The United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay covers about forty-five miles of real estate on the southeastern end of Cuba. With its 9,500 troops, “Gitmo,” as it is commonly called by military personnel, is the only U.S. military base located on Communist soil. It is not this distinction, however, that has thrust it to the front page of newspapers all over the world. Instead, it is reports of alleged abuse of enemy combatants being detained there, especially reports of the mishandling of the detainees’ holy book—the Koran. 

The source of these allegations against American forces mistreating detainees and mishandling the Koran is the detainees themselves. Thanks to a civil suit brought against the U.S. military on behalf of enemy combatants by the American Civil Liberties Union, thousands of pages of F.B.I. documents have been handed over to the A.C.L.U. Once in the hands of the A.C.L.U., these sensitive and declassified documents, some of which contain  reports of unsubstantiated accusations against American forces by enemy combatants, are passed on to a salivating press. In spite of the fact that the vast majority of these reports are hearsay, mere rumors that the detainees claim to have heard, and that the few reports in which detainees claim to have actually experienced mistreatment are largely unverifiable, today’s press has no qualms about turning our foes’ allegations against our forces into front page news.

There are more than 500 detainees from approximately forty different countries being held at Guantanamo. According to Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, all of them are “enemy combatants”; that is, “terrorists or supporters of terrorism” captured by American forces in their execution of the war on terror. In a recent interview, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “The important thing to understand is that the [prisoners] that are at Guantanamo are bad people. I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the al-Qaida network.” General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the Guantanamo detainees to Fox News as people who would “slit our throats” and “our children’s throats.”

As Vice President Cheney pointed out, many of the detainees at Guantanamo are members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida. According to al-Qaida’s terrorist’s manual, captured “mujahadeen” (holy warriors) are obligated to falsely charge their captors with torture and the desecration of the Koran. By doing so, captives are assured that they can continue fighting jihad even while imprisoned, since their spurious charges will incite fellow prisoners and inflame the Muslim world. This practice of lying to further the cause of jihad is known among Muslims as “taqiyya” or “kitman” and was instigated and sanctioned by none other than the founder of Islam himself, the Prophet Mohammed.

According to the Hadith, Mohammed taught his followers that “war is deceit.” Unlike the Lord Jesus, who committed “no violence” and had no “deceit in His mouth” (Isaiah 53:9), Mohammed bragged about his use of deception in the slaughter of his enemies and praised his god (Allah) as the greatest of all deceivers (Surah 8:30). Whereas the Bible teaches that God cannot lie (Titus 1:2) and that lying is a sin, the Koran teaches that Allah deceives and that lying is virtuous and the religious duty of all who “strive in the way of Allah.”

Despite the obvious, that we should take with a grain of salt anything said by a throat-slitting terrorist who has been trained to lie in the service of his double-dealing deity, Newsweek Magazine rushed to report the rumored flushing of a Koran down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay. Though Newsweek claimed to have an anonymous source who guaranteed them of a forthcoming—never to be heard—confession of Koran flushing by the American military, the truth remains that the rumored flushing of a Koran down a toilet originated with Gitmo’s dubious detainees, none of whom claim to have actually witnessed the incident. All, however, claim to have heard about it through the prison grapevine and appear to be in agreement with one detainee’s assertion that it was “his duty as a Muslim to believe the rumor.” All of this, along with the utter impossibility of flushing a book comparable in size to our New Testament down a toilet, should have provided ample reason to give Newsweek pause in printing its story. Yet, in as glaring an example of irresponsible journalism as our country has ever witnessed, Newsweek Magazine ran with the rumor.

Thanks to the Newsweek article, thousands of Muslims from Iraq to Indonesia took to the streets in protests. In Bangladesh, Muslim protesters waved and held copies of the Koran above their heads, spat on and kicked the American flag, and shouted “Death to America.” In Gaza, Palestinian protesters carried the green banners of the terrorist organization Hamas, raised pictures of Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and shouted “Protect our holy book.” While burning American and Israeli flags, demonstrators in the Lebanese capital of Beirut chanted, “O America, listen, listen! With my blood I will protect my Koran!” In Pakistan, the Muslim world’s only nuclear power, angry protesters in Islamabad called for “Islamic revolution.” And in Afghanistan, where 18,000 U.S. troops are still stationed, Muslim protesters turned violent, smashing car and shop windows, attacking government offices, and killing at least seventeen people.    

