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More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.

Alexander Haig

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Alexander Haig
Age: 85 †
Born: 1924
Born: December 2
Died: 2010
Died: February 20
Businessperson
Diplomat
Former United States Secretary Of State
Military Personnel
Politician
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Alexander Meigs Haig
Jr.
Alexander Meigs Al Haig Jr.
Americans
Often
Power
Overestimated
Westerners
Capability
Soviet
Union
Unions

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You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.
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I probably carry more scar tissue on my derrière than any other candidate-that's political scar tissue.
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Propaganda was an important arm of the Soviet diplomacy, very important.
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The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
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The world awaits Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, an occasion which will bring into the global spotlight the dramatic advances China is making in enhancing the quality of life for its people.
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Prior to his takeover of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was camping near Paris, giving daily news conferences to a fawning international press corps without a murmur of complaint to France from the United States about the disaster it was coddling in the incredibly naive liberal belief that this extremist cleric would be an improvement over the Shah.
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I am in control here, in the White House.
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You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the Khrushchev - beating down of Jack Kennedy in Vienna, that President Kennedy believed that we had to join the battle for the Third World, and the next crisis that developed in that regards was Vietnam.
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I started out as a Cold Warrior, even my last years in grade school.
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Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down.
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Sooner or later something had to give. But President Bush, faced with the unprecedented affront of 9-11, could not wait to take action. So he had to do what we were capable of doing, and he did it brilliantly.
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Syria is a terrorist state by any definition and is so classified by the State Department. I happen to think Iran is too. Iraq, Iran, Syria, they're all involved.
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What the fundamentalists are doing is a total negation of their own faith - encouraging and lionizing suicide bombers and killing women and children, hardly in keeping with the teachings of Prophet Mohammed.
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If they analyze the situation as thoroughly as they should, Muslims will realize they are the first targets. What are the fundamentalists really after? Simply taking over Islam and then turning its back on modernity.
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Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House.
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I'm the only American alive or dead who presided unhappily over the removal of a vice president and a president.
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I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it.
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Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.
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As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.
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In Desert Storm, we had too many troops in Afghanistan probably not enough for the major commitment we have made.
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