A Roguish sale

The ebook edition of Dictator's Ransom - where the Rogue Warrior ventures to North Korea and beyond - is now on sale for $2.99. You can get it from the Tor/MacMillan site here (scroll toward the bottom of the page), or at your favorite ebook provider.

We had a lot of fun with that one, writing about what "the loathsome dwarf" would do in his last days. Or as Dick would put it: Was it fiction, or prediction?

You be the judge.

Through the worst, love has and will still endure. That's a lot to be thankful for.

The 'deal' with Iran

Skepticism is only the start

  

There’s no way not to be skeptical about the deal with Iran to “freeze” its nuclear weapons program. Even aside from recent history and the character of the people involved, the stakes are so high that any deal must be viewed with deep skepticism.

Keeping nuclear weapons from the region is a worthwhile goal. But even if this deal leads to an agreement to do that, the impact is likely to be less clear cut than it seems.

First and most importantly, the present deal presents a clear timeline for action by the West. If suitable disarmament is not achieved in six months, then clearly the proper move by the West is to force that disarmament. And sanctions aren’t going to do it; only an attack on Iran’s facilities will.

A real agreement to disband the program would include abandonment of the nuclear weapons program and work on the delivery systems – no missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads should be allowed to exist in Iran. The country’s ongoing missile program has always been a clear sign of its leaders’ true intentions to build and deploy nuclear weapons; if it remains in place, there can be no doubt about what it really is up to.

But what if Iran is sincere and does freeze or completely disband its nuclear weapons program?

Iran will benefit simply by being able to sell its oil openly, but the up side is far greater than that. To the extent that an agreement leads to a rapprochement or even just an easing of relations with Western nations and China – not the U.S. – it will have a major impact on the current war between Shia and Sunni Islam.

The leaders of Iran have not only exported weapons and fighters in that conflict but have proselytized for a Shia-dominated Islam and Middle East; if Iran has more resources to use in that quest, it surely will. From a long-term point of view, stopping the nuclear program now allows Iran to deal with its immediate goals of dealing with the Sunnis. This is especially important if the leaders have concluded that they cannot use nuclear weapons against co-religionists, a belief that seems to be evident in many of their pronouncements. (You'll have to ask them why that doesn’t extend to other Children of Abraham.)

None of that changes the equation for Israel, which surely must see Iran as a constant threat, even without nukes. Allowing Iran to keep material that is only a few stages away from a bomb may never be acceptable. But what of the store of knowledge and experience that might be tapped secretly to restart a program in the future? That has to be considered a threat as well. The problem is how to neutralize that threat without weakening the nation in the long term. If a single attack on a nuclear plant would have guaranteed success, it would have been launched a long time ago.

Finally, as is already clear, any agreement will unsettle Iran’s Sunni neighbors, Egypt and Saudi Arabia especially. Ironically, their natural ally against Iran is  . . . Israel, which alone in the Middle East has a force strong enough to challenge it.

Iran's actual and verifiable abandonment of its nuclear weapons program would be a good thing. An agreement that stops short of that commitment is no agreement at all. But even if such a real deal to ban nukes completely is reached and fulfilled, it may ironically be the precursor to more conflict in the region.

Look closely . . .

. . .  that's a MiG-21 dressed in U.S. colors.

Part of an early '60s Cold War project to test the aircraft and other Soviet Union fighters. And guess what - it turned out to be pretty damn good.

More information and links at The Aviationist.

China vs. Japan

Things escalate

China continues to lurch toward a more aggressive foreign policies in Asia, as show here:

HONG KONG — The Chinese government warned on Saturday that it claimed the right to identify, monitor and possibly take military action against aircraft that enter a newly declared “air defense identification zone,” which covers sea and islands also claimed by Japan. The declaration appeared to be a step in China’s efforts to intensify pressure on Japan over the disputed islands in the East China Sea.

NY Times story.

Another story, with maps, from the BBC.

The aggression is part of an ongoing powerplay by China as it seeks to extend not only its influence but its access to natural resources in the region. A lot of this is about oil and gas, and because of that, it's unlikely the territorial disputes will be settled easily. The real question is what sort of reaction China will provoke in other countries, beginning with the U.S. and Japan, but just as importantly including smaller nations from Vietnam to the Philippines. The administration's so-called "pivot" to Asia in American foreign policy has not produced much in the way of counterbalances to China, nor has it had any noticeable effect on Chinese policy.

The news media remain fixated on the Middle East, but the conflicts in the Pacific are more critical to long-term U.S. interests, and potentially as difficult to resolve.

