This is a fascinating piece of 1952 footage featuring former US Ambassador to Poland Arthur Bliss Lane discussing a Big Lie put over by the Soviets in 1943 concerning their 1940 massacre of thousands of Poles in what is known as the Katyn Forest Massacre.

I'm not sure the facts come through clearly in this short exchange, but the basic outline of events is as follows. The Germans uncovered mass graves containing thousands of Polish officers in Katyn Forest near Smolensk in April 1943. The Soviets blamed the Germans for the massacre. The Germans blamed the Soviets. The Soviets -- our bosom allies led by "Uncle Joe" Stalin and appeased at all costs by FDR and Churchill  -- were, in fact, guilty. The US and British governments under FDR and Churchill not only accepted this Soviet Lie, they amplified, supported and perpetuated it, and for most of the next decade -- even in the face of overwhleming evidence to the contrary. I discuss this notorious cover-up and its deep implications at length in American Betrayal,...

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Sgt. 1st Class Frank Limtiaco, left, exults as 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry Regiment, Guam Army National Guard leaves Afghanistan on December 28. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Eddie Siguenza/Released)

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The latest National Intelligence Estimate, the Washington Post reports, conveys the glaringly, painfully, tediously obvious: That "gains" in Afghanistan, repetitiously labeled "fragile and reversible" by the vaunted, disgraced, then vaunted again David Petraeus for years, "are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017, even if Washington leaves behind a few thousand troops and continues bankrolling the impoverished nation, according to officials familiar with the report." (Emphasis added.)

Bring them all home, yesterday. The sooner this...

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In the interest of tying up some loose ends, here are a few updates before the new year.

Principle, what principle?

Remember how 2013 began with much ado over Al Gore’s unseemly $500 million sale of Current TV network to Al Jazeera, aka “the Muslim Brotherhood channel”? Even anything-for-a-buck Time Warner Cable saw fit to drop the Qatar-owned “news” organization from its package. Well, TWC this month announced that, yes, it will be bringing Al Jazeera America into 55 million American homes after all. “Financial terms weren’t disclosed,” USA Today reported.

The Few. The Proud. The Gender-Normed.

Remember how, with a stroke of their pens, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin E. Dempsey decreed that no battlefield mission or military role would be off-limits to women? Call it the Equal Rights Amendment by executive fiat. But hold on about “equal.” As Elaine Donnelly’s Center for Military Readiness has reported, “gender-norming” is the Pentagon’s idea of “equal.”

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My syndicated column:

It’s been weeks now, more than a month in some places, but it is all about to come to an end.

“It” is the soundtrack of the season – Christmas carols. From mall to shining mall, these carols sync American life in a rare shared cultural experience that lasts exactly as long as the holiday shopping season itself. Most of the widely – OK, incessantly – played songs are secular in content: “White Christmas,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and more. But their glory days run according to the holiday calendar. They vanish from audio range as soon as Christmas Day is over and the sales begin.

Many will say good riddance, having been Frostied, Rudolphed and Silver-Belled to a tinseled pulp by year’s end. But I will confess to regret on seeing many of the great voices of American popular song once again retired to seasonal oblivion. I refer...

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This week's syndicated column

Feeling soaked after the gushers of drenching hagiography that crashed over the world on the death of the Nelson Mandela, I have been trying to reconcile what I know with what we are supposed to believe.

For example, I know Mandela was a founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the combat wing of the African National Congress, which was closely allied with the South African Communist Party. Starting in 1961, MK carried out hundreds of bombings, including of civilian targets. When Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1964, I know his crime was sabotage and related charges – not political opposition to apartheid, as we are supposed to believe, at least if those comparisons to symbols of non-violence, from Martin Luther King to, yes, Jesus Christ, are to stick.

Another founder of MK was Ronnie Kasrils, a Soviet-trained, South African Communist agent and militant, who, decades later, would serve President Mandela and then President Thabo Mbeki (also...

