hDSC00724.JPG
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/planetary-conjunction-venus-jupiter-mars-converge-in-morning-sky-1.3291162
CBCnews
Planetary conjunction: Venus, Jupiter, Mars converge in morning sky
3 planets so close together are 'rare and beautiful sight'
CBC News Posted: Oct 27, 2015 4:17 PM ET Last Updated: Oct 27, 2015 4:29 PM ET
Three planets will converge for a beautiful close encounter in the eastern sky about an hour before dawn for the next couple of days.
This week, Venus and Jupiter — the two brightest objects in the night sky after the moon — and Mars appear at their closest together in the sky for 2015, forming a tight triangle near the constellation Leo in the early morning. Such close gatherings of planets are sometimes called planetary conjunctions.
Because all three planets are within five degrees of one another, if you look at them with binoculars, you'll be able to see all three at the same time, something NASA calls "a rare and beautiful sight."
If you steady your binoculars with a tripod, you may even be able to see three or four of Jupiter's biggest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, NASA says.
Venus is by far the brightest of the three planets, followed by Jupiter. Both will still be visible very close to sunrise.
To view Mars, though, you might need to get up an hour or more before sunrise, advises the astronomy website EarthSky, as the Red Planet is much fainter than Venus.
The three planets have been gathered closely since Oct. 24 and will stay in a tight triangle until Oct. 29 (so don't worry too much if it's cloudy tomorrow morning — you'll get another chance). After that, they will gradually move away from one another.
According to the astronomy site EarthSky, there won't be another such "planetary trio" again until January 2021.
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie8.html
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
LILY: You do have books in the twenty-fourth century?
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: August 5, 2006
Assuming that I was shot down in Feb. 1986 by Libya.
This excerpt below about Jack Dempsey seems relevant to me. The wording here also makes me wonder, and I am sick of not knowing, whether he was feeling some guilt about me being missing. Assuming that any of my imagination is even true. I am sick and tired of not knowing!!!!
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/22686b.htm
Address to the Nation on National Security
February 26, 1986
One cannot sit in this office reviewing intelligence on the military threat we face, making decisions from arms control to Libya to the Philippines, without having that concern for America's security weigh constantly on your mind. We know that peace is the condition under which mankind was meant to flourish. Yet peace does not exist of its own will. It depends on us, on our courage to build it and guard it and pass it on to future generations. George Washington's words may seem hard and cold today, but history has proven him right again and again. ``To be prepared for war,'' he said, ``is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.'' Well, to those who think strength provokes conflict, Will Rogers had his own answer. He said of the world heavyweight champion of his day: ``I've never seen anyone insult Jack Dempsey.''
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 05 August 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: - posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 9:39 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Thursday 09 October 2014 - http://hvom.blogspot.com/2014/10/and-those-are-winding-sheets.html
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/26/17107085-comet-just-might-hit-mars-in-2014?lite
NBC NEWS
Comet just might hit Mars in 2014
Tuesday Feb 26, 2013 5:48 PM
By Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
There is an outside chance that a newly discovered comet might be on a collision course with Mars. Astronomers are still determining the trajectory of the comet, named C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), but at the very least, it is going to come fairly close to the Red Planet in October of 2014.
"Even if it doesn’t impact, it will look pretty good from Earth, and spectacular from Mars, probably a magnitude -4 comet as seen from Mars' surface," Australian amateur astronomer Ian Musgrave wrote.
