veto

[GreatOwl]

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. "
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html

as the Iraqi security forces stand up, coalition forces can stand down.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113000667.html

I am glad we began training Iraqi forces two years ago.  How many have we gotten up to ready status now.  We pull our our young men out of high school and give them 6 months and send them to Iraq.  Surely there must be 10's of thousands of Iraqi's trained and ready to fight for their own country by now.  The projection by our own military leaders was:

"Military leaders in Baghdad planned to train 325,000 Iraqi security forces. Once that was accomplished, those forces were to take control."

How many have we trained so far?

"Training Iraqi troops no longer driving force in U.S. policy"

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17104704.htm

Oopps!  I guess they found it was harder than they thought!

So if we don't train enough troops using Iraqi's then who will we train to allow our own forces to step down?

A year ago it was announced that only one brigade of Iraqi troops were ready to take on the task of defending their own country.  In this case that was about 1,500.   Since there estimate was that training would go smoother and faster I wonder what the number is up to now.

The real answer is that even when that brigade went into action, they needed American troops to support them.  As far as additional trained Iraqi troops, there is no indication that the number has increased significantly.

The USA is in a war it can not win!!!

[mrs. red]

GO... I truly appreciate your answer to me.  I still disagree with you, but I do agree on one thing... if we are determined to lose at all costs and to tuck our tails and run and to put soldiers in harm's way and not funding them.... then they should all come home now.  

I intensely dislike the idea of pulling funding from the troops... you don't ask people to sacrafice like that and then pull that kind of stunt... the Democrats in this instance should be ashamed, JMO.

[GreatOwl]

GO... I truly appreciate your answer to me.  I still disagree with you, but I do agree on one thing... if we are determined to lose at all costs and to tuck our tails and run and to put soldiers in harm's way and not funding them.... then they should all come home now.  

I intensely dislike the idea of pulling funding from the troops... you don't ask people to sacrafice like that and then pull that kind of stunt... the Democrats in this instance should be ashamed, JMO.

The advantage of not having a political affilliation is that I, as a taxpayer, can demand accountabily of all the political types without guilt.  I do not feel funding should be pulled.  I do not feel we should have been in Iraq in the first place.  I have had friends and family who have served in Iraq.  One has recently returned from his second tour with the Marines.  He is now disabled.  I doubt he is healthy enough to return for a third tour.  

I would never sign a blank check for anything and in this instance my feelings are that there needs to be accountabily for the tax dollars spent.  It is something that is lacking right now.  I would not dole out my hard earned SS check to anyone who told me the job would be done when it is done.  I expect my representatives to hold the government to the same standards.

[LouiseVargas]

Great Owl wrote in response to my post regarding civilizations lasting two thousand years: "I would be very interested in hearing your reasoning Louise. How do you define a civilization. This may be taking this thread a bit O/T but I am curious as to why you feel this way. I had never given thought to this concept and do not know anything about it. We owls enjoy devouring ideas as much as we do meices."

Hi GO!  I learned this in history classes in Pasadena High School and Pasadena City College. History was not my favorite subject but this is one thing I clearly remember because it made sense to me and explained why civilizations died.

Examples of civilizations are the Roman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Aztec Empire, the Incas, the Vikings, Atlantis, Amazon, ancient Japan, Egypt, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization

We are now in 2007 and I see our civilization (pretty much the whole world) on the brink of self destruction. Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea. Insurgents, suicide bombers, snipers, double agents, WMD, Israel in turmoil along with the Palestinians. Who has nuclear bombs? United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel. States suspected of having clandestine nuclear programs: Iran and Saudi Arabia. I believe (not from a religious point of view) that the end times are here.

I am waiting for suicide bombers to blow up shopping malls, Hollywood landmarks such as the Hollywood Mulholland Reservoir - we would be washed away. It's a damn big dam. Downtown LA has tall buildings. I don't see security anywhere.

Why do great civilizations fall? The history of humankind has been marked by patterns of growth and decline. Some declines have been gradual, occurring over centuries. Others have been rapid, occurring over the course of a few years. War, drought, natural disaster, disease, overpopulation, economic disruption: any of these can bring about the collapse of a civilization. Internal causes (such as political struggles or over farming) can combine with external causes (such as war or natural disaster) to bring about a collapse.

