War is not only hell – it's insane.

We've seen the insanity in George W's war of lies in Iraq – WMDs that aren't there, perverted PR stunts about "Mission Accomplished," the White House effort to redefine "torture" as being okay, the transfer of "democratic power" to a handpicked Iraqi regime that isn't democratic and won't really wield power, etc.

But our own leaders are not the only ones acting insanely. The tiny nation of Macedonia has now learned that its leaders also have been caught up in the hellish insanity and depravity of Bush's self-declared unlimited war on the world's "evil-doers." In an effort to curry favor with Bush, the top officials in the right-wing government of this Balkan country plotted in late 2001 to show their commitment to George's war on terror.

Macedonian police commanders were dispatched to lure seven impoverished Muslim immigrants from Pakistan into their country. Believing they were on their way to jobs in Greece, the seven immigrants were taken in a minivan to a farm outside Macedonia's capitol city. The van parked, the driver opened his door and fled, and a special terrorist unit of the police command opened fire, slaughtering all seven of the immigrants.

Shortly after the ambush, Macedonia's top government officials announced that these seven had been al Qaeda holy warriors, and that the police authorities had heroically thwarted their plan to conduct a terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy.

The Bushites and U.S. media loudly hailed Macedonia's government as heroes in George's global terrorist war, totally ignoring the pleas of families of the seven immigrants that their sons had zero connections to terrorists – unless you counted the insane cowards who had them murdered.

Macedonia's cowardly leaders would have gotten away with their monstrous fabrication, except that they subsequently lost an election, and the new government revealed the truth. There has been no comment from Bush.