The United Nations was founded in 1948 upon a flawed premise: that all nations would willingly work together for the betterment of the entire world. In the past few years alone, we have seen the consequences of believing that falsehood we told ourselves for over fifty years. Perhaps the time has come at last to examine the UN and its role, and how well -- if at all -- it functions in the real world.

Possibly the worst failing of the UN is its insistence that any group which can claim a territory should receive all the benefits and deference due a nation as old as Great Britain, as powerful as the United States, as populous as China or as large as the former Soviet Union.  This has given gangs of thugs -- Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party, for instance -- the assurance that if they could just hold a nation hostage, by whatever means, they would be treated as its legitimate government. No one would be allowed to invade them. UN peacekeepers might even help to quell internal uprisings. In the same way that members of the Mafia would use their ill-gotten wealth to "go legit" as honest businessmen, any gang leader who managed to fix an election or cow the populace of a small country could be treated as the equal of the President of the United States. The United Nations itself has given hope to the ambitions of the world's most ruthless dictators.

How ridiculous is it for Libya, while itself under stricture for human rights abuses, to head the UN Human Rights Committee? Did it make any sense for -- of all places in the world -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq to chair the UN Disarmament Conference in 2003? Yet this is precisely how matters stood a year ago. Apologists for the UN say that everything is equal, that all committee chairs move among the members in alphabetical rotation, and that their "fitness" to head various offices is never questioned. That's precisely my point! Perhaps a nation's worthiness to head UN committees or conferences should be questioned before they are handed such responsibilities.

Liberals, in general, love the United Nations for three reasons. First, they consider it a "world government", although I certainly never got the chance to vote for my representative. (As a citizen of a Republic, however, I still have more of a say than would residents of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or any of the dozens of dictatorships that populate the UN.) Second, the UN gives France unearned power that they would never have on the world stage of their own merit, in the form of a permanent seat on the Security Council and a veto. Third, if the UN was a world government, the power of the United States to act in its own defense would be curtailed, which all Liberals seem to agree would be a good thing. The fact that a defenseless USA would not be loved by the world any more than a strong USA is doesn't register, it seems.

The United Nations has failed in its responsibilities time and time again. Thousands of UN peacekeepers stood and watched as 800,000 Rwandans were butchered right before their eyes in 1994. More than five years after the UN took over the administration of Kosovo, ethnic violence is still going on! According to Human Rights Watch:

U.N. police indicate that most of the violence is being directed at the ethnic Serb minority. Unidentified attackers have burned churches, homes, public offices and at least one school. Particularly disturbing are reports of arson attacks on newly built homes of Serbs who had recently returned to Kosovo following their forced displacement in previous years. 
The attacks bear similarity to the campaign of arson, abduction, intimidation and killing directed at Serbs and Roma in the summer of 1999. This campaign of violence forced 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma from the province. Human Rights Watch documented the violence in an August 1999 report, “Abuses against Serbs and Roma in the New Kosovo.” 

Worst of all has been the utter failure of the United Nations in Iraq. The oil-for-food program, instituted in 1996, functioned as a piggy bank for Saddam Hussein to the tune of over ten billion dollars. The UN itself, meantime, was raking in a percentage of every transaction under the program, socking away over a billion dollars in hidden UN bank accounts. What kind of interest does a billion dollars generate, and who is receiving it? UN Treasurer Suzanne Bishopric won't say. Despite the sanctions strictly regulating what kind of equipment was sold to Iraq, UN member nations Russia and China sold military equipment to Saddam, and France shipped Saddam spare parts for Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters to Iraq, despite the sanctions and the impending war. High-ranking politicians and advisors in those three countries and many more were revealed as the recipients of oil vouchers from their friend Saddam. (Among those names was Benton Savan, the man who was in charge of the oil-for-food program.) France, Russia and China have led the corruption of the United Nations, which can no longer be considered a neutral body (if indeed it ever could have been). It remains to be seen whether the damage can be repaired.