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Michael Goodwin of the New York Post, a former colleague on the old Lou Dobbs shows at CNN, has a column out today interpreting Obama's unseemly behavior at Mandela's funeral. He writes:

But the “selfie” episode also symbolizes the greater global calamity of Western decline. With British prime minister David Cameron playing the role of Obama’s giggling wingman, the “look at me” moment confirms we have unserious leaders in a dangerously serious time.

To say the very least.

Goodwin continues, lambasting Obama & Cameron as empty suits.

Obama and Cameron were posing as world leaders. They will never be confused with FDR and Churchill. The fratboys stand in stark contrast to the days when the “special relationship” meant two great leaders uniting two great countries in the fight for freedom.

Here is the AP photo that runs in the Post illustrating Goodwin's point:

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I am reposting a couple of columns below from 2009, written at a time before the Obama "surge" in Afghanistan, based on Bush's "surge" in Iraq, was in full swing. 

I have long argued that the Bush surge failed (explanation in three parts here). The Obama surge has failed, too, and for the same basic reason that has nothing to do with leaving Iraq "too soon," or, I deeply hope, "leaving Afghanistan" in 2014. It is vital to stress that these failures are not due to the bravery and sacrifice and skill of our military forces. These forces have resolutely fufilled their impossible missions, to say the very least. The failures lie in war-planning and political strategy, ignorance and fecklessness, at the highest levels of the Bush and Obama White Houses, in the Pentagon, and in the Congress that failed to check them.

(To such ignorance and fecklessness we may also add an epic show of institutional callousness.)

...

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From the Wash Times.

The setting: House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Issue: Afghanistan and the transition to fewer U.S. troops post-2014.

The witnesses: James F. Dobbins, State's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan; Donald Sampler, assistant to the administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides civilian foreign aid; and Michael Dumont, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

The questions: How much is the US budget on Afghanistan, and how many Americans have been killed and wounded in the last 12 months?

None of the witnesses knew the answers.

Rowan Scarborough reports:

According to the Pentagon's fiscal 2013 budget, it is spending about $88 billion this year to wage the war in Afghanistan. The State Department...

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... I will be speaking and signing books on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

On Tuesday, December 10:

Location: Skirball Cultural Center
2701 North Sepulveda Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90049

M. Stanton Evans and Sebastian Gorka will be joining in via Skype.
 
Admission: $15.00
 
Parking: Free (on site)
 
To register and for more information call the AFA office at: 310-444-3085

On Wednesday, December 11:

A dinner followed by a book-signing.

More information here.

"If he wants to make a lot of money advising Huawei, that's his prerogative," Wolf told the AP. "But he shouldn't be on a critical advisory board that provides intelligence advice on foreign investments in our country."

Once again, thank you, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). The story below is a coloring book example of influence -- Chinese Communist influence -- in the US intelligence chain: a paid consultant of a Chinese tech company who is also (until recently) an advisor to US intelligence regarding foreign investment in the US. That this conflict of interest ( a nice phrase for it) did not strike the intelligence establishment as a concern (another nice word) is, of course, the biggest problem of all.  

From the AP:

WASHINGTON -- A longtime adviser to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence has resigned after the government learned he has worked since 2010 as a paid consultant for Huawei Technologies Ltd., the Chinese technology company the U.S. has condemned as an espionage...

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The following open letter to Pope Francis was written today by Geert Wilders, the leader of the PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid, Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands.

Your Holiness,

In your recent exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Paragraphs 247-248) you draw the world’s attention to the indebtedness of Christianity to the Jews and their faith. The exhortation also contains a sharp condemnation of the terrible persecutions which the Jews have endured from Christians in the past.

Your words are words which might inspire many.

Unfortunately, they are in sharp contrast to the expressions of hatred which were voiced last October by the spiritual leader of Sunni Islam, Ahmad Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Institute in Cairo.

