Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 23. december 2008 / Time Line December 23, 2008
Version 3.522. December 2008, 24. December 2008
12/23/2008
Amerikansk lov mod børnesoldater
Den amerikanske kongres vedtager the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008, An Act
To prohibit the recruitment or use of child soldiers, to designate persons who recruit or use child soldiers as inadmissible aliens, to allow the deportation of persons who recruit or use child soldiers, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled.
- http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/135981.pdf
12/23/2008
National Security Archive Update, December 23, 2008
"We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North
Vietnam."
Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger Telephone
Conversations
Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger "Telcons" Provides Inside
View of Government Decision-Making;
Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign Leaders, Journalists,
and Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years
Washington, DC, December 23, 2008 - Amidst a massive bombing
campaign over North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon
candidly shared their evident satisfaction at the "shock treatment"
of American B-52s, according to a declassified transcript of their
telephone conversation published for the first time today by the
National Security Archive. "They dropped a million pounds of
bombs," Kissinger briefed Nixon. "A million pounds of bombs," Nixon
exclaimed. "Goddamn, that must have been a good strike." The
conversation, secretly recorded by both Kissinger and Nixon without
the other's knowledge, reveals that the President and his national
security advisor shared a belief in 1972 that the war could still
be won. "That shock treatment [is] cracking them," Nixon declared.
"I tell you the thing to do is pour it in there every place we
can... just bomb the hell out of them." Kissinger optimistically
predicted that, if the South Vietnamese government didn't collapse,
the U.S. would eventually prevail: "I mean if as a country we keep
our nerves, we are going to make it."
The transcript of the April 15, 1972, phone conversation is one of
over 15,500 documents in a unique, comprehensively-indexed set of
the telephone conversations (telcons) of Henry A.
Kissinger--perhaps the most famous and controversial U.S. official
of the second half of the 20th century. Unbeknownst to the rest of
the U.S. government, Kissinger secretly taped his incoming and
outgoing phone conversations and had his secretary transcribe them.
After destroying the tapes, Kissinger took the transcripts with him
when he left office in January 1977, claiming they were "private
papers." In 2001, the National Security Archive initiated legal
proceedings to force the government to recover the telcons, and
used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the declassification
of most of them. After a three-year project to catalogue and index
the transcripts, which total over 30,000 pages, this on-line
collection was published by the Digital National Security Archive
(ProQuest) this week.
Kissinger never intended these papers to be made public, according
to William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive,
who edited the collection, Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A
Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977. "Kissinger's
conversations with the most influential personalities of the world
rank right up there with the Nixon tapes as the most candid,
revealing and valuable trove of records on the exercise of
executive power in Washington," Burr stated. For reporters,
scholars, and students, Burr noted, "Kissinger created a gift to
history that will be a tremendous primary source for generations to
come." He called on the State Department to declassify over 800
additional telcons that it continues to withhold on the grounds of
executive privilege.
The documents shed light on every aspect of Nixon-Ford diplomacy,
including U.S.-Soviet détente, the wars in Southeast Asia,
the 1969 Biafra crisis, the 1971 South Asian crisis, the October
1973 Middle East War, and the 1974 Cyprus Crisis, among many other
developments. Kissinger's dozens of interlocutors include political
and policy figures, such as Presidents Nixon and Ford, Secretary of
State William Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Robert S.
McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin; journalists and
publishers, such as Ted Koppel, James Reston, and Katherine Graham;
and such show business friends as Frank Sinatra. Besides the
telcons, the Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record
of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977 includes audio tape of Kissinger's
telephone conversations with Richard Nixon that were recorded
automatically by the secret White House taping system, some of
which Kissinger's aides were unable to transcribe.
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