Sadly, the world has come to this point. I'm not sure it's the fault of any country or elected politician. It just is what it is. For some strange reason (I learned in my political science class), there is an aspect of human nature that makes some of us want to make war in order to conquer.

[GreatOwl]

Thank You Louise,     I had thought this was the concept to which you were referring.  It makes very good sense.  Usually, when a dynasty declines there is another one on the rise.  In considering the world population as a whole it doesn't leave us with many options for another dominant civilization on the rise.

The world has become a melting pot and we certainly are beginning to boil over.  Perhaps I must fly higher and hope there will be some surviving branches to land on.  I can only hope there will be another species for my little owlettes to feast on.  I don't see them surviving on frozen meice pudding for too long.

[LouiseVargas]

Great Owl,

Thank you. It's a pleasure to exchange thoughts with you.

[Tylergal]

Great Owl, you are really a great cheerleader for the defeatism of America.  Islamofascism's ugly march continues.

[spooky112483]

I will hold with my original thought that the "war" in Iraq is one which the USA can not win and that those in power in Iraqi lack the desire to fight the battle and to compromise where it would do the most good.

The United States of America has never lost a war. Read some history. We have negotiated at times and we have also been pulled back because of partision politics (re. Veitnam War) yes, go back and look...we were not losing the Veitnam war...politicians MADE us come home...same as they are trying to do now. But Ameriaca has never lost a war. Do you really think our army could loose this war?? Really?? Given the history of this great country (and forgive me because I am currently in school learning about our great country) I will stand on the side of this country. Always. I will never settle for defeat before the war is over. I will continue to fight for what is best for this country. And at this moment it is winning this war. Give up?? It's not in my vocabulary. Do what EVER IT TAKES TO WIN for the good of freedom for the world and this country. I've resolved to the fact that some have the stomach (throughout history) to lose and some don't. I listen to our troops and they say WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. WE CAN WIN THIS WAR.  I have no doubt in them. I stand by them!

[nonesuche]

Spooky isn't it great to be in school, I wish I could go back   enjoy it !

I have difficulty comparing former dynasties and wars to our current landscape in that many unstable factions now have global reach with nuclear and chemical weapons and terrorists are those factions. It's a wholly different
game as some might say..........but it's war with risks far beyond any other in our history.

[GreatOwl]

Great Owl,

Thank you. It's a pleasure to exchange thoughts with you.

ditto  

[A's Fever]

How does one even define "winning" in a situation such as this?  Saddam is gone, we have found no WMD.  That was our objective.  What does winning the war mean now?  Are we going to defeat Islamic terrorism?  Probably not, since it has already spread over the globe.  Are we going to bring peace to the ancient hostilities between the Sunnis and the Shiites so that a stable democracy can survive?  I don't see how, nor do I see how we belong in the middle of that.  So how do we "win" this one?

[nonesuche]

that's a good question A's, I agree that winning doesn't appear to be viable and almost an after thought.

what I really fear now is we will continue to see this cycle of 'war' in order to beat back these terrorist factions and/or tyrannical rule (hopefully less of the latter).........just to maintain our own survival?

horrifying thought but I think this may be where our planet is now?

[mrs. red]

I will hold with my original thought that the "war" in Iraq is one which the USA can not win and that those in power in Iraqi lack the desire to fight the battle and to compromise where it would do the most good.

The United States of America has never lost a war. Read some history. We have negotiated at times and we have also been pulled back because of partision politics (re. Veitnam War) yes, go back and look...we were not losing the Veitnam war...politicians MADE us come home...same as they are trying to do now. But Ameriaca has never lost a war. Do you really think our army could loose this war?? Really?? Given the history of this great country (and forgive me because I am currently in school learning about our great country) I will stand on the side of this country. Always. I will never settle for defeat before the war is over. I will continue to fight for what is best for this country. And at this moment it is winning this war. Give up?? It's not in my vocabulary. Do what EVER IT TAKES TO WIN for the good of freedom for the world and this country. I've resolved to the fact that some have the stomach (throughout history) to lose and some don't. I listen to our troops and they say WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. WE CAN WIN THIS WAR.  I have no doubt in them. I stand by them!

