ON THE BRINK


We are on the brink of a wider - and more deadly - war in the Middle East.

Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s coordinated dual attacks on Israel - employing the same sneak-attack-and- kidnap strategy indicating close cooperation and timing - have sparked the very real possibility that this war could extend into Syria and even into Iran.

We would be making a mistake to underestimate the seriousness of this conflict: when Arabs and Persians start throwing around terms like ‘another Holocaust’ you have to wonder if this isn’t coordinated in Iran and Damascus.

Radical Islam - already on a Jihad against the United States - has now targeted Israel and is determined to provoke the Jewish state.

Their ultimate goal?

Who knows?

Yes, they’d like to “wipe Israel off the map,” as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said. Any logical mind, however, knows that isn’t going to happen.

But the Arab and Muslim mind is not a logical mind. It is clouded with hatred, opiates and genetic oddities due to generations of inbreeding. So trying to deduce what these misfits with rockets are up to isn’t easy.

If Hamas and Hezbollah were operating as independent terrorist groups, Israel could easily deal with them; they’d wipe out their leadership, as they’ve done in the past.

But it appears that Tehran and Damascus are in fact directing this war on Israel - and that changes everything. That makes this a full-fledged war between nations - and Israel has tough choices to make:

1) Hit sites in Syria connected to Hezbollah’s leadership plus the hiding places from the real Hamas leader;

2) Hit Syrian military sites - risking an expansion of the war;

3) Hit Tehran - perhaps even their nuclear development sites;

4) In Gaza, destroy the Hamas leadership - including the elected members of the Palestinian Parliament;

5) In sum, do now what they would have preferred not having to do until later.


Israel Defense Minister - and Labor Party Leader Peretz - said on Sunday that “everywhere I go, Israeli citizens say they wish this didn’t have to happen but now that it has, we should go and finish the job.”

“Finishing the job” is the debate today in Prime Minister Olmert’s cabinet.

Now, as the role of the United States: yes, President Bush was correct in saying that Israel was invaded and has every right to defend itself. And Secretary Rice was also correct - in geopolitical terms - to call for Israeli ‘restraint’ - even if we privately approve of Israel’s aggressive counterstrikes in Lebanon.

This battle is part of the world-wide Radical Muslim jihad against the USA and Israel. The only way to survive is to kill the leaders who ordered these attacks on Israel - and, of course, on the USA on 9/11.

Iraq has proven to be an ongoing disaster, a diversion from the real war we have been in since November 4, 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s so-called students seized our embassy in Tehran. Since then we have never really fought back.

Then came 9/11. We did indeed take down the Taliban Government and scatter the Al Qaeda leadership into caves and perhaps into Pakistani cities. But we haven’t finished the job! Osama lives on - and clearly is the spiritual and operational leader of this world-wide jihad.

Meanwhile, we are bogged down in a morass known as Iraq where big shot Iraqis are now being kidnapped daily. Yesterday it was the head of their Olympic Committee; today the head of their biggest oil company; last week a Sunni member of Parliament and her eight-man security team.

It never ends. Beheadings, retributions, assassinations, car-bombings, rapes, infiltrations of the Iraqi Army by militiamen loyal to radicals - the whole conflict is a mess we cannot fix.

The sooner we figure out that the Bush/neo-con dream of “planting the seed of democracy in the Middle East’ was unrealistic and impossible.

The Arabs are dominated - for a number of reasons - by a barbaric code of (mis)conduct that is not conducive to freedom and democracy.

In sum, it ain’t gonna happen over there.

It is high time we as a country wake up, pack up and come home.

And let the Arabs stew in their own misery.

MCCAIN’S CHARACTER


Ronald Kessler’s excellent piece in Newsmax on Senator John McCain’s erratic and explosive temper is 100% dean on target. As someone who has known McCain for 32 years, I can unequivocally state that he should be no where near the Oval Office.

His behavior through the years tells us all we need to know: he is a spoiled brat-turned adult who demeans people who dare to disagree with him; he has an explosive temper that can erupt on a nanosecond’s notice; he is a total liar who will tell you something one day and then totally deny it the next (more on that below); he is a political chameleon who is enabled by the so-called Main Stream Media; he is also a megalomaniac whose former POW status has allowed him to get away with things - i.e. the Keating Five Scandal - that others would have gone to jail for.