One of the things that needs to be done to "fix" the United Nations is change a few simple words in its charter. Member nations -- which means, of course, all nations and/or groups of thugs who control a country by force -- have the right to act in their own defense. Article 51 of the UN Charter states, "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." Keep in mind that when this charter was written, "armed attack" was a perfect description of warfare. Armies sweeping across the landscape, tank columns rolling through the countryside, waves of bombers smashing cities to rubble -- that's what an armed attack was understood to mean in 1948. However, is funneling funds to suicide bombers an "armed attack" on the country in which they explode themselves? No... but it's an act of aggression, surely. Is a nation handing vials of anthrax to a terrorist group technically an "armed attack" against the country that subsequently suffers an anthrax outbreak? Same answer. How about a nation training small groups of religious fanatics in hijacking techniques, using only small knives? Same answer again. Iraq certainly engaged in two of these activities, and would almost certainly have engaged in the third had Saddam not been removed from power. Yet the Liberals --  a year after the war that ended Saddam's misrule -- still wail that Saddam had not "attacked" us, and so the United States was not "permitted" to defend itself under the UN Charter.

If we only added a few words after "armed attack" to reflect the realities of the world in the 21st century, it would go a long way towards making the UN more relevant to the necessities of the modern age. Inserting the words, "or support of terrorist groups" into Article 51 would allow UN members states to defend themselves against modern methods of attack.  Even if one is willing to ignore evidence of links to the terrorist group that bombed the World Trade Center 1993 and flew two passenger jets into it (and one into the Pentagon) in 2001 among others, Saddam's shooting at US and British aircraft over Iraq's no-fly zones and attempt to assassinate a former US President were "acts of aggression" against the United States even by the narrowest definition. (Many Liberals complain that the attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush was too long ago to care about, the same as Saddam's mass murders at Halabja, but I've never seen any mention of a statute of limitations on either crime.)

Don't expect to see the al-Qaedan Navy sweep up the James River and capture Richmond. This is a new war, in a new century, and must be fought in new ways. If our old friends won't help us, and our old institutions no longer serve our needs, we must either be prepared to find new ones, or be prepared to lose the war.

The Left continues their hypocritical attacks on the Bush administration, some of the American people continue to take them seriously, and rational people continue to have trouble understanding why. One one hand, President Bush is under attack for not "connecting the dots" quickly enough to prevent 9/11. On the other, he's being attacked for connecting the dots too quickly regarding Iraq. Which is it?

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, the Left has been trying to find a way to place all the blame for not preventing them on President Bush. The previous administration had nearly eight years after the first al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 to hunt down Osama bin Laden, but receives a permanent pass from the Left. It's the eight months immediately preceding 9/11 that draws cries of mock outrage from the Left. They deliberately ignore the fact that the 9/11 attack was planned for three years before it occurred, and may have been only the first attack of three that were planned. (Could the wish to avoid giving out confirmation of this knowledge be why Condoleeza Rice and President Bush can't testify in public before the 9/11 commission?) No, the Left is trying with all their resources to blame President Bush for "allowing" 9/11 to happen, holding him responsible for not connecting the dots quickly enough to prevent it.

From the outcry, we can clearly understand that he Left insists that the President must be able to make connections between seemingly disparate events among the sea of such events that are presented to him every day. They seem to be saying that the President must make decisions to protect Americans from disaster before it can strike, is that right? They insist on a proactive policy of defense... or do they?

At the same time the Left is vilifying President Bush for not acting quickly enough to prevent 9/11, the same people are also reviling him for acting too quickly when he prevented a possible worse attack from Iraq, which could have involved terrorists delivering biochemical weapons. They insist that he "should have waited to be sure." Well, exactly how sure should he have waited to be? Iraq had been on the State Supporter of Terrorism list for years. Al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Mud’ab al-Zarqawi fled to Iraq after the Taliban was overthrown in Afghanistan. He even wrote to al-Qaeda leadership, complaining that "There is no doubt that our field of movement is shrinking and the grip around the throat of the Mujahidin has begun to tighten. With the spread of the army and police, our future is becoming frightening." Every intelligence source in the world stated that Saddam had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, and was working to make more. The 1997 UNSCOM report on Saddam's weapons -- the last one before his stonewalling caused them to leave the country -- went into great detail about what they believed he still had hidden. The last UNMOVIC report from March of 2003 -- three months after the final deadline the UN set for Saddam's full disclosure -- was full of such items as "Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist." Saddam had, by 1998, completely thrown off the yoke of UN inspections, and was slowly but surely working to get the UN sanctions lifted. He even had the willing help of several key members of the UN Security Council -- France, Germany, Russia and China had extremely lucrative oil and arms deals with Saddam, and all had been granted oil rights in the west Qurna and other unexploited oil fields in return for lobbying to lift the UN sanctions on Iraq. There was absolutely no chance that these members of the United Nations would have given the United States a "permission slip" to remove Saddam Hussein from power without another terrorist attack taking place. Preferably one in which the terrorist cell leader left a confession -- hand-signed by Saddam, with his fingerprints all over it -- at the scene of the crime.

