Jack

The Meme that can Knock Out Obama

2012-01-10T08:13:00.001-05:00

When I’m not ranting about politics I’m employed by US and foreign manufacturers to analyse their products and business models and create marketing communications strategies and tactics to improve their sales. A major part of that job is creative thinking that takes the available assets and known factors, powers them with the right words, and mobilizes them against the competition.

Every once and a while when looking at a company’s situation, an idea emerges that is so darned perfect for the situation you get really excited. Then the client gets really excited, then the market, and then - it works.

So, I was suddenly struck by an idea yesterday that puts Obama in a box he can’t get out of. It’s a positioning that forces him to deny soemthing that’s undeniable and explains all his bad behavior.

Barack Obama just isn’t into being president any longer.

It explains all the golf, the parties, the travels, the failure to call congressmen, establish comraderie, reach out to his peers in other countries, or establish a SOFA with the president of Iraq. He was so focused on the hunt that bagging the job was anti-climactic. He wanted to win the presidency, not actually be president.

Now, he’s caught in a horrible position. He has to run for the sake of his party, his ideology, the Wall Street donors that gave a fortune to his campaigns. But, sadly, he really isn’t into it. The pressure is aging him, he’s isolating himself more and more, according to reports. His second Chief of Staff just left a year early. His wife doesn’t even want to live in DC. The guy is stuck.

You don’t phone in the presidency from the golf course unless you’d simply rather be on the golf course. You don’t manage one or two signature pieces of legislation in four years unless you haven’t got the enthusiam to do a lot more. And then, how can you get fired up when your key achievement is about to be declared unconstitutional, and your big money bill was a failure that can’t be explained away under your own economic models. Frankly, the job may be too tough for him. After all, his only work experience, prior to politics, was as a community organizer - that’s not a slap at him, it’s just a fact. This job is a lot bigger.

But, Obama has no choice. He has to run and make it look like he’s into it - even if he’s not. The bloom is off the rose. The job is no longer cloaked in mystery and challenge. It’s a prison sentance. He’s hoping the next four years go fast.

If this “he’s not really into it” meme gets out there, it’s all over for Mr. Obama. It will be too hard to deny given his own actions and the circumstances around him. And, the closer we get to the election, the more it will seem to prove true.

If you communicate with a congressman, a Senator, a candidate, Reince Priebus or someone who can get this idea to the Powers That Be, please do. Or just retweet the link to this page.

It can’t hurt.

From Boer War to Bore War A Review of War Horse

2012-01-02T17:09:00.001-05:00

Every New Years eve, my wife and I take in three movies. Then we head home to watch the Times Square festivities on TV. This year, because of the running time of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and War Horse, we really didn’t have time for a third - which is a good thing because there wasn’t a third movie we both wanted to see. TTSS wasn’t playing yet in Pittsburgh or that would have been our choice.

Dragon Tattoo? Go. Absolutely a terriffic movie. Lots of Hitchcockian elements, too, that were delightful. Rooney Mara is an amazing actress who transcends, in this one character, anything I ever saw Meryl Streep do. Note to Rooney - eat something, drink some milkshakes, beef up.

The only negative comments I read were in a few fan reviews. Some friends said the “sex scenes were too violent.” True, there’s violence and it’s distrurbing, but integral to the story. I really didn’t pay attention to those who said they preferred the Swedish version because I haven’t seen it. So, I suppose without that bias to influence me, I thought the film was great.

On the other hand, War Horse is so bad, so unredeemingly faulty, that I can’t spend this entry just praising Dragon Tattoo. I have to warn you about War Horse.

Briefly, it’s a bad story with poor character development, technically a throwback, and long and tedious. Oh, the acting is terrible, too.

The film opens as a young man witnesses the birth of a colt and within two minutes he’s decided he is going to devote his life to this animal. We don’t know why exactly, the kid has no other apparent interests. No girl friends, no friends at all, really. Everyone keeps repeating that there’s something special about the animal. Yeah. If you say so. Actually, the animal kept changing throughout the movie. Sure, it had to grow and age a little. But at one point, you could clearly see where his forehead star had been painted on over an existing diamond shape. Wierd, too, because they could have brought the horse with the natural star in for the close-up and then swapped them out for a wide shot.

As a colt, the animal warms up to the lad because he offers it a bright red apple. We see the animal react to the offer with interest, and when the camera cuts back to the young fellow, his apple is no longer ripe red. Okay. Then the kid once again extends the apple to the horse who continues to keep his distance. And back to the boy. Now the apple has a big bite taken from it but the kid isn’t chewing. So what is going on? Who is in charge of continuity?

Oh, and you can be sure the kid didn’t eat the apple because he can’t shut his mouth. I mean whether he’s talking or not, his mouth is always, always open. I remember my mother once said that was a sign of “adenoids”, whatever that means. His father is a stereotypical drunken, abusive Irishman (thanks a lot, Spielberg. Bet you love stereotypes as much as I do) enabled by his mother. Curiously, we find out at the outset that Dad had served with the British military in the Boer War. Ironically, boredom sets in not long thereafter and remains a leight motif. Here’s some of the flaws I found so vexing.

Dad’s Boer War regimental colors, we are told, are a good luck talisman, and are passed to each caretaker of the horse. They are such good luck that one guy gets killed during his first charge into battle. And just about everyone else who gets close to the horse suffers, too - including anyone who pays anything to own the horse, only to lose all the money they paid, along with all their worldly possessions like food, saddles and granddaughters. Though not the film’s intent, it’s clear, the horse, like most horses in stories, is a bringer of destruction.

But first, there was the farm field. The horse, named that timeless favorite of horse names - Joey, (not Flicka, not Silver, not Black Beauty...but...Joey) plows a field and that makes him a hero because he’s not a big powerful draught horse and the field was in horrible shape. Okay. But check this out. The field is on the side of a hill and it would make a better quarry than a vegetable garden. The landlord even advises the kid to start Joey (not a dancer) at the top of the hill so gravity will help him plow as he heads downhill. It makes sense, there’s at least a 15 degree slope and it’s hard work.

Nevertheless, the horse delivers, turnips get planted and they grow into beautiful plants about to be harvested. However, there’s suddenly a torrential downpour and the field - that hillside of gravel - is flooded like a rice paddy. Now, how you flood a hillside? That had to be the dryest piece of ground in Ireland. And lest you think I’m being picky, you have to understand how obvious this flaw is. Even the characters point out how steep and rocky the hillside is. Gimme a break.

Anyway, Joey (not a kangaroo) is sold to a soldier on his way to the fields of France and WW1, and we see it placed in a makeshift stall at their bivouac next door to a black stallion destined to become Joey’s second best friend. Farmboy says goodbye and promises to find Joey (not a lounge singer), which is how we know Joey will get lost. 
By this point I recognized a directorial look reminiscent of Old Yeller. The sets, the story, the acting, the camera angles all look like vintage Disney. There’s even a full frame shot of Dad’s face with a glorious sky behind him. The only difference is Disney would have centered the guy and Spielberg chose to compose him off-center, which is more contemporary. But there’s something else vintage that drove me crazy. The lighting.

The lighting in War Horse sucks.

Like at the bivouac. You’ve got a light source, presumably the sun, coming from behind and left of the camera. To the right is a black horse. You’re not going to be able to see any detial in the horse’s face without a lot of light (there was a better way to do it and I suspect James Cameron would have thought of it) so they blew (or based on the color temperature one could say they blue) a ton of light onto the black horse’s face. Every time the horse nodded, the light shot under or over the horse’s mane and blasted the soldier behind him, turning him pale and blue.

It reminded me of the many old Westerns filmed in the Hollywood Hills at the same familiar rock outcroppings. Rock outcroppings have a lot of shadows so film crews would use reflectors to fill and provide shadow details. Characters often cast two shadows and moved through hot spots where crinkles on the reflectors were evident. Cheap looking.

The horse eventually encounters a portly old Frenchman and his grandaughter who were so over-the-top that I am convinced when they left the set of War Horse they spent their evenings as Tevia and Bielke. “Oooh Grandpere, may I ride ze horse to my death? Even zo ma bones, zay are zo brittle I must take ze green medicine?” So endearing I wanted to yell, “Shut up!”

I couldn’t get to know any of the characters. Maybe there were too many. They were introduced but not well developed. And the war scenes were impersonal. I don’t think there was a single image of an enemy shooting. There were long-range machine guns, mortars and artillary images. But no enemy in a trench drawing a bead. Very distant.

And the trench. That was another problem.

There’s a scene when the Brits have taken the German trench and there are German bodies scattered here and there still wearing gas masks. All of a sudden gas grenades hit the trench. Do you think anyone grabs a mask off a dead German to save his own neck? Have they no survival instincts? There are masks everywhere! Spielberg put them there cause they’re scary. But they’re not as scary as seared lungs, right?

And to make matters worse, farmboy’s friend is consumed by gas as he calls out to him, yet later, he’s okay and farmboy is the one with chemical burns. Bad luck, Old Bean.

Anyway, they’re about to kill the horse, which there’s a lot of in this movie, but he’s rescued by a miracle that anyone in the theatre could have predicted. He hears farmboy whistle for him the same way he did on the farm. Spielberg takes so long to develop this that I really wanted to shout (again) “Hey, Joey, get yer bloody ass over there.”

But I thought I shout at you, instead.

The Dutch Sanction

2011-12-20T10:28:00.002-05:00

I read in The Drudge Report that Dutch scientists have mutated two genes within avian flu, H5N1, to make it more virulent, more contagious and more deadly - capable of being spread on the wind.

This makes those scientists more dangerous than the pathogen they have created.

First, they have knowledge of a very deadly process that can be weaponized by merely releasing it. Think of it like a suicide bomber. A fanatic exposes himself and takes a trip around the world. The destruction would be measured in hundreds of millions of lives.

So what do we know of these scientists? We know they have bad judgment. They may also be naive and arrogant. In any case. We can be assured that this discovery, if true, will most certainly someday cause great damage unless some action is taken right now. We also know that the Netherlands is plagued by radical Islamists who have wantonly murdered to enforce their radical views and who regularly threaten the public with their lives should the Islamists simply be offended by a word or deed. Not harmed - just offended.

The threats are even greater than that posed by Oppenheimer’s crew when they created the atomic bomb. A bomb is so expensive only a state can afford to create one. Bombs cannot procreate and they are not dispersed by the wind. An atomic bomb or ten - however dangerous - are not nearly as dangerous as a deadly wind-borne virus, and that is what the Dutch have given us.

Unfortunately, these scientists could be so weak in terms of their morals or judgment that they would publish their findings - releasing their secrets to those who would use the virus simply to unleash misery upon the world. Or, they could be threatened and held hostage, their families or an entire group of people could be held hostage by terrorists, until the scientists relented and revealed their secrets. And terrorists do not seem to fear mutually assured destruction.

The discovery is an existential threat to all humankind, a threat greater than nuclear weapons.

The only solution, I’m afraid, is for a state to kill every one who worked on the project. It’s that bad. They should be assassinated and their work utterly destroyed. Unless you have a better plan.

Jonah Goldberg Inspired This Post

2011-12-14T09:12:00.005-05:00

I just read his piece, “Newtzilla to the Rescue” and enjoyed the satisfaction of reading that an NRO superstar had reached the same conclusion I had reached, in many respects, about Mr. Gingrich. See Just Two Speeches Away from the Presidency.

Goldberg’s story got my hackles up by reminding me about the vocal GOP establishment and the Establishment/Media cabal, the writers and politicians who are attacking Newt and failing to offer a better alternative. What they don’t see, and what the Tea Partiers see clearly, is that Newt is never going to be the Not Romney. He’s gaining ground because he’s the Not Obama.

The Tea Partiers, bloggers, and Top Conservatives On Twitter that I know, want to see Newt eviscerate Obama. And while they do not care whether or not he performs that act metaphorically, they are imagining one grand debate. Think about it. You’d have teacher against teacher, grasshopper. Ego against ego. Chamberlain versus Churchill, Ken Jennings toe-to-toe with Big Blue Statist. Andrea Tantaros wrestling Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Yeah, maybe that’s just me. But you get the idea.

It would be the moment we have all been waiting for. Newt wielding his vorpal blade, “Mr. President, I knew Hubert Shlafly, Hubert Shlafly was a friend of mine (wait for it). Mr. President, you’re no Hubert Shlafly.”

Tears would roll. Sobs of joy would be audible from entire suburban neighborhoods. There would be fist bumps and the other thing people do when they jump into each other and slam their beer guts together. It would awaken America like Whoville on Christmas Day.

It really does come down to this. Newt knew to run against Obama from the start. He has honed his weapons and we know what is coming just as surely as we knew the plot for Home Alone Two.

Personally, I’m hoping for something on this order:

“Mr. President, I’m fairly widely regarded as a person with ideas, but I can say without fear of equivocation, that never in my wildest imagination did I think I would say these words to a president of the United States. Mr. Obama, you are a Marxist and therefore an existential threat to our Nation and its way of life. You must be defeated or we will all be defeated. Our dreams will cease to exist like they did for the people of the Soviet Union, our future will freeze in time like it did for the people of Cuba. Our government will become even more bloated and fetid like most of Europe is today. Now, that is not a deduction on my part. That is the only conclusion the American people can reach when they examine your very words. You renounced the free enterprise system in December 2011 when you stated clearly and in context that “Capitalism is a failure.” You have complained incessantly that there is a disparity between economic classes in America that you believe the government should fix by taking from the wealthy and distributing it to the poor - precisely how Marx defined communism. Even Robin Hood knew better. He took from the government and gave to the poor. He let the rich be. You know, envy is so unbecoming as to be regarded as sinful in some quarters.

You have made friends of the worst of America - it’s haters like Bill Ayers the terrorist bomber. Like the Black Panthers who violently threatened voters that might have denied you your office. Like the drug cartels who you hoped would help you persude the Congress to ban guns - though the lesson we learned is that we have much more to fear from government than we do from Mexican Drug Lords. Or, like the sadly misinformed Occupy movement who claim to be a 99 percent minority incapable of working within a system designed specifically to deliver up all of its power to even just 51 percent.

“You have shut down industry and lamented the loss of jobs. You have forced American companies to keep their money offshore yet admonished citizens to buy American.

“You have squandered the blood of heroes so you could remove our military from a conflict that is not over - just so you could appease your voters.

“You have apologized for our greatness, you have bowed to lesser nations and you have humiliated us across the world with the zeal of a missionary.

“You have spent this Nation’s treasure like a profligate. You have indebted us to a greater degree than all of your predecessors, combined. And, you have failed to take responsibility for the damage you have caused. Instead, you have, on every occasion, blamed President Bush for leaving this Nation in arrears.

“The truth is, Mr. President, until Mr. Bush’s last year in office - and despite the worst enemy attack on US soil in our history, our country and our economy was strong and people were at work. It was a Democrat-controlled congress that spent the money - you know Mr. Bush didn’t write the bills he signed. But you, you have had your own Congress, your own Senate - now that the people have taken back their House from you. So, when you complain that work remains to be done, one must wonder how you fail to realize that you could have passed any bill you wanted. You had all the votes.

“Now, you must run on your lack of a record. You have not just wasted the great opportunity and the incredible honor you were given. You have soiled it.

“I am here to take it back.”

Why Mark Steyn is Wrong about Newt

2011-11-30T06:52:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, Mark Steyn subbed for Rush Limbaugh.

Don't get me wrong, I think Steyn is a terrific radio host, a superb wit, a true Conservative and the kind of guy who I'd like to call a friend. In fact, as it turns out we do have mutual friends. Maybe some day I'll get to meet Mark. I'd like that.

But yesterday he ranted on an on about Newt Gingrich, asserting that the large majority of the ideas that have caused Newt to be credited as a great thinker are horribly flawed beyond redemption. To hear Steyn tell it, if we weren't being seduced by Gingrich's debate style we would see right through these awful, convoluted, contradictory, Escher-like visions for a Gingrich world.

Mark may be right on all counts - but he has missed the point entirely. It's all about Newt as a quintessential American.

A few years ago I engaged in a political discussion with some friends in Madrid. My Spanish isn't that good so it was difficult, but I knew what they were saying. They were trashing George W. Bush over the war on terror, which at that time had progressed to Shock and Awe and no further. The discussion turned to generalizations about the people of America and their character. How could we, for example, not revolt when there was such an opposition of clearly strong, well verbalized and very public dissension, shared to a great an extent by these Spaniards, who had just elected Zapatero and had not yet seen their friends carved up by shards of what used to be a commuter train.

I did not get into the weeds with them. I just asked them if they understood us, if they knew what was the essence of America. They did not, they didn't even know how to approach an answer. I explained, "America es una idea." That's it. That's why Steyn was wrong about Newt and why he thinks we're being lulled into embracing a dreamer of labyrinths.

The reality is that America, as an idea, is itself horribly flawed, very high maintenance, completely entropic, and overly complex to the highest degree possible without ceasing to exist - and yet it does. It continues to, I would submit, thrive. Yet, as Americans, we no more expect perfection from an idea than we expect sinlessness from Christians. It is only in the marketplace of ideas where American Conservatism values the effort even more than the outcome. We will invest our lives and our fortunes in a good idea and it has been that way from the beginning.

Because in the DNA of every American we have a reverence for ideas, we respect them, we cherish them, we spend our fortunes to nurture them. We name them; Mac, light bulb, TV, assembly line, Windows 7, movies, Blues, Rock 'n Roll, telephone, iPhone, MRI, One small step for man, cheeseburger, cowboy, oil well, Mach one, basketball, New York, LA, Peoria.

The earth is fertile here for the growth of ideas. So much so, even the seasons anticipate the harvest. We knew that each summer solstice brought with it a new iteration from the mind of Steve Jobs, for example. Yes, ideas grow very well, that's why some of our best traveled from somewhere else to be planted in our soil, traveling by Einstein, Tesla, Marconi, de Tocqueville among them. Okay, even Cowell.

Mark, when we look at president Obama, we see no ideas, we hear no plans, we gain no insights. He imbues within us no anticipation of an American Spring because he has no ideas. Ideas are so fundamental to American leadership that his lack of vision only gives life to the questions concerning his citizenship. What was the last great Kenyan idea?

But despite the fact that nothing has grown, we look forward to the fall harvest. We will pull out this weed, we will throw it on the compost heap, we will put it from our minds, we will briefly lament the lost season and then we will lovingly, respectfully, honor the idea that we are endowed by our Creator with the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and then we will repeat the process until we get it right.

Irene. Big Deal.

2011-08-29T08:51:00.003-04:00

The media are rushing to defend their over-coverage of the fizzled hurricane and, in the process, they’re forced to defend state, local and federal government actions. Already we’re hearing the dead being used as a defense. “Do you think the family’s of the six dead North Carolinians think the warnings were overdone?” was one defense this morning on Fox.

Of course, these comments are beside the point.

The point is that the government got several things wrong in a way that’s symptomatic of government’s major shortcomings. First, government is ham-handed. It is packed with people who think they know better than you how to run your life, and they do so without your consent. Mayor Bloomberg is a great example. If he’s not complaining about your diet, he’s demanding you leave your home because a storm is approaching. His excuse, in the case of the storm, is that you will put a burden on emergency services if you get into trouble. Problem is, while Bloomberg is not in charge of you, he is in charge of emergency services and all he needs to say is, “Fine, stay home. But when the storm’s blowing and you’re crying for help, we won’t be able to reach you so you’re on your own.” Fair enough. But don’t tell me I have to leave my house. You are not welcome to make any rules about my house. Period.

