Nicolas Maduro was led to believe that Russian air defense systems would keep American helicopters from landing near his fortified compound in Caracas. He was misinformed.

The Venezuelan dictator also thought that any hostiles who managed to enter his residence would be taken down by his Cuban bodyguards. But Caribbean muscle proved no match for Delta Force special operators relying on actionable intelligence provided by a clandestine CIA team. More than 30 Cubans were reportedly KIA.

President Trump deserves enormous credit for authorizing this intervention, fully aware of the risks entailed but also anticipating significant rewards – for the U.S., Venezuela, and Latin America.

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Following the massacre on Bondi Beach earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters that the murderers were adherents of a "radical perversion of Islam."

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett added that the men who gunned down 15 Jews, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, were aligned with the Islamic State, which she claimed is a terrorist organization – "not a religion."

Really, mates?

It's been a generation since Al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Back then, most people had no idea who Osama bin Laden was, much less what he believed.

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Every American president publishes a National Security Strategy because, as the NSS recently released by the Trump administration says, "all Americans need to know what, exactly, it is we are trying to do and why."

The rub, of course, it that the NSS also lets America's adversaries know what, exactly, it is we are trying to do and why. Would a chess grandmaster tell his opponent exactly how he plans to checkmate him?

The NSS is not a "grand strategy." It can't be because, in just over three years, a new White House resident may have different priorities.

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A few months back, passengers arriving at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport walked down a sloping path to passport control flanked by dozens of posters depicting the remaining hostages Hamas had dragged into Gaza following its Oct. 7, 2023 invasion of Israel and the largest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

When I arrived in Israel earlier this month, only one poster remained: that of Ran Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer killed while attempting to defend a kibbutz from the terrorists.

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President Trump is a master multitasker. Still, while he was busy dining and deal-making with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia last week, I doubt he had time to carefully examine the 28-point "peace" plan drafted by Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, and Kirill Dmitriev, de facto special envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Initially, Mr. Trump appeared to endorse the plan, saying that Thanksgiving would be "an appropriate time" for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to it.

Over the weekend, however, American and Ukrainian officials met to revise the plan in Geneva where, according to a joint White House/Ukraine statement, they made "meaningful progress."

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