Once the smoke cleared from the inflamed Muslim street and the U.S. military completed an investigation prompted by Newsweek’s article, an investigation in which “no credible evidence” was found “that a member of [America’s] Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay [had] ever flushed a Koran down a toilet,” Newsweek Magazine apologized for its faulty journalism. Its editor, Mark Whitaker, wrote, “We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.” In response to Mr. Whitaker’s apology, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, replied, “Newsweek cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations.”

Apparently, Mr. Whitman failed to carefully read Mr. Whitaker’s apology. While Newsweek apologized for possible errors in its article, it initially stopped short of retracting it. In an incredible statement that exposes today’s liberal press as propagandists rather than journalists, Mark Whitaker said, “We’re not retracting anything. We don’t know what the ultimate facts are.” In other words, our story may be wrong and we may not know what the facts are, but we still refuse to retract what we’ve printed.

In the past, the press refused to print stories until it was reasonably sure of the facts. Even when sure of the facts, some stories were never printed, because the press feared that printing them might compromise national security or endanger our military forces. Since the Newsweek story resulted in people dying “and the U.S. war effort [being] set back,” Columnist John Podhoretz argued that the story should have never been printed even “if verified with multiple sources and [known] beyond any question [to be] true.”

Unfortunately, the golden age of journalism is long gone. Today’s press is far more interested in influencing public opinion than in informing the public. Rather than practicing journalism—informing us about the facts so that we can form our own opinions—today’s press practices propaganda—skewing the facts in order to deceive us into adopting their opinions. Whether it is Walter Cronkite’s turning of the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War by characterizing America’s victory in the Tet Offensive as a military defeat and the beginning of the end for our forces in Southeast Asia, NBC’s rigging of two General Motors’ trucks with remote control igniters in order to accuse the automaker of manufacturing trucks with unsafe gasoline tanks, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair’s eyewitness accounts of things he never saw in places he never went, or Dan Rather’s attempt to influence the 2004 presidential election with forged documents that called into question  President Bush’s National Guard service,  the evidence that today’s press is no longer reporting the news but making it up is insurmountable. All who fail to face this fact put themselves in peril of being brainwashed by today’s masterfully manipulative media. 

Anyone who doubts this unflattering appraisal of our modern-day press needs only to listen to its steady drumbeat of accusations against our forces to be convinced otherwise. Right now, any scurrilous charge made by a Guantanamo detainee against his American captors ends up printed by the press and believed by millions around the world. Our terrorist enemies no longer need Al-Jazeera to propagate the world with their lies and innuendos; they have the world’s free press aiding and abetting them in jihad.  If today’s press had been around during World War II, Hitler would have had no need for Joseph Goebbels, his Minister of Propaganda.

According to the military investigation prompted by Newsweek’s article, which the magazine finally and reluctantly retracted, there has been seven confirmed cases of abuse out of about 24,000 interrogations at Guantanamo, “all [seven] of which were relatively minor.”  Such humane and tolerant treatment of enemy captives during a time of war is truly unprecedented, especially when you consider that the Taliban and al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo would kill their American interrogators and guards in a split second if given the opportunity. Don’t forget that America’s first casualty in the war on terror, Johnny “Mike” Spann, was killed by rioting Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners.

The military’s investigation also looked into allegations by the detainees that their Korans were being mishandled by American servicemen. Have you ever wondered where the detainees got their Korans? Our military provided them. If our military had not given Korans to the detainees, there would be no possibility of the detainees accusing our military of mishandling them. For this reason, as well as the fact that the teachings of the Koran are what inspires the detainees’ hatred and animosity against us, one cannot help but question the wisdom of furnishing Korans to the detainees in the first place. We felt no obligation during World War II to provide Nazi POWs with copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Why then do we feel obligated today to provide Korans to Muslim terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay?

If the shoes were reversed, do you believe Christian members of our military taken captive by the detainees at Guantanamo would be given Bibles? In the Muslim homelands of most of the Guantanamo detainees the Bible is outlawed. Far from distributing the Bible to Christian prisoners, people in Muslim lands are often imprisoned for professing Christianity or possessing a Bible. In Saudi Arabia, Bibles are confiscated and destroyed by the religious police. In a clear demonstration of Islamists’ true sentiment toward the Bible, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, while holed up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002, tore up Bibles to use as toilet paper.  