And NOAA. They got it very wrong. Today, they’re saying it’s better to over-predict than to under-predict and, by the way, they got the track exactly right. Well, let’s just predict rain for every day opf the week. If we’re right, nobody cares. If we’re wrong, everyone’s delighted with the sunshine. What a bogus argument!

It’s your job to get it right. You missed the dry air mass that interdicted the storm. You missed the extremely low pressure. You missed a lot of details.

The problem is, a government agency carries a certain elevated import or credibility that government agencies are not entitled to. They have never earned their credibility and every time they’re put to the test, they screw up. The government screws up about everything it touches.

Obama’s “Nice job, Brownie,” moment with Napolitano and Fugate was a Little League trophy ceremony. Congratulations on handling the storm of the century, er year, er week, so well. Okay, well here’s a thought. Do you think the families of the six dead in North Carolina think you did such a good job?

How I’d Explain the Debt Ceiling Crisis

2011-07-14T14:00:00.002-04:00

If I were John Boehner, Speaker of the House:

“As you know, the Republican Leadership has been trying desperately since we were elected to the majority in the House of Representatives, to bring sound financial policy to our government.

But now, the President, the pilot of this great big corporate jet that we’re all riding in as a nation, has come back from his lofty perch in the nose of the plane to inform us that we’re running out of fuel, and we’re going down. Instead of telling us he’s going to throttle back, save the fuel we have left, and look for some soft turf for an emergency landing - he wants to know what WE’RE going to do about it. Turns out, he didn’t file a flight plan. He didn’t calculate how much fuel we’d need for our trip. And, he dumped a most of our fuel while we were in flight. Makes us wonder what he was thinking. Naturally, we make our recommendations - come down to earth, throttle back, measure your resources.

But instead, he demands to fill our fuel tanks with blood from the biggest and strongest of the passengers, the very one’s who’ll help us evacuate if we come down hard. Even if it would work, there’s not enough blood in all of them to make much difference. It would just make it worse for all of us. Clearly, it’s in our own best interests to resist that idea.

Since we have only a majority in the House it’s easy to accuse us of just blocking progress. But the polls show that most of you understand that what we’re blocking is just more of the same “tax and spend” that got us into this mess in the first place. On the other hand, what we’re trying to provide is leadership that you are not seeing from the President and the Democrat-controlled Senate. I deeply regret having to say those words because we Americans have a strong tradition of looking to the holder of the nation’s highest office with a respect that ordinarily would cause one to forebear such direct criticism. We have reached a point with his conduct, however, where such silence concerning it becomes tantamount to a lie.

For example, unlike the presidents before him, this President has failed to produce a budget for the operation of his government. The failure to lead this country financially is dangerous and irresponsible, and the condition we find ourselves in today is all the proof you need. Our national security is impacted by our financial stability.

But to threaten to not pay our military, or to criticise us when we try to step in and attempt fill the leadership vacuum makes us suspicious of the president’s abilities and intentions. We ask, “If he could lead, wouldn’t we be seeing it?” If he could do something good for the nation, wouldn’t he?

Here are four facts that are not in dispute:

-In just two years, this President has driven our nation deeper into debt than all the presidents before him combined.

-This President has failed to produce a budget for the operation of government.

-This President has given away the nations wealth on the promise of rapid reductions in unemployment.

-The President has failed to put before the American people any concrete plan, meaning even a single sentence in written form, as a proposal for solving the debt crisis.

This financial crisis is of his making. These four facts cast doubt on his ability and sincerity and may explain why he has been unable to make anything positive happen.

Of course, I fully expect a shallow response to what I’ve just said. There will be those standing in the midst of the disaster crying, “how dare we speak ill of the President.” We’ll be upbraided by the President’s minions and the media sycophants for blaming him instead of addressing the problem. You’ll pardon us if we ignore that, if we refuse to engage in those diversions and instead insist that you pundits get serious and do your jobs.

You see, the facts are not in dispute. It IS the President’s problem. Now, we must try to solve it without his help and with our best ideas and intentions. We can’t all be the pilot, so we’ll have to do it somehow from the back of the plane, with the people’s help.”

The Hidden Problem with The Budget Deal

2011-04-09T11:32:00.004-04:00

I used to produce TV advertising for a car dealer and as I write this I'm reminded of the saying, "It isn't the deal you got - it's the deal you think you got." In other words, even if you paid way too much, if you think you got a good deal, that's all that matters. I work with a guy who once visited a dealer and told him, "I only have $18,000 to spend, so I want your best deal." Guess how much his van cost.

But, I'm not going to pass judgment here on the deal Speaker Boehner thinks he got. Because we are still spending more than we collect, I do question the level of accomplishment. What really bothers me is quite different than the substance of the deal.

What really bothers me is the GOP's inability to communicate the many persuasive arguments they had in their pockets - that I believe would have allowed them to achieve much more than they did - by getting the preponderance of public opinion on their side. They have to learn how to fight and argue in ways that capture the public's imagination.

For example, their sole argument was framed around the two words, "cutting spending." That same rhetoric was employed the last time the two parties squared off over keeping the government open. By changing the meme, the GOP could have made it much more difficult for the Democrats to say, "There you go again." For example, if the GOP had said they are "cutting the cost of government," it would have more squarely represented what was actually happening, and it would have reinforced the reasonableness of the Tea Party's demands to cut the size and cost of government. We know the Democrats cannot successfully argue against cutting the cost of government. Everybody wants that.

Further, cutting the cost of government does not imply cutting services. For example, when you shop, if you ask for a discount it doesn't mean you get less of an item - it simply means you pay less for an item.

The GOP never brought the argument out of the stratosphere and down to the level where most people could undertand it. For example, why did they never take the two-percent Boehner was asking for and related it to a single dollar? Instead they were always relating it to several trillion dollars. How reasonable and easy it is to understand when you hear, "Speaker Boehner wants to cut the budget by 2 cents on the dollar." Immediately opposition seems unreasonable. Heck, he could have started at a nickel using that kind of rhetoric.

When the Democrats complained about cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and NPR, the GOP should have responded, "But they're not government agencies." You Democrats who are always talking about the sin of giving tax breaks to special interests have to be willing to do what you ask of others. Show us by your example. Let's see you have the guts to cut spending for your own special interests.

And when Harry Reid said the GOP didn't care about women, why didn't the GOP remind Mr. Reid that his Nevada is where politicians look the other way when women prostitute themselves. Is that how Mr. Reid shows his respect for women? Let's see a show of hands of all the Democrats who believe that prostitution in Nevada demonstrates a proper respect for women - if you do, you should be voting for Planned Parenthood - it'll help keep Harry Reid's prostitutes in business.

Why didn't Speaker Boehner simply say, "Look. Most people in this country are opposed to abortion. Most people in this country don't think the government should pay for it and most people think it's bad enough that it exists. Planned Parenthood is simply going to have to find another way to pay for abortions. That's what the people want and, while I cannot speak for the Democrat party, the Republicans are determined, to the best of our ability, to represent the people. As far as other health-related issues are concerned, there are plenty of places for people to go and we have many entitlement programs in place already for providing health care to the indigent. If those aren't working, then perhaps Mr. Reid should not have advocated so vehemently recently for more government care - but less.

See. There are lots of great arguments that could have been made to appeal to the public. They should be being made right now. Today. Because the fight has just begun.

*crickets*

Israel Security Is real. TSA is not.

2011-03-10T17:26:00.003-05:00

Fifteen Hours ago I went through security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. As I entered the airport, I was interviewed by a 20-something female who spoke perfect English, Hebrew and, no doubt a couple other languages. First she carefully checked my facial features - glancing back and forth three time - while holding my passport photo at the same elevation as my face. She asked me, by name, how I was doing, and she watched my face as I answered. I suppose if I didn’t react with familiarity to my own name I was to be quickly yanked from the line. I passed the test.   She asked me questions about who I was traveling with, where I’d been, and if I had been responsible for my suitcase the entire time. Once satisfied, she motioned me over to an x-ray machine with a conveyor belt. A 20-something young man took my bag and labeled it, he scanned the bar code on the label and sent me to another line.

At that checkpoint, I took my suitcase to a countertop that had a permanent lectern of frosted glass elevated on stainless tubing. The lectern held touch screen displays left and right like an open book. As I approached my bag tag was scanned and the image produced by the x-ray machine was displayed after a couple finger-taps on the screen. Another 20-something female asked me to open my suitcase and I complied. She checked the screen and oriented the suitcase to the image. The dialog went something like this-

Her: (She picks a package out from between some clothes I had packed around it) What’s in here?
Me: A bowl.
Her: Where did you get it?
Me: I bought it in the Galilee, in Tabgha.
Her: Did you pack your suitcase yourself?
Me: Yes.
Her: Did anyone give you anything as a gift?
Me: No.
Her: Did you have your suitcase in your control the whole time you were in Israel?
Me: Yes.
Her: What is in these paper bags?
Me: Those are olive wood carvings.
Her: Where did you get them?
Me: Bethlehem.
Her: Did you buy other things?
Me: Yes.
Her: What did you buy?
Me: More of the same. Small items, mostly - souvenirs.
 Her: Okay, you can close your bag.  

What else do they do at Ben Gurion? They profile. Another group of caucasian Americans who had an Asian-American leader saw him pulled aside and interviewed for a half hour. A woman who left Israel a few days before her husband was interviewed alone, in a private room, by two men - one of whom was armed with an automatic weapon. She was repeatedly asked where he was, who he was with, what Arabs he knew, who his friends were in Israel and then she was asked the same questions over and over.

They use spies. There are people who walk around as though travelers, sitting at gates, watching faces and listening to conversations, who never leave the airport. I have seen them myself at JFK. After several hours I realized that some of the people I had noted who were meandering though the crowds waiting for flights to Israel were disappearing into a secure room where for just a moment, I saw several workers looking through suitcases. It was in a room with one-way glass and a combination of lighting and reflection allowed me to see for just a couple seconds. But it was clear as a bell what was going on.

But, there’s no pat down. There’s no radiation. No shoes come off, no computers come out of their cases, jackets are sent through the x-ray, but no belts come off. There’s a walk-through metal detector. And there are more questions at passport control.

It’s intelligent, respectful, and it works.

On the other hand, I was required to change terminals at JFK and just 12 hours after going through Israeli security, I went through TSA security. It might as well have been another planet, the differences were so extreme.

TSA eyes were not scanning me, my face, my demeanor. They were concentrating on what they’ve been trained to look at - paperwork, screens and images - processes. Am I putting things in trays that should go through the conveyor trayless? Yeah, that’ll help spot a terrorist. One of my traveling companions - a grandfatherly white man - was patted down. Ridiculous. All incidents have been caused by dark skinned, young Muslim men - none by 60-year old white German-American grandfathers. What you see in our airports is not security - it’s politics.

I had a plastic bag with two pounds of Dead Sea mud in an Army green Alice Pack that I carried on my back. The Israeli’s didn’t care - but the Americans missed it. It’s a liquid, a colloid, a prohibited soupy, viscous chemical mix, and they never even saw it. I know why, and if I wanted to transport an explosive, I know how it could be done now. Essentially, it slipped through because there’s no passion in the US for finding and outsmarting the terrorists - TSA just follows orders and uses no intuitive processes - because the TSA doesn’t really believe there are people who want to kill us.

That’s why we’ve had several terrorist incidents on our airplanes in just the past few years and why TSA has never caught a terrorist. The Israeli record is spotless.

Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead

2011-02-02T08:53:00.001-05:00

Democrats and the mainstream media are whistling past the graveyard. They’re talking about Obamacare like it’s a tennis match. Durbin just yesterday, and others, are referencing the won/lost court case standings. Yes, two Federal Judges have ruled that the Affordable Care Act (gag) is legit - and two have ruled against the government.

But that’s not the way these things work. This is a lot more like hunting than tennis.

Two Judges decided not to shoot at the Healthcare Law. They left it alone. That has no impact on the law. It doesn’t make it stronger, and it doesn’t detract from it. It has no effect.

However, another judge did take a shot at the bill and wounded it (the Virginia case). That had an effect and the government is forced to appeal that case.

Judge Vinson, the Federal Judge hearing the case brought by Florida and joined by 25 other states, ruled the Act unconstitutional. He further said that he would not enjoin the government from enforcing the Act because he had rendered it null and void. In other rather uncivil words, he shot it in the heart at close range and killed it. It does not exist anymore. It is not a law, it has no force and it is as though it never passed.

The government hopes to win an appeal and win at the Supreme Court, but that is unlikely.

What must happen now is for pressure to be brought to bear on the Administration to agree to take the case immediately to the Supreme Court. The Court could hear and render a verdict on the case in less than two months, saving the country a lot of pain and money in litigation.

Here are two ways to pressure the Administration: First, the victorious states must announce that they accept the verdict and will not implement any of the mandates provided for in the former law. In other words, they show they understand how to win. Then, the House should refuse to consider any legislation until the Administration agrees to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court. I believe the House could appeal to the Court to do so because they should have standing in the matter - they created the bill.

Meanwhile, it would be better for McCain and Graham and Hatch to just keep quiet. Hatch’s plan to repeal the individual mandate would leave the question of Congress’ Commerce Clause power undecided by the Supreme Court. We need the Court to address and roll back that authority. And stripping an act which no longer exists of its authority is simply silly, a futile exercise. You guys don’t have any idea how winners act, do you. Buh-Bye.

This Should Scare You

2011-01-28T09:46:00.004-05:00

All of us who have spoken publicly know that there’s the rare occasion when you must speak extemporaneously - and there's the norm, when you have time to prepare enough to make the speech look extemporaneous. Those are the best speeches.

It’s been 48 hours - enough time to let it settle in - since the State of the Union speech. My initial impressions have not been modified by the pundits, but they have been generally confirmed.

Essentially, it was a very poor speech. It rambled, lacked cohesion - even a theme - and it was full of inherent contradictions or statements that were false on their face. Obama talked about the country having great debt - yet he never took responsibility. Obama claimed we needed a Sputnik moment to replicate the commercial successes of the Space Program - yet he never mentioned gutting NASA’s budget and essentially shutting it down. Obama talked about American exceptionalism - but he praised not only the failed Soviet Union, but modern Communist China. Obama called for a budget freeze but in the same breath referred to it as a budget cut - and at the same time insisted we needed to hire 100,000 new teachers. His examples of American ingenuity, which he employed as a lever for more “investment,” meaning taxing and spending, were achievements which had been accomplished by people and businesses without any support or interference from the government. His joke about salmon fishing and canning regulation also fell flat - partly because it wasn’t funny, but mostly because he was making light of how his cronies spend most of their time - regulating, legislating and controlling other people’s lives. It was like he was mocking his audience.

But, what I haven’t heard said is how thin the speech was. It lacked the trappings of leadership. It was absent the heart-felt rhetoric or emotion or a personal conviction. I don’t think even Obama believed what he was saying. In fact, I’m certain he didn’t.

I remember a friend, a performer, once telling me that when you perform - you must not hold back. The audience can tell when you’r holding something back and they won’t like it.

In my opinion, we didn’t hear what Obama is really thinking, what he’s really planning for his next two years. But in our hearts, I suspect we know what it is, and we know for sure, it isn’t good.

Null and Void

2011-01-27T09:05:00.004-05:00

Associated Press reported yesterday that several state legislatures are working on bills to nullify Obamacare. 

“GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho

House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska,  
Texas and Wyoming are also talking about the idea.”  

At least one of those measures would call for the prosecution of anyone - including state officials - who refused to enforce the bill’s provisions. So, they’re serious.

But, according to the AP, “The efforts are completely unconstitutional in the eyes of most legal scholars because the U.S. Constitution deems federal laws ‘the supreme law of the land.’”

But one constitutional scholar disagrees. His name is Thomas Jefferson, he was intimately familiar with the Constitution and served as the third president of the United States. Though some today might regard the opinion of the Associated Press as more credible, in 1799, Jefferson wrote that "nullification ... is the rightful remedy" whenever the Federal government commits an act so egregious that the states cannot allow themselves to be compelled to submit. Jefferson created the doctrine to express his disgust with the Alien and Sedition Acts that were enacted by then-President John Adams during the war with France.

Certainly there is case law that clearly demonstrates the Supreme Court’s opinion that Federal Law supercedes state law. The Supreme Court may or may not one day turn a different direction. But in this case, we’re not looking at a clash between two contradictory laws. Nullification is a rejection of an act by the Federal government. In our opinion, the Constitution. It is, in effect, a means of suing the Federal Government outside of court by expressing simultaneously the state’s and the people’s sovereignty. Both of which, by the way, are guaranteed in the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

There are already law suits between states and the federal government where the states are suing the Federal government for injurious legislation. Obamacare has recently been the subject of such suits filed by about half the Union. But, is that the only way to stop an out-of-control Federal government?

No. The ratification process enshrined within the Constitution shows that the Framers recognized the power and authority, post confederation, of state sovereignty. They allowed for any part of the Constitution itself to be altered if simply enough state legislatures so desired. That Constitutional authority does not suggest that the Federal Government, its Congress or its Supreme Court is the superior governing body. It suggests the opposite.  This is a very important argument to those of us who see the strength of this nation, believe it or not, in its diversity - cemented by its great brotherhood - formed of a single idea. States that pass nullification laws are expressing their exquisite understanding of our freedom, and their willingness to participate in a Union of States, only as long as they are held sovereign. It is a midway point between oppression and secession.

Cruel and Usual

2011-01-12T10:17:00.000-05:00

The shooting at the Safeway may make it more difficult for those who are desperately seeking greater border security by playing into the hands of the Obama Administration and the Liberals who want porous borders. As usual, their minions are out making cruel accusations, trying to stir the pot with perverted statements.

The shootings in Tucson will make it seem to many as creating an extremely difficult situation for those who want more force on the border. Anything seen as presenting a violent potential will be used by the perverted Left as an example of violent speech.

Therefore, the time is right now to get out in front of this argument with some thoughtful and simple-to-understand comments to defeat the Left and rally the people who might otherwise be crestfallen by the turn of events in the face of their dire need for security.

Here are the words that need to be said in order to create a pre-emptive argument:

The lack of focus on the border may have been made even worse by this psychopath’s attack on our Republic. We must not be distracted from the greater peril.
The shooting at the Safeway is over, but the decapitations, the drug trade, the invasion of our sovereignty continues unabated. Will Obama speak to that?
As bad as it was, the shooting at the Safeway pales in comparison to the violence in Mexico that’s behind the drug trade coming across the border.
Why does Obama give more attention to the actions of a psychopath that threatened the life of one Congresswoman than he’s willing to give to the actions of a cartel that threaten entire States?
The Left is quick to make cruel accusations against their fellow Americans, yet where there is real crime, by foreign invaders, they are silent. It is time for them to join Americans everywhere and stand up for our sovereignty.

Oh, and when they make a cruel accusation, don’t address it. Just tell them it’s cruel, which makes it psychopathic - wanting deliberately to hurt innocent people is sick - and that it’s unfounded, and well beneath the standards you have set for yourself for public discourse. That ought to do it.

Deathers

2011-01-11T09:53:00.003-05:00

Like you, I’ve been consumed and saddened by the shootings in Arizona. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sense of it. Of course, that’s a futile effort. The shooter was irrational, crazy, maybe knew right from wrong, but you can’t rationalize an irrational act.

