123

I’ve been tagged with this by Kevin Sullivan of Independent Liberal. Here’s the drill:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

As it happens the book nearest to me was The World Was Going Our Way by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, the second published volume of the Mitrokhin Archives. It makes very interesting reading, particularly the sections on the Middle East and Central America. P. 123 deals with happenings in El Salvador in 1980:

The DRU was given a secure base in Nicaragua and, in consultation with Ortega, agreed to imitate the Sandinistas’ strategy against the Somoza regime by seeking to create a military machine powerful enough to defeat the army of the state. Thousands of Salvadoran revolutionaries were given rapid military training in Cuba; several hundred more were trained in Nicaragua. The DRU agreed with its Cuban and Sandinista allies on the importance of striking ‘a decise blow’ before the end of the Carter administration in January 1981 for fear that, if Ronald Reagan were elected President, he would provide more active military assitance to the Duarte government (as indeed he decided to do).

I’ll tap the following unfortunates:

Callimachus of Done With Mirrors
Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice
Michael van der Galiën of PoliGazette
MR of Sideways Mencken
Mark Safranski of Zenpundit