In 2003, Sheikh Nasir bin Hamid al-Fahd, a prominent Saudi cleric close to al-Qaeda, provided a comprehensive religious opinion (fatwa) justifying the use of nuclear weapons against the United States, even it killed up to 10 million Americans, under the pretext that the U.S. is to blame for the deaths of 10 million Moslems.Over 20 million Moslems - 7% of the total population - live in Russia today. The increasing influence of Salafi/Wahhabi Islam among them may facilitate penetration of the Russian military-industrial complex by collaborators and sympathizers of terrorist organizations.Anti-Americanism pervades the Russian elite from the top down and is escalating in the media. A former senior Russian officials stated that "U.S. behavior [vis-à-vis Russia] is not that of a friend, but of an adversary... While we need to talk to the U.S., we need to keep in mind that it is an enemy." Such anti-Americanism may facilitate illicit transactions involving nuclear weapons or components in which the Russian seller or thief understands that the U.S. is the likely target.

It is common for politicians in trouble to seek scapegoats for their own incompetence and wrong-headedness, but when this begins getting widespread popular support, both the people's liberties and pocketbooks are in danger. Given its history, one would think Germany's people would be particularly resistant to demagogy. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Recently, Franz Muntefering, head of Germany's left-wing Social Democratic Party (the SPD), which also is the lead party in the governing coalition, accused business leaders of being "anti-social" and like "swarms of locusts." Rather than denounce him for attacking businesspeople and "international capital," other SPD leaders joined in the denunciations. The chairman of Lufthansa airline and a director of the "Invest in Germany" organization, Jurgen Weber, replied to the SPD leaders: "If it turns out that this criticism of capitalism has a fundamental nature, then we don't need an Invest in Germany organization any more."

More than 400 people have been killed in Iraq in the last two weeks, including at least five U.S. Marines taking part in Operation Matador in western Iraq. A reader wants to know if, in light of this upsurge in violence, I still believe, as I wrote on March 1, that the war in Iraq was All But Won . My answer is emphatically yes. The insurgency is now dominated by al Qaeda. The news media describes this as ominous, as they describe every development in Iraq as ominous. But the opposite is true. Al Qaeda is coming to the fore through subtraction. Many of the "former regime elements" who dominated the insurgency are giving up. The Marines say the insurgents they're fighting in Operation Matador are almost all foreigners, and that they're well trained, well armed, and fighting like cornered rats. That's because they are.

[Tarek Heggy, a native Arab Egyptian, is one of Egypt’s most prominent intellectuals and most successful business managers. He is the author of innumerable articles and several books, and is a frequent guest lecturer at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England.]I have written many books and articles over the last ten years about the defects in the Arab mind-set, all of which are cultural defects stemming from three main sources. The first is the repressive climate that prevails throughout Arab societies, the second a backward educational system that lags far behind modern educational systems and the third a mass-media apparatus operated by those responsible for the climate of political repression to serve their interests. The following are the most obvious defects from which the contemporary Arab mind-set suffers:

Terri Schiavo has committed no crime, yet she has been sentenced to death by Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer, who steadfastly jettisoned due process in her case. The fundamental issue in Terri's case is disability rights -- not the right to die. Throughout all the extensive media coverage of the case, there has been only slight mention, but usually none at all, that nearly every major disability-rights organization has filed legal briefs to prevent what they regard as judicial murder. The protests are not only from pro-lifers and the Christian Right. Mrs. Schiavo -- who collapsed in 1990 from what may have been a potassium imbalance that temporarily stopped her heart and cut oxygen to her brain -- has never been comatose, brain dead or in a persistent vegetative state, despite what some physicians have stated and others have denied. Michael Schiavo has forbidden therapy or rehabilitation for Terri since 1991, or any further tests since 1993. Terri has never even had an MRI or PET scan, let alone a complete neurological examination.