The really egregious part, the part that’s stirred the biggest reaction, has been the perverted attempt by politicians to try to elevate themselves and their political ideologies by standing on top of the corpses so they can get more attention. It’s an act that may actually be more twisted than the shootings themselves because it’s done by seemingly rational people. The pain inflicted by them on perhaps millions of others by accusing them, their words, and their beliefs of evoking any part of this tragedy is plainly an act of pre-meditated cruelty. And cruelty is psychopathic.

Why would they do it?

We all know someone who manages to turn the conversation around to them, no matter what the subject. It gets annoying. Like, “But enough about me, what do YOU think of me.” So, after you suddenly realize what you’re hearing - and how often it happens - understandably, you try to analyze your friend, why does she do that? Is she so insecure? Or maybe it’s the opposite, she’s so egocentric that she really only sees the world in the first person.

Perhaps, finally, you realize you can’t really know the answer, so you settle for the only facts you know for sure- that it’s symptomatic of something, that she does it, she does it constantly, and she does it predictably.

That’s where I’m at with the Liberals and Progressives. I can’t really analyze them, but I know what they’re doing is wrong and why it’s wrong. I know it’s cruel, and I know cruel is sick. But I’ve also just realized that what they’re saying is their most common discourse. They are obsessed with death as a tool for political ideology, while it seems quite clear that the opposite political ideology embraces discussions of life.

Sarah Palin was quick to point out that Obamacare’s rationing would lead to Death Panels. Proved true by the release of a private Democrat document. The progressives are still apoplectic for being called out - no doubt one of the reasons they chose to turn demographic targets into metaphoric rifle scope images on a Palin campaign piece.

Abortion is an easy example. As clearly as it seems to Conservatives that a death results, Progressives and Liberals have spilled drums of ink attempting to deny that anything but a surgery takes place. All I know is that when I have surgeries - the cells removed and destroyed all had my DNA - not someone else’s.

Why do the Liberals want a body count of US war dead, and not a body count of the enemy. To impose their cruelty. They want it to hurt, all the while they decry torturing our enemies.

Something is happening as you see the Liberals and Progressives sink further into the Dark Side. Their cache is fading, their credibility is being eroded by simple observation, their words are cutting more and more people who once felt there was truth in their claims that they represented the thoughts and dreams of their constituents - now, a lot of those dreams have turned to nightmares, and very few others have those thoughts, thank God.

So now, when the perverted legislative initiatives are presented once more to ban criticism of politicians and ban guns and ban public meetings, people will see more clearly what is happening. Free speech is inversely proportionate to political violence. But these politicians are opportunists. They are trying to make us believe that the behaviors of a sane society should be regulated on the basis of the acts of the insane among us.

That thought sits just a bit farther down the same scale of irrationality the shooter sits on.

Thoughts on the Giffords shooting.

2011-01-08T17:04:00.003-05:00

Guns
Anyone who has lived in this country for even the past few years has learned that we are a place where some people kill other people with guns. That’s a crime everywhere, so people who do that are not only morally wrong, they are criminally wrong, too. Only a very, very, very small percentage of people who ever own a gun use it to shoot someone. Nevertheless, a lot of people, including some who own guns, are continually trying to restrict gun ownership by rational people, on the basis of the behavior of irrational people. This shooter is clearly as irrational as they come.

Politics
When the president talks about a nut shooting someone, it tells the other nuts that they can get the president’s attention this way. Bad idea. He said nothing that he couldn’t have said on paper. He referred to the Congresswoman in the past tense though she is still very much alive, and he really added nothing. Bad form.

When the Daily KOS makes the Congresswoman a political target of its venom and then burns up the social media accusing every Republican and Conservative it can name for provoking this individual, it reflects the same dementia inherent in the shooter. This shooter needed no provocation and left zero evidence he had been provoked by anyone other than some of the best known Leftists - Hitler, for example - whose Mein Kampf was on the shooter’s recommended reading list.

Reaction
Some conservatives called for not politicizing the act. Of course, that’s not possible. Assassination is patently political. But the hasty reaction from Paul Krugman and the Daily KOS, are indicative of a deep sickness that appears to thrive in the political Left. It’s important for the Right to refuse to debate whether or not this criminal was provoked by the Tea Party or Sarah Palin, but instead, to simply respond, “That’s sick thinking, take it somewhere else.”

Government Warming

2010-12-22T11:57:00.000-05:00

Picture those Goriffic glaciers, as massive sections let go and crash into the green-blue water sending up huge plumes of spray. Edited to appear like they’re rushing into the sea, the visuals show slab after azure slab break away - calve, I think they call it - and drop violently into the drink.

It occurred to me that this is a metaphor for our society more than a lesson in global climate change. We are being ripped apart one slab at a time. As Dennis Miller might say, “we’re being sliced and diced like a sheep that just accidentally wandered into Osama Bin Laden’s cave in Tora Bora.” He might say that.

The point is, it’s a thousand cuts...we’re not paying attention to these Socialists, and we should be:

They said they wanted to preserve the land for us. So they took it from us.
We can’t build, sell, hunt on, cut a tree or even pee on that land now.
They said they wanted to end poverty. So they took money from those that had it.  We still have plenty of poverty. It lives in the ghetto the government created.
They said they wanted to provide affordable health care. They took more money.  As many as 50% of doctors report they may leave the profession. (CNN)
They wanted to make air travel safe, so they took guns away from passengers.
9-11 would not have happened if there had been armed passengers.
They said they wanted better schools, so they raised taxes and built palaces.
Test results are worse, not better in the US.
They said they wanted to stimulate the economy so they spent $900 billion.
Unemployment rose to about 10 percent.
They said they wanted to stimulate car sales so they created cash for clunkers.
Taxpayers bought the junk. After the event, people stopped buying cars.
They said they wanted to protect our borders from illegals. So they voted to make illegals, legal.

It just goes on and on. Nothing they do works to help us, it always involves taking our money and wasting it, and it usually has a negative result. It just continues to erode our nation - each time Congress acts, it wounds us. It removes some of our fiber and our flesh and it leaves us weaker.

The system is broken. The government is corrupt. The people have had it.

What’s next isn’t pretty.

“Poppies!”

2010-12-21T10:45:00.001-05:00

“And now, my beauties, something with poison in it, I think. With poison in it, but attractive to the eye, and soothing to the smell.” -Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz.

Matt Drudge links to a story today about Wikileaks that reveals US concern over homosexuality and pedophilia in Pashtun Afghanistan. Is there any other corruption that Muslims can rationalize? They can kill their own wives and daughters, any non-believers, any defilers, any foreigners, anyone who does just about anything that someone doesn’t like. According to the story in the Washington Examiner (Afghan sex practices concern U.S., British forces), Pashtun men are practicing rampant pedophilia and homosexuality, despite the Moslem prohibition against homosexuality. I mean, who’s surprised that there are no rules. I’ll bet the goats aren’t even safe.

But it is another reason to make me wonder what we are hoping to accomplish in Afghanistan, and how we’re going about it.

A culture that condones, accepts as normal, the sexual assault by men on little boys is not a culture - it’s a hell on earth. Read or see The Kite Runner if you think we need to view Afghan culture through a different lens. I’d recommend the lens of a 12 power Leupold like the one on my Belgian .30-06.

Here’s the topic sentence. Sorry I took so long but the aforementioned helps set the stage.

If we were serious about Afghanistan we would forever poison the poppy fields - carpet bomb, agent orange, dirty nuke, irradi-f’ing-cate them. But we let these buggars keep growing the stuff that they use to poison our kids while they defile their own.

You really want to insist that we view Afghanistan like Afghanis? Then I say we blow them all to hell, because that’s the way tribal people think. Honor/Shame. Offense/Absolute Punishment. Individual Affront/Tribal Debt.

Our president, who may himself have been a “little boy” once according to some reports, has shied away from a meaningful and quick (meaning violent and remorseless) solution to the war. Like most Democrats, he listens too much to diplomats , who have failed by definition (there is a war, after all). This is a time to kill, President Mom Jeans. Killing the poppies kills the Taliban.

The Consent of the Governed

2010-12-19T21:46:00.002-05:00

What we have witnessed from the Lame Duck congress is nothing either party can be proud of.

The Democrats have not learned their lesson. They are ideologues plowing headlong through their agenda like they’re delivering a kamakaze to the Ship of State. They are hiding legislation that has been defeated inside legislation that is being voted on. They are refusing debate, refusing compromise, refusing the clarion call of the people who said, “This will end.”

And the GOP is no better. I heard Lindsey Graham speak today in opposition to a piece of legislation and he was the weakest, most passionless and ineffective speaker I have probably ever heard. Is he a lawyer? Really?

Mitch McConnell doesn’t impress. We should have stopped everything. We had 40 votes and he didn’t have the guts to tell Scott Brown, “Scott, have you met Marco Rubio? Because he’s going to get a committee and you’re going to get a broom. He’s going to be president and you’re going to lose your re-election bid.”

Here’s the problem. 13% approval means that if the next Congress wilts under the media spotlight, the jig is up. Meaning they have to be Chris Christies, not John McCains.

The people have already withdrawn their consent. That’s what the thirteen percent means. If they do not see results, there will be a revolt. First there will be an economic collapse and soon blood in the streets. And because the military is largely conservative, the military may join the people. The borders will be ignored by our government and foreign invaders will form an insurgency in our own country. The internecine fighting and the insurgency will be too much for the government and it will collapse.

Yeah, I’m out there.

So, what is it I’ve speculated on that has no basis in fact?

Doomed to Repeat

2010-12-17T06:10:00.005-05:00

The Obama Administration, or more accurately, The Obama Cartel, has up to now managed a very clever sleight of hand. They have bemoaned the chaos, violence and mayhem south of the border, and used it as a distraction from their own complicity.

Would anyone assert that we, with or without Mexican help, are incapable of routing the Mexican Cartels? We better be, because they’re coming for us with machetes and grenades.

Yet, The Obama Cartel, an organized crime syndicate with its own national flag, has refused - that’s the word - refused to seal our borders and/or prosecute a war against the invaders and terrorists who have no regard for life, limb, property or sovereignty. That makes Obama complicit.

The fact that the Obama Cartel has made it a policy to do nothing, shows why community organizing is not a suitable preparation for executive leadership. Rather, a world history course would have been a better path. Because, had Obama studied history, he would realize that the very words, “Vandals” and “Barbarians,” which we use today to describe remorseless thugs and Union bosses, were vast tribes of people once engaged in precisely the same occupation that today’s Mexican cartels engage. They crossed borders, raided, raped, pillaged and murdered. By 500 AD, the Vandals, Barbarians and their cohorts took over nearly the entire continent of Europe by employing the same methods the Mexican terrorists are using on us today.

Oh, you may have heard of the government the Vandals and Barbarians toppled - it was called the Roman Empire. Like the United States, the Romans were known and feared for their strong military, too. So don’t feel secure - be very afraid.

Sorry to say, but all of this is the good news. The bad news is in the next Chapter of the history book Obama never read. In that chapter, the Vandals and Barbarians are displaced on the lower rung of humanity, around 600 AD, by another group of border raiding nation killers who attack with even more bloodthirstiness - the Muslims.

And today, thanks to his politics and his commitment to doing nothing about the problem, Obama’s Cartel has invited BOTH Muslims and Barbarians to our gates.

History suggests that through his ineptitude, Obama will help accomplish a destruction that will earn him an infamy greater than Emperor Nero’s. I pray it passes over you and your loved ones.

ILTG

I Want Answers

2010-12-15T01:27:00.003-05:00

Because I have the post of Creative Director at the agency where I work (yes, that’s what Don Draper does), I lecture occasionally on the Creative Process to local college students. One day I tried something new. I walked in, introduced myself and asked, “Does anybody have a great story or maybe know how to sing a song for us?”

They were appalled. They looked at each other like they had been tricked into participating in some bizarre reality show. After I kept silent for about a minute I had every eye.

“What the hell has happened to you people,” I said. “What have they done to you?”

More looking around.

I waited for the words to sink in, then I continued. “You realize that just 5 maybe 7 years ago if I had walked into your classroom that most of you would have your arms in the air, waving them wildly, asking to be the first one to share something.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Who beat you down, stole your fun, told you it was better for you to sit there and be quiet?” I waited. “I want a name!” They knew I was serious. “I mean it, somebody tell me who did it? I want to know who’s responsible.”

One hand rose.

“What?”

Meekly she asked, “Our teachers?”

“I don’t know, you tell me,” I challenged.

“I think it was our teachers,” she said, more resolute, more certain this time.

I agreed. And I asked them how they felt about that. Some said, it was okay the way it was, and others - a minority - said it wasn’t right.

But that’s not what this story is about. It’s about the TSA.

And it’s about Obamacare. And it’s about eminent domain, Afghanistan and estate taxes and same sex marriage, and abortion and people picketing funerals, and unions that screw a company into the ground and end up buying it with our money, OUR MONEY, and corrupt governments that get handed dollars by the same lying looters who tell us we should pay more taxes because America has too many unemployed, and it’s about paying farmers not to grow crops and paying the UN to promote a Marxist redistribution called a carbon tax and your damn head should be exploding.

What the hell has happened to you people? Who did this to you?

Is Obama Following Sharia Law?

2010-09-16T16:42:00.000-04:00

An email I received this afternoon:

Interesting News
- Sheppard Smith, Fox News
"If you check President Obama's last trip over-seas, his wife left just after their visit to France . She has yet to accompany him to any Arab country. Think about it. Why is Michelle returning to the states when 'official' trips to foreign countries generally include the First Lady ."
Here's one thought on the matter.
While in a Blockbuster renting videos I came across a video called "Obama". There were two men standing next to me and we talked about President Obama. These guys were Arabs, so I asked them why they thought Michele Obama headed home following the President's recent visit to France instead of traveling on to Saudi Arabia and Turkey with her husband.
They told me she could not go to Saudi Arabia , Turkey or Iraq .
I said "Why not,(?) Laura Bush went to Saudi Arabia , Turkey and Dubai ."
They said that Obama is a Muslim and therefore he is not allowed to bring his wife into countries that adhere to Sharia Law. Two points of interest here:
1) I thought it interesting that two American Arabs at Blockbuster believe that our President is a Muslim,
2) Who follows a strict Islamic creed. They also said that's the reason he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. It was a signal to the Muslim world, acknowledging his religion.
For further consideration, here is a response from Dr. Jim Murk, a Middle Eastern Scholar and expert on Islam. This is his explanation of what the Arab American's were saying.
"An orthodox Muslim man would never take his wife on a politically oriented trip to any nation which practices Sharia law, particularly Saudi Arabia where the Wahhabi sect is dominant. This is true and it is why Obama left Michelle in Europe . She will stay home when he visits Arab countries. He knows Muslim protocol; this includes, bowing to the Saudi King.
Obama is regarded as a Muslim in the Arab world, because he was born to a Muslim father; he acknowledged his Muslim faith with George Stephanopoulus. Note that he downplays his involvement with Christianity, by not publicly joining
A Christian church in D.C. and occasionally attending the chapel for services at Camp David . He also played down the fact that America is a Christian country and said, unbelievably, that it was one of the largest Muslim nations in the world, which is nonsense. He has publicly taken the side of the Palestinians in the conflict with Israel and he ignored the National Day of Prayer, something no other President has ever done.
He is bad news! He conceals his true faith to the detriment of the American people ."
- Jim Murk, Doctor of Philosophy in Middle Eastern Culture & Religion
ACTIONS speak louder than words. Another interesting item regarding Sharia Law.
Why has Barack Hussein Obama insisted that the U.S. Attorney General hold the trials of the 911 Muslim Terrorists in Civilian Courts as Common Criminals instead of as Terrorists who attacked the United States of America ?
If the Muslim Terrorists are tried in Military Tribunals, convicted and sentenced to death, by LAW, Barack Hussein Obama, as President of the United States , would be required to sign their Death Warrants. He would not be required to sign the death warrants if they are sentenced to death by a Civilian Court . Recently, Muslim Jihadist, Army Major Hassan slaughtered non-Muslim, soldiers at Ft. Hood , Texas rather than go to Afghanistan and be a part of anything that could lead to the deaths of fellow Muslims. He stated that Muslims 'could not and should not kill fellow Muslims.'
Is the motive for Barack Hussein Obama's insistence on civilian trials, to make sure he doesn't have to sign the death warrants for the Muslim Terrorists? Why would he, as President of the United State , not sign the death warrants for Muslim Terrorists who attacked the United States and murdered over 3,000 U. S. Citizens on 9/11? Could it be that he is FORBIDDEN by his RELIGION to authorize the execution of Muslims?
Think about that! Open your eyes, ears and mind to who the President is, how he behaves and what he is doing.

Shut up, General Petraeus. That’s an order.

2010-09-10T09:58:00.002-04:00

General David Petraeus made two huge mistakes, and if he were my General Officer I’d have busted him.

First, he commented on the kooky minister in Florida who threatened to burn Korans. Why? He said it was because the Koran-burning protest threatens our troops in Afghanistan.

Really? More than they’re threatened after the General makes an even bigger deal out of it? Aren’t our forces there to engage the enemy? Give me a break. Petraeus didn’t have to elevate this kook to the level of credibility he gave him. Speaking out is the kind of blunder I would expect from the Obama/Clinton/Holder administration - but not from the military. Having the military’s top battlefield commander comment on what he deems appropriate expressions of the first amendment is chilling. This was clearly a time the General should have just swallowed a big cup of STFU.

The second blunder - the most grievous - was in the fact that Petraeus got the whole issue backwards, indicating a total lack of understanding of the core values he’s supposed to be defending. If he was going to say anything, he should have said something like this, “Burning Korans is wrong and the guy threatening to do it is way off base. But, there are good men living and dying here in Afghanistan just so he will have the right to say whatever outrageous thing he wants to say. Anyone who attempts to thwart his right to do so by attacking our men will be killed. That’s how we feel about freedom. We’re willing to sacrifice to preserve it, and if you intend to deny us that, you better be willing to die .”

Obama is the Mosque

2010-08-26T20:31:00.001-04:00

One of the reasons that middle America is squarely against the Ground Zero Mosque is because they sense it represents a stealthy step toward a different America than they know or want. America senses that, as an Arab might say, agreeing to this mosque is tantamount to letting the camel’s nose into the tent. It is no coincidence that this hue and cry rises at once with the implosion of the Democratic party. The issues are the same and the American people know it.

Barack Obama is the Mosque and all of America is Ground Zero. Obama has failed to show himself to be as he was labeled; a uniter, a bridge between races, a maker of peace and a solver of problems. For many reasons, he does not belong where he is ensconced. Many Americans believe he has perpetrated a monstrous fraud as he used our good will against our own interests. He has infiltrated himself into our midst by playing on our sense of fairness and ignoring questions about what he is really all about. The media was complicit in hiding the truth, in ignoring a search for the truth about his past, his values, his mentors, his loyalties. The progressives implored us to listen to our hearts and not our heads.

Obama is the Mosque. His purpose is to bring an ideology that reflects injustice, to destroy opportunity, to invoke a failed moral structure, to return to another time and right imagined wrongs. We agreed to let him build his presidency.

He dismissed charges against armed men who brazenly threatened the sanctity of the voting booth with cameras rolling.

He took jobs away from thousands of men and women who were victimized by an accident, then he blamed the accident.

He bribed legislators to ram through the largest tax ever imposed on the American people - against their will - with a program that will surely result in a reduced quality of life for most Americans.