SPOOKY- I applaud your post!  My sentiments exactly!...Look at France... they finally elected someone with a a backbone who made a speech about how the U.S. has an ally in France - and I thought we were hated

[tidycat]

The "war" WAS over, and won, when the President made that speech.  The problem was that nobody foresaw anything that has happened since.
President Bush and his administration saddly apparently thought all they had to do was take out Saddam, do some rebuilding, put in some money, and go home.  This is obvious in their actions after the war.   We have not been fighting the same "war" since 2003.  We have been fighting the terrorist insurgents from outside Iraq, financed and armed by Iran.  Them  and the remnants of the Sunnis who backed Saddam, and who refuse to give government up to the Shiite majority.

We Americans thought the Iraqis, esp. the Shiites would welcome us, be grateful for liberating them, and support us.  We knew there was a lot of infrastructure that had to be rebuilt.  We never expected the Shiites, backed by Iran, to be as hostile as they have been, or that the Sunni tribes would continue to fight for so long.   And there are now Al Qaeda elements openly killing both Iraqis and Americans.

Nobody realized (stupidly IMHO) that Iran and Syria would be financing and sending in insurgents, money, and arms.  Nobody in our administration seems to have understood the complicated politics within Iraq.  The Wall St. Journal had a very good article about that subject recently (Wed., 4/11/07, by Fouad Ajami, "Iraq in the Balance").

We were never prepared for the aftermath of taking down Saddam.  There may not have been Al Qaeda terrorists, except for one little group up north, prior to the war, but they have flourished there since, and if/when the Americans leave, they will continue to use Iraq just as they used Afghanistan before we bombed them out.  If we leave, we will have to go in and get rid of them again.  The United Nations and the world need to realize that this has gone far beyond our war against Saddam in 2003, and is no longer containable by the USA and a few Brits and Australians.  It requires attention from the UN to contain the violence and terrorism in Iraq.

With some help from the UN, including political pressure, we would be able to get out of Iraq without abandoning those people to the terrorists and to Iran.  I'm ready for the troops to come home.  But I don't think we can just set a timetable and pull out; that would be insane and irresponsible.

IMHO.

[tidycat]

Because Pres. Bush has become so unpopular with this war, it seems to me that many Americans have forgotten the time right after 9/11 and the speech he made when he said we are in a war on terror (terrorism) and that it would go on for a long time, that much of the time it would be an invisible war and we wouldn't know exactly what was happening.

And just because there have been no more attacks by terrorists on our soil, that is actually a plus for the Bush administration.  In spite of criticism for the way they handle Gitmo, trials for terrorists, interrogating them, the Patriot Act, etc., we forget that they have arrested many of the leaders and planners of 9/11 and related attacks, and prevented other such attacks.   It seems nobody appreciates that fact.  I do.  Those people are still out there plotting; there are sleeper cells in this country just biding their time.  Al Qaeda still exists all over the world, and it is not just that organization we should fear.  Iran and its highest leaders have stated they plan to wipe us and Israel off the face of the earth.  

I sincerely believe that we have to try to stop them "over there" in the middle east.  It's better to fight them over there than here.  

Recommended reading:  [/u]Showdown with Nuclear Iran[/u].  I will try to find the author's name, but he is a recognized expert on Iran and it's nuclear activities.  We can't just hide our heads in holes in the back yard.  They expect that Americans cannot stomach seeing Americans dying in any war and that we will pick up and run.  All they have to do is wait a little while.  It is a shame that we have earned that reputation.  They see it as a major sign of weakness.  They have sworn to kill us all.  They aren't kidding.

[Tylergal]

December 7, 2008, began inauspiciously.
At 0753 at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the attack that had triggered America's entry into World War II, sixty-seven years before, was ceremoniously commemorated, an honor guard, taps, a 21-gun salute, the bugle's notes and the rifles' crack drifting across the bay to the USS Arizona memorial, where Admiral Arthur Peterson, USN Ret., laid a wreath in memory of the sailors sleeping below, one of whom was his own grandfather.
 
