Things are looking up in Iraq, according to some, that is. We are talking to the insurgents, which is obviously a good thing, but if one believes what they have to say, one is obviously an idiot—or else, one believed Bill Clinton when he told us he never had sex with that woman. Here’s why we cannot trust the Iraqis: Baghdad is lawless because the kidnapping and murdering is done by the very Iraqi police and ...

Thomas Lejus, a Moscow university graduate, was the first Soviet to be accepted to the Wimbledon draw after the war. An American friend of mine, "D," (whom I cannot name because he is now a very big shot in D.C.) was also in the draw. He suggested we take Thomas out to lunch and get him to defect. “Do you know what this will do, if their first player defects ?.....” I agreed, and my friend and I invited Lejus to the Cafe ...

The funny thing about Sarkozy being president of France is not his size, but his family. His father, Pal Sarkozy, used to frequent the same nightclubs I did back in the early Sixties. Of the beau monde he was not. Pal was rather sleazy, a bit of a conman, and something of a playboy. None of us knew what he did, and by that I don’t mean to suggest he was dishonest, but there were always rumours about him. And an inveterate ...

Robert E. Lee once said that duty is “the sublimest word in the English language.” Yes it is, but dodging duty has now become the operative word in the neocon language. They talk about supporting our troops and all that blather, but how many of these bloodthirsty donut eaters have ever answered the call of duty? The blood of America’s fighting men cannot indefinitely be spilled by a government made up of people who have ...

Another friend's farewell, this time at West Point, where Commander Tim Vogel was buried with full military honours. Some of you oldies may have seen the film The Bridges of Toko-Ri, starring William Holden, Grace Kelly, Frederic March and Mickey Rooney. Holden played a pilot based on Tim's father, a hot shot jet fighter who died in North Korea in 1951. The film had changed his name and presented him as a reluctant hero. Tim's ...

Yesterday, in Columbia, South Carolina, Rudy Mussolini attacked the only honest person in Congress, Rep. Ron ...

During the German occupation of my homeland in the Second World War there were nightly shouts of "Vasta Rommel" by certain Greeks. "Vasta" in Greek means "Hold on." In other words, Greeks were praying for the great Erwin Rommel to hold against Montgomery's 8th army. The German officers who were billeted in our house were immensely flattered. Until, that is, Fraulein, my German nanny, informed them that those shouting "Vasta ...

People to the manor born simply do not disapprove of those born in lesser circumstances than themselves. To the contrary, a duke is much more at ease with his dustman than with a hedge fund vulgarian who tries to ape the duke’s manner of speaking. Unlike in America, where one’s pocketbook is taken as one’s worth, an Englishman’s accent counts for more. Or used to, anyway. Even if one learns to fake it, like the great ...

There are 800,000 British passport holders who can at any time come to the United States without a visa or subject to any controls. These Brits are all either Pakistani born and naturalized British subjects, or their sons or grandsons. Pakistani Britons travel to their ancestral land of Pakistan around -- get this -- 400,000 times per year. 400,000 trips are taken each year by Britons of Pakistani descent who are then free to ...

So we have come to this, have we? Israel is more important than the United States as far as certain Jewish Americans are concerned. Well, I don't think so, and fervently hope Rosen and Weissman have the book thrown at them. A nation of immigrants like America simply cannot afford to have American citizens betray Uncle Sam to the country of the origins of their forefathers or ...

Oldies have a powerful lobby in America, even in sport. Take judo, for example. Last week I went down to Miami for the U.S. national judo championships, a competition which decides who will represent Uncle Sam in next year’s Olympics. Along with the seniors, as the main competitors are known as, there is also a master’s tournament. Age groups begin from 30 to 35, and so on. I was entered in the 70 to 75 ...

The first time I met Pat Buckley was in 1964 and the circumstances were rather strange. It was at the Palace hotel in Gstaad, and a few friends and I were drinking around the large piano in the grill while the pianist was playing a spirited version of Mussolini's favorite tune, "Giovinezza." Our singing the ode to youth and fascism apparently did not best please a tall, bald man standing at the bar who suddenly threw his ...

One of the least gratifying pictures I have had the bad luck to view on television this week for the portly figure of Richard Perle expounding his vile views in The Case for War. Even worse, it was on public television, which as everyone knows is paid for by our tax dollars. The heavy-lidded Perle is hardly photogenic, although unlike most bullies of his kind, he is soft-spoken and claims to sympathize with mourning relatives ...

Larry Ellison, the chief executive of the software giant Oracle and the world's 11th richest man, according to Forbes magazine, is not imbued by an ounce of grace or elementary good manners. He has constructed a basketball court on board his megayacht, the latter a monstrosity which pollutes more than a battleship and serves no other purpose than as a penile extension to its owner. He's also so ...

One, two, three, four, Wolfowitz has got to go! Five, six, seven, eight, one more day will be too late. As the wise man said, once a crook and a liar, always a crook and a liar. Wolfowitz conspired with Douglas Feith to fabricate proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction aimed at us. After the greatest disaster in the history of American foreign policy took place, Wolfowitz was the first rat to leave the sinking ...

I remember when I was living in Flambertin des Creppieres, a small hamlet west of Paris with an admittedly extremely pretentious name, and listening to two butchers arguing about Camus. They both had obviously read him, but it was their evocation of other writers whom they compared him to which left me breathless. After they finished their wine they shook hands and went back to slicing up chickens and lambs. Just like back in ...