The comet was discovered in the beginning of 2013 by comet-hunter Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. According to a discussion on the IceInSpace amateur astronomy forum, when the discovery was initially made, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona looked back over their observations to find "pre-recovery" images of the comet dating back to Dec. 8, 2012. These observations placed the orbital trajectory of comet C/2013 A1 right through Mars orbit on Oct. 19, 2014.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 09 October 2014 excerpt ends]
From 5/13/1994 ( Bill Clinton - Remarks at the Gallaudet University Commencement Ceremony ) To 10/19/2014 is 7464 days
7464 = 3732 + 3732
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/21/1976 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan the civilian and privately financed astronaut bound for deep space in his privately financed atom-pulse propulsion spaceship this day was his first landing the planet Mars and his documented and lawful exclusive claim to the territory of the planet Mars ) is 3732 days
From 5/8/1994 ( premiere US TV miniseries "Stephen King's The Stand"::miniseries premiere episode "The Plague" ) To 10/19/2014 is 7469 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/15/1986 ( the United States bombs Libya ) is 7469 days
From 10/10/1957 ( premiere US TV series episode "Sheriff of Cochise"::"Jail Break" ) To 10/19/2014 is 20828 days
20828 = 10414 + 10414
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/8/1994 ( premiere US TV miniseries "Stephen King's The Stand"::miniseries premiere episode "The Plague" ) is 10414 days
From 3/16/1991 ( my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate Columbia South Carolina ) To 10/19/2014 is 8618 days
8618 = 4309 + 4309
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 8/20/1977 ( the United States Voyager 2 spacecraft launch ) is 4309 days
From 6/27/1956 ( premiere US film "Moby Dick" ) To 6/13/2005 is 17883 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/19/2014 is 17883 days
From 11/18/1996 ( premiere US film "Star Trek: First Contact" ) To 10/19/2014 is 6544 days
6544 = 3272 + 3272
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/18/1974 ( premiere US film "Airport 1975" ) is 3272 days
From 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut ) To 10/19/2014 is 8200 days
8200 = 4100 + 4100
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/23/1977 ( premiere US TV miniseries "Roots" ) is 4100 days
http://mars.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5931
NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
03.26.2013
A Comet Heads for Mars
An artist's concept of Comet Siding Spring (2013 A1) and Mars. Closest approach to Mars is on October 19, 2014.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=50163
The American Presidency Project
William J. Clinton
XLII President of the United States: 1993-2001
Remarks at the Gallaudet University Commencement Ceremony
May 13, 1994
Thank you. Thank you so much for the warm reception and for the honorary degree.
I must tell you at the beginning that I have been deeply moved by the wonderful statements of your students, Jeanette and Andre. I think they have already said everything I could hope to say as well or better. And I wish only that I could say it to you in their language as well.
I'm delighted to be here with Dr. Jordan, whom I have admired so much, and Dr. Anderson, a native of my home State; with my great friend and your champion, Senator Tom Harkin; with many Members of Congress, including Major Owens, who will receive an honorary degree, Congressman David Bonior, Congressman Steve Gunderson, and your own Representative in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton.
I honor, too, here the presence of those in the disability rights community, the members of our own administration, but most of all, you the class of 1994, your families, and your friends. You have come to this extraordinary moment in your own life at a very special moment in the life of your country and what it stands for.
Everywhere, nations and peoples are struggling to move toward the freedom and democracy that we take for granted here. Our example is now over 200 years old, but it continues to be a powerful magnet, pulling people toward those noble goals. This week we all watched in wonder as a former prisoner stood shoulder to shoulder with his former guards to become President of a free and democratic South Africa.
Yet each day, across the globe from Bosnia to Rwanda and Burundi, and here in America in neighborhood after neighborhood, we wonder whether peace and progress will win out over the divisions of race and ethnicity, of region and religion, over the impulse of violence to conquer virtue. Each day we are barraged in the news as mutual respect and the bonds of civility are broken down a little more here at home and around the world.
It is not difficult to find in literature today many who suggest that there are large numbers of your generation who feel a sense of pessimism about the future. People in my generation worry about that. They worry whether young people will continue to try to change what is wrong, continue to take responsibility for the hard work of renewing the American community.
I wish everyone who is worried about America could see your faces today and could have heard your class speakers today. Our whole history and our own experience in this lifetime contradict the impulse to pessimism. For those who believe that nothing can change, I say, look at the experience of Rabin and Arafat as the police representing the Palestinians begin to move into Gaza and to Jericho. For those who proclaim there is no future for racial harmony and no hope in our common humanity, I say, look at the experience of Mandela and de Klerk. For those who believe that in the end people are so vulnerable to their own weakness they will not have the courage to preserve democracy and freedom, I say, look to the south of our borders where today, of almost 3 dozen nations in Latin America, all but two are ruled by democratically elected leaders.