In sum, McCain is a disaster waiting-to-happen.

Now, a story: in 1990-1991 I had the great privilege to meet and ultimately befriend retired Air Force Colonel Ted Guy. Ted had been a POW in Vietnam for over six years - after being shot down and captured in Laos and driven on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi. Ted became famous as the war ended as he tried to bring changes against several of his fellow US POWs who he thought had cooperated with the North Vietnamese while in captivity; after coming home in 1973 his superiors decided not to press charges. But Ted was forever branded a “real hard ass” because of this incident.

For a while Ted was the Senior Ranking Officer (SRO) in - I believe - The Plantation (a POW camp on the outskirts of Hanoi) in which John McCain was also being held.

The SRO kept the chain of military order among the POWs; they took orders from him and kept discipline that way.

When I got to know Ted Guy, the US Senate Select Committee on POWs was being organized; McCain was named a member. Ted Guy’s thoughts - then - about McCain? “John was a good troop in camp.”

Ted Guy - since repatriation in 1973 - had discounted any chance that living US POWs were left behind in Vietnam after the January 27, 1973 Paris Peace Agreements. In fact, by his own admission, Ted often became gruff with MIA family members who asked him if their loved one might have been left behind in captivity. “I told them there was no chance and they needed to get a life.”

This was the same message many of the former POWs were delivering to relatives of the thousands of men who did not come home in Operation Homecoming: “Forget it...we are the only living men...give it up and move on with your lives.” Of course, that was easy for them to say: they had come home!!!

The US Government never officially briefed the returning POWs about the egregious violations of the Paris Peace Accords - by both Hanoi and Washington DC.

Washington refused to pay the $4.25 billion President Nixon secretly promised in a February 1, 1973 letter to Premier Pham Van Dong - and kept hidden from the Congress for three years; Hanoi failed to release the other group of 600 US POWs they were holding as an insurance policy against these funds.

If the truth had been told to our returning heros, they would probably have led the charge for the return of their comrades; but they were not told. Instead they were sent out to America’s heartland as the war heros we so desperately needed - McCain and Ted Guy included.

Except that Ted Guy was intellectually honest enough to read all the new revelation that began surfacing in the 1980's; by 1991 he had seen enough. “I was lied to,” he told me. “I am now certain we knowingly left men behind in captivity.” Ted also got a fellow former POW, Terry Uyeyama, to join our little ‘group’ as we went around DC trying to get the US Government to reverse policy and negotiate for the living men still being held in Vietnam and Laos.

Then McCain entered the picture.

As the Senate Committee heated up - and more and more new information surfaced showing that indeed we did leave men behind held against their will in Vietnam and Laos - McCain began a long and vicious campaign to discredit and shoot down any new information or anyone advocating that the truth about our POWs be made public. Thus emerged for many to see the mean and ugly side of John McCain.

Ted Guy, his old Senior Ranking Officer and friend and admirer, soon changed his mind about McCain.

A series of odd phone calls to Ted in Missouri from McCain made him question the truthfulness and sanity of McCain. “John would call me one day and say something...and then he’d call a few days later and I’d ask him about what he’d said on the first call and John would completely deny ever saying it!”

So Ted Guy began recording all his phone calls from McCain. “I don’t trust him anymore,” said Colonel Guy. “I think he is a total liar.”

From these taped calls, Ted soon discovered a frequent pattern: McCain often denied things he has just said only a few days earlier!

How to explain this? A liar or a total nut? Or both?

Sadly, Ted Guy died of leukemia 7 years ago. A healthy Ted Guy today could have and would have stood up and told the truth about John McCain - and had the former-POW status to take McCain on.

McCain these days goes unchecked - either about his truthfulness or his sanity. Ron Kessler has opened the topic of McCain’s explosive and dangerous temper to further public scrutiny. In Ron’s story are traces of the lies and denials and admissions - all at the same time!

In sum, John McCain is not the man for the presidency. He is a fraud.

Yes, he would beat Hillary one on one. And we can’t have her either.

But before everyone rushes to sign up for McCain’s campaign, let’s take a break and learn more about McCain the man and his character.

Once you get to ‘know’ this man, you will agree: he must be defeated by a real Reagan conservative for the GOP nomination.

