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The following proposed 10 point non-interference plan should make the world
happy!
Here's the plan:

1) The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their
affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini and the rest
of them 'good old boys'. We will never "interfere" again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with
Germany, South Korea and the Philippines and leave them on their own.
They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No more
sneaking through holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and
leave. We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the
remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately,
regardless of who or where they are. France would welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90
days unless given a special permit. No one from a terrorist
nation would be allowed in. If you don't like it there,
change it yourself, don't hide here. Asylum would not ever be
available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers.

5) No "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they
don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self sufficient energy
wise. This will include developing non polluting sources of
energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan
wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel
for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else.

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we
will not "interfere". They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds,
rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides' most of what we
give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need it
most get very little, if any anyway.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an island some place. We don't
need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, it would
make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way,
no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer.

Nice little read.

An Elite Athlete. By Tom Demerly.

It is dark and Mike Smith's clothing is wet.

Mike Smith is an athlete, an elite athlete in fact. He is a tri-athlete, has done Ironman several times, a couple adventure races and even run the Marathon Des Sables in Morocco- a 152 mile running race through the Sahara done in stages.

Mike has some college, is gifted in foreign languages, reads a lot and has an amazing memory for details. He enjoys travel. He is a quiet guy but a very good athlete. Mike's friends say he has a natural toughness. He can't spend as much time training for triathlons as he'd like to because his job keeps him busy. Especially now. This is Mike's busy season. But he still seems very fit. Even without much training Mike has managed some impressive performances in endurance events.

It's a big night for Mike. He's at work tonight. As I mentioned his clothing is wet, partially from dew, partially from perspiration. He and his four coworkers, Dan, Larry, Pete and Maurice are working on a rooftop at the corner of Jamia St. and Khulafa St. across from Omar Bin Yasir.

Mike is looking through the viewfinder of a British made Pilkington LF25 laser designator. The crosshairs are centered on a ventilation shaft. The shaft is on the roof of The Republican Guard Palace in downtown Baghdad across the Tigris River.

Saddam Hussein is inside, seven floors below, three floors below ground level, attending a crisis meeting.

Mike's coworker Pete (also an Ironman finisher, Lake Placid, 2000) keys some information into a small laptop computer and hits "burst transmit." The DMDG (Digital Message Device Group) uplinks data to another of Mike's coworkers (this time a man he's never met, but they both work for their Uncle, "Sam") and a fellow athlete, at 21'500 feet above Iraq 15 miles from downtown Baghdad. This man's office is the cockpit of an F-117 stealth
fighter. When Mike and Pete's signal is received the man in the airplane leaves his orbit outside Baghdad, turns left, and heads downtown.

Mike has 40 seconds to complete his work for tonight, and then he can go for a run.

Mike squeezes the trigger of his LF25 and a dot appears on the ventilator shaft five city blocks and across the river away from him and his coworkers. Mike speaks softly into his microphone; "Target illuminated. Danger close. Danger Close. Danger close. Over."

Seconds later two GBU-24B two thousand pound laser guided, hardened case, delayed fuse "bunker buster" bombs fall free from the F-117. The bombs enter "the funnel" and begin finding their way to the tiny dot projected by Mike's LF25. They glide approximately three miles across the ground and fall four miles on the way to the spot marked by Mike and his friends.

When they reach the ventilator shaft marked by Mike and his friends the two bunker busters enter the roof in a puff of dust and debris. They plow through the first four floors of the building like a two-ton steel telephone pole traveling over 400 m.p.h., tossing desks, ceiling tiles, computers and chairs out the shattering windows. Then they hit the six-foot thick reinforced concrete roof of the bunker. They burrow four more feet and detonate.

The shock wave is transparent but reverberates through the ground to the river where a Doppler wave appears on the surface of the Tigris. When the seismic shock reaches the building Mike is on he levitates an inch off the roof from the concussion.

Then the sound hits. The two explosions are like a simultaneous crack of thunder as the building's walls seem to swell momentarily, then burst apart on an expanding fireball that slowly, eerily, boils above Baghdad casting rotating shadows as the fire climbs into the night. Debris begins to rain; structural steel, chunks of concrete, shards of glass, flaming fabrics and papers.

On the tail of the two laser guided bombs a procession of BGM-109G/TLAM Block IV Enhanced Tomahawks begin their terminal plunge. The laser-guided bombs performed the incision, the GPS and computer guided TLAM Tomahawks complete the operation. In rapid-fire succession the missiles find their mark and riddle the Palace with massive explosions, finishing the job. The earth heaves in a final death convulsion.

Mike's job is done for tonight. Now all he has to do is get home.

Mike and his friends drive an old Mercedes through the streets of Baghdad as the sirens start. They take Jamia to Al Kut, cross Al Kut and go right (South) on the Expressway out of town. An unsuspecting remote CNN camera mounted on the balcony of the Al Rashid Hotel picks up their vehicle headed out of town. Viewers at home wonder what a car is doing on the street during the beginning of a war. They don't know it is packed with five members of the U.S. Army's SFOD-D, Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta.

> Six miles out of town they park their Mercedes on the shoulder, pull their gear out of the trunk and begin to run into the desert night. The moon is nearly full. Instinctively they fan out, on line, in a "lazy 'W' ." They run five miles at a brisk pace, good training for this evening, especially with 27 lb. packs on their back. Behind them there is fire on the horizon. Mike and his fellow athletes have a meeting to catch, and they can't be late.

Twenty-seven miles out a huge gray 92 foot long insect hurtles 40 feet above the desert at 140 mph The MH-53J Pave Low III is piloted by another athlete, also a tri-athlete, named Jim, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He is flying to meet Mike.

After running five miles into the desert Mike uses his GPS to confirm his position. He is in the right place at the right time. He removes an infrared strobe light from his pack and pushes the red button on the bottom of it. It blinks invisibly in the dark. He and his friends form a wide 360 degree circle while waiting for their ride home.

Two miles out Jim in the Pave Low sees Mike's strobe through his night vision goggles. He gently moves the control stick and pulls back on the collective to line up on Mike's infrared strobe. Mike's ride home is here.

The big Pave Low helicopter flares for landing over the desert and quickly touches down in a swirling tempest of dust. Mike and his friends run up the ramp after their identity is confirmed. Mike counts them up the ramp of the helicopter over the scream of the engines. When he shows the crew chief five fingers the helicopter lifts off and the ramp comes up. The dark gray Pave Low spins in its own length and picks up speed going back the way it came, changing course slightly to avoid detection.

The men and women in our armed forces, especially Special Operations, are often well trained, gifted athletes. All of them, including Mike, would rather be sleeping the night away in anticipation of a long training ride rather than laying on a damp roof in an unfriendly neighborhood guiding bombs to their mark or doing other things we'll never hear about.
Regardless of your opinions about the war, the sacrifices these people are making and the risks they are taking are extraordinary. They believe they are making them on our behalf. Their skills, daring and accomplishments almost always go unspoken. They are truly Elite Athletes.