It is a commonplace in a story or article about the Arab-Israeli conflict that mentions Jerusalem to repeat the Moslem mantra that “Jerusalem is the third holiest city in all Islam, next to Mecca and Medina.”

You’ve heard this innumerable times -- but how come? Just why is Jerusalem so important to not just Jews and Christians but Moslems as well?

Have you ever noticed that the older you get, the scarier the world gets -- because you keep noticing that many of the folks who run it are not very smart?

I was at a private luncheon in Washington earlier this week and among the guests were two guys from the CIA. Not only were they clueless -- we were discussing Russia -- they were just not bright. OK -- so picking on folks from the Three Bad Words is too easy. Let’s raise the bar and talk about the Chinese.

There are a lot of people here in DC who constantly worry about the Chinese, and predict the Chicoms -- China’s Communist rulers -- will soon pose the greatest threat to America’s security. The worriers offer considerable evidence for their argument and they may well be right. But here’s a question:

If the Chinese are so smart, how come they are busy surrounding themselves with neighbors who can aim nuclear missiles at them?

The critical insight about the Soviet Union that led to its downfall was -- as I explained in countless Reagan Doctrine briefings during the 1980s -- that the Soviet Union didnt simply possess an imperialist empire of colonies beyond its borders: it was itself a colonial empire within its borders.

It was a gorgeous spring day in Washington D.C. when I got a call from Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). The year was 1995. "Hey, Jack, can you come to my office late this afternoon? The Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg and his entourage will be here and I'd like you in on the meeting."

The good news in Iraq is that things are much, much better than the gloomy picture painted daily by the propaganda organ of the Democratic Party, the LME (The Liberal Media Establishment, consisting primarily of Time-Newsweek-New York Times in print, Rather-Brokaw-Jennings-CNN in television, and NPR in radio).

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are directing the military in continuing a superb performance, Jerry Bremer is following their lead and not his putative bosses at State, oil production will soon hit one million barrels a day, and over 90% of Iraq's population is living under peace and increasing prosperity.

The bad news is that State Department and CIA bureaucrats resolutely continue to be in the way of all of this. This is best exemplified by their personal vendetta against the one man who could lead Iraq out of chaos and into a flourishing democracy: Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress.

In a talk entitled "The Map of the Future" I gave last week in Dallas, I discussed which countries throughout the world were or could become the greatest threats to America's national security. At the top of the list, more dangerous than Iran or North Korea or China, I placed Mexico.

The bottomless inferiority complex that Mexico feels towards America is summed up in an old saying known to all Mexicans as "Mexico's Curse," the lament that their country is "So far from God, so close to the United States."

The truth, however, is the reverse. Today, Americans lament "America's Curse," that their country is so close to Mexico.

Let’s say there’s this fellow named Joe. He makes a living as a highway bandit robbing travelers. Any victim who gives him any trouble he kills. Joe has a special hatred for Jews. “Kill Jews wherever you find them,” he tells the members of his gang. At age fifty, Joe tells his best friend that he fallen in love with his daughter and wants to marry her. She is six years old. They are married and Joe starts having sex with the little girl when she is nine years old.

Joe tells his gang that God talks to him. As the Messenger of God, every word of Joe’s is the Word of God. Anyone who refuses to believe this, Joe has his gang members kill them.

Here’s the question: Is Joe a criminally insane pervert and moral monster, or is he worshipped by hundreds of millions of devout followers who deeply believe that he is the most moral human being who ever lived?

The answer is: he is both. Joe’s real name is Ubul Kassim, an Arabian bandit chieftain who became known as Mohammed (“The Praised One” in Arabic) and founded the religion of Islam…

Doomsday scenarios were ever-popular during the Cold War. But the reality was that if a nuclear missile hit a U.S. city, we would know for sure who launched it: the Soviets. Thus we knew against whom to retaliate. And thus the Cold War was conducted without a single nuclear shot fired.

We are now facing a threat an order of magnitude or greater than that of the Cold War. What if a nuclear bomb goes off in a U.S. city and we're not sure who did it, so we don't know against whom to retaliate?

Dr. Wheeler's Final Behind The Lines Column from Strategic Investment

Reading Ann Coulter’s new book, Treason is a lot of fun. She has to be the ballsiest chick in America. Part of what makes her so cool is that you know she would love that description of her.

Aside from the sheer enjoyment of watching her rhetorically eviscerate liberals, she performs a great public service in rehabilitating Joe McCarthy and exposing the Myth of McCarthyism. “McCarthyism is one of the markers on the left’s Via Dolorossa,” she observes. “It is their slavery, their gulag, their potato famine. Otherwise liberals would just be geeks from Manhattan and Hollywood.”

So let’s go

The Jewish Talmud makes the following observation:

There is no beauty like Jerusalem, no wealth like Rome, no depravity like Arabia.