It is just before dawn in the heat-wracked, arid desolation of a ramshackle cluster of buildings on the dry-as-death face of the Bek'kah Valley of Lebanon. Already the few scraggly chickens are fighting life and death struggles for the few desperate insects who dared the pre-dawn 98º+ heat and die as the eager fare of a chicken perhaps bound to be the meager fare of five year old Ahmed one day - but that won't be today as Ahmed already knows.

Ahmed is the fourth oldest surviving child of Me'eanna and Ibr'im. There are now 12 mouths to feed in the splapped together mud hut in the desert. Ever since Sa'adam, Ibr'im's brother, took his own life three years ago, Rafla and her brood of five are now a part of this Palestinian refugee resettlement camp and share Ahmed's home with him and his other family members. Before Sa-adam did this "thing of honor" there was little food for his family, but at least they had their own hut. Ahmed doesn't really remember what it is like to not live cramped into a small space where he has to use filthy rags for blankets and sleeping mats are always infested with sand lice and fleas that bite all the time.

Today Ahmed is pleased. He is being allowed to attend the mosque school where he will memorize long and difficult passages of text he really will never learn how to "read," only spout on cue. That means he will get an extra piece of bread and onion from Me-eanna. His father will tell him to study hard and learn the teachings of "the prophet" so that he can one day help restore his people to the land stolen from them years ago and now occupied by those "gutter people" who are less than animals... those JEWS! Those ZIONISTS!

Ahmed isn't really sure what a "Jew" or a "Zionist" is, but he's been told from birth that they are gutter people who come in the night to kill Palestinian children and to eat their hearts from the lifeless bodies of those children. Whatever they are, they have to be pretty bad because his Aunt Rafla cries all day and wimpers about how "Jews and Zionists murdered her husband" when he set off that suicide bomb all those years ago. Ahmed doesn't have any problem with the logic. It's how he thinks... how he has been taught to think since birth, It makes sense to him and he cannot wait for the day when he can kill Jews and Zionists and those Satans from Amerike who protect the murdering Jews on the land stolen from Ahmed and his people over fifty years ago.

Ahmed hurries to complete his morning chores so that he can get the breakfast that isn't always there. Last night he heard his father condemn another settler in the camp for daring to criticize Yassir Arrafat for stealing huge amounts of the money that is supposed to be used to feed the people in the camp. Ahmed heard his father say that, Allah willing, some men in the camp would call on the recalcitrant and complaining settler this very day to discuss the error of his ways. Ahmed is pretty sure the complainer won't like the visit. Just before he slipped out of the open doorway and into the bug-infested daybreak, Ahmed saw his mother and aunt take down the pots they use for annointing the dead before burial. Ahmed wondered who was that sick, but there were always old folks dying in the camps. It was hardly what a four to five year old boy in those circumstances would even consider an event remarkable enough for noting.

Suddenly, Ahmed is forced to jump back in panic from the street, such as it is, passing in front of his family's mudden hut with wooden stick roof. Rough, dark, swarthy looking men in uniforms drive wildly all over the nation anyway, but they seem especially prone to doing it in the misery of the overcrowded camps. Ahmed had heard many of them laugh at their latest victim as the sickening "thud" of a human body is subjected to the impact of one of thode military trucks and jeeps the men all seem to drive everywhere. Ahmed wonders if he will ever get to ride in a truck or a jeep. That would be something special for a Palestinian kid to accomplish, wouldn't it? He'd sit right up there on the front seat next to the driver so proudly as they went wherever it is that young men grew up to kill Jews and Zionists and then be murdered like his uncle had been.

