Poor Taliban.  Just a bunch of poppy growers who, you might say, have recently taken a short step up the so-called evolutionary ladder from humanoid cave-dwelling.  That is, until you realize that they have somehow acquired an arsenal of functional weapons and a fleet of Japanese pickup trucks. 

Even a caveman can do it?

Forget military strategy, shooting skills and ammunition replacement.  How would you go about keeping hundreds of late model trucks running on smooth American freeways let alone out in the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan without computer diagnostics and the parts network to back it up?

Every day there is a report of another hundred-or-so of these Islamo-fascist vermin being taken out in combat or by a bomb from somebody's air force. If there is any truth to their propaganda, for every dozen Taliban off-ed in village somewhere, three times as many "innocent civilians" are also martyred to paradise.

With just a brief hiatus between the Russians' exit and the onset of the Hunt for bin Laden these zealot yahoos have been right up there at the top of the endangered species list with the silvery salamander and the greater prairie chicken.  Or have they?

As Taliban Toyotas close in on the Pakistani nuke stash you've got to wonder if these guys aren't actually part poppy. You can keep cutting them down but as long as someone makes sure to plant a new one every now and then the resource will keep renewing itself.

So maybe the bleeding hearts are right.  Watering these guys may not be such a good idea.  It could actually make them grow faster.

But a continuation of the left's most dangerous opium pipe dream -- that going soft on terrorists will make them less anti-American -- could lead to the extinction of the rest of us.