Was the fall of the Berlin Wall staged for teevee?

[Atman]

Bush seems to think so. I just saw a clip of him making a speech yesterday, saying the fall of the statue of Saddam would go down in history as one of the great moments of liberty, just like the Berlin Wall was. Really? If BushCo gets to write the history books, sure. Hopefully, the TRUTH will be in the history books, though. What a concept, eh Bush?

[htuttle]

1. No, it wasn't even planned

As I recall, some guy showed up with a hammer, which gave a lot of other people the idea, and there you had it. There was no official plan to destroy the wall that night -- it just sort of happened after they decided to open the border, and once it got going they decided not to stop it. Ultimately, it was probably due to whatever guards were working the East German side of the border just deciding they had had enough, I guess, and wouldn't stop the destruction of the wall

I think the immediate impetus for those conditions that night came from the Czechs opening their border up to East Germans (and they had already opened up the Czech border to the West), thereby making the wall sort of pointless (since East Germans could now leave via Czechoslovakia).

[SouthernDem2004]

2. Yea, I remember watching it live on TV...

They first started with little hammers and barely put a dent in it. It took a while to put a hole in it. Definitely not staged.

[NYC2099]

3. If you ever saw the East German (gov't sponsored) news update

from that night - You saw this politburo guy very matter-of-factly announcing towards the end of the telecast; that it will be possible for anyone to cross the border check and enter West Germany. He looked very confused after reading it. Then you hear a voice from someone on the set ask 'When?'. He looks back at the sheet of paper and says "I believe immediately". About a 1/2 hour later, there were a few thousand people lined up at the border....and the rest is history. It was definately not planned.

[Atman]

4. I should have had my Sarcasm Indicator on

Look, I realize it wasn't planned. I was actually commenting on Bush's vision that his phoney tumbling of the Saddam statue was on the same historical magnitude as the Berlin Wall crumbling. Possibly, I suppose, but I'd bet it would be for reasons entirely different from those in Bush delusion megalomaniacal head.