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Ruth King

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Dan Rather on Bush Memo Story: ‘We Got to the Truth But We Paid a Painful Price’ By Nicholas Ballasy

By on October 19th, 2015

Former CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather said 60 Minutes “got to the truth” in 2004 but paid a “painful price” for the story on former President George W. Bush’s National Guard service that aired before the 2004 presidential election.

Aside from the authenticity of the memos, Rather said the “basic story” remains true today.

“One, did former President Bush when in his troubled youth, did he use his father’s influence to get into the Air National Guard as a way of avoiding Vietnam? That’s a fact. Fact two: Once he got in the Air National Guard after performing well, in some ways, very well, disappeared for a year, nobody disappeared for a year, now those are facts,” Rather said at the Washington premiere of Truth, a film based on a book written about the controversial 60 Minutes segment that aired in 2004.

“Everybody is entitled to their opinion but they aren’t entitled to their own facts. The reason this film is called Truth is we got to the truth but we paid a painful price for it,” he added.

The broadcast included documents that were not authenticated by forensic experts, which ultimately led to the dismissal of the staff that worked on the story as well as the firing of producer Mary Mapes. The fallout is referred to as the “Killian documents controversy” – after Lieutenant Colonel Killian, Bush’s superior in the National Guard, whose name appears on the documents.

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Barack Churchill, 1939 By Victor Davis Hanson (hilarious!)

By on October 19th, 2015

“Certainly we do not need a disproportionate response to Herr Hitler that initiates a cycle of violence on both sides. We need to tamp down the rhetoric.”
I have nothing to offer you, except blood, sweat, and arugula.

Winston Churchill, well before he became prime minister in May 1940, was busy all through 1939 prompting the British government to prepare for war — and then, as first lord of the Admiralty, helping to direct it once it broke out. But what if Churchill had been Barack Obama? What would Britain’s foremost opponent of appeasement have been like?

The Munich Agreement

Obama-Churchill might have said something like the following in regards to the 1938 Munich Agreement.

“We live in a complex world and at a challenging time. And none of these challenges lend themselves to quick or easy solutions, but all of them require British leadership. If we stay patient and determined, then we will, in fact, meet these challenges. The Munich Agreement is a comprehensive government agreement. It is the first that actually constrains Nazi Germany from further aggression, and one whose provisions are transparent and enforceable. It is a sober and judicious way to preclude war and to bring Germany back into the family of nations and to become a credible regional power, while allowing the German people to express their legitimate aspirations.”

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Smoking gun’ emails just released by UK Daily Mail prove Hillary a bigger liar than Tony Blair By Thomas Lifson

By on October 19th, 2015

The UK Daily Mail is making big headlines (at the top of the Drudge Report page as I write) with its exclusive story purporting to prove that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was committed to war with Iraq at a time he was telling the British public that he was seeking a diplomatic solution. The email it cites came from “a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.”

I think the Daily Mail has buried the lead. For one thing, the secret memo to President Bush authored by then US secretary of State Colin Powell, rather than proving Blair was committed to war clearly states, “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary.” That is a contingency. If diplomacy had succeeded, then Blair would not be committed to war.

But much more important to me than this UK-centric story is what we learn about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Take a look at the memo itself, the top line in the left had column.

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Peter O’Brien: Climate Change and Mute Conservatives

By on October 19th, 2015

The increase in global temperatures, touted by warmists but nowhere evident in almost 19 years of flat-lining satellite readings, is said to inflict many dubious ills, from shark attacks to hermaphroditic lizards. Its only demonstrable consequence, however, is the cowardice of those who dare not speak up
At the essence of conservatism is the philosophy that, while accepting change as inevitable, it should be for the good or, at the very least, do no harm. Coupled with this should be a healthy scepticism and an insistence that any case for significant disruption of society and the economy be first subjected to rigorous examination. This raises the matter of what we now routinely refer to as “climate change” – catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), to use one of the climateers’ favoured and emotionally laden descriptors.