During an interview, aired on Egyptian television on October 25, Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayeb reaffirmed the relevance of Koranic verse 5:82, which states that of all people the Christians are closest to the Muslims, while the Jews...

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This week's syndicated column

An extraordinary thing happened in Washington, D.C., this week. Appearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee, several constitutional scholars forthrightly and unmistakably outlined the leading danger to the survival of our constitutional republic: the usurpation of powers by President Barack Hussein Obama.

This wasn’t just me, a non-lawyer, perplexed by how out-of-whack constitutional checks and balances have become and, in particular, how enfeebled the legislative branch is. This wasn’t even Mark Levin, a constitutional lawyer himself, explaining to his radio audience that we are living in “post-constitutional” times.

This was, for starters, Jonathan Turley, a liberal Georgetown law professor, who, noting that he once voted for Obama, nonetheless warned America that the concentration of executive branch powers, having accelerated under George W. Bush, is approaching a crisis under Obama. “The problem with what the president is doing...

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A little birdie tells me that the upcoming Christmas Books feature at the American Spectator will include American Betrayal on my friend Jed Babbin's list. Babbin, a noted author and commentator, is also former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, and long familiar to readers of the Spectator, Human Events and National Review.

Jed writes:

Last and certainly not least, American Betrayal by Diana West documents Soviet penetration of the U.S government during World War II and the parallels today to how the “free world” is reacting to Islam. Do not be dissuaded by the controversy that has erupted around the book which, if you insist on complete accuracy, would be characterized...

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A fascinating account from October 28, 2013 of a libel trial in Denmark by Dispatch International editor Lars Hedegaard:

Danish Journalist Jørgen Dragsdahl was a KGB agent With Friday’s acquittal of history professor Bent Jensen for libel, the Danish Superior Court put an end to a seven-year court battle. Jensen was unanimously and comprehensively exonerated and the court determined that he was ”justified” in calling Jørgen Dragsdahl a KGB agent. Dragsdahl (photo above) was also the man behind the Social Democratic Party’s anti-NATO course during the 1980s. It remains to be seen if the party will take this blow to its reputation lying down.

Here we see the curtain drawn back on the identity of an agent of Soviet influence,  a "spy" whose mission under consideration is not the theft of secrets but rather influence on policy -- the topic under consideration in American Betrayal.

It took Professor Bent Jensen (75) – an acknowledged expert on Soviet and Cold War history – seven...

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What a publishing coup for the editors at Breitbart News when Vladimir Bukovsky chose to offer them the first chapter of his 1993 book, Judgment in Moscow, for publication for the first time in English. Published in other languages including French (Judgment a Moscou,1995), Random House acquired the book in the 1990s, but, as Bukovsky lays out below, the deal became contingent on deep, transformative revisions he simply refused to make.

As Bukovsky explains, Random House honcho Jason Epstein was determined to shape Bukovsky's remarkable manuscript based on a trove of ultra-secret Soviet documents to fit the conventional wisdom ... the consensus ... the court history of the Cold War -- never mind the evidence as laid out in these stunning documents themselves. Something else Epstein was determined to root out of the manuscript: Bukovsky's interpretation of events, which posits that...

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Note: It is a great pleasure, as always, to publish an original essay by the accomplished Canadian writer, poet, and critic David Solway.

"Is American Racist?"

Oprah Bravely Names the Hatred Roiling the American Body Politic

by David Solway

The United States, as many informed celebrities, experts and political figures would have us believe, is without doubt an impenitently racist nation. Most recently, for example, the divine Oprah told the BBC that the “disrespect” which many Americans feel for Barack Obama has to do with the fact that he is African American. Of course, Obama is not African American, he is half-white, so he is at least as Caucasian American as anything else that he might conceivably be. But this is a mere triviality—he is, after all, what we have come to call a “racialized person.” The skepticism with which many Americans have come to regard Obama plainly has nothing to do with his incompetence, his frivolity, his bald-face lying, his betrayal of America’s...

