John Perazzo
Monday, Jan. 29, 2001

It inspires awe to realize that just as you demonstrate your brotherhood with your new neighbors, so did you show all Americans, during your presidency, that the surest way to develop genuine brotherhood with other nations was to become more like them – particularly in terms of military might.

Doubtless, America's overseas admirers are tickled pink to know that under your watch, the U.S. Army's ranks were reduced from 18 divisions to 9, and the Navy's fleet from 600 ships to 300. No other president in American history ever had the courage to so erode our military as a sign of his own trust in the goodwill of potential adversaries around the world. Thank you, Mr. President, for your uncommon vision.

And thank you further for your steadfast opposition to the research and development of a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) system to shield us against the awful specter of a nuclear missile attack by any of the world's numerous unstable, despotic regimes. While some cynical critics might view the absence of such a defense as a potentially deadly state of affairs that leaves us utterly defenseless against an intentional or accidental nuclear strike, I know better – because you, oh eminent truth-teller, have assured us that striking diplomatic deals with potential enemies is preferable to technological preparedness.

It's called peace through trust, a peachy concept that Neville Chamberlain demonstrated so expertly just before Hitler began his rampage through Europe. Thank you for your repeated assurances that, thanks to the many diplomatic coups you engineered, we live in a safer world than at any time in recent memory.

Surely this safety, of which you are so rightfully proud, explains why you chose not to encumber us with details of the 1997 commission headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which ominously concluded that nuclear threats to the American mainland from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are so grave that no time should be wasted in developing an effective defense system. Talk about negative vibrations! Party-poopers like Rumsfeld surely do put a damper on the good time we're all having in this marvelous economy that you created.

And thank you for sparing us needless sleepless nights by keeping so bravely mum on Jan. 25, 1995, the day our country actually came within a hairsbreadth of a Russian-launched nuclear attack – when Russian military forces temporarily mistook a Norwegian scientific rocket for an American ballistic missile headed for Russia. Thank you for not burdening us with the knowledge that President Boris Yeltsin, for the first time in Russian history, went so far as to activate his Cheget, the display screen showing attack assessment data and containing the infamous button which, when pressed, authorizes the Russian military to initiate nuclear retaliation. Thank you for downplaying Rep. Curt Weldon's observation that Yeltsin was "one decision point away – less than several minutes away – from launching an all-out nuclear attack on the United States." Clearly, you are sensitive to the fact that Americans don't like to think about such unpleasantness.

Thank you for the brotherhood and trust you have fostered with what you call our newfound Russian "ally," a trust you demonstrated by dismantling the Energy Department's Russian Fission monitoring program which had kept tabs on Russia's nuclear arsenal. Oh, the cynics might complain that this ought not have been done at a time when CIA reports show that Russia's alarmingly poor control over its 21,900 nuclear warheads makes it more possible than ever that an accidental Russian strike will occur; or when Colonol Robert Bykov, a career strategic missile officer and member of the Russian parliament, candidly laments that Russia "could launch an accidental nuclear strike on the United States in the matter of seconds it takes you to read these lines." But I know better, because you, oh noble truth-teller, have assured me that all is safe.

Thank you for your tireless diplomacy which persuaded the Russian military to detarget its intercontinental missiles away from American sites – the crowning achievement of your 1994 summit with President Yeltsin. Oh, how peacefully I sleep now. Sure, the cynics might say that detargeting is an unverifiable, purely symbolic gesture that can easily be undone within a matter of minutes, but I find the version of my noble, truth-telling president so much more palatable.

Thank you, Mr. President, for sparing my family much anxiety by keeping mum about the fact that while the U.S. has no nuclear programs in development, Russia, in violation of its every diplomatic pledge, is engaged in a major arms buildup and the construction of a massive underground network of secret bunkers and command centers for waging nuclear war. Thank you for not burdening us with the details of Russia's already-concluded contracts to illegally sell advanced nuclear defense systems to such nations as India, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

And thank you for never even breaking a sweat when CIA Director George Tenet testified in 1998 that Russia was illegally giving enormous assistance to Iran's missile program. When you vetoed Congress' most unfriendly 1998 legislation mandating retaliatory sanctions against Russia, you showed the whole world what true Christian forgiveness is all about. Not even July 22, 1998 – the day Iran stunned the world by conducting the first test flight of its new Shahab-3 medium-range missile capable of carrying nuclear or biological weapons – could dampen your eternally sunny spirits.