How quickly should a President act to prevent an attack by an enemy who specialises in hiding and striking in the dark? Our enemies in the War on Terror won't be coming across a border with tanks and massed hordes. Because this is not a "conventional" war, John Kerry wants to return to a purely reactive style of fighting terrorism, which didn't do much to prevent 9/11. On Kerry's own campaign web site, his "Plan to Make America Stronger and Safer" can be found. Under the heading "Bringing 21st Century Information Technology To The War On Terror," we can find Kerry's plan for preventing terrorists, backed by rogue nations, from carrying out further attacks on American soil.  Its three basic steps are as follows:

• Assuring First-Responders Can Communicate in an Attack
• Sharing Information With Appropriate State and Local Officials
• Cutting Down on False Identification

Checking the identification of terrorists after they're already here? Spending more money on first responders so they can clean up the bodies faster after an attack? What kind of prevention is this? Under other parts of his "plan," Kerry lists such proactive ideas as "Calling on the Private Sector to Help Bring Technological Innovations to the War on Terrorism," "Protect Private Infrastructure," and "Creating a New Community Defense Service." Is a new version of the 1950's Civil Defense going to stop rogue nations from harboring, training and equipping terrorists to attack America, possibly with weapons of mass destruction? Would Moammar Ghaddafi be as frightened by the thought of firefighters with better radios in NYC as he was of soldiers with better guns in his backyard? President Bush wants to take the War on Terror to the enemy. John Kerry wants to take it to Radio Shack. Better equipment for first responders is necessary, but it's not where the forefront of the War on Terror ought to be. My favorite part of the Kerry plan for fighting the War on Terror in defensive mode is this:

• Enlisting the National Guard in Homeland Security
  Homeland security should be a central mission of the National Guard. Guard members should be trained to serve as personnel in the event of an attack, helping evacuate or quarantine people, assisting in medical units; and helping communities set up and execute plans.

Could there be any clearer indication that John Kerry would change the War on Terror into a barbed-wire-and-bunker defensive war, only reacting to attacks after it's too late? The horrific events of 9/11 have taught us -- most of us, anyway -- that there is no "degree" of being too late when it comes to preventing terrorism. An instant of time -- a single terrorist getting through the fences -- is all it would take to devastate an entire city. We cannot wait to connect those dots until they represent casualties. The hypocrisy of the Left is that they want to attack President Bush for not preventing 9/11 while simultaneously attacking him for preventing another potential attack from Iraq... or from any country that sponsors and supports terrorism.

Only those who can afford to lose choose to fight a defensive war.

In his book "Against All Enemies," Richard Clarke viciously attacks President Bush for failing to take strong action against al-Qaeda in the first eight months of his Presidency, pointing the finger of blame for 9/11 at the Bush administration. A year ago, Richard Clarke was extensively used as a source for Richard Miniter's book "Losing Bin Laden," which pointed the finger of blame for 9/11 at the Clinton administration for not taking action against al-Qaeda in the eight years of his Presidency. It's no coincidence of names... it's the same Richard Clarke. So who does Clarke blame for 9/11, Clinton or Bush? How many fingers are there?