He claimed to want to bring the nation together. Then he prosecuted a sovereign state for trying to maintain its border against criminal trespassers who have been killing, raping, poisoning and robbing innocent Americans, and he threatens to pardon the criminals and leave them in our midst.

All of this because we let him.

Lately, most of us have decided that was a mistake, and if it isn’t too late we will undo it. The Mosque will not be built - it will go away, remembered only as a terrible idea that should never have reached such levels of serious consideration.

In that respect, the Mosque is Obama.

The Undoing

2010-08-20T12:36:00.001-04:00

Democrats, or more accurately Liberals and Progressives in the Northeast and a few other financially-ailing locales will probably vote the party line this November, and thus vote against their own best interests.

The Democrat party is about to be so marginalized that it will have left only the power the media gives it, which, though substantial, will not be enough to derail GOP plans. In large part, those plans are being driven by fear - the sheer terror that the GOP senses of what might happen to this country if they don’t deliver what the people are demanding.

Any winning Dems are going to be relegated to minority status - a position they can’t handle emotionally. Their districts will not benefit from having towed the party line. I would hope that the GOP would force the Dems in those districts to finally fail - to run out of money, to run out of ideas and to #MajorFail as leaders and politicians.

Earmarks may end. Pork may become a thing of the past. With a little luck, there will be a conveyor line of investigations. Fannie and Freddie, the DOJ and any number of other targets need to be hit and sunk with extreme prejudice. Dammit, the people are saying, someone needs to go to jail for what they’ve done to us. If any of us committed similar offenses, you can bet we’d have been convicted.

And Obamacare must go away. If that doesn’t happen, and happen fast, there’s a very good chance there will be a violent attempt to replace the administration. Why? Because the fire has been lit. Pat Caddell, the pollster, said this week that the numbers he is seeing and the disdain and disrespect they represent show that this government no longer has the consent of the governed. His word to describe the overwhelming numbers was, “pre-revolutionary.”

A number of Americans, many of whom have very good and healthy imaginations, cannot see how the morass of legislation, taxation, regulation and litigation that plagues our society can be taken from our backs without throwing it off. If the GOP fails to release the pressure of this great offense, it may explode.

How Gay

2010-08-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

No one should be surprised that a Federal Judge in San Francisco has ruled that California’s ban on gay marriage - the ban approved by 7 million California and federal tax-paying citizens - is unconstitutional.

Judge Vaughn Walker cited two reasons the ban was unconstitutional: due process and equal protection.

Let me give you my thoughts on the equal protection argument.

The concept of equal protection is designed to assure citizens that no matter what their station, or race, or physical incapacity, for example, they’ll be treated by the law just the same as everyone else.

But homosexuality isn’t in any of those categories. It’s characterized only by a set of behaviors, and laws mostly regulate behaviors because that’s how you identify and can enforce standards that the community has established. Using laws to regulate behavior usually results in discriminating against a minority of people whose behaviors might offend the majority. Thieves, for example, have behavior that is regulated. You can be a thief and exist in society with all the rights and privileges of a non-thief, as long as you don’t steal. You can even live with another thief and pretend to steal. You just can’t actually steal with society’s blessing because it’s offensive - some might say “immoral”.

No one has yet argued that laws against thieves should be changed because thieves are a class of people who WANT to steal and therefore should not be denied just because the majority don’t want to. It probably wouldn’t fly.

Homosexuals want to be a class of individual who receive protection for their behaviors in the way protection is usually granted to others in a situation of being unrelated to behavior - a handicapped person, for example.

A woman might be discriminated against if she is not permitted to join a public group, say a Men’s Club, just because she is a woman. Being a woman, however, is not characterized by a set of behaviors. it is characterized by physical gender attributes - her sex, not her sexuality. For homosexuals to argue that they deserve the same considerations as women, therefore makes their argument absurd. A homosexual woman could therefore argue that she could be discriminated against both because she is not allowed to join the Men’s Club and because she does not have the right to take a wife. It shows how troubled her thinking really is and how twisted the Judge’s reasoning.

This is not an argument about the rights of homosexuals. It is an argument about the rights of Society and its need to defend against the tyranny of the minority. The score so far is 1 to 1.

If I Were President

2009-12-28T12:52:00.005-05:00

1) I would pay our soldiers, sailors and marines what congressmen now earn and I would provide them with upscale housing with all the amenities. I would pay congressmen what the military now earn.

2) I would direct my AG to issue "prayer in public venue" guidelines that would explain how to allow prayer and avoid lawsuits. I would pardon violators and prosecute oppressors.

3) I would direct our military to win conflicts in which we're engaged with overwhelming, ceaseless, remorseless force.

4) I would order the poppy fields in Afghanistan destroyed and poisoned. I would order the cocaine producing jungles of Colombia destroyed and poisoned.

5) I would jail newspaper reporters and editors who permit the printing of leaked national security matters.

6) I would order immediate opening of drilling offshore and in national parks. Leases would be auctioned and income would go to the treasury of the adjacent state. There is no such thing as government land. Public land must be returned to the people through a trust.

7) I would order construction of geothermal plants in Yellowstone, I would order fasttrack construction of nuclear plants.

8) I would close the Department of Education, and a couple others, and subcontract the USPS to private industry run by a board - per the US Constitution.

9) I would sign legislation making it illegal to have a union in any government agency.

10) I would liberate Cuba and put Castro(s) and their minions on trial. I would arm the Cuban resistance and immediately move into South America to rid the continent of Marxists - and I mean rid them. I would then offer Cuba the process of Statehood. This is our hemisphere.

11) I would do whatever it takes to restore the nation's agricultural production so that it becomes our greatest export. Food can be a weapon with which we shape world opinion, and a blessing by which we communicate our American ideals.

12) I would work with the Congress to redistrict congressional districts and all federal courts in order to reduce their size and decrease their provincialism.

13) I would reject government regulations that attempt to control the behavior of sane people on the basis of the behaviors of the insane. Therefore, I will order that suspicious classes of people be searched at airports and not everyone including Swedish Lutheran grandmothers.

14) I would de-regulate every industry, create industry boards and hold those boards personally liable for their conduct.

15) I would end the Federal Reserve Bank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, et al. I would re-establish a monetary standard based on an equivalent holding of a precious asset such as gold.

16) I would end the US relationship with the United Nations.

17) I would re-establish the Union of States philosophy of the founders in order to reduce the size of the Federal government by a factor of 4 or 5.

18) I would pardon anyone convicted of violating any law abridging their absolute freedom to carry a personal firearm unless that person was previously a convicted felon.

19) I would pardon anyone convicted of violating any law abridging their absolute freedom to say even the most objectionable thing imaginable or to practice their religion. Similarly, I would remove protection under the 1st amendment for political or cultural organizations masquerading as religions.

20) I would end the IRS and collect only a national sales tax on new purchases.

21) I would order the following investigations:

ACORN with regard to RICO violations

Climategate and global warming as a conspiracy to use government

to build personal wealth.

The personal background of Barack Obama and his affiliates.

The protections offered to media when media collaborates in promoting demonstrable lies promulgated by the government. Shield laws, for example.

22) I would move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and I would end the senseless attempts to carve up parts of Israel to give to the Arabs. We wouldn't tolerate another country coming over here and telling us who to give our land to, why should the Israelis?

23) I would set up immigration offices in Mexico and require all Mexicans to register there for an expedited hi tech immigration ID. Illegals in the US would be required to register in Mexico. Aggressive deportation of illegals to the border would begin immediately.

24) I would put troops on the border and I would consider illegal crossing to be - by definition - an invasion.

25) I would sign legislation that denied the privilege of voting to those receiving welfare until six months had passed since they had received an assistance check.

26) I would sign legislation that prohibited legislators or jurists from receiving any benefits not enjoyed by other citizens including special health care, transportation and franking.

27) I would sign legislation reforming intellectual property laws. The government shouldn't be leveling the playing field, markets should.

28) I would personally conduct a 13-week class (with the help of Newt Gingrich), via videotape, on the conservative principals that founded this country for the purpose of winning back the hearts and minds of America's youth.

29) I would work with a cadre of Conservative Black leaders to break through the liberal lies that have been sold to America's Blacks and help them to rise above the subjugation that the left prefers for them.

30) I would restore America's rail system by integrating high-speed rails systems along our Interstate Highway system.

31) I would restore the balance of power among the three branches of federalism by being more assertive and less submissive to the legislature and courts.

32) I would sign legislation making the penalties for any legislator, executive or jurist violating the law by corruption of office or official oppression extremely severe, and to include loss of pension and benefits.

Chapter 16. I will defend

2009-10-28T22:11:00.002-04:00

Jael Simcha was thinking about the madness that was this morning. In just the past few hours she had helped deflect a massive Iranian missile strike on multiple Israeli cities, she had admitted to herself for the first time in years that she was ready once again to love a man completely and unequivocally, and she had made love to him - freely, passionately, completely releasing herself to him without any expectations, without any guilt or hesitation. Now, she felt like she had restarted her life, a young and vital life that had been on hold for way too long.

Making love seemed to be the key to escaping from her perpetually blue state. She felt in her heart of hearts that she always knew that it would make the difference. When she was ready for physical intimacy again, she would know she had finally healed. It even made enjoying her morning coffee seem like a new experience. She liked to add a little marjoram, Turkish style, and drink out of a glass instead of a ceramic cup. She often started her days in the apartment daydreaming, staring out the window of the tiny breakfast nook watching the city’s day dawn and marveling that she had the honor of serving the state and an important role in helping to protect it. Everything at the intersection of Yafo and Nevi’im Streets below looked like a normal, sunny, Jerusalem day. Westward, up the hill, was a small home with an interior plaza, in Spanish style, nestled in the tree-filled, upscale neighborhood. She imagined it was hers. There were lots of nice homes below, the shops, consulates and lawyers’ offices that lined the street made it very desirable. Nearby was the Davidka monument. There, at the base of a giant limestone edifice, was the solitary piece of artillery used by the Jewish defenders in 1948 to hold off the Arab assault on Safed. It was a tiny cannon - not as tall as a man - a mortar used to lob shells down onto the enemy, and beside it a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 37, verse 35, ‘for I will defend this city to save it.’

She had spent a lot of time looking out that window. She admired the bougainvillea growing up the side of the Spanish house. She envied the three adjacent neighbors who had the trappings of wealth - a swimming pool, a Mercedes S500, a Jaguar XJ in that deep green color that turns heads. And the kids, there must be twelve kids among those three families. Life was good.

To the east, just two miles or so, were the ancient walls of the Old City. The only pools were either reservoirs that had been built by the Romans or mikvaot, ritual baths, built by the Jews before the year 70 and the destruction of the Temple. There were Mercedes and Jaguars there, too, but there were more camels and sheep than cars around the Old City. At dawn, before the din of automobiles grows to its standard background noise level, old Jerusalem is nearly silent, to be awakened by the sound of bells. First the sheep and the donk-donk-donk of the lead ram’s bell. And then the Christian church bells, and soon the air is filled with the strange music, the pleasing dissonance the bells create. Jael loved that celebratory sound. She thought it was as close as humans would ever get to singing like birds to greet the dawn. She did not, however, find any romance in the call to prayer that interrupted the chorus of bells and reminded her again of that night in Netanya.

Still, she wasn’t a religious bigot. She had a few really good Arab friends, she was more tolerant than most, except the crazy minority of Jews that wanted just to hand over territory as a result of some abject guilt over who-knows-what. Jael just had a reason not to trust and it was in the form of random flying ball bearings, nails, broken glass and lag bolts delivered by a pretty girl selling roses in a bar off Sderot Nitza Street. But the human conflict that underpinned the Capital, the daily drama, was one of the most compelling things about Jerusalem, the two cities, the old and the new.

The conflicts and opposites were all around. The richness of the city and its clear, cold and crisp springs was just a few miles from the scorched desert and the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. The neighbors, those Arabs and Jews who chose every so often to kill each other, between periods of uneasy calm and commerce. The internecine drama between the religious and the secular Jew was every bit as heated as the friction between Arab and Jew. As a result of the many factions that formed from the religious and political distinctions, there were perhaps a dozen or more political parties whose members hold seats in the Knesset. Nowhere on earth was there a religious group united by a common ancestor and faith so at odds with itself. Jael had heard that fervor explained, “The Jews are just like everyone else, only more so.”

There was something beautiful about this cacophony of life, this insane bunch of people who had to be at this singular spot on the planet because they believe God set it apart from everywhere else. Fittingly, one could choose to laugh or cry in response to that thought and either might well be appropriate.

After a while, Avi Ben-Tzvi appeared as the elevator door opened.

“Standing down?”

“Hmmm. Just having a shot of black coffee to steady my nerves,” said Jael taking a swig and clearing her throat.

“You know, it was an incredible day today,” said Ben-Tzvi, grabbing a coffee for himself. Jael watched him try to pour with the carafe that always dribbled. The poor guy was wearing a bolo tie, a blue jean jacket, Levis and pointed boots. He was a cowboy from Tel Aviv with coffee dribbling down on his fly.

“Avi, you’re spilling it!”

“Ah! Shit I couldn’t feel it until you shouted! Shit! Shit that’s hot!”

“Come here, sit down and relax. Here’s a napkin. It’s not so bad, sit and let it dry.”

“Oh, Jael, I’ve been under a lot of pressure.” He looked down and shook his head in disgust at the wet spot on the crotch of his jeans, “ and I’m wound way too tight right now. I had to get outta’ there. Daniel was going through this whole thing about resetting in case there are attacks in response. I know the routine, and he knows I know. Daniel’s tough on me, you know, because I’m the eldest member of the team.”

“I know, Avi. I’ve noticed. Everyone has. But you’ve respected his authority. The mission was a success.”

“I know.”

“Well, then what’s wrong, Avi?”

“I think I need to go back to Yeshiva, I want to get a Master’s in Talmudic studies.” Jael raised her eyebrows at the comment. “I feel drawn to it. I think I could be a good rabbi and I need to find out,” Avi lowered his head and a wisp of steam rose from his coffee and left a cloud on the lenses of his glasses, He looked up over the top of the black plastic frames, “What do you think?”

“I think I just had a somewhat similar thought about my own situation. Really,” Avi looked at her as though wondering if she was patronizing him. “Here’s what I think,” She reached out and took his hands in hers.

“Avi, we were just in a war. We were on the very edge of that war, but we were in it. That kind of experience makes me...makes us...reevaluate our lives. You love Israel, don’t you?”

“Yes, with all my heart. I love my country and I love the One who gave it to us.”

“Then you must do what you have to do. You must follow your heart.”

“Go over that line again, David, would you please?” Obama asked his Chief Political Advisor, David Axelrod.

“Sure. We understood the risks and we understood that previous administrations had come close, but had failed to capture the King of Terror.”

“I don’t know. Just say, ‘we understood the risks but we knew the the American people were tired of hearing that we missed him again. But, don’t call him the King of Terror, “ Obama chuckled, “It makes me think of Larry King.” Several people laughed out loud at seeing the President loosen up and chuckle. “I don’t know why I think of Larry King at all,” he said, and they laughed even louder.

“How are we explaining how we found him?” asked Obama.

Axelrod was prepared for that one. “I think we have to say that we had assets on the ground that just picked up his trail and had been following Bin Laden for a very short time. We did not know that Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs were collaborating with this murderer but the fact that they were developing a nuclear capability and meeting with him is chilling.”

“I love it! It makes such good sense. Ahmadinejad isn’t collateral damage then, he deliberately put himself in a position where he could get hurt. He collaborated with Bin Laden!”

Hillary spoke up, “That’s the Bush Doctrine, Mr. President.” Leon Panetta couldn’t help but look right at her and smile, the two aging politicians went way back.

“Oh my gosh, you’re right. Well, we’ll stay one step away from drawing that conclusion, then.”

Axelrod spoke up, “Mr. President, The Bush Doctrine is just a group of words that frame a diplomatic position. Bin Laden being brought to justice is a reality.”

“Yes, David, that’s absolutely correct.”

“If anyone brings up the Bush Doctrine, you have the answer.”

“Beautiful.”

Obama surveyed the room and decided the worst was over, “Thank you people. Job well done. I’m heading upstairs. I have a few calls I must make, and Gibbsy’s scheduled a press conference for about an hour from now so we’ll be busy until then. Ah, listen Mike, I’d like you and Hillary to be there. Leon, I’ll need you for follow-up conferences. David, I need you there, too. Why don’t you kinda’ tandem up with Gibbsy. Also, Jim Jones. Definitely, you need to be there. Okay, people. I’m gone,” and with that, the President turned and left the room.

Strangely, the room grew silent. No one spoke, although a lot of eye contact and half smiles were exchanged - meaning nothing. Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton remained seated. As the last few people exited the room, Panetta stacked the several notebooks and papers he had at the ready. After they were neatly arranged, he took his pen, and placed it on top of the stack.

“Well, Leon,” said Hillary, “how do you think it went?”

“About as well as it could have gone, I would say.”

“I think you’re right,” she concurred, as she stood across from her old friend, still seated at the massive conference room table.

“Where’d you get that pen, Leon?”

Panetta looked down at the gold pen he had just placed on his stack of notebooks. “Hmmmmm. I don’t remember.”

“Isn’t that the UN seal?”

Panetta picked the pen up and studied it closely. “Yeah, it is.”

“It’s very nice,” said Mrs. Clinton.

“Thanks,” said Panetta.

Chapter 15. The Gift

2009-10-26T13:00:00.002-04:00

“I want to know for sure. Get some goddam face recognition software or something. This is bad. I’m gonna’ be asked what the hell is going on and I need answers fast.” The President slammed the phone down and turned to Leon Panetta.

“NSA’s on it. You on it?”

Panetta peeled his glasses off his face and looked the President in the eye, “Mr. President, it is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei. We’ve just killed the government of Iran, probably all the Ayatollahs. They tend to travel together in a gaggle. This is precisely...”

Obama cut him off.

“David, get Gibbs and start working. And not just for domestic consumption,” he turned to face the balance of the team. “Hillary, could you have someone get with David and work on a diplomatic statement?”

“Sure, but I need to know our position.”

Obama shouted at her. “I don’t have a fucking position on taking out a foreign government. I want you to give me one.”

“You don’t have a position? Let me recommend that the US position is that we didn’t do it. That it may have been political opposition or insurgents.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” said National Security Advisor Jim Jones. “I have Bob Gibbs on the line.”

“What line? asked the President.

“4”

The President punched the button.

“Gibbsy. What’s up? Who the fuck is Malini, what? Malini Wilkes? Hang on.”

“Malini Wilkes has a story,” Obama reveals to the assembled group and puts the phone back to his ear. “Fox? Oh, shit. Major, punch up Fox News on the monitor!”

The face of Fox News Channel’s Bagdad reporter appeared almost full screen on the Hi-def monitor. The caption read, “Malini Wilkes, Tehran EXCLUSIVE”

"My cameraman had put the long lens on our camera and was scanning the neighborhoods, the horizon, and we spotted these two jets. You can see the flight path is a typical bombing run, the jets are on a fairly straight and level flight and they suddenly drop their bombs and peel off that flight path, and then we lose them in the sun. These are F-22 Raptor fighter jets. They were manufactured in the United States and the US Congress refused to let Boeing sell them outside the country in a move critics said was designed to kill the program. President Obama, in fact, did kill the production of F-22s shortly after he was inaugurated, citing budget overruns. That was just a few weeks before his administration insisted on the $3 Trillion stimulus package to prevent unemployment levels above 8 percent. The F-22 program employed about 3,000 people.

