After the all night Iraq filibuster concluded in the Senate this morning without any conclusive action, I think something radical needs to happen to get our politicians to cross the aisle to shake hands on a way to end the war in Iraq. Especially since more of our soldiers will die if we wait until September to hear what General Petraeus has to say.

Hear me out.

Earlier this week, after the new National Intelligence Estimate warned of a heightened al-Qaeda terror threat, I heard President Bush say we have a strategy to win the war on terror. It took a few seconds for it (the funny, repetitive joke he always tells) to sink in. We have a strategy to win the war? Progress is being made. The surge is working!

After realizing Bush was talking out of his ass, again, I decided to hatch a plan of my own. I think Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will be hugging each other after reading this idea.

Who could win the war on terror for America? Thanks to fifth-grade history, I think I have the answer: Juan Ponce de Leon. Sure, he was alive from 1460-1521, but he did so much in the time the Good Lord gave him, just like River Phoenix.

I'm not talking about the fact that he was the first European to set foot in Florida, or that he discovered the Gulf Steam in the Atlantic Ocean, or even that Ponce de Leon founded the oldest European settlement in Puerto Rico.

No. I'm talking about his Schwarzeneggeresque domination of the Muslims in the late 15th century and the Native American Indians in the early 16th. He has quite a resume, as any Google search will confirm.

Peep this: Ponce-ditty was a soldier fighting the Moors of Grenada in southern Spain, and he did it with vengeance - the hearty kind of resolve that comes from getting hit in the head during a game of dodge ball: you get to stay in the game, it hurts like hell, and you want to inflict as much reciprocal pain as possible. And Ponce-ditty reciprocated all through the early 1490's.

He was so good at fighting against those long-gone insurgents (re: innocent natives) that he was awarded a position with Christopher Columbus's second expedition of the Americas in 1493. When Columbus returned to Spain, Ponce-ditty stayed behind. He had more ass-kicking to do.

Ponce unleashed the flying-elbow when he helped crush Indian revolts on the island of Española. He then sailed to Puerto Rico (known as Borinquen back then) in search of gold and the Fountain of Youth, believed to be a legendary spring that gave people eternal health, akin to the same health points you score in Zelda.

When Ponce got to Puerto Rico, he found the Natives hostile to his presence, which totally caught his ethnocentric sensibilities off guard.

"What are the Natives thinking?" Ponce wondered. The same thing Bush never asked after coalition forces got to Baghdad.

Ponce then played a game of paper-rock-scissors to decide their fate, and he won the deciding match (out of three) with a rock-fist. So he decided to crush them.

After crushing the natives, he took control of the island and found many riches, like plagioclase feldspar, trace amounts of fool's gold, a pair of Larry King's suspenders, and a jar of half-eaten creamy JIF. There, in Puerto Rico, Ponce was so vicious that he was relieved of his leadership duties in 1511 due to his immense brutality.

He continued his search for the Fountain of Youth in the Bahamas, where he was fruitless. Fruitless means Ponce bore no fruit. He then returned to Puerto Rico in 1514, where he continued to slaughter the Indians there.

Ponce died seven years later as the same warrior he was when he was fighting the Moors in Spain as a young man. It was on the west coast of Florida, where Ponce was in search of treasure, that he was met by Native American warriors. There he pounded his chest in the name of the King of Spain and died of an arrow wound.

He probably offered a great target for the archers when he was pounding his chest - cocky, just like Bush likes his conquerors. Getting sniped with an arrow was Ponce's only real douchey move. No posthumous sports-pat for him.

See, Ponce has quite the resume. He is the perfect candidate to help us win the war on terror. He has legitimate experience and leadership qualities. He is the kind of guy we need to fight the indigenous tribes of Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in Iraq. With his bravado, we'd bypass the intricacies of modern war.

The only catch to this whole deal is that we'd have to bring him back from the dead.

But I'm optimistic; all we'd have to do is get Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough to harness some of that tree-sap-amber-mosquito-chaos-theory-technique that was used to bring dinosaurs back from the dead in Jurassic Park.

Then, Juan Ponce de Leon would be a living, breathing, ass-kicker once again.