Former Navy SEAL And Congressman-Elect Dan Crenshaw Calls On Trump To Stay In Syria: 'We Go There So They Don't Come Here'

Gabriella Munoz at the Washington Times reports on former Navy SEAL and Congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw’s Washington Post op-ed that calls on President Trump to stay the course in Syria.    

Rep-elect. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal, cautioned President Trump against following through on his plan to pull troops out of Syria.

In a Washington Post op-ed published Friday, the Texas Republican argued there is one key reason troops should remain in Syria.

“We go there so they don’t come here,” he wrote. “There is a common misconception that if we just let them fight their own wars they will leave us alone.”

Mr. Crenshaw argued that terrorist organizations will always target the U.S., but preventing attacks does nothing to stem the “cascade effect of instability and chaos” created by a power vacuum if Americans leave.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/21/dan-crenshaw-calls-trump-stay-syria-we-go-there-so/

David Ignatius' 'The Quantum Spy' Is About Quantum Computing, The Chinese/American Technology Race And Espionage

I interviewed Washington Post columnist and best-selling spy novelist David Ignatius (seen in the above photo) yesterday morning. 

We discussed his latest thriller, The Quantum Spy, and quantum computing, espionage and the technology race between China and America.

My Q&A with David Ignatius will appear in the upcoming Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, a quarterly magazine for government, law enforcement and military people worldwide. 

I’ll post the piece here when it comes out. (I’m also reviewing The Quantum Spy for the Washington Times).  

In addition to covering quantum computing, The Quantum Spy also takes the reader into the headquarters of Communist China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an adversarial intelligence agency mush less known than the Russian SVR and the old Soviet KGB. 

His realistic, well-researched and well-written novel is informative, suspenseful and entertaining.      

Below is a description of the novel from www.davidignatius.com:  

From the best-selling author of The Director and Body of Lies comes a thrilling tale of global espionage, state-of-the-art technology, and unthinkable betrayal.

The Quantum Spy is a hyper-fast quantum computer is the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb; whoever possesses one will be able to shred any encryption and break any code in existence. The winner of the race to build the world’s first quantum machine will attain global dominance for generations to come. The question is, who will cross the finish line first: the U.S. or China?

In this gripping cyber thriller, the United States’ top-secret quantum research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, inciting a mole hunt of history-altering proportions. CIA officer Harris Chang leads the charge, pursuing his target from the towering cityscape of Singapore to the lush hills of the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of Mexico, and beyond. The investigation is obsessive, destructive, and—above all—uncertain. Do the leaks expose real secrets, or are they false trails meant to deceive the Chinese? The answer forces Chang to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, morality, and the primacy of truth.

Grounded in the real-world technological arms race, The Quantum Spy presents a sophisticated game of cat and mouse cloaked in an exhilarating and visionary thriller.

You can also read David Ignatius’ review of John le Carre’s spy novel, A Legacy of Spies, in the Atlantic via the below link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/le-carre-goes-back-into-the-cold/534189/

And you can read my Washington Times review of A Legacy of Spies via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/31/book-review-a-legacy-of-spies/ 

Krauthammer: In Defense Of Obama's Drone War

Charles Krauthammer defends President Obama's drone war in his column in the Washington Post.

The nation's vexation over the morality and legality of President Obama’s drone war has produced a salutary but hopelessly confused debate. Three categories of questions are being asked. They must be separated to be clearly understood.

1. By what right does the president order the killing by drone of enemies abroad? What criteria justify assassination? 

Answer: (a) imminent threat, under the doctrine of self-defense, and (b) affiliation with al-Qaeda, under the laws of war.

 

Imminent threat is obvious. If we know a freelance jihadist cell in Yemen is actively plotting an attack, we don’t have to wait until after the fact. Elementary self-defense justifies attacking first.

... Once you take up arms against the United States, you become an enemy combatant, thereby forfeiting the privileges of citizenship and the protections of the Constitution, including due process. You retain only the protection of the laws of war — no more and no less than those of your foreign comrades-in-arms.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-in-defense-of-obamas-drone-war/2013/02/14/3a69d76c-76e5-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions 

John McCain Tells How Neil Armstrong Inspired The Vietnam War's POWs

Seantor John McCain offers an interesting piece in the Washington Post on how Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon inspired him and the other POWs who held in prison by the communist North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

Neil Armstrong's passing reminded me of the moment I learned of his historic accomplishment. I didn’t gather with my family around the television to watch him take his “small step” onto the surface of the moon. When the momentous event occurred, I had no idea it was happening. I and several hundred comrades were otherwise engaged — prisoners of war in the enemy’s capital, where in 1969, news could travel slowly.

... Once in a while, the Vietnamese unwittingly let a little good news slip by. One evening, Hannah played a clip of a speech by a prominent American opponent of the war. It was a quick, throwaway line in a long list of diatribes about the war and the president. But we all caught it. The quote was something like: “President Nixon can put a man on the moon, but he can’t end the war in Vietnam.”

Yes, that was news to us, arriving years after the successful Apollo 11 mission.

We had all heard President John F. Kennedy commit our country to putting a man on the moon within a decade. Most of us prisoners were pilots, and we admired and envied the pilots who became Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts. Most of all, we wanted our pride in our country, our love for the place where free people reached for the stars, reaffirmed in the place where it had been tested and mocked.

