Going It Alone . . .

Going It Alone . . .
Vol: 36 Issue: 30 Thursday, September 30, 2004

Although the US war on terror is ostensibly a global war with many allies, in reality, it is an American war on terror. And that is something we d better get used to.

The mythical United Nations that the Left worships does not exist. The United Nations that does is exist is united only in its opposition to all things Israeli, which, by definition, includes all things American.

If there is a single issue over which there is almost no division at the UN, it is the shared view that world peace will never be possible as long as Israel exists.

When an anti-Israeli resolution comes before General Assembly, the vote is always the same: the whole world votes in favor — with the United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands opposed.

Our closest allies at the UN — according to the liberal left include Germany, France and Russia. With allies like that, who needs enemies?

They claim to stand united with America against the terrorists, provided the US doesn t ask them to do anything EXCEPT stand. None of them seem particularly interested in DOING anything.

Not even the Russians. They are going after their own terrorists, but any claims of cross-cooperation are a fantasy, except in cases where it benefits Moscow.

America s global war on terror remains America s war, despite the very significant contributions from genuine allies like Australia, the UK, Poland and some of the former Eastern European Soviet bloc countries.

But both Tony Blair and John Howard are in deep trouble at home because of their commitment to the US effort to liberate and rebuild Iraq. Both face tough re-election battles, and the central issue in each campaign revolves around Iraq and the war on terror.

On the other hand, our other alleged allies at the UN, especially France, Germany and Russia, are not just sitting on their hands they are actively helping terrorists and terror states procure and develop weapons of mass destruction.

As Bill Gertz explained in his book, Treachery , intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the late winter of 2002 helped explain why France refused to deal harshly with Iraq and blocked U.S. moves at the United Nations.

Iraq’s Mirage F-1 fighter jets were made by France’s Dassault Aviation. Its Gazelle attack helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which became part of a consortium of European defense companies.

The State Department confirmed intelligence indicating the French had given support to Iraq’s military.

The central figure in these weapons ties is French President Jacques Chirac. His relationship with Saddam dates to 1975, when, as prime minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris.

“I welcome you as my personal friend,” Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq.

France’s corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf War.

By 2000, France had become Iraq’s largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment

In mid-March 2003, U.S. intelligence and defense officials confirmed that exporters in France had conspired with China to provide Iraq with chemicals used in making solid fuel for long-range missiles.

In April, 2003, an American A-10 Thunderbolt was shot down by Iraqi forces. The A10 was hit by a French-made Roland anti-aircraft missile. Army intelligence concluded that the French had sold the missile to the Iraqis within the past year.

A week later, a US Army team searching Iraqi weapons depots at the Baghdad airport discovered caches of French-made missiles.

One anti-aircraft missile, among a cache of 51 Roland-2s from a French-German manufacturing partnership, bore a label indicating that the batch was produced just months earlier.

Keep in mind that these weapons were being sold to Saddam Hussein s government in violation of UN sanctions WHILE Dominique de Villepin was fighting tooth and nail at the UN to keep Saddam in power.

In May, Army intelligence found a stack of blank French passports in an Iraqi ministry. They found French-made trucks and radios as well as RPGs with French-made night sights.

A Defense Department-sponsored report produced in February identified France as one of the top three suppliers of Iraq’s conventional arms, after Russia and China. The report revealed that France supplied 12 types of armaments and a total of 115,005 pieces — while Iraq was under UN embargo.

Assessment:

Why would our allegedly closest allies arm our enemies knowing those weapons will be used to kill Americans?

Because they hope we ll lose. Even if America survives, they are hoping that it will result in a corresponding reduction of American power and influence ending what Jacques Chirac dubbed a unipolar world.

If al-Qaeda can successfully cripple America to the degree it is no longer the world s only superpower, then the task of developing a counter-balance to American global influence becomes that much easier. And if a few million Americans die in the process, well, c est la vie!

As a consequence, our alleged allies want no active role in it; unless and until they are certain that we are winning. In that case, they ll be the first to clap us on the back and celebrate the “collective victory over world terrorism,” and hope we ll let bygones be bygones.

As the Bible s outline for the last days continues to develop, more and more of the Big Picture begins to come into focus.

According to Scripture, in the very last days, Israel will face the assembled might of the world s collective armies alone.

Zechariah writes, And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. (12:3)

Consider the historical progression so far. There is no political potato hotter than Jerusalem. Every nation that has attempted her destruction was cut to pieces. Israel won all five of her wars by utterly decimating her enemy s war-making capability.

It took years after each attempt for the Arabs to sufficiently rebuild their military capabilities so they could try again. Even with the almost unlimited military aid given the defeated Arab states by the Soviets and Europeans.

Zechariah says that ALL that burden themselves will be cut in pieces allies as well as enemies. America became a target of Islamic terror more for its support of Israel than any other reason.

According to Zechariah, Israel is alone in this final confrontation, under siege by ALL the people of the earth there is no mention of an ally standing beside her apart from God.

Zechariah says that; In that day shall the LORD [and not Washington] defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem. (12:8)

In the Big Picture, we can already see the four spheres of global power defined by Scripture assuming their final forms; the reviving Roman Empire, the Gog-Magog alliance, the Kings of the East and the Kings of the South [Islamic North Africa].

That pretty much encompasses our erstwhile allies in the war on terror who are sitting on the sidelines hoping for an Islamic victory over America.

But Scripture makes no mention of a fifth, overarching superpower resembling the United States.

So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till ALL be fulfilled. (Luke 21:31-32)

Why Did God Create Man?

Why Did God Create Man?
Vol: 36 Issue: 29 Wednesday, September 29, 2004

The Bible tells us that it is the Lord Jesus Christ Who the Creator of all things, including the heavens, the earth, and even hell. This mystery is revealed in the first chapter of the Book of John.

John takes us back to creation, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (1:1) In John’s Gospel, the ‘Word’ (logos) is capitalized as a proper noun, since it is used in the sense of a title.

“The same was in the beginning with God.” John also reveals that, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:2-3)

That John is referring to Jesus is made clear when he writes, “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto his own, and His own received Him not.” (10-11)

That can only be describing Jesus Christ, Who came first to the Jews, as Jesus told the ‘woman of Caanan’. (Matthew 15:24-28)

So, following the logic that Jesus is the Creator of all things, we must also conclude that He created Hell. This presents what appears to be an impossible theological conundrum.

Jesus describes hell as a place of eternal torment, describing it three times as the place; “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:44,46,48)

The conundrum arises when one tries to solve the apparent contradiction between a compassionate Christ Who shed His Blood to provide a way for me to avoid the horrors of hell and the Creator of Hell Who knew at the time He was creating it that there would be some who would go there.