On the West coast it was 1053, and in Washington D.C. it was one fifty-three in the afternoon, 1353 military time.
 
In 2006 America, tired of War in Iraq, had elected Democrats to modest majorities in both houses of Congress. Representative Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House, third in line for the presidency. In the spring of 2007, on a narrow, party-line vote, Congress, led by Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer refused to authorize spending to continue the war in Iraq, and set September 30, 2007, as the deadline for complete withdrawal of American troops.
 
President Bush spoke to the country, to the American forces in Iraq, to those who had been there, and to the Iraqi people, to apologize for the short-sightedness and irresponsibility of the American congress and the tragedy he believed would follow after leaving task of nurturing a representative and stable government in Iraq half done, his voice choked, tears running down his stoic face, a betrayal of emotion for which he was resoundingly criticized and denounced in much of America's media.
 
The level of violence across Iraq immediately subsided, as the Americans began preparations to redeploy back to the States. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised the new Congress for its clear vision and sound judgment. America's Democrats rejoiced and congratulated themselves for bringing peace with honor and ending the illegal war based on lies that George Bush had begun only to enrich his friends in the military-industrial complex, and promised to retake the Presidency in 2008.
 
"The failure of many Americans, including many of the leading Democrats in Congress, and some Republicans, to fully appreciate the persistent, long-term threat posed to America's liberties and survival, and to the future of Liberal Democracies everywhere, by an Islamic Resistance Movement that envisions a world dominated and defined by an Islamic Caliphate of religious totalitarianism, and which will fight any war, make any sacrifice, suffer any hardship, and pay any price to achieve it, may prove to be the kind of blunder upon which the fate of America turns, and falls."
 
 
At 1000 on September 30, 2007, precisely on schedule, the last C-5A Galaxy carrying the last company of American combat troops in Iraq had roared down the Baghdad runway and lifted into the air. Only a few hundred American technical and military advisers and political liaisons remained in-country.
 
The Galaxy's wheels had scarcely retracted when Iraq erupted in the real civil war many had feared and foreseen, and which many others had predicted would not happen if only the American imperialists left Iraq. Sunni militias, Shia militias, and Al Qaeda militias ravaged and savaged the country, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis known or suspected to have collaborated with the Americans, killing Shias for being Shias, Sunnis for being Sunnis, Americans for being Americans, and anyone else who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
By noon, not one of the American advisers and liaisons left behind remained alive. Many had been beheaded as they screamed. Most of their bodies were dumped in the river and never seen again. In the next thirty days more than a million Iraqis died. The General Assembly of the United Nations voted to condemn the violence, and recessed for lunch and martinis. In America, there was no political will to redeploy back to Iraq. And after a few months of rabid bloodletting, the situation in Iraq calmed to a tense simmer of sporadic violence and political jockeying, punctuated by the occasional assassination, while several million refugees fled the country. Only Kurdistan, in the north, which had thrown up a line of its Peshmurga fighters to keep the southern violence away, remained stable and at relative peace.
 
In the spring of 2008 America began its quadrennial circus of a national election, and in November elected a Democrat, the Junior Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as it next president, to the surprise of few. Her running mate, to the surprise of many, was San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose intelligence, charisma, and reputation as an indefatigable campaigner for gay marriage and the homeless of San Francisco helped solidify Clinton's support among liberal Democrats who only grudgingly forgave her for not openly opposing the Iraq war sooner, and the Clinton-Newsom ticket went to the top with a narrow 50.2% lead over Republican John McCain's 49.8% of the popular vote, despite, or perhaps because of, Clinton's and Newsom's lack of foreign policy and military experience.
 
America, or a slim voting majority of it, felt it had had all the war it ever wanted to see, and Hillary had led her party to a glorious (if narrow) victory with the unambiguous slogan: "Clinton & Newsom: No More War." Crowds at every whistle stop had cheered and chanted, No more war! No more war! No more war! At victory parties George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice were hung and sometimes burned in effigy, enthusiastic crowds chanted "No more war!" many times more, and local bands cranked up the theme from the first Clinton electoral victory, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow...yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone...," and indeed, it was.
 