Ahmed had seen aremed these men here many times before, especially in the last month or so. They operated heavy equipment to dig holes in the dirt beneath the village and bury things other men brought in in other huge trucks. Ahmed wasn't sure what was in all the crates or the steel drums they kept putitng under the earth but he knew it had to be important. Some of the men in the trucks had shot and killed his friend Hajii's father for daring say something to them about burying "that poison" there where their families had to live. Ahmed saw it happen and he had tried to help comfort Hajii who watched the men shoot his father down and then laugh at some joke only they understood as they continued shooting into the man's dead body. Ahmed wondered, "Is it possible these men are the horrible 'Jews' and 'Zionists'?" When he made the mistake of asking his Aunt Rafla that question, she set upon him with a stick from the roof and beat him on his back and shoulders and legs for what seemed like a life time. That was not a mistake he was likely to repeat any time soon. In fact, he was still a bit worried that his mother just might not give him the extra food for breakfast this morning because he had been such a bad boy.

Honey, when you and Deb get finished with your blood lust for George W. Bush and your dedication to believing that your family, friends and neighbors are spread all over an Iraqi desert so Dick Cheney can make a few bucks, remember that valley in Lebanon. It is where Syrians (who control Lebanon) helped Hussein and his henchmen bury most of that WMD you don't think ever existed. The next time you sit stunned in front of a television set, with tears pouring down your cheeks because another bin Laden or his like have murdered innocent civilian men, women and CHILDREN in the name of their religious fervor.

You and all like you who expect real life as practiced by beings so vile and evil you cannot even begin to concieve of how their minds work. You want it all wrapped up within 48 minutes of news time, allowing for 12 minutes of commericials and station breaks. If you don't get instant gratification and instant laundry that makes you the star of the National PTA Convention with a single load.

Take a look at REALITY, ladies. Even their OWN military people are saying their defenses were NEVER setup to withstand a ground force attack. They were barely capable of protecting them in an arial assault. The Republican Guard, the Elite Republican Guard, the regular Army troops didn't just surrender. They tried to pretend they weren't even a part of Saddam's military. They are still doing so.

Don't consider that Ahmed is the future "bad guy" of the piece I wrote above, but he could very well be. Or it could be some wild-eyed Hebrew ki9d named Saul who will kill Palestinians simply because he hates Palestinians... not one of whom he has ever met or known. He was taught that hatred with the milk from his mother's breast just as was Ahmed.

Palestinians want to limit discussions on the possession of "Palestine" to the time frame they consider to be important and totally ignore the time prior to that or even the events - especially those - that shaped the new landscape of Israel and Palestine. Meanwhile the Jews think they have a God given right to build encampments on the ancestral land of others - kicking them off their land - because an ancient ancestor of their's may have once lived in the area a feww thousand years ago.

Hone. Deb and Elizabeth, you cannot even BEGIN to comprehend the logic that is the daily fare of Palestinians. Let's see if you can understand it as I have had Palestinians explain it to me may times.

Abdul is Palestinian by birth. His family has never lived in Israel or in any of the "occupied territories. He just "knows" that "the rat people who are Jews" stole the land of some Palestinans. They claimed it, therefore it is absolutely true. Abdul's brother straps high explosive semtex around his waist and covers that with a blanket of rough carpenter's nails. He boards a crowded bus in Tel Aviv loaded with young children - mostly Jewish, but some Arabs and Palestinans as well - on tehir way home from a normal school day. He sets off the explosive and 65 peopel are injured, 14 die outright and nine more will linger in agony for days before they too surrender to the pain and destruction.

To Abdul and his family, his brother was MURDERED by Jews. To the Jews whose children were slaughtered senselessly, Abdul's brother was a murdeous animal and therefore his entire family must now pay. That's what their "religion of love" teaches them, after all.

IDF soldiers will track down the ramshackle slum where Abdul's brother and family lived and will fire round after round into the rubble of that home. After all, they're "soldiers of God's chosen people" and "this is the only way to solve the Palestinian problem." Of course, Abdull's family will wish to retaliate against those who struck back at his brother's Al Aqsa, Hamas or Hezbollah group. To them, striking back is a NEW attack on Palestinians.