Chris Kyle & JFK


Whether or not every human being is connected by no more than six degrees of separation, I'm continually fascinated by the odd, weird and occasionally wonderful ways we seem to be related to each other. This being the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death, I was reminded of my own very weak - very, very, very weak - connection to the event.

It came about this year, after the tragedy of Chris Kyle's murder. Stepping in to work on American Gun, I wanted to talk to some old-time police officers who swore by the .38 Special.* A friend put me in touch with a man who'd carried the gun for years and years - Jim Leavelle.

The same man who was walking Lee Harvey Oswald out of the police station when Jack Ruby appeared.

Chris had a lot of friends in the Dallas police department, and I know he heard the story of that day more than a few times. Here's the account from American Gun, in Chris's voice:

 
I started this chapter with a presidential assassination. It’s hard for a boy from Dallas to do that without thinking of Lee Harvey Oswald and that awful day back in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was shot down here. There are still plenty of folks around who were there and remember what all happened.

One of them is Jim Leavelle, who was walking Oswald down the ramp of the garage under police headquarters two days later when Jack Ruby shot him.

Jim, a friend of a friend, was a Dallas police officer for going on twenty-six years. If you’ve ever studied the JFK assassination, or even spent a bit of time looking at the photos, you’ve seen him at Oswald’s right in the light suit on the garage ramp as they walk down to take Oswald to court. Just as they come into view in the famous TV footage, Ruby ducks past an army of reporters and policemen. Leavelle starts to yank Oswald toward him out of the way, but Ruby’s too close. He fires into Oswald’s middle, then gets gang tackled.

Leavelle says he spotted Ruby’s pistol in the half-second after Ruby ducked around one of the other officers near the car. The retired officer is often asked by people why he didn’t shoot Ruby.

“It just happens so fast,” he tells them. “It always does. Sometimes you don’t have time to draw. You just react. That’s all you can do.”

That’s some hard-earned experience talking there. Training helps, good weapons help, but nothing beats fate, or dumb luck.

Leavelle was in a bunch of close scrapes over his career. He packed a number of weapons – a lot of .38s in just about every barrel length, a .45 Colt, a .38 Super, a .357 that he thought was a bit too heavy for an everyday carry. The day he escorted Oswald, he had two Colt .45s with him, but never had the chance to use them.

Ruby, by the way, killed Oswald with a .38 Special.

* I might have used my uncle, a former NYC policeman, but that seemed a little too close to nepotism, or maybe nephewism . ..

Patricia Cornwell's favorite book . . .


. . . is American Sniper.

Item:

Tell us about your favorite book of the year. 

Chris Kyle’s “American Sniper.” It’s an amazingly detailed account of fighting in Iraq — a humanizing, brave story that’s extremely readable. It will give you a much stronger appreciation of our troops, more awe for Navy SEALs and also insight into how wars are really fought today. 

Story.

Did I mention that she's my favorite crime/mystery writer?

Walking dog earns $100k



Clearly I walk the dog in the wrong place  . . .

Damn Van Damme

. . . how it might have gone.

Got health insurance?

No surprise here:

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress like to boast that they will have the same health care enrollment experience as constituents struggling with the balky federal website, because the law they wrote forced lawmakers to get coverage from the new insurance exchanges.

That is true. As long as their constituents have access to “in-person support sessions” like the ones being conducted at the Capitol and congressional office buildings by the local exchange and four major insurers. Or can log on to a special Blue Cross and Blue Shield website for members of Congress and use a special toll-free telephone number — a “dedicated congressional health insurance plan assistance line.”

And then there is the fact that lawmakers have a larger menu of “gold plan” insurance choices than most of their constituents have back home.

Story.

Meanwhile, my insurance premium has reached the point where I pay more for health care than my mortgage each month . . . and still have a fifty dollar a visit copay, no drug coverage, etc., etc. . . .

Maybe I'm the only one in the world that this has happened to, but my policy is more than the most expensive policy the same company offers through the NY Health Exchange. I can't switch due to the contract timing . . . yet.

A57

I've always been fascinated with the family of high-speed sea planes and related aircraft, but I hadn't realized until recently that the Soviet Cold War designs were actually the work of an Italian. The original script for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon called for the descendant of one of these planes as a "boss" in the Black Sea sequences. alas, it didn't make it to the final cut.

St. Lo and our (mis)perception of history

One of the things that struck me while I was working on my biography of Omar Bradley* is how much misperception there is of the man. He’s not so much the blank slate of World War II but the punching bag.