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This week's syndicated column

When Thanksgiving 2013 is over, will Americans remember it as the holiday when the Obama administration body-snatched their friends and family and turned them into Obamacare robots?

Maybe it happened to your own loved ones. Maybe Cousin Sue brought her favorite cranberry Jell-O mayonnaise salad, but when she opened her mouth, she sounded like Jay Carney on a roll. As for Uncle Al, there’s a reason he kept asking “Have you thought about signing up for health insurance on the new marketplace?” every time it was your turn at Scrabble.

BarackObama.com told them to.

Turning Thanksgiving into Obamacaring was clearly the Big-Brotherly goal of a disturbing project launched by the president’s campaign website, now known as Organization for Change, or OFA. Entitled “Health Care for the Holidays,” this OFA spinoff provides a “sign-up checklist” to take along to grandmother’s house (bring W-2s and paystubs along with those sweet potatoes). It offers “conversation tips” that include such icebreakers as, “When do you plan on signing up?”

...

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After positively reviewing American Betrayal at Breitbart News at the end of September, Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov found themselves subject to a flurry of attacks. They have now responded, not in kind but rather to explain why "a more intelligent debate" over the issues raised in American Betrayal is urgently needed despite what they call "the vehement campaign against the book." 

From Breitbart News:

"West's American Betrayal Will Make History"

by Vladimir Bukovsky...

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I forgot to post my most recent column on the disastrous US-Afghan agreement. Since writing it, the loya jirga has approved the agreement, Hamid Karzai has nixed it, and now the Obama administration is trying to get some other Afghan government official to sign it. Meanwhile, a new draft Afghan penal code restores death by stoning for adultery. More making the world safe for sharia -- courtesy Uncle Sucker.

My most recent column

Now that U.S. and Afghan negotiators have agreed on terms of a seemingly open-ended – if reduced – U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration alike breathlessly await the verdict of the world’s greatest deliberative body.

No, not the U.S....

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Happiness is an Iranian diplomat

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Today, Andrew Bostom notes for the record: "Nuke Deal Ignores Iran's Genocidal Islamic Jew-Hatred." Quite. He proceeds to fill in these gaping holes in both the deal itself and, almost worse, in its schematic reporting with a historical/religious overview of the past half-millenium of theocratic Shiite rule. This was interupted by 54 years rule of by Pahlavis, father and son, whose Western-oriented and secularizing regime (1925-1979) would be overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's current leader, Rohani.

Bostom writes:

The so-called “Khomeini revolution,” which in 1979 deposed the secular, Western-oriented regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was in reality a mere return...

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Gates of Vienna has published an important declaration from Geert Wilders

Let us raise a flag of truth and liberation by Geert Wilders

Nine years ago this month, in November 2004, policemen wearing bullet proof vests and carrying machine guns picked me up at my home and drove me to a safe place. This happened two days after the filmmaker and Islam-critic Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic assassin in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. The police brought me to safety because Islamic criminals had threatened to kill me, too. Because I, too, spoke the truth about Islam, the biggest threat to our freedom and our civilization.

Since that ominous date, nine years ago, I have been forced to live under constant police protection. I have lived in army barracks, prisons and safe houses. The threats continue to this day and have deprived me of my privacy and my freedom.

...

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On Wednesday, November 20, I received the Mightier Pen Award from Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy at the Union League Club in Manhattan. It was a truly spectacular event. As I noted in my remarks, in early September when Frank announced the award, which is dedicated to the doctrine of peace through strength, it came not only as a great honor, but also as a welcome missile shield against continuing attacks on me and American Betrayal. I can't thank Frank and CSP enough for their unwavering support and friendship throughout, and now, for this unforgettable celebration.

It was, of course, a career high point to be introduced by the great M. Stanton Evans.

Video of Stan's introduction and my remarks below.







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Anybody home?

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How's this for a measure of how far our republic has fallen?