Here at home, with all of our terrible problems, for every act of craven violence, there are 100 more acts of kindness and courage. To be sure, the work of building opportunity and community, of maintaining freedom and renewing America's hope in each and every generation is hard. And it requires of each generation a real commitment to our values, to our institutions, and to our common destiny.
The students of Gallaudet University who have struggled so mightily, first for simple dignity and then for equal opportunity, you have built yourselves, and in the process you have built for the rest of us, your fellow citizens of this country and the world, a much better world. You have regiven to all of us our hope. Gallaudet is a national treasure.
It is fitting, as Dr. Anderson said, that President Lincoln granted your charter because he understood better than others the sacrifices required to preserve a democracy amid diversity. And ultimately, Lincoln gave his life to the cause of renewing our national life. He signed your first charter in the midst of the Civil War where he had the vision to see not just farmland and a tiny school but the fact that we could use education to tear down the walls between us, to touch and improve lives and lift the spirits of those who for too long had been kept down.
Over the years, pioneers have built Gallaudet, sustained by generations of students and faculty, committed to the richness and possibility of the deaf community and the fullness of the American dream. This school stands for the renewal that all America needs today.
Lincoln's charter was an important law. But let me refer to another great president to make an equally important point, that just as important as laws are the attitudes that animate our approach to one another. The president I'm referring to is your president, King Jordan. When the Americans with Disabilities Act passed, he said, and I quote, "We now stand at the threshold of a new era for all Americans, those of us with disabilities and those of us without." He went on to say that in this pursuit, as in every pursuit of democracy, our task is to reach out and to educate each other about our possibilities, our capabilities, and who we are.
I ran for President because I thought we were standing on the threshold of a new era, just as President Jordan says. I felt we were in danger of coming apart when we ought to be coming together, of arguing too much about going left or right, when we ought to be holding hands and going forward into the future together. I grew weary of hearing people predict that my own daughter's generation would be the first generation of Americans to do less well than their parents. I was tired of hearing people say that our country's best days were behind us. I didn't believe it in 1992, and I sure don't believe it after being here with you today.
My responsibilities to you and your generation are significant. That's why all of us have worked hard to restore the economy, to reward work, to bring down the deficit, to increase our trade with other nations, to create more jobs; why we've worked to empower all Americans to compete and win in a global economy through early education and lifetime training and learning, through reforming the college loan program to open the doors of college to all Americans; why we have worked to strengthen the family through the Family and Medical Leave Act; why we have worked to create a safer America with the Brady bill and the ban on assault weapons and putting more police on the street and punishing more and preventing more crime as well.
But I say to you that, in the end, America is a country that has always been carried by its citizens, not its Government. The Government is a partner, but the people, the people realize the possibility of this country and ensure its continuation from generation to generation.
I think there is no better symbol of this than the program which I hope will be the enduring legacy of our efforts to rebuild the American community, the national service program. Six Gallaudet students, including four members of this class, will be part of our national service program, AmeriCorps' very first class of 20,000 volunteers. I am very proud of you for giving something back to your country.
By joining the Conservation Corps and committing yourselves to rebuild our Nation, by exercising your freedom and your responsibility to give something back to your country and earning something for education in return, you have embodied the renewal that America must seek. As King Jordan reminded us, Government can make good laws, and we need them. But it can't make good people. In the end, it's our values and our attitudes that make the difference. Having those values and attitudes and living by them is everyone's responsibility and our great opportunity.
Look at the changes which have occurred through that kind of effort. Because previous generations refused to be denied a place at the table simply because others thought they were different, the world is now open to those of you who graduate today. Most of you came here knowing you could be doctors, entrepreneurs, software engineers, lawyers, or cheerleaders— [laughter]—because over the years, others spoke up for you and gave you a chance to move up. And you have clearly done your part. You have made a difference. You have believed in broadening the unique world you share with each other by joining it to the community at large and letting the rest of us in on your richness, your hearts, your minds, and your possibilities. For that, we are all in your debt.
