No surprise there.
No Muslim ruler has visited Israel.
I do not believe this is coincidence.
To visit Israel is to recognize it. Obama is being simpatico.
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@ yamit82:
Cheney didn’t ‘produce’ it. (I’m not even sure he released it to the general public when it was produced.)
It was produced by the DoD bureaucracy — when they were tasked by then-Secty Cheney to provide an analysis
— which they did, from their p-o-v.
In ANY case, however, what was the purpose HERE of the Cheney comment anyway? — It’s completely off-topic, Yamit.— Dick Cheney has nothing to do with this thread OR Ted’s little ‘article’ about who’s visited Israel, etc.
You’re just picking at scabs, hoping something will bleed
— weird.
@ yamit82:
What you reject is my willingness to study the man — in context and in circumstance — instead of viewing him as a symbol. (I treat EVERY public figure that way.)
But I’ve told you, Yamit: Reagan doesn’t need me or anybody else to ‘whitewash’ him.
— Who, and what, he was are perfectly capable of standing up to anything his detractors can tar his memory with.
History will be very kind to him.
Correction: you SHOULDN’T need to use Mr Gil-White
— but you surely do need to use him (inasmuch as he tells you what you want to hear).
Oh, really? — Note carefully the web address you offer at the end of your very next post”:
“Byline: James M. Dorsey http://emperor's-clothes.com/gilwhite/fuller”
Busted.
Occasionally.
He’s also done vicious slander, and there’s nothing ‘credible’ about THAT.
Not until AFTER I’ve given them a fair hearing.
Opinion is what it is.
I’ve never given what was strictly opinion — without saying so, and why.
As to “corroborative material” — there is nobody on this site who is more faithful (and precise) in citing sources than myself. NOBODY.
You want more Reagan biographies? (all you have to do is ask) I offered the best one — IMABHO — but there are others, less complete in their reportorial detail. But they don’t factually contradict anything I’ve said.
Oh, so you’ll only “accept” one that denies “[my] positions in advance”?
I didn’t arrive at many of ‘my positions’ and THEN read Lou Cannon’s book for corroboration (I don’t need that). I read the book first.
Read the book for YOURSELF, nudnik — and make up your OWN mind what you think about what he says. What’s more, you’ll then know what to go LOOKING for by way of corroboration or challenge.
@ yamit82:
What a crock of shit.
And even if it WERE true (it isn’t, but from Mr Gil-white, what can you expect? — yet even if it were), it would’ve happened long before Reagan became President. So what’s your point? — you do have one, right?
(I’m STILL waiting for you to name a few of those “known Nazis” that you claim Reagan appointed to posts in the Administration.)
Show me.
I already addressed this above [“older comments”: #6, #50, etc]. The 49 Waffen SS buried there were seventeen & eighteen-yr-old draftees who would’ve been hanged for evading conscription. They were indeed victims in THAT regard.
Make up your mind, loksh.
Actually the original decision that he NOT visit a camp was precisely because his advance men KNEW it would be perceived as a sop.
He TRIED that. I told you: Kohl wouldn’t go for it. Read my earlier posts in this thread.
I emphasize: the only thing “carefully premeditated & deliberate” here is Francisco Gil-White’s carefully premeditated & deliberate intention to drag the memory of a decent man thru the putrescent sewers of Prof Gil-White’s consciousness.
— And your OWN carefully premeditated & deliberate collaboration with the stinking slander.
Nothing significant in the Hoffman piece. All the FP heavyweights (including RR) recognized the importance of W. Germany to the functional integrity of the Cold War alliance. (Why did you even cite it?)
@ yamit82:
More evidence points to Syria (or a Syrian catspaw in Lebanon) than to a strictly Lebanese faction. Maybe even IRGC, which was training Hezb’ollah.
More bullshit from Francisco Gil-White, I see. (You’ve hauled out that passage so many times, I’ve nearly got it memorized verbatim.)
From previous posts of mine in response to the same, repeatedly, tiresomely, above-quoted drivel:
Still another previous response to the same pile of FGW horseshit:
@ yamit82:
Show me, please, precisely where Cannistraro characterizes the Palis as Reagan’s ‘Pets.’