How about Jewish members of our military, do you believe they would be provided with copies of the Torah if taken captive by the detainees at Guantanamo? Do you think Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose gruesome execution was recorded on video tape, was given a Torah to read by his Muslim kidnappers before they slit his throat and cut his head off for being Jewish? To expect Jewish hostages or captives to be treated humanely by Muslim terrorists, much less to be given copies of the Torah, is the height of naiveté. After all, the Koran teaches Muslims that Jews are “apes and pigs” who serve the devil and have incurred the curse of Allah (Surah 5:59-60). In addition, the Koran instructs Muslims to kill Jews wherever they find them (Surah 4:91).  

When it comes to the Koran, Muslims believe it is mishandled anytime it is held below the waist, not placed on the highest self or in a place of honor, touched by a Muslim before he washes and purifies himself, or touched by a non-Muslim period. In view of Muslims’ hypersensitivity over their “glorious Koran,” the Pentagon issued a three-page memorandum in January of 2003 detailing rules for handling the Koran at Guantanamo. According to these rules, detainees’ Korans can only be touched by Muslim chaplains and interpreters. Moreover, chaplains and interpreters are to put on clean gloves before touching a Koran and must always treat it as if it were a “fragile piece of delicate art.”

Before the issuance of these rules in 2003, detainees at Guantanamo alleged Koran abuse every time a Koran was placed on top of a television, was stood over by an interrogator while questioning an inmate, or was merely touched by an American serviceman, either accidentally or in the performance of his duties. All of these instances, according to General Jay W. Hood, commander of the Guantanamo Joint Task Force, were caused by ignorance. None occurred in an attempt to demoralize or intimidate detainees for interrogation. Since 2003, General Hood maintains that the “mishandling [of] a Koran at Guantanamo Bay [has become] a rare occurrence.”

Of the thirteen instances of confirmed Koran abuse investigated by the military at Guantanamo, all but five occurred before 2003. Of the five that have occurred since, three appear to have been deliberate and two accidental. In one of the deliberate cases, a contracted interrogator stepped on a detainee’s Koran. He later apologized to the detainee and was fired for his “unacceptable behavior.” In one of the two accidental cases, detainees’ Korans got wet when guards on the night shift tossed water balloons on the cellblock.

Interestingly, our military’s investigation turned up more instances of Koran abuse by the detainees themselves than by their American guards or interrogators. For example, the only case involving the flushing of a Koran was one in which a detainee used pages torn from a Koran to stop up a toilet. Such hypocrisy by the Muslim detainees at Gitmo should come as no surprise when we consider the fact that Muslim terrorists in Pakistan blew up an Islamic shrine filled with Shiite worshippers and Korans on the very same day that other Pakistani Muslims were publicly protesting over Newsweek’s false reporting of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay.

Speaking about the Koran abuse hullabaloo at Guantanamo, William Barr, former Attorney General of the United States, said, “Rarely have I seen a controversy that has less substance behind it.”  Nevertheless, today’s press continues its front page coverage of this tempest in a teapot. Relentlessly, remorselessly, and recklessly, today’s press appears hell-bent on aiding and abetting our enemies in inciting the whole Muslim world against us.

Thanks to the press’ incessant stirring of worldwide anti-Americanism, a chorus is rising for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Former Presidents Jimmy  Carter and Bill Clinton, current U.S. lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, as well as human rights groups everywhere are shouting in unison for the shutdown of Gitmo. This, despite the fact that intelligence gleaned from Guantanamo detainees has stopped planned terrorists’ attacks, led to the arrests of twenty-two suspected terrorists, and enabled the United States military to identify twenty bodyguards of Osama bin Laden.

Undeterred by the obvious aid a detention facility like Guantanamo affords us in our war on terror, key lawmakers recently held a four-hour Senate hearing in which they grilled members of the executive branch over the Bush Administration’s policies on foreign detainees. Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, a Pentagon legal adviser, and J. Michael Wiggins, deputy associate attorney general, testified at the hearing that the Bush Administration views foreign detainees captured in our war on terror as “unprivileged belligerents” who are neither conventional POWs covered by the Geneva Conventions nor common criminals covered by U.S. criminal statutes. Therefore, according to Wiggins, they may “be held in perpetuity” in order to prevent them “from rejoining the conflict” and to protect us from “additional attacks.”

