Two (2) Tweety Cats Out of the Bag

[UTUSN]

1) Guest Richard ALLEN admitted that there were "several" people in the '70s thinking that the Soviet conglom was going to collapse. Tweety added that MOYNIHAN had written ('70s) an article saying he "could SMELL" the collapse to come in the early '80s. With that, ALLEN chimed in that "the REAL NeoConservatives" then began flocking to RAYGUN, who was listening to them on this score. So much for RAYGUN bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

2) Just in case anybody still has hopes for Tweety, one of the guests claimed that RAYGUN's voo-doo-economics (Thanks, Poppy!) laid the groundwork for the CLINTON economy, that "CLINTON would not have been able to (accomplish)..."--------Tweety broke in and said, "Yeah, well, this isn't the CLINTON corner, in case you haven't been watching for a couple of years..."

Gratuitous cat: Tweety took a swipe at his boss CARTER, asking one of the RAYGUNites what it was like writing speeches for RAYGUN. Tweety LOVED whatever that process was, then said, "Know what it was like writing for CARTER?---------DIFFERENT!"

[htuttle]

1. Regarding point #1

Those neocons preaching doom from the Soviets were known as 'Team B' at the Pentagon, and included none other than Paul Wolfowitz.

They were the ones saying that they 'suspected' that the Soviets had far more strength than we could detect with our intelligence efforts, even though no such evidence of 'hidden strength' was ever found, and it was later determined that they were completely wrong.

Sound familiar?

[htuttle]

2. Link mentioning 'Team B'

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/11/02/the_hard_liner/

Team B was engulfed in controversy from the outset. A top CIA analyst called it "a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view." Others said its mission was to hype the Soviet threat. Pipes disagrees. "We dealt with one problem only: What is the Soviet strategy for nuclear weapons? Team B was appointed to look at the evidence and to see if we could conclude that the actual Soviet strategy is different from ours. It's now demonstrated totally, completely, that it was," he says, adducing documents in Polish archives that show the Soviets planning to use nuclear weapons in the event of war.

Still, the debate persists, as much because of the panel's methods as its findings. While some Team B reports (for instance, Wolfowitz's on intermediate-range missiles) were closely reasoned, others drew on what Pipes himself calls "soft evidence" such as Soviet "theoretical writings that showed they didn't share the MAD doctrine." (That is, the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," the premise that both sides would avoid a first nuclear strike for fear of unleashing armageddon.)

At times, Team B performed logical somersaults that eerily foreshadowed Bush administration statements on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Just because superweapons like a "non-acoustic anti-submarine system" couldn't be found, Pipes's report argued, that didn't mean the Soviets couldn't build one, even if they appeared to lack the technical know-how.

NOW does it sound familiar?

[UTUSN]

3. Also, Committee on the Present Danger

*******QUOTE*******

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0402teamb.php

A History of Threat Escalation
Remembering Team B
By Tom Barry | February 12, 2004

.... Team members included Richard Pipes (father of Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum) and William Van Cleave, both of whom would become members of the second Committee on the Present Danger, as well as Gen. Daniel Graham, whose "High Frontier" missile defense proposal foreshadowed President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars." The team's advisory panel included Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze, and Seymour Weiss--all close associates of Albert Wohlstetter. 5 Although Richard Perle played no direct role in Team B, he was instrumental in setting it up. It was Perle who had introduced Richard Pipes, a Polish immigrant who taught Czarist Russian history at Harvard, to Sen. Henry Jackson, catapulting Pipes into a clique of fanatically anti-Soviet hawks. Pipes, who served as Team B's chairman, later said he chose Wolfowitz as his principal Team B adviser "because Richard Perle recommended him so highly." 6



Committee on the Present Danger Follows Team B
The Team B Report, released as an “October surprise” in an attempt to derail Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential bid, argued that “Soviet leaders are first and foremost offensively rather than defensively minded.” The team had arrived at this conclusion of Soviet intent from an assessment of the USSR 's capabilities, but they ignored evidence pointing to an opposite conclusion. Although it was true that the Soviets had been expanding their military capacity in the early 1970s, the USSR 's military production--along with the Soviet economy in general--began to stagnate by the mid-1970s. Dismissing this new trend, Team B accused the CIA of consistently underestimating the “intensity, scope, and implicit threat” posed by the Soviet Union. By relying on technical or “hard” data rather than “contemplat Soviet strategic objectives,” charged the panel, the CIA was setting up the United States for defeat in the cold war. 7

But as Anne Hessing Cahn establishes in her history of the Team B affair, some of the CIA estimates critiqued by Team B were themselves exaggerations, particularly the estimates of Soviet military spending. ....



********UNQUOTE*******

[UTUSN]

4. Members, Committee on the Present Danger

*******QUOTE*******

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/cpd.php

Right Web connections


Ken Adelman, former executive committee member
Richard V. Allen, former executive committee member
Martin Anderson, former member
Midge Decter, former member
John S. Foster, Jr., former member
Amoretta M. Hoeber, former board member
Rachelle Horowitz, former member
Fred C. Iklé, former member
Max M. Kampelman, former member
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former member
Charles Kupperman, former executive committee member
John F. Lehman, former member
Richard Perle, former member
Richard Pipes, former executive committee member
Norman Podhoretz, former associate
Richard Mellon Scaife, former funder
William Schneider, Jr., former executive committee member
George P. Shultz, former member
William R. Van Cleave, former executive committee member
********UNQUOTE*******

[jpgray]

7. Yes, their new angle is the Islamic terrorist boogeyman

But of course one mustn't confuse them with logic--that boogeyman is an avenue to destroying and undermining any political organization we don't care for in the Middle East, regardless of whether or not any ties to 'terrorists' are extant. If I were told of such ties, I would not trust them for a moment unless the claims were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. They didn't meet that standard in Iraq, and they won't be able to meet it again, nor will the need to--'oops the intelligence was wrong' is the ultimate plausible deniability, get out of jail free card.

[robbedvoter]

5. Gorbaciov wrote an article about how many times he offered Raygun

the detente and how many times the doofus refused. If anything, he DELAYED the end of the cold war.
Clinton hatred is what keeps Tweety flapping his lips. If somehow it would disappear, Tweety would stop breathing and die.

[UTUSN]

6. Kick for the Re-run n/t

[UTUSN]

8. Tweety's Ratings - Even SCARBOROUGH Beats Him

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 1.8
FOXNEWS HANNITY/COLMES 1.6
FOXNEWS GRETA 1.4
CNN LARRY KING 1.4
FOXNEWS SHEP SMITH 1.3
FOXNEWS BRIT HUME 1.1
CNN AARON BROWN 1.O
CNN PAULA ZAHN .7
MSNBC SCARBOROUGH .3
MSNBC HARDBALL .3
MSNBC OLBERMANN .3
CNBC DENNIS MILLER .2
MSNBC NORVILLE .2