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Commentary & News Briefs
...Having just returned from a three-week trip to the combat zones in Iraq, Lt. Colonel Oliver North told a huge audience at the National Day of Prayer ceremonies in Washington yesterday that the present is a crucial time to invoke God's power and that Americans must not forget to pray for the fighting men and women of the U.S. armed forces. The former Marine officer noted that the National Day of Prayer has historically been associated with war, the first observance of it having been proclaimed by the Continental Congress back in 1775 "as America was on the edge of a war for independence," and he says Abraham Lincoln renewed the call for national prayer during "a war for national survival, and today, we are fighting another such war on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan." North says he himself is a living example of the power of prayer, and he has been amazed at the faith in God he saw displayed by the American military men and women in Iraq, who he describes as "true heroes in every sense of the word."

...The honorary chairman of this year's National Day of Prayer, Oliver North, says the U.S. troops he recently visited in Iraq "are compassionate toward the Iraqis." And he says they regularly pray that they will do what is right. North told a prayer gathering on Capitol Hill that there is also a spiritual battle being waged in the United States -- against the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and what he called "the traditional concept of marriage, biblically-based." Other National Day of Prayer organizers warned that Americans are losing their religious rights. Attorney General John Ashcroft said he had spoken with President Bush shortly before the Capitol Hill prayer gathering. He says Bush credited his daily religious devotions with helping him carry the burdens of the presidency....

...An Israeli author and lecturer believes the United States and Israel have a master plan for bringing down the tyrannical regime in Iran. Victor Mordecai has been touring the United States, telling church audiences about the ongoing threat of Islam. Mordecai says Iran is the next rogue regime that must be brought down before it gets a nuclear bomb, which he says the radical mullahs want to use against Israel in order to prove that the Koran is true and the Bible false....