Several senators took strong exception to the Bush Administration’s unwillingness to treat captured terrorists as conventional POWs or common criminals. One of them, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the Bush Administration had “actually created a legal black hole” at Guantanamo Bay. Leahy went on to add, “We’re the country that tells people that we adhere to the rule of law. We want other countries to adhere to the rule of law. And in Guantanamo we are not.” Perhaps, it is senators like Vermont’s Patrick Leahy that inspired a Muslim leader’s recent boast: “Thanks to your democratic laws, we shall invade you; and thanks to our religious laws, we shall dominate you.”

What will happen to the enemy combatants at Guantanamo if the Bush Administration acquiesces to growing pressure to shut down that facility? Will they be released in a goodwill gesture to appease an unappeasable Muslim world? If so, the cost of such folly will undoubtedly be paid with the blood of Americans, as is proven by the fact that a dozen suspected terrorists already released from Guantanamo have been recaptured or killed plotting terrorist attacks or fighting against U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One released Guantanamo detainee, Abdullah Mehsud, has resurfaced in Pakistan as the leader of a militant group aligned with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Another, Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, has told the Danish media that the oath he signed at Guantanamo renouncing violence was nothing more to him than “toilet paper.”

Not satisfied with joining the growing chorus of U.S. lawmakers demanding the closure of Guantanamo Bay and dubbing it “a legal black hole” and “international embarrassment,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor to compare America’s detention facility at Guantanamo to Hitler’s concentration camps, Stalin’s gulags, and Pol Pot’s killing fields. To date, there have been no reported deaths of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. However, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was exterminated in Nazi concentration camps, twenty million people died in Soviet gulags, and more than a million corpses have been uncovered in the mass graves of Cambodia’s killing fields. How then, one wonders, can a United States senator make such a crazy comparison?

Senator Durbin’s over-the-top remarks are being played worldwide by Al-Jazeera as a statement of fact. According to Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Durbin’s comments have armed “every radical Islamist with the official-record words of a Senate leader to justify their war of terror against civilized people everywhere.” Seldom, if ever, has a United States senator played so clumsily into the arms of our enemy, given such aid and comfort to our foes, or done such damage to our war effort. No wonder Gingrich is now calling for the Senate to officially censure Durbin over his devil-may-care diatribe made on the Senate floor and put into the Senate record.

In all fairness to Senator Durbin, his “blame America first” blather was probably inspired by the good folks at Amnesty International—the world’s self-appointed human rights watchdog. In its annual report, Amnesty International called the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our times.” Again, twenty million people died in Stalin’s gulags, most from starvation and the indescribable harsh conditions under which they were subjected to forced labor. How does this compare to Guantanamo Bay, a place where no detainee has ever died, where detainees have unlimited access to the Red Cross (Oops, I mean the Red Crescent), where more than 400 reporters have been allowed to visit, where detainees are given Korans, prayer rugs, and prayer beads, where the traditional Muslim call to prayer is heard five times a day, and where detainees are fed a diet conforming to their religious dietary requirements and consisting of such entrees as lemon-baked fish and oven-fried chicken with rice, fruit and vegetables?

In light of the conspicuous contradistinctions between Stalin’s gulags and America’s detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, it’s easy to see why President Bush called Amnesty International’s comparison of the two “absurd.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the comparison “reprehensible.” Kate Gilmore, Amnesty International’s second highest ranking official, called the Bush Administration’s response to her organization’s report “typical of a government on the defensive.” Ms. Gilmore added, “I think it’s a dangerous game the U.S. Administration is playing, to attack civil society in this manner.”

Believe it or not, I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Gilmore’s assertion that we are presently playing a dangerous game; however, it is not the game Ms. Gilmore accuses us of playing, a game of thumbing our noses at the civilized world. Instead, it is a game of Patty Cake with a satanically inspired false religion that is obstinately determined to destroy Western civilization. Our ignorance of Islam and refusal to admit its militant nature places us at a distinct disadvantage in our war on terror. Furthermore, if we continue to poke our heads in the sand we will imperil the future of our nation and the lives of our people, both at home and abroad. For example, consider the following.