The failed strategy of dealing with terrorism through courts and lawyers rather than military means was pursued all through the nineties. Clarke was the White House terrorism advisor for both Presidents, ever since he was appointed to the National Security Council staff in 1992 by Bill Clinton. Iraq was clearly involved in the 1993 WTC bombing by al-Qaeda operatives, yet was never confronted by the Clinton administration... which only emboldened Saddam to defy the US even more openly as the years passed. Mohammed Salameh, one of the bombers, made 46 phone calls to Iraq. Most of them were to his uncle, a convicted terrorist working in the PLO office in Baghdad. Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ramzi Yousef came to the US from Iraq, and Yousef traveled back to Iraq afterwards using a Kuwaiti passport in the name of Abdul Basit Karim. Karim's file had clearly been tampered with during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait -- Yousef's fingerprints had replaced those of the real Karim. All the evidence of State sponsorship of terrorism was ignored, and a policy of prosecuting individual terrorists as common criminals was followed. Who was the White House's counter-terrorism advisor during this time? Who bears some of the responsibility, at least, for this policy? Right answer: Richard Clarke.

Clarke's book castigates President Bush for his response to the second attack on the World Trade Center in less than a decade. When informed of the attacks, Clarke states that Bush wanted to know whether Iraq -- which had been involved in the attack on the the Twin Towers less than a decade ago -- was involved again. In the course of Clarke's prime-time network infomercial on 60 Minutes (no one saw fit to mention that VIACOM, which owns CBS, also published Clarke's book through Free Press, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster), Clarke stated that President Bush had a brief conversation with him on the subject. According to Clarke, Bush said,"'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said 'Iraq did this.'" Any objective, intellectually honest person would be forced to wonder at Clarke's vehement reaction -- more than two years delayed -- to this seemingly reasonable question. It would, in my opinion, have been irresponsible NOT to ask whether a country that had declared us their enemy, had been shooting down our planes for years, had been known to support terrorism, and had been involved in the first attack on the WTC was involved in the second attack on the same building. Clarke's personal impressions and prejudices -- which apparently form the bulk his book -- aside, all this tells us is that President Bush pays attention to history while Richard Clarke does not... even to his own. In his resignation letter, dated 20 Jan 2003, Clarke wrote to President Bush, "I will always remember the courage, determination, calm, and leadership you demonstrated on September 11th," and "It has been an enormous privilege to serve you these last 24 months." A little more than a year later, he seems to have changed his mind. In the 60 minutes interview, he attacked President Bush's handling of 9/11.

CLARKE: I think the way he has responded to al Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing nothing and by what he's done after 9/11 has made us less safe. Absolutely.
STAHL: Don't you think he handled himself and hit all the right notes after 9/11, showed strength, got us through it, you don't give him credit for that?
CLARKE: He gave a really good speech right after 9/11.
STAHL: You don't give him credit for anything. Nothing.
CLARKE: I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.

Prior to President Bush, there WAS no war against terrorism. After the 1993 WTC attack, nothing was done to stop al-Qaeda. Nothing was done when al-Qaeda terrorists killed 18 US servicemen in Somalia, also in 1993. Nothing was done after al-Qaeda terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers in 1996 or the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998. Nothing was done after al-Qaeda blew a hole in the USS Cole in 2000. Clarke claims that he warned President Bush about the terrible danger posed to the US by al-Qaeda and the need for a military response. The entirety of the "military response" to al-Qaeda during the Clinton administration -- under Clarke's leadership as "terrorism czar" -- was limited to missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan, both of which proved fruitless. Why was nothing done about al-Qaeda during all the years of Clarke's tenure as head of counter-terrorism, if the danger was so obvious?

Clinton's administration passed up an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden in 1996 According to a statement by Mansoor Ijaz (one of Clinton's 1996 campaign contributors), "President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening." After 9/11, Clinton was heard to call his decision not to take bin Laden "the biggest mistake of my Presidency." A second back-channel offer was made to turn over bin Laden by the United Arab Emirates in the summer of 2000, before the attack on the Cole. Richard Clarke soured the deal by openly referring to it during a meeting with the UAE rulers, who immediately denied any such offer had been made. That fall, a Predator drone spotted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Clinton administration again declined to act.

Richard Clarke -- arguably, the man who actually dropped the ball -- continues to criticise President Bush for not acting swiftly enough to send American military against bin Laden's terror network. It turns out that the Bush administration was, in fact, preparing to launch a worldwide war against al-Qaeda. The day before 9/11, the Bush administration finalised a plan to overthrow the Taliban, capture Osama bin Laden, and crush al-Qaeda around the world. Even had President Bush launched such an attack on Afghanistan the day after he took office, however, it wouldn't have stopped 9/11... which had been in motion since 1998.