President Bush had been a very lame duck since the 2006 election, and with a Democratic Congress could do little but veto most of the bills it sent him. The Democrats couldn't override his vetoes, so for nearly two years almost nothing important had been accomplished by anyone on the Hill or in the White House. After the 2008 election it was transition time, flocks and herds of thoroughly demoralized Republican staff began leaving Washington in search of greener pastures, Congress adjourned for the Holidays, Democrats came house hunting, and Clinton and Newsom began the briefings they would get from a fully cooperative Bush administration on the state of the nation and the state of the world they would inherit and have to cope with for the next four years, or eight, and in those last weeks of November both Hillary and Gavin seemed to age rather quickly. The exhilaration of the campaign was over, and the weight of a tumultuous world began to settle on their shoulders.
 
Back in early October, 2006, North Korean President (for life) Kim Jong Il had announced the detonation of a nuclear bomb deep in a tunnel in the stony mountains of North Korea. The seismic signature had been small, and American intelligence at first doubted whether it had been a nuclear explosion at all. Traces of radioactive emissions were detected a few days later, and the intelligence estimate revised to conclude that it had been a failed test that produced perhaps only 10% or less of the expected yield, only 0.5 to 1.5 kilotons, not the 20 kilotons, at least, that Western intelligence had anticipated.
 
Kim Jong Il gloated. The deception had worked. The Americans were thinking in terms of long range intercontinental ballistic missiles with huge warheads that they could shoot out of the sky with their sophisticated billion-dollar anti-missile defense systems. He was thinking in terms of small warheads carried by small, medium range cruise missiles that could be launched from many places, and infiltrated close enough to slip in under the radar and hit America's coastal cities.
 
On the evening of December 6, 2008, a junior analyst in the National Security Agency was going over routine satellite photo production of ship movements in the Atlantic and Pacific within a thousand miles of the US coasts. Late in the shift he thought he saw something through a haze of fatigue and caffeine, and called a supervisor over to talk.
 
"Look," he said, photos up on several computer screens, more printed out and spread across his desk, "See? These boats, not big ships, fishing boats, yachts, they've been moving in along shipping lanes for several days, across from the South Pacific toward the West coast, up from the South Atlantic toward the east. Nothing very unusual, they're all small and slow, and scattered up and down the oceans, it seems, but if you look at the times and courses..." and he pulled out a chart he had plotted, "They're approaching so they will all arrive at about the same time, or all be about the same distance off the coast at about the same time...," he trailed off.
 
The supervisor looked a bit quizzical. "Coincidence? Probably. You need more sleep. Too much fun in the night, eh? Let me know if you see something we can do something with." And walked away.
 
At 0723 Hawaii time on the 67th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack three old fishing trawlers, about 100 miles apart, and each about 300 miles off the east coast, launched six small cruise missiles from launch tubes that could be dismantled and stored in the holds under ice, or fish, and set up in less than an hour. The missiles were launched at precisely one minute intervals. As soon as each boat had launched its pair, the skeleton crew began to abandon ship into a fast rubber inflatable. The captain was last off, and just before going overboard started the timer on the scuttling charges. Fifteen minutes later and ten miles away, each crew was going up the nets into a small freighter or tanker of Moroccan or Liberian registry, where each man was issued new identification as ship's crew. The rubber inflatables were shot and sunk, and just about then charges in the bilges of each of the three trawlers blew the hulls out, and they sank with no one on board and no distress signals in less than two minutes.
 
The missiles had been built in a joint operation by North Korea and Iran, and tested in Iran, so they would not have to overfly any other country. The small nuclear warheads had only been tested deep underground. The GPS guidance and detonating systems had worked perfectly, after a few corrections. They flew fifty feet above sea level, and 500 feet above ground level on the last leg of the trip, using computers and terrain data modified from open market technology and flight directors, autopilots, adapted from commercial aviation units. They would adjust speed to arrive on target at specific times and altitudes, and detonate upon reaching the programmed GPS coordinates. They were not as adaptable and intelligent as American cruise missiles, but they did not need to be. Not for this mission.
 
