(CNN) Defense Secretary Ash Carter has made it official: ISIS has saved one of its deadliest enemies, the U.S. Air Force's A-10 Thunderbolt.

The inelegant but well-armed and well-armored ground-attack jet, nicknamed the "Warthog," was facing quick retirement after the Air Force said it needed the money and crews being used to keep the A-10s flying for the brand-new F-35s and other missions.

Then came Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition's campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
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"I saw some of the A-10s that are flying bombing missions against ISIL (the Pentagon's term for ISIS) when I was at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey last December, and we need the additional payload capacity they can bring to the fight," Carter said in testimony on the Pentagon's Fiscal Year 2017 budget before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday. [MORE]

Night after night I watch my World War One and World War Two documentaries. I just finished the BBC’s The World at War, 30 hours or so on WWII, surely as fine a piece of work on film as there has ever been. The writers got the Battle of Midway totally confused with the Marianas Turkey Shoot and got quite a bit wrong about Leningrad. But the series in general is magnificent. Laurence Olivier’s narration is subtle beyond belief. His command of the material is stupefyingly potent.

It offsets the puzzling use of Alger Hiss as an expert witness on Russian intentions in the War and John Kenneth Galbraith’s sneering words about Nixon. Well worth watching.

I watch these documentaries because I am compelled by the World Wars. Nothing like them has ever happened before or since. The full power of the world’s great powers mobilized to kill as many people as possible. And how they went at it!
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Roughly 100 million killed in Europe alone, in both wars, the great majority in eastern Europe, six million of my fellow Jews, helpless noncombatants murdered to satisfy Hitler’s insane adaptation of Darwinian evolutionary theory.
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State Department officials released roughly 800 of Hillary Clinton's private emails Friday evening, just hours before the South Carolina Democratic primaries begin.
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However, agency officials missed a court-ordered deadline on Jan. 29 after overlooking thousands of pages of emails that needed to be sent to outside agencies for review.
The State Department has been ordered to complete the publication of the remaining Clinton emails by Feb. 29. It is unclear whether the agency will make the new deadline. [MORE]