Of course, then Liberals would certainly have condemned President Bush as an "imperialist warmonger" for launching a pre-emptive strike against a sovereign nation before they had actually attacked us. Go figure.

The anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has arrived, and Saddam's useful idiots -- Lenin's term for Westerners easily duped into supporting those who should be their worst enemies -- remain on the job, still billing themselves as "anti-war protesters". Don't they realise that we've already invaded, Saddam went from palace to spider hole to jail cell, the UN has recognised the Coalition as the legal authority there, and the Iraqi people are free of his misrule at last?  Don't they realise that Iraq is well on the way to self-government by the will of the people, instead of the will of a dictator? Or do they simply lack the honesty to call themselves what they really are? One cannot separate the cause from the effect. These people are actually protesting the removal of a brutal dictator and the liberation of twenty-five million Iraqis.

It appears that the Democrats are going to run their 2004 campaign on a two-pronged strategy: "hate Bush" and "hate the rich". The latter, at least, is the same old class warfare strategy they've tried and failed with before. Since John Kerry has proposed raising taxes on everyone who earns over $200,000 a year, that seems to be the defining line on who's "rich" and who's not. So, what of it? Why should those of us who make less than $200,000 a year care how much those darned rich people get their taxes raised? How is that going to affect you and me?

The answer is simple. In most cases, they're the people we work for.

People who make over $200,000 a year are the ones who run the business world that keeps most of the 94.4% of Americans that earn a paycheck (as of February 2004) employed. They're the people who own and invest in the large corporations and small companies that the majority of us work for. According to an IRS study done in the year 2000, only 2.8 million people earn over $200,000 per year. Keep in mind, however, that much of that data predates the dot-com bubble collapse that led to the Clinton recession in late 2000, foreshadowed as early as May 2000 by a "turmoil in technology stocks." By March 2001, the economy had clearly been failing for ten months in a row. Today's number of "rich" may still be less that it was before the recession.

Small businesses are the backbone of wealth creation in this country, and their influence on the economy is growing. In fact, the biggest difference between the Democratic meme that "2.3 million jobs have been lost since President Bush took office" and reality lies in that shadowy area between two methods of counting jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll survey always quoted by Democrats only covers people employed by large corporations and established businesses. The household survey, which covers small businesses and startups, not only accounts for those 2.3 million jobs, but actually shows a net gain of 700,000. Small businesses are fast becoming the most important factor in today's economy. According to a 2001 study by the University of Colorado:

Wealth appears to reside primarily in larger U.S. firms and the results herein suggest that this is changing. Smaller firms do create significant wealth and, more importantly, the percentage of wealth increase is significantly larger among small firms. Although further research is needed, it may be, based on the results of our study, that the very large corporate behemoths are wealth destroyers rather than wealth creators. It also appears that the economic impact of smaller firms is significantly increasing over time.

With the overthrow of Jose Maria Aznar's "Popular Party" in the Spanish elections yesterday, al-Qaeda has learned some very important things. By setting off a few bombs with the probable assistance of the Basque separatist group Eta and killing a "mere" two hundred people or so, they have learned that that can cow an entire nation into appeasing them to avoid further attacks. Like any bully or blackmailer, they'll be back when they want more concessions from the socialist Spanish government. Next time, all they have to do is threaten an attack to get their way. In a cave somewhere on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are exchanging high-fives.

Al Qaeda has learned that they have the ability to control elections in supposedly democratic countries with violence.  Does anyone really think that having proven this ability, they won't use it? One thing the Spanish appeasers have done is guarantee a wave of terrorist violence just before the November elections.

Not only have we lost a valuable ally in the War on Terror, we have lost an entire Western nation to the socialists, who lost power in 1996 due to widespread corruption. Middle East expert Mansoor Ijaz said, "This particular election result in Spain is probably the single most important event that has taken place since the attacks on Sept. 11 because it demonstrates that terrorism, in fact, can pay." He added, "And now one of the governments that supported the United States has fallen." 

It's a black day for democracy, freedom, and the fight against worldwide terrorism.

Once again, terrorists have committed mass murder on an unsuspecting people. Once again, the news is flooded with images of horror done to innocents in the name of a political agenda. This time, the murderers have struck in Madrid, Spain, on crowded railroads in the middle of the day, killing 200 people and wounding perhaps 1500. 