Perhaps the greatest moment in the history of this university occurred in 1988 when the community came together and said, "We will no longer accept the judgment of others about our lives and leadership in this university; these are our responsibilities, and we accept the challenge." In days, what was known as the "Deaf President Now" movement changed the way our entire country looks at deaf people. The Nation watched as you organized and built a movement of conscience unlike any other. You removed barriers of limited expectations, and our Nation saw that deaf people can do anything hearing people can, but hear.
That people's movement was a part of the American disability rights movement. Just 2 months after King Jordan took office, the Americans with Disabilities Act was introduced with the leadership of many, including my friend Tom Harkin. In 2 years it became law and proved once again that the right cause can unite us. Over partisanship and prejudice we can still come together. For the now more than 49 million Americans who are deaf or disabled, the signing of the ADA was the most important legal event in history. For almost a billion persons with disabilities around the world, it stands as a symbol of simple justice and inalienable human rights.
I believe that being deaf or having any disability is not tragic, but the stereotypes attached to it are tragic. Discrimination is tragic. Not getting a job or having the chance to reach your God-given potential because someone else is handicapped by prejudice or fear is tragic. It must not be tolerated, because none of us can afford it. We need each other, and we do not have a person to waste.
The ADA is part of the seamless web of civil rights that so many have worked for so long to build in America, a constant fabric wrapped in the hopes and aspirations of all right-thinking Americans. As your President, I pledge to see that it is fully implemented and aggressively enforced in schools, in the workplace, in Government, in public places. It is time to move from exclusion to inclusion, from dependence to independence, from paternalism to empowerment.
I mention briefly now only two of the many tasks still before me as your President and you as citizens. Our health care system today denies or discriminates in coverage against 81 million Americans who are part of families with what we call preexisting conditions, including Americans with disabilities. It must be changed. If we want to open up the workplace and if we are serious about giving every American the chance to live up to his or her potential, then we cannot discriminate against which workers get health care and how much it costs. If you can do the job, you ought to be able to get covered. It's as a simple as that. And that simple message is one I implore you to communicate to the Congress. We have fooled around for 60 years. Your time has come. You are ready. You are leaving this university. You want a full, good life and you do not wish to be discriminated against on health care grounds. Pass health care reform in 1994.
The last thing I wish to say that faces us today also affects your future. The Vice President has worked very hard on what is called the information superhighway. We know that America is working hard to be the technological leader of the information age. The technologies in which we are now investing will open up vast new opportunities to all of our people. But information, which will be education, which will be employment, which will be income, which will be possibility, must flow to all Americans on terms of equal accessibility without regard to physical condition. And we are committed to doing that.
Finally, let me just say a very personal word. A few days ago when we celebrated Mother's Day, it was my first Mother's Day without my mother. And so I have been thinking about what I should say to all of you, those of you who are lucky enough still to have your parents and perhaps some of you who do not. On graduation, it is important for us to remember that none of us ever achieves anything alone. I dare say, as difficult as your lives have been, you are here today not only because of your own courage and your own effort but because someone loved you and believed in you and helped you along the way. I hope today that you will thank them and love them and, in so doing, remember that all across this country perhaps our biggest problem is that there are too many children, most of whom can hear just fine, who never hear the kind of love and support that every person needs to do well. And we must commit ourselves to giving that to those children.
So I say, there may be those who are pessimistic about our future. And all of us should be realistic about our challenges. I used to say that I still believed in a place called Hope, the little town in which I was born. Today I say, I know the future of this country will be in good hands because of a place called Gallaudet. For 125 years, young people have believed in themselves, their families, their country, and their future with the courage to dream and the willingness to work to realize those dreams. You have inspired your President today, and a generation. And I say to you, good luck and Godspeed.
NOTE: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to Jeanette Anne Pereira and Andre Laurent Thibeault, students; I. King Jordan, president; and Glenn B. Anderson, chairman, board of trustees, Gallaudet University.