[Cuban-born writer Humberto Fontova has just published Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant ] It gets old. It really, really gets old. I refer to all the moralizing and humbug by U.S. political and business hucksters when they visit Cuba. Take Louisiana's own Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, on her visit to Castroland last week. If the woman had simply told us: "Look, Cuban-Americans, there ain't enough of you voting in Louisiana to make any difference to me. Worse, all you Cubans are Republicans and didn't vote for me or contribute to my campaign anyway. I owe you people nothing." How refreshing it might have been! But no. She insists on warbling about the "strictly business" aspects of the visit and how this "builds bridges with the Cuban people," and how this "positions Louisiana for dealing with Cuba after the transition," etc., etc. The best came when she rationalized her luncheon with the mass murderer himself. She did it, said her spokesperson, "out of respect for the Cuban president." Mrs. Blanco, I realize you're very busy with state business, but in case you haven't heard: There have been no "presidential" elections in Cuba for the past 46 years, ma'am.

Partisan politics in Washington this season are getting interesting, as a few Democrats are cautiously beginning to challenge their leadership's strategy of total opposition to major Bush initiatives. It is dawning on some Democrats that their all-defense strategy may not pair up well with President Bush's all offense strategy. President Bush plays politics the way my friends and I used to play pick-up football when I was a kid. In the huddle, the quarterback would tell everyone else to go out long. On the snap the quarterback would dance around in the backfield until one of us five or six receivers got open, at which point he would complete the pass. With both sides going long all the time, we often ended up with basketball scores. The Democrats, on the other hand, when on offense, merely receive the snap and fall on the ball. When on defense, they put all their men on the line, trying for a quick sack of the quarterback. If the quarterback is too agile for them, they are vulnerable to be scored upon, given their lack of a pass defense. When two such teams meet, the best score the all-defense Democrats can hope for is a 0-0 tie. The best score the all-offense Republicans can expect is at least a 56-0 win.

Only one year after Vladimir Putin handily won a second presidential term, his domestic and foreign challenges are snowballing and his aura of almost superhuman invincibility is quickly dissipating. This is not to say, however, that Putin should be counted out: He is still in control. The question is: for how much longer?Under Putin, Russia is pursuing uneven, unpredictable, and counterproductive policies in its self-declared-and shrinking-sphere of influence, nicknamed the "near abroad." The Russian foreign policy and defense establishment seems unable to design and implement policies that would further develop cooperation with NATO or fight Islamist (Salafi/Wahhabi) terrorism in the Northern Caucasus. Meanwhile, hard-line circles are assailing the Putin Administration for failing to secure the election of pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine despite vast expenditures to do so. Further, the Kremlin failed to control, let alone reverse, ubiquitous corruption in the state apparatus. The Russian state has not become a reliable and civilized partner to domestic and foreign business-which would have provided the rule of law, predictable legislation and regulation, and property rights and investor rights that are not subject to political whims.

This is a very important article on a world-wide underground Islamofascist movement you never heard of, yet is a Trojan Horse for terror in America. I urge you to read it carefully and in full. ---JWEvery fall, over a million almost identically dressed, bearded Moslem men from around the world descend on the small Pakistani town of Raiwind for a three-day celebration of faith. Similar gatherings take place annually outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Bhopal, India. These pilgrims are no ordinary Moslems though. They belong to a movement called Tablighi Jamaat (“proselytizing group”). They are trained missionaries who have dedicated much of their lives to spreading Islam across the globe. The largest group of religious proselytizers of any faith, they are part of the reason for the explosive growth of Islamic religious fervor and conversion.

The following letter to all members of the United States Congress was written by legendary Chinese freedom advocate and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Harry Wu. Information on the struggle for human rights in China and how to help free political prisoners being held in China’s Gulag can be found at the website of Harry’s Laogai Research Foundation. ---JW ...Business expansion and economic reforms in China have caused many people around the world to hail China as a glittering land of golden opportunity and ignore the continuing brutality perpetrated by the Communist government of China. It is often said that today’s China is not the same China that existed during the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square, and is no longer even a Communist society. Meanwhile, however, innumerable people are languishing in China’s vast Laogai system, where many have been sent without any trial taking place or any official documents being issued. Internet dissidents and religious believers are being rounded up and thrown into jail in increasing numbers in order to prevent dissent among the masses. Women and their families are being persecuted for violating the national one-child policy, and are subject to forced abortions and sterilization, detention and other punishments.

You’ve heard, I’m sure, of the righteous outcry over Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis's comment that "It's fun to shoot some people," made about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the loud complaints from various leaders of special ethnic interest groups belly-aching about it.Well, actually, it is "fun" to shoot some people - and all of us who have ever waited through an hour and a half movie, or read some 300 pages of a thriller, to the point when the bad guys finally get their comeuppance know this perfectly well.