Jesus says that it would be better not to have ever been born than to end up in hell. So, why create man in the first place, then? The Bible answers that question, but, to the skeptic, the answer only prompts more questions.

According to Revelation 4:11, we were created for God’s pleasure.

(“Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”)

So, if man was created for God’s pleasure, but a significant majority of mankind is destined to go to hell, does that mean God takes pleasure in sending people there? The Scriptures say no.

“For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.” (Ezekiel 33:11)

“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)

Jesus says in Matthew 25:41 that hell wasn’t created for man, but rather was “prepared for the devil and his angels.”

But that still doesn’t fully address the question. IF the place of ‘everlasting fire’ Jesus is referring to was ‘prepared for the devil and his angels’, and if man was created for God’s pleasure, AND, if God is all-knowing, then He knew some of his Creation would end up there.

AND, if it would be better for man to never have been born than to end up in hell, then WHY create us in the first place?

The universe is considerably more than just man, and while the salvation of man is an integral part of God’s program, we are not the only part of God’s program.

Eons before man was created, God’s anointed angel, Lucifer, rebelled against a decision of God’s (most likely over the creation of man himself).

In describing Jesus’ decision to take on human form, the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus “was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death.” (2:9)

Psalms 91:11 tells us that, “He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. But Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (2nd Corinthians 6:3)

One can imagine Satan rebelling against the concept of the creation of a new, puny, human spiritual being, made ‘lower than the angels’, that God decreed angels (including Satan and his followers) would serve in this life, and then be judged by in the next.

Isaiah outlines Satan’s rebellion as a series of five “I wills”.

“For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” (Isaiah 14:13-15)

When God cast the rebels out, it was incumbent upon Him to prove Himself just in His decision to those angels who remained loyal. After all, eternity is a long time, and hell is a terrible place. Wasn’t God being a bit hard on them?

So, in a sense, humanity serves as a kind of living courtroom in which angels can observe the consequences of unchecked sin on the natural order of the universe.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us we are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” [the angelic hosts].

God created man initially with only one rule: avoid the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. To the astonishment of the angels, man broke that rule, introducing sin into the world. Then God allowed man to ruled by his conscience.

(That worked out so well that it took a world-wide flood to repair the damage.)

So God went to Abraham and spoke with him directly. The angels must have been dumbfounded to witness Abraham’s sin with Hagar, knowing that Abraham KNEW better. God told him so directly. They also saw the consequences of sin beginning to pile up, embodied by the ongoing conflict between Abraham’s descendants, Ishmael and Isaac.

To further prove God’s judgement of sin was just and fair, God set aside a Chosen Nation, gave them ten little rules to follow, and allowed the scenario to play out before the heavenly jury.

What began as ten rules for living in harmony for God resulted in the development of a religious system so corrupt that Jesus came to earth Personally to replace it with an even easier method of reconciliation with God — trusting in the shed Blood of Christ alone for salvation.

Remember, the angels who are witnessing all this have seen sin go from a bite of fruit to the horrors of Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Knowing first-hand what a unimaginable Gift was extended mankind from the Cross, can you imagine their astonishment when that Gift was almost universally rejected by what is now a sin-sodden world.

Finally, the Bible says, Jesus Christ returns at the end of the Tribulation Period, binds Satan for a thousand years, sets up a physical Kingdom in Jerusalem from which He personally rules the earth.

During that time, Scripture says, man will live in perfect harmony with nature, as God had originally intended in the Garden of Eden. Isaiah says that a person who dies during the Millennial Kingdom at age 100 would be mourned as one who died in his youth.

Lions will lay down with lambs, little kids will be able to play with deadly snakes, men will beat their swords into plowshares and war will be abolished.

Scripture then says that, when the thousand years are finished, Satan will be loosed for ‘a season’ to tempt those human beings who KNOW Jesus, have lived a THOUSAND YEARS under His Personal governance, and are perfectly certain of His Power and Authority.

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.” (Revelation 20:8-9)

At this point, the angelic jury is convinced, and the prosecution rests.

“And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” (Revelation 20:9)

Then comes the judgement. “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” (20:10)

Why did God create man if He knew that some would choose hell? Because He also knew that some would choose Heaven.

And in any case, it is man’s choice to make. As declared the citizens in the parable of the nobleman in Luke 19: “We will not have Him to reign over us.” When such people are cast in hell, it is literally what they asked for.

God has a purpose for every detail of our creation. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

God created mankind to prove His justice. He created mankind for His pleasure. And He created mankind so He could save them.

But He also created mankind so we could CHOOSE to love Him. There cannot be a choice without an alternative.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

First Venezuela, Now Florida?

First Venezuela, Now Florida?
Vol: 36 Issue: 28 Tuesday, September 28, 2004

First Venezuela, Now Florida?

Former President Jimmy Carter has made a post-presidential career out of bashing America. His post-presidential meddling in foreign affairs has cost America dearly, particularly in the area of foreign affairs.

In the past, Carter has defied US law by visiting Cuba — even addressing the Cuban public and handing Castro a huge propaganda victory.

Carter’s foundation oversaw the elections in Haiti, against the expressed wishes of the Clinton administration. A coup followed.

Carter once described Yugoslav strongman Marshal Josef Tito as “a man who believes in human rights.”

Of former North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung, Carter described him as “vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well-informed about the technical issues, and in charge of the decisions about this country,” adding, “I don’t see that [North Koreans] are an outlaw nation.”

Jimmy Carter’s other good buddies included Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu and, of course, Palestinian dictator Yasser Arafat.

Carter once famously said of Ceausescu and himself, “Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights.”

(When Ceaucescu’s government fell, his Romanian countrymen were also impressed with his human rights record. So impressed, in fact, that when they arrived at his presidential palace, they summarily executed Ceaucescu and his wife on the spot.)

Virtually all of the humanitarian activities of the Carter Foundation abroad have been in direct opposition to US foreign policy.

Carter called Bush s description of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil” was “overly simplistic and counterproductive.

He went on to warn darkly, “I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement.”

Ummm, North Korea and Iran either possess or are developing nuclear weapons that both have threatened to use if provoked. Repairing THAT damage might take even longer.

Carter recently made a trip to Venezuela to monitor that country s effort to recall strongman leader Hugo Chavez. While Carter supervised the elections, exit polls conducted by a prestigious NY polling firm predicted Chavez would lose two to one. As Jimmy Carter counted the votes, Chavez defied the exit polls, WINNING by a two to one margin.

Carter’s election observers were supposed to do a wide survey of the more than 20,000 electronic voting machines. Instead, they did only a quick check of a few. Only days later, in the face of major criticism, was an audit made of 150 of the machines too late to affect any result.