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition
Chapter 43
Retarded, Nick thought. I can’t talk and he can’t read. For a moment he was utterly nonplussed.
“Holy gee, mister, but you took a tumble!” Tom Cullen exclaimed. In a way, it was the first time for both of them. “My laws, didn’t you just!”
Nick nodded. Replaced the pad and pen. Put a hand over his mouth again and shook his head. Cupped his hands over his ears and shook his head. Placed his left hand against his throat and shook his head.
Cullen grinned, puzzled. “Got a toothache? I had one once. Gee, it hurt. Didn’t it just? My laws!”
Nick shook his head and went through his dumbshow again. Cullen guessed earache this time. Nick threw his hands up and went over to his bike. The paint, was scraped, but it didn’t seem hurt. He got on and pedaled a little way up the street. Yes, it was all right. Cullen jogged alongside, smiling happily. His eyes never left Nick. He hadn’t seen anyone for most of a week.
“Don’t you feel like talkin?” he asked, but Nick didn’t look around or appear to have heard. Tom tugged at his sleeve and repeated his question.
The man on the bike put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. Tom frowned. Now the man had put his bike on its kickstand and was looking at the storefronts. He seemed to see what he wanted, because he went over to the sidewalk and then to Mr. Norton’s drugstore. If he wanted to go in there it was just too bad, because the drug was locked up. Mr. Norton had left town. Just about everybody had locked up and left town, it seemed like, except for Mom and her friend Mrs. Blakely, and they were both dead.
Now the no-talking-man was trying the door. Tom could have told him it was no use even though the OPEN sign was on the door. The OPEN sign was a liar. Too bad, because Tom would dearly have loved an ice cream soda. It was a lot better than the whiskey, which had made him feel good at first and then made him sleepy and then had made his head ache fit to split. He had gone to sleep to get away from the headache but he had had a lot of crazy dreams about a man in a black suit like the one that Revrunt Deiffenbaker always wore. The man in the black suit chased him through the dreams. He seemed like a very bad man to Tom. The only reason he had gone to drinking in the first place was because he wasn’t supposed to, his daddy had told him that, and Mom too, but now everyone was gone, so what? He would if he wanted to.
But what was the no-talking-man doing now? Picked up the litter basket from the sidewalk and he was going to… what? Break Mr. Norton’s window? CRASH! By God and by damn if he didn’t! And now he was reaching through, unlocking the door…
“Hey, mister, you can’t do that!” Tom cried, his voice throbbing with outrage and excitement. “That’s illegal! M-O-O-N and that spells il -legal. Don’t you know—”
But the man was already inside and he never turned around.
“What are you, anyway, deaf?” Tom called indignantly. “My laws! Are you…”
He trailed off. The animation and excitement left his face. He was the robot with the pulled plug again. In May it had not been an, uncommon sight to see Feeble Tom like this. He would be walking along the street, looking into shop windows with that eternally happy expression on his slightly rounded Scandahoovian face, and all of a sudden he would stop dead and go blank. Someone might shout, “There goes Tom! ” and there would be laughter. If Tom’s daddy was with him he would scowl and elbow Tom, perhaps even sock him repeatedly on the shoulder or the back until Tom came to life. But Tom’s daddy had been around less and less over the first half of 1988 because he was stepping out with a redheaded waitress who worked at Boomer’s Bar & Grille. Her name was DeeDee Packalotte (and weren’t there some jokes about that name), and about a year ago she and Don Cullen run off together. They had been seen just once, in a cheap fleabag motel not far away, in Slapout, Oklahoma, and that had been the last of them.