DAMN them.

I don't care about the politics or aims of the group that did this thing. The black hats ride together. As far as I'm concerned, all terrorists need to be exterminated like the cockroaches they are. Anyone who deliberately targets innocent men, women and children just to get attention or cause fear for some political reason has no humanity, and has forfeited all claim to human rights.  I felt the same way in the days after 9/11... all two and a half years of them, so far.

The topic of discussion seems to be what political group is behind this atrocity. If it's al-Qaeda or a group linked to them, as it certainly seems to be, then the "talking heads" think that tomorrow's election may go ill for Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. The thinking here is that if Spain was attacked because they joined the Coalition to liberate Iraq, the voters will vote him out of office. If it's "just" a Basque separatist group (members of which recieve training in Iran and Lebanon, by the way -- remember the comment about the black hats), then his party may win re-election. The big question seems to be "Are the Spanish people are going to throw Aznar out of office because of his support for the US and UK in Iraq?" I certainly hope they don't think that appeasing the terrorists will make them go away, because it won't. If the terrorists -- whoever they are -- find that they can force the people of Spain to meet their demands with a few lousy bombs, they'll be back again.. and again... and again.

Wait a second... am I missing something here? Everyone's concerned that al-Qaeda may be behind the attack on Spain because they're angry that Spain was our ally in Iraq? I thought that the Liberals and other anti-liberation groups have been insisting for a year that al-Qaeda may have been in Afghanistan, but had nothing to do with Iraq. Why are they suddenly concerned that al-Qaeda committed an act of terrorism in Spain because of its involvement in Iraq, without mentioning Afghanistan? According to Liberal doctrine, Osama bin Laden hated Saddam and wanted him removed for ideological reasons.

This is no surprise, of course. We've known all along that Iraq is the main front of the war on terror, haven't we? Several months ago, in fact, al-Qaeda shifted its focus from defeating the evils of democracy in Afghanistan to defeating the evils of democracy in Iraq. If we can defeat al-Qaeda and establish a real democracy in Iraq, we will have dealt a mortal blow to terrorism, and the terrorists know it. The signing of Iraq's interim constitution last week -- with its incredibly progressive bill of rights -- was a serious win for our side, though the "mainstream" media reported it with a barely-stifled yawn.

According to Norwegian investigators, a message on an al-Qaeda web site last year said, "We must make maximum use of the proximity to the elections in Spain in March next year. Spain can stand a maximum of two or three attacks before they will withdraw from Iraq." Al-Qaeda has been looking for ways to get the US and our allies to withdraw from Iraq since the minute we went in.

I'm sure that the Left will come up with some tortured logic to explain how al-Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq before poor, innocent Saddam was removed from power, but has since decided to punish the whole world for doing so. (Liberals insist al-Qaeda and Saddam had no contact, despite all the evidence that they had a working relationship for over a decade.) I'm not about to buy such a twisted explanation any more than I'd be willing to buy this attack being Muslim retaliation for El Cid's reconquest of Spain from them in the 11th century. And in either case, does it matter why terrorists murder innocents? It is inexcusable, indefensible, and intolerable that they do so.

The War on Terror goes on, and this proves it. It's a threat to the entire world, not just the US, and this proves it. This war is one we can't afford to stop fighting, proactively, wherever terror groups find support. This proves it.

Presidential hopeful John Kerry has more guts than most people gave him credit for, after all.  It takes unbelievable audacity to attack President Bush for "stonewalling" the 9/11 terrorist attack investigation, when Kerry was personally warned by an FAA agent about the possibility of a terrorist hijacking at Boston's Logan International Airport only months before... and did nothing.

In a letter to Senator John Kerry on 7 May 2001, retired FAA Special Agent Brian Sullivan wrote that the FAA needed to change its focus from hijackings for hostages (the usual purpose until 9/11) to encompass the possibility of terrorists taking over airliners for other, more deadly purposes.  "While the FAA has focused on screening for handguns, new threats have emerged, such as chemical and biological weapons," Sullivan wrote.  "Do you really think a screener could detect a bottle of liquid explosive, a small battery and a detonator in your carry-on baggage?"  Sullivan continued, "And with the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other passengers? The answers to these questions are obvious."