MIDDLE EASTERN MADNESS


For those naive enough to believe we can change the Middle East for the better, look at these three recent items:

1) Israel vs. Hamas over the kidnapped Israeli soldier: What a total mess this situation is. A team of Hamas killers tunnels under Israel’s security fence into an Israeli military base where they kill two soldiers and kidnap Corporal Gilad Shalit.

They take him - it is believed - into the Gaza and immediately start using him as negotiating leverage. Why? Because in Israel - unlike here - the Israeli government will do virtually anything to recover their missing and captured soldiers. Do you recall the time they traded 1100 imprisoned terrorists for just 3 Israeli pilots?

So, despite these claims - “We won’t negotiate with terrorists” - in the end they’ll make a deal.

The problem here is that Hamas has already overstepped their bounds. Their radicalism knows no bounds; they still want to wipe Israel off the map. They are demanding that Israel release 6,000 imprisoned Palestinians.

Israel has apparently told Hamas, according to published stories, that if Gilad is harmed or killed, Israel will kill the Palestinian Prime Minister. They have already captured 8 leading members of the Palestinian Government - presumably for a trade.

And the Israeli Air Force buzzed the summer home of Syrian President Bashir Assad to send him a message: “We know you’re aiding Hamas and harboring their leader in Syria. There will be consequences to you, too, if Gilad is harmed.”

OK, that is the overall situation - subject to changes as the days go on. But here is the bigger picture: as noted TV journalist and Mid-East veteran, Liz Trotta, said, “As long as any of us can remember we have heard about “peace talks in the Middle East” and yet nothing changes - ever!”

So true.

Democracy in the Middle East is the key, says GW Bush? Oh yeah? What about the overwhelming electoral victory in January of Hamas among the Palestinians? How does this make things better?

Could it just be these are a people doomed to live lives of misery, hatred and fear?

Indeed, the Middle East is a barbarous place.

2) THE CIA has closed down its Bin Laden Bureau: Alec Station, the ten-year-long ‘special bureau’ aimed solely at killing or capturing Osama Bin Laden (set up long before the 9/11 attacks) has been closed by the CIA.

If this act doesn’t show our complete diversion by the war in Iraq, nothing does. We have devoted almost all our resources to getting Saddam, his sons and Zarquawi - all legitimate targets. But doing so at the expense of the world-wide terrorist leader shows a lack of focus in the War on Terror.

Seeing and hearing Osama taunting us week after week on audio and video tapes - almost 5 years after 9/11 is a total disgrace.

The America I love and believe in would never allow this bastard to run free for 5 years!

Whatever happened to President Bush’s boast - “We’ll get him dead or alive!”?

Iraq is what happened.

Never dreaming that we’d be bogged down for 3 ½ years in Iraq, Team Bush thought they could fight Osama and in Iraq at the same time - and win both.

They were wrong.

The result?

Iraq is a morass with no end in sight. And Osama is alive and free and still running Al Qaeda.

3) Government Kidnappings in Baghdad: twice this week high-ranking Iraqi officials have been kidnapped along with their entire security details.

Over last weekend a female Sunni Member of the Iraqi parliament was kidnapped along with her 8 body guards.

Then on July 4th, the assistant Energy Minister in charge of electricity was kidnapped with his entire 11-man bodyguard unit.

Both abductions followed a similar pattern: the kidnappers appeared wearing Iraqi Army uniforms, thus lulling the bodyguards into a false sense of security.

These events - along with the recent string of devastating car bombings in Shiite sections of Baghdad - highlight a painful fact: we are witnessing a civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. This is a war that we should not have a role in.

Our wonderful troops should not be caught up in this type of conflict.

The fact of the matter is that Iraqi sectarian strife - tribal, religious and mysterious - is typical of the entire Middle East. And it isn’t going to change.

Those Americans who think - or thought - that we could change this centuries-old behavioral pattern are naive. And they’re playing with precious American lives.

It is time to wake up: the Middle East is not going to change.

The sooner we get off their oil, stop putting our dollars in their pockets, and redirect our national focus to killing Osama before he unleashes an even more devastating attack the better.

INDEPENDENCE


Next week we celebrate our Independence - from British autocratic rule 230 years ago.

But our independence today depends on many decisions that we have to make - beginning in this year’s mid-term elections and continuing into the 2008 presidential race. Let’s go over some of them:

1) Independence from our own wrong-headed thinking about what we can do in the world.