The Kerry-Karzai agreement for continued -- no, cesaseless -- American woe and waste in Afghanistan must past muster with the "loya jirga," the assembly of 3,000 tribal "elders" who will be meeting for the next several days in Kabul. 

Unless a small group of upstart US senators gets traction, our own representatives are assumed to be a rubber stamp for Obama's latest blunder abroad. Or so it seems. As quoted by the New York Times, Kerry's concern is limited to whether the agreement passes muster with the loya jirga, that world- renowned embodiment of sharia justice and tribal enlightenment.



“We have agreed on the language that would be submitted to a loya jirga, but they have to pass it,” Mr. Kerry said.

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Signed copies of all of my books -- and this lovely mug! -- are now available with the click of a "signed copies" button on this website, located in both the blue navigation bar (above), and in the right-hand column.

Enjoy the brew-haha.

Mightier Pen 2013 | Honoring Diana West

Introduction by M. Stanton Evans

November 20, 2013

The Union League Club | 38 E 37th Street, New York City

Registration & Book Signing | 11:30 AM

Luncheon | 12:15 PM

In the amazing-what-you-find-on-Youtube category, here is Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov expressing his pleasure over FDR's decision to "normalize" relations with Stalin's terror state in November 1933. (Spot the whopper when Litvinov discusses new relations between the two "republics.")



Gates of Vienna has now kindly posted short video clips from Friday's symposium on the 80th anniversay of of this momentously infamous event. Because the Soviet Union was always an abnormal state bent on world revolution, state-engineered terror and genocide against its own citizens, our leaders seeking "normalization" would have to deceive us about such things in order to maintain (and even extend and deepen) "normal" relations. This they did and with catastrophic results, as discussed in American Betrayal.

In a post called "Mantled in Deception and Denial," GoV writes:

...

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Henrik Raeder Clausen has reviewed American Betrayal for Europe News.

Titled "Down the Rabbit Hole, Again," the review opens:

Every once in a while, something happens that turns a whole structure of preconceived ideas upside down, shattering tales and narratives long taken for granted, destroying prejudice, clearing space for new understanding to grow. Diana West's latest book, American Betrayal, is such an event.

To those of us in Europe who grew up under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, with US troops still stationed in Germany to deter a Soviet invasion of our countries, history seemed solid: The heroic Americans saved us from the national socialist menace, rolling back the occupations that had plagued our countries...

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With M. Stanton Evans, Frank Gaffney, and Chris Farrell at Judicial Watch yesterday, discussing the the world inaugurated by FDR's calamitous decision to "normalize" relations with Stalin's genocidal regime on November 16, 1933. Steve Coughlin, also on the panel, is not pictured.

One of the things I saw in even clearer terms in preparing my remarks and listening to the other presentations was the extent to which the epic struggles over what we now quite ignorantly and even superstitiously sum up as "McCarthyism" (tossing a pinch or two of salt over the shoulder) may be seen on one level as an extended cover-up by the executive branch of the calamitous, multi-pronged impact of that 1933 decision.

Not that "McCarthyism" came up on our discussion, the presence on the panel of Stan Evans, author of the seminal book overturning decades of lies about Joe McCarthy notwithstanding. Still, FDR "normalized"...

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This week's syndicated column:

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the United States marks a milestone: the 80th anniversary of when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union and “normalized” U.S.-USSR relations. It is a day that should live in infamy.

But it’s a day hardly anyone has ever heard of. I certainly hadn’t before researching my book, American Betrayal. As I studied the event, however, it became clear that it was on this day 80 years ago that what I call “American betrayal” began. It is the date on which the U.S. government institutionally learned to lie.

After the Bolsheviks seized dictatorial powers in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, four U.S. presidents...

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Center for Security Policy Convenes Symposium on Subversion in High Places:

The Legacy of FDR’s Normalization of Relations with the USSR

Eightieth Anniversary of Deal That Facilitated Penetration of U.S. Government, Society

Washington, DC — Eighty years ago this Saturday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed for the first time to recognize the Communist regime of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He did so on the basis of formal undertakings by then-Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov that the Kremlin would not engage in subversive actions in America.

