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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scumbria who wrote (133234)	2/21/2001 11:17:07 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570416

Scumbria, <The behavior of the post WWII Soviet Union was very easily explained in non-paranoid terms. They took the Baltics, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia because they wanted a buffer to keep the Germans out of Russia. Quite understandable after losing 60,000,000 people in WWI and WWII.> Yes, quite understandable, but also quite scary if you are the leader of a nation next to such a "buffer" or an ally of those nations. I'd say that makes America's fear of communism very explainable in "non-paranoid terms." That doesn't mean the Soviet Union collapsed as a direct result of Reagan's military spending. But it does make me wonder how you can call the Soviet Union's actions "non-paranoid" while at the same time calling America's reaction "self-serving paranoia." Tenchusatsu

To: Scumbria who wrote (133234)	2/21/2001 2:15:35 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570416

Dear Scumbria and Amy: Of those 60 million lost in WWI and WWII, more than twenty million were executed due to Stalin's paranoia. Whole ethnic groups were sent to Siberia just due to a suspicion of Stalin and for no other reason (Source was a program, War of the Century, running on the History Channel last week). It is funny how 8 million Jews were executed by Hitler and most people remember that, but, many people conveniently forget that Stalin killed more than 2.5 times as much of USSR citizens. IMHO, Stalin was an even greater perpetrator of Genocide than Hitler (and I consider Hitler to be a great genocidal maniac). Now, later Soviet leaders may not have been anywhere near as bad as Stalin, but, they were no saints themselves. Besides, hindsight is always far better than sight in the heat of the moment. Liberal leaning people have an axe to grind to lessen any former Republican President's accomplishments while building up any former Democrat President's accomplishments. Many former Democratic members of the intelligence community say that the USSR was a house of cards but, fail to take account of how long it lasted and how long it could have taken to fall. There should be no mistake that the military buildup and SDI program caused the initiation of the collapse and made it far quicker than anyone at the time were predicting. Would it have collapsed by now if, the buildup did not occur and SDI was not even talked about? Remember, the FBI recently arrested a spy which they claim was informing the USSR and later the Russians on what we knew about them and how we went about that and our methods of stopping spies and terrorists here, since 1985. Now given far more information about what they knew and more details that were hard if not impossible for us to get with such bonafides that we could believe it, we have a far better way to interpret the actual situation. All of this belies the simple fact that these facts were not known and more to the point trusted by decision makers and the public. Too many cases where these same intelligence agencies missed certain events that either occurred with no warning or far sooner than predicted. Intelligence has a severe problem with vastly under or overestimating an enemy. The smart policy is to side on the worst case scenario wrt our goals because it is far better to overestimate their advantages and underestimate their disadvantages than the reverse. The first case goes better than planned and is much more forgiven by the public than the second where thing are far worse and the public is disgusted and very angry. In any case, the problem is usually traced to the number of calculation levels between the people doing the initial analysis and policy makers and the public. Where the analyst says 5 units but, it could be 10, if everything breaks their way, the middle managers restate 10 units but, 15 units at best. The upper level briefers state 15 units and say 25 units, if pressed. And it goes into the report to Congress as 25 units maybe 30 units. Finally it is released to the public as 30 units and much larger than the 3 units it actually was. Not surprising given the number of levels between the low level analyst and the Public Congressional report with each having a fudge factor for worst case scenarios. In any case, it is easy to play what if games when nothing is on the line and information can be easily had and your butt is "on the line", if you are wrong. BTW, second guessing about the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to this day with even more information available as to the situation at that time. Pete

To: Scumbria who wrote (133234)	2/21/2001 4:25:02 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 1570416

RE:"Having gotten to know several dozen Russians from the Soviet Union, I have developed an understanding of how our Government used us during the cold war. The fear and paranoia which the US Government stimulated was quite self-serving. Did you ever see the movie "Red Dawn", where the Soviets came and invaded a small town in Colorado? I was running a movie theater at the time (1985, in Los Alamos), and the fearful reaction to that movie gave me a hint of how deeply brainwashed the American public was" Tell us something we don't know. As a culture, we are defined by the stories we tell. So where does Hollywood and the media fit in? They tell the stories with a twist, their twist. The government is all to happy to accomodate if their needs are met. Jim