Shimon Peres Quotes
I joined the army as a private. I was offered a rank at that time, but I refused. I preferred to remain a private. First of all, I wasn't taken by ranks, and before I knew it, they put me in the most sensitive positions anyway.
Peres, Shimon. Interview. Academy of Achievement, 28 Feb. 2003.
At the height of the Watergate scandal, the president wanted special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired, because Cox was developing evidence against the president. The attorney general, Elliot Richardson, refused to fire Cox and resigned. The chief of staff then turned to the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, who also refused and resigned. Finally, the Solicitor General, next in line of authority, agreed to fire the special prosecutor. These events happened on a Saturday night and became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre”. This event persuaded most Americans that Nixon was guilty of felonies and was desperately trying to cover things up. Congress would include “obstruction of justice” in it’s list of crimes that they would have impeached Nixon for had he not resigned.
Ataturk was a young major at the time commanding troops of a weak and corrupt Ottoman regime. However a combined English and French (the strongest military powers in Europe) invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula threatened to capture the Turkish capital, Constantinople. Ataturk alone rallied the Turkish defenders and fought the invaders to a standoff in long drawn out battle with huge casualties on both sides. Ataturk became a national hero. Although Ataturk thereafter was very reluctant to use military force or endanger troops, the thing he always thought worth the supreme sacrifice (including his own) was the independence and sovereignty of the nation. See {584502} for his continuing belief in this type of sacrifice.
Shimon Peres was an Israeli politician who served both as ninth President of Israel, (2007–2014) and Prime Minister of Israel, as well as Interim Prime Minister. He was a member of twelve cabinets in a political career spanning nearly 70 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, was in office continuously until 2007, when he became President, being in that role for another seven years. At the time of his retirement in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state. He was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation.
