Before reading the Cox Report, please read below the answer to the first question ( YES, fundamentals of MIRV and bus design), given in message #82927, posted by jerryhere, to the New York Times Forum "The Clinton Impeachment", Feb. 16, 1999.has China now the specifications to implement Mutual Assured Destruction, i.e. to destroy the US ? if yes, when will those specifications be implemented ? why didn't the Clinton Administration prevent these secrets to get to China ? (the plan is to have the whole thing finished very soon, that is before China can implement MAD capability)
Peace, prosperity, and growing incomes have combined with the perceived triviality of the case to preclude the pressures that otherwise might have forced the president's party to abandon him. In the absence of any chance of success, the best policy is to cut one's losses and get the troops off the beach so that they might live to fight again. This analogy to Dunkirk surfaced in the Republican caucus. Some senators of great ability and judgment are convinced of it, and have acted in good conscience and with the highest integrity to save their party and do their best for the nation.
But are they right? No, they are not. For this there are many proofs, but consider one that is accidental. The day after the closing arguments, a unit of Air Force cadets in a Virginia auditorium far less elegant than the chamber of the Senate was gathered for instruction in the problems of the air worthiness of an F-16 asymmetrically loaded with external ordnance. It may seem that nothing could be further removed from the previous day's events, but this is only partly true. These were splendid young people who were making a start into life with faith, trust, and innocence. Although they had no idea and could not have been expected to know, their future may have been wrought in the Senate the day before. How?
Next to such enormity the Lewinsky affair pales in significance and, though in itself should have been sufficient for the removal of a president, must have been seen by this president as a magnificent distraction and the answer to his prayers. The Senate showed its characteristic resolve in killing the Thompson committee and taking no offense at being stiffed by scores of witnesses, which is strange for an assembly so conscious of its own dignity. Whether or not this is related to the fact that Republicans have been drawing from the wells of Taiwan since the days of Chiang Kai-shek is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Republican majority, never mind the Democrats, failed in its duty to the country.
And that is where Dunkirk comes in once again. Churchill had been prime minister for three weeks before the fighting retreat at Dunkirk. He was the author of the fighting, and Neville Chamberlain the author of the retreat. Had Churchill's skills and aggressive instincts been applied earlier there would have been no Dunkirk and there may have been no war. The British need not have been driven from France and the fighting disastrously prolonged. They need not have almost lost the war itself. The question was of generalship. What good are generals if they will not fight? Had Republicans not cowered behind every marble column, had they called out the president on such things as China and stood fast, they would have won the battle of public opinion over which all they have done is despair.
In this, the House managers, with whom the Senate elders are so cross, can be likened to the soldiers of Calais. To block a German assault from the west upon the Dunkirk beaches, Churchill asked of the 30th Brigade in Calais that it would neither withdraw nor surrender, and it didn't. Commanded by a Brigadier Nicholson, units such as the Second King's Royal Rifles, the First Queen Victoria's Rifles, and the Sixth Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders waged a fierce and losing battle. They had little equipment and less ammunition. Their officers fought while wounded, until they died, in a chaos of bombing, armored attack, burning vehicles, shattered glass, artillery fire, and the bodies of the dead.
The Germans arrogantly and accurately held out the alternatives of surrender or death, and though he knew their backs were to the sea and they were never to be relieved, Nicholson's reply was, "The answer is no as it is the British Army's duty to fight as well as it is the German's." To quote Gregory Blaxland, the historian of this great episode, "All that is certain is that there was no depression. The men were uplifted by that strange grandeur of spirit which defies rational explanation and can carry men above despair."