Back in the 2000 campaign, then-candidate GW Bush correctly said, “I am against nation-building.”

Within a year - only in part due to 9/11 - we were - and remain today - ‘nation-building’ like mad around the world. Afghanistan up until now has been a success but lately the Taliban has again made inroads in the rural parts of that backward country. Only Kabul has been transformed by our efforts there.

And, of course, Iraq is GW Bush’s ‘nation-building’ folly. Our Ambassador over there - Khalizidad - recently issued a report on the living conditions for Americans living in Baghdad. It was a disaster. Can you imagine how it is for Iraqis? Even he admitted the electricity and water situations are at times worse than before our invasion.

The point is this: as well-intentioned as we Americans are about providing freedom and democracy to other peoples, we simply cannot re-build and run their countries for them! They have to fight for themselves - and then our help is a supplement.

But Iraq is so torn with civil war and ethnic tension that virtually none of the massive infrastructure re-building that we American taxpayers have already paid for has been built! And who knows what has happened to those billions.

We Americans need to be independent of this misguided notion that we can - or ought - to be the world’s policeman.

We can’t do it. It won’t work. Period.

2) Independence from the bad guys who control so much of the oil we rely on: the Saudi Royal Family, the Iranians, the Russians and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

It is simply nutty that our economy is allowed to depend on oil from fruitcakes, communists and greedy sloths like these.

We need to become Energy Independent. How? A combination of presently available sources - nuclear, clean coal, safe off-shore drilling, ethanol - plus conservation - and good old American ingenuity charged with the task of inventing a new generation of cars, trucks and busses relying on something ‘new.’ Maybe that is hydrogen fuel cells or lithium batteries or compressed air or who knows what? The point is we need to be Independent of our present reliance on these potential enemies for this crucial lifeblood for our economy.

Washington DC’s role is to prod and push and goad and lead the nation into a new way of thinking about our energy needs. Let the brains and the risk-takers do the inventing.


3) Independence from a belief that government at any level can solve our problems; it can’t, hasn’t and won’t.

Government - even if instances when it tries to do good things - often makes the problem worse. Case in point: prescription drugs for our Senior Citizens through the Medicare Program.

This was a well-intentioned effort and a promise from the 2000 presidential campaign.

But it has been a dismal - and costly - failure.

Why? Because he White House lied to the Congress about the cost and then strong-armed a weak GOP House and Senate to swallow a massive new government entitlement program.

The result is angry seniors, some of whom have had to be hospitalized, massive new federal debt and a feeling in the community of helplessness about their own prescriptions.


4) Independence of thought. We all need to stop parroting whatever our political leaders say - and, instead, think and speak for ourselves.

Be independent - think for yourself - and have the courage to speak up and to speak out against the wrongs we see every day in our lives.

Happy Fourth to you all!

CUTTING AND RUNNING


“Cut and run” is the accusation hurled toward anyone advocating withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.

Of course, the implication is that it is cowardly if you talk of troop reductions or withdrawals or timetables.

Interesting....

Because now the new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki - just 12 days after a surprise face-toface meeting with GW Bush - himself is talking of a timetable for the reduction of American troops!

Here is what is really going on:

A panicked GOP and White House - fearful of losing one or both houses of Congress in November and thus entering a blizzard of investigations - has craftily begun yet another PR campaign on Iraq. In this campaign, they are branding the Democrats as wimps and ‘advocates of surrender’ when they introduce Senate resolutions calling for deadlines and troop withdrawals.

Meanwhile, our own commanding general in Iraq, General Casey, has leaked out a plan to begin reducing our troops this September - just weeks before these crucial November mid-term elections.

Furthermore, Casey’s plan - leaked over the weekend to all broadcast networks and major newspapers - details troop reductions all the way through 2007.

If that isn’t a timetable, then what is?

All the arguments used to attack Jack Murtha - the original proponent of reducing and ultimately withdrawing all our troops from Iraq - that it is “cutting and running,” that we “need to support our troops,” that it will be ‘read by the Islamists as American surrender,’ that it will ‘embolden’ the insurgents and Al Qaeda - apply equally to the Casey/Bush/Rummy Troop Drawdown Plan.

So what we have here is plain old politics being played with this war - by both sides in DC.