Everyone from historians to political columnists have used him as a straw man for whatever sort of prejudice they have or point they want to make. Mostly that’s because:

a) readers don’t really know much about him, and

b) neither do historians.

There are a number of reasons for this, which I go into in the book. But it’s not just the fact that Bradley hasn’t had much attention. Much of what we focus on when looking at the history of World War II helps distort who he was.

Take, for example, the battle of St. Lo in Normandy. Capturing the city was an important accomplishment during the campaign that followed D-Day; it was an American victory. It was also a bloody mess that resulted in a pile of rubble and not much else. Because of the geography, lack of ammunition and a host of other factors, it was a slow, plodding affair, absolutely not what the Americans, or Bradley, wanted.

It happens, though, that because the battle lasted so long, we have a lot of specific information on it, which has allowed historians to focus on it. It’s often used as the last battle of the D-Day campaign – which of course it’s not. (That would be Cobra, a decidedly different affair, and the one plan completely drawn up by Bradley and followed to his specifications. And contrary to some historians’ contentions, there’s little evidence that Bradley saw St. Lo as the precursor to Cobra.)

There are a lot of things you can say about that battle. But if you look at it and think that it represents Bradley or American doctrine during the war, you’d be totally mistaken. Even if the historian writing about it doesn’t think that or say that, many readers will certainly get that impression if they spend a lot of time reading about it.

I should note that the documentary I’m in does end at that battle, and for that and many other reasons I don’t mean to exempt myself from the criticism of inappropriate context. But we do have to keep in mind that history, even at its most accurate, comes to us with many hidden strings. What we know is not always what we think we know, and what we think is often not what we know.

* which you can get here and here.

In Dutch:

Hello, Netherlands, and thanks.

(First time I've ever had a book translated into Dutch. I can't understand a word, but then that's not an unusual situation...)

Scanning books is fair use . . .

... says judge, dismissing what was a landmark case between authors and Google

Item from Reuters:

(Reuters) - Google Inc on Thursday won dismissal of a long-running lawsuit by authors who accused the Internet search company of digitally copying millions of books for an online library without permission.

U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google's argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books, and making "snippets" of text available online, constituted "fair use" under U.S. copyright law.

Story.

Damn, Van Damme



It hurts just to watch this . . .

Speaking of Cobra . . .



. . .  this is the Army's official history of the attack.

There are a few things that'll make your eyes roll, but the footage of the troops and the terrain alone make it worth watching.

The visuals that always amaze me are the ones showing the sheer damage to St. Lo. The obliteration of French cities during the campaign is something quite often overlooked, even in the best books.

(Ignore the comments at the bottom of the page. Apparently the commentators didn't know that Patton wasn't involved in Cobra, or realize that Bradley's in the film to tout the Army's history series (including, it should be said, historians whose interpretations he didn't agree with). Then again, it's always interesting to see how the Patton-Bradley myths are perpetuated.)

What would 007 say?

Item:

A spy whose naked, decomposing body was found in a padlocked gym bag at his apartment likely died in an accident with no one else involved, British police said Wednesday. 

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said the death of Gareth Williams, whose remains were found inside a bag in his bathtub in August 2010, was "most probably" an accident.

"I'm convinced that Gareth's death was in no way linked to his work," Hewitt told Reuters. 

Story.

People lock themselves in gym bags all the time, I'm sure . . .

More D-Day books

Reading D-Day

One of the questions that I wasn't asked for the History Channel documentary, and that surely would have taken hours and hours to answer, is probably the most basic:

What's a good book to read if you're interested in D-Day?

Stephen Ambrose's D-Day is usually mentioned as one of the best introductions for a general reader, and I still remember my first reading when I was . . . a few years younger than I am today. Anthony Beevor's one volume D-Day is another good survey of the battle - and I'm not just saying that because he's in the History Channel documentary, too. (You should see my dog-eared copy, still tagged with a mountain of Post-It notes.) Max Hastings' Overlord is another good introduction, a bit older than the others, but still an excellent read.

After a general introduction, you might want to dig in a little deeper with Carlo d'Este's Decision in Normandy and John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy. Both books take you well beyond D-Day, and in fact past Cobra, the battle that broke the american army out and set the stage for the race across France. Speaking of Cobra, James Jay Carafano's After D-Day is the best one-volume account of the battle I've found.

There are literally thousands of other books to round out the picture. You won't agree with every interpretation, not even (or especially not) in the best-known books, but that's part of the fun of history.