"The bombs created a huge explosion followed by this mushroom cloud just about a mile from our building. We watched the cloud for several minutes. No word on radiation, Brian...”

“Oh, shit,” the President was watching his job, his reputation and his presidency come apart before his eyes.

“Malini, we have Colonel Hunt on the line. We haven’t put him on yet but we want you to know that he already told us that it was extremely unlikely that a bomb could set off a nuclear explosion. Also, tactical nuclear weapons are much more sophisticated than Iran would be capable of producing. This was more likely a Daisy Cutter, a giant conventional weapon.”

“Well, I am very glad to hear that, Brian. We were concerned that there might be radiation or additional explosions. We have this footage of an Iranian HazMat team combing through debris near the scene. We were shooting through streets and alleys but you can see them definitely dressed in anti-radiation coats.”

“Turn it off,” ordered Obama. “We’re in a world of shit here people. Fox was tipped off. How did they get that footage? I need ideas and I need them fast.” He grabbed his cell phone and made a quick speed dial call to Robert Gibbs while the group cross-talked and tried their own arguments out on their neighbors.

“Yes, sir,” the standard answer Gibbs offered Obama whenever he called.

“Bob, you don't need to know what’s going on right now. I want you to remain in the safety of deniability, got it?”

“Got it. But, listen, I’m getting a lot of calls and there are suggestions that there’s some video out there of US military in HazMat suits walking through the rubble of this attack in Iran and machine-gunning some survivors.”

“Not our guys,” said Obama.

“Good. Can I say that?”

“You better say that,” replied Obama emphatically.

“I think it’s probably a good time for me to call the President, Ehud,” suggested the Israeli Prime Minister.

“He’s probably quite upset. You could wait until he calms down a bit.”

“He won’t calm down. The pressure will build from the media, from the Arab states, Islamic nations, his liberal political base. It will get worse fast.”

“Then we risk his making a mistake, making a bad judgment.”

“Right. There’s a high probability of that. The only good judgments he’s made are those we forced him to make.”

“Very well. I will arrange to have the package delivered to the consulate.”

“No, no. Deliver it in Tel Aviv to the American Embassy. I don’t want it in Jerusalem. How long do you need.”

“The plane arrived from Teheran about an hour ago. I’d say thirty minutes.”

“Fine. Have Pinkus call the Ambassador, and make sure the package is driven over in a military vehicle. No limos.”

“Yes, that’s good. I’ll make the arrangements. Thirty minutes?”

“Yes, from right now.”

“Listen people,” Obama had made some decisions about the direction this crisis needed to go. “As a practical matter we need to lay this off on Israel. I really don’t care as much about your religious or cultural sensitivities right now as much as I care about what kind of grief the US is going to get if we’re caught up in this.”

“Blame the Jews? Not very original, Mr. President,” said Mrs. Clinton. It was a stunning comment to be spoken aloud. Obama decided to respond calmly as though it was good advice.

“I know, Hillary. But it’s not a hollow claim. The world knows they led a strike on Iran. We’re not making that up. Now the world knows we sent two jets into Iran. We need to explain why.”

“And that explanation is...?” asked the Secretary of State.

“Classified.” responded Obama.

“That’s it?” asked Mrs. Clinton.

“Absolutely. We indicate we may be able to reveal the reasons in a few days, maybe a few weeks...”

Emanuel spoke up, “Mr. President, that’s just not going to fly. We just blew the entire government of Iran to hell. Now, I’m not saying we should feel real bad about that, but it just isn’t done. We can’t say we have to be mum about what’s happened because everyone fucking knows what happened. I mean why we did it can be pretty much inferred from what happened, you know?”

“Ah, shit. You’re way too practical,” replied Obama in frustration. “Listen, if we say we can’t talk about it, it’s going to imply that there’s more to the story that just the strike and its results. It makes it bigger than it even appears to be.”

“Nope. This is as big as it gets. This is ‘we screwed up” time,” pleaded The Chief of Staff.

“I’m not gonna’ do that, Rahm,” insisted the President. “I’m not taking the fall for this when our decision was the right one. This is Israel’s fault. I was lied to and we were tricked,” Obama shot back angrily. "Now, get the Speaker, get the Leaders and the minority leaders and get them in here. I also need to call the Chief Justice and inform him, too. See, Rahm, where this bullshit gets us. It was a trick and I'm pissed."

“I know. We all know. We were here when it happened, Barack. But the explanation that we can’t talk about it is bullshit. It’s bullshit. Do you know what the Republicans will do with that? What I would do with that. They’ll say, ‘we’re waiting for the president to order an attack on Pyongyang, or Caracas, or Havana, or Toronto, or Boise. Hopefully, after he has a few weeks to craft his story, he’ll tell us about it.’”

“Rahm. You’re leaving me no way out.”

“There IS no way out.”

“Nope. There’s always a way out. We just have to find it. Mike, I want an evaluation of our current state of security. You and Jim work that out. Leon, help them out, and anyone else who needs to give input. I don’t want to be caught flat-footed if we’ve pissed off someone. Just get the leaders in here.”

Most of the military officers had long since checked-out of the conversation mentally and emotionally. The battle was over, at least for the time being, and Israel had performed an amazing feat. They had somehow defeated their enemy with a flock of medium range ballistic missiles, a computer hack, six helicopters and bunker buster bombs delivered by an unseen hand. It was shock and awe on a scale that had never before been achieved.

The politics of the matter was a morale-killer, however, for those who were true warriors. Some generals have political aspirations, like Wesley Clark. He and the Clinton Administration were part of the same political machine. But is arrogance never caught on because he had no folksy side to give it balance. He was no Ike. But it was uncomfortable, when you were among those who deal with the outcome of battles conducted with lethal force, to sit among the politicians and maintain one’s silence while such trivial and inconsequential matters, like the outcome of an administration, were being discussed. As a result, only the political types were animated.

Mrs. Clinton spoke up, “Mr. President. Ambassador Cunningham is calling me from Tel Aviv. He says Alon Pinkus is pulling through the gates in an Israeli Army lorry.”

“What the hell is that all about?” said Obama shaking his head is disbelief.

“Mr. President?” the Major interrupted, “Prime Minister Netanyahu is on Green 10, sir.”

Obama punched the button and picked up the handset.

“Mr. Prime Minister. I have been lied to and compromised because I trusted you. We are at risk now because we treated you as a friend and confidant.”

“Yes, I understand. But I did not lie to you. You spoke with Ehud about this and not me. I didn’t make you any promises so save your anger for Barak.”

“What?” Obama was incredulous. “Like you didn’t know we were being suckered into making a raid on Ahmadinejad?”

“No. You were not persuaded to attack Ahmadinejad. That’s not what happened. You were persuaded to attack Osama bin Laden. Is that not true?”

“Yes. That’s precisely the case. But Osama was not the target. The target was Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs and you knew it.”

“What I knew was that you would never help us. You would never attack. You wouldn’t even allow us to fly over a country you occupy - not your country but one that you occupy - in order to protect our own people and the stability of the entire Middle East. What kind of a foreign policy is that? How do we separate ourselves from the way the United States treats its enemies. So don’t tell me you were lied to. I know when I am being lied to. There is no slavery Jews haven’t experienced and no lie we haven’t heard, so don’t try to claim any moral high ground.

“Like it or not, Mister President, you have done the right thing and every nation in the Middle East knows it. You have found a way to earn the respect of a culture that has been based on tribe against tribe for thousands of years. A culture that respects the use of violence as a measure of your resolve and even your veracity. They will believe you now merely because you have cut the head off this snake. Don’t you see that unless you’re willing to do that there’s no reason they should believe you?”

“You lied to me. You knew we were targeting Ahmadinejad and you didn’t tell me. That’s the bottom line.”

“No, Mr. President, that is NOT the bottom line. The bottom line is you have preserved the stability of the Middle East. You have stood by a putative friend. You have demonstrated to those who would attack you and call you a Great Satan that they could incur your wrath - not a bad thing.”

“We do those things with diplomacy, not with violence.”

“Precisely wrong, Mr. President. War is merely an extension of diplomacy that works. Diplomacy does not work until after wars have been waged. You haven’t noticed that? It’s in every history book. Diplomats fail, wars are fought, diplomats rush in to fill the void and things go along well for a couple generations. What are you missing?”

“Prime Minister, I don’t need a lecture right now. I am going to issue a statement condemning Israel for the raid. I’m going to indicate that we were close to an agreement with Iran...” Netanyahu interrupted.

“Then what do you want me to do with the body?”

“What?”

“The body of Osama bin Laden was just delivered to your embassy in Tel Aviv. You can take it to the States for DNA testing and claim it was a casualty of the raid, or we will claim we captured him in Pakistan and flew the body back on a cargo flight from Pakistan, which we did, and which we have the video to prove.”

“Bullshit.”

“Mr. President, Ambassador Alon Pinkus and Jim Cunningham are on the line,” interrupted Mrs. Clinton as she held her Blackberry aloft.

“Pinkus and Cunningham are on Hillary’s phone Benjamin, what’s that about?” asked the President.

“They’re confirming what I’m telling you, I knew you had no reason to believe me without proof, so here’s proof.”

“Hang on. Hillary, confirm...I mean, tell them you’re here with me, I’m on the line with Netanyahu and I said for them to tell you whatever they have to say to me.” Clinton nodded her understanding.

“Mr. Prime Minister, if you hand that body over to me, my immediate problems are solved. But the political crap I’m going to take for killing the Iranian government is not going to go away.”

“I know, Barack. But this is the truth. We did not know the Ayatollahs were with him. This was a miracle. We believe we may have also, you may have also, eliminated the Mahdi Army and Hizbollah with this raid. We’re still checking.”

“A miracle, huh? We need to meet. I’m okay with this on the short term, but long term we have issues we need to get straightened out.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Benjamin?”

“Yes, Barack?”

“Are you sure this is bin Laden? I'm serious.”

“Absolutely. This is no trick. We also have video you can use for media releases that we will supply to Ambassador Cunningham.”

“Thank you for keeping your promise.”

“No. Thank you, Mr. President. You are a pragmatist. I knew you would understand.”

Chapter 14. Target Acquired

2009-10-19T22:39:00.006-04:00

The US attack on Teheran was devastating. The fact that it was the only attack of the 4-hour war to specifically target personnel was not lost on Obama and his assembled senior advisors. It had to be done. This was the first chance to get Bin laden since Spring, when with Musharraf’s cooperation, there had been a joint strike in Waziristan. Of course, someone - or everyone - in the ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Service had tipped him off and the valley where Osama was guaranteed to reside was devoid of everything except footprints and feces. The raid was scrubbed after the Predators couldn’t spot a living thing in the valley after an hour of scouting.

There was someone looking back, however. Because for the first time since they began using the drones over Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Predator returned with a cal. 30 hole in the left wing. No accident.

The fact that UBL was in Teheran was also important. It meant several things to Obama. For example, Obama could now de-emphasize the war in Afghanistan, claiming that the cabal between Al Qaeda and Ahmadinejad had been broken up. The threat was gone or reduced to a point where the enemy could never recover. Plus, Obama could hasten the departure from Iraq. With Al Qaeda humbled, there was no chance they could supply lines from Pakistan to Iraq without great difficulty. The time it took them to rebuild was time the Iraqis could build their own defenses.

Politically, it meant Obama could return to his base with a promise kept, while simultaneously handing the head of Osama to the right. It was a beautiful thing.

The Situation Room watched the attack play out. It was great theatre. It was the best reality show on TV and had the most limited audience. It was also the most expensive pay-per-view.

The Chinook landed in a nearly-vacant parking lot 12 blocks from the apartment complex. That maneuver gave the guards on the upper floors something to look at. The satellite view showed them looking through field glasses and pointing. They had to have seen the Iranian markings. To add to the legitimacy, some crew exited the helicopter and ran around to the other side. A couple others walked away from the craft, toward the apartment complex and examined maps and papers on the top of an automobile. They returned to the helicopter, the rotors returned to full revolutions and the craft rose into the air.

It made a large sweep away from the apartment complex in order to appear to have no interest in that particular district. As it did, it gained altitude until it was at 2,500 feet. At that altitude the beating of the rotors was still very loud and would cover the sound of the incoming F-22s until it was too late.

The chinook made certain that it wandered south far enough to no longer be heard. That would be a couple miles. Then, it performed a few lazy loops until the Raptors were 10 miles out. At that point the lumbering workhorse made a graceful turn and began to bear down on the apartment complex. At one mile, the argon laser was charged and aimed at the target. The crosshairs were set two floors below the roof so that there would be some DNA to recover. The giant helo would pass to the west of the complex after bombs were released. Until then it had to maintain laser fix on the target - a task which was largely automated unless the helicopter went around the building.

The Chinook was close now. A half mile away and 3,000 feet. It climbed in order to appear to the guards to be moving without sacrificing a good angle on the building. At a quarter-mile the word was relayed, “Bombs away.” The Chinook was put into a fast climb as a monstrous package was released from its gaping cargo bay. The box fell three-thousand feet in about eight seconds and a parachute popped open.

At the very moment the chute opened, a half dozen of the guards saw it pop as the floor exploded under their feet. The men’s legs and hips were instantly broken as the lift of the building’s roof sent their appendages flying before their greater mass could accelerate. Now, helpless on the concrete tiles they rose into the air like pancakes on the end of a spatula, flipping and flopping.

Some in the crowd were tossed clear of the roof and into space. They were still conscious of the upper portions of the building passing them as they fell to earth. One or two were seen rolling from a relatively unscathed section of the roof that no longer had an ornamental railing, they fell at the same rate as the debris, which had now fallen back upon itself.

It was at the moment when it looked like the building might remain damaged but standing that the package beneath the parachute shed it’s case. In a microsecond, the metal shroud of the fuel-air bomb was parted from the contents by a precise explosive. That blast also distributed a lethal mixture of ethylene oxide and a metal particulate over an 80-foot diameter. The shock wave of the initial explosion causes the metal particles to slam together and ignite at the same time. The detonation of the metal creates a blast wave that has more devastation per ton of explosive than any other conventional weapon. It would be heard over the chatter of a conversation forty miles away. Anyone within a block or two would suffer permanent hearing loss even indoors, that is if the flying glass did not kill them first. There would be no glass untouched for about a mile from ground zero.

The 200-foot tall faces of the two apartment buildings adjacent to the blast disappeared from the screen as the camera struggled to adjust to the sudden brilliance of the blast. A massive fireball gathered, rolling into itself and becoming larger, then cooling and turning dark with a glowing underbelly. Debris could be seen rushing into the space that had been occupied by the fireball and falling away as chaff. Immediately, as the mushroom shaped cloud rose to 500 feet, the two cleft buildings fell helplessly into the street below.

The Chinook was about three-quarters of a mile away when the mushroom cloud appeared. Teheran would begin to panic. A mushroom cloud is a mushroom cloud and when you expect to be bombed with nuclear weapons, you will believe your own eyes.

It was fifteen minutes before the fires had died down sufficiently for the Chinook to return. No one was at the scene. Cars could be seen on every street surrounding the fallen buildings and the one thing they all had in common was that they were all headed away from that one spot.

The Chinook settled into soccer field across the highway from the devastation. The main doors opened and men in HazMat suits emerged. Some carried weapons, some Geiger counters with live radiological samples taped to the case to provide a constant rattle, like metallic popcorn in a frenzy. One man carried an HD video camera transmitting pictures back to the Chinook, and then via satellite, directly to The White House. It was also transmitting sound.

The camera bounced as the man struggled to maintain his balance in the cumbersome space suit as he stepped over chunks of debris searching for human remains.

Bodies were seen some distance from the base of the structures, but several had dropped with the structure and were expected to be found in the rubble.

About ten meters ahead of the camera there was burst of automatic weapons fire. None of the HazMat suited men reacted, one of the men was seen pointing his weapon and waving the others forward. Whatever he saw was no longer alive.

The camera moved forward. Several men ahead could be seen moving plywood, asphalt, concrete block and drywall, revealing a massive pile of bodies. Remarkably, there was not much blood. But it was difficult to see facial features because dust and soot covered many of the faces. Each man had a spray bottle they used to direct a stream of disinfectant-laced water. As each face was revealed a number was placed beside the face, digital photos were taken, a syringe was inserted into the neck of the victim and fluids withdrawn and the actual number tag and the contents of the syringe were placed into a plastic zip lock and dropped into a fishnet bag.

This grizzly activity moved rapidly, but there were so many bodies it was taking a long time.

It became apparent to the group at The White House that something was going on before the cameraman noticed. Two or three of the Special Ops fighters were gathered in one corner of the screen. They looked down, sprayed, moved a few objects, sprayed some more and for the longest time just stared at the ground. Then they stood erect, just looked at each other. One turned toward the camera and called out in English.

“You need to get that over here,” the voice behind the clear vinyl mask could be heard to say, and even though his face was obscured, there was a clear sense of urgency.

The picture bounced and bobbled, for a moment it revealed the damage to the remaining buildings, then quickly tilted down and spun toward a point just three feet below the lens. The auto-focus motor attached to the protruding tube of optical glass

spun the lens around until the unmistakable visage of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came into view.

“I got another one,” a voice called from a few feet away.

Again the camera swayed and rocked before finding its target, a hirsute and craggy face, now detached from its lifelong perch upon a pair of shoulders somewhere, elsewhere, in the rubble. A pair of blue-gloved hands reached down, grabbed the skull by the ears and pointed it right at the camera.

It was the remains of Ayatollah Khamenei.

In moments, a number of additional bodies were discovered, all in the clerical garb associated with the Ayatollahs. Each was being tagged and bagged. The Special Ops guys were suddenly on pins and needles. They didn’t expect what they found, and even though these guys were the most battle hardened in the service, it shook them up.

After all, at the suggestion of and with the help of Israel, The United States of America had just murdered the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Chapter 13. The Noose

2009-10-18T22:02:00.002-04:00

Uri Oren was winging his way back to Israel aboard the Airbus 330 that had just delivered a death blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, dropping 15 ton Bunker Busters deep into hardened facilities where they pulverized the contents and sent hundreds of feet of debris falling into the rubble, effectively burying it beyond recovery. Further, any radiological materials that had been within the targeted facilities had, no doubt, been scattered throughout, making any entry by a living human being a suicide mission guaranteeing a slow, painful death.

At the moment, however, Oren could not even consider the great victory he had helped to deliver. He had been contacted through secret channels and ordered to talk anyone he could contact into getting an Iranian radio station, Irib Payam, back on the air.

He hadn’t been told why, but the station’s radio energy was being used to make a locating device reveal the location of Mamoud Ahmadinijad, the madman who ostensibly presided over the Islamic Republic, doing the bidding of a collection of throwbacks to the dark ages who were considered Ayatollahs, or penultimate religious leaders in the Theocracy. Most of them were low on intellect and big on hate-driven fervor. They were the Dons of this religious Cosa Nostra called Iran.

The American’s had been given the output of the device and the American President had become convinced that the signal reveled the location of Osama Bin Laden.

No one had actually said that to him, but Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak had said that someone had referred to the target as the sheik. The Israelis had long ago decided that if Obama took the bait that they would thank the US for their support and deny they ever said the target was Obama. Obama’s favorability ratings in Israel were in single digits, yet he failed to suspect anything. As Israel suspected, Obama’s ego was too big and out of control for him to exercise the thoughtful restraint necessary during a crisis. He was hooked on the bait that Israel had dangled. If in the future Obama might again stand against the Jewish State, he could be sure that there were tapes or transcripts that would leak. In addition, there were the domestic political considerations.