The night before, a local tv station had broadcast a report concerning security vulnerabilities at Logan Airport featuring Sullivan and another former FAA Special Agent named Steve Elson.  The two had waltzed in and out through airport security multiple times with a variety of weapons and gadgets.  Many times, their bags weren't even opened, even when "suspicious items" were inside.  Agent Sullivan sent Kerry a video of the report following his letter.  In a chilling prophecy, he encouraged the Senator to "[t]hink what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day."  In the last week of July, Kerry's office finally sent Sullivan a reply saying that the video had been forwarded to the Department of Transportation.  Less than two months later, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were hijacked after taking off from the same Logan International Airport and flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NYC, killing thousands.

Was this the famous "alarm" John Kerry claims to have "sounded... on terrorism years before 9/11" in his television commercials -- sending a video to the DoT mere months beforehand?  Anyone with money for postage could have done as much.  Isn't it possible that a Senator with a direct warning from a former FAA agent could -- and should -- have done much more?  While it's true that few people would immediately leap into action on a warning alone, most people lack the hypocritical arrogance to criticise others for not doing so when they hadn't themselves.

Kerry has recently attacked President Bush for daring to spend time campaigning for his own re-election instead of answering questions before the 9/11 commission.  "If the President of the United States can find time to go to a rodeo, he can spend more than one hour before the commission," Kerry said.  Why is more than an hour necessary?  It comes as no surprise that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (as it's formally known) would be used as yet another political attack on President Bush before too long.  Senator Kerry apparently needs to be reminded that he's able to find plenty of time to do everything except the job he's still drawing a hefty paycheck to do, having missed 64% of the Senate roll calls last year.  Some might consider that "being AWOL", and call for a minute-by-minute account of his activities while taking money from the public he supposedly serves.  Perhaps the Senator can furnish dental records to go along with that.

When will Kerry take his seat before the Commission to answer for his deliberate disregard of vital information concerning the lack of airport security in his very own Senatorial district, at the very airport from which half of the 9/11 attacks were launched?

Every Presidential candidate needs a running mate to help define his or her campaign, and John Kerry is no exception.  Now that the big primaries are over, the media needs something positive to report about their favored candidate (not that the media would ever take sides).  Expect the next media flurry -- the next one not attacking President Bush, that is -- to be about the burning question of who John Kerry will pick for a running mate. 

Some people are hoping (or fearing) that Kerry will choose Hillary Clinton as his Vice President.  Others think he will ask former Presidential hopeful Senator John Edwards to run with him.  A running mate is normally chosen for one of two things: the positives he or she can bring to a campaign (like energising the base, bringing in funding or helping to win a state or region), or the negatives that he or she doesn't bring.  This is especially true of Democrats, who tend to think of people more as representatives of a racial or economic group than as individual voters.

The huge amount of negative baggage carried by Hillary Clinton completely cancels out any positives she might bring.  Also, Kerry doesn't need to take out "insurance" in New York; there's very little chance the state will go Republican this year.  As for John Edwards, he held his own home state against Kerry, but his presence would be no guarantee that South Carolina or any other Southern state will suddenly vote Democratic.  Another reason to discount Clinton and Edwards is that no President wants a VP who's vastly more charismatic or personally powerful than he or she is.  Keeping all the above in mind, here's my list of probable VP picks for John Kerry.

Representative Dick Gephardt still has a huge amount of pull with the unions, and could (with a little hard-sell campaigning) bring in his home state of Missouri.  He might also have an effect in neighboring states.  Gephardt is more of a centrist than Kerry (for that matter, Ted Kennedy is more of a centrist than John Kerry!) and does not have a record of flip-flopping on every issue.  In my opinion, Gephardt's daughter's inability to stop pushing her gay activist agenda even when stumping for her father in a middle-of-the-road state cost him the primary in Iowa.  In a national campaign, however, it may actually come as something of an asset (if they confine her to more "Liberal" states like New York, California, Massachusetts and Vermont).  On the other hand, those who see Kerry as "Old-Time Washington Establishment" wouldn't find anything different to like about Gephardt.

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has many of the positives and few of the negatives of Gephardt. Though he doesn't have quite the amount of support from the unions, he's also younger and m