The rest, as they say, is history. And a sordid and still unfolding history it is.

The Center for Security Policy is pleased to convene a symposium to review that history — both that of the immediate post-normalization period, of World War II, of the Cold War and of today — from noon-2:00 p.m. at the headquarters...

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A reader just reminded me of a post from those first weeks of the campaign against American Betrayal -- a campaign my editor at St Martin's Press tells me he has never before seen the likes of. I am re-posting this August 18 post today for the benefit of both new readers and old who may have heard David Horowitz belittle this mendacious and widespread campaign he and Ronald Radosh spearheaded against American Betrayal as "one bad review."

By the way, "take-down" was Radosh's word for this "review" (his first of multiple hits), which is referred to below. A chronology of the copycat hit pieces that followed appears in an appendix of The Rebuttal.

From August 18, 2013:

"The War on American Betrayal: The...

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I went to the Heritage Foundation today to hear David Horowitz discuss his newly published collection of essays, The Black Book of the American Left. Maybe, I thought, I could figure out why his personal views of Left and the Right necessitated the ad hominem attacks, the smears of American Betrayal, as completely rebutted in copious if not excruciating detail in The Rebuttal  (not "Book-Burners," as Horowitz misstated today).

I don't know what I learned, but I surely witnessed something strange.

Watch the clip above and fact-check Horowitz with "The Rebuttal" in three parts as published by Breitbart News  here, or The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal from the Book-Burners with Additional Commentary from the Blogosphere here.

Favorite Horo-whopper: "She's got a whole book, it's 22,000 words, it's called "Book Burners," for one bad review --  I mean, come on!"

Is he kidding?

A partial list:



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The cone of silence over public discussion of the Radosh-Horowitz attacks on American Betrayal cracked perceptibly last week as commentator and radio host Hugh Hewitt asked my great friend and Team B II colleague Frank Gaffney to interpret the controversy for Hugh Hewitt's sizeable radio audience.

(NB: On November 20th, I am deeply honored to say, Frank Gaffney's organization, The Center for Security Policy, will be awarding me The Mightier Pen Award for 2013. Information about attending the event in NYC here.)

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It was a high honor and privilege to address the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition at the group's annual leadership luncheon on Saturday -- particularly as the only non-veteran to speak on a program that included former Vietnam POW Red McDaniel and former Navy SEAL Benjamin Smith.

I know my late father would have been very happy to know I had this opportunity to discuss before so many fellow patriots his World War II service from Normandy to the Bulge in the context of American Betrayal -- the possibility than sans Communist penetration (saturation) of the policy-making chain in Washington and London, neither of those two costly battles might have been necessary.

I also discussed the shocking cable traffic that indicates the Truman administration and military command in Europe under Gen. Eisenhower in May 1945 left some 15,000 to 20,000 American GIs in Stalin's custody -- the ultimate...

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Seated: Me, Dru Davida, Lucianne Goldberg, Carol Taber, Ruth King, Linda Barnes. Standing: Ronnie Perl, chair, Book Events at WNRC, Lee Kessler

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Last week, I was royally feted by the ladies of the Women's National Republican Club in their elegant clubhouse next to Rockefeller Center. While this was a fine opportunity to discuss American Betrayal and the ruckus it has kicked up, it was also a long-awaited reunion with some of my staunchest and outspoken defenders during the attempted "take-down" of the book spearheaded by Ronald ("yellow journalism conspiracy theories") Radosh and David ("She should not have written this book") Horowitz. These include (seated at the table above) Lucianne Goldberg of Lucianne.com, Carol Tabor of Family Security Matters and Ruth King of Ruthfully Yours.



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This week's syndicated column

Dear Prospective Conservative Republican Candidates:

Today’s column offers strategic tips that can’t possibly be worse than the ones “political consultants” charge you big bucks for. Even better, these are free.

