Dubya meet the man in the mirror

So a couple of weeks ago you drag out, dust off, and proceed to have the Groping Governor lionize a former criminal, who resigned from office. I know that you Republican reconstructionist's are vigorously working on a rewrite of history, and its a shame that 30 years later we discover that during a serious cold war crisis, that said CinC was too drunk to do his Job. 30 years later there is some worry if the current CinC is drinking the hard stuff.



Nixon gets the hell out of Dodge

(AP) Five days into the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, with the superpowers on the brink of confrontation, President Richard Nixon was too drunk to discuss the crisis with the British prime minister, according to newly released transcripts of tape recordings.

Henry Kissinger's assessment of the president's condition on the night of Oct. 11, 1973, is contained in more than 20,000 pages of transcripts of Kissinger's phone calls as the president's national security adviser and secretary of state — records whose privacy he had guarded for three decades. The National Archives released them Wednesday.

They show the powerful adviser trying to manage world crises even as Nixon's presidency teetered from the Watergate scandal that would consume his administration in August 1974.

In October 1973, U.S.-Soviet tensions were peaking over the Arab-Israeli war, and British Prime Minister Edward Heath's office called the White House just before 8 p.m. to ask to speak with Nixon.

"Can we tell them no?" Kissinger asked his assistant, Brent Scowcroft, who had told him of the urgent request. "When I talked to the president, he was loaded."

Scowcroft replied: "We could tell him the president is not available and perhaps he can call you."

Kissinger said Nixon would be available in the morning.

The happy ending of the story is that Nixon did not need to make immediate decisions, like say elevating the defcon status, commiting a battle group to action, or any other decisions relating to national security interests. You just think that during a crisis like the Arab-Israel war it might be prudent to lay off the sauce.

Will update when I can re-create lost post. arrrrhggg. The above pales, compared to the inspired screed I was moments away from publishing, when the computer crashed last night. It might have been some of my best work - poof - gone - sad.