Something had better jog the liberal mind from its obsessive Bush-hatred. The liberals, on both sides of the Atlantic, are in imminent danger of repeating the great shame of many of their ideological grandparents in the middle of the last century, who became unthinking apologists for Stalin's terror and tyranny. This coming Sunday, the Iraqi people are holding an election -- the first real election in the 6,000-year history of this ancient people. But the cynicism and indifference of liberals to this extraordinary event should shock the conscience of decent people, because Iraqis are marching through shot and shell to gain this first chance at self-government.

My friend Gary Metz - known as “Doctor Zin” - has a critically important website called RegimeChangeIran . It’s one of To The Point’s “Liberation Links” listed in the home page left side bar. Gary and I share the view that the greatest threat in the world right now is Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. It is of the most immediate necessity that Iran’s nuclear facilities be militarily destroyed. In this article, Gary explains why. The Bush White House, however, will do absolutely nothing that might upset the Iraq elections of January 30. The earliest Bush could authorize a strike (or give the Israelis the green light) would be in February. Cross your fingers that he does. -JW Last month in RegimeChange Iran, I warned that Iran must shut down all of its uranium enrichment centrifuges, including the twenty "experimental" centrifuges. Why? Because Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has demanded:"We must have two bombs ready to go in January or you are not Moslems."

While the West is basking in the tunes of Christmas carols, a different tune is being played by the two leading Jihadi TV channels, al-Jazeera and al-Manar. Little response has come to date from Washington to this 24/7 global brainwashing. Today, al-Jazeera is launching its English language global satellite channel. Al Manar is broadcasting unabated, and its popularity is growing. Al Qaeda is recruiting hundreds, if not thousands, through chat rooms around the world. Jihadi websites are proliferating like poisonous mushrooms, in Arabic, English, French, Farsi, Urdu, Uzbek, and in the languages of the Indian subcontinent and East Asia.

As Tony explains here, the just-passed intelligence reform bill is a dog’s breakfast. The best news about its passage is that Duncan Hunter (House Armed Forces Committee Chairman) managed to neuter it at the last moment. By inserting the wording that the NID - the new National Intelligence Director or Intelligence “Czar” -- in carrying out his duties "shall respect and not abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the heads of the departments," Duncan made sure that a good General Counsel from a subordinateAgency/Department can drive a Humvee through an NID directive if need be. --JWSo it is to be a Czar of all the Intelligence Services. All the president's men have engulfed the remaining opposition to the intelligence reform bill and seen it passed with strong bipartisan support. Like its namesake, The Czar of all the Russias, our new czar is likely to begin what will become a very mixed record.

This is the transcribed text of a speech Newt gave to a private meeting of conservative leaders I attended in Washington last week. --JW Thank you very much. This is a very important group which is a big part of how we ended up beginning to be - I emphasize beginning to be - the natural governing majority of the country and so it’s a thrill for me to be here.I want to give you a very brief outline and then I’m going to take questions for most of my time because just looking around the room I know how many interesting personalities are sitting out here. It’ll be more fun to interact with all of you.Here’s my outline. I have a book that’ll be coming out next month called Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America It makes the following core argument: that we are entering the fourth cycle of a growing conservative movement. The first cycle was Reagan defining the majority. The second cycle was the Contract With America creating the majority. The third cycle was President George W. Bush deepening and reaffirming the majority. The challenge now is to have this fourth phase growing the majority out so it becomes a more natural governing majority.

[Marc Sageman, M.D., was a CIA case officer in Afghanistan between 1987-89 and is now a forensic psychiatrist. He is the author ofUnderstanding Terror Networks(University of Pennsylvania Press:2004), and is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Dr. Sageman’s research, based on 400 psychiatric case histories of Moslem terrorists provides a fascinating insight into the cause of Islamofascist terror. -JW]Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they’re just plain evil.Taking these perceived root causes in turn, three quarters of my sample came from the upper or middle class. The vast majority—90 percent—came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.Al Qaeda’s members are not the Palestinian fourteen-year- olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect. A few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.Far from having no family or job responsibilities, 73 percent were married and the vast majority had children.At the time they joined jihad, the terrorists were not very religious. They only became religious once they joined the jihad.