Not to mention a peaceful protest of the recall result that was greeted by gunfire from a group of thugs loyal to Chavez. One woman was killed and several others were injured.

Yet Jimmy Carter pronounced Venezuela’s election was “free and fair.”

Assessment:

This week, the president who doesn t know he isn t still president wrote in a Washington Post column that Election 2004 would be as flawed as Election 2000 was.

Writes the man who never met a dictator he didn t like, (or an American policy that he did), “The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair.

Aha! Other nations, like Venezuela or Haiti, are capable of conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair. But not America.

Carter’s Post column repeated the conspiracy theories that many far left political activists, like Michael Moore, used to smear President Bush’s win in the 2000 election, including the allegation that, “a fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans, but only 61 Hispanics, as alleged felons.”

Carter never fact-checked with Florida officials, or he would have known that was easily disproved, partisan propaganda.

According to our ex-president, the Florida elections will be rigged by crooked politicians like Jeb Bush. Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, naturally a strong supporter of his brother, has taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the future,” wrote Carter.

“It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation. It is especially objectionable among us Americans, who have prided ourselves on setting a global example for pure democracy.”

For a former president, you d expect Jimmy Carter have a better grasp of American politics than to speak of America as a global example for ‘pure democracy’.

(But you’d also expect a former president to have a better grasp of honor than to accuse his own government of election fraud — before the election even takes place! )

In any case, the European Union is a pure democracy. The United Nations is a pure democracy. But America is NOT a pure democracy and never was.

America is a Constitutional Republic. In a pure democracy, anything can be made legal by a majority vote. In a Constitutional republic, it doesn t work that way. According to Blackstone s Commentaries on the Law, a Constitutional Republic has certain limits placed on its authority by God.

Blackstone limits the role of government in a Constitutional Republic to measures necessary to maintain good social order, but with certain restrictions. In Constitutional Republic, certain things are out of reach.

Murder could never be legalized in any form in a Constitutional republic, since the Constitution says the Creator guarantees the right to life. (The left gets around this Constitutional guarantee in its support of abortion by claiming the unborn aren’t ‘alive’).

Theft couldn t be legalized by majority vote, since Americans are guaranteed the right to be secure in their homes. (The left gets around this by advocating the imposition of confiscatory tax increases.)

The same with perjury, since we are guaranteed a fair trial before an impartial court. And so on.

In America s Constitutional Republic, individual rights are granted by God, not by the government, a majority vote by the governed, or by Jimmy Carter, the ACLU or the liberal left.

The significance of that truth cannot be overstated, yet the liberals on the left don’t seem to get it. In the ‘pure democracy’ of the Jimmy Carter liberals, our Constitutional rights would be as secure as the next election.

Just ask the Venezuelans.

“Stolen Honor” Restored

“Stolen Honor” Restored
Vol: 36 Issue: 27 Monday, September 27, 2004

One of the few good things to come out of the partisan debacle that passes for Election 2004 is the partial rehabilitation the reputations of those veterans who served in the Vietnam War.

They’ve spent the last thirty-five years being convinced that, although most of them had never witnessed war crimes, they MUST have been happening just over the next hill, somewhere.

As a consequence, they’ve spent the last thirty-five years trying to convince their friends and families that, while war crimes MUST have been rampant, they didn’t have any part in them.

Since, as “everybody knows”, American troops during the Vietnam War behaved worse than the Nazis, Vietnam veterans protesting their individual innocence didn’t sound any more convincing than the Germans did after WWII when they said all the real Nazis were killed in the war.

It has been thirty-five years of secret shame. A ‘secret’ shame because the protests of innocence sound so hollow, given the widely accepted ‘truth’ that Vietnam veterans, “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,” as Lt. (jg) John F Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 1971.

For thirty-five years, Vietnam veterans have quietly endured this slander, mostly because the louder they protested their innocence, the guiltier they sounded.

(I know that there are some of you who know EXACTLY what I mean. And I know veterans who deny ever having GONE to Vietnam, just so they don’t have to endure the silent questions.)

Assessment:

John Kerry has never been called to account for leading the effort to steal away the honor of those brave men who served their country in Vietnam.

Largely thanks to the efforts of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which Kerry led during the early 1970’s, returning Vietnam veterans were ashamed to wear their uniforms or display their medals for fear of being spit on or called ‘baby killer’.

The VVAW had clout disproportionate to its size — never more than 7000 members out of a pool of 9 million veterans — and some of the movement’s most vocal leaders were later proved to be frauds who never even saw combat, let alone the atrocities they described as being ‘routine.

The VVAW’s wide influence came mainly thanks to the charisma of the young, politically ambitious John Forbes Kerry, and his high-profile fellow protestors, like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

Kerry and his VVAW compatriots portrayed their fellow veterans as unwilling soldiers, morally debased and haunted by their service.

While this might have fit a small minority, the most accurate survey, done by the Harris Poll in 1980, showed that 91% of those who went to Vietnam were “glad they served their country,” 74% “enjoyed their time in the military” and 89% agreed with the statement that “our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.”

Retired Lt. Ralph E. Gaither, U.S. Air Force veteran and author of “With God in a POW Camp”, spent more than seven years as a POW.

In the documentary, ‘Stolen Honor’, he said something that stunned me. I suppose I knew it intellectually, but hearing it from Lt. Gaither connected the dots in my mind:

“We didn t realize how powerful the [VVAW] movement was until toward the end of the war. I dedicated the book I wrote to John Frederick he died 6 months before we came home. John would probably have been alive had the antiwar movement not been doing what they were doing. The Vietnamese grew great relish in the movement in support for their cause.”

Then he said this: “I m convinced that they held on to the war until after Nixon was reelected. They felt Nixon would not be re-elected, that the antiwar movement would be strong enough to get him out of office.”

There was something haunting about Gaither’s observation. It sounds too much like he is talking about 2004.

In an opinion piece published by Dar al Hayat on September 14, Mahmoud Rimawi declares in the title; “John Kerry, the Arabs’ Candidate as Well”.

Rimawi writes, “In a survey, conducted in 35 countries all over the world, have shown that citizens of 30 countries prefer the Democratic candidate, Kerry, over the Republican candidate and the current president George W. Bush “

After explaining all that was wrong with George Bush and the Republicans from the Arab point of view, Rimawi opines;

“And since John Kerry is the only practical substitute, and a candidate open to discussion unlike Bush and his staff, its not an exaggeration or even unusual for us to express our favoring of Kerry for president . . .”

The same sentiment is shared by al-Qaeda. They see Bush as inflexible, whereas John Kerry seems far more open to intimidation.

