The Oval Office, April 19, 1972:.... Nixon: I'm the last president... I'm the only president... who had the guts to do what we're doing.... Reagan never could make president to begin with, and he couldn't handle it.... I'm going to destroy the [expletive] country, believe me, I mean destroy it if necessary.... We will bomb the living [expletive] out of North Vietnam. ...
__________ Yes, well, and at the same time most liberals, when condemning the U.S. war against Vietnam, would add caveats about the evil and oppression that North Vietnam represented; they would talk about the blood bath that would result, if there was not an orderly withdrawal; they would talk of the crimes of the North Vietnamese.
But really we were the victims of our good intentions, of our love of democracy and human rights. And those of us who were "good liberals" who opposed the war, we would never fail to mention the "reality" of how evil and oppressive the North Vietnamese really were. We should never forget that those we attack (the "North" Vietnamese regime, the "Cuban" regime) are deeply oppressive and violate our basic values of human decency. We should never forget to mention these things when we have the "courage" to attack the "mistaken" policies of our own government. To mention such things, is not in anyway to justify our "mistakes" but only to acknowledge our high regard for human decency. To not mention such things is to fall into moral depravity.
Meanwhile our war criminals and terrorists go unpunished, are lauded and rewarded.
Jerry Monaco