In Islam, an attack upon one’s honor is to be avenged by blood. This explains the Muslim practice of “honor killings.” Muslim women who are perceived to have brought dishonor upon their families are often killed by their male relatives. According to the United Nations Population Fund, 5,000 women are killed every year in “honor crimes.” In Muslim countries, and even in Muslim communities in the West, thousands of women are  being put to death by their families for refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, for seeking a divorce from an abusive spouse, for engaging in premarital or extramarital sexual relations, and even for falling victim to a sexual assault.

This dirty little secret of the Muslim world was exposed by ABC’s “20/20” in 1999. On the show’s January 22nd broadcast, Diane Sawyer interviewed a Jordanian man who had murdered his recently raped sister by shooting her four times in the head in the family living room. When Sawyer asked the man how he could commit such a dastardly deed, he answered, “It is better to have one person die than to have the whole family die of shame and disgrace.” Other graphic footage on the program that evening showed a slain woman’s body lying on a street with a crowd of Muslims celebrating her brutal killing in the name of honor. According to Jordanian law, “the act of killing another” is permitted “in defense of [your] life or honor, or somebody else’s life or honor.

In Pakistan, where honor killings are known as “KaroKari” and account for about 20% of the country’s homicides, legislation was recently proposed to curtail the killing of mothers, wives, and sisters in the name of Allah and family honor. Unfortunately, the proposed bill was soundly defeated. In the end, the Pakistani government caved in to Islamists who vehemently opposed the bill as “un-Islamic.”

To Muslims, any affront to their religion or desecration of their Koran is viewed as an attack upon the honor of the “Ummah”—the worldwide Muslim brotherhood —and the “Dar al-Islam”—the whole house or family of Islam. Therefore, Muslims are duty-bound by their religion to avenge all attacks upon their honor with blood.  According to the Koran, any Muslim who refuses to do so is either a hypocrite (Surah 3:167) or an apostate (Surah 9:44-45; 49:15).

Though contradictory to the teachings of their sacred texts, both the Koran and Hadith, Muslims repeatedly assure us that their religion only condones fighting in self-defense. What they conveniently fail to explain, however, is that their definition of self-defense includes the defending of their honor. In other words, Muslims are acting in self-defense and in perfect accordance with their religion anytime they kill a perceived blasphemer of their god, denouncer of their prophet, desecrater of their Koran, or denier of their faith.

Muslims have a saying: “Kill me, but do not mock my faith.” Any perceived mockery of their faith is believed to be an attack upon their honor, an attack which must be avenged by blood. This is why blasphemy and apostasy are capital crimes in Islamic jurisprudence. It is also why the Koran teaches that any Muslim who is unwilling to fight to the death in defense of his faith incurs “the wrath of Allah” and “a grievous penalty”; namely, his eternal “abode [shall be] Hell” (Surah 8:15-16; 9:38-39; 48:15-16).

Now you know why an erroneous report in an American magazine about a Koran being flushed down a toilet in Guantanamo Bay provoked rioting Muslims in Afghanistan to kill seventeen people.

Now you know why a female reporter’s suggestion that the Prophet Mohammed would have gladly taken a bride from among the contestants at the 2002 Miss World Pageant in Nigeria provoked Nigerian Muslims to stab, beat, and burn to death more than 200 people. The reporter, Isioma Daniel, was forced into hiding by a fatwa—religious edict—issued against her by Zamfara’s deputy governor, Mahamoud Shinkafi. The fatwa, calling for Daniel’s death, was justified by Shinkafi on the basis that the Koran “states that whosoever accuses or insults any prophet of Allah should be killed.” Shinkafi added, “Just like the blasphemous Indian writer Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed.” Shinkafi also assured anyone carrying out his fatwa that they would “go to heaven” for their murder of Isioma Daniel.     

Now you know why Shanti Nagar, the only majority Christian town in Pakistan, was attacked by 30,000 Muslims over the discovery of a torn Koran in a nearby mosque.