”John X” is a very recently retired FSO (Foreign Service Officer) of many years at the State Department. It’s important to know that there are a good many conservatives sprinkled throughout the Foreign Service - and even on the Seventh Floor of Foggy Bottom itself. Most of them have to stay politically hidden, but with Condi they may start coming out of their closets. Here is “John’s” assessment, as a State Department professional, of Colin Powell. -JWPowell had made no secret that he would resign after the election. We had been hearing rumors all last week that Powell had submitted his resignation letter; on Friday, November 12, a 7th floor source told me that Powell had sent his letter to the President. On Monday, of course, it was all over the media.I was in the Department the day that Powell arrived. He was a breath of fresh air after a string of very bad Secretaries of State, starting with Jim Baker, continuing with the comatose Warren Christopher, and then the vile Madeleine Albright. The State Department was in disarray, morale was at rock bottom, literally hundreds of officers had quit or taken early retirement. Our Embassies in many countries were barely functional, and very exposed to terrorist attack. Department employees were constantly being lectured on the need "to do more with less" but no reform of the bureaucracy was undertaken to make it leaner and more efficient; everything was pretty much left as it was, but just given less money -- except of course for Albright's travels, in my office she was known as the "Empress" for her lavish demands on the budget.[Clinton’s Secretary of State was also nicknamed “Secretary Half-Bright” by virtually the entire Foreign Service. She was astoundingly stupid. - JW.]So Powell was a relief.

If you think the fighting has been rough in Fallujah, wait until you see Washington in the springtime. President Bush's early personnel decisions for the second term suggest that he is preparing, unilaterally, to take on not only our foreign enemies, but also the Democrats and Washington's most cunning and vicious bureaucracies-all at the same time. With the nominations of Condoleezza Rice at State, Porter Goss at CIA, Donald Rumsfeld (or an equally tough replacement) at Defense and Stephen Hadley at NSC, the president has created an all-Patton foreign and defense team. Moreover, he has a team that understands that among the necessary targets of their firepower must be, not only our foreign enemies, but also the slouching, sly, insubordinate bureaucrats under their chain of command.

Back in 1984, if you had bet Bulgaria would in 2004 host a convention of European free market think tanks including many from what were then communist countries, you probably would have been given very good odds. Yet during the last days of October, a remarkable conference -- the First European Resource Bank -- was held in the pleasant ski resort of Borovets, Bulgaria. This "Resource Bank" essentially was a convention of European free market think tanks. Representatives from organizations in 20 countries came together for mutual support, communication and cooperation.

The United States of America needs you right now! The election is over, it was a dogfight, and my fangs were bared as much as any. If you were a Democrat, independent, a Kerry-supporting Republican, or a member of any other political group, and anything I said in any editorials hurt or offended you, I apologize. It is now time for us all to come together in unified resolve to support our commander-in-chief and our troops. Our fight is over, but the war is not. As a Vietnam veteran, I personally still have issues with John F. Kerry, which most-likely will never see resolution, but that right now is inconsequential. I respected and appreciated John Kerry's comments in his concession speech for an end to divisiveness. This election was a time for healing and great closure for most of us who walked those fields of fire in the steaming emerald-colored hell of Vietnam. After years of silent agony and an American public who hid us in the cellar as their bastard stepchildren, John Kerry, unwittingly or not, forced us to march upward into the sun-like-brightness of self-awareness, and ultimately, of our own self-worth.

I am glad to see Professor Hospers’ letter on websites such as WorldNetDaily. We offer it here in case you have not seen it. John Hospers changed my life, and so much for the better. When he was Chairman of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, he persuaded me to teach there and get my Ph.D. under his guidance. That was 33 years ago, and whatever philosophic capacities I have result in large part from the impact of his wisdom and counsel. It is a tragedy that so many libertarians pretend to live in Plato’s Cave, despising the real actual America because it does not live up to their Platonic ideals. Let’s hope Professor Hospers’ valiant effort persuades them to leave the comforting dark of fantasy and have the courage to fight for the country they actually live in. -JW As a way of getting acquainted, let me just say that I was the first presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party back in l972, and was the author of the first full-length book, Libertarianism, describing libertarianism in detail. I also wrote the Libertarian Party’s Statement of Principles at the first libertarian national convention in 1972. I still believe in those principles as strongly as ever, but this year — more than any year since the establishment of the Libertarian Party — I have major concerns about the choices open to us as voting Americans. There is a belief that’s common among many libertarians that there is no essential difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties — between a John Kerry and a George W. Bush administration; or worse: that a Bush administration would be more undesirable. Such a notion could not be farther from the truth, or potentially more harmful to the cause of liberty. The election of John Kerry would be, far more than is commonly realized, a catastrophe.

