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HH: I am now joined by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon’s New Map, one of the most important books within the Pentagon and outside of it in many circles in the last few years. Dr. Barnett and I are spending an hour a week going through this book. We are on Chapter 6. Dr. Barnett, welcome back. You’re in the District of Columbia tonight? TB: Yes, I am, in a cab heading toward the hotel. HH: Well, we’ll do the best we can, and we’ll make it work. As I read Chapter 6, The Global Transaction Strategy…...

| 8:30 PM Here is the transcript of my interview with former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.  The audio will be posted here later. Some key excerpts: HH: Do you believe, as opposed to your staff, that the CIA was filtering its own intelligence, Mr. Feith? DF: Yes, I think that there were people, there were people in the CIA who had a theory that the Baathist secularists would not cooperate with the religious extremists in al Qaeda. And because they had that theory, when they looked at information that was, that showed, or that suggested that there was cooperation,...

HH: We start off as we do most Thursday when we are lucky with Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, www.steynonline.com. And Mark, the Society of Ethnomusicology has denounced torture today. MS: Yes, they’ve come out against using music as torture. So it’s part of the constant redefinition of torture, Hugh. In the good old days, when you could just tear out people’s fingernails, or clamp the electrodes to their more sensitive parts, it was fairly clear. Then sleep deprivation became torture, then sensory deprivation, then people were concerned that we were making people stand up for too long at...

From www.JustAWoman.org: Sunday, Feb 11: It's Grammy Night and... we're joined by Hugh Hewitt ! Listen Sunday at 7pm (PST) here From The Right: The Next Big Thing?: Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt marries the power of talk radio with the reach of the 'netroots.' Watch out, Kos. Talk Radio: 'Both spoken words and written words are powerful,' says Hewitt WHAT THEY'RE SAYIN' ABOUT LORES LIVE "Lores from LA---the rising star of talk radio today!!"  --Sean Hannity"Lores Rizkalla Live is just what radio needs--fun, fast-paced, hard hitting commentary with a new voice and a rising talent."   --Hugh Hewitt"Lores is not Just A Woman....

HH: Got another Texan now, Col. Austin Bay of www.austinbay.net/blog, actually knows that, “Hell, Hoss, we’re at war.” Austin, welcome back. Always a pleasure. AB: Thanks, Hugh. Glad to be there. HH: Let’s remind people where they can get your latest, Embrace the Suck, a pamphlet. Where’s the website where they can grab that? AB: www.pamphletguys.com. I edited and put it together, Adam Bellow of Pamphletguys.com is the publisher. I encourage everybody to go take a look at it. I saw that the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed of mine, but most of the op-ed was comprised of terms...

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless...

An essay from an active duty officer with more than 25 years of service, addressed to his fellow USNA alum, Senator James Webb. Senator Jim "Copperhead" Webb, Why did the new Democratic majority select Senator James Webb (D-VA) to give the Democratic response to the president's State of the Union Address? Since when does this privilege fall to a freshman, even a freshman senator? It's seems that despite the bad experience with nominating John Kerry to be their standard bearer in 2004, the Democrats have learned nothing. At least they recognize that they have a serious national security credibility problem...

If you are a blogger who has taken the pledge and linked to the site, please send me a note so I can add your support here. I interviewed Tony Snow at the top of the program today, and Senator Norm Coleman is scheduled in hour two. After you have taken the pledge, please call Senator McConnell's office and urge a filibuster of Senator Biden's and Senator Warner's resolutions. Senator McConnell's office number is (202) 224-2541. The capitol switchboard is 202-225-3121. Senator McConnell's e-mail is here. Yesterday General Petraeus testified that the Biden/Warner resolutions and those like them encourage the...

From the Washington Post's coverage of the House and Senate maneuvers to undercut the president and the troops: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) took to the Senate floor yesterday to implore his colleagues not to go through with a vote on any resolution of opposition, calling the effort "pernicious" and "very, very dangerous." House Minority Leader Boehner's decision to break with the president yesterday, and the desperate attempt of John Warner and some of his Senate colleagues to split the difference between defeatist Democrats and round-heeled Republicans underscores that the GOP is now close to splitting on the war. Parties do...

The president gave the Library Room speech on January 10. Tony Snow had briefed some bloggers before the speech, and made a few appearances on talk radio afterwards (including on my program.) The Vice President appeared on Fox News Sunday four days later, and the National Security Advisor made the rounds of the other shows. Senator McCain, Governor Romney and Mayor Giuliani –the big three of the GOP presidential campaign—all endorsed the plan. The president appeared on 60 Minutes. And that was it. Media offensive over. It never stood a chance. First, business-as-usual dictated that the White House released all...

