Free Republic

A Jewish American man jailed in 1985 for spying for Israel was released from strict parole conditions Friday, allowing his move to Israel, the US Justice Department said. Jonathan Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, served 30 years for giving classified US documents and had been confined by parole terms to the United States since his release in 2015, despite Israeli pressure to allow him to leave. US officials said Pollard, over a series of months and for a salary, provided 1,500 intelligence summaries and 800 classified documents to Israel in the mid-80s.

Twelve years ago Eric Holder enabled the pardon of Marc Rich, the biggest tax thief in history, at Israel's request, instead of Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy now in his 27th year in prison. Now Israel is pushing for Pollard. It's again Holder's turn to call the shot. Don't think Pollard will get thumbs up from Holder as Rich did. Holder only does favors for four groups now as I explain below in my blog entry. (Only partly tongue in cheek.) Then there’s Eric (“the Unconscionable”) Holder, the guy who’s supposed to make the call. To get Holder to recommend...

On 21 September 2004, Michelle Weinberger woke up on the 79ft powerboat that she and her husband, Mark, owned as it rocked gently in the waters of a marina on the Greek island of Mykonos. "I put my hand on his side of the bed, and I remember feeling it empty," she later told the US television channel NBC. Weinberger leapt from bed in alarm to find that her husband had vanished, taking with him his passport and money he had stashed secretly on board. It was the beginning of a five-year flight from justice that ended this week even...

Does Barack Obama have the nomination locked up? You would think by now that the Democratic choice for President is most assuredly in concrete, sealed and delivered. After all, the convention starts next Monday, on August 25th in Denver, Colorado. The Democrats could not show up so disorganized as to blow the scene in the home stretch. Anybody thinking differently would have to be seen as being at least out-to-lunch. However, I am willing to risk that moniker and say that this nomination really has not yet been decided and that it is possible America is in for a big...

Reagan's War, Not Charlie Wilson's Media Bias: Hollywood would have us believe that Democrats defeated the evil empire in Afghanistan, and that President Reagan played only a minor role and even helped pave the way to 9/11. If you think Hollywood's idea of a Christmas movie being one about the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is strange, even stranger is the plot line. "Charlie Wilson's War," which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote. Charlie Wilson was a pro-abortion, Equal Rights Amendment-supporting congressman widely known as "the liberal from Lufkin." To his...

[Caspar] Weinberger [said] that the United States would make no more half-hearted interventions, such as in Vietnam, or the U.S. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which occurred on Weinberger's own watch. ...[snip] [But] today we have Americans watching over civil war in Iraq, not Lebanon. ... Weinberger preached that a war plan had to be "wholehearted": Preparation often precludes the need to fight. So in Iraq, where was the overwhelming force needed to subdue a country of 25 million? Where was the training for counterinsurgency? The adequate armor? The effective anti-improvised explosive device technology? In fact, there was a disgraceful lack...

"Home of the Brave : Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror by Caspar Weinberger and Wynton C. Hall...promises to be one of the most significant books of this or any summer..."

"I then remembered the time Cap told me his favorite part of being secretary of Defense: visiting the troops. When he’d visit a ship he said he would make sure to go down to the engine rooms where no one ever went. 'They were always surprised and thankful someone had taken the time to notice them,' Cap said. 'They were grateful someone had remembered.' We feel the great untold story of this war has been the acts of heroism and hope the mainstream media refuses to report. But I now wonder..."

This is exactly the sort of book that people seeking a full understanding of the war should read - along with many others that deal with other specifics - and I'm curious as to why Publisher's Weekly seems so frightened by the propect that they might.

It has been a week of movement, of comings and goings that have reminded me of the wisdom of a friend, a businessman. He told me, a decade or so ago, that it is important to remember, especially when you have a problem or a particular challenge, that life is not a painting. Life is not static; it moves. In a painting of a room, say, everything is set in one position forever. But in life the curtains move with the breeze, people enter the room, and leave it. So whatever problem you're facing, realize that life one way or...

