GOD SHUFFLED HIS FLEET:

The old peshmerga general smiled at the sound of the U.S. fighter jets. "That's the sound of God," he said.

Gen. Omar Hama Ali Farag held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, scanning Islamic State positions about a mile away, across the Great Zab River in the direction of Mosul.

"There's two Daesh fighters hiding beneath a tree in front of the white house," Farag told me, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for the Islamist terrorist army also known as ISIS.

He handed me the binoculars. "Have a look."

And there they were. Clear as day and in the flesh.

The black-clad foot soldiers of the terrorist army responsible for so much death and destruction across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, Europe, and even back home in the United States. Disciples of the same twisted group that had brutally killed the American journalist James Foley, a friend of mine who had graduated a few classes ahead of me at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

I couldn't help it. A smile spread over my face as the sound of U.S. fighter jets roared overhead. As a former Air Force pilot, I was acquiring a unique education in the awesome ground level effects of my former profession.

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