Both parties supported this war - overwhelmingly. In fact, they fell all over each other to vote for the war in October 2002.

But only after things turned sour on the ground in Iraq - and the American people turned on the war (almost 60% now believe it was a mistake) - did the political backtracking and attacks begin. Democrats - hearing it loud and clear from their leftist base - began ‘apologizing’ for the pro-war vote. (John Edwards and John Kerry have apologized; Hillary and Joe Lieberman have not. Hillary now is getting booed and Lieberman may lose his August 8 Connecticut primary to an anti-war candidate.)

GOP Congressmen are very nervous over Iraq. The White House has convinced them to - yet again - embrace the war instead of running away from it. But the candidates are nervous because all polls now show that the intense voters are the ones who are against the war.

Plus, conservatives are so disconsolate over Bush’s pro-amnesty immigration plan that many may just stay home in November.

Indeed, these are perilous times for conservatives and Republicans.

They are being asked to carry the water for an administration that has is hopelessly out of touch with the GOP base on immigration, international trade deals and federal spending - and is also out of sync with the majority of Americans on a war that never seems to end and never shows any substantial progress.

Republican loyalty is admirable; but their judgement is questionable. They wisely scuttled an awful immigration bill but refuse to admit that it is high time to begin to leave Iraq.

If General Casey can advocate a gradual plan for troop reductions, then that is the way we all ought to go. The American people want it.

But Prime Minister Al-Maliki’s proposal to give amnesty to Iraqi insurgents is going to cause big, big problems. Just the idea that some of these murderous butchers who run around kidnapping and beheading people might be allowed to get away with it makes a mockery of the entire war effort.

Just what are we fighting for if these crimes go unpunished?

It proves one thing: the Middle East is filled with barbarians unworthy of American sacrifice, honor and blood.

THE ARAB MIND


Well, it did not take long for the case of the 2 MIA’s to end: they were brutally tortured and then apparently beheaded by the new head of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Perhaps this is their (demented) view of payback for our killing Zarquawi two weeks ago.

Whatever it is, it further illustrates the brutality of the militant Muslim enemy that we face across the world. And it needs to be made clear that while most Muslims do not behave this way - indeed the overwhelming majority do not - that majority for whatever reason also does not condemn it. And the Iraqi government - elected thanks to the courage and sacrifice of our soldiers and taxpayers - seems incapable or unwilling to crack down on these militants.

In fact, many of these murderers are actually members of the Iraqi Army by day, and then at night maraud as Muslim militia members sometimes even killing their own fellow Army troops!

Today’s abduction and murder of one of Saddam’s lawyers is a case in point: he was abducted from his house by Iraqis wearing police uniforms - and then hours later he was found shot to death and dumped on the street in the Shi’a part of Baghdad.

This is a daily occurrence in Iraq. These militants play both sides of the game - and can’t be trusted.

Now, as to our ultimate game plan in Iraq:

What is ‘victory’? In the ideal sense, it is for the elected government to settle things down and establish that indeed democracy can work in an Arab country. The argument goes that in this case, the other neighboring Arab nations would see this, thirst for it and freedom and democracy would grow.

A noble goal indeed.

But it depends on Arabs controlling Arabs. It requires Shi’a and Sunni to live peacefully together.

So far this is simply not happening.

And we haven’t even mentioned the presence of Al Qaeda helping to fuel the flames. We make a mistake to believe most of the violence in Iraq comes from Al Qaeda; it doesn’t. It is homegrown sectarian violence in the form of ‘payback’ for Sunni brutality over the Shi’a majority under Ba’ath Party rule.

All of this has turned Iraq into a mess.

Yes, a majority of Iraqis were happy to get rid of the brutal Saddam and then to vote in 3 national elections.

But we have to remember something: they are devout Muslims who do not want Christian and Jewish American troops on their soil for any longer than necessary.

The problem is when do we begin to leave? GW Bush says that will be up to “the next president.” Thus, we are staying - in some form - through 2008 anyway.

Do we really believe that Iraq will settle down? That Sunni and Sh’ia will peacefully coexist? That Iran won’t continue to fan the flames of this insurgency if only to gain a stronger foothold in Baghdad?

I believe the Arabs have proven themselves to be incapable of democracy and freedom and dissent and all that goes with it. Plus, other than oil, what have they produced for the world? Anything? Any scientific or creative advances? And progress for their own people?

