The sad fact is that the Gaza government doesn't want to find these journalists, just as the Gaza government doesn't want to give up the Israeli soldiers. They NEED war, and they NEED it sooner rather than later. They need the threat of violence to control the civilian population and get them to endure all manner of injustice. They need war because it's the only thing their particular death cults find worthy. When you base a society on the concept that the greatest death possible, with the highest attainments in heaven achieved is by murdering infidels, these fools NEED war. We'd like to think they only need this in small doses, and we could practice containment on them, but the THEY includes more than just the Gaza and Lebanese groups, it's including Iran and Syria, and while Syria could sit by almost indefinately and play the containment game, Iran is under time pressure, Iran is trying to seize it's moment. The Iran power brokers need to make their play, do their part for greater Islam and take their place at the head of the Islamic Faith. They need war/murder/death to the infidels now, because they've reached a number of critical political evolutionary points, and they've made religious promises to get there.

Let's face it, if the Catholic Church based it's access to the top slots in heaven on murder, the Big C would have never gotten off the ground under the Romans. So it's basis was on something else, commitment to Jesus, who didn't run around lopping of heads in wars of conflict. Now look, this isn't a comparison of the two, I'm just pointing out that what you base your religion on forms the nature of your civilization.

Now it's debatable what Islam is based on, just as it's debatable what Catholicism is based on. Both Islam and Catholicism have their benefits and their faults. But there is a problem, and that problem is that Islam has had their faults rise to prominence within the faith and created monsters in the process.

If you are a Muslim man, you're most likely very rational and probably a good person, trying to live a good life and make the right decisions for yourself and your family to improve your lot as you race around through space on this big blue orb. If you are a Catholic man, you're most likely doing exactly the same.

Fanaticism is what we're talking about people. Yet this isn't the fanaticism of a small cult, it's the fanaticism of MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO GREATER ASPIRATION IN LIFE BUT MURDER. That's not a cult, it's a threat to civilization itself, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, it makes no matter, this fanaticism is a threat to civilization itself.

Iran's President (sorry, I'm not gonna go find the correct spelling and cut and paste it), is one of these fanatics, his aspiration is to get to heaven and receive his 72 virgins. He sees his martyrdom as a political one, he sees his martyrdom status as delivered by his very service to the creation of the Islamic caliphate, he'll get his crack at the top spot in heaven, and he knows it. That's an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS individual to have around. There is no way in Armie's mind that he can actually fail in his quest to battle the infidel, he's already locked in what he sees as mortal conflict. This is evidenced by his letter of late to George Bush calling Bush to Islam. Armie is engaging in what he sees as ritualized combat leading up to the actual show. His war has already begun and he is playing the role of omnipotent dictator in consult with the religious powers delivered in the personages of the Imams and Ayatollahs who remain the men behind the curtain. Who in a very real sense are even greater fanatics who are even deeper in psychosis than the "fighters on the streets" and the power-brokers/Political Sheiks like Armie.

So Iran needs war. Their fanaticism demands it, to deny the Muslim masses the ability to attain the top slots in heaven is a position these fanatics cannot back down from. Once you promise someone heaven, you can't take it away, when you promise paradise, and you're using religion to do so, you're stuck, you've either got to deliver or you've gotta go Jim Jones and pass out the Kool-Aid.

Hezbollah cannot stop their war against Israel. It's not about "land", it's about God, they are after all, the "Party of God" remember. Hamas cannot stop their war either, they cannot accept defeat, because they have generations of young Palestinian men who have been bred for a purpose, that purpose was to drive out Israel. Many of these young men believe that their own way to achieve a better life for themselves is to die in martyrdom and receive the gift of paradise from Allah. Come on people!!!! Can't you see the danger here. You basically have human predators being bred and created with all rational thought stripped away, all ability to question stripped away, you then cage these people in isolation from the rest of the world and you feed them a God-construct that demands that they blow themselves up (but only where their death can create the largest number of infidel casualties).

The absurdity of this situation is coming to a crest. We as a civilization are in some extremely dangerous straights right now. I think that the Mutual Assured Destruction of the Cold War was certainly a threat, and we minded our p's and q's to keep that eventuality off the table. BUT. . . there is no such fear on the part of Islamic Fanatics, contrarily, they have devised a quite logical and ingenious tactic. They have simply abandoned the need to care for the welfare of their people. They have turned their people into cannon fodder and send them to die without reservation about how many will survive the attack because all who are sent to attack are sent to die. They have abanoned the need to care for civilians, instead using them as human shields rather than create military defenses, simply place your machinegun nests or rocket launchers in civilian areas, use the humans above and around you as meat to absorb shrapnel and bullets. It's Ok, because if these civilians die, they died in the service of Allah against the infidel, and they will be martyrs for the cause, and achieve paradise.

Is this turning your stomach yet?

There will be no peace until this fanaticism is quite literally stamped out from within while pressure is put on it from without. If no pressure comes from within, from moderate Muslim communities, no amount of outside pressure will eradicate it, and that leaves only one solution for us infidels. If there isn't a change in the Muslim street in Gaza and Lebanon, which are both proxy acts for Iran and Syria, there is going to be a serious escalation in the Middle East, and when the other side provokes Israel by kidnapping soldiers in the north and the south, and they feel that they need to bump it up a notch by kidnapping Americans as well, there comes a point where you begin to say that you've had enough provocation, and it becomes time to open up the can of whoop-ass all the way.

We are using slightly less than 15% of our combat power in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have a number of pools to pull from if we need to. Without much effort, we could put 25% of our force in the middle east and escalate the violence to a point where much of the Middle East is charred sand and the population centers are significantly reordered.

We're approaching the point of all out war people. It's a war that is being forced upon us, it's a war we've consistently said we did not want, but would not shy from. This world war is against an ideology and those that would align itself with such an ideology, that ideology is Islamic Fascism and it's fast becoming, if not past, time to start calling this a World War and get busy with winning it.

Thanks for letting me rant.

--Jason