Indeed, who but a fool could question the sincerity with which you recently quipped that while our country may have had better presidents than you (modest to a fault!), "no one ever had more fun" in the Oval Office than you did? Downright inspirational! And really, who could doubt that you genuinely did have fun sitting in the Oval Office with a female intern's lips exploring your genitalia?

Thank you, oh great truth-teller, for your stoic silence and unwavering opposition to SDI when our country's National Security Agency learned in 1999 that Chinese scientists were aiding North Korea's satellite program for the guidance of long-range missiles. How dutifully you reminded us at the time that all we really needed was a bit more constructive "bilateral dialogue" with Beijing. And how decisively you countered China's massive military buildup by expanding American business ties with Beijing.

What a marvelous model for international cooperation you engineered by loosening our country's longstanding export controls on supercomputers and other high-technology products that now, thanks to your uncommon vision, have dramatically improved the potential accuracy of Chinese intercontinental missiles. Sure, the cynics might bray that among the prime American beneficiaries of this policy was Loral Space & Communications chairman Bernard Schwartz, the single largest contributor to your political campaign and the Democratic Party.

But I worry not about such trifles, such scandalous assertions by jealous and petty right-wing extremists. Nor am I troubled by the 1998 Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's conclusion that the foreign campaign contributions you received "were facilitated by individuals with extensive ties to China." I despise those silly worry warts – always trying to keep you from having more fun than other presidents had.

Thank you for not overreacting in 1996 when it was discovered that Chinese spies had stolen nuclear design secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most damaging security breach in American history – giving China the ability to produce and deliver nuclear warheads via submarines, mobile missiles, and long-range missiles. With a superhuman poise that helped calm the fears of our entire nation, you actually stymied Energy Department efforts to address security problems at the nuclear labs, and were able to postpone, for more than a year, a previously approved counter-intelligence program.

Your even-tempered response was reminiscent of the equanimity you exhibited a few years back when you assured us that the theft of 900 Republicans' confidential FBI files was nothing more sinister than a "bureaucratic snafu." How innocent! How quaint!

Thank you for not allowing the July 1997 Energy Department report, which detailed even more comprehensively China's ongoing spying, to weigh down your heart with worry. When this report came to light on the eve of your scheduled summit with the Chinese president – a meeting designed to dramatize your unprecedented success in improving relations with Beijing – you did precisely what any great statesman would have done in similar circumstances: you ordered the Energy Department to conceal from Congress its findings about Chinese espionage, lest those nasty Republicans use the revelations to tarnish your sterling reputation.

Even more unhappily, the new information came to light while Congress was examining how sources tied to China's intelligence agency and military had helped you win the 1996 election – by illegally pouring rivers of money into your campaign coffers. Thank you for not buckling under their unpleasantness. Instead you cheerfully informed us that, thanks to your diplomacy, "there are no more nuclear missiles pointed at any children in the United States. I'm proud of that." Well, who wouldn't be proud? Not even the CIA's April 1998 revelation that 13 of China's 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were in fact targeted on the United States could deflate my confidence in you.

Nor could my spirit be deflated by Chinese Gen. Xiong Guangkai's 1995 warning that Beijing was prepared to respond to any American interference in Chinese-Taiwanese conflicts by actually bombing the city of Los Angeles. Such things can't worry me, when I have the great truth-teller working for my side.

Thank you for remaining calm when our country's Defense Intelligence Agency revealed that China was trying to buy advanced ICBM technology from Russia – in direct violation of U.S.-Russian agreements. How stoically and presidentially did you shield us from the disagreeable fact that Beijing was not only negotiating the purchase of colossal ten-warhead missiles from Ukraine, but was continuing its illegal transfer of missile technology and equipment to Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and Turkey.

