Posted on 07/25/2003 2:17:22 AM PDT by DPB101
In hindsight, passage of the European Recovery Program of 1948, or Marshall Plan, seems almost a miraculous event. It was launched by the administration of an unelected, "lame duck" president whose loss of the upcoming election appeared to be such a virtual certainty that both press and politicians openly talked about his administration being "scheduled" to leave office in 1949. Indeed, President Harry S Truman's personal popularity was perceived to be so low by his own party that he was actually pressed not to assist in the congressional campaign of 1946.
A recovery program of continental dimensions, the Marshall Plan expended more than $12.5 billion (equivalent to roughly $60 billion today) at a time when:
a worried Pentagon, virtually disarmed by postwar budget cuts, was making a solid case for increasing funding. numerous domestic agencies were, with heavy congressional support, clamoring for enlarged welfare programs.
the US Treasury Department was intent on building upon the existing budget surpluses.
the president's party did not hold a majority in either house of Congress.
That the Marshall Plan became a reality was due to the energetic efforts of many individuals: the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur H. Vandenberg; British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin; eminent Republicans Henry L. Stimson and Robert Patterson who had both become secretaries of war under Roosevelt; Truman himself; and, of course, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, a man venerated by Truman as being "the greatest living American." Curiously, Joseph Stalin was also a key figure behind the passage of the Marshall Plan and Truman once remarked that without his "crazy" moves, "we never would have had our foreign policy. . .we never could have got a thing from Congress."
The military was cut after the war and yet the money went out of the country.
Forrestal's death allowed the appointment of Louis Johnson who reduced the American presence in Korea to effete happy-faces.
John T. Flynn in The Roosevelt Myth notes:
When Roosevelt faced Stalin at Yalta, Alger Hiss--Stalin's man--was at Roosevelt's side as his adviser.
When Roosevelt faced the problem of post-war Germany at Quebec, Harry Dexter White was there to shape Roosevelt's decisions.
So, Russia got East Germany thanks to a communist.
The U.S. was too week to break the Russian blockade of Berlin because Marshall--with Stalin's help--diverted the money from the military to Europe.
By 1952 America was ready to reject Adlai Stevenson for the perceived leadership of Eisenhower.
In fact, the NK had easily won most of their initial battles with us. Truman's Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, had not only virtually disarmed our ground forces, he had forced a change of mind-set for their training, resulting in an army much more prepared to be friendly garrison troops than to fight for their lives against a fearsome and vicious enemy.
Indeed all the nonsense of containment, detente, peaceful coexistence and the like needed the leadership of Ronald Reagan to produce victory.
Goldwater wanted the same thing, but as I learned going door to door for him in 1964, the undershirt white trash wanted the welfare state of the War on Poverty.
The hudna or strategic truce of Hamas has enabled it to manufacture 1,000 short-range missiles.
Every day delayed in taking out the terrorist groups headquartered in Damascus and Teheran enables them to plan the next terrorist strike on CONUS--they are the shock troops for Hitlery.
Three steps forward, two steps back.
The islamo-communist alliance, rust and cockroaches never sleep.
As a United States government official at the Commerce Department, Huang had access to four types of very valuable information: (1) CIA briefings, (2) CIA materials shared by others, (3) classified State Department cables on foreign economic and political matters, and (4) information that is confidential, even though not classified, collected in the normal course of business by the department.
CIA representatives testified before Chairman Fred Thompson's Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that agents gave Huang thirty-seven classified one-on-one briefings in his office at Commerce. In such a briefing, Huang's CIA handlers would typically hand him intelligence documents to read. They estimate that he saw between 370 and 550 CIA-produced pieces of American intelligence. According to the Commerce Department, Huang also attended an additional 109 meetings at which classified information may have been discussed, including several at the White House.
Huang of course faxed this material from the small windowless office set aside for him at Stephens, Inc. across from Commerce.
Lippo received the faxes and no doubt made them available to its partner ChinaResources, per CIA, a front for ChiCom intel.
Thompson's inquiry was hampered by John Glenn's serving as Beijing's butt boy, and by the convenient death by mountain of Chuck Meissner and Ron Brown.
Such deaths made it possible for traitorrapist42 to boast, "I don't think you'll be able to find any evidence that policy was changed in exchange for contributions."
Riady gave tr42 a million in his limo, but tr42 doesn't recall what was discussed.
The actions of Glenn vis a vis Thompson, and Barney Fag vis a vis Dan Burton attest to the aptness of the thesis of Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, Crown, 2003.
I spoke with two of Burton's counsels on a conference call and they noted that Charlie Trie did a dance in the corridor outside the courtroom inasmuch to say, "We fooled them bigtime."
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