My Water Heater Erupted with Iraq

How can a water heater be like Iraq?  Iraq sprang a serious leak this week - hot steam erupted from what was supposed to be progress in Iraq's nation building, just as I discovered our water heater sprouting steam into the attic, creating a waterfall into the house.

Fortunately, I walked into the house right after it happened and was able to shut a valve and stop the flow before real damage occurred. A few minutes or an hour later we would have had a major disaster.

Unfortunately, the valves may be stuck wide open in Iraq eruption that occurred this week. Someone has been turning the wrong valves and the mistakes have piled up, like a boiler set too high until it finally explodes. Some of the reasons I covered in a new Global American newsletter released a couple days ago (access and archives at www.INTLEGALGROUP.com).

A culmination of a series of blunders have set the stage for hellfire in Iraq - no planning, failure to have enough troops or give them cultural training, dismissing the Iraq army, failing to secure the borders to keep Al Qaida out, using aircraft to bomb a Mosque killing women and children, the list goes on. Our leaderships blunders have caused centuries old enemies, Shiites and Sunnis, to team up for the first time ever. We are poking the hornets nest and they are teaming up. NOT a good sign.

My water heater will be fixed by Monday. The Iraq broken water heater is so critical now from valves being turned, often the wrong way, that it will either blow up completely, or will take years to fix. Our obsession with Saddam the local thug has left Osama bin laden a wide open field to focus on attacking the U.S. We should NEVER have taken our attention off that snake. It's almost guaranteed America will be hit again, and probably soon.

Lack of international understanding by our military and political leaders has put us in a tight box. A U.S. commander said the American mission remained to ''kill or capture'' the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. That can only make him a hero and get him elected - or increase the rage we seem to have stirred up (600 killed in Fallujah last week, mostly women, children and elderly).

First good sign was a U.S. commander negotiating a cease fire...