Syndication
Michael Ledeen
Peter Beinart on Norman Podhoretz’s Bluster Problem
Former New Republic editor Peter Beinart eviscerates neo-con chieftain Norman Podhoretz’s new book “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism” in The New York Times Book Review:
His assertions are bold, sweeping and almost wholly unencumbered by evidence. We learn, for instance, that “almost to a man, Muslim clerics in their sermons” endorsed the 9/11 attacks. “Just about everyone in the whole world who was intent on discrediting the Bush doctrine,” he tells us, claimed that Jews were behind the Iraq war. And none of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib “so far as anyone knew, was even maimed, let alone killed.”
But what really gets Beinart — hardly a starry-eyed dove himself — is the Commentary editor’s blustering antagonism toward his domestic political opponents. Beinart writes:
Michael Ledeen: Secret Forward Writer
American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen takes a trip down memory lane in a post on National Review Online:
Many years ago, at the request of Seth Lipsky, I wrote a serialized novel for The Forward about Jim Angleton’s complex and important relationship with the Israeli internal security service, the Shin Bet. The tradition of the newspaper was that such novels had to be written under a pseudonym, and I chose “Joshua Caleb,” the two most famous names in the history of Jewish espionage.
Incidentally, the novel was titled “Teddy and Jesus,” after Teddy Kollek and James Jesus Angleton.
Thanks to writer Dave Wagner, who alerted me to the story.
