The Washington Post's Walter Pincus has extracted some other items of interest from Robert Gates' book, Duty (noted earlier here). These include the forgotten fact that the Bush administration discussed withdrawing the "surge" in Iraq even as it was getting underway, much as the Obama administration would do more emphatically vis a vis Afghanistan. (Similarly, a withdrawal date from Iraq was set by Bush.)

Also this:

Another Gates disclosure provides another lesson: information about Syria building in 2005 what turned out to be a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium during the Bush administration.

Though the United States considered Syria a high-priority intelligence target, it was Israel that supplied the compelling evidence in spring 2007 about its nuclear activities. Gates, a former CIA director, said this represented “a significant failure on...

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This week's syndicated column

Two Iraqi men in their 20s have been convicted of a bloody sex crime in Colorado that left the victim, a woman in her 50s, in need of immediate surgery and a colostomy bag. Three other Iraqi men, also in their 20s,were convicted on lesser charges as accessories.

Four points set this case apart. First, there is its brutality: Law enforcement officers describe the July 2012 assault as "rare" and "horrific" and "one of the worst in Colorado history." Second, all of these men once assisted U.S. military forces in Iraq as informants and interpreters. Third, every one of them received permanent residency status in the U.S., due in part to efforts made by U.S. military members on their behalf. Fourth, this extraordinary case and the ties that bind it to the U.S. military and the war in Iraq have received little coverage.

Most of what the public knows...

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At Breitbart News today -- the 64th anniversay of the conviction of Alger Hiss, by the way -- M. Stanton Evans has published a brand new article, "`McCarthyism by the Numbers." Besides laying to rest the canard that Sen. Joseph McCarthy's investigations only netted a "few small fry," it concretely strengthens the defense of American Betrayal against all those tired, postmodern, juju-charges of "McCarthyism."

Which isn't to say, of course, that I don't take "McCarthy's heiress" as a compliment.

"`McCARTHYISM' BY THE NUMBERS"

by M. Stanton Evans

The orchestrated attack on Diana West’s important book, American Betrayal, has been brutal and unseemly, but in one respect at...

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In 2012, five Iraqi men in their 20s were arrested on charges in Colorado related to the extremely bloody rape and assault of a woman, who has been variously described as elderly or middle-aged. It was a sex crime so violent law enforcement describe it as "rare" and "horrific" and "one of the worst in Colorado history."

Finally, the last defendant in the crime now comes to trial. His name is Jasim Ramadon, above in orange. A decade ago, Jasim, known as "Steve-O," helped US troops i.d. Saddam loyalists, including his father.  

UPDATE: Jasim Ramadon has been convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault.

As the disturbing realization...

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After endorsing the gubernatorial run of conservative California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Tea Party favorite who opposes illegal immigration, actress Maria Conchita Alonso "abruptly" left the cast of a San Francisco play this week.

From the local CBS story:

The actress was to perform next month at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District in a Spanish-language version of “The Vagina Monologues,” scheduled for a run from February 14th through 17th. The show is being produced by none other than Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

“We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately,” Lopez told KPIX 5. She said Alonso abruptly resigned from the cast on Friday, given the backlash on the immigration issue.

“Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what...

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One of my favorite sites, Tundra Tabloids, is currently under a massive DDOS assault launched by enemies of free speech. No worries. After armoring up, TT will be back online.  

I've been mulling how -- or even whether -- to mark the appearance of six entries on American Betrayal in the January 2014 issue of The New Criterion. The issue contains an essay by editor Roger Kimball and five letters, all devoted to my book, or, rather, to  Andrew C. McCarthy's review of American Betrayal, which appeared in the December 2013 issue. Why so much ink? The answer is simple. Andy McCarthy, the celebrated former federal prosecutor, noted author and commentator, had the temerity to write positive things about my book in his December review. Like a clanging bell to Pavlov's dog, this review drove Ronald Radosh and Conrad Black to churn out letters to the editor explaining to McCarthy the error of his ways. By my count, this becomes the fifth, maybe even the sixth piece by Radosh, and the fourth or fifth by Black. Harvey Klehr and John Haynes also write in general protest. I...

