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