The transcript of Part 2 of my eight part interview with Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map, is now posted, as is the audio. The transcript of Part 1 is here and the audio here, and the transcript of our short introductory interview is here, and the audio here. One teaser from yesterday's exchange: HH: Dr. Barnett, when we went to break, we were talking about China and the American Navy. We have these 10 Nimitz-class carriers out there, which are really our force projection power. If China develops the ability to attack from land via cruise...

HH: Time to do an end of the year look at the media hour. It’s pretty easy to find a lot of aging MSM’ers who hate the new media, and blogs in particular. But it’s very rare to find a young MSM’er who wants to throw down against the blogs especially, but we’ve got one. Last week, Joseph Rago wrote, “The Blog Mob: Written By Fools To Be Read By Imbeciles”, in the Opinionjournal.com, and I welcome him now to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Joe, welcome. Good to have you. JR: Thanks for the invitation, Hugh. HH: Now did this...

Go to the article at Townhall for the embedded links: Part 218 of the Boston Globe's attempt to derail Mitt Romney's accelerating presidential campaign details the governor's travels and his PACs' spending this year. (The Globe neglected to give us the citation to its parallel story on John Kerry's absences from DC or Massachusetts in 2002, or Mike Dukakis' journeys in 1986. Perhaps they are in the same file as the Globe's stories on the citizenship/green card status of the crews working on Kerry's many homes?)Rarely have we ever had such a clear demonstration of the hard-left nature of a...

Biola University hosted GodBlogCom 2.0 this past October, and it featured a panel discussion that became a genuine conversation with the audience. The panelists included Professor John Mark Renolds, the director of the university’s Torrey Honors Program, blogger LaShawn Barber, and the then-candidate for United States Senate in New Mexico, Dr. Allen McCullough. The audience included some very fine intellects, including Joe Carter, Andy Jackson and John Schroeder, and many students. Among the students were a number who were pursuing studies that would prepare them for public life of some sort, and some thought a run for elected office might...

The almost instant reject of the central recommendations of the ISG Report by key officials in Iraq and Israel, and serious observers of the war is a refreshing bit of resolve. The criticism is withering and deserved. "A fatuous process yields, necessarily, fatuous results," writes Eliot Cohen in today's Wall Street Journal, a piece I hope the editors make available to the public generally. He continues: War, and warlike statecraft, is a hard business, and though this is supposed to be a report dominated by "realists," there is nothing realistic in failing to spell out the bloody deeds, grim probabilities...

Hugh may not be aware of Warren's actual denials and outright deceptions in his attempt to cover his tracks on the Syria issue from a couple of weeks back. But Hugh's two paragraph defense of Warren doesn't cut it on several layers. Rick has convinced Hugh that allowing for "difference on the issue of abortion" will not impact the common good that can be achieved in striving for the prevention or eradication of HIV/AIDS. Yet it does! And to not say so betrays poor things about the mind of those who make such justifications. The worldview that Obama has -...

Well, we all love to jump on it when a lefty says something stupid, don't we? We should also point out when an ostensible Conservative news commentator says something ridiculous, too... Now, I don't usually report what radio guys are doing or saying, not that I don't like them or that I find them somehow illegitimate, but because they have their own fora from which to make their waves and they can get their ideas out without my assistance. But, I do listen to several talkers and enjoy some of them, as well. One of the talkers I like is...

Danny DeVito's disgraceful performance on "The View." the clip shows him referring to the President in terms vulgar enough that they were bleeped out by ABC; what it doesn't show ...were his remarks about having sex with his wife on every surface in the Lincoln Bedroom. Discussing the episode on today's Hugh Hewitt show, the incredibly talented James Lileks made a very perceptive remark about DeVito's comments about the Lincoln Bedroom -- to the effect that DeVito was the type of person who couldn't bear to leave anything undebased. Absolutely true... people like Danny DeVito have always been with us....

HH: Victor Davis Hanson, if you had a chance to visit with the President tonight, what would you be telling him? VDH: Don't give up. Don't weaken. Don't hesitate. Don't pause. Do not cut a deal with those two governments. They're killing American soldiers through surrogates in Iraq. They're trying to destablize Lebanon like they did in the 1980's. They're the source of most of the evil that's now causing us problems from Afghanistan to Iraq. And this idea that you're going to bring James Baker back, and that team back who gave us everything from Iran-Contra to jobs, jobs,...

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days...