According to intelligence reports, al-Qaeda plans to strike US targets in advance of the November election in the hope of recreating the ‘Madrid Effect’.

That March 11 terror attack toppled anti-terror Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s government in favor of the more malleable Spanish Socialists who immediately began caving in to al-Qaeda’s demands.

al-Qaeda hopes to do the same thing in America, with the same result — a defeat for George Bush. The resurgent violence in Iraq is aimed at the same goal.

The terrorists there believe John Kerry will pull US troops out of Iraq, in effect, handing the country over to them and creating a new Afghanistan — or, if you like, another Vietnam.

In a perverse sense, John Kerry and his crowd are correct in saying that Iraq is becoming another Vietnam — thanks to the same propaganda methods that Kerry and the VVAW used to create the myth of the ‘Vietnam quagmire’ in the early 1970’s.

A recent pro-Kerry political ad featured Iraq War veterans condemning the war and endorsing John Kerry, who they say will ‘get us out’ of Iraq. ‘Peace with honor’ is their catch-phrase. Sound familiar?

But, now that the story is getting a fair hearing, aging Vietnam veterans can tell the truth without sounding like post-WWII Nazis trying to cover up war crimes.

Because, in Vietnam, war crimes WEREN’T ‘rampant’. The worst ‘war crime’ America was guilty of in Vietnam was turning its collective back on its defenders for thirty-five years.

And now that the chief war criminal of the Vietnam War is running for president of the United States, the honor stolen from an entire generation of America’s defenders is being debated in public — honestly — for the first time.

And many of our children and grandchildren are discovering, for the first time, the quiet heroes that live among them. Its no substitute for the parade that never was, but, better late than never.

And in the most ironic twist of all, we owe it all to John Kerry.

Iran’s “Shooting Star”

Iran’s “Shooting Star”
Vol: 36 Issue: 26 Sunday, September 26, 2004

“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” (Revelation 8:11)

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards staged military maneuvers earlier this month near the Iraqi border, with top military officials saying the exercise was designed to reinforce Iran’s resolve to defend itself against “big powers.”

During the maneuvers, a “long-range missile” was test fired. Reports of the successful test on by state-run radio did not say whether the test involved the previously announced new version of the Shahab-3 rocket, capable of reaching Israel and U.S. forces stationed in the Middle East, or a different missile.

“This strategic missile was successfully test-fired during military exercises by the Revolutionary Guards and delivered to the armed forces,” Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani was quoted as saying. He described the new missile, saying it has an “unprecedented range, destructive power, accuracy and launching time” that can meet all threats — from both within the region and beyond.

Earlier this month, Israel said it was buying from the United States about 5,000 smart bombs, including 500 1-ton bunker-busters that can destroy 6-foot-thick concrete walls.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi has warned that Tehran would react “most severely” to any Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities.

In August, Iran said it test fired a new version of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile. Iran’s Defense Ministry did not give its range, but Israeli sources in Jerusalem later said it could reach targets more than 1,200 miles away, or 400 miles farther than its previous range.

The development of the Shahab, whose name means “shooting star” in Persian, has raised fears in Israel about possible attack by the Iranian government, which strongly opposes the Jewish state’s existence.

Assessment:

Although Tehran denies having a nuclear weapons program, it makes no bones about its expectations of an Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities. Because, should Iran become an operationally nuclear power, Israel WILL attack.

That is as certain as sunrise. Israel didn’t buy ‘bunker-buster’ smart bombs for use against the Palestinians. It is equally certain that the mad mullahs in Iran are working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons, official denials notwithstanding.

And it fits too neatly into Bible prophecy to be coincidence. Iran’s nuclear program began with the Russian construction of the first nuclear power plant in Bushehr. The deal is worth at least thirty billion dollars to the Russians, and Russia’s economic situation is desperate. The Russians would take a dim view of Israel blowing up their investment.

And according to Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, the Bushehr reactor could produce a quarter ton of plutonium per year, which Leventhal says is enough for at least 30 atomic bombs.

The prophet Ezekiel outlined a future invasion of Israel, at a time when the Jews are at last regathered as a nation on ‘the mountains of Israel’. (38:8)

Ezekiel lists those nations who assemble against Israel, led by ‘Gog and Magog’ (the historic names for what is the modern Russian Federation) followed by those nations who make up the invasion alliance.

The FIRST country listed by Ezekiel after Gog-Magog is Persia — the name by which Iran was known until the early 20th century. Other nations named in the alliance include Libya, the Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East, and portions of extreme Eastern Europe (Gomer and all his bands) (38:5-7)

Explicitly excluded from the invasion alliance are Sheba and Dedan, (historically Saudia Arabia and Kuwait) and the ‘merchants of Tarshish’ — (the Western economic powers). And while Ezekiel says they don’t participate, their only response to the invasion is a weak diplomatic protest. (38:13)

The reason for the invasion is given from God’s perspective; “I will bring thee forth” (38:4) after “things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought” (38:10) but Ezekiel doesn’t explain exactly what that ‘evil thought’ is — just that it results in an attempted invasion of Israel.

Ezekiel describes the battlefield, again from God’s perspective, saying,

“For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at My presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.” (38:18-20)

The description provided is, as I’ve noted, from God’s perspective — that is to say, Ezekiel explains it from His vantage point. But from the human perspective, it sounds very much like the description of a battle fought using weapons of mass destruction:

“And I will call for a sword against him throughout all My mountains, saith the Lord GOD: every man’s sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” (Ezekiel 38:22-23)

The only detail that Ezekiel doesn’t provide about the Gog-Magog invasion is a political reason for why they invade in the first place.

An Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facililities would fill in the blanks nicely.

The Bible indicates that the Gog Magog invasion of Israel takes place at some point early in the Tribulation Period, at a time when Israel is again a ‘land of unwalled villages’. Israel’s defensive ‘wall’ could come down as quickly as it is going up, but that hasn’t happened yet.

But Ezekiel’s invasion scenario sounds like something one would find outlined by intelligence analysts at Global Security.org or the Stratfor Intelligence website, based on the current situation, as a probable scenario for the near future.

It seems unlikely to be ‘coincidence’.

No Help For Iraq From UN

No Help For Iraq From UN
Vol: 36 Issue: 25 Saturday, September 25, 2004

“Our struggle is your struggle, our victory will be your victory and if we are defeated, then that will be your defeat,” Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the UN General Assembly yesterday.

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly’s annual session Allawi urged governments to put behind them the divisions over Washington’s invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam Hussein and later called “illegal” by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“Some countries objected to the war, and that is their right, but difference over the issue shouldn’t stop the aid now,” he said.

Allawi attracted only a moderately-sized audience in the General Assembly’s chambers, where he barely mentioned the United States but had great praise for the other nations who helped liberate the Iraqi people, and especially for those that are now providing military, technical or financial assistance to the reconstruction.

Allawi told the world’s assembled leaders that his nation was facing “a struggle between the Iraqi people and [their] vision for the future of peace and democracy [on the one hand], and the terrorists and extremists and the remnants of the Saddam regime who are targeting this noble dream [on the other].”

Allawi told world leaders yesterday that Iraq’s foreign debt remains “the most serious obstacle” to reconstruction. Repaying it, he said, is beyond Baghdad’s capabilities. “It is an unjust burden [accumulated from] unjustified wars and the search of weapons of mass destruction.”

He urged them to ‘look forward, rather than continue to examine the acrimonious buildup’ to the 2003 war. Allawi all but begged Kofi Annan in a private meeting to send the UN mission back to Baghdad.

He even met briefly with Annan yesterday, but didn’t even get promises of an expanded U.N. mission, let alone any hope of a dedicated protection force of U.N. personnel.

Assessment:

For the interim Prime Minister of Iraq to expect help from the UN is like a mugging victim waiting for his mugger to call 9/11 for him. The UN spent the better part of twelve years actively working behind the scenes to protect Iraq’s mugger so they could continue to take their cut of the loot.

While Saddam’s forces murdered and pillaged across the country, in full view of the United Nations, UN bureaucrats siphoned uncounted billions out of Iraq’s ‘Oil for Food’ accounts. To keep Saddam from complaining about the theft, they authorized pretty much anything Saddam wanted.

During the 12-year embargo, Saddam was able to order luxury cars, telecommunications equipment, and even weapons, using money that was ostensibly supposed to be used only to buy food and medicine for the starving Iraqi civilians.

If there is any record of the United Nations denying any purchase requests made by Saddam’s government during the embargo, it hasn’t surfaced in the public domain that I’ve been able to find.

So it didn’t come as much of a surprise that Allawi’s reception at the United Nations was about as friendly as that of a homeless wino crashing a cocktail party.

Everybody was too polite to throw him out, so they did their best to pretend he wasn’t there. Allawi’s speech was scheduled on the fourth day of speeches being offered during the UN’s annual international boreathon.

By the time it was Allawi’s turn, most of the UN diplomats, including the French ambassador, had vacated the premises, leaving lower diplomats to anchor their spots at the Assembly while they did something more important than listen to the appeals from Iraq for help.

About the only real attention Allawi’s visit got came from the White House, and later from John Kerry. The White House received Allawi as an important ally. John Kerry immediately attacked Allawi’s credibility, scoffing at Allawi’s promise to hold elections by January.

Kerry called Allawi’s visit a political ploy to help the Bush administration get reelected, and criticized Allawi’s contention that Iraq’s government was making any genuine headway.

“The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy,” Kerry told a press conference he convened immediately after Prime Minister Allawi’s speech. “But the fact is that CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story.”

Allawi fired back from the Rose Garden in a speech that was all but ignored by the mainstream media, saying, “When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence.”

But more violence in Iraq is EXACTLY what the Kerry campaign is counting on. Dismissing Allawi as an American ‘puppet’ is exactly the rhetoric the terrorists in Iraq need to keep up their recruiting goals. But if defeat in Iraq means defeat for George Bush in November, then so be it.

VP candidate John Edwards picked up where Kerry left off, saying Allawi was merely parroting President Bush’s ‘lies.’

“The best lesson for any fledgling democracy is that leaders should tell the truth, to always be straight with the people,” Edwards said. “Prime Minister Allawi’s trip to the United States was filled with all the wrong lessons, lessons from an administration that just can’t seem to tell the truth when it comes to Iraq.”

Kerry spokesman and former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart said of the man who is arguably America’s most important ally, “The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips.”

I say that Allawi is arguably America’s most important ally because at the moment, American soldiers are in combat, risking (and sometimes, losing) their lives in what John Kerry and John Edwards are calling a lost cause.

It will only be a lost cause if Allawi fails and Iraq descends into civil war. All Allawi has to work with is his credibility as a leader. Kerry and Edwards know that, or they aren’t qualified to hold the jobs they seek. The worst POSSIBLE thing that could happen would be for Iraqis to view Allawi as an American puppet — it would be the kiss of death to his government. And knowing that, they attacked Allawi’s only real asset — his credibility — mercilessly and in public.

The war in Iraq is a real war, involving real people shedding real blood. It isn’t political theater, it is life and death, both for the Iraqis and for the Americans trying to restore their country.

Last year, Kerry called America’s coalition allies — including England, Australia and Poland, “some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted.” In a speech in March, he called them ‘window dressing’ — on the same week Poland lost five of its soldiers in combat.

At the same time, Kerry continues to criticize the White House for alienating our friends and allies, something he promises to rectify if elected. (To this point, I’ve yet to be able to find out how he plans to make up with the ‘bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted’ after getting elected.)

If America loses in Iraq, then the war was for nothing. Our troops shed their blood for nothing. America gave its sons and daughters for nothing. Are these guys even Americans?

One would assume that the rest of the Democrats are ALSO Americans. There might even be a few Democrats in harm’s way in Iraq right now. But to listen to the Democrats now, one would also assume there is no hope in Iraq and the best thing to do is to bring our troops home and let the Iraqis sort things out themselves.

John Kerry asked the Congress in 1971,”How do you ask a man to be the last one to die in a lost cause?” before riding his ‘lost cause’ theme all the way into the United States Senate. Thanks to his testimony, America’s Vietnam veterans have hung their heads in shame for the last thirty years.

But it got him elected to the Senate, and he’s hoping the same tactics will win him the White House.

The amazing thing about it is that there are millions of Americans who don’t seem to care, as long as it defeats George Bush.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” (2nd Timothy 3:1-4)

Collecting Interest on The ‘Peace Dividend’

Collecting Interest on The ‘Peace Dividend’
Vol: 36 Issue: 24 Friday, September 24, 2004

Collecting Interest on The ‘Peace Dividend’

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharaz continues to rattle sabers, threatening [again] to react ‘most severely’ if Israel strikes any of its nuclear facilities.

“Israel is always a threat not only against Iran, but all countries in the Middle East,” said Kharazi, (whose country explicitly rejects Israel’s right to exist). “Be sure that any action by Israel certainly will be reacted by us most severely.”

The Iranians have every right to expect an Israeli strike against their facilities. Although Jerusalem has been warning the Western powers for a decade, somehow, Iran’s nuclear ambitions seem to have caught the whole world by surprise, so to speak.