Hillary Clinton was just waiting to pounce on an Obama miscue. No one would be surprised if she would resign in opposition to an Obama move to elevate herself and damage him in the process.

Obama had made a mistake putting her the big chair at the State Department, one he couldn’t easily undo. And, she had allies - like Leon Panetta. Panetta had been hammered by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and accused of lying to Congress. It had demoralized the CIA and made Panetta wish he’d declined the appointment. Obama had been unwilling to defend the CIA and Panetta had privately called him, “pathetic.” Clinton was an old friend, a Pelosi nemesis and a survivor. The stars were aligned against Obama and yet, at the moment, he was only concerned with the sudden loss of the signal from Iran.

Oren was waiting for young Amin Mahmudi, a technical assistant at the radio station. He had persuaded Mahmudi that he was Mohmmad Soleimani, the Minister of Information and Communications. Mahmudi would do anything for the government official in charge of the nation’s radio and television.

“Minister Soleimani?”

“Yes, Amin?”

“I have three people with me who each have a telephone.”

“Excellent, they are to use their telephone’s to provide light. Use them as torches and have them search for the emergency generator. When they find it, they are to shout out to you and guide you to their location. Then, we’ll take it from there.”

“Yes. I understand. I will explain this.”

Oren could hear Amin in the background saying, “Come, follow me to the basement. Use your phone for a light and I will tell you what we are looking for.”

Suddenly, Ami was back on the line, “Minister, what am I looking for?”

“Amin, it will look like a large electric motor attached to an engine, perhaps an automobile engine. It may be more than a meter in diameter. There may also be batteries nearby for the starter and...the entire thing may be in a cage. I don’t know. You must just look in utility areas.”

“Very good,” Amin said with an official air, and he returned to instructing his entourage as they entered the dark basement.

“I think you should call it off, Mr. President,” said Leon Panetta. He was responding to a discussion that Jim Jones, National Security Advisor and Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff were having with the President regarding the framing of the announcement should they hit Bin Laden, or should they hit and miss Bin Laden.

Emanuel asserted himself before Obama could engage Panetta,“The decision’s been made,” he said.

“I know,” said Panetta, “but nothing’s happened yet. There’s still time to think about this.”

Obama followed Emanuel’s lead. “Leon, we’ll keep an eye on the screen. How long before everyone’s in position for the strike, General Holland?”

Air Force General Bill Holland responded on the speakerphone. “An hour and maybe 15 minutes. The helicopter will take about that long to reach the target, the jets don;t have to scramble for another few minutes.”

“A lot can happen in an hour,” assured Obama, looking at Panetta. Nevertheless, Panetta had gone on record as being opposed to the mission and that was just where he wanted to be.

“Minister Soleimani! I think I have found it!” Came a shout through the telephone link.

“Excellent, Amin! Describe what you see.”

“It is just as you said. There is a large motor. I think it is electric because I can see shiny wires inside the motor and there is an engine attached to it. A large engine.”

“Are there any signs, or warnings?” asked Oren urgently.

“It says General Electric. I know that symbol, but I cannot read the English!”

“Okay. Look for a large switch or a push button.”

“Yes, I see a large red and green button.”

“Push the green button, Amin.”

Oren could hear a whining churning sound, like a car turning over on a cold morning. It didn’t sound right.

“Amin. Push the red button.”

“It did not start, Minister. What should I do?”

“It needs fuel, Amin. Do you see a tank of fuel?”

“No, Minister, there is an oxygen tank.”

“Amin, that’s the fuel. It’s an LPG tank. Can you tap on it, is there a gauge?”

“No, there is no gauge. The line goes to the first machine, to the engine.” Is there a valve on the tank, Amin? Damn, Amin. You must think about this. I cannot do it all.”

Oren was disappointed that he had lost his temper, except it was very much in character for anyone in the upper echelons of the corrupt Iranian government. That’s why they were hated so much. It’s why just two weeks earlier a secret group of Iranian Sunnis opposed to the government of Ayatolah had selected a member from their midst to walk into the middle of a room filled with leadership of the Revolutionary Guard and Basiji. The Basiji are plain-clothes vigilantes who do the bidding of the revolutionary guard. The Baathists in Iraq were the same kind of a hit squad. Almost two-dozen were killed and nearly seventy seriously wounded. It shook the foundations of the Khamenei regime.

The Israelis commenced the strike earlier than planned after the Sunnis struck, fearing that Ahmadinijad would strike first in order to coalesce the populace in a war against the Jews.

“Minister, there is a valve in the line right on top of the engine. It was shut. I have opened it, shall I try the green button again?”

“Yes, Amin. Now!”

No one had said a word in about 10 minutes. The equipment room in the basement of the Jerusalem apartment building was heating up as racks of electronic equipment maintained their stations in the cyberwar battle against Iran.

“It’s back!”

“They’ve moved!”

“What is that?”

“It’s one of the Apartment buildings.”

“They’re moving across the entire building like there are no walls?”

“It is the roof. They are on the roof! It’s the only part of the building without walls.”

“Is our feed still up?”

“Yes, the Americans can see it now.”

Cheers went up in the Situation Room. A couple people shook Obama’s hand as if to congratulate him for something.

“Mr. President the jets are away,” reported General Holland.

“Thank you, General.”

“Mr. President,” Mullen had his earpiece pressed to his head with his right hand. “The Pentagon has analysts on this signal. The target’s moved and it looks like he’s on the roof of one of the buildings in the complex.

“Let’s hope he’s taking nap,” said the President.

“Yeah, surrounded by a hundred of his top guys,” added Emanuel.

“Our satellite has acquired a picture, Mr. President.”

“Put it up, Morrell,” ordered Obama.

“Amin. You will receive a medal if I have anything to say about it! You have done a wonderful job under difficult circumstances.”

“Thank you, Minister. But I must go up to the studio and make sure there is something on the air.”

“Amin, I want you to just get something on the air. A CD. An opera perhaps. Leave the transmitter on and post a message. You may sign my name. The message must say that no one may enter the premise until further notice. Can you do that Amin?”

“Yes, Minister. Whatever you ask. But what about the programming? The CD will run only about an hour.”

“Amin. Just go home. These things are decided at the highest levels. The Basiji will be at the station soon, you should just go be with your family.”

“Do you see him?” asked Mrs. Clinton.

“Man, black is the new black in Iran,” cracked Emanuel.

“There’s a shitload of guys in black,” said Biden. “They might be clerics. If we blast them we’re in a world of hurt.”

“Joe, nobody likes these guys. Nobody,” countered Emanuel.

“I don’t like blowing up Mullahs, Barack,” said Biden, “Bad foreign policy.”

Mrs. Clinton perked up. “We’re way past the point of diplomacy, Mr. Vice President,” she said. It was a brilliant statement, distancing her from the decision and putting the room on notice.

“It’s some kinda’ meeting. They probably wanted to get up in the air to be safer. Forgot about our birds,” suggested Jones.

“No, they don’t think we’re in the game,” said Obama.

Chapter 12. Dead Air

2009-10-16T16:46:00.001-04:00

There was a problem.

The signal coming from the high-rise complex in Teheran had suddenly disappeared. The most likely reason was that the local FM station had gone off the air. The nano chips that were broadcasting the target’s location in response to being excited by the local FM carrier would not broadcast if that frequency suddenly shut down. With all the triple-A, the bombs, the missiles coming in, it was not surprising.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” shouted Alon. “I didn’t even know you guys were using my concept.”

“What can we do?” asked Jael.

“I have to think,” pleaded Alon. “Give me a minute.”

Avi and Danny just glanced at each other. Jael wanted to take Alon’s head, rest it on her chest and comfort him. But right now they were all soldiers and they were professionals.

“When did the signal stop?” asked Alon.

“About 3 minutes ago,” said Danny. “It stopped, started and then stopped again.”

“Is there any way we can tell if the grid is up in the vicinity of the tower?” asked Alon.

Danny scratched his head, “Wow. Let’s see. Maybe we could get a satellite to look. Thing is, it’s daylight. There won’t be much lighting in use anyway.”

Alon had a idea of what was wrong. “Let’s do it. Let’s see what we can see.”

“Mr. President, we’ve lost the signal from Teheran,” announced Morrell.

“No!” Obama sounded deeply disappointed. “Mike, what can we do?”

Admiral Mullen had anticipated that there could be problems - although losing the signal was way down the list. “Well, we could turn back. We could keep going and hope the signal returns before we get there. Or, we could continue on and attack the last point we saw him and hope he’s still there.”

“Fuck.” The President spat the word out.

“Mr. President, we have plenty of time to make up our minds. The Israelis are probably working on the problem right now. Plus, the Chinook isn’t going to enter Iranian airspace for a half hour and then it has about an hour flight to Teheran. It’s not going to get shot at, so let’s be patient. That’s my recommendation.” concluded Admiral Mullen.

“Any other ideas?” Obama polled the group.

“I say, pull ‘em back.” declared Vice President Biden. “For Chrissake, you’ve got enough on your plate. My God, when you get in front of the cameras today they’re going to be all over your ass with all kinds of questions. This is going to complicate things so much more. Just let it go.”

“Hillary?” asked the President,”What’s the diplomatic point of view?”

“Joe’s probably right about this. It gets very complicated,” He didn’t show it, but Clinton’s acquiescence clenched Obama’s decision. The remaining opinions were gathered for show.

“Jim?” The National Security Advisor was a bit more circumspect.

“Mr. President, I’ve wanted to nail that bastard every day, ever since my first day of service in the White House. It’s the bullseye as far as I’m concerned and I think the American people would feel the same way.”

“Anyone else?” No one volunteered.

“Keep ‘em going,” ordered the President.

Ben-Tzvi and Peled were studying satellite feed of high resolution live images of Teheran and the Borj-e Milad, the Milad tower, the tallest structure in Iran and the location of the radio transmitter that should be pumping out a signal at 99.9 megaHertz and was not.

“Danny, I have some archival images from the same time yesterday and the lights aren’t glowing on the electric signs in the area,” said Avi. Peled had noticed something himself.

“Traffic lights are not working, Avi. The grid is down, the transmitter’s off the air because there’s no power.” reasoned Peled.

“Don’t they have a backup generator?”

“Probably. But there’s not much we can do about it.”

“Anybody speak Farsi?” asked Jael.

All three shook their heads. “What’re you thinking? asked Ben-Tzvi.

“Well, there’s gotta’ be someone in the station, probably a very junior person. I mean if you have any authority you have a key to the local shelter. I think we could talk someone through troubleshooting the problem if we could get someone.”

“I’ll make some calls,” said Peled.

Uri Oren was just north of Kuwait when his radio squawked.

A voice spoke in Arabic, “Sabaah al-khayr, Yusef.” It was the traditional morning greeting, ‘The sun is rising.’

“Sabaah al-nuur,” replied Oren as Shirani. ‘The sun is risen.’

The speaker’s voice was familiar, he was a friend from Mossad. But Uri was on the way home. Why the need for cover now?

The Arabic continued, “I want you to know that your paperwork is not correct on the Karachi shipment and the accounting office wants you to contact them.”

The code had been passed so Oren played up his response, “I provided the paperwork to them and they could have said something when I delivered it. I am tired of their complaints. They lose all my paperwork and then they blame me. I will contact them, but then I will speak personally to the manager in Karachi upon my return, inshallah.”

“You do what you must, Yusef. I am just a messenger.”

And Oren terminated the conversation. He climbed out of his captain’s chair and walked back to a bulkhead where a clipboard hung carrying a sheaf of paper that looked like a collection of bills of lading. Oren leafed through them and found the Karachi delivery. On the surface, in the upper left corner, was a sort of bar code, a mottled black and white splotch. Oren took out his cell phone and shot a photo of the blotch. He opened an application on his phone called “QR Quick” and in a heartbeat the application converted the unintelligible blotch into a 6 digit number punctuated by a decimal point. It was a radio frequency. Oren returned to his seat, reached toward the center panel on the massive Airbus and dialed the six numbers on his radio transmitter.

He then threw a switch on the panel that was unlabeled. It put a digital converter online that encrypted Uri’s transmission and decrypted the incoming signal.

“This is Oren.”

“Uri, we need a Farsi speaker who can take charge of a situation in Teheran. There’s a radio station off the air and we need it back on the air fast. I’ll patch you through to the project team leader Danny Peled and he can explain.”

“Peled? I know him.”

“This is Peled.”

“Danny, this is Uri Oren. How are you?”

“I’m good Uri. I thought of you when it was proposed we get a Farsi speaker. You’re the best.”

“Good enough, I hope. What do you need?”

“Uri, we need to get the Teheran FM station at a frequency of 99.9 back on the air. We need you to call the station, Irib Payam, and get anyone there to work with you to get them transmitting.”

“Understood.”

“We can patch you in.”

“Who is there, who am I asking for?”

“We don’t know but we’re guessing that management has fled. The station’s in Milad Tower and I’m sure they would think they’re very vulnerable there.”

“True.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, we can ring it now.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

There were some strange electronic sounds coming through Oren’s noise-canceling headphones, not surprisingly, as the connection was made between the Airbus over Kuwait, to Jerusalem to Teheran and back to the Airbus.

The sound of two tones, then a pause, two tones, then a pause, then suddenly there was an answer.

“Salaam!” called out an excited voice.

“I must speak to a manager,” ordered Oren.

“There is no manager here. Who is this, please?”

“I am Mohmmad Soleimani,” said Oren with a heavy dose of hubris and dismissiveness, “I am the Minister of Information and Communications and I want to know why you are not on the air? It is the duty of any employee of the Ministry to maintain communications. That is in the directive that has been sent to every State facility and a directive you have signed. Do you remember making that commitment?”

“Yes, of course.” The poor man had never been asked to sign anything but he wasn’t about to get his bosses in trouble.

“What is your name and what is your position?” demanded Oren.

“I am Amin Mahmudi, I am a technical assistant.”

“I see,” said Oren as though he was unsure. “Yes, you are here on the loyalty list. I can call upon you to help the Islamic Republic?”

“Yes. Whatever I can do,” pleaded Mahmudi.

“The you must get the station back on the air immediately.”

“There is no electricity to the building.”

“But there is an emergency generator, Mahmudi. May I call you Amin?” asked Oren in an attempt to ingratiate himself.

“But of course. Minister Soleimani. I do not know of a generator, however.”

“It is probably in the basement, Amin. You must get to the basement and search for it.”

“Very well. I will set the phone down...”

“No wait. You must not do that. Do you have a mobile, Amin?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is it working?”

“Let me see.” There was a brief lull in the conversation as Amin reached into his pocket and flipped open his Nokia phone. “Yes, It has a strong signal.”

“Do you have a good charge in the battery?”

“Yes, it is good.”

“Then give me your number and we will hang up and I will call you back immediately.”

“It is 3 zero 4 zero 6, 6, 4, 7, 3.”

The line was disconnected in Jerusalem, as the new number was punched in, Peled spoke to let Oren know they were with him.

“Dialing, Uri - stand by.”

“Salaam, Minister.”

“Salaam, Amin. Are you on your way?”

“Yes, I am just to the lobby. The steps are behind the main desk right beside the elevators.”

“I can picture where you are, of course.”

“I am entering the stairway.”

“Stop. Right where you are. Do not allow a door to close.”

“Oh, ahh, I am sorry, Minister. I fell trying to catch the door. I am in the doorway.”

“Can you move?”

“Yes, but I have cut my ankle.”

“Do you have a jacket. Your wallet. Do you have a wallet?”

“A wallet? Yes.”

“Use it to block the door. You must be certain that the doors do not close and lock behind you.”

“I see, yes. I would not be able to get back to my post.”

“That’s right.”

“It is very dark, Minister. I am afraid I can’t see anything.”

“Of course. There is no power, it would be dark.” Oren was disheartened for the first time since the conversation began. But, he was a very resourceful man, it made him a perfect candidate for the Mossad. He simply had to draw upon those resources.

“Is there anyone else in the Tower?”

“Yes, there is my sister and there was woman in the lobby as I ran through.”

“You must go see if she has a mobile. And if you see anyone else get them, too. Go!”

Chapter 11. The Ruse

2009-10-14T10:56:00.003-04:00

“Mr. President?” Major General Bill Holland was at a remote site and calling through a speaker phone in the White House situation room.

“Yes, General?” replied the Commander in Chief.

“I have a damage assessment from satellite recon over Israel, and it’s surprising.”

“How bad is it?” The President steadied himself for the worst.

“There’s no damage, sir.”

“No damage?” Obama repeated.

“Sir, all the missiles, ahh, all the missiles...missed.”

Panetta spoke up, “Sir, I can confirm that. We have assets in Jerusalem and Haifa, Jaffa and Be’er Sheva and they all report missiles flew overhead but none scored.”

“How the heck did they manage that?” asked Jim Jones, Obama’s National Security Advisor. “We need to get some of that.”

Admiral Mullen leaned back in his high-back leather chair and studied a folding map he held in his hands.

“Leon, maybe you know the answer to this. Is there a way to change the signals being sent by GPS satellites and make an object believe it is in a certain place on earth, when it is really about 50 miles west?” Mullen was amused by the prospect.

“Admiral, as I understand it - and I can tell you we have looked into it - there are a couple signals sent by GPS satellites that could be tampered with. One is a timing signal. If you know where satellite A is located and you know the speed of light, you can tell how far away you are by comparing what time the signal was sent to what time you received it. Time signals are important because if there’s even a slight error the huge numbers in the speed of light would throw a position way off. These satellites are so precise they use the time signal to synchronize the world’s cell phone base stations. Everytime you turn on your phone, it goes to a tower somewhere to announce itself and synchronize the time.

"But another is the location signal. The point in space where the satellite is orbiting. If you could hack into the right three or four satellites, or more, you could very precisely warp the apparent dimensions on earth.” Panetta looked to Mullen to see if he had understood.

“Cell phone technology is involved?” asked Mullen.

“Sure,” replied Panetta.

“The Scailex calling card, Leon. I think they were letting us know how they planned to beat the Iranians. I think they told those missiles they needed to travel an extra 40, 50 miles and they ended up falling harmlessly into the sea.”

Panetta grinned because his insistence that the Israeli covert and military prowess was second-to-none had been attacked earlier, and it was slowly being revealed that he was correct in his assessment. “I can’t imagine another explanation,” he said, “except having someone deliberately screw up the guidance systems or the target locations - but this was failure on too grand a scale to be an inside job.”

“How long were they into our site?” asked Mullen.

“Ahh. I have that in this notebook,” Panetta shuffled a stack of looseleaf binders in front of him. He found a navy blue one-inch binder, checked the spine for its title, and flipped it open. He found a certain tab and began tracing a finger down the page.

“It was 3 point 4 seconds. Do you think that means something?” he asked.

“I don’t know. 3 point 4?” Mullen scratched it onto a pad in front of him. What if we multiply 3 times 4.”

Panetta agrees, trying to follow, “Okay.”

“What’s the distance of one second of arc on the surface of the earth.”

“It’s about three point five miles, Mike.” General Holland chimed in.

“Three point five times 12 is......?” asked Mullen.

“42,” answered the President.

“How wide is Israel at its widest point, Leon?” asked Mullen.

“Christ, Mike, gimme a break,” pleaded Panetta.

“I thought you were in charge of intelligence,” joked Mrs. Clinton. There were a few chuckles. The Major spoke up.

