John Gorenfeld has the trailer for Oliver Stone's W.
I'm of two minds about Stone: The historian in me is appalled by his treatment of, shall we say, facts (see: JFK) but the artist in me thinks he's a pretty darn good (if wildly inconsistent) filmmaker.
At any rate, W ought to be...interesting.
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At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait now called Xiamen, according to the documents.But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.
In releasing the official history, William Burr of George Washington University's National Security Archive said Eisenhower's decision forced Air Force leaders to think more seriously about conventional warfare instead of relying on nuclear arms.
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When informed that Eisenhower had insisted that first strikes be made with high explosives, Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the Pacific Air Forces commander, described "this idea of limited response as disastrous . . . and warned that the United States should either be ready to use its most effective weapons -- in his opinion nuclear bombs -- or stay out of the conflict," according to the history.
Revelations that the Bush administration is developing new nuclear weapons to target Iraq, North Korea and others have been greeted with alarm as a radical departure from established U.S. policy.
In fairness:
A shift in this direction began in 1990 under Vice President Dick Cheney when he was secretary of defense, and was accelerated after the Persian Gulf War. By the mid-1990s the Pentagon already was working to integrate the possible use of nuclear weapons to respond to biological or chemical attacks.
The difference between the current administration and the previous one is that BushCo™ would probably love to lob a few teeny-tiny nukes.
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(Welcome First Drafters!)
Possibly from the late 18th/early 19th century:
In the weeks since Dr. Schaaf’s surprising pronouncement was made public, “The Leaf,” originally thought to have been made around 1839 or later, has become the talk of the photo-historical world. The speculation about its origins became so intense that Sotheby’s and the print’s owners decided earlier this month to postpone its auction, so that researchers could begin delving into whether the image may be, in fact, one of the oldest photographic images in existence, dating to the 1790s.[...]
Dr. Schaaf, who said he was not paid by Sotheby’s or by the owner of “The Leaf” print, said that he had been aware of the images — also known as photograms, cameraless prints made by placing objects on photosensitive paper exposed to light — for many years. He had seen five of the six prints that were once compiled in an album by Henry Bright, a Briton whose family was part of a group of scientists and tinkerers active around Bristol in the late 18th century.
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An unscientific poll of 109 historians finds:
At least two of those who ranked the current president in the 31-41 ranking made it clear that they placed him next-to-last, with only James Buchanan, in their view, being worse. “He is easily one of the 10-worst of all time and—if the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities matter—then probably in the bottom five, alongside Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore, and Pierce,” wrote another historian.[...]
One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .” Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”
In fairness to George another historian hedged a bit saying, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title. Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”
Quite a legacy.
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Try not to blow up Parliament today or you might end up drawn and quartered:
Not that I'm a killjoy like some.
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ADDED: Scott Horton.
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