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All I can say is that it's been way too long since Tom Stone has published a guest-blog here.

"Regarding Michael O’Sullivan’s review of Lone Survivor in the January 10, 2014 Washington Post, Weekend Section."

by Tom Stone

I don’t know if Mr. O’Sullivan has ever been in the military, let alone in combat.  Let us not get into an argument over whether we should go to war, for whatever reason, this movie is not about that. War is a terrible thing, has been for thousands of years, an unavoidable consequence of man’s ignorance, of man’s inhumanity to man. War is in our genes and will never cease.  I dare anyone to argue that. I have seen war in Vietnam, and like my father and my father-in-law in WWII, and my son in Iraq and Afghanistan, experienced the worst...

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March 1940 NKVD memo by Beria, released by Russia in 2010, proposing mass execution of thousands of Polish POWs. Signed approval by Stalin, K. Voroshilov, V. Molotov, and A. Mikoyan. Signatures in left margin are M. Kalinin and L. Kaganovich. Soviet guilt for this massacre was known to US and GB beginning in 1943, but Allies joined Stalin's conspiracy of silence.

This week's syndicated column

The power of history to speak to us depends on our ability to hear it. When we are deaf to its secrets, or too confused or conditioned to decipher them, we miss the opportunity to be empowered by them. We thus fail to overcome the propaganda our own government, like the dictatorships we revile, has all too often deceived us with.

I am struck by this aura of static around a sensational new discovery. Researcher and author...

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RLN.fm, a news site described to me as "Russian libertarian" (yes, you read right), has included me among 20 "important American conservatives." I tossed the site's Russian-language write-up into Google Translate to learn this recognition comes due to  American Betrayal.

It is wonderful to see how far and wide American Betrayal has already traveled -- as far as Australia, where a positive review is now the top featured article online in the January 2014 issue of Quadrant, edited by Keith Windshuttle, and now even to Russia. I recently learned that a Polish-language translation of American...

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DVIDS photo by Lance Cpl. Jason Morrison of Marines patrolling Sangin, 2012 

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Excuse me while I defend President Obama.

This doesn’t happen often, if ever at all. But this Robert Gates story, whipping through Washington like wildfire, feels like smoke in our eyes.

It all started with an article by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post about the former secretary of defense’s new memoir, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.” Gates, Woodward writes, had concluded “by early 2010 (that) the president ‘doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war (in Afghanistan) to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.’”

Getting out: my one, undoubtedly accidental, convergence with Obama. But I digress.

Woodward continues: “Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates...

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An interesting new review of American Betrayal from the January 2014 issue of the Australian journal Quadrant, edited by Keith Windshuttle.

"America, the Big Dumb Ox"

by Steven Kates

I have long known Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics, of which the third had always been something of a mystery. One and two I have seen for myself, but the third remained unclear: 

1. Everyone is conservative about what they know best.

2. Any organisation not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

3. The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation...

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This week's syndicated column

The reporting on China’s commemoration of the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong all seemed to come from the same angle. Festivities were “understated” (Associated Press). Events were “scaled back” (Reuters). The following headline, which ran on the Fox News website over the AP story, is typical: “China marks Mao’s 120th birthday with low-key celebrations.” The story opens: “China’s leaders bowed three times before a statue of Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of his birth Thursday in carefully controlled celebrations that also sought to uphold the market-style reforms that he would have opposed.”

Forget for now the “market-style reforms.” Only three times? How “muted”! That, by the way, was the word CNN used to describe the occasion.

But there’s something wrong with this media picture. Imagine if, on Adolf Hitler’s upcoming 125th birthday, German Chancellor Angela...

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