Britain always needs a Caspar

With thanks to PBS.org

"America never had a wiser patriot, nor Britain a truer friend." - Margaret Thatcher

Caspar Weinberger, who died yesterday aged 88, was US Secretary of Defence under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987, and a loyal friend to Britain during the Falklands War.

Weinberger had a special admiration for Winston Churchill from the time when he had served as an Army officer in the Second World War, and often cited him as a significant influence. When Argentina invaded and occupied the Falklands in April 1982, Weinberger came down strongly on Britain's side and supported Margaret Thatcher's government when it decided to retake the islands.

From the first, he was in touch with Britain's ambassador in Washington, Sir Nico Henderson, saying that America could not put a Nato ally and long-standing friend on the same level as Argentina and that he would do his best to help. Read the rest of the obituary from The Telegraph here: Caspar Weinberger (1917 - 2006): America's erstwhile Secretary of State

FROM THE TIMES: CASPAR WEINBERGER was the US Secretary of Defence who built up the huge arsenal with which President Reagan confronted the military might of the Soviet Union in the last decade of its existence.

He was not the only American who believed passionately that the price of safety in the modern world was to sink dollars into arming men and developing ever more complex weapons systems. But he was more intelligent, more sophisticated and genuinely tougher than most of America’s hawks. American Secretary of Defence who created the military machine with which Ronald Reagan faced down the Soviet Union

Mark