How tranquil we felt in late 1998 when you reminded us of our "strategic partnership" with China, even while U.S. intelligence reports warned of China's rapid progress in developing missiles capable of hitting targets 7,500 miles away. Most presidents would have lacked the inner strength to bear such disagreeable news privately, but you – much like a father shielding his innocent children from life's darker side – chose not to inflict needless anxiety upon us.

From the bottom of my heart I thank you for mandating that no official White House spokesmen tell the public about the menacing Chinese buildup. I'm only sorry that a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation eventually discovered it and went public with the information. Clearly, he did not possess your understanding of the great benefits to be derived from preserving a people's emotional tranquility via secrecy. Nor could lesser men than you have withstood, as you did, the many external pressures to impose economic penalties on Beijing. Loyalty is perhaps your strongest suit, as your campaign donors in Communist China can attest.

Thank you for all you have done to stabilize U.S. relations with North Korea, whose military had already amassed enough plutonium to build nuclear weapons as early as 1994. When Korean leaders denied outside inspectors access to suspected weapons-production sites, you never lost your cool. Instead you negotiated a plan giving them ten years to dismantle their weapons program and five years to surrender their existing plutonium stockpile.

Oh, the cynics might say that you were merely shifting to a future presidential administration the burden of eventually dealing with the potentially horrific consequences of a Korean buildup. Surely those nasty cynics got their noses out of joint in the spring of 1997, when U.S. intelligence satellite photographs showed some 15,000 Korean workers building an immense underground nuclear facility in an area called Kumchangni. And undoubtedly the doomsayers complained that the nuclear weapons freeze to which North Korea had pledged, and which you had hailed as a major arms control achievement, was nothing more than yet another sham.

But once again, in the face of criticism, you carried yourself with quiet grace and were not pressured into making any hasty responses. How marvelous was the stoic dignity with which you waited for more than a year, until July 1998, before informing Congress about the Kumchangni construction. How inspiring was your commitment to sparing us the panic that the truth might have caused.

And I would be remiss in not thanking you for what you've done in Iraq, the nation which Defense Secretary William Cohen says already may have "produced as much as 200 tons of VX [nerve gas], theoretically enough to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth." Thank you for assenting to a U.N.-brokered deal in the mid-1990s that greatly restricted inspectors' access to the "sensitive presidential locations" suspected of housing nuclear and biological weapons production plants.

When you intervened to dissuade U.N. inspectors from making surprise visits to suspected weapons sites in Iraq, critics were quick to accuse you of seeking only to avoid an embarrassing public standoff with Saddam; of placing your preoccupation with your own public image above the safety of the entire world; and of being content to saddle some future administration with the disastrous outgrowths of your own self-absorbed gutlessness. But I can't believe such things.

Nor can I believe in the sincerity of Scott Ritter, the longest-serving weapons inspector in Iraq who resigned in 1998 to protest what he called your "surrender to Iraqi leadership." When Ritter explained that you had "made a farce" of U.N. inspection efforts by reining in investigators who were literally "on the doorstep" of uncovering Iraq's hidden weapons programs, surely he was speaking with the petulance of someone averse to properly crediting you for the Christian trust you so demonstrated in your dealings with Saddam.

Though many cold and envious people call you a liar and a traitor, I don't believe them. I only believe you, oh great truth-teller. After all, you created this great economy for us all. Yes, the cynics point out that the current boom actually began in 1982 and was interrupted only briefly by a recession that ended more than a year before you took office. But who has time for such details? You seem so sincere when you smile, so fatherly when you walk hand-in-hand with your daughter, and so pious when you parade your trusted Bible before the cameramen each Sunday.

Truly you are a soldier of Christ, an American hero, a friend to the downtrodden, a champion of the truth. Welcome home, Mr. President. Welcome home.

John Perazzo lives minutes away from Bill and Hillary Clinton's home in Chappaqua, N.Y. He is the author of "The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations." E-mail: wsbooks25@hotmail.com. Web site: www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/00548.htm.

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