In that one screw-up, that brief mention of glorious news, our morale soared. We felt almost physically strengthened as we communicated with each other in whispers and tap code: “Did you hear that? Did you? We put a man on the moon. My God, we did it.”

Many years later, I had the honor of meeting the man who planted that flag. I told him how we had learned what he had done and how much it had meant to us. Armstrong was a brave man who made his countrymen proud, but he was also a modest man with a quiet demeanor, and he seemed moved by the recollection.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-mccain-how-neil-armstrong-inspired-a-pow/2012/09/13/5bd707e2-fdc0-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

Italian Banker Connected To The 'Pizza Connection' Case Arrested In Bangkok

 

The Washington Post reports that a fugitive connected to the 'Pizza Connection' heroin smuggling case that reached from Sicily to American pizza parlours was arrested in Bangkok.

ROME — A fugitive Italian banker implicated in the “Pizza Connection” drug and money laundering trial has been detained in Thailand after Italian authorities tracked his whereabouts on Facebook, authorities said Saturday.

Italy’s highest court in 2009 upheld the 2006 conviction and nine-year prison sentence against Vito Roberto Palazzolo for Mafia association. Prosecutors allege that while working in Switzerland as a banker, Palazzolo laundered money for some of Italy’s top mobsters, a charge he denies.

You can read about the "Pizza Connection" and the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/italian-implicated-in-pizza-connection-trial-held-in-thailand-on-alleged-mob-ties/2012/03/31/gIQAqsCMnS_story.html

But We Got him First: The Bin Laden Plot to Kill President Obama And General Petraeus

David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post, reports on the Osama bin Laden plot to assissinate President Obama and General David Petraeus.

Before his death, Osama bin Laden boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus.

“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency. . . . Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour . . . and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.

Administration officials said Friday that the Obama-Petraeus plot was never a serious threat.

The scheme is described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces on May 2, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official. They have been declassified and will be available soon to the public in their original Arabic texts and translations.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html?hpid=z2

Note: David Ignatius is also a fine spy thriller writer. You can read my review of one of his thrillers, The Increment, via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2009/07/iranian-intrigue-in-increment.html

Citizen Twain: Actor Val Kilmer To Play Mark Twain In One-Man Play

 

Sarah Ann Hughes at the Washington Post reports that Val Kilmer, seen in the above photo, is portraying one of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, in a one-man show.

Have you recently thought to yourself, “I wonder what Val Kilmer is up to”? Why, he’s currently playing Mark Twain in a one-man show he created about the American author and humorist, of course.

The “Batman Forever” actor will perform “Citizen Twain” — a show that “delves into the heart and soul of Samuel Clemens and conjures forth the great spirit of Mark Twain” — in a two-weekend run at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery this March, Playbill reports.

Apparently, Kilmer has been impersonating Twain for some time now.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/val-kilmer-to-play-mark-twain-in-one-man-show/2012/03/15/gIQAv5fYES_blog.html

Note: I love Val Kilmer's portrayal of Doc Holiday in Tombstone.

Charles Krauthammer's Column: The 9/11 Overreaction

Charles Krauthammer wrote an interesting and insightful column that debunks the "new conventional wisdom on 9/11."

Krauthammer responds to the notions that we have created a decade of fear, we overreacted to 9/11, al-Qaeda was a paper tiger, and our overreaction to 9/11 bankrupted the country and sent us into national decline.

9/11 was our Pearl Harbor. This time, however, the enemy had no home address. No Tokyo. Which is why today’s war could not be wrapped up in a mere four years. It was unconventional war by an unconventional enemy embedded within a worldwide religious community. Yet in a decade, we largely disarmed and defeated it, and developed the means to continue to pursue its remnants at rapidly decreasing cost. That is a historic achievement

You can read the rest of Charles Krauthammer's brilliant column, which appeared in the Washington Post, via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-911-overreaction-nonsense/2011/09/08/gIQAc727CK_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

You're a Terrorist, a Murderer, in Prison for Life, Called a Jackal, and You're Concerned About Your Image Now?

I read an interesting piece in the Washington Post about how Ilich Ramirez is suing a documentary film company over the “intellectual property” rights to his name and “biographical image.”

Ramirez, better known as “Carlos the Jackal,” is a former terrorist and murderer who is currently serving a life sentence in Paris, France for killing two French security agents.

Ramirez was, and apparently remains, an egomaniac. He was a rich, spoiled child who played at being a terrorist. He enjoyed being in the international spotlight in the 1970s and he didn’t mind having to bomb, shoot and kill people to be there.

Although he committed some truly awful criminal acts, this vicious coward was hardly “the most dangerous man in the world,” as some journalists, novelists and film makers made him out to be. He loved and encouraged the over-blown publicity, even adopting the name “Carlos the jackal,” which a reporter called him after finding a copy of Frederick Forsyth’s first-class thriller The Day of the Jackal in his abandoned belongings.

Forsyth’s character was a shadowy, highly efficient, professional assassin. Ramirez was none of these things. Perhaps Frederick Forsyth should sue Ramirez.