Didn't Nixon's staff keep the football away from him...

[Roon]

towards the end?

[Lasher]

1. Yes they did.

I was thinking the same thing this morning.

[Roon]

3. Perhaps the same will be of Bush

and we have nothing to worry about. I am really distressed about bush's hardon to nuke something.

[unblock]

2. only because the rest of the staff had more sense than he did

in shrub's case, the rest of the staff are as batshit crazy, if not more so, than he is.

[Roon]

Oh shit!

That's scary. :scared:

[Roon]

4. Oh shit!

That's scary. :scared:

[Cyrano]

5. The story is that Alexander Haig, Nixon's chief of staff during the

critical period during the impeachment hearings, gave orders that (??? senior pentagon officials ???) check with him before accepting any orders to launch nuclear weapons.

Haig was a retired general, so probably had many important Pentagon contacts. As to the reality of this story, ???, who knows.

[Minnesota Libra]

6. They tried really hard - but eventually the chicken came home to roost nt

[Hand]

7. Quite a lot of things like that happened.

For example, during the October 1973 Arab/Israeli war, Kissinger basically took over the entire US diplomatic and policy response after a point--Trick Dick was in the midst of jettisoning Spiro Agnew and fighting Archibald Cox over Watergate, and Kissinger didn't want him creating a worse mess in the Middle East than was already going on.

So, for example, when Brezhnev made some moves to intervene militarily, it was Kissinger, not Nixon, who brought US nuclear forces to high alert. Nixon was in bed asleep when the news of Brezhnev's move came through, and Kissinger decided not to wake him up.

I hold no brief for Kissinger, but I have to say that I wouldn't feel the least bit safer if any of the present mob did anything similar. They're all psychopathic nincompoops--every damned one of them.

[Gman]

10. I did not know that about Kissinger and the Middle East nuclear alert

although at the time, I thought it was a brilliant move from a deterrence perspective. It reassured that the theory of mutually assured destruction worked.

Although I agree f100% with Hunter Thompson's thought at the time of Nixxon's death that his body should have been set off into a sewer canal and allowed to drift into the ocean whereas upon its return it would be no longer recognizable, I did think Nixxon and Kissinger two of the best president/secretary of state duos in the history of foreign relations of this country.

[caledesi]

8. I seem to remember that Nixon wanted to nuke the USSR.

Could someone confirm that or set me straight on this.

[Gman]

9. IIRC, they did. I believe it was because toward the end Nixxon

was so zonked on Thorazine he was pretty much out of it.