Yes it is. A man with as much blood on his hands as General Ion Mihai Pacepa undoubtedly has is now considered a reputable and reliable source for a great organ of conservative thought like National Review. Shocking indeed. But conservatives seem to be hangin' in a very shocking hood these days.
EUROPEAN FOUNDATION INTELLIGENCE DIGEST
Issue No. 161
20th February 2003
I. The Audit of War
Welcome to the New Europe
Ten countries signed a declaration of support for the position taken by the USA and Britain in the Iraq crisis: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
They have been branded "the new Europe" by Donald Rumsfeld, as opposed to the "old Europe" of the Franco-German axis. But how new are these governments?
Albania is governed by the party of Enver Hoxha, for forty years one of the worst Stalinist dictators in Europe; the president of Bulgaria is a former communist; the president of Croatia was the last communist president of old socialist Yugoslavia, while his prime minister was the Ideology Secretary in the Yugoslav League of Communists; the president of Estonia is the former president of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic; the prime minister of Lithuania is the former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party; the government of Macedonia is in the hands of former communists; the president of Romania rose to prominence as head of the Communist Youth under the Romanian dictator, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, before becoming a member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party under Nicolae Ceausescu; the president of Slovakia was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia and for 20 years a senior local communist boss; while the current president of Slovenia was for years deputy to his predecessor, who had been the communist head of Slovenia since 1986. Prior to the open letter signed by the "Vilnius 10", moreover, three countries, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined five current EU members in signing up to the war on Iraq [see Digest Issue No.160]: the prime minister and president of Poland were both Communists until the bitter end, while the prime minister of Hungary used to be an agent for the Hungarian equivalent of the KGB.....
Shocking.....