I've been examining the Iran situation very closely and have mentioned some of the things McCain did...but in not such a senile way:

http://theworldofhowey.wordpress.com/

Hope it's ok to post a link to my blog. If not, delete and folks can just click on my name.

I didn't realize that reading trivia on placemats and sugar packets counted as being a "student" of history. Thanks for placing the bar so low, John McCain.

Yes, let's all just throw GWB down the amnesia hole and pretend that Reagan was not only the most recent Republican president but that he was ALWAYS president except during those very unfortunate periods when Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Bush I and Clinton were president.

You all remember how Reagan helped liberate the Concentration camps during WWII, right? Even though he never left Hollywood. So Reagan could do anything, even travel back in time to 1968.

Hard to distinguish from being disingenuous, but of course many didn't vote for McCain when they observed his confusion and temper problems. Maybe not his fault (jet bail, beatings etc.) but it is what it is. Not good for a President.
BTW, interesting irony that our ship intercepting the NK ship is the "USS John McCain." His dad? Him, for chrissake?

When Reagan secretly sold arms to the Iranian Mullahs... that was helping Iranian Freedom-Fighters HOW EXACTLY?

Ummm, didn't the AFL-CIO back the Polish shipyard workers and solidarity? I guess they are the "some good democrats" McCain mentioned. We did dodge one when he and Palin lost the election.

I cannot say it enough times. read Will Bunch's Tear Down This Myth.

The McCain strategy is to have the US forcefully back the Iranian protesters so that there is a crack-down and then he can call for bombing Iran again.

When I was a kid, I remember Reagan leading a twenty mule team through Death Valley just to help Cesar Chavez get decent wages for his lettuce picking union. Ah, who knows? It was a long time ago.

Don't forget who was Reagan's National Security Adviser when the U.S. Government was selling weapons to both Iran and Iraq in order to keep the conflict going (it stands to reason that if you want one side or the other to win, you don't help their enemy, right?), and transferring Bacillus Anthrax to Saddam Hussein in an exchange that is still a matter of government record. If you need a hint, it was the same gentleman who was almost moved to emotional tears over all the poor dead Kurds who were gassed by Saddam, years after the fact, when he visited Iraq shortly after the U.S. military's successful drive to Baghdad in the second Gulf War. All the materials used to make the chemical agents involved, except maybe for some water to thin the mix down a little, were provided by the U.S. government during the same time that gentleman was National Security Adviser.

Steve Benen wrote: "Something for the 'students of history' to keep in mind."

I'm sure their script writers will keep your advice in mind while they compose new lies to spoon-feed to the weak-minded, ignorant, mean-spirited Ditto-Head mental slaves of the so-called "conservative" media. Or not.

When McCain and other Rep.s say that Obama should make tougher statements, it has nothing to do with any desire to support dissidents or marchers. This is ALL about appealing to AMERICAN voters. I am hopeful that most American voters have become skeptical about appeals to toughness. Previous chest-thumping toughness hasn't worked out so well for us, after all.

As Hilzoy noted the other night, "We can debate how important Reagan's various pronouncements about Eastern Europe were, but I do not recall anyone suggesting that they would not be welcomed by Eastern European dissidents, or would harm their cause. -- Steve Benen

I had a long answer to Hilzoy's post all written out and then Wash Monthly website went kablooey and I couldn't upload it...

I don't know about other countries in Eastern Europe in that Spring and Summer of '68, but I do know about Poland. And the American support of the dissidents was a double edged sword. Because of it, we were dismissed by the govt as a fistful of hooligans, manipulated by a cabal of elite Jews well-paid by the west. The result was mass incarcerations, mass dismissals from jobs (and eventually, mass emigration with citizenship stripped. It wasn't restored till '89). Students were pressed to take loyalty oaths to even get permission to re-enter the University (which had been closed for nearly a month), etc, etc, etc; a whole slew of really ugly sanctions.

And all that time, the government was pitting one section of the population (the bought, treasonous, "elites") against another (what you might call "regular folk" here), because divided they fall... And we fell, and didn't recover till the 80ties.

I meant to add, for those fond of irony, that one of the most moving lines in his speech was, "The world should have acted sooner. What happened here in 1988 is never to happen again.�

Of course they don't give a cat fart about the fate of Iranians, only that they can exploit this for, you might say,

personal gratification.

You all remember how Reagan helped liberate the Concentration camps during WWII, right?

I didn't know that. I always thought he personally whipped the Kaiser at Waterloo, single-handedly captured the entire Confederate Army at San Juan Hill, and opened a can of whoop-ass on the Spanish Conquistadors when they bombed Pearl Harbor.

Yeahh, danp. That's a hot one. I had no idea what the hell you were talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Mule-Team_Borax

Has to be best in show.

I'm trying to think of any example of US accomplishing something by commenting on a foreign event. The problem always is that we cannot follow up on words with actions, so what is the point of the words?

dannyshenanigan - You must be a young 'un.

Well OK, if you absolutely must take all of this literally, then maybe John McCain was off by more than a decade in the case of the Prague Spring.
But come on, he didn't mean Ronald Reagan the governor in Sacramento, he meant Ronald Reagan the patron saint of small government and economic liberty. And can there be any doubt of that intrepid spiritual giant standing with Alexander Dubcek, (even though that fellow was a commie, which doesn't matter anyway, cause he's been dead for a while.)
John McCain knew Ronald Reagan personally, and was a good friend of Ronald Reagan (at least until that thing with Cindy happened). Were you? No, so how dare you challenge what John McCain has said about Ronald Reagan.

"Hard to distinguish from being disingenuous..."

He's disingenuous.

Aside from that, if Reagan was President and HAD stood up against the Soviets in Prague Spring we most likely would have had WWIII, the only way soviet tanks would not have rolled into Prague was to stop them with nukes.

"Students of history" my ass! Ever hear of Mohammad Mossadeq? Or Shah Pahlavi and his
reign of terror? How about Iran = Contra?
The US an GB have a long and well documented history of fucking with Iranian politics!
Its all about the oil.
Hannity & McCain...As they say "What Morans!"

Yes I remember the newsreel of Reagan boldly marching with Bonzo, or possibly Shirley Temple in tow to bump Chamberlain out of the way and lay Hitler flat! What a moment in history! What a man, a God really.

...they are completely ignorant of Iran's history, and have no business commenting at all."

-why limit it to IRAN'S history??????????

They ARE not ignorant of history, they just are lieing about, inventing, and misrepresenting it to prove their points.

Jose Ortega y Gassett said, "history is an enthusiastic attempt at resurrecting the past." I see no enthusiasm, no resurrection, and no past in this history. Just fantasy.

"We're talking about the same Ronald Reagan who sold Iran's regime weapons and sent Rumsfeld to Iraq to get chummy with Saddam Hussein after the Butcher of Baghdad used chemical weapons to attack civilians in his own country."

That's different.

BTW, interesting irony that our ship intercepting the NK ship is the "USS John McCain." His dad? Him, for chrissake?

USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) is named after both Adm. John S. McCain, Sr., and Adm. John S. McCain, Jr. (that is, the father and grandfather of Sen. John S. McCain III.)

As a student of history (at Berkeley, no less) I remember reading about Reagan dropping tear gas on Cal students and thinking, "Golly, that doesn't sound like the icon I know." So, I did some research and discovered good old Ronny earned the right to gas a bunch of hippies by fighting on the shores of Iwo Jima. It was his experience in North Africa demolishing Rommel's tanks that gave him the expertise he later passed on to Yeltsin and that guy in Tiananmen Square. It was Ronald Reagan slugging through the maze of Hedgerows, across Europe and marching through the snow to fight the Nazis in the Ardennes. I looked deeper into the past and learned Reagan was there in the trenches of the Western Front, which was all quiet except for his captivating singing voice, the dulcet tones inspiring thousands of brave young soldiers to fight on against the wretched Huns. It was Reagan who counseled Sherman as he scorched his path through Georgia. It was Reagan, there by the side of Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans, who brought victory to a young America during the War of 1812. It was Reagan, with a little help from George Washington, who defeated the cowardly British battle after bloody battle during the Revolution. (Fortunately, other students of history have discovered how important Reagan was to this nation's founding and re-named Washington's airport after Ronny). And who could forget the tales of Reagan and Benjamin Franklin experimenting with electricity and building new wood-burning stoves (if there was any justice in the world, we'd re-name Franklin stoves Reagan stoves). Sometimes glossed over is Reagan's involvement in the Jamestown Settlement, not to mention the establishment of the other colonies. He was in high demand due to his time under the tutelage of Christopher Columbus, although, truth-be-told, their roles should have been reversed considering the time Reagan spent cruising the Atlantic with Leif Ericson. Then there was Ronald Reagan's finest moment, drafting the words (and blocking the scene) for the St. Crispin's Day speech which inspired those few, those lucky few.
I could go on forever and anon singing the praises of St. Ronny. Who can begrudge a few lucky Senators a few moments of reverie, according the legend his due. I begrudge no one their right to bow down before the Almighty Reagan, clearly no greater man ever lived. If only he were here today, he'd walk down the streets of Tehran, right to the door of Ahmadinejad, and give Mahmoud the stern talking-to he needs. One word from the mouth of Ronald Reagan and all these problems would drift into the ether like so much tear gas.

S. Waybright: "... and opened a can of whoop-ass on the Spanish Conquistadors when they bombed Pearl Harbor."

Don't be silly. It was the Luftwaffe.

As we all know, there must be documented miracles in a holy man's history in order to elevate his status to Saint.

Thank you, dear commenters for the background on how this man became Saint Ronnie the Prophet of the Conservatives.

Jeff Wenker:

It was more than just the hippies Ronald Reagan disliked. He hated the liberal bastion that was Berkeley and set out to weaken it in any way he could.

As Governor, he attacked it financially: he deflected funding from the university to the state colleges, declared them universities and more worthy of support.

On campus, there was teargas--lots of it--in response to anti-war rallies there. Its use escalated things considerably. It became student-hippie opposition to local and state authority, not just the war. The animosity was mutual: police hit protesters over the head with billy clubs and left them unconscious and bleeding in the streets. Protesters threw rocks. Police shot and killed a protester. Protests continued over the shooting. Armed National Guard troops were stationed on the street corners and controlled access to all streets in the area south of campus. Military helicopters flew over the streets inside the area. No one entered or left the area without permission. This remained the situation for some time.

That's how Ronald Reagan handled dissent.

impartial,
Yes. All that and a bag of chips. We're not even going to get started on Ollie and Poindexter and whats-her-name (Fawn?) The reality scoffs at the fiction.

McCain and his ilk wish Obama had the Reagan-like "strength" to call down tear gas amongst mosque spires as it was in the shadow of the Campanile.

Thank whatever god you worship that he and his crowd lost in November.