Everything a conservative needs to win state and national elections lies in the exit poll numbers. I first noticed these strategic gems following Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat. The media echo chamber was still in high gear, revving up the public to believe that “white men” were Romney’s “only” constituency – and you know how awful “white men” are, and did you ever notice how Mitt Romney is both white and a man? Well, no wonder he lost.

Then I realized the exit polls didn’t tell the same story the media were telling. (Shocking, I know.) According to these numbers, it wasn’t really “white men” and Romney against the world. Romney had other constituencies – underexploited constituencies. This week in Virginia, the same is true according...

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Just wondering: Could the use of these poisonous chemicals (to dogs) be banned under an international chemical weapons treaty as implemented by Congress?

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The following report from The New York Law Journal relates how "a `lover's triangle' dispute from Pennsylvania ... has mushroomed into a major test of the power of Congress to implement international treaties in ways that may interfere with the prerogatives of the 50 states."

WASHINGTON - U.S. Supreme Court arguments over the constitutional power to make and implement treaties took a dramatic turn Tuesday when Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. warned justices that a ruling interpreting the meaning of a chemical weapons treaty would be "terribly unfortunate" and could disrupt "very sensitive negotiations" underway with Syria and...

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Just heard my friend and colleague from the good ol' days of the Washington Times (before dread respectability set in) bring down the house at the Kirkpatrick Society with her first presentation of her hilarious -- but sharply pointed -- new book, When Did White Trash Become the New Normal?: A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question.

While Charlotte doesn't examine perpetual youth in her travels through the culture (my own springboard  in The Death of the Grown-Up), I can certainly relate to these fresh insights and trenchant observations (and white trash recipes!) from Charlotte's inimitable Delta perspective.

Don't miss. 

...

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The war on American Betrayal launched from the Right continues to perplex people. I hear the same question everywhere I go, and notably from people who have actually read the book: What is inside the covers of American Betrayal that could have inspired the no-holds-barred smear campaign against it waged by putative political allies?

M. Stanton Evans has discussed his theory in "In Defense of Diana West" here; Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov weighed in with "Why Academics Hate Diana West" here. I have my own theories, too.

Now, Ned May of Gates of Vienna, a leading counterjihad site that distinguished itself during the hottest weeks of this battle in its defense not only of my book and me personally but also free and civil debate more generally, has published here his further and deeper thoughts on the controversy. These also include Ned's take on the crashing silence on the part of professional...

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Three-plus months later, the any-means-necessary effort to eject American Betrayal from within the boundaries of debate has failed, with only the faintest yap-yapping in the distance.  

Now, where were we?

To recapture the line of argument, I am reposting my piece, "Who Really Won the Cold War?," which ran on July 18 at Breitbart News.

How could there be anything left to say about World War II and the Cold War that hasn’t been said already? We know the narrative, start to finish. In researching my new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press), I was shocked to learn that’s not the same thing as understanding what really happened.

That probably won’t make sense until you find yourself, as I did, staring at the brick wall that somehow blocks the body of intelligence history from entering the general flow of the narrative we know so well. Bringing them together--intelligence history with general history--changes almost...

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I am very happy to reveal that at this year's gathering of the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars, a deluxe dinner held in Washington by intelligence experts and interested observers to honor the memory of Whittaker Chambers and his triumph over the traitor Alger Hiss, I was given the annual honor of lighting the pumpkin and later addressing the assembly about American Betrayal.



American Betrayal guarded the door.





Highlights of the evening included warm tributes to fallen Cold Warriors: M. Stanton Evans on the late Herbert Romerstein (1931-2013), and Paul Kengor on the late Judge William P. Clark (1931-2013). This year's "coveted" Victor Navasky Award, presented by Ken deGraffenreid, went posthumously to Saul Alinsky, whose spawn (HRB, BHO, among others) continue to subvert the remnant republic. Regrettably, former Sen. Jon Kyl was unable to appear as scheduled. Al Regnery and Sebastian Gorka MC'd the evening's presentations.