They were small, less than twenty feet long, and only 18 inches in diameter, powered by small, quiet, fuel-efficient, high-bypass turbofans, and painted in a mottled light blue and light gray ghost camouflage. Cruising at 600 knots, just below the speed of sound, they were nearly impossible to see or hear. They came in under the radar until they reached the coast. After that they were lost in the ground clutter. Nobody saw it coming.
 
At precisely 0753, Hawaii time, 1353 in the District of Columbia, sixty-seven years to the minute after the Pearl Harbor attack began, the first of six missiles to hit the Washington area exploded in a huge white burst of nuclear fire just 500 feet above the White House, which disappeared in a mist of powdered plaster and stone, concrete and steel. President Bush and President-Elect Clinton had been meeting with Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Clinton's national security adviser, reviewing the latest National Security Estimate, when they instantaneously turned into a plasma of the atomic elements that had once been human beings. No trace remained.
 
Alarms immediately began going off all over Washington, and precisely one minute later the second missile exploded just as it struck the Capital dome, instantly turning thousands of tons of granite that had one moment before been the nation's center of government into thousands of tons of granite shrapnel that shredded several square miles of Washington like a leviathan Claymore mine. At precisely one minute intervals, four more 3 kiloton nuclear weapons exploded at an altitude of 500 feet AGL above the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters, the NSA headquarters, the FBI headquarters, all of which were fully staffed in the middle of the day. In five minutes, the government of the United States of America was decapitated, and a quarter million of the people who made the place run were dead, or dying, or had simply disappeared.
 
Also at 1353 Eastern time, a missile had blown off just above the New York Stock Exchange, in New York City, and thousands of years of collective financial knowledge and experience evaporated in the nuclear flame. In one minute intervals, others had hit the financial centers of Boston and Baltimore, and the Naval base at Norfolk, Virginia.
 
Simultaneously, within the same 10-minute window of hell, nuclear tipped cruise missiles devastated the largest intermodel shipping facility on the West coast at San Pedro harbor, exploded just above the Library Tower in central Los Angeles, and short circuited the computer technology ghetto of Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County, big time. One exploded ten feet away from the top of the Bank of America Building in San Francisco and set much of the east slope of the city ablaze. Another giant fireball flared among the phalanx of office towers along the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, instantly obliterating Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state government of California, the largest state economy in the US, the seventh largest economy in the world. Two ripped open the heart of Portland, Oregon, one shattered the financial district of Seattle, and the last one turned the Microsoft campus into a pillar of fire and smoke, wiping from the face of history, in a second, the IT giant that had revolutionized global communications.
 
It was 0803, Hawaii time. Ten minutes.
 
Three million Americans dead. And not a trace of the assault fleet remained on the surface of any ocean.
 
Vice-President Elect Gavin Newsom was in his bedroom at home in Pacific Heights, his window overlooking the Golden Gate and the Marin bluffs. He thought he heard an oddly loud crack of thunder and saw a flash reflected on the hills across the inlet, but it was a clear day and nothing else seemed out of place. He continued packing for the return trip to Washington, his second since the election, to continue his transition briefings and begin organizing his staff. His nomination as Hillary's running mate had come as a huge surprise, and he was elated.
 
Someone rapped on the door, loudly, twice, and without waiting for a reply the senior Secret Service officer on his detail opened it and stepped quickly in. "Come with me, now," he said. Gavin was startled. "I need to finish packing," he replied.
 
"No time, sir. Something has happened. Very big. I fear. No details yet. We have to get you out of here, NOW! RIGHT NOW! GO! GO! GO!" He grabbed Newsom's arm, swung him around, and pushed him out the door, where two other Secret Service agents flanked him down the stairs and out to a running black Suburban waiting in the garage. They pushed him into the back seat, jumped in, and the driver gunned the engine, out the drive, down the street, tires squealing. Nobody spoke until they were headed over the Bridge, northbound at seventy-five miles an hour, weaving through the traffic which wasn't yet the gridlock it would soon become.
 
"What the hell's going on?" he finally demanded.
 
"Okay. This is what I know," the officer said. "The US has apparently sustained multiple nuclear attacks in the last fifteen minutes, including Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Financial district. We're not sure how many, at least ten, maybe twenty. Lots of dead.  Got the White House, the Capital, the Pentagon. Our job is to get you on an airplane at the nearest functioning airport, that'll be Novato, and get you to a safe place.  Prestissimo."
 
"Where?" Newsom asked. Things were moving way too fast now.
 
"Don't know yet. We'll get orders."
 
The Air Force Learjet had been airborne for two minutes when a cell phone buzzed, and the Secret Service captain answered it and handed it off to the Vice President Elect. "It's Mr. Cheney, sir," he said.
 
"Gavin?" Dick Cheney asked. "Yes, sir," Newsom replied, subdued, for the events of the last hour had sobered up his elated mood considerably.
 
"Okay, Gavin. I don't know what you know, so I'll tell you what I can. There have been approximately 20 nuclear strikes on government and financial targets in the US, about an hour ago. No real damage estimate yet, except that it's awful. A hundred times 9/11, maybe a thousand times. I happened to be at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and have moved into Cheyenne Mountain to set up a temporary HQ, until we get things sorted out. As you know Cheyenne was vacated by NORAD a few years ago, so we have plenty of space. You will be flown here, nonstop."
 
"I know you haven't a lot of national and international experience." Cheney had thought of saying that Newsom had none, but Newsom would be too painfully aware of that. He didn't need reminding. "The President is missing and presumed dead. So is Mrs. Clinton. So you may become the next president, in about six weeks. I don't know.  he Constitution says the Vice President succeeds a president who is dead or disabled, but it doesn't say what happens if the President Elect dies before being inaugurated. I suppose the Court will have to answer that, if we can cobble one together by then. In the meantime, I will assume you will be inaugurated. You'll have a steep learning curve, a real steep curve. All presidents do, under the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances."
 
The next day a hard winter storm roared down the West coast from Alaska, pelting rescue workers in bombed out city centers with hard, cold rain, that did not let up for a week. People alive but injured or trapped in the wreckage died of hypothermia before they were found. Two days later, a cold front out of Canada brought heavy snow to the Northeast. Millions were already without electricity, and in a week of subzero weather hundreds of thousands more died. More than four million, altogether. More than one of every one hundred Americans.
 
Al Qaeda had picked December 7 because it was the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and because, just before Christmas, the Infidel holiday, it would destroy the Christmas shopping season so important to so many retailers, driving another nail into the national economy of the Great Satan. And it would destroy the festive spirit of the season for millions of Americans, perhaps for all. The perfect psyop. Psychological warfare. And the weather forecasters had predicted severe winter storms on both coasts during the week immediately after disaster.
 
Al Qaeda leaders had calculated, correctly, that by turning up the violence in Iraq during the weeks before the 2006 election it could achieve an anti-war Democratic Congress that would vote to end America's wars in the Middle East, and then by turning down the violence in Iraq after the election of an anti-war Democratic Congress, it could lull America into a false sense of safety and security in anticipation of the "peace in our time" that America's new ruling party had promised would follow from what Al Qaeda perceived, correctly, as America's retreat before the unstoppable determination of the Islamic Resistance Movement, the Jihad. America did not call it that, of course. The Americans thought they were just ending a bad and illegal war ginned up by George W. Bush to depose Saddam Hussein who had proven not to have WMDs after all, the ones the Americans had never found, the ones buried in Syria. Al Qaeda saw more clearly. It was a capitulation, a de facto surrender of the Middle East to the coming Islamic Caliphate that would someday rule the world. The martyrs of Islam had beaten the Great Satan to its knees. In time they would cut off its head.
 
By Christmas, the American economy had imploded. Inflation soared, unemployment soared, businesses closed, cities that had suffered direct hits became ghost towns. Tax revenues evaporated, leaving state governments without funds to pay unemployment benefits or teachers' salaries. With the New York Stock Exchange gone, stock trading ended, and values plummeted. Retirement assets and pension funds disappeared in a wink. Nobody knew what to expect. Real estate crashed, and major banks filed for bankruptcy. With the collapse of the American economy, the largest on earth, the most productive country on earth, with just 5% of the global population producing one third of the global economic output, the rest of the global economy fell into chaos. Oil shipments stopped, food shipments stopped, and in that winter millions of people in third world countries starved to death.
 
The America era was over.
 
"In the spring of 1941, Nazi Germany was poised to dominate the earth. France, the low countries, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and much of Poland had been overrun by the Germans. All of Europe, save neutral Sweden and Switzerland, was in the hands of Hitler's friends and allies: dictators or monarchs who ruled fascist Italy, Vichy France, Franco's Spain, Portugal, the Balkan countries, Finland, and above all the Soviet Union."
 
"A single German division under General Erwin Rommel, sent to rescue beleaguered Italians in Libya, drove Britain's Middle Eastern armies flying and threatened the Suez lifeline; while in Iraq a coup d'etat by the pro-German Rashid Ali cut the land road to India. In Asia, Germany's ally, Japan, was coiled to strike, ready to take Southeast Asia and invade India. No need to involve the United States; by seizing the Indies, Japan could break the American embargo and obtain all the oil needed for the Axis Powers to pursue their war aims.
 
"Hitler should have sent the bulk of his armies to serve under Rommel, who would have done what Alexander did and Bonaparte failed to do: He would have taken the Middle East and led his armies to India. There he would have linked up with the Japanese. Europe, Asia, and Africa, would have belonged to the coalition of dictators and militarists."
 
"The Nazi-Soviet-Japanese alliance commanded armed forces and resources that utterly dwarfed the military resources that the holdouts, Britain (with its empire), and the United States, could field. The English-speaking countries would have been isolated in a hostile world and would have had no realistic option but to make their peace with the enemy, retaining some autonomy for a time, perhaps, but doomed ultimately to succumb. Nazi Germany, as leader of the coalition, would have ruled the world."
 
"Only Hitler's astonishing blunder in betraying and invading his Soviet ally kept it from happening." - David Frompkin, Professor of International Relations and History, Boston University, writing in What If: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (Putnam 1999) pp. 308, 309.
 
History is made, wars are won and lost, cultures and nations and civilizations come and go, rise and fall, as much by blunders as by victories.
 
The failure of many Americans, including many of the leading Democrats in Congress, and some Republicans, to fully appreciate the persistent, long-term threat posed to America's liberties and survival, and to the future of Liberal Democracies everywhere, by an Islamic Resistance Movement that envisions a world dominated and defined by an Islamic Caliphate of religious totalitarianism, and which will fight any war, make any sacrifice, suffer any hardship, and pay any price to achieve it, may prove to be the kind of blunder upon which the fate of America turns, and falls.
 
Raymond S. Kraft is an attorney and writer in northern California.

[Artcolley]

Tylergal
THank you for posting that article. It sums up perfectly my greatest fears at this time.

[tidycat]

Tylergal, thank you.  That is tremendous.  The book I mentioned, Showdown with Nuclear Iran, contains a first chapter that is a similar fictional portrayal of how easily the Iranians could mount nuclear weapons and with only 3-6 of them launched off our shores could decapitate America and send us back to the 1800s, literally.  Both of these accounts are very plausible.  Most Americans don't realize this.  It is so very scary.

tidycat

[tidycat]

Tylergal, is that from a book, or an article?  Is the person you mention at the bottom the author?  At first I thought you had written it!

[mrs. red]

Tyler... great article and too many get it and far too many don't -

it's funny the poeple I have met from the military and in fact two men I know serving every day that truly feel this is the most important mission of our time  - none are so called born Americans, well that's not entirely correct - two of them are first generation American... their family came over from CUBA in 1962 when Batista fell and Castro took over... both of my friend's brothers are enlisted and have indeed re-upped not twice but three times... they both have told me that the children make it all worthwhile... and to further bear what they tell me... the soldier I met last year was from Hati and his fondest memories of being a child was the American soldiers and that is why he enlisted...


I pray every day for this country... we are in the times of our lives... Tyler's post may have been a what could happen.... but it is my biggest fear of all times that it is what will happen and we will all be sorry....

it truly frightens me beyond belief////