“Azzam the American,” the face of al Qaeda to the West (and the former Adam Yehiye Gadahn, of Orange County, CA), released a new video last week in which he listed AQ’s “Legitimate demands” for the United States and the Bush Administration.

Robert J. Dixon won’t be receiving the Medal of Honor. He didn’t go down in a hail of bullets, saving the lives of multiple soldiers and civilians in the process. Don't let this lack of glamour cause you to think that he was any less of a hero - Dixon simply did what was asked of him, and what he wanted to do; something which happened to be putting his life on the line for an ideal, and operating under conditions so dangerous and so intense that to do so one must have an inner heroism which most will never understand.

This affair paints a very distressing picture of where some key individuals’ priorities really lie. Regrettably, these priorities apparently do not include taking any steps toward supplying the young men and women who are risking their lives in the War on Terror, nor are they in tune with the spirit of our Republic, which demands open, honest, and accountable government, regardless of the subject of the legislation in question.

People who wield such power that they have a legal say in others’ freedom – let alone in others’ lives and deaths – have an immense responsibility to exercise infinitely more wisdom, judgment, conscience, patience, reason, and moderation in the exercising of that power than the normal man