If you can’t, then the word is YOURS, not his.
That was an established CARTER policy. (Reagan had only recently become president when the Lebanon War broke out.)
When Israel entered Lebanon, it was 1982.
The Palis had been there since 1970 — at which time Hussein had harshly kicked their butt [Black September] & booted them out of Jordan (for trying to usurp the state from his kingdom, and making a serious attempt on his life).
So the PLO survivors (Hussein may have killed as many as 20,000) went from Jordan to southern Lebanon — where they eventually set up a “ministate within a state” (Fatahland, it was often called).
ANYBODY wanting to do business there (commercial, political, OR diplomatic) had to go thru the PLO. So it’s hardly surprising that USA (or any other) diplo personnel in southern Lebanon would have found themselves reliant on PLO for “security” prior to the Lebanon War.
You can’t lay that on Reagan; that horse won’t run, howsoever much you might like it to.
In 1989 U.S. Secretary of Defense Cheney Pushed to Create a Palestinian State
1989 article from the Washington Times
The Washington Times
November 8, 1989, Wednesday, Final Edition
Section: Part A; WORLD; Pg. A7
Rand study urges birth of West Bank state
Byline: James M. Dorsey http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/fuller.htm
@ dweller:
I reject your lame and very subjective if not venal attempts to whitewash you demigod Reagan. I don’t need to use White, there is much more I could use like Jarred Israel,but he has done credible research and why should I bother bringing other sources which you will deny and characterize as crackpot Liberal Jews etc. You supply your opinions and the opinions of others with no corroborative material. Yes, you mentioned a biography and that’s it. Why should I or anyone accept a biography which I haven’t read, knowing that it supports your positions in advance. Give me specifics that can be corroborated and I will address them.
CIA director in 1985 was William Casey, who was appointed to that post by Ronald Reagan after Casey ran his presidential campaign. Who is William Casey?
The US absorbed almost the entire Nazi war criminal organization and out of that created the CIA.
“Frank Wisner, a dashing young Wall Street lawyer who had distinguished himself in underground OSS intrigues [the OSS is the precursor to the CIA] in Istanbul and Bucharest, headed the coordinating team.”
This coordinating team was tasked with the job of absorption of the Nazi war criminal infrastructure.
It was Reagan who supported Kurt Waldheim and endorsed a second term for him over the objections of the whole Jewish community in America and Israel. It was Reagan who went to German military cemetery where SS were buried and equated the dead German soldiers including the SS with their victims. His agreement to visit a concentration camp was only a sop done under pressure from the Jewish community who were vociferously opposed to Reagan’s visit to the cemetery. If he had wanted to support the German PM and American German relations he could have found a less controversial venue than Bittsberg .
@ yamit82:
Good God, do you never tire of citing that crank, Francisco Gil-White!?
Reagan did not — ever — “endorse” the plan. That is entirely Gil-White’s conclusion (and yours; of course).
The WH liaison said RR had “praised” it — and this in the context of a much broader discussion.
Frankly, I’m not even sure that “praised it” is a proper assessment. All we have is hearsay; if there is an actual record of Reagan’s specific words in that exchange, it has yet to come to light.
Moreover, there is no record of Reagan ever calling for a Pali state. Nor is it LOGICAL that he would have.
Why would he DO that after having repeatedly characterized the J/S settlements as legal?
Waldheim? — ‘objective’?
ROFLMAO.
I already covered this, Yamit. Told you, it was pure posturing for popular consumption (at home AND abroad)
— on Reagan’s part, and then on Begin’s part. And they both knew it, in both instances.
If there’s anything more in your post to be considered, I’ll do it when I get back.
They’re closing the place; gotta go.
vincent cannistraro
In 1981, Ronald Reagan comes into office. When the hostages are released, what’s on the horizon? What is the thought about the potential for terrorist activity on [Reagan’s] watch?
Palestinians were Reagan’s “Pets”: “The Lebanese occupation by Israel caused the Palestinians to have to leave Lebanon eventually. They were pushed out. They had been the protectors for the American diplomatic community in Beirut. The presence of Palestinian organizations, PLO, and cadres and guards had been necessary for the security of the American embassy. There was liaison with the PLO, and the Americans were depending on them for their security. Once the Palestinian presence was drastically reduced, and once the U.S. started shelling from the battleship New Jersey, we opened up Pandora’s box. And Pandora’s box happened to be populated by religious zealots, well funded, well armed and ruthless. They were Hezbollah. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/
“A bit later, a rival Lebanese faction assassinated Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese phalangists. Two days after that, in the resulting chaos, a massacre was committed in Sabra and Shatila, blamed on these now-headless phalangists. Despite the fact that nobody was blaming Israeli soldiers, Ronald Reagan (who was then using the Contra terrorists to kill innocent civilians in Nicaragua) launched a ferocious diplomatic attack against Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and his Likud government, claiming Israel was responsible for this.”
Reagan, Israel and his anti-Jewish actions.
Reagn endorsed the Saudi plan praising what he called implicit recognition of Israel in the plan advanced by Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi plan called for establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and peace between countries in the region. The plan never mentions Israel.
The New York Times, December 23, 1981,”Secretary General Kurt Waldheim said today that the strained Israeli-American relations reflected ‘an objective reassessment’ by the United States of its interests in the Middle East.
The American support for Security Council resolutions rebuking Israel, he said, demonstrates that the United States ‘wants good relations with both sides,’ Arab and Israeli.”
After Israel annexed the Golan Heights, and Washington suspended talks to carry out the strategic cooperation agreement with Israel, Mr. Begin accused Washington of treating his nation like a ‘vassal state’ and a ‘banana republic.’
Reagan reversed his public support for the Saudi Plan (due mostly from Israeli rejection and And all American Jewish leaders concerns, even accusing Regan of antisemitism) Regan then fell back of the American (Cater) position of Camp David Agreements.
So Reagan, first, endorsed a Saudi ‘peace’ plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state “with its capital in East Jerusalem,” and which didn’t recognize Israel’s actual existence, let alone recognize its right to exist.
@ Michael Devolin:
I’ve no doubt that a lot of them did, and were.
The faces on the people in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will tell the story starkly enough.
No way the Reich could have ‘forced’ that many people at one time to put such ecstatic expressions on their faces for the cameras to capture.
OTOH, whether the 49 17- & 18-yr old conscripts whose bodies lie under the sod of Bitburg are likely to have been counted among such mad & worshipful enthusiasts seems less likely.
@ Ted Belman:
Four mos AFTER the campaign Press Conference where he had declared he believed the settlements legal — and now, shortly after having taken office as the 40th Pres, Reagan firmly reiterated his opinion — a position from which no subsequent US administration, to this day, well over 30 yrs later, has ever presumed to waver (or even ventured to wiggle):
“As to the West Bank, I believe the settlements there — I disagreed when the previous Administration referred to them as ‘illegal’ — they’re not illegal.”
[NYT, 3 Feb 81 (2 wks after Inauguration Day); based on an interview with some journalists in the Oval Office the previous day]
Reagan’s steady rejection of the “illegality” characterization was consistent & unyielding.
He did add, nonetheless, during the course of the interview, while speaking from the perspective of the moment — in observing that his recent election had heartened the revenants & stiffened their spines — that as to settlement expansion’s apparent dubious potential for promoting Arab ‘confidence’ toward conducting autonomy [not “statehood”] talks,
“I do think now with this rush to do it [i.e., rapidly expand the communities & build new ones], and this moving in there the way they are, it’s ill-advised. Because if we’re going to continue with the spirit of Camp David to try & arrive at peace, maybe this — at this time — is unnecessarily provocative.”
Thus his concern — as stated — was not in any way (or to any degree) that the Jewish presence there was somehow ‘barred by law.’ His Reagan Plan of the following year would propose, as a practical matter, the deferral of any new such communities, in hopes of sustaining Arab ‘confidence.’ Nothing more.
Nonetheless, it’s clear to me that DOS was already “making its presence known” to Reagan — as it had long done with each of his predecessors in the Oval Office.
