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Reagan Library Bans Oliver North, Buckley, Daschle, Iran, More Special From NewsMax's Most Informed Sources
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Khamenei: Iran Will Have Bomb in April April 8, 2006 could turn out to be an ominous date in history - that's the day Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says that Iran will have a nuclear weapon. Late last year Khamenei gathered his top advisers for a strategy meeting and told them "it has been promised that by April 8, we will be in a position to show the entire world that we are members of the club."
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This presumably refers to nuclear weapons, according to National Review Online Contributing Editor Michael Ledeen, who offered an inside look at the top-level meeting. Among the assessments by Iran's leaders:
But if the Iranian leadership has come to believe it has little to fear from the West, there are clear signs of trouble within the regime, Ledeen reports. Khamenei is said to be fighting a losing battle with cancer, and a succession struggle is already underway. The government has stepped up repression of groups suspected of opposing the regime, and President Ahmadinejad recently canceled most foreign travel by government officials, which is "not the sign of a confident mullahcracy," Ledeen writes. What's more, the Iranians may be misreading the U.S., says Ledeen. He writes that the perceived "paralysis" of America is "nothing more than a replay of the usual blunder committed by our enemies, who look at us and see fractious politics," only to learn that "free societies are quite capable of turning on a dime and defending their interests and values with unanticipated ferocity."
Editor's Note:
2. Reagan Library Nixes Ollie North Appearance The rift between Nancy Reagan and Oliver North continues. The retired Marine colonel and star of Fox News Channel's "War Stories" was set to be the guest speaker at a planned March 25 dinner for the Pacific Legal Foundation, to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. But when Library execs got word that North was coming, they told the Foundation to drop him or find another venue. The hostility between Mrs. Reagan and North goes back to the Ronald Reagan presidency and the embarrassing Iran-Contra affair. North coordinated the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to fund the Contra rebels fighting to topple the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Reagan denied he knew about the deal and he fired North in 1986. Still, North was hailed as a hero by conservatives for keeping the Contras' struggle alive - one that eventually led to Nicaragua holding free elections. North later wrote a book, "Under Fire: An American Story," in which he claimed that Reagan must have known about the deal. Sources says Mrs. Reagan was incensed by the claim. When North ran for the Senate from Virginia in 1994, she told a reporter on the eve of the election that North had lied to her husband about the Iran-Contra affair. North lost the election. According to Dick Bradley, a spokesman for the Pacific Legal Foundation, Reagan Library officials told the Foundation that Col. North was simply not welcome at the Library. Bradley said former Reagan speechwriter Peter M. Robinson - who wrote the famous speech in which President Reagan told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this [Berlin] wall" - is the new speaker, replacing North. A Library official, Robert Cuillard, flatly denied that Col. North was barred from appearing at the dinner, and referred us to a Library public relations spokeswoman, Melissa Geller, who we were unable to reach. Col. North was not available for comment. Editor's Note:
3. Daschle's Wife Opposes His '08 Run Former Sen. Tom Daschle is said to be mulling a run for the White House in 2008, but his wife is reportedly dead-set against the idea. A longtime friend of the South Dakota Democrat told Roll Call's "Heard on the Hill" column that Daschle is "thinking about" launching a presidential campaign. But another friend said his powerhouse lobbyist wife Linda is "steadfastly opposed" to her husband running, although the friend believes the former Senate Minority and Majority Leader will run anyway. Both friends said they thought Linda Daschle would be loath to give up her successful lobbying job and "slog through an uphill battle of a presidential primary with her husband," the Roll Call column disclosed. Daschle's longtime political advisor Steve Hildebrand, however, claimed that Daschle's wife would support any decision he might make, although he added that "the chance of him running isn't even great." Daschle first won election to the Senate in 1986 but was narrowly defeated by Republican John Thune in 2004. Editor's Note:
4. Buckley, Fukuyama Desert Bush on Iraq Two leading conservatives have abandoned President Bush on Iraq and called the American campaign there a failure.
Writing for National Review, conservative icon William F. Buckley said: "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed ... Francis Fukuyama, a leading neoconservative theorist and author, went even further, saying Bush's broader strategy of preemptive American military interventions has been proven wrong. "The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles," Fukuyama wrote in the New York Times Magazine. "Successful preemption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before." In describing what become known as the "Bush Doctrine," the president in a June 1, 2002 speech asserted that the U.S. had a unilateral right to overthrow any government in the world that was deemed a threat to American security. "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he declared. Robert Parry, author of "Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq," writes on the Web site of the Consortium for Independent Journalism: "During those heady days, Bush and his neoconservative advisers dreamed of remaking the entire Middle East with pro-U.S. leaders chosen through elections and Arab nations ending their hostility toward Israel." Instead, surging anti-Americanism fostered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq has led to gains by Islamic extremists in elections in Egypt, Iran and Pakistan and the victory by Hamas in Palestine. "This string of catastrophes has now led even prominent conservatives to conclude that Bush's 'stay the course' strategy must be rethought," Parry concludes. "The latest defectors - Buckley and Fukuyama - threaten to pull away even members of Bush's political base."
5. Incumbents Could Lose Out in Next White House Race History tells us that presidential candidates who already hold public office are more likely to win their party's nomination. But 2008 might be different. Leaving aside incumbent presidents, since 1956 Democrats and Republicans have nominated for president 12 individuals who held an elective office when they were chosen, while picking only five who were out of office.
But of those five, two were former vice presidents (Richard Nixon and Walter Mondale), and another was a repeat nominee (Adlai Stevenson). A fourth, Ronald Reagan, had built a national following by nearly winning the nomination during the previous presidential primary season. Nevertheless, several strategists are willing to disregard the historical trend and say that candidates without a political office actually enjoy advantages over incumbents. And that could be a key in 2008, when as many as 11 strong out-of-office candidates could vie for their party's nomination. "It is far better to have a candidate who is loose and not affiliated," Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 campaign, told the Times. Brazile and other strategists say the biggest edge for out-of-office candidates is a more flexible schedule and the opportunity to spend more time in early-primary states. Out-of-office candidates are also free to take contrary positions and stay out of the crossfire in the day-to-day political tumult. Potential out-of-office candidates for the GOP nomination in 2008 include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and New York Gov. George Pataki - all three will leave their current positions after the November election - plus former House Speaker New Gingrich and ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Democrats include former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack - who is not running for re-election this year - former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Retired Gen. Wesley Clark and former Vice President Al Gore.
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