I missed the prayer walk the past two weeks, but they continued without me. It was good to be back in the neighborhood this morning carrying the Salvation Army flag that stands for the blood of Jesus and the fire of the Holy Spirit.

We had some powerful prayer at several of our stops this morning. Even though it was cold out there, the seven of us on the walk all felt God's warmth.

One guy who looked very pitiful, was watching us from a distance so three of us went up to him and asked if we could pray for him. His name is Augustus. We reminded him that he had the name of a great Roman leader and that God had great plans for him. After we prayed for Augustus, he asked if he could say a prayer for us. Wow. He prayed a beautiful, heart-felt prayer for God to bless us.

Abortion -- the use of lethal force against a baby in his or her mother's womb.

If something doesn't work, increase it. That is the inverse of the old definition of insanity: "To keep doing the same thing and expect different results."

The American approach in Iraq plainly isn't working. After receiving a report from a commission he appointed, the President decided to ignore most of their ideas and to increase what isn't working -- to send 20,000 more American troops to Iraq, what he calls a "surge". Is their any reason to expect different results from this "surge"?

Unless we are prepared to use the ruthless, indiscriminate violence of a dictator, the waring ethnic groups in Iraq will not be subdued. Sadam could do it only because he had absolutely no morals and no concern for human life. "Civilized" Geneva Convention violence won't work.Is the US prepared to act like the man we called the leader of the Axis of Evil? I hope not.

If not, then we must come up with some other method to end the slaughter of human beings in Iraq. President Bush, please listen to your commission and try something different. I've given my idea in yesterday's post.

Iraq was created by the victorious British after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in World War I, from territory that had been taken from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had existed for hundreds of years and was ruled from Istanbul, Turkey.

The British created Iraq and drew up its boundaries based on their interests and not on the interests of the people of the area. They ignored ethnic groups and thought only of territory as they drew the boundaries of Iraq. A British woman, Gertrude Bell, is the person who actually drew the borders of Iraq on a map.

Thus the Kurds, Sunnis, and the Shiites were forced to share the same "country". These hostile groups could only be held together by strong force, first the British and then dictators. When the US removed the dictatorship of Sadam, how could we expect anything but civil war?

There are only two "solutions" for "peace" in Iraq -- another dictator or partition. The people deserve better than the oppression of a dictator, so that leaves partition.

The US should begin to call for and recruit an open international conference bringing all sides to the table -- the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds, the Assyrian Christians, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Arab League, the United Nations, and all the splinter groups withing Iraq, even the so called terrorists. The objective should be to divide Iraq into at least three countries -- a Kurdish country, a Sunni country, and a Shiite country. Their boundaries should be negotiated as fairly as possible with boundaries drawn to share resources as much as possible on a per person basis so that each group (country) is treated fairly.

The boundaries should be secured by an international peace force consisting mainly of Moslem troops from various countries. The 3 (or more) new countries should agree to be demilitarized for a time period of 20 or more years (much like Japan). After the peace treaty is signed and the peace keepers are in place, the US should get out.

What do you think?

I was telling my wife about a picture I recently saw in the newspaper of a young man in a military uniform who the paper said was the 3,000th American soldier to die in Iraq, when suddenly I began to sob. For the violent death of that young man, for the 3,000 American soldiers slain, for the tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police killed, and for the more than 150,000 civilian Iraqi men, women, and children slaughtered, I cried.

Lord, have mercy on us!