So President Bush puts the Army’s top expert on counter-insurgency in charge of our forces in Iraq, and begins sending him additional troops to help pacify Baghdad. The politically-correct “rules of engagement” that have prevented the troops from doing their jobs effectively are lightened. Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s leader is reportedly wounded, and his deputy killed. Moqtada al-Sadr suddenly remembers a pressing engagement in Iran, hikes up his robes and runs for the border. 

The idea of Earth being invaded by aliens from another planet has always made people uneasy. On October 30, 1938, Orson Welle’s produced the radio show “War of the Worlds”, which dramatized an alien invasion of Earth so frightening and so believable that it caused a near panic in cities across America.

No American soldier or Marine fighting in Iraq would ever make such an absurd statement.

I have been watching the “reportage” on the regrettable incident of a teenaged killer’s rampage in a Utah shopping mall with mounting interest. In nearly every story of this crime the fact that this youngster is from a Muslim background is either muted or ignored altogether.

On Monday, the day the mass murderer Sulejman Talovic gunned down nine unsuspecting shoppers in Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, five of whom died instantly, every report was calling it a “massacre.” Salt Lake City Salt Lake City Police Detective Robin Snyder observed: “We’re just trying to figure out where it started and why this happened.  There was one shooter. We have no indication that anyone else was involved in this. That shooter is dead.” Eyewitnesses described the gunman as “white, in his 20s, about 6 feet tall, with brown hair.” The New York Post headlines screamed “UTAH MADMAN GUNS DOWN FIVE.”

It’s February, and in keeping with that, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States:

The Bush administration claims to have a way to deter the militant theocracy of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons--and thwart its ambition to bring “death to America.” Washington’s plan aims to pressure Teheran, financially and psychologically. The idea is to cut off Iran’s nuclear program from banks and businesses in other nations, and to undermine the confidence of Iranian officials. The right amount of pressure, we are told, can induce Teheran to give up its nuclear program.

According to Roman mythology, the god Janus had a number of functions, or responsibilities, if you will. One of the less prominent in the Roman pantheon, to be sure, his most memorable feature was (and is to this day) that he was depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions.

A lot of people, attributing the current conflicts in the Middle East to either religion or oil, believe they don’t really have a dog in the fight. What cannot be ignored however is that a paroxysm of religious strife has broken out in the Middle East and it is exporting death and terror in the name of Allah.

I have written a number of prophetic articles about changes in the governments of democracies since September 11th and since America liberated Iraq.  At the time we ended the reign of terror of Saddam Hussein, men like John Kerry were speaking openly about how unsympathetic our democratic allies were toward America.  Things have changed a great deal since then.

A couple of days ago I received one of the hundreds of e-mail I get on a seemingly regular basis that strikes me as being totally baseless, yet couched in language designed to proclaim a “truth” that brooks no debate. The e-mail stated: “Your point that if Bush lied so did congress fails to take into consideration that congress, like most Americans, did not know they were being lied to.”

All hail the inscrutability of Israel’s political machine!

There is sharp cracking sound in the distance. A moment later a low rumbling sound, like an innocent clap of thunder, shakes the ground slightly and the whole city becomes immobile, as if frozen in time. All florescent lights, neon tubes, and television sets glow with eerie brightness; even the ones that are turned off at the time. Smoldering plastic seeps from outlet covers, electric wires arc, and telephone wires melt into tangled piles of smoking jelly.

No bears here. It’s all bull. But don’t all rush in at once. There’s more than enough bull to go around. So before you do any heavy speculating elsewhere, give Iraq serious consideration. You may not break any bank, but you’ll find out where the biggest bull market is, and that’s sometimes better than cash.

Nearly 3,000 Americans killed in a series of attacks on one single day—the most American civilians ever killed in a single day with coordinated attacks—was no big deal as far as David Bell writing for the L.A. Times(1) is concerned.