Nevertheless, U.S. and Israeli officials are talking of possible military action even though some believe it’s already too late to keep Iran from going nuclear (if it chooses).

“We have to start accepting that Iran will probably have the bomb,” says one senior Israeli source. There’s only one solution, he says: “Look at ways to make sure it’s not the mullahs who have their finger on the trigger.”

After Iraq, calls for regime change without substantial evidence of weapons of mass destruction are going to fall on deaf ears.

Especially as long as the Democrats continue to conduct business as if the best thing that could happen would be for America to lose another unpopular war.

But Iran was not the only country whose secret nuclear ambitions hummed along while the Democrats and Republicans continued to battle over who won Election 2000.

And if anybody points out to the DNC that Election 2000 was four years ago, they are making it clear that they are not intimidated by time.

American partisans have yet to reach a concensus as to whether America lost the Vietnam War thanks to George Bush not making some Alabama National Guard meetings or because of John Kerry’s antiwar activities.

It is MUCH too early for the partisans to decide who lost Iraq, let alone make plans to lose a new war against Iran.

Besides, Iran isn’t the only country with nuclear ambitions. There is that other war we didn’t win [but didn’t lose] against the North Koreans that still has to be dealt with. But instead of dealing with a POTENTIALLY nuclear North Korea, say, in 1994, the North Korea of 2004 is a sure-enough nuclear threat with both the nuclear warheads and the missiles necessary to carry them half-way around the world.

Arms control specialists are increasingly alarmed by Brazil’s efforts to do precisely what Iran is doing: use centrifuge cascades to enrich uranium with a couple of key differences.

Unlike Iran, Brazil has never signed the NPT’s Additional Protocol, which gives expanded inspection rights to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

And unlike Iran, Brazil is not letting the IAEA examine its centrifuges. If the Brazilians go through with their program, it’s likely to wreck the landmark 1967 treaty that made South America a nuclear-free zone.

Assessment:

Israel, which has long regarded Iran as a more dire threat than Iraq, is making thinly veiled threats of a unilateral pre- emptive attack, like its 1981 airstrike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

“If the state decides that a military solution is required, then the military has to provide a solution,” said Israel’s new Air Force chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, in a newspaper interview last week.

“For obvious reasons,” he added, “we aren’t going to speak of specifics.” U.S. defense experts doubt that Israel can pull it off. Iran’s facilities (which it insists are for peaceful purposes) are at the far edge of combat range for Israel’s aircraft; They’re also widely dispersed and, in many cases, deep underground.

But America certainly could do it and has given the idea some serious thought. “The U.S. capability to make a mess of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is formidable,” says veteran Mideast analyst Geoffrey Kemp. “The question is, what then?”

According to a report in Newsweek, the CIA and DIA have war-gamed the likely consequences of a U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. No one liked the outcome. As an Air Force source tells it, “The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating.”

As Bill Clinton assumed the Oval Office, the Soviet Union had just collapsed, bring with it cries of ‘peace and safety’ as it sunk in that the Cold War was over and the only remaining superpower on earth was the United States. The Soviets spent themselves out of existence trying to keep up with the Reagan-inspired arms-race and eventually collapsed.

America, having spent its way out of nuclear war with the Soviets, turned to what Bill Clinton called ‘the peace dividend’ and found all kinds of creative ways to spend it on other things.

After ten years of spending cuts, the superpower that defeated the Soviet Union is struggling to win the peace in Iraq, while facing the twin nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran with neither the military nor intelligence capacity it had a decade ago.

Writing of the signs of the times for the last days, the Apostle Paul warned;

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3)

Nebraska, WWI and the Rapture

Nebraska, WWI and the Rapture
Vol: 36 Issue: 22 Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Probably the question most prophecy teachers hear the most often is, When do you think the Rapture will happen? The smart ones will remember the Words of Jesus that no man knoweth the day or the hour but that we WOULD know when it was near, even at the door.

The signs of the times are all around us, but the most potent sign is the one few Christians look to for theological answers the world itself.

By way of explanation, consider the following scenario carefully. Imagine a 12 year old Nebraska farm boy working his father s farm in 1904. He has probably gotten all the education he can hope for, and is working full time on the farm.

He has never seen an automobile, probably never heard of one, and the Wright brothers have yet to prove their theory of heavier-than-air powered flight.

Now, skip ahead to 1924. Our Nebraska farm boy is now in his early thirties. A veteran of the first global total warfare in history, he s traveled to Europe, seen airplanes deployed in combat, come home to find a job in the city to help him pay for his new Model T Ford.

In 1904, radio was unheard of. In 1924, radio entertainment was an industry unto itself. The farm boy who had never heard of electric lights or indoor plumbing is now a sophisticated city dweller with both, plus a Model-T Ford parked nearby.

A lot can happen in twenty years.

Assessment:

Now we fast forward 100 years to 2004. We live in an age of instant communications, global networking, computers and virtually unlimited access to information. At the moment, there are some forty countries who have or are developing nuclear technology.

Chemical weapons of mass destruction can be manufactured by a novice chemist using an apartment kitchen as a laboratory. Most of the belligerents in the Middle East have some form of WMD in their arsenal, whether chemical, biological, or nuclear.

Most of those belligerents are also sympathetic to the Islamic terrorists who have declared jihad to the death with the Western democracies, principally, the United States.

We have been promised by our leaders that the current war against terror will be long and costly.

Now, following the pattern of 100 years ago, we fast forward twenty years to 2024. Given all that computers are capable of, and all that the terror network formed against us plans to use against us, the picture twenty years from now, from a secular political perspective, demands only one of two outcomes.

Either it is a world at peace, or it is a world devoid of inhabitants. Science, technology, history and politics all point to exactly that conclusion. In twenty years, the terrorists won t be armed with Soviet-era RPGs. They will be armed with the most sophisticated and deadly weaponry that will be available on the high-tech market twenty years from now. (Twenty years ago, a PC was an expensive, but unnecessary novelty)

So, unless we wipe out everybody who hates us (an unlikely scenario), or we make peace with everybody (terrorists included) who have access to WMD (40 countries and counting) then the only logical conclusion to draw is that the unimaginable weaponry that will be available between now and 2024 will be deployed against SOMEBODY, who will respond in kind, which will involve other allies, who will be forced to take sides, which is precisely what started the first war to end all wars in 1914.

Those are the only two possibilities imaginable, taken from the secular political perspective, given the information available and the various possibilities.

World peace or global annihilation.

The Bible doesn t say when the Rapture will occur. It says we will know when it is near, even, at the door. And we know that Jesus said of the Tribulation Period which follows the Rapture, that the destruction and death will be so great that, if the days be not shortened, there should be no flesh saved.