Most folks took Tom’s sudden blankouts as a further sign of retardation, but they were actually instances of nearly normal thinking. The human thinking process is based (or so the psychologists tell us) on deduction and induction, and the retarded person is incapable of making these deductive and inductive leaps. There are lines down somewhere inside, circuits shorted out, fouled switches. Tom Cullen was not severely retarded, and he was capable of making simple connections. Every now and then—during his blankouts—he would be capable of making a more sophisticated inductive or deductive connection. He would feel the possibility of making such a connection the way a normal person will sometimes feel a name dancing “right on the tip of his tongue.” When it happened, Tom would dismiss his real world, which was nothing more or less than an instant-by-instant flow of sensory input, and go into his mind. He would be like a man in a darkened unfamiliar room who holds the plug-end of a lampcord in one hand and who goes crawling around on the floor, bumping into things and feeling with his free hand for the electrical socket. And if he found it he didn’t always—there would be a burst of illumination and he would see the room (or the idea) plain. Tom was a sensory creature. A list of his favorite things would have included the taste of an ice cream soda at Mr. Norton’s fountain, watching a pretty girl in a short dress waiting on the corner to cross the street, the smell of lilac, the feel of silk. But more than any of these things he loved the intangible, he loved that moment when the connection would be made, the switch cleared (at least momentarily), the light would go on in the dark room. It didn’t always happen; often the connection eluded him. This time it didn’t.
He had said, What are you, anyway, deaf?
The man hadn’t acted like he heard what Tom was saying except for those times he had been looking right at him. And the man hadn’t said anything to him, not even hi. Sometimes people didn’t answer Tom when he asked questions because something in his face told them he was soft upstairs. But when that happened, the person who wouldn’t answer looked mad or sad or kind of blushy. This man didn’t act like that—he had given Tom a circle made of his thumb and forefinger and Tom knew that meant Okey Dokey… but still he didn’t talk.
Hands over his ears and a shake of his head.
Hands over his mouth and the same.
Hands over his neck and the same again.
The room lit up: connection made.
“My laws!” Tom said, and the animation came back into his face. His bloodshot eyes glowed. He rushed into Norton’s Drugstore, forgetting that it was illegal to do so. The no-talking-man was squirting something that smelled like Bactine onto cotton and was then wiping the cotton on his forehead.
“Hey mister!” Tom said, rushing up. The no-talking-man didn’t turn around. Tom was momentarily puzzled, and then he remembered. He tapped Nick on the shoulder and Nick turned. “You’re deaf n dumb, right? Can’t hear! Can’t talk! Right?”
Nick nodded. And to him, Tom’s reaction was nothing short of amazing. He jumped into the air and clapped his hands wildly.
“I thought of it! Hooray for me! I thought of it myself! Hooray for Tom Cullen!”
http://www.tv.com/shows/stephen-kings-the-stand/the-plague-1178981/
tv.com
Stephen King's The Stand Season 1 Episode 1
The Plague
Aired Sunday 12:00 AM May 08, 1994 on ABC
AIRED: 5/8/94
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-06-20/news/8602060350_1_moammar-gadhafi-white-house-wife
SunSentinel
Gadhafi: Reagan Tried To Kill Me
June 20, 1986 By MARIE COLVIN, United Press International
TRIPOLI, Libya -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi disclosed Thursday that he was at home when U.S. planes bombed Tripoli in April and that he helped rescue his wife and children while ``the house was coming down around us.``
In the first interview with a Western reporter since the April 15 raid, Gadhafi accused President Reagan -- who ordered the attack in retaliation for Gadhafi`s alleged support of terrorism -- of trying to kill him.
Gadhafi said reconciliation between Libya and the United States is impossible so long as Reagan is in the White House.
``I have nothing to say to him,`` he said, ``because he is mad. He is foolish. He is an Israeli dog.``
But Gadhafi said he had no plans to attack the United States or U.S. targets.
During a 45-minute interview at his fortified Bab al-Azizzia compound, Gadhafi said he was in his house nearby with his wife Safiya, 32, when the bombs began falling.
``My wife was ill that night,`` he recalled. ``She had a slipped disc and the doctor had strapped her into her bed. Our children were sleeping.
``The attack began then. I was very surprised, because I could not imagine how they could attack a head of state in his house with his family. It has not happened before in modern history.
``I tried to rescue my family because the house was coming down around us. I tried to untie my wife and to get the children.
``Was Reagan trying to kill me? Of course. The attack was concentrated on my house and I was in my house.``
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/mars/vikinglander2-2.jpg
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 05:41 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Wednesday 28 October 2015