ARLINGTON, Va., April 4, 2006 – Caspar W. Weinberger's definition of happiness was "service to a noble cause," current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said here today at the former defense secretary's funeral. Weinberger died in Maine on March 28 at 88. He was buried today at Arlington National Cemetery. Weinberger served as defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan and as secretary of health, education and welfare under President Gerald Ford. Rumsfeld, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, and former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired Army Gen. Colin Powell delivered eulogies. Weinberger presided over the largest...

Weinberger Remembered As a Tough Leader By ELIZABETH WHITE, Associated Press Writer Caspar Weinberger was remembered Tuesday as a defense secretary who took on totalitarian regimes and helped to end the Cold War — and also hid chocolate in his desk and liked to catch a daytime nap. Weinberger, who was President Reagan's Pentagon chief, died last week at 88 in Maine. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery after a funeral service at nearby Fort Myer Memorial Chapel attended by Vice President Dick Cheney, former Reagan officials and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Secretary of State Colin...

For the last two years, former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger and Wynton C. Hall had been working on their forthcoming book, HOME OF THE BRAVE: Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror (A Forge hardcover). The book chronicles the heroic stories of 19 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines and is said to contain a powerful defense of the Iraq War and the men and women in uniform Weinberger loved and served. Sources close to the book report that early reactions to the manuscript have drawn strong praise. Conservative commentator Sean Hannity has called the book, "The most...

by Mark Finkelstein March 28, 2006 Keith Olbermann might be on vacation, but that doesn't mean MSNBC's mean-spiritedness took a day off. If guest host Alison Stewart was auditioning for the Olbermann seat, she might well have ingratiated herself with her MSNBC bosses by the nastiness she doled out on the day of Caspar Weinberger's death. Weinberger passed away today at age 88. He had served as President Reagan's Secretary of Defense. As Bloomberg News put it: "Weinberger . . . oversaw the U.S. military buildup under President Ronald Reagan that helped hasten the Soviet Union's collapse." Stewart managed to...

According to Fox, per Colin Powell.

WASHINGTON - A former defense secretary for Ronald Reagan says he implored the president to put Marines serving in Beirut in a safer position before terrorists attacked them in 1983, killing 241 servicemen. "I was not persuasive enough to persuade the president that the Marines were there on an impossible mission," Caspar Weinberger says in an oral history project capturing the views of former Reagan administration officials. He said one of his greatest regrets was in failing to overcome the arguments that "'Marines don't cut and run,' and 'We can't leave because we're there'" before the devastating suicide attack on...

NEWPORT NEWS -- President Reagan's defense secretary says the U.S.-led invasion met all his tests and insurgents will relent for the sake of democracy. In 1984, as secretary of defense under President Reagan, Caspar Weinberger outlined six major tests the United States should apply before deciding to use military force abroad. They include ensuring that the situation is vital to U.S. interests or to that of allies; knowing that the United States can win; having clearly defined military objectives and getting support from Americans and those in Congress. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq met all the tests, Weinberger said in...

The Democrats’ History of October Surprises When Carter administration official, Gary Sick, wrote an OpEd piece in the NY Times entitled “October Surprise,” an urban legend was born. Sick accused "individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages until after the Presidential election." This, of course, was pure fiction and thoroughly investigated and debunked (wasting how much of the taxpayers’ money?). Yet, the myth continues to persist. The myth is that Republicans launch October Surprises. Phooey. This is another example of Democrats unfoundedly accusing Republicans of the...

Former Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger said Sunday that it was Ronald Reagan's staunch anti-Communism and determination to rebuild the military that "literally redeemed the country and helped save the world." Weinberger recalled to WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg: "When [Reagan] made his Evil Empire speech - that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire that had to be destroyed and they couldn't coexist with us - one diplomat complained to him, 'You have destroyed 20-years of patient diplomatic effort with that one speech.' " But the former President responded, according to his former defense chief, "Yes. And where did that...

The short, easy and wrong solution to the problems in Iraq is to turn them all over to the United Nations and urge other countries to help. This basically is Senator John Kerry's response to any "What would you do?" questions. He and others who criticize President Bush for going to war without the UN's permission and the support of the international community offer only this egregiously useless solution. The ignorance, misconceptions and faulty judgment displayed in such thinking are appalling. To begin with, we have the support and participation in Iraq of some 30 countries. Not incidentally, the majority...