bdp (08/03/82)
I personally resent any implication that smacks of declaring Ronnie insane. He's simply congenitally stupid, with an IQ that matches his years. Reagan: "Those [nuclear weapons] that are carried in ships of one kind or another, or submersibles, you are dealing there with a conventional type of weapon or instrument, and those instruments can be intercepted. They can be recalled. And so they don't have the same, I think, psychological effect that the presence of those other ones that once launched, that's it... What we're striving for is to reduce the power, the number, and particularly those destabilizing missiles that can be touched off by the push of a button." (13 May 1982 news conference.) Truth: Submarine-launched missiles *cannot* be recalled or intercepted-- and if President Reagan continues to think differently, he may be quite surprised in a nuclear exchange. And the destabilizing impact of land-based ICBMs is not that they "can be touched off by the press of a button." They can't. The problem is that their great accuracy might encourage a pre-emptive nuclear first strike. --- The Nation, "Reagan's Reign of Error," 7-14 August 1982, p. 102. I'm still amazed that he seems to know where Lebanon is. How did Haig keep his attention long enough to get him to find out? Bruce Parker BTL Pissthataway