Now you know why Southern Baptist missionaries serving in ten predominantly Muslim countries wrote a letter asking their fellow-Baptists to refrain from making any negative comments about Islam. According to the letter, “Comments by Christians in the West” that “malign Islam or Mohammed” only serve to “further the already heightened animosity [of Muslims] toward Christians.” Thus, any negative comment about Islam in the West may result in Muslims killing Christian missionaries elsewhere. Translation: “If we don’t say how peace-loving Muslims are, Muslims will kill our missionaries.”

The truth is, every time a propagandizing press, a partisan politician, or a U.S.-hating human rights group makes an unsubstantiated claim of detainee mistreatment or Koran mishandling at Guantanamo, Muslims declare open season on Americans everywhere, especially on American Christians, missionaries, and Jews. Muslims around the world will feel obligated to avenge their honor by shedding the blood of Americans.

Though the blood shed thus far by Muslims in retaliation of perceived attacks upon their honor is substantial, it has been somewhat limited by the limited arms at Muslims’ disposal. Though Muslim countries are the world’s largest arms purchasers, they are not, with the notable exception of Pakistan, in possession of the world’s most dangerous weapons—nuclear weapons.  This scenario may soon change, however, with the recent landslide victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the next president of Iran.

Iran, an Islamic country with a secret nuclear program hidden from international inspectors for seventeen years, is actually ruled by Shiite mullahs who the Bush Administration has described as men who “spread terror across the world.” As the candidate favored by the mullahs Ahmadinejad was a shoo-in for the presidency. Upon his election he vowed to make Iran into a nuclear nation. Ahmadinejad said, “Nuclear energy is a result of Iranian people’s scientific development, and no one can block the way of a nation’s scientific development. This right of the Iranian people will soon be recognized by those who have so far denied it.”

Just imagine nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran, a Shiite Muslim nation whose stated policy is the destruction of Israel and who is recognized by our government as the world’s “No. 1 state sponsor of terror.” Or of far more immediate concern, just imagine the overthrow of President Musharraf by radical Islamists in Pakistan who are believed to be hiding Osama bin Laden. As previously noted, Pakistan is the Muslim world’s only nuclear power, not to mention the country boasting the world’s second largest Muslim population.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of an alliance of Islamic parties in Pakistan that won record votes in general elections in 2002 and that vehemently oppose President Musharraf’s alliance with America in the war on terror, responded to Newsweek’s spurious article on Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay by calling for Muslim protests. As angry protesters in Islamabad shouted anti-American slogans, Qazi Hussain Ahmed cried out, “We want Islamic revolution!” When he asked the protesters, “Are you with us?” they chanted passionately in the affirmative.

This protest, along with Ahmed’s call for “Islamic revolution” and a recent string of suicide bombings, proved quite unnerving to Talat Mahmood, Islamabad’s police chief. “It’s terrible news,” Mahmood said, especially “when the president [Musharraf] and the prime minister have narrowly escaped three suicide bombings in the past 18 months.” What if the next assassination attempt on President Musharraf is successful and the nuclear button in Pakistan ends up under the thumb of a radical Muslim in league with Osama bin Laden?  What a different world we’ll all awake to once a radical Islamist gets his figure on a nuclear button that he feels religiously obligated to push in defense of Muslim honor!

In a recent appearance on CNN’s “Late Edition,” Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel bemoaned the fact that the U.S. is “losing the image war around the world.” I don’t know about you, but I think it’s high time we stopped worrying about our image and started concerning ourselves with our survival. As far as our image is concerned, our survival is not dependant upon winning the image war. Believe it or not, being disliked by the French won’t kill us and winning the favor of those determined to kill us is an illusionary aspiration, as is proven by the fact that liberating fifty million Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as sending millions of dollars in aid to Muslim tsunami victims, has not earned us a single Brownie point in the Muslim world.

Although not dependant upon our winning of the image war, our survival is dependant upon our winning of the real war. We must wake up as a nation to the fact that we are in a real war against a real enemy who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of our utter destruction. This enemy is not a tactic—terrorism—but a satanically inspired false religion—Islam. Contrary to what you’ve been told, it is a religious war, not between Christians and Muslims, but between Muslims and all non-Muslims, Christians included. As the Koran clearly teaches, Muslims are to  “fight and slay the pagans” (non-Muslims) until there is no more opposition to Islam “and religion should be only for Allah” (Surah 9:5; 2:193).                  

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