Logical secular analysis suggests either an historically elusive and seemingly impossible world peace that will result in the destruction of these weapons, or the historically probable global war that will result in their deployment. And it is impossible to imagine that if we don t achieve one, we are doomed to face the other, as certainly as our 1904 Nebraska farm boy.

Except that we live in a world where 19 guys with box cutters can destroy two 110 story buildings and kill 3000 people, all by themselves.

Now we return to the central question of the timing of the Rapture. I don t know the day or the hour, but I know the odds that we will achieve world peace, keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists and avoid total war with the Islamic world in the next twenty years.

And, unless we do all that, if the Rapture hasn t already happened, there will be nobody left to Rapture.

And when these things BEGIN to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke 21:28)

Memogate Not Over With CBS ‘Apology’

Memogate Not Over With CBS ‘Apology’
Vol: 36 Issue: 21 Tuesday, September 21, 2004

One would think that with the admission by CBS News that its major hit piece questioning President Bush’s National Guard service was based on forged documents, the story would go away. Or at least, fade into the background.

But it hasn’t. Even with the admission, there are still idiots out there who are demanding President Bush answer the charges contained in the four memos.

I published a parody last week, reversing the Rather situation by making wildly outlandish charges against Dan Rather, admitting they were based on ‘forged documents’ but demanding Dan release all his private records in order to disprove my charges.

I received dozens of emails criticizing me for being unChristian, or being a Bush partisan, and even a couple of emails suggesting the only reason I wrote the parody was because I was envious of Dan Rather.

But a few people got the point. Yesterday, Gayle phoned me from the car. She was listening to a radio talk show when she realized the host was reading my parody on the air.

The radio guy got the point. He ticked off each of my imaginary charges, plus my imaginary responses, and commented, “Isn’t that just what Dan said?”, as he went through the piece.

(I was relieved to find Gayle was tuned to Christian radio. Not everybody thought the parody was ‘unChristian’ of me.)

But other columnists came away from the Memogate story with a different perspective. Syndicated columnist EJ Dionne, writing in the Seattle Times, headlined his column, “Yes, Mr. President, there are questions to be answered.”

Dionne opines, “. . .what’s good for Rather, who is not running for president, ought to be good for George Bush, who is. “There are a lot of questions and they need to be answered. Surely that presidential sentiment applies as much to Bush’s guard service as to Rather’s journalistic methods.”

Dionne goes on, saying; “The New York Times put the relevant questions on the table Monday in a lengthy review of Bush’s life in 1972, “the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen,” as the Times called it.”

Assessment:

RELEVANT questions? What relevant questions? Talk about a tempest in a teapot! Let’s contrast this mess, (one more time) and see what is ‘relevant’ here.

According to the New York Times, the suspicion is that George Bush may have missed some weekend drills towards the end of his Guard service and didn’t get a dishonorable discharge (or something) because he was getting preferential treatment because his dad was a Congressman.

That same charge was made against Al Gore, but it never got legs because it, (like Bush’s Guard service), was irrelevant to a campaign some thirty years after the fact.

Dionne acknowledged that fact, writing, “Oh, I can hear the groaning: “But why are we still talking about Vietnam?” A fair question that has several compelling answers.” I read through to the end of the piece, but Dionne never reveals what those ‘compelling answers’ are. He just repeated the ‘compelling’ charges against Bush.

First, Dionne had to dismiss the charges made by the SWIFT Boat veterans who served with John Kerry as ‘untruthful’. Dionne doesn’t say how he knows that all those veterans are really partisan liars with no honor or dignity of their own.

The Kerry campaign makes much of the fact only one SWIFTEE actually served on John Kerry’s boat, as if the rest were merely repeating hearsay. SWIFT Boat commanders lived together, ate together and patrolled together.

But to liberals like Dionne, “Republicans were conspicuously happy to have a front group spread untruths about John Kerry’s Vietnam service in August and watch as the misleading claims were amplified by the supposedly liberal media. The Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush’s character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off. Why? Because the media were supposed to question Kerry’s character, but not Bush’s.”

(Let me interject here — the ‘supposedly’ liberal media? You mean like the NYTimes, CNN, ABC, NBC and, of course, CBS? What country is Dionne living in?)

Dionne’s argument would make more sense if the Kerry campaign hadn’t resurrected the National Guard issue six months before the first SWIFT Boat ads appeared. But since Bush has NEVER raised Vietnam, and Kerry has campaigned exclusively on his Vietnam service, it makes you wonder what Dionne’s been smoking.

Is George Bush’s National Guard service ‘relevant’, as Dionne claims? If so, I am still trying to figure out how. The whole Guard controversy was designed to create the impression that, as a National Guardsman, Bush demonstrated a lack of character that makes him unfit to serve as Commander in Chief.

In 2000, when George Bush was an untested state governor, it may have been relevant. But since Bush has BEEN Commander in Chief for the last four years, how relevant is his Guard service 30 years ago?

It would seem that, if there were something relevant to this election to attack, it would be related to something Bush did as Commander in Chief in the 21st century, not as a twenty-something 1st Lt. in the 20th.

On the other hand, John Kerry does NOT have four years experience AS Commander in Chief coming into this election. Since it was Kerry who made it a benchmark, and since it is Kerry who claims service in Vietnam makes him qualified to lead America, John Kerry’s Vietnam service is extremely relevant.

(In particular, since he hasn’t provided anything else for the electorate to consider when making up their minds)

The point isn’t Vietnam, or the National Guard or whether or not George Bush (or John Kerry, for that matter) satisfactorily completed their military obligation.

What is beyond question, when you get down to it, was that John Kerry certainly did NOT. Both John Kerry and George Bush signed up, as do all US military, for a six year term. Bush with the Guard, Kerry with the US Naval Reserve, but both for six years.

All the questions seem to be swirling around what George Bush did during the last couple years of his military obligation. But not around Kerry. Why?

Because we already know how John Kerry finished out his final two years as a US Naval Reserve officer.

He testified that he and his military comrades who were still serving in Vietnam were war criminals. While still a US Naval Officer in time of war, he traveled on his own to Paris to meet with representatives of the North Vietnamese government.

He presented an unauthorized peace proposal of his own, favorable to the North Vietnamese, and then returned to the United States to suggest the US wasn’t really interested in peace, undermining ongoing efforts at the peace table to reach a solution favorable to the United States.

One would think THAT might be relevant to the question of who is better qualified to be Commander in Chief. But apparently not.

The year is 2004. The threat facing America is a nameless, faceless enemy, driven by a fanatic religious ideology and dedicated to America’s destruction. As the hours count down to Election Day, America is gearing up for another onslaught of attacks against the homeland, possibly involving the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The candidates are 56 and 62 years old, respectively. But the debate is stuck in a war that America LOST thirty-five years ago. At the expense of a war we are fighting right now.

