Advocacy journalists in the national news media showed their bias against Ronald Reagan and against U.S. defenses by their reporting about the so-called breaking of the SALT II Treaty. This happened when a B-52 bomber, equipped with cruise missiles, was recently put into active service.
Newspapers and network television constantly laced their reporting with emotion-charged terms calculated to lead the American people to believe the false proposition that the Reagan Administration has violated a treaty. The page one story in the New York Times was headlined “U.S. exceeds limit set in 1979 accord on strategic arms.”
This so-called news article even presumed to ascribe ulterior motives to the Reagan Administration, quoting one anti-defense Congressman as charging that the Reagan Administration took this action only in order to shore up conservatives’ support at a difficult time and to prove that it is acting decisively. Just to be sure that readers didn’t overlook this point, the Congressman’s picture was printed with a caption that repeated the slur on Reagan’s motives.
The national network newscasts repeatedly used such terms as “violated” SALT II and “exceeded the SALT II limits.” To give verisimilitude to this false reporting, CBS-TV showed old news clips of Jimmy Carter signing the SALT II Treaty with Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev on June 18, 1979.
This type of news reporting is dishonest, biased, and reflects the consuming desire of the national media elite to achieve their liberal policy goals by the way they select and frame the news. The media’s success in manipulating public opinion about SALT II is aided by the American people’s general lack of knowledge about the United States Constitution.
Under the U.S. Constitution, a treaty is not a treaty unless it is signed by the President AND ratified by a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate. The SALT II Treaty is NOT a treaty at all under U.S. law because it was never ratified, and no amount of showing Jimmy Carter fraternizing with Brezhnev can make it a treaty.
Article 19 of SALT II states that the treaty “shall be subject to ratification in accordance with the constitutional procedures of each Party.” Clearly, the Soviets were on notice that anything Jimmy Carter signed was NOT a treaty unless the Senate ratified it, so it was disingenuous of Mikhail Gorbachev to attack Reagan for ignoring SALT’s so-called limits, and it was mischievous of the media to give him air time to act out his tantrum.
Pretending that the United States should obey the terms of the SALT II Treaty is like a woman demanding that a man be faithful to her even though he never married her. If the marriage ceremony was never completed, she is just shouting in the wind.
The news media try to rationalize their proposition that the United States has some kind of obligation to abide by the SALT II terms by saying that the Soviet Union declared it would abide by the treaty anyway. So what! That’s like the woman who was left standing at the altar saying that she will be faithful to the man who got away. That doesn’t create any obligation on him.
When Ronald Reagan campaigned for the Presidency, he labeled SALT II “fatally flawed.” The recent newspaper stories should have been headlined, “Reagan fulfills campaign promise to reject SALT II.” There are so many reasons why SALT II was opposed by Ronald Reagan, the Senate, and the American people, that it is no wonder Gorbachev is eager to lock us into its unfavorable terms.
SALT II defined “bombers” so as to include our B-52s but to exclude the new Soviet Backfire bomber, which is 15 years newer. Under SALT II, the Soviets can keep building as many new advanced bombers as they want, but the United States would not be permitted to do likewise unless we scrap an existing bomber or missile launcher for every bomber we build.
Article V set up a phony equality by creating a sublimit of 1,320 MIRV-equipped ICBM and SLBM launchers plus cruise-equipped heavy bombers, but not limiting the carrying capacity of either the individual weapons or the total weapons force. That is like saying limiting two trucking firms to a fictitious equality of 1,320 “delivery vehicles,” even though one firm has all 50-ton tractor-trailers and the other has only one-ton pickup trucks. Within this so-called limit of 1,320, the Soviets have 820 “heavy” ICBMs (many of which can deliver 50 times more bang than our ICBMs), whereas our ICBMs are all defined as “light.” Anyway, if anyone “broke” the SALT II Treaty it was the Soviets. Our government has confirmed 22 SALT II violations by the Soviets. But I’ll bet you didn’t read that in any of the news stories telling about President Reagan exceeding the limits.
