"I didn't have cancer. I had something inside of me that had cancer in it and it was removed." ---Reagan to Biographer Lou Cannon, summer of 1985
---------------Captain Ron and the Little Green Men:
"As a boy," says Cannon Reagan fed his imagination with adventure stories and tales of improbable success." He loved Edgar Rice Burroughs's novels in particular, but preferred his science fiction tales to the much more popular Tarzan series. These sci-fi novels featured John Carter, a Martian warlord. Cannon found that Reagan had read science fiction throughout his life and was a fan of science-fiction films(The Role of a Lifetime, Lou Cannon, p.214). Daughter
Patti Davis had described herfather as fascinated with stories of unidentified flying objects and the possibility of life on other worlds.(Cannon, p.214).
"In Hollywood he became an
aside nationalistic quarrelsand band together against an alien invader. Reagan liked this idea so much he tried it out on Gorbachev in their first meeting at Geneva in 1985, saying that he was certain the United States and the Soviet Union would cooperate if Earth were threatened by an
invasion from outer space."(P.61).Gorbachev seems to have smoothly side-stepped the subject with Reagan taking his non-response as a small victory. But Reagan's advisors were also frequently privy to versions of the idea, some of them less than impressed.
Colin Powell, national security advisor for a time--one of seven during RR's eight years--was well
aware of "Reagan's preoccupation with what Powell called "the little green men."" Cannon says Powell "struggled diligently to keep interplanetary references out of Reagan's speeches."(p. 61). Powell was convinced that the source of the idea had been a 1951 sci-fi film, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The plot of the movie involves the attempts of the alien hero, an envoy from a highly advanced civilization on a distant planet, to convince Earth's nations to work peacefully together. He warns them that an "interplanetary force of robots" would destroy them all if they fail to do so. The alien is killed as a menace, resurrected, then departs after giving some advice and final warning:
"The Universe is getting smaller everyday, There must be security for all or no one issecure...We shall be waiting your decision."(p.62).
He then flew off in his saucer.
His own version became something of a pet idea for Reagan which sometime spilled out, exasperating his wary advisors, into his speeches. To the original film story, according to Powell, Reagan liked to add "personal touches and dramatic flourishes"(p.63).
One such occasion was his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1987:
"In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war
and the threat of war?" (pp. 63-64).
Huh? Huh? I ask you Jeb. I may require little vacay from these issuances of immense and grievous bodily need for I tire easily in these days of wonder. Am reading about George I now an I tell you boy he warnt no slouch neither in the field of pullin the wool over the eyes of the unsuspectin masses. Kep his eyes open when settin by the master for eight years. Boy learned
real good Jeb and dang if he dint come up with some trick his own self.
Stay tuned for GEORGE OF THE DESERT part one coming
soon to an E space near you.........
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