You ladies need to catch on before it is far too late. The middle-eastern situation IS our problem aand we owe it to OUR people to do something to stop the insanity ON BOTH SIDES! It will never get any better until we get rid of haters like Arrafat and Sharon. Let's get some THINKERS and BELIEVERS in there.

We need to stand up to teh Saudi princes and potentates who supplied aircraft and equipment to transport HUGE stockpiles of weapons for Hussein and hide them in Lebanon prior to March 19, 2003. These are the same sleazy "firends" who teamed up with our other "friends," the French, to help Iraqi known to be on the Crimes Against Humanity list for future prosecution escaped via Syria and Lebanon, Russia, France, Germany and even Saudi Arabia itself.

You want to see and touch the actual Weapons of Mass Destruction? Reach out and touch anyone idiotic enough to claim they did not exist just because we didn't find them laying out in plain site. It took allies nearly seven months to discover the mass graves of WWII Germany even after finding Dachau. You two would claim that obviously none of that really happened simply because it took so long to document and prove. It took Allies over 18 MONTHS! to find the FIRST canister of ZIRGON B Gas following the fall of Germany. It was labeled something else and hidden in the kitchen of a nearby farmhouse. Some of the same fools who claim there was no Holacuast then are the same exact types who claim Hussein was jsut a little rough around the edges and just didn't play well with other children. We could have done something else... like U. N. Weapons Inspectors whose itineraries were provided to the Iraq regime days in advance by French members of that group and so-called "independent journalists" with Al Jezeerah who have now been identified as employees of Saddam's spy agency allowed there and protected in those roles by Al Jezeerah. Talk to them, ladies. They don't believe there were ever any WMD in Iraq. It's all just a plot by nasty old Republican conservatives and Oil People who just want to steal Iraq's oil.

It;s a dmaned good thing you ladies didn't join Hans Blix and his Inspecotrs at the Annual UN Easter Egg Hunt. Even with maps, photos and information, they couldn't find a single egg. Blix joined Jacques Chirac and Jean Crietien of Canada to announce that they now had proof that there are no such things as Easter Eggs, but they needd two more years to investigate while the French and the UN Secretary General manage to steal an additional $21-BILLION of the Iraqi's oil money.

That one is so easily documented as to make comments about Bush and Cheney appear to be fairly ugly little lies that need a "Good Christian" to step forward and apologize for making such a false claim. I seem to remember "Thou shalt not bear false witness" to be one of the BIG no-nos MOses brought back from the Big Guy. Well, Honey and Deb, are you that sold on your religious beliefs to live up to them here? I really hope you both are. I am kinda running low on hope these days and I need someone to prove to me that way does work.

DOnt' worry though. If you don't, Ahmed and his friends willbe around to see you and your children and grandchildren in about 20 years where he will show you and everyone else just how much he believes in HIS brand of religion.

I warned you folks you would not like what I had to say on this. I dont' want you to LIKE it! I want you to UNDERSTAND IT and DO SOMETHING before Ahmed and a bunch of new maniacs in jeeps and trucks goes digging in the Bekkah Valley. Tell George Bush and teh politically correct that it doesn't matter if Jessica Lynch is just another home-grown screw-up just like one of our sons. She doesn't have to be an artificial hero and we don't need to tell lies about humane Arabs and Iraqis who acted with dignity, pride and humanity in a difficult time for her. She and they deserve a whole lot better than that! Tell President Bush that we're willing to look the lying Saudis in the eyes and tell them to "knock it off or pay the price for treachery..." AND MEAN IT! Shut the French and the ass who runs Canada down. Let THEIR PEOPLE tell them they have to go because their arrogant treachery is destroying their nation's economy. The French never have voted for courage or principles before. Let them taste an economic price tag and Chirac is history within weeks. Canada can no longer acrt so smug with us. We can shut down our borders and THEY NEED US MORE THAN WE NEED THEM. The same goes for Mexico. Tell President Bush to tell the truth on THOSE fronts and he's got all the time he needs to find where Saddam hid his goodies.