[HARDCORE]

It?s a whole new ball game! One that is very similar to the one played out by the Barbary Pirates back in the early 1800s. This time around, however, the playing field is not the Mediterranean, but rather the Middle East and Asia!

Extortion and arms profiteering are the order of the day all over the world. In particular, North Korea and Iran are making a bundle ($) producing and selling weapons that may include nuclear arms, as well as chemical and biological stores.

A few of these "Modern-day Pirates and Purveyors of Mass Genocide" no longer have to engage in outright war, but rather (like a large banking house) merely supply the logistical and financial means of social devastation!

So what is our collective response to this spreading disease ? Is it indigent diplomacy, capitulation rather than head-on confrontation, paying tribute to mounting numbers of worldly thugs, or just plain surrender through gross apathy perhaps? Let?s face it, some now perceive us to be the New-Rome of Planet Earth, the Chamberlain of the Americas, the dumping grounds of the Western Hemisphere, and the Foreign Legion of Humanity!

We now find ourselves fighting endless brush wars aimed at securing ties rather than victories, ceasefires rather than real peace, and status-quo rather than continued advancement.

We now seek to pacify and accept foreign dictates, to open our borders wide to illegal and/or vested entities, and to let minority whim overshadow national security.

We now seem willing to accept foreign interference in our internal affairs, glorify individual political factions over the good and needs of the majority, and to just kick back as observers instead of leading "Our Nation's Way Into The Future!"

Of course, the United Nations, our outright enemies, the boys with the bucks and power gone mad, and the mindlessly content, are perfectly happy with the way that things are going! After all, we have always been a nation that springs back from the brink of oblivion, have we not? ?But with death now for sale to the highest bidders, can we still afford the luxury of complacency??

Is a replay of Pearl Harbor really all that impossible - another surprise attack that may (or may not) be conducted early upon a Sunday Morning in December? Or maybe it could come in the form of a vicious aerial assault, like the one that was launched upon us some five years ago?

In the event that you haven?t noticed, the beast (any beast) becomes emboldened after its initial successes, be they military, financial, criminal, or political. This is the way that it was, the way that it is, and may be the way that it will always be!!

?Unfortunately for us all, however, some politicians, during any given period of time, have never seemed to grasp this never changing axiom - and therein lies the rub!?

VERITAS (Truth)