It is being driven by ideologues on the left who know their guy can’t win based on anything he’s done in the Senate, and now realize he can’t win based on anything he did in Vietnam.

It appears the only way Kerry thinks he can win is to ‘prove’ George Bush’s military records are MORE suspicious that his are. No evidence is too flimsy to examine, no charge too outrageous to demand answers to. Even forgeries have credibility with the liberal left — if it will defeat George Bush.

And there are no shortage of idiots in the media who think Americans are too stupid to figure all this out on their own.

History Revised: The Wrong Lesson

History Revised: The Wrong Lesson
Vol: 36 Issue: 20 Monday, September 20, 2004

The biggest danger America faces from the terrorists who want to destroy us comes, not from the terrorists, but from revisionist historians. Thanks to them, even something as obvious as profiling is widely seen as un-American and ‘racist’.

As a consequence, if you are a little old white-haired lady with a walker, you just might be pulled out of line at the airport and singled out for a secondary search and inspection. Not because little white-haired old ladies represent a threat to national security.

Instead, little white-haired old ladies, (not to mention 87 year-old former governors who hold the Congressional Medal of Honor – Joe Foss was ordered to remove his shoes as the airport inspector tried to confiscate his CMH) are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

A political correctness that was born out of the historian’s horror stories about Japanese relocation during World War II. Revisionists call that one of the darkest periods in American history.

The relocations were chalked up to latent American racist tendencies being allowed to rise unchecked, due to mass ‘war hysteria’ — instead of a common-sense approach to homeland security in time of war.

As proof, they point to the fact that there wasn’t a single instance of Japanese-American sabotage throughout the entire war. And that the 442nd “Nisei Battalion” fought with distinction during World War II, earning significantly more medals than the average combat unit. Both are true.

But in the first instance, historians give no credit whatever to the relocation camps for taking potential Japanese-American saboteurs out of circulation in the first place.

In the second instance, Japanese-Americans of the 442nd fought with distinction because they were Americans first and Japanese second, men who volunteered for combat like millions of other Americans.

They fought hard and distinguished themselves, BECAUSE they represented America, not Japan. They fought against the REASON there were relocation camps. They weren’t fighting against American racism. They were fighting against Japanese imperialism, realizing that with victory, the relocation camps would be unnecessary.

But that isn’t the way American history remembers it.

The 19th century philosopher Santayana warned, “those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.” In the rarified atmosphere of liberal academia, historians spend more time learning about America’s response to Japanese atrocities than it does to the atrocities that started the war in the first place.

With the typical self-loathing that so often accompanies liberal academia, the Japanese get a pass for STARTING the war, (because of the way it ended — in a mushroom cloud).

Thanks to that mindset, we’ve learned the wrong lesson.

Assessment:

An exclusion order signed by President Roosevelt, included “any and all persons” living within a prescribed military area. The order did not apply strictly to the Japanese as revisionist historians would have the public believe.

“Any and all persons” included those whose countries of origin, not race were at war with the United States. The primary targets of the exclusion order were Germans, Italians and Japanese.

All were directed to move out of the State of California and from the western halves of Oregon and Washington as well as from the lower one third of Arizona. Thousands complied.

The order was a direct result of the American Signal Corps having broken the secret Japanese diplomatic code thus, the American government was reading what the Japanese government was advising its consulates around the world.

These Top Secret messages were dubbed “MAGIC” and only a mere handful of people knew about this code-breaking feat until after the war. MAGIC messages were not made public until 1980. Therefore all books or articles written prior to 1980 about why the relocation was necessary are obsolete by error of omission.

Historical revisionists don’t like to have the record corrected, particularly if it means that the lessons of history they worked so hard on making clear are the wrong lessons.

It would mean going back to the drawing board to revise history from 1941 to the present all over again to learn the REAL lesson history teaches.

It would require the relocation of ‘political correctness’ to the trash heap of history where it belongs.

Knowing the rest of the story puts the relocation camps, and their contribution to America’s victory, into a different perspective.

In dozens of MAGIC messages, persons who were loyal to the Imperial government were named and locations given. This data, added to other information from German and Italian sources, caused American government agents to swoop down on hundreds of German, Italian and Japanese on the day war was declared (December 8, 1941) with named warrants to arrest these persons.

Each person was given an individual hearing. As a result of the hearing, the person was either paroled and permitted to rejoin his/her family, or sent to an Internment Camp to be deported.

Of particular concern to the U.S. government was the fact that all Japanese children were required to be registered at birth with the nearest Japanese Consulate.

When the boys reached age 17 years of age, they were required to join the Japanese army or perform other military service as directed — including spying for Japan, if called upon to do so.

Question in the minds of U.S. authorities: Would these men side with Japan in the event of war or side with their birth land, the United States? As history shows, there were lots of each.

MAGIC revealed that, by mid-1941, six months before Pearl Harbor, Japan already had an extensive espionage network along America s West Coast. There were Japanese spies watching military bases, shipyards, airfields and seaports. A Honolulu cell provided important last-minute help to the attackers at Pearl Harbor.

History shows the vast majority of Japanese-Americans were as loyal as the men of the 442nd. But Japanese ultranationalists were broadcasting into the United States, sending coded messages to enemy sleeper cells embedded near strategic sites.

All US intelligence knew was that there WERE sleeper cells of ultranationalist Japanese scattered up and down the West Coast. The intercepted Japanese coded messages proved that. But they didn’t know who or where. The only way to watch them all was to put them where the government could see them.

Now, I am NOT advocating the revival of relocation camps for followers of Islam or Arab-Americans. In the first place, I don’t think it would work. This is 2004, not 1941.

And in the second place, the vast majority of Arab-Americans and American Muslims are as loyal as were the majority of Japanese-Americans in the 1940’s.

But the Twin Towers weren’t brought down by white-haired old ladies or former governors or by a sect of Norwegian monks. And profiling isn’t relocation or deportation.

It is this revisionist view of history that spawned the politically correct worldview that profiling Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 35 is as racist as the relocation of enemy aliens and potential enemy sympathizers during World War II.

Ironically, the lesson of history that revisionist historians miss is the one they keep trumpeting to promote the current politically correct view that profiling is ‘racist’ and un-American.

There were no documented acts of Japanese sabotage or disloyalty after the Japanese and other potential enemy aliens were relocated.

If we had learned the correct lessons of history, 19 Muslim males of Arab descent between the ages of 17 and 35 may have been ‘profiled’ before they boarded their flights on September 11, 2001.

And maybe it would have been just another day.