“It’s about 40 miles, sirs. Maybe 45 at the widest point. ”

"That's no coincidence, Leon," Mullen stated emphatically, "That's a message."

Jael and Alon were wrapped in each others’ arms and lying on a sofa in the apartment barracks. The scratchy old army blanket was keeping them warm and hiding them from the peering eyes of the multiple survelleilance cameras in the room. They were hoping their compatriots had the discretion to look away. It wasn’t likely given the unnatural levels of curiosity flowing in all their veins. The precautions were a good idea.

“This could get serious, I think,” whispered Jael.

“I hope so. I don’t feel like I did such a good job for our first time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she insisted, “You were wonderful.”

“Still, I think I could do with some practice.”

It was good. He was a tall and a big-boned boy-man who was being very naturally gentle and playful, and that was just exactly what Jael needed. She suddenly sat bolt upright, the blanket falling off her shoulder and to her waist.

“Alon, have you ever heard me speak of Eliezar Weisz?” Her voice was a bit unsteady, enough that Alon could hear it waver.

“No.”

“I may need to do that. He was my fiance...” she swallowed hard, “and two years ago he was murdered by a Palestinian bomber.”

“Oh, Jael. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” She slid back down and closer to Alon. He reached over to her face and she placed his hand on her breast. “I’m dealing with it.”

“But I am not your therapy, am I?” asked Alon.

“You are the best medicine, my little rooster. But I will not toss you away, don’t worry. It was a long time ago. But this is our time.”

There was a long pause. Finally Alon spoke.

“Little?” he asked as their pagers began blinking and scuttling across the coffee table beside them.

Admiral Mullen hung up his phone and turned to Obama. “I have ordered two F-22 Raptors readied to go into Iran at your call, Mr. President and Admiral Eric Olsen, Commander Socom, is online from MacDill to propose a solution. Admiral?”

“General, Mr. President.” Olsen, the Commander of US Special Forces was on screen in hi-def 1080p. MacDill had the best technology in the US military. They had so many 60-inch screens installed in Tampa and the Green Zone for the Iraq war, that for six months after the installation was completed not even Best Buy had any in stock.

“Admiral, I’m eager to hear your plans,” said Obama.

“Then, I’ll get right to it. Thank you. We are looking to send three aircraft to a site the Israelis have identified for us. You should be seeing a satellite image of Teheran on your monitor. And you will see Azadi Stadium captioned. The apartment complex identified is a circular array of six 20-story buildings around an interior plaza about a quarter mile west of Azadi. The target is in a small two-story building in this interior plaza. No doubt, the target’s personal guards are using the surrounding towers as lookouts. It’s a pretty secure location for him. Also, there are gardens in the plaza with tall hedgerows. He’s able to come and go to or from the perimeter with pretty good cover.

“We have determined that the target IS a real human, not an animation, a car or a pet, for example. We overlayed the Israeli signal on our own information and we have synched to all our command and control systems.

“Our plan is to send three aircraft. First will be a CH-47 C Chinook Helicopter. It’s being painted as we speak with Iranian ID and the well-known three-triangle yellow symbol for nuclear radiation. The Iranians have two Chinooks and they’re occasionally seen flying around Teheran, so it’s not going to raise a red flag. That Chinook is going to come in with a crew of two and six native Farsi speaking Special Ops. The Chinook will laze the location of the target from its maximum distance to direct the bombs, and it will capture video of the strike. One Raptor will deliver four GBU-39 Small Diameter bombs - these are 250 pounders - the second will carry two more 39s and a BLU-95, that’s a fuel-air bomb.

“We don’t know which floor in the building the target might be so we’ll have to bring it down and crush them. Could be the basement. That’s the job of the GBU-39s. The BLU-95 will create a huge fireball and concussion - followed by a mushroom cloud. It’s a 500 pound bomb so it could take one of the six towers with it. We’re creating a ruse, hoping it looks like a tactical nuke, because when the Chinook comes in, about four minutes after the strike, the Special Ops platoon will be dressed in Iranian-flagged radiation protection and waving off any Revolutionary Guards or onlookers.

“Their job will be to check for and photograph casualties, get DNA and get the hell out.

“That’s the plan. Any questions?”

Hillary Clinton raised her hand and began speaking, “Admiral Olsen, what if they don’t believe its a nuclear blast?”

“Madame Secretary, good question. The Iranians are scared to death of the nuclear activity taking place in their midst. We only have to be concerned about the Revolutionary guards who’ve been given radiological badges and Geiger counters. Some have. So, we’ve brought a box of powder with us that we’re going to release upon descent. The prop wash should spread it around pretty good and it’ll scare the bejeesus out of anyone with a badge or a Geiger counter. The half life is short, though and it won’t hurt anyone or leave a trail.”

“What if the sonofabitch gets away?” asked Emanuel.

“Then we were never there,” answered the Admiral.

The President spoke up. “Are we all good, people?”

A couple people, the military in particular, looked quizzical. It was strange to see such an important mission the subject of a committee vote at the Command level. Damn, sometimes you just have to make a decision. Get off the pot. Fish or cut bait. True leadership was a rare trait and when it was absent, it raised all kinds of alarms in the minds of warriors. It’s absence was a very, very dangerous thing to a country, and to anyone who reported to that Commander. Unfortunately, in this case, everyone did.

Fifteen minutes later a giant Chinook helicopter cleared the sand from a city block of tarmac beneath it as its rotors pulled it skyward and toward the capital of an outpost in the Evil Empire.

Chapter 10. Trust but verify

2009-10-12T20:58:00.001-04:00

Rahm Emmanuel sent the President a text message while sitting six feet away from him in the White House Situation Room. It read “Let’s talk.”

The President slipped his iPhone back in his pocket. People were used to seeing him fiddle with it, having recently switched from his very well-known Blackberry at the insistence of NSA. He interrupted the free-for-all discussion that was in play, “People. I have to take a break, Rahm can you walk with me for a moment.”

The two exited the confines of the of the conference room.

“What’s up?” asked the President.

“Not sure, but I think I like it. This Bin Laden grab has ‘Second Term’ written all over it. It shuts up those bastards who were whining about the Nobel Prize and it would boost the economy by spiking confidence - and probably the market - without having to change a thing legislatively.”

“So, we’re doing it.”

“Yeah, but no one’s looked at the downside. We always do that. You and I just need to take a second and do that.”

“Rahm, Hillary heard the whole thing. If I don’t go after Bin Laden now, she’ll leak it. She’ll leak it to the Brits or something and it’ll come back through channels, but she will leak it and you know it,” suggested Obama.

“I know. But you could - if you had to - create a compelling reason why you reversed course. I mean, you could claim he was hiding in a kindergarten or some such shit,” countered Emmanuel.

“Look, this is a good thing. Downside is we lose a plane, bomb a kindergarten, get accused of helping the Israelis. What else?”

“You think Fox News would give a flying fuck about a kindergarten full of Iranian kids? The story would be about you and your failure to attack Bin Laden.” challenged the Chief of Staff, with a flourish of his usual colorful style.

“Rahm, I don’t know what alarms are going off for you but all those possibilities are already real. Bombing Bin Laden changes nothing but the upside.”

“You trust Netanyahu?”

Obama looked down. He didn’t want Emmanuel to read anything in his eyes.

“No, I don’t. But Ehud Barak set this up, not Natanyahu. I think Ehud convinced Netanyahu to allow it.”

“Why?”

“Beats me.” The President shrugged as he replied.

“Maybe he feels like he owes you something?” Emmanuel was pressing to see if there was something that he wasn’t aware of, something that needed to be considered in the mix of political, economic, and military variables that seemed to inevitably intersect when decisions were made at this level.

“I can’t tell you Rahm. Not this time. It’s better if I don’t. Now, I’ve gotta get back in there.” Even if he hadn’t been forthcoming, the President did feel good to have been honest with his right-hand man.

“There’s always a downside Barack, what’s the downside?”

“I don’t know,” said the President. They were words he seldom uttered.”

Ballistic missiles are a lot like stones. They accelerate to their apogee and fall back to earth according to their aerodynamics and their inertia. After, their fuel is consumed, ballistic missiles are just like rocks thrown at the enemy.

The inertial guidance system of the Iranian long-range missiles were programmed to tug their noses down to force an impact with a pre-determined point on earth. Before their fuel had been exhausted, the hackers had stretched that flight path out by changing the algorithm used to project the grid from several satellites over the earth, and the missiles were allowed to fly well out into the Meditteranean. Like a Mercator projection, the distortion was most evident at the extremes and it was unlikely it was noticed by the Americans, Iraqis or Iranians. No civilians would have been affected.

In the cold October dawn, Avi, Jael and Alon looked into the Eastern sky, expecting to see flaming telephone pole-sized projectiles zipping past. But the missiles had long since consumed all of their fuel. A few were indeed visible framed against the indigo sky as the rising sun reflected off their sand-colored skin. Some still had a trail of smoke or vapor tailing them. But the sheer numbers were better appreciated by the sonic booms. Each missile created a double boom as it passed overhead at a speed greater than the speed of sound, and the ground around Jerusalem reverberated with the concussion of dozens of aerial explosions.

“Alon, you’ll be needed in a few moments if the Americans decide to strike. Don’t get lost,” cautioned Avi.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” promised Jael.

“Yeah, right,” replied Avi as he left the deck and headed for the elevator.

Alon had been standing near the railing with his arm around Jael as the three were watching for the missiles, so it was easy for him to curl his arm around and turn her toward himself.

“Did you make a wish?” she asked, as though the two had been watching falling stars.

“I suppose you could say that,” whispered Alon.

“Then why don’t we go back inside so I can make your dreams come true?” asked Jael with a sly smile.”

Alon did not argue. He raised his left hand and swept a cascade of blonde hair from her right cheek and sent it streaming over her ear and onto her shoulder. As he leaned forward to kiss her, his hand traced the strong lines of her face. His fingertips followed her neckline, tracing a gently curving and descending path to her open blouse.

There his hand met hers,

Jael slipped two more buttons through their mated buttonholes and lowered her arms. Alon accepted her invitation.

It had been almost two years since Jael had kissed a man with abandon the way she was kissing Alon. She was particular, yes, but also she had desperately needed to heal. Jael thought of it as needing time to forget, but after 18 months she finally began to realize that she was never going to forget Eli - and, in fact, she didn’t want to forget. Such a Jewish thing, to have so much you wish you could forget, yet such a strong desire to remember it all, to celebrate it, to enshrine it, study it, defend it and maybe someday understand it.

But this feeling for Alon was simpler than that. This was a palpable tug at her heart that Jael felt from the first time she saw Alon. She had first regarded him as a sort of stuffed animal - cute and cuddly, but not handsome. He was innocent-looking, like he would be receptive to some good old-fashioned nurturing and affection. He could take her teasing without complaining, and he’d responded with growing fervor to her flirting. That was good, because it meant to her that he was making an emotional investment. That was important to her, because she didn’t want just a lover. She was ready to fall in love again and rebuild that part of her life - the part that had been destroyed by an 18 year old Palestinian girl, Hiba Jaradat, a girl who had never met Eli, who had never seen his brown eyes flash in the candlelight. A girl whose desperate need to be appreciated in a culture that offers women little in the way of a future, and nothing in the way of romance had played a large part in Hiba’s willingness to wear the bomb. She may have been told that the 72 houri-el-ein would be awaiting her at the gates of heaven to cleanse her of her sins and provide to her every pleasure of mankind that Allah has provided - that was the usual line. Or, she may have been told that if she refused, she would be raped and sold into sexual slavery. These were the methods that the terrorist cowards used to enlist children to do their evil bidding. In essence, her handlers used her innocence to destroy her and to shock Israel into believing that this war of terror against them would never end.

So, one June night at a club in Natanya, while Jael stood on the beach making a cell phone call to her parents in East Talpiot, Hiba walked into the club carrying an armful of roses, pretending to offer them to the gentlemen who might buy them for their lady friends. Eli, who had been sitting at a table near the edge of the dance floor saw her and got up to buy a flower, no doubt for Jael.

The surveilance tapes show Eli walking up about eight feet behind her as she drops the bundle of flowers. Hiba kneels, as though to pick them up, but instead, she reaches into her left sleeve and the video ends.

Magan David Adom arrived within three minutes to treat the wounded and transport them to hospital. In that three minutes Jael was unable to find Eli and believed he had escaped. But ZAKA found him. ZAKA is a group of deeply religious volunteers who will scour a suicide bombing scene to recover every piece of flesh, fragment of bone, tuft of hair or human organ, catalog it, identify its owner, and provide it for the traditional rapid interment. Eli’s body had been shredded, returned to his family in a sealed metal cask, inside of a plain oak casket emblazoned by a Menorah and a beautifully carved Shin. Jael never even got to say goodbye.

In the apartment building, their barracks, the couple were in nearly absolute darkness. Jael knew that there were cameras all over the flat, but even with IR chips she knew they couldn’t see through a blanket. She ran to her bunk, removing her blouse as she felt her way through the darkness, returning to Alon and shrouding him with the scratchy, thin, IDF-issue bedcover. He was sitting on a kitchen chair, fighting to remove his boots.

“Alon. Leave the boots. You may need to run if we get paged. Let me help. I want to take your trousers off of you.” She giggled as she heard herself say the words.

“You do?” Alon asked, “We are so alike. I have been wanting to help you do the same.”

Jael stooped, lifted the edge of the blanket and crawled under on her hands and knees.

Alon reached forward and felt her lovely blonde hair in his hands. “I can’t kiss you if you’re down there,” he said with a half-hearted attempt to raise her shoulders

“Ah, but I can,” she said. Alon just crossed his legs behind her and caressed her head in his hands. After a moment she stood. Alon reached out for her belt and in a second she had freed a leg from its confinement.

She moved closer.

“Alon?” She needed to ask him something, anything that would assure her that this would be real, not merely physical, but maybe the beginning of forever.

“Yes, my love?” he whispered.

“Is there anyone else in your life?”

“No,” he said without hesitation, kissing her stomach and exploring her warm and moist body with a gentle touch. “And I hope that is the last time I ever say ‘no’ to you, Jael.”

She reached down and steadied him as she rested on his lap, content and happy, truly happy for the first time in so long. She moved her feet to rest on her toes and she began to sway and rock and move her head front to back, left and right. Alon showered her with kisses, his mouth found every ready nerve, her neck, under her chin, he could feel with his lips her heart pounding between her breasts. She rose and fell as it suited her and she lost herself in the heat and the sensations momentarily trapped under the army blanket and forever in their memories.

The war could bring long periods of loneliness. It could bring death. Jael was going to make sure that there were no wasted moments. Life was to be lived and, while it was still crazy, it was beginning to make sense again.

The Hueys had delayed over their targets after dropping their baby Bunker Busters. Even at about 2 miles altitude, the circling chopper crews could see quite a bit of detail. There was no visible indication of impact, but momentarily a towering explosion followed. After that, there was nothing, nothing to see from above the blast. After fifteen minutes, several dozen Revolutionary Guards poured from their emplacements and began clearing debris, searching for survivors, gloating that only the first few subterranean stories had been compromised. It was equivalent to a victory.

“Mr. President, we’re getting satellite recon from Qom and several other sites. Analysts say the strike was a failure. Direct hits. Looks like a one-ton bunker buster. They were delivered by the Hueys and they failed to penetrate. Maybe damage to fifty feet.”

“How deep are those facilities, do we know?”

“No, sir. We have speculated on the basis of the truckloads of debris that the volume removed from the sites could represent 200 to 300 foot-deep facilities.”

“Crap! They just swatted at a fucking wasp and did nothing but piss it off!” interjected the President’s Chief of Staff.

“Yeah, it’s not good,” agreed Obama. “Leon, I thought you said they were the best in the world.”

“I did,” said Panetta humbly.

“Admiral Mullen,” Obama leaned on the conference table with both hands and looked his Chairman Joint Chiefs in the face. “I’m canceling the mission to...”

“Shit, sir!” exclaimed Morrell. “Oh shit!”

“Talk to us,” ordered the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“There’s been a secondary explosion at Qom, sir. I don’t know. It’s blown the side of the fucking hill off.”

“Put it up, Major.” ordered the President. With two fast flicks of his fingers, the officer manipulating images and data sent the live images, streaming from a high-resolution satellite feed, to the 60-inch display.

“Sirs, that’s where Qom used to be. Here, Major, please insert the image we took just 30 minutes ago. Hang on. Hang on. There, see? The semi-circle is where the mountain was carved away and the facility was directly beneath.”

“Mike?” General Holland was calling through the speaker phone.

“Bill?” Holland replied.

“Mike, it was brilliant. They engineered a one-two punch, and I mean engineered it. There’s so much debris in those holes now if anyone WAS left alive underneath it’ll take months to dig them out. They’re not gonna’ bother. Damn brilliant. Brilliant! I’d say the Iranian nuclear program is dead AND buried.”

"Where'd it come from?" asked Admiral Mullen.

"No one knows, sir. Spooky as hell." added Morrell.

“They’re the best in the world.” said Leon Panetta with a smile.

Chapter 9. The Levant

2009-10-10T08:18:00.003-04:00

The great arcing curve of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean is known as the Levant. The word Lebanon is a derivative. A student of romance languages might conclude the meaning if they recognize the verb, “to rise” within the word.

The Levant had a mystical connotation for the Sea Peoples who first ventured from Sicily, Sardinia and the Greek islands to explore and eventually populate the Levant. They were the antecedents of the Philistines, drawn to the area now sometimes called Palestine by the promise of the rising of the sun, and the implacable human need to explore and conquer.

They discovered that other tribes living beyond the Levant had the same reverence for the East. It was there that the Sun began its daily march across the sky, the Sun that gave life to the Earth and punished the desert. This sort of dual personality exhibited by gods of the time when evidenced in a heavenly body easily explains how simpler people could attribute god-like status to a burning ball of hydrogen gas. Ra, the Egyptian sun god, depicted as a golden orb, is a prime example.

The Sumerians, an ancient people who once built a flourishing nation where northern Iraq is located today, called the East, ‘Asa’ and the West, ‘Osa’. Asa, the word, grew to embody a dual meaning, both the compass direction, and the land it represented, Asia.

Today, war in the East arose with the Sun. Israel’s helicopters and fighter jets made great loops around their targets to approach them so that the sun would be in the eyes of their defenders. Even though most defensive weapons were computer controlled, men still feared their attackers and wanted to be able to see them coming. With the sun in their eyes, defenders were always handicapped.

“I don’t get it.” confessed Admiral Mullen.

“You mean how pointless it is?” asked general Holland from the speakerphone.

“Exactly.”

“What am I missing?” asked the President.

“After all this is said and done. We’ve got a war, but no resolution. None of these weapons even approach taking out Iran’s hardened nuclear facilities. Plus, Israel’s about to be obliterated.” commented Holland.

“Maybe, I know this sounds crazy, but maybe Israel thinks they can take the punch and run Iran out of candles.” suggested Mullen.

“The Iranians are gonna’ take out Tel Aviv, probably leave Jerusalem alone, but Tel Aviv and Haifa, Joppa, Netanya, they’re toast.”

“How long have they got?”

“Missiles are just about to start crossing Jordan, sir, that’s 150 miles to Haifa and Tel Aviv...at Mach 1? say 10 to 15 minutes.”

“Sir, Ehud Barak on Secure green 6.” called the Major.

Obama punched a button on his phone and picked up the receiver.