It’s important to note that — despite RR’s reversal of the Carter State Dept assertion of “illegality,” and despite the fact that no subsequent administration has ever backtracked on that reversal — DOS itself has never yet (to this day) revised its own statement of “illegality” as drafted 35 yrs ago by Legal Advisor Hansell.
Now, how can that BE if indeed the State Dept is merely a Foreign Policy arm of the White House — and not, for better or for worse (God help us), vice versa?
I have long contended (as I do above, briefly, in post #37) that the President’s decision to save Arafat & the PLO in Beirut — and pack them off to Tunis, for safekeeping — was in fact ultimately a DOS decision, in which RR (essentially) acquiesced. However, to flesh out the reasons for my suspicions, I’d have to reference the Lebanon War itself, and that would extend this post considerably into territory which would be off-point for this article & this thread.
Another time.
@ Ted Belman:
I see the heavy hand of Foggy Bottom in ALL these actions.
It will take a couple of posts to develop this.
First, I submit that it was Rogers’ pressure on Nixon (not vice versa) — and that this pressure, in turn, was placed on Rogers by the entrenched DOS bureaucracy — to advance (what came to be known as) the “Rogers Plan.”
Carter declared the settlements “illegal” — but only after the State Dept’s Legal Advisor, Herbert J. Hansell [1977-79], delivered DOS’s written pronunciamento to that effect.
Reagan BUCKED that declaration — rejecting it outright even BEFORE he became President. In an October 1980, campaign press conference, he left no doubt about it:
More to follow.
Thanks for your courteous post, Dweller. I appreciate it.
“They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”
This statement reminds me of the line in Ecclesiastes which states that “He who sharpens an edge shall be endangered thereby.” I personally believe that these German “victims” were as those who are cut by the edge they themselves sharpened. Do you not believe, Dweller, that these same Germans welcomed and were enthralled by Hitler’s hateful madness? In my low station in life I have worked with Germans who, even decades later, boasted about Adolf Hitler’s anti-Jewish hatred, even those who suffered imprisonment in Soviet Gulags after the war. Lunchroom conversations with these former German soldiers were some of my earliest introductions to antisemitism, and it was really upsetting for me. This was at the Gainers plant in Alberta, which was originally owned by two German Canadians (if memory serves me correctly). Before I moved there from Ontario, I had a Jewish friend who was a prisoner in Auschwitz when he was 15. I noticed the number on his forearm one day when we were passing hay bales between each other and into the mow. That’s when he told me about his experience in Auschwitz. This is where my journey to HaShem began. That was about forty years ago (if my math serves me correctly).
@ Michael Devolin:
Many questioned Reagan’s assertion in his Bitbutg statement that most of the Waffen SS troops at Kolmeshöhe Cemetery had been teenagers drafted against their will into serving — but later research indicated that most of the 49 SS dead were , in fact, betw ages of 17 & 20.
Kohl confirmed earlier press comment that in the war’s waning days, he was able to avoid Waffen SS service because he was only 15, “but they hanged a boy from a tree (who was perhaps only two years older) with a sign saying TRAITOR because he had tried to run away rather than serve.”
Anyway, Kohl made a call to the White House days before Reagan’s visit to make sure RR wasn’t wavering in the face of criticism — or pressure from Nancy (who was dead set against the visit). The Chancellor’s aide, Horst Teltschik later said: “Once we knew about the SS dead at Bitburg – knowing that these troops were 17-18 years of age, and knowing that some Germans were forced into the SS, having no alternative – the question was, Should this be reason to cancel?”
Reagan aide Robt McFarlane later noted: “Once Reagan learned that Kohl would really be badly damaged by withdrawal, he said ‘We can’t do that; I owe him’…” [for Bonn’s acceptance of emplacement of US nuke installations 2 yrs prior].
Prior to sending his deputy COS, Mike Deaver, back to W. Germany for the 3rd time — just 2 days before the scheduled visit — RR told him: “I know you & Nancy don’t want me to go thru with this, but I don’t want you to change anything when you get over there, because history will prove I’m right. If we can’t reconcile after 40 years, we are never going to be able to do it.”