The rescue raid was launched Saturday morning (Moscow time) after the Muslim Terrorists began executing additional captives. CNN televised reports stated that most hostages were safely freed and that at least 36 of the approximately 50 Muslim Terrorists were killed, including the leader of the Muslim Terrorists.

Well, alright, the reports didn't exactly state the events the way I just described them. I admit it, I made some editorial substitutions.

You see, CNN couldn't bring itself to calling the Muslim Terrorists what they are. It wasn't a nice enough way to describe them, so CNN instructed all of its reporters to refer to the Muslim Terrorists as Hostage Takers.

Yes, that's right, politically correct Hostage Takers. Once, during a report, I did hear one of the news readers slip and call them terrorists, but he quickly covered the gaffe and went back to using the prescribed PC term. I suspect he'll get a severe tongue lashing from one of his supervisors.

I hope that Russian President Putin throws CNN out of his country.

How much more of a threat to civilians must there be for those jackasses at CNN to wake up? They were terrorists, they were Muslims, and they committed this act in the name of Allah and with the intention of terrorizing millions of people.

I hope that television viewers in America start demanding their cable companies replace CNN for some other news network.

CNN didn't even use words like gunmen, or militants, which they usually do when they're protecting the murdering Arab terrorists from the West Bank and Gaza. CNN used "Hostage Takers," as if they were describing competing sides in a touch-football game: On the left, receiving the bullets and bomb blasts are the Hostages, and on the right side carrying the weapons and killing the Hostages will be the "Hostage Takers."

Funnily enough, I'm not so troubled about calling them Dead Hostage Takers.

I hope that Ted Turner gets bonked in the head with a line drive in the Atlanta Braves' opening game next year..  

Marc J. Rauch is a multi-award winning TV/film writer, producer, and director, and has been a broadcasting and marketing executive since1975. His political commentaries are regularly published in several print and online publications.

Egypt: The Peace That Never Was

Rael Jean Isaac

In 1978, Israel traded both crucial strategic assets and vital principles for what (predictably) turned out to be worthless pieces of paper. Yet unlike the 1993 Oslo agreements, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty is still almost universally deemed a success. This became obvious when conservative critics, indignant at the Nobel Peace Prize award to Jimmy Carter, criticized every aspect of his record but this one. Here the critics, implicitly acknowledging the treaty's value, have resorted to arguing that Carter does not really deserve the credit, pointing out that Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat initially negotiated without and even despite him. More astonishing, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon clings to the disastrous Egyptian treaty as if it were a model to emulate. Speaking to the Likud Party Congress on October 23 Sharon declared: "We know the price of peace and the Likud, as it did in the past [in the case of Egypt], is prepared to pay this heavy price."

Let us look at what Israel's leaders gave up, what they thought they received in return and what they actually obtained. Israel relinquished strategic depth -- the Sinai is five times the size of Israel in its pre-1967 borders. That depth was not only important in relation to Egypt, always Israel's most formidable antagonist, but in relation to its other Arab foes. The Sinai airfields served as the backbone of Israel's defense system. Israel relinquished the Abu Rudeis oil fields and with them the prospect of energy independence. The treaty opened the way for the United States to provide Egypt with both civilian and military aid: $50 billion worth since 1980. Direct U.S. military funding for the Egyptian military now comes to $1.3 billion each year.

Even more important were the principles that were established, with Israel sacrificing what had been basic tenets of the state -- and of Begin himself as a Revisionist Zionist. Begin agreed to return to the old international border with Egypt and to destroy Jewish towns and villages. Begin's initial plan called for Israel to retain the Etzion air base in northern Sinai and for the Sinai settlements, of which Yamit was the most important, to remain, although both would be formally under Egyptian sovereignty. But faced with Sadat's fierce rejection, Begin accepted the dangerous principle that Israel stood ready to uproot Israeli citizens and forfeit all its territorial gains in a defensive war in exchange for Arab promises.

Moreover, while Begin's core principle as leader of the Herut Party had been Israel's right to Judea and Samaria, the heart of the ancient Land of Israel, to win the treaty he agreed to Sadat's demand that Arabs in the

November 2002               - 9 -               Outpost