The Never Ending Saga That Is The Middle East

The Mid East reminds me of a soap opera.

The same plot twists get reused dozens of times, characters disappear for months or manage to come back from the dead and there is no end in sight to the storyline.

Bin Laden's taped message released yesterday touches on all of these plot mechanisms. He had been silent for more then a year and some of his first words were to say the U.S. should expect more attacks. In defense of his writers he did introduce a new bit of drama by saying he was willing to enter into a long-term truce if the U.S. were willing to abide by all his demands.

Notice he said "long term" truce and not permanent. He fully intends, truce or no truce, to restart his fight with us at some future date.

Iran is the center of the other long running series. It also has reguritated several old plot lines during the past few months, while instilling a new twist. Iran's president has called for Israel to be wiped from the face of the Earth, an oldie but a goodie bit of dialogue, and soon after stated that Iran would continue developing its nuclear program. While this has been mentioned from time to time it seems this effort is quite a bit more serious and the players intend to use it to take the story to another level.

If nothing else these machinations will guarantee that The Bin Laden Show and Leave it to Iran will garner a great deal of attention during the coming months. Hopefully, that focus will include attracting several dozen GPS guided 1,000 pound bombs.