“Mr. Barak. I’m surprised to hear from you at this moment.”

“Communicating in a while may be problematic. So, it must be now. Bibi wants to speak with you, but he is on the line with Alon Pinkus. Should be soon. I have an urgent matter he has asked me to convey.”

“Please.”

“We have a highly placed operative in Muqtada al-Sadr’s entourage. This has taken us a matter of many years of diligence and patience. Al-Sadr has been in the company of Hassan Nazrallah, the Hizbollah leader, ever since he fled Iraq. We have followed many munitions from Iran to Iraq and even on to Israel that flowed into our midst because of their collaboration. This has brought extreme violence and tragic consequences to both our countries.”

“I am aware of much of that, Mr. Barak.”

“Three days ago a man joined them for a meeting. One just one occasion he has been referred to as “The Sheik.”

“Bin Laden?”

“He has been called “The Sheik.” We have a description of a tall, thin Yemeni with a leg injury. I believe we know who it is. We suspect he traveled into Iran from a southern route. Maybe by ship. Eveyone had been looking for him in the mountains, in Tora Bora or in the caves. He’s not there. The target is in Teheran at this very moment..”

“Are you going to attack. Can you get him?”

“Oh, yes, we are certain we can. He is in a residential area. I expect they are all together.”

“But you are not going to attack?”

“Probably not...for two reasons. First, we have a special covert relationship with the Saudis and the Jordanians, the Egyptians, also. That would be severely damaged and we cannot risk it - especially at this time. Second, he is just another bad guy to us. But he is an almost mythical enemy to you. Bibi and I believe there is a lot more value in your being the one to bring him to justice than if we should be the ones to do it.”

“I see.” Obama also realized it would make all the efforts of his administration look feckless if Bin Laden was finally brought down by little Israel.

“Of course, please understand, I can not reveal how we have targeted him, but I can tell you that we have a signal and it is coming from his person. I can send you an image of the signal and its GPS coordinates by a secure data link. You can do with it what you wish. I can also promise you that our aircraft will not molest yours and that you will have little or no resistance between the Green Zone and Teheran. In just a few minutes, we will have completed taking apart their air power.

Now, Mr. President, my Prime Minister wishes to speak with you and I must attend to other urgent matters.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barak.” said the President, but Ehud Barak had already handed the telephone to Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Mr. Prime Minister?”

“Mr. President.”

“What can I do for you?” asked Obama with great compassion in his voice.

“Barack, I want to thank you for your forbearance. Thank you for allowing us to defend our homeland against this genocidal maniac and his regime.”

“You’re welcome, Benjamin. It was the right thing to do.”

“I agree, and very smart. I’m sure you will understand that I will not be available for the next several hours, Mr. President. Please contact Ambassador Pinkus, personally or through your representative, as you choose. You will be my first call upon my return, I promise.”

“Very good.”

And with that, Netanyahu was gone. Obama had wanted to discuss the matter of Ahmadinijad with Netanyahu directly, but now that would not be possible. He placed the handset in its cradle and asked for the group’s close attention.

“It appears the Israelis have handed us UBL, if we want him.”

“Let’s get the bastard,” roared Biden.

“Are they holding him?” asked Mrs. Clinton.

A momentary chaos erupted in the room. There were lots of questions, stunned disbelief, joy, and years of pent-up anger being released in one moment.

“Whoa, whoa..Here’s the story,” pleaded the President. They have an operative in the midst of the Hizbollah-Mahdi Army cabal and he claims Osama has just joined them. There’s a device that’s somehow on him and transmitting. Can they do that, Leon?”

They’re the best in the world, if they said they did it, they probably did”

“So, if we want him. We have to bomb him.”

“Mr. President,” interrupted Biden, “You need to be the one that gets Bin Laden. The joy that would bring to America! Now the political implications can’t be denied, and think of the demoralizing effect that success would place on our enemies. There’s no downside.”

“Can we do it, General Holland?”

“Sure, especially now. There’s not much resistance left.”

“Mrs. Clinton, the heat will be on you.”

Hillary was watching her presidential candidacy become an asterisk on a Wikipedia entry. She just smiled broadly. It brought a big smile to every face in the room.

“Alright then,” acknowledged the President. CENTCOM or the Pentagon should be getting a feed from Israel with a signal and coordinates. That’s our target.”

Admiral Mullen spoke up, ‘Can we verify?”

Obama shook his head. “They’re gone into bunkers or wherever,” said Obama. “Leon, what can you do for us?”

“Whew! We have zero assets that close up,” said Panetta. You have to believe they’ve got a bead on him. They’re the best in the world,” he repeated.

“Okay.” said Obama. He finally felt like he had accomplished something, like a decision had been made that was Presidential. Even the Nobel committee would have to conclude that the death of a terrorist brought the world closer to a peaceful state. There had been too much criticism of Obama as an undeserving warmaker in the days following the Peace Prize announcement. It was a lot more pressure on him than he had expected.

Admiral Mullen spoke up, “I want to overlay our own hi-res satellite imagery on those coordinates and see if we’ve got human movement - room to room, building to building. I want to make sure we’re not tracking a camel.”

“Go for it.” said Obama. He was feeling pretty good about how this day would dawn in Washington.

In Tel Aviv, word was reaching command centers that the Hueys were at 10,000 feet over their targets and all eight bunker busters were being dropped on a single command. That would add to the fog of war because when damage reports were being conveyed, people would think it impossible that all facilities were damaged and believe that reports were erroneous.

Fighters had been recalled and were releasing any remaining armament on secondary targets. They needed to fly back without any extra weight, too much fuel had been spent and their credit cards were only good in Israel. One limping aircraft did get permission to land in Bagdad, although he was first refused by an Iraqi controller who was only overridden when he buzzed the tower twice and caught the attention of a US Lieutenant General.

Uri Oren received a page and picked up the phone. In his best Farsi he told the tower he was getting out of there, that he was ordered out. Oren was told that the military had shut down the airport but there were no obstacles on the runway. “Then I am leaving now,” he said and hung up the phone. Oren understood the current state of chaos, the low probability he would create a problem for the military and the general loose control the Iranians had over commercial air traffic. If he went away, it would be one less variable for everyone to think about. The second aircraft had already arrived and would pull the same stunt within a few minutes, just before the first giant bunker buster hit the ground.

With the perfectly choreographed help of his ground crew, Oren got the massive aircraft backed up and the jets started whining. Two crew members jumped aboard through the open bomb bay and immediately operated it and sealed it up. Three crew remained. The fuel load was about half capacity.

Oren had reviewed the route when in Amman the night of the bomb bay installation and had decided he would fly a loose S-shape which would cover all his targets. The S-shape would make it appear that he was always flying away from the next target until he was close enough to make the turn and drop. The last turn of the S sent him westward, toward home, toward Israel.

Off the end of the runway, the Giant Airbus climbed steep and slow. Uri could begin to see columns of smoke rising from innumerable locations beyond the airport district. He maintained his climb and requested 35,000 feet from air traffic control. There was no reply. Smoke around the airport had created a thick fog of low level haze to about 1500 feet, but as the blunt nose of the Airbus escaped the haze, the shock of the bright morning light filling the cabin disrupted Uri’s concentration like the first intonations of the Call to Prayer.

He was en route to Qom. It was time for him to put an end to the madness.

Chapter 8. The Earth Moves

2009-10-08T22:03:00.001-04:00

Morrell called out another “Excuse me!” which was getting to be annoying as the Pentagon wire to the Situation Room was now streaming information at an ever-increasing pace.

“What ‘cha got?” asked the President.

“More images from the Gulf.”

“Put them up,” requested Obama.

“The Hueys are lifting off. These are about 15 minutes old. The wire says they’ve begun a path up the middle of the Gulf toward Basra.”

General Holland ventured a guess at their strategy. “Sounds like they’re going to hug the border until they can break off for their LZs in Iran. They’re counting on the Iranians to respect the border.

Morrell interrupted again, “Holy shit, sirs! Missiles, Pentagon can’t even count them. Ha Ha! Israel’s got a sky-full of birds headed east.”

Morrell’s enthusiasm for Israel’s decisive offensive was almost out of place. “Analyst estimates are 72 incoming Jericho 2s. Trajectories are being calculated but they’re all coming down on Iran.”

“Have Aegis batteries track and stand down. Have them prepare to track and destroy any retaliation on the President’s order, my order, or SECDEF. Let me know the minute you see them light up anything in Iran.” ordered Admiral Mullen.

“Why all three of us, Mike?” asked Obama.

“We may all be on the phone at the same time, sir, talking to different people. We won’t want to be passing phones around.” explained Mullen.

The Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor had arrived just a few minutes before the Hueys lifted off of the Netz Class missile frigates the Israelis had parked in the Persian Gulf. Morrell had a real-time radar scan ordered up to watch the helos march up the eastern Iraqi border, but he got a lot more than he bargained for.”

“Look, Mr. President,” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, rising from his chair and approaching the 60-inch plasma screen. Here are the eight helos in a nice loose line all tracking up the gulf.” Looking back toward the console he waved his right arm toward the Air Force Captain on the video controls. “Captain, add borders to the display, please.”

“Yes, sir. Borders on.”

“There you go. There’s the Persian Gulf. And this...My God are they going to get punished. Ah, I’ve never seen anything like this. That swarm is about seventy-two medium-range ballistic missiles with who-knows-what in their warheads.”

The volume of cross-talk in the room and the sound of electronic communication being used by each member to communicate with their subordinates was rising fast.

“Can we cut the chatter, people?” demanded the President. “I need to hear Admiral Mullen right now.”

Mullen continued, “Standard issue is a 5-ton warhead. High explosive. But, there could be thermobaric or cluster warheads on any of these.

“What do the frigates have?” Obama asked.

“I’m not that familiar,” conceded Mullen. “Can you take that one General Holland?”

“Well, sure. Depends, of course on the mission. My guess is they’ll be sitting there waiting to use surface-to-air Arrows on any missiles headed west. If they have a belly full of those, they won’t have room for much offensive weaponry.”

“Makes sense, Bill.” Admiral Mullen knew it was important to reply. Like the EOS beep at the end of a radio transmission telling both parties that the communication hasn’t dropped off.

General Holland unexpectedly jumped back into the conversation. “I see missiles heading into Iran from the Persian Gulf. Anybody there see this?”

The Secretary of Defense spoke up, “Bill, this is Bob Gates. We’ve got ‘em.”

“Those are not long range. They’re either big surface-to-air missiles or surface-to-surface. Those frigates can only reach out about 150 kilometers.”

“A hundred miles or so,” offered SECDEF to the room.

Holland began a narration to accompany what everyone was seeing on the screen.

“They’re spreading out. God, gotta’ be a hundred of ‘em. They’re hitting everything near the Gulf, I’ll bet. Looks like they want to take down command and control, airfields, personnel, missile sites, radar. This is definitive Shock and Awe. I’m, I’m really flabbergasted.”

“Bill, this is Jim Jones. Why no response from the Iranians?”

“Shit. I don’t know.”

Jael and Alon were out on a deck at the apartment building in modern Jerusalem. Jael had a tobacco habit and every hour, or more, she disappeared for a smoke. This time, she invited Alon because, well, the war was getting close and she liked him.

From the deck they could see down to the Old City, to David’s Tower and the dusty gray dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was a beautiful sight, and if you overlaid the eons of history that have played out in the narrow space between them and the crenelated parapets of Jerusalem’s walls, you would have all the raw material necessary to describe the entire drama of human existence.

Jael was leaning back against the building as Alon, his back to Jael, put his hands out and rested his weight on the wrought iron railing.

“Alon? I’m chilly”

He turned and took a step toward her. She reached her hands into his jacket, grabbed his belt above his back pockets and drew him toward her. Her face was barely illuminated by the glow in the eastern sky. But her eyes were filled with lights reflected from the world around them. She closed them.

Alon took her head in his hands and tilted it just a bit. Jael let her head drift back and thrust her half-open mouth toward him. He tasted the tobacco on her lips, but it was sweet, and he didn’t care. At that moment, Alon Rosen did not have a care in the world.

“You two!” They were startled by Avi’s sudden appearance at the doorway. “Incoming. Let’s go.”

The three electronics wizards disappeared into an apartment that contained an elevator to the basement bunker. They quickly completed retinal scans, the elevator door opened and they entered the car. In a moment they were back at their computers.

Ballistic missiles were on the radar and ten minutes from touchdown. Aegis calculations on each missile were transmitted in real time to the bunker. 3D displays showed where each missile would impact if they continued unabated on their flight paths with a GPS grid projected onto the topography of the nation of Israel.

“Get me the Topcon list display,” barked Peled. Let’s test the signals on Missile 34.

“Confirm 34,” replied Ben-Tzvi.

“Toggle A,” called out Peled.

“Still on. Still on.”

“B”

“Still on. Still on.”

“C”

“Whoa! Flat, she’s flat out looking for the longitude.”

“It’s the L-5 signal.”

“Works like magic, Danny! Damn!”

“Stretch her out!”

“You got it!”

“Take it to 12 minutes, 30 seconds of arc. And I want a check of every other bird. MAke sure their all tuned in to L5 and not channel surfing.”

As Ben-Tzvi manipulated a variable capacitor on the transmitter in front of him, the lines of longitude on the 3D display began to move apart on the western side. They no longer formed squares with the intersecting lines of latitude over Israel. They became elongated.

In fact, any line that had fallen over an Israeli city, like Tel Aviv, was now 42 miles to the west. Those were the new positions in space that the Iranian missiles were chasing. They were going to fall exactly where programmed, but where they were programmed had been moved by four young Israelis who hacked into a satellite 120 miles over their heads. All the new positions were in the deep blue Mediterranean Sea.

“Wanna watch, asked Jael?”

Peled spoke quickly, “I’ll stay, take your cell phones. And take the camcorder for me.”

“Recommendations?” asked the President, with tension clearly in his voice.

“We take down any ballistic missiles heading East,” volunteered Director Panetta.

“Then we’re perceived to be on Israel’s side and we could be attacked,” countered Mrs. Clinton.

“Attacked by whom?” asked National Security Advisor, Jim Jones. “Iran? Looks to me like Iran’s about to get the ever-lovin’ shit kicked out of ‘em. And it’s high-time, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Most of the country feels the way you do, Jim,” added Emmanuel. “They’d love to see these guys get their butts kicked. Anymore, there’s no difference in perception between Ahmadinejad and the Taliban and Al-Queda. They’re all bad guys and they all deserve what they get.”

“We need to be more measured though in our response, no matter if we all feel that way,” suggested Mrs. Clinton. No one asked why, although Mullen thought the question was obvious and flashed a look at Gates that said so. Gates averted his eyes. Panetta caught it all.

“We’re going to be blamed for helping the Israelis.” announced Panetta.

“But we didn’t help them, did we?” asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, entering the Situation Room.

“No. You’re right,” agreed Obama, “we didn’t. We didn’t obstruct them, but that’s a different thing altogether.”

“Panetta countered, “Suppose I’m an Iranian. What would be happening differently to me this morning if the United States had or had not helped the Israelis?”

“Leon, we need a reason we can give the world for allowing the Israelis through, some compelling need we had that gave us no choice.” suggested President Obama.

“I’ll work on it, sir.” replied Panetta dutifully.

Well I want everyone working on it. Think people, think!”

“Mr. President?” Hillary Clinton said as she rocked back in her chair. “Maybe to help us work out an acceptable statement, we should know, why DID we let the Israelis fly over Iraq?”

It was the elephant in the room question and Obama’s most likely opponent in the future presidential contest was asking in order to get him on the record.

He paused briefly and looked her straight in the eyes and said, “It was the right thing to do.”

It was a beautiful, innocent - almost Reaganesque - answer. And everyone in the room knew instantly that it was a lie.

Chapter 7. The Negev

2009-10-07T23:49:00.000-04:00

Despite its relatively small size, it is one of the world’s most rugged deserts, stretching from Be’er Sheva in the north to the Red Sea resort city, Eilat, to the south. On the west the desert extends all the way to the shores of the Egyptian Meditterranean, while to the east, the Negev ends at the Dead Sea, or the geologic rift that cuts south from the lowest point on earth. Within this strange and beautiful triangle, deep and sharp chasms penetrate brown, red, violet, orange and ochre mountain ranges that rise like row after row of shark’s teeth. Here and there, vast dry plains extend from one mountain range to another and narrow wadis allow the shepherd or Bedouin to hunt, explore, or simply navigate from place to place. Nomads have traversed this land for perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 years.

There was life in the desert. Along some of the wadis, fresh water streams flowed, providing life to great stands of bamboo, acacia, fruit and almond trees, snakes, amphibians, small rodents, larger arboreal Hydrax that looked like part woodchuck and part squirrel, panthers and the regal Ibex, an antelope with giant curved horns the diameter of a hula hoop. Ibex could run along the side of a mountain as though there were a wide, flat path - when there was no path at all.

Because the desert does not tend to remove any scars placed upon it, but rather seems to be created from a collection of scars, all the hills are circumscribed by parallel lines, some a few feet apart, some only inches apart, but each roughly level, no matter the steepness of the grade. These paths are ancient, formed by a thousand generations of sheep, Ibex, perhaps even lions and tigers that once ruled the desert here.

In the last several centuries the nomads were authentic arabs, the Bedouin, and the animals traversing these slopes were their sheep and camels. Many who never saw a living Bedu, knew them from the film Lawrence of Arabia. But even before the Bedouin, the most famous group were a generation of nomads called Ibaru, translated as Hebrew, who came through the very northern tip of this land. Except for one, a certain Moses, who remained on a mountain named Nebo to the east of the rift, a camel-backed mountain that rises prominently over the Dead Sea, where he had a good view of this rugged and beautiful land that was given to his people by the One who created it.

The road south from Be’er Sheva to Eilat takes a sharp right at Dimona. Just southwest of the highway, and a half-mile through the desert, lies a heavily guarded facility surrounded by two concentric circular bulldozed mounds. To enter, one must go through two offset openings. There is no direct route. Four other facilities nearby, identical in every way to the first are found in similar situations just off the highway. And thre were many more, protected by the desolation of the desert.

An aerial view of the roadways near these facilities would reveal an interesting construction not visible from the roads. Trenches, four to five feet deep, cutting jagged lines roughly parallel to the thoroughfares allowed infantry to defend the facilities or close the roads. The jagged angles that the trench line followed meant that if the enemy were to take a position within the excavation, the same trench could protect defenders even just a few feet away. It was a technique as old as DaVinci, perfected in World War One. Here and there, a corner was flattened to allow for the mounting of a 50 cal. machine gun.

Ari Ma’oz put the phone down, walked across the white tiled room and methodically, calmly, placed a steel key into a gray painted steel panel and turned it 180 degrees. A white light beneath a multi-faceted glass lens suddenly shone. A simple sign to let Colonel Ma’oz know that he had access to the fire control for a dozen medium range, solid fuel Jericho 2 ballistic missiles. The guidance solutions would be sent by telemetry if there were any need to change them, otherwise, each was already programmed for a certain latitude and longitude that pass each other in a country called Iran. Ma’oz knew the targets and the thought crossed his mind that it had been something like 4,000 years since there was a war between the Jews and the Persians.

Jael Simcha, Avi Ben-Tzvi, Alon Rosen and Danny Peled were leaning toward the computer monitor. Simcha and Rosen were also watching a second monitor displaying two rapidly changing sets of digits. The small room in the basement of the Davidka Street apