Not a political question, but

What happened to the political forum? Any one know the back story on its disappearance?

That was a feature of CSP, not Milsurps.com.

As Stevo points out, that particular forum was a subset of CSP and moved over to their new site when they left. We have retained an off-topic forum in the watering hole, but the political forum was not a great fit due to the multi-national membership of the site and the focus on collecting and shooting vice political wrangling.

Hope that helps by way of explanation!

ARCHER 9505,
I haven't seen you posting lately. Good to hear from you.

If you've been inactive for a while, here's the announcement page explaining things.
Military Surplus Collectors Forums - Announcements in Forum : Jouster's CSP Forums (Archives)

The political forum moved to jouster.com and has all the same few people posting frequently.

Also, most people probably know, but there's a general discussion forum here that's interesting and relates to general discussion of militaria. It's an original Milsurps forum similar to this forum and there's some interesting posts there.
(It's more international and lots of information relating to militaria, but nothing political)
Milsurps General Discussion Forum - Military Surplus Collectors Forums