by Brent Budowsky

When McCain said during the debate that Ronald Reagan refused to negotiate with the Soviets until Gorbachev has instituted reforms, McCain had the facts and the truth exactly backwards. Shortly after the attempted assassination of Reagan — shortly after he assumed office — Reagan wrote a personal plea to Leonid Brezhnev calling for a new era of reconciliation and hoping for diplomatic negotiations to achieve it.

I am linking here a story from Time magazine that includes the first draft of the letter Reagan wrote to Brezhnev, in his own handwriting, with his plea for negotiations.

John McCain simply does not know what he is talking about. In fact, not only did Reagan write to Brezhnev in his own handwriting, not only did Reagan send a final version of the letter that was released in 1990, Reagan said, famously, that he wanted diplomacy to improve relations but Soviet leaders kept dying on him before he could achieve it.

Read on..