Chirac, Putin & Co.

One of our favorite newspaper columns was issued back in 1986 on the eve of America’s attack on Libya. The attack was ordered by President Reagan after the bombing of the LaBelle nightclub in Berlin. President Mitterrand had just announced that American warplanes flying the mission out of Britain would not be allowed to cross French air space, with the result that our pilots would have to take the long way around to their targets and arrive there lower on fuel and energy. This is when R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. issued his famous dispatch proposing that our pilots cross France anyhow, following a route that would take them over all the American war cemeteries where our GIs lie facing the sky under which they died for French and American freedom.