...

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Opening his weekend column at PJMedia, Andrew C. McCarthy writes:

Life may be too short to unwind everything Ron Radosh distorts in his PJMedia blog post on Monday. ...

Uh-oh. Sound familiar?

In the course of unwinding the basic Radosh distortions of his own work, Andy writes:

I have not commented on this but, since he [Radosh] brings up the subject of civility, I am still taken aback by the tone of his review of Diana West’s American Betrayal … and I cringed upon learning that, in the midst of the nasty cross-fire that it ignited, he sent Diana a giddy...

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As some are aware,  American Betrayal came in for a little flack in the past couple of months.

While I was marshalling my forces -- all 22,000 words' worth -- many others filled the breach with eloquent, passionate, heartfelt defenses both of my book and of free and civil debate overarchingly. I didn't want these missives from the front to disappear into Internet ether. This amazing record of intellectual battle in real time needed a repository. To that end, I have published both my rebuttal, which originally appeared in three parts at Breitbart News, and a selection of these essays written in my behalf in a new book, The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal from the Book-Burners. Authors include Andrew Bostom, Vladimir Bukovsky, Donald Douglas, Edward Cline, M. Stanton Evans, Ruth King, Clare M. Lopez, Ned May, R.S. McCain, Takuan Seiyo, Cindy Simpson, David Solway,...

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This week's syndicated column

Could Obamacare be the biggest voter registration fraud scheme in the history of the world?

This is the bombshell assessment of a pair of conservative activists: Gregg Phillips, founder of Voters Trust, and Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote. Both groups are conservative nonprofits focused on election integrity.

What helped Phillips and Engelbrecht draw this conclusion, which Breitbart News reported this week, is almost as amazing as the conclusion itself: Left-wing groups and media have for some time been openly discussing Obamacare as a vehicle for so-called Motor Voter registration. Motor Voter is the law that makes voter registration a part of driver’s license applications. In fact, the 1993 law also requires any government office that provides “public assistance” to make voter registration part of the process. Since many applicants applying for coverage in the Obamacare “insurance marketplace” – the infamously malfunctioning healthcare.gov...

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Back in a few days.

From National Review Online today:

Conrad Black has now published three attacks at National Review Online against my book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, but I would bet the $4.1 million Black has to pay the U.S. government in fines related to his fraud conviction that he hasn’t read the book.

In his most recent attack — this time against a positive review of American...

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This week's syndicated column

So what just happened for 16 days in October?

Was it just a hiccup in the continually rising “debt ceiling,” a monkey wrench in the smoothly turning wheels of government, a boorish slap at the warm, enveloping embrace of “Obamacare”?

Should Americans now thank their Maker that the conservative revolt has been quelled so the federal government can continue to spend and spend without limits? Should we count ourselves fortunate for having patriots in the Senate and White House who forced open the nation’s coffers to nationalize health care for all Americans – only just not “now” for these same “temporarily” exempted lawmakers, as well as the president, assorted unions and big businesses?

I’m just asking. The triumph in...

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Cuban refugees pray for the success of the Bay of Pigs invasion at a rally in downtown Bayfront Park in Miami, Fla., April 19, 1961.

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Robert Strauss, longtime reader and penpal, writes in to make an apt historical comparison I haven't seen before between Obama, a president who didn't order the military support for Americans under fire in Benghazi, and Kennedy, a president who canceled military support for Americans and Cuban exiles under fire in the Bay of Pigs.

What drew his eye were the four questions Charles Woods, father of slain ex-SEAL Ty Woods, recently asked Obama, including whether Obama would have acted more aggressively to rescue Americans in Benghazi if his own children had been there.

Diana,      Obama's letter to Charles Woods brings to mind this paragraph by a paramilitary CIA operative at the Bay of Pigs, reacting to Theodore Sorensen's downplaying...

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