Information regarding the location of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is speculative. The naysayers don’t really want to know the answer and are deliberately and repeatedly asking the wrong question. It is critically important that we understand that the mother’s milk of modern military might is money. It is the lucre with which the Hussein’s of the world buy their weapons of choice “off the shelf” in the world market. Good businessmen do not tie up their money in inventories. The toys of war are available to those that have the money and an evil intent to use those weapons.
On the basis of a recent report, there are at least 40 nations with the “know how” to produce nuclear weapons. Hussein invaded Kuwait to acquire oil fields and the revenue they would generate. The “world community” responded to Hussein’s move by giving birth to the Gulf War in which the U.S. carried the major burden and paid the biggest price. The allied forces all knew that Iraq possessed and used weapons of mass destruction on Iran, Kuwait, and their own people, who today lie in mass graves in mute testimony to Hussein’s barbarianism.
Stuart McAllister said, “While an unexamined embracing of our culture is certainly precarious, the impulse to retreat may be equally as dangerous. Life can involve so much more than myopic self-protection. We have an exhilarating challenge from God to craft a culture of goodness, equity, and beauty. Essentially, we have the option to transform culture rather than run away from it or be swallowed up by it. The call is to live in the world, not of the world, but for the world.
Over the past decades Americans have been denied access to oil reserves located in the Alaskan Wilderness and off our coasts. These reserves represent nearly 100 billion barrels of oil. Recently Congress blocked a program to produce oil from a large amount oil shale (rocks) located in the Rocky Mountains between Colorado and Canada. It is estimated that this deposit contains as much as a trillion barrels of oil. Just 1/10 of that would increase our nation’s existing oil reserves by more than 400%. In addition, the technology exists to liquefy coal and turn it into gasoline. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and liquid coal fuel could powers cars in the U.S. without shortages for decades if not centuries. But Congress has also blocked the use of coal-liquefaction technology.
“In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”
–Barack Obama in response to a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire, released on Nov 27, 2007
In June 2008, Barack Obama reneged on that “novel” way to preserve the strength of the public financing system.
The reasons for this should be fairly obvious. Obama has raised an obscene amount of money, far more than Republican candidate John McCain, who not only pledged to accept public financing and its limitations, but who is actually sticking to that pledge. With so much cash in the bank, it’s exceedingly difficult to conceive of giving much of it back rather than spending it in the effort to win the general election in November, not to mention that Democrats in general have a hard time giving money back to people.
“Hope” and “change” have been the oft-chanted mantra of the 2008 Presidential campaign. Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama has made those two words the central motif of his entire bid for office, and has motivated unprecedented numbers of supporters at his speeches and rallies as a result. Coupled with the poignant fact that he’s the first African-American to clinch a major-party nomination to run for President of the United States, and what we have is a political impetus that represents a monumental challenge for any opponent.
But is the very foundation of Obama’s campaign a legitimate goal, or political opportunism with little “hope” of actually realizing any positive “change?”
For historical, theological, and practical reasons, it is important for Trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostals to communicate with each other and to develop a greater understanding of one another’s beliefs. When both groups were small and rejected by mainline society and religion, it was relatively easy for them to remain isolated from the world and from each other. Today, however, both groups have experienced such growth and acceptance that they need to consider how to relate to each other as well as to the world at large.
In August of 2007, the international community penned a multilateral agreement, including cease-fire conditions to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, a terrorist organization dressed up as a political party which has won seats in the Lebanese legislature. The agreement was, in effect, another step toward the destruction of Israel and ensures greater and more widely-spread violence in the future.
UN member states claimed to be appalled by the civilian casualties and hurried to intervene to save innocent lives. (Apparently, innocent lives in the Middle East are more valuable than innocent lives in Africa, where close to one million Rwandis died while the world looked on.) With trepidation, the world watched the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict escalating and pronounced judgment: The violence must stop. Then, having so proclaimed, it brokered a truce between Israel, whose very survival depends upon its resolve, and Lebanon-Hezbollah -- without extracting any commitments from the puppeteers Syria and Iran, two rogue nations known for their hatred of Israel and their sponsorship of state terrorism.
Multilateral intervention was a mistaken course.Israel should have been allowed (even encouraged) to continue and finish the fight against Hezbollah.
Stuart McAllister said, “While an unexamined embracing of our culture is certainly precarious, the impulse to retreat may be equally as dangerous. Life can involve so much more than myopic self-protection. We have an exhilarating challenge from God to craft a culture of goodness, equity, and beauty. Essentially, we have the option to transform culture rather than run away from it or be swallowed up by it. The call is to live in the world, not of the world, but for the world. 
By: Dr. David Bernard (
