A massive Cholera outbreak, widespread hunger, collapse of healthcare systems and almost no services of any kind are the result of a dictatorship that is destroying the nation of Zimbabwe. Without dramatic outside intervention, the situation will only worsen. In just a matter of time, Zimbabwe will, for all intent and purposes, be yet one more African nation that is a state in name only.

This week, the dictator Mugabe - who is close to totally crazy as any world leader today (which is saying a lot) - insisted there is no Cholera in the country. This, despite United Nations reports of over 60,000 cases of the painful and deadly disease. The number of official deaths is currently estimated in the hundreds but my sources from within the nation strongly proclaim that perhaps hundreds are dying each day! Basically, hospitals have ceased to exist and many trained healthcare workers have fled to South Africa. In fact, what used to be called hospitals have become nothing more than dropping off points for the dying.

Hunger is widespread and malnutrition is taking the lives of young Zimbabweans. Their inflation is the highest in the world if not one of the highest in history. Mugabe is a dottering old man who has lost all contact with reality. What exists in Zimbabwe is just nothing short of a nightmare.

Over the last years, nations have proclaimed with heartfelt sincerity how they wish they would have intervened in the genocide in Rwanda. Now is their chance to rectify that wrong in another needy African country.

The time has come for an international force to intervene in Zimbabwe to A) remove Mugabe from office, B) set up emergency services to provide food and healthcare and C) work with local opposition leaders to create a stable government. It might not ultimately end up being a fully democratic society, but it should be a functioning and an enlightened one. The goal must be to save lives, to restore a nation to where it is at least functioning again and to prevent the spread of Cholera into South Africa via the massive refugee flow.