Final Word from Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Lubomír Zaorálek of ČSSD has been making the rounds of the media and talking about how lucky the Czechs are that they turned down the U.S.'s missile-defense radar system 15 years ago. "We would be the first target of a Russian nuclear strike," he told Seznam Zprávy. But why? The radar wasn't targeted at Russia at all, according to two U.S. presidents. As part of a meeting in Prague with Pres. Václav Klaus and PM Mirek Topolánek on June 5, 2007, George W. Bush even proposed to Russia that it cooperate on missile defense as a way to deal with the "true threats." And then when Barack Obama announced on Sept. 17, 2009, that he was scrapping the plans for the CR and Poland, he said that the "clear and consistent focus [had] been the threat posed by Iran's ballistic missile program," not Russia. Yet Zaorálek is now claiming that a third U.S. president, Joe Biden, told him while he was VP that the missile defense was one big fraud and that Biden even gave him the names of those who were going to line their pockets from it. Zaorálek didn't name any names, not wanting to become the first target of a nuclear strike. [ Czech Republic United States ]