The Fifth Column, a shadowy element that works against the well-being and success of our country, is alive and well right here in the United States. We are all familiar with The Fifth Column whether we know it or not. In fact we feed off the "information” it offers daily, sometimes not realizing it. And at this very moment we are engaged in a struggle with The Fifth Column that could very well hold the future of our country in the balance, at least in the long run.

We first saw it at work during the Vietnam War, an event thrust back into the light of day courtesy of John Kerry’s need to validate himself as some sort of foreign policy genius. Of course the idea that someone would somehow possess and elevated knowledge of foreign policy simply because he skippered a swift boat in Vietnam while carrying out free-fire missions in the Mekong Delta is puzzling to me. It’s especially puzzling since his post-service anti-war activities place him squarely in the ranks of The Fifth Column. Quite frankly, it should be puzzling to everyone, but I digress.

We saw The Fifth Column at work during the Vietnam War. It came to us in the form of radical anti-war protesters. Now, before you start your email to me stating your outrage toward that statement let me clarify: not all people who harbored anti-war sentiments during the 60’s and 70’s were card-carrying members of The Fifth Column. Many who showed concern for the events that took place were guided by a sense of right and wrong as portrayed to the American public through the mainstream media. Remember, the Vietnam War was the first regularly televised police action in American history. There were many among us who saw the daily body counts and concluded that 50,000+ killed in action and 500,000+ "in country” (a far cry from today’s numbers in Iraq by the way) were prices too high to pay for the politics of the Cold War.

No, the average person that felt our soldiers didn’t deserve to sit behind lines of restriction drawn by politicians like Ted Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson weren’t members of The Fifth Column. The Fifth Column, as witnessed in the Vietnam Era, came to us in the form of those who tore at the fabric of our nation. They are the ones who aped for the television cameras while they spat on and called our soldiers "baby killers” as they returned home from halfway around the world, changed forever by the horrors of war. They are the ones who donned North Vietnamese, Chinese and Soviet military garb in a twisted display of unity with the very enemy our soldiers were sent to fight. They are the Jane Fonda’s, Abby Hoffman’s and Jerry Rubin’s of the world, those who supported propaganda producing movements such as the Winter Soldier Investigations, Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. These organization and individuals did what no military force could do to the American soldiers of that era; they undermined a certain victory into a self-imposed and mandated defeat.

UPI’s Editor At Large, Arnaud de Borchgrave penned a brutally honest piece on this very subject titled, "Analysis: A Mini-Tet Offensive In Iraq?” I urge everyone to read it.

Today, disturbingly, we are seeing some of the same players using the same tactics in an effort to undermine the progress of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Whether you agreed with the way the reasons to intervene were presented or not, the battles in Iraq are part of a greater War on Terror that simply must be won. But familiar names such as Ted Kennedy, Jane Fonda and John Kerry are re-emerging as darkness on the horizon. There is even a new Clarke as opposed to the old Clark. The Fifth Column rolls on.

As the old adage goes, "The more things change the more they remain the same.”

While Kennedy is still a US Senator (why defies the rational mind), John Kerry has shed his GI issued green fatigue jacket and 60’s styled haircut for the uniform of the US Senate and $120 Chistoph quaffs. Where Kerry used to speak through a bullhorn on the steps of the Capitol Building (Ted Kennedy by his side giving advice), he now uses the lectern of the Senate floor and the presidential campaign trail (Ted Kennedy by his side giving advise). Groups that organized protests and bastardized the laws of the land by advocating violence and the overthrow of the US government, such as the Weathermen and the Students for a Democratic Society, have now been replaced by groups with names like MoveOn.org and America Coming Together. These "new” groups have already started organizing protests to disrupt targeting the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. They have stated publicly they hope the demonstrations will be reminiscent of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention of 1968. And they are under scrutiny for violating campaign finance reform legislation, their fund raising efforts clearly a bastardization of the law’s intent.

Mix MoveOn.org’s ability to organize protests and their fund raising tactics with John Kerry’s no vote on the $87 billion for our troops in Iraq and Ted Kennedy’s, "Iraq is George W. Bush’s Vietnam” rhetoric and the fog on the mirror of the past starts to clear. Add a liberally slanted mainstream media that spews its hatred of the current administration through their positioned reporting and slanted commentary of talking heads like Katie Couric, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, and it is easy to see that The Fifth Column is up to its old tricks once again.

The US is fighting more than just a War on Terror; she is fighting a homegrown cancer born of her own freedom. This cancer threatens to turn our country, founded on Judeo-Christian philosophy, and capitalistic in nature, into a monotone, gray, socialistic nanny state, a tool of the United Nations. This cancer comes to us courtesy of The Fifth Column.

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials, Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications.