Well, Glock, since you seem to be determined to engage in name-calling, here goes. You sound like an ill-informed RINO. I was a registered Republican for more than 30 years. I was a contributing member of two Republican PACs. That's money I am talking about. Have you contributed any money to conservative causes, or are you just a big mouth in an empty head?
I have supported Republican causes and candidates in two states: Illinois and California. I was a registered Republican in Nevada. I voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. I voted twice for Richard Nixon. I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and again in 1984. I voted for George H. W. Bush. I supported John McCain in the 2000 California Republican primary. How dare you call me a liberal? You know nothing about me, or about anything else, for that matter.
This post is going to be long, but if you want to know the truth about the man you worship, then you will read the whole thing. If you choose to remain ignorant, then that is a choice that you have made, and I can do nothing to inform you because you prefer the darkness of ignorance over the light of knowledge.
Reagan might have been a good President in many respects, but he tried his damnedest to screw veterans out of their benefits. I already posted a link to the story from the New York Times. Did you even read it?
In 1983, on Reagan's watch, Islamic terrorists bombed the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people. Seventeen of them were Americans. A couple of months later, terrorists bombed the United States Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 American service members. They simultaneously bombed a French military facility killing 58 members of the French military. This was the beginning of the war on terrorism, and the enemy had fired the first shots. I didn't need to look up these incidents on the Internet because I remember them. But you can read all about them here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing
How did the French respond? They launched airstrikes in the Beqaa Valley. What did the United States do? Nothing! Our President elected to cut and run. He eventually pulled all of the Marines out of Lebanon, and we have seen what has happened in the Middle East since that time. How is that kind of inaction considered to be looking out for our military? Would George H. W. Bush have done that? Did George W. Bush do that after 9/11? Which of these Presidents was the real courageous leader?
"Eventually, it became evident that the U.S. would launch no serious and immediate retaliatory attack for the Beirut Marine barracks bombing beyond naval barrages and air strikes used to interdict continuous harassing fire from Druze and Syrian missile and artillery sites. A true retaliatory strike failed to materialize because there was a rift in White House counsel (largely between George P. Shultz of the Department of State and Weinberger of the Department of Defense) and because the extant evidence pointing at Iranian involvement was circumstantial at that time: the Islamic Jihad, which took credit for the attack, was a front for Hezbollah which was acting as a proxy for Iran; thus, affording Iran plausible deniability." [ibid]
Islamic terrorists learned an important lesson from Reagan, a lesson that they put into play on September 11, 2001. They learned that the United States Government was weak, soft, and unwilling to hold them to account. They decided right then and there that America was a nation of cowards and weaklings. Keep in mind that Reagan also had the power to retaliate against Iran for the 444-day hostage crisis, but he did nothing. That encouraged the Iranians to sponsor the bombings in Lebanon, and to continue to sponsor terrorism all across the globe.
Wait! There's more! On December 12 of that same year (1983) the American Embassy in Kuwait city was bombed by terrorists. Did Reagan respond? No.
"The American embassy in Kuwait was bombed in a series of attacks whose targets also included the French embassy, the control tower at the airport, the country's main oil refinery, and a residential area for employees of the American corporation Raytheon. Six people were killed, including a suicide truck bomber, and more than 80 others were injured. The suspects were thought to be members of Al Dawa, or "The Call," an Iranian-backed group and one of the principal Shiite groups operating against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The U.S. military took no action in retaliation. In Kuwait, 17 people were arrested and convicted for participating in the attacks. One of those convicted was Mustafa Youssef Badreddin, a cousin and brother-in-law of one of Hezbollah's senior officers, Imad Mughniyah. After a six-week trial in Kuwait, Badreddin was sentenced to death for his role in the bombings.
Over the following years, the arrest and imprisonment of the "Kuwait 17" (also known as the "Al Dawa 17"), became one of the most consistent demands of the kidnappers of Western hostages in Lebanon and plane hijackers.
Reagan had sent the terrorists a powerful message: "You can kill Americans with impunity because their government will do nothing in response."
Then, in 1984, Iranian-backed terrorists kidnapped CIA Station Chief William Buckley in Beirut. He wasn't the first, nor would he be the last American to be kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in the Middle East on Reagan's watch. In all, at least 30 Westerners were kidnapped in Lebanon, and some of them were either killed, or died in captivity, including Buckley. How did our President respond? He cut a secret deal with the terrorists. He sent weapons to the people who were killing our service members and citizens. It later came to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair, the biggest scandal of Reagan's Presidency.