No.

What we need to do is simple: stop buying their oil and stop thinking we can change their mentality. They take those dollars and fund terrorists and enrich a few at the upper level - and treat the masses like dirt. Then they allow these poor souls to believe in this insane concept of martyrdom and violence against westerners.

The Arab mentality is the problem here - and we can’t change it, as much as we would like to.

The sooner we realize our limitations, the better off we will all be.

PRAY FOR THE 2 MIA’S


It is going to be a rough road for the two missing US soldiers who were abducted Friday night from a roadblock when insurgents cleverly split the American contingent apart. The two soldiers were apparently last seen being marched off and loaded into a car by up to nine masked insurgents.

So much for the predicted “fall-off of violence” now that Zarquawi has been killed. Indeed, things have continued unabated in the nine days since his death. At least 36 people were killed in bombings today - and numerous kidnappings were reported, as well.

Clearly there is an ‘intelligent’ force directing this widespread, systematic, well-planned insurgency. And there is also huge support among the Iraqi people for attacks on American soldiers: in a new poll, 47% of the Iraqi people support attacks on US soldiers.

If that is true, then our continued presence in Iraq is a futile exercise. An ‘occupation’ cannot work well if there is widespread resistence.

If the Iraqi insurgency is now targeting US soldiers - as has been reported over the past several weeks - then the tone of this war will change. Capturing Americans is a sure-fire way to enflame the American people and, in effect, to escalate the war itself.

What we don’t yet know about these two missing soldiers is: will they be videotaped and that tape used for propaganda purposes? Will they be ransomed? Will they be taunted and beheaded like other hostages? Will they just fade from view like Sgt. Keith Maupin? Will they be ‘punished’ as payback for Abu Garaib? Or will they be used to try to break the will of the American people to keep fighting this seemingly-never-ending war?

Most worrisome is that, under GW Bush’s administration, we have purposely dissed international agreements, especially the Geneva Conventions on the holding and treatment of captured military personnel. Because of this, these Iraqi insurgents may feel free to abuse and torture and humiliate these 2 GI’s - as a vindictive form of ‘payback.’

All the domestic debate here about the efficacy and morality of torture may come back to hurt us now - or to hurt these two soldiers. We have no leg to stand on as we long ago abandoned the moral high ground when we began invoking torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanimo.

These 2 soldiers - and others yet to be captured in this and future conflicts - will be the unwitting victims of a stupid policy that has done nothing but hurt America’s image worldwide. Even Mr. Bush himself now acknowledges that those photographs from Abu Garaib have severely damaged the USA.

All our previous enemies have discovered the value in holding American soldiers as prisoners. They are useful for both ransom and for propaganda. Also, under torture, sometimes combat secrets can be extracted - although in this case it is less likely than with captured officers or airmen.

Because we care about the lives of each and every soldier, we are paying attention to the fate of these 2 men. Our news media is leading the news each cycle with updates about the search. (Is it only 9 days ago that we were celebrating the death of Zarquawi? Oh how things can change.)

If we can rescue these men alive, it will be a huge victory; if we don’t, it will be seen as yet another sign of a war gone bad with no end in sight.

Our Congress voted on Friday against a “date certain” withdrawal of our troops. But no one is considering a more simple idea: telling the new Iraqi government that it is now up to them to run their own country. We’ve ‘birthed’ their democracy and poored billions of dollars and 2,500 lives into their freedom. It is time that we took the training wheels off and they learn to defend themselves.

There is no useful reason American soldiers are now dying in a decades-long fight between Sunni and Sh’ia - a fight that has nothing at all to do with 9/11, or Osama or a threat to America.

Iraq is a nation that never should have been.

It is 3 peoples crammed together by the British decades ago - and then kept under the jackboot of a Ba’ath Party dictatorship.

Now, thanks to our liberation, these three peoples are free - but some of them are using this newfound freedom to settle old scores and perform ethnic cleansing, just like in the former Yugoslavia.

This mess will not be tolerated much longer by the American people. The upcoming November elections will go a long way to determining whether the ‘stay the course’ plan can continue - or instead we begin to disengage.

The capture of these 2 soldiers in a microcosm of the war itself: how long will America be held hostage by a war with no end game?