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I remember the first time I met Cap. It was 1992 and I was researching a book on the Reagan Cold War strategy — and I was anxious. Cap was publisher and chairman of Forbes at the time. Previously, he had served in Cabinet positions under three U.S. presidents, most recently as secretary of Defense for seven years under Reagan. He was known as "Cap the Knife" under Nixon, and was the man who built up the Reagan Military Machine. Just a little intimidating, don't you think? I was ushered into his office by Kay Leisz, his long-time aide. "Call...

My father's latest book, "Home of The Brave" (Forge, May 2006) is prefaced with a quote from former President George Herbert Walker Bush: "Ours would not be the land of the free if it were not also the home of the brave." On my visit to Wisconsin last week, my host took me to the home of her parents. Both of these octogenarians were concentration camp survivors. While they do not speak of it, there is no doubt of the horrors that they, and so many others in similar situations, endured. They are indeed brave souls. Today, we think such...

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...

What do these people have in common?: George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, William J. Casey, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Raymond Donovan, William Frist, Lewis Libby, Robert McFarlane, Oliver North, John M. Poindexter, Karl Rove, Kenneth Tomlinson, Caspar Weinberger. Answer: they are all conservative Republicans who have been accused by the liberal press and/or prosecuted for criminal acts under pressures brought by liberal politicians. All of them have been persecuted by the threat of legal action or by actual indictments for political reasons. None have been found guilty although some have had to go through the expense of an appeal...

President Reagan used several deft tactical maneuvers to exploit cracks in the Soviet armor. As president of the United States, Ronald Reagan initiated a sweeping and unprecedented program of covert actions and economic-warfare initiatives that acted to greatly weaken the Soviet economy, its support for "wars of liberation," and its hold on its power in Eastern Europe, former top Reagan administration officials said. The elements of these programs were contained in top-secret national-security directives signed by Reagan in 1982 and 1983, these sources told United Press International. "Any kind of covert-action program had to be expressed in a presidential finding,"...

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...

<p>Most Americans don't know the names Javier Camacho or Patrick M. Quinn, but they should. As 150,000 U.S. troops spend the Christmas holiday fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, all Americans should reflect on the unique sacrifices of the men and women like them who form this new generation of brave soldiers.</p>

Let Bush Be Bush By Michael A. Ledeen Posted: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 ARTICLES New York Sun   Publication Date: December 17, 2003 As the Reagan years pass further back into time, both his enemies and his admirers are straining mightily to write the history the way they want it to have happened. In the process, those eight years are taking on almost mythical characteristics. The 'phobes see an ideologically driven administration almost psychotically obsessed with defeating communism; the 'philes see a simpatico human being who understood America perfectly and used American strengths to bring down the Soviet empire. It...

As a tail-end Gen-Xer, I cut my political teeth on the comic strip "Bloom County." So the recent news that creator Berkeley Breathed is bringing back the strip's star — Opus the penguin — is welcome news. Since Opus, The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes all retired, there hasn't been much reason at all to read the comics page. Bloom County, you may remember, featured a hodgepodge cast of prairie critters (one of them was actually named "Hodgepodge"), pre-adolescent boys (about my age when I started reading), and adults (whose role was mostly to play the fool). It began...

<p>Richard Miniter's new book, "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror," tells the sad, infuriating history of the number of opportunities President Clinton had to capture and imprison or kill the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Instead, we are still hunting. Bin Laden is still at large and alive enough to sponsor and concoct the details of the worst attack on America in our history — the destruction of the World Trade Center and the bombing of the Pentagon. What other horrors he is planning we do not know, simply because he is still uncaptured.</p>

<p>Completely frustrated by their inability to belittle, sneer at or just plain falsify about the victory of our troops in Iraq, opponents of the president are now reduced to using bits and pieces of non-evidence to contend that we did not have to replace the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.</p>