heat-seeking missile, the
Pentagon announced. Iran said 290 persons were aboard the European-made
A300 Airbus and that all had perished."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flight801/stories/july88crash.htm
We can all understand presidents who make mistakes but what happened
after this mistake told the world a lot about the American Empire. Bush
41 was VP and he went to the UN to explain what happened. Every word he
told the UN was a lie.
It seems the Bush family has a knack at lying about threats to our
national security.
zzpat
>
> Of course, most historians and political scientists, people who
> ctually know something about the Soviet Union, say the exact opposite.
> It was internal developments within that country that resulted in the
> Gorbachev's policies and the ultimate collapse. And Reagan wasn't even
> in office when that event occured.
>
Republicans need(ed) an excuse for the Reagan debt so they manufactured
the myth about him bankrupting the USSR. Never mind the fact that in his
State of the Unions he promised to build more weapons so we could 'catch
up.'
Reagan thought we were behind the USSR but after it fell we saw the
idiocy of his beliefs. That country was NEVER ahead of us.
Liberalhere
@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net:
Oops, looks like reichhandskanki has a new nym.
.
> RONALD REAGAN - "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL !"
>
>
>
> Twenty years ago today in Berlin, Germany President Ronald Reagan called on
> Soviet General Secretary Gorbechev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
>
> Reagan was the first US President to stand firm against the Soviet Union and
> that stance coupled with his policy of strengthening out military lead
> directly to the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall ending
> more than forty years of Cold War with the Soviets.
>
> His critics condemned him for his stance against the, "Evil Empire."
> Democrats believed that he would bring the ,"wrath, " of the Soviet down on
> America. Much of the world protested his stance against the USSR.
>
> But Reagan new that Soviet Communism was weak and that a strong stance
> against their expansionist plans and ideals would lead to the end of the ,
> "Evil Empire."
>
> He was vilified then, but history has proven him correct and shown that his
> strength and steadfastness not only prevailed but brought to an end the
> threat of nuclear destruction from the USSR that had dominated US policy
> since the early 50's.
>
> Ronald Reagan remembered. A truly great man and leader who lead during and
> extremely difficult time. He brought optomism
>
>
but consider
the current example of sad excuse..
Learn to spell 'optimism', Right Wing Zero.
.
Worst President Ever. Perhaps the latter title should belong to Dick
Cheney, one of the Most Miserable Bastards On The Planet..