Tony Abbott, speaking frankly, once conceded that “climate change is crap”. It’s difficult to know just how many conservative voters share that conviction if one goes only by the polls. Take as one example a recent Lowy survey that posed two questions. The first asked what Australia’s approach to the upcoming Paris climate conference should be, with 63% of respondents agreeing we need to “commit to significant reduction” in greenhouse gas emissions pour encourager les autres. Only 35% believe we should not make commitments ahead of other countries. But this result seems to fly in the face of responses to the second question, relating to belief in global warming. While 50% of respondents rate climate change a serious problem, 40% believe its effects will be gradual and can be dealt with by taking less costly and disruptive steps over time. The remaining 10% believe that “unless we are sure that global warming is a problem” we should take no steps at all.

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Clinton Coronation Back on Track? Not So Fast By John Fund

By on October 19th, 2015

In the Perils of Pauline–like cliffhanger serial that is Hillary Clinton’s career, she has once again escaped and is declaring herself safe.

A strong debate performance — aided by chief rival Bernie Sanders’s dismissal of her e-mail scandal — has Clinton backers claiming the scandal is a dead issue in the Democratic primaries. Clinton’s pollster, Joel Berenson, notes that some 75 percent of Democrats approve of her, even though 31 percent of them also think she is lying about the e-mail scandal. Her questioners on the House Benghazi Committee, this line of thinking goes, have revealed their partisanship, and she ought to have no trouble besting them in her appearance before the committee this Thursday.

Not so fast. An intelligence source told Fox News the FBI is focusing on evidence that Clinton may have engaged in “gross negligence” in her mishandling of government documents, a violation of the Espionage Act. FBI agents are also looking at obstruction-of-justice allegations. More than 400 e-mails containing classified information flowed through Hillary’s homebrew server, but she continues to insist that she handled no classified material on it. But the mishandling-of-government-documents charge doesn’t even require that any of them be classified.

As for Hillary’s new political peril, Vice President Biden leaked his interest in running for president to columnist Maureen Dowd in early August, knowing that the e-mail revelations would spool out over months. As new revelations are pried out of the State Department, the scandal has taken on new dimension. All appearances to the contrary, its resolution is still beyond Clinton’s control: It lies with the FBI and the national-security establishment, as it always has. Biden might not enter the primaries now, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t fully aware new twists in the story could have party leaders begging him to jump in and replace a badly crippled front-runner at some point in the near future.

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Resistance Then and Now, According to Dietrich von Hildebrand By John O’Sullivan

By on October 19th, 2015

Editor’s Note: The following article is adapted from one that ran in the September 21, 2015, issue of National Review.

German opposition to Hitler, though it never enjoyed mass support, drew on three main sources: the Communists and Social Democrats, the army, and the churches. Each of them had occasional successes; none seriously threatened the Third Reich. The Left, though brave, was penetrated by the Gestapo and not very effectual. Senior army officers were largely hostile to Hitler, discussing politics freely in private, protecting their own anti-Nazi dissidents, and hatching several plots to remove or assassinate him. But their caution, political unrealism, and aversion to “revolution” ensured that most of their plots fizzled out. Only Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt came near to success. The relative independence of the churches until very late in the war enabled them to resist the regime on specific issues — notably, its euthanasia of disabled and mentally ill people — but they failed to mount any kind of general resistance to Hitlerism. Indeed, they were shamefully divided among themselves, both within and between denominations, in their overall attitude to Nazism. Some churchmen bravely defied it; some supported it enthusiastically; some equivocated.

My Battle against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich helps to explain why the churches, in particular the Catholic Church, failed so lamentably. It consists of the memoirs of Dietrich von Hildebrand, a German theologian and philosopher who mounted a consistent campaign of resistance to Nazism from academic posts in Munich and Vienna, together with a selection of his articles for the anti-Nazi Austrian journal Der Christliche Ständestaat (“The Christian Corporate State”), which he edited between 1934 and 1938. Faithfully translated and edited by the father-son team of John Henry Crosby and John F. Crosby, it gives us one dedicated Christian’s privileged insight into how Nazism both corrupted and overcame Catholic intellectual resistance in Central Europe.