"U.S. officials believed that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah was behind most of the kidnappings and the Reagan administration devised a covert plan. Iran was desperately running out of military supplies in its war with Iraq, but Congress had banned the sale of American arms to countries like Iran that sponsored terrorism. Reagan was advised that a bargain could be struck -- secret arms sales to Iran, hostages back to the U.S. The plan, when it was revealed to the public, was decried as a failure and anathema to the U.S. policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists." [ibid]
Our fearless leader showed his support for the military again a couple of months later:
"In Aukar, northeast of Beirut, a truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. Embassy annex killing 24 people, two of whom were U.S. military personnel. According to the U.S. State Department's 1999 report on terrorist organizations, elements of Hezbollah are "known or suspected to have been involved" in the bombing.
The U.S. mounted no military response to the embassy annex bombing, but it did begin to explore covert operations in Lebanon. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward says that the CIA trained foreign intelligence agents to act as "hit teams" designed to destroy the terrorists' operations. Ambassador Robert Oakley says the U.S. merely attempted to set up a "protective unit," a Lebanese counterterrorist strike force.
President Reagan and the CIA called off covert operations when Lebanese intelligence operatives -- some allegedly trained by the U.S. -- set off a car bomb on March 8, 1985, in an attempted murder of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Shiite Muslim cleric who some believed to be the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. Over 80 people were killed in the attack near a Beirut mosque. Fadlallah survived." [ibid]
But wait! It continues!
December 3, 1984: "Kuwait Airways Flight 221, on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan, was hijacked and diverted to Tehran. The hijackers demanded the release of the Kuwait 17. When the demand wasn't met, the hijackers killed two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development." [ibid]
June 14, 1985: "TWA Flight 847 was hijacked en route from Athens to Rome and forced to land in Beirut, Lebanon, where the hijackers held the plane for 17 days. They demanded the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as the release of 700 fellow Shiite Muslim prisoners held in Israeli prisons and in prisons in southern Lebanon run by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army. When these demands weren't met, hostage Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, was shot and his body dumped on the airport tarmac. U.S. sources implicated Hezbollah." [ibid]
October, 1985 - January, 1986: "On Oct. 7, 1985, off the coast of Egypt, four gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in Egypt, Italy, and elsewhere. When the demands weren't met, they killed Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old disabled American tourist. Investigators blamed the Palestine Liberation Front, which some believed to be allied with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization. Later, U.S. officials were able to link Libya to the PLF and the hijacking." [ibid]
And:
"Then on Dec. 17, 1985, airports in Rome and Vienna were bombed, killing 20 people, five of whom were Americans." [ibid]
April 5, 1986: "An American soldier was killed when a bomb was detonated at La Belle, a discotheque in West Berlin known to be popular with off-duty U.S. servicemen." [ibid]
Finally, President Reagan decided to make some sort of response. It took only three years.
"After U.S. intelligence intercepted Libyan government communications implicating Libya in the La Belle disco attack, President Reagan ordered retaliatory air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi. The operation on April 15, 1986, dubbed Operation El Dorado Canyon, involved 200 aircraft and over 60 tons of bombs. One of the residences of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qadaffi was hit in the attack, which, according to Libyan estimates, killed 37 people and injured 93 others." [ibid]
Are you keeping score? Have we killed as many Islamic terrorists as they have killed Americans? At any rate, the attack didn't do a lot of good because:
"Two days after the U.S. retaliatory attack, the bodies of three American University of Beirut employees -- American Peter Kilburn and Britons John Douglas and Philip Padfield -- were discovered near Beirut shot to death. The Arab Revolutionary Cells, a pro-Libyan group of Palestinians affiliated with terrorist Abu Nidal, claimed to have executed the three men in retaliation for Operation El Dorado Canyon." [ibid]
Then, in the last incident of terrorism on President Reagan's watch, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. Do you remember that? Reagan did nothing, and neither did Bush, who succeeded him as President. Have you watched the three-part PBS series "My Brother's Bomber"? One man went to prison for a few years in Scotland and died a hero's death in Libya from Prostate Cancer. Nobody else has ever been punished for this dastardly crime that killed 270 innocent people, 189 of whom were American citizens.
All in all, President Reagan might have "talked the talk," but he certainly didn't "walk the walk." He betrayed members of the American military and its veterans. In my eyes, he might be qualified to talk about a lot of things, but not about his support for our military. Tell me how you can be familiar with his history involving matters of the US military while serving as President of our country and come to a different conclusion.