One of the key indicators of Bush’s impending victory on November 2nd is a historic shift in Jewish voting habits. American Jews in unprecedented numbers will cast their ballot for a Republican president. Cliff Alsberg, a writer and television producer in Los Angeles, has written this compelling essay addressed to his fellow Jews still struggling with their reflexive compulsion to pull the Democrat lever. -JWI am writing to you today as members of my “extended family”—my family of fellow Jews and fellow Americans with whom I most strongly identify and who I most cherish. Never before have the stakes in a presidential election been greater for us; both here at home and abroad. Never before has there been a clearer choice between two candidates, and never before has so much depended on us-- both as Jews and as Americans.I’d like to address six key issues that invariably affect each of us as both Jews and Americans. I urge you to read and to “listen” to these issues with an open heart and an open mind. If you are truly “undecided”, I implore you to dig deep within your heart to weigh the consequences of your vote. If you are already a staunch Kerry supporter, I respectfully ask you to remain open and intellectually honest for the duration of this letter.

Enders Wimbush has been a good friend of mine since he was Director of Radio Liberty under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He played a pivotal role in bringing freedom to the subject peoples of the Soviet Union. He possesses one of the sharpest geostrategic minds not just in Washington, but in the world. I encourage you to read his analysis of America’s stakes in Asia carefully. -JWAsia, more than the Middle East, will compete for the attention of America's next president. It is in Asia that America's most vexing security challenges will likely emerge in the next few decades.The shape of New Asia will be formed in large part from three powerful interactive forces: America's resolve, or lack of it, to play the key role in creating a new security architecture for Asia; the specter of an unmanageable rising China; and the deterioration of security in the "Crescent of Crisis" stretching from the southern Philippines to the Persian Gulf.It is ironic that as America's presidential candidates debate how the U.S. can achieve its goals in Iraq and get out, for most Asian strategists the post-Iraq world has already begun.

Whether he intended it or not, John Kerry's much commented upon statement - that terrorism should be reduced to a nuisance like prostitution or gambling -- has engaged the central issue of this presidential campaign. His statement was neither an accident nor as easily dismissed as many people have asserted. Rather, it reflects the institutional policy of the CIA, and is at the heart of the almost open warfare between the Bush White House and the CIA.

Comparing U.S. President George Bush with Winston Churchill may seem a stretch. Yet there's a parallel -- not with Churchill of the war years, when he was the "free" world's most admired leader, but with Churchill of the 1930s when he stood alone, warning about the rise of Nazism. Then, pacifism was rampant in Britain and Europe. Hitler's aggression was rationalized by wishful thinking. Peace at any price. Except for Churchill. He began warning that the Nazis must be stopped when they occupied the Rhineland in 1936. He urged an alliance of Britain, France and the Soviet Union to stop Hitler's expansion. He was called a warmonger, an enemy of peace, reviled in print and in speeches. Few stood with him. History has proven Churchill right.

Media reports that the "insurgency" is gaining ground are no more genuine than Dan Rather's memos on President Bush's National Guard service. Contrary to vague news reports of a "widening conflict," an analysis of where casualties are being inflicted indicates the conflict is still restricted largely to the Sunni triangle areas where it has always been. Two thirds of the country and three quarters of the population are relatively peaceful."You may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it's looking significantly better now than when I got here," says a US Marine. "It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read and hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed."Are you listening, Senator Kerry?

Jack Kennedy would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe." For Kennedy: "Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it." It is ironic that in this time and in this place, the direct descendent of those words, and the virile passions they convey, can be found coming from the mouth and heart not of the Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, but of his opponent, the Texas Republican George W. Bush. Yesterday, addressing the den of jackals, thieves, petty dictators and other international flotsam -- which goes by the name of the United Nations General Assembly -- President Bush echoed the brave, necessary words of the once Prince of Camelot: