October 2003: In Response to Brzezinski Speech, Former Ambassador Wonders ‘Who Would Now Ever Take an American President at His Word?’

In a speech, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski observes that in 1963, during the Cuban missile crisis between the US and the USSR, Secretary of State Dean Acheson offered to show French President Charles de Gaulle satellite photographs of Soviet missiles in Cuba to support President Kennedy’s request for French support in case the US needed to go to war with the US. De Gaulle replied that he did not need to see the photos, that Kennedy’s word was good enough for him. In April 2004, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, reflecting on Brzezinski’s words and the raft of lies and misinformation that led the US to invade and occupy Iraq, will write, “Who would now ever take an American president at his word, in the way that de Gaulle once did?” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 426]