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Iran and Obama’s Ballistic Delusion By Tom Rogan

By on October 19th, 2015

Yesterday, President Obama signed off on sanctions relief for Iran. The relief will take effect when the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies Iran has cut its enriched-uranium stocks, restructured its heavy-water facility at Arak, and dismantled its centrifuges. In a statement, the president promised that the U.S. will be ‘‘closely monitoring’’ Iranian compliance ‘‘to ensure Iran fully fulfills each and every one of its commitments.’’

But this is fiction. Recent facts on the ground — and in the air — already prove President Obama is allowing Iran to bend the deal into mush. First off, consider Iran’s ballistic-missile test on October 10. According to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., the test breached international law and the missile was “inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.” But White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claimed Iran’s breach was ‘‘altogether separate’’ from its responsibilities under the nuclear deal. While the Obama administration says it will take Iran to task at the U.N., we can expect any action will, in true U.N. form, be deafeningly pathetic.

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Using Biden to Block the Clintons from Regaining the White House – Barack Obama’s last act By Kevin D. Williamson

By on October 19th, 2015

For Progressives, It’s Personnel over Policy

As he approaches the end of his career in elected office, Barack Obama is in a truly precarious position: He is going to exit the White House having accomplished almost nothing substantive on the policy front — his health-care program is not going to survive, Gitmo is not going to be closed, we are not leaving Afghanistan, and he is sending troops into Iraq — and outside of his perch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his party is in ruins: In Congress and the states, the Democrats are in their weakest position in modern political history. If the Democrats do not win the presidency in 2016, there are going to be some very uncomfortable questions about what exactly Obama & Co. accomplished, and at what price.

What to do? Throw Herself to the wolves, of course.

Barack Obama isn’t a policy guy; he’s a personnel guy. An underappreciated aspect of Barack Obama’s politics is that he has been trying to convert the Democratic party from a party that lives in Congress to a party that lives in the White House.

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Clinton’s ‘Please Hack Me’ Server Lawmakers this week should ask her about the potential damage. By L. Gordon Crovitz

By on October 19th, 2015

“I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry, ” President-elect Obama said in early 2009. “They’re trying to pry it out of my hands.” The National Security Agency was so anxious about foreign intelligence agents gaining access to classified information that it assigned dozens of technologists to work for months before the inauguration to modify a BlackBerry Mr. Obama could use. The new president was told his device could safely communicate with fewer than a dozen other people, after their devices were loaded with special encryption.

His secretary of state took a different approach.

Hillary Clinton set up her own private email server. By avoiding use of government servers, she succeeded in keeping emails off-limits to information requests from congressional overseers and journalists—but American counterintelligence agents must now assume that Chinese, Russian and possibly other agents had full access. A Pentagon counterintelligence official told the Daily Beast that if he were in charge of a foreign intelligence agency, “I’d fire my staff if they weren’t getting all this.”

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Taiwan’s Election Drama Is a Message to Beijing An intraparty putsch shows the limits of detente with Beijing. By Rupert Hammond-Chambers

By on October 19th, 2015

In an emergency congress convened on Saturday, Taiwan’s ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) ousted Hung Hsiu-chu from its presidential ticket and formally endorsed Party Chairman Eric Chu for January’s presidential election.

Ms. Hung, vice president of the legislature, suffered from low opinion polls and an ever-widening gap with the opposition candidate Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who was ahead by nearly 30 percentage points in September. Ms. Hung’s strongly China-leaning policy turned off voters and risked undermining the KMT effort to retain control of the legislature, which the party has held for more than a decade.

Mr. Chu, a popular centrist figure, should improve the fortunes of the KMT’s legislative candidates. At 54 he is relatively young, with a reputation for clean government and focusing on economic development. He is currently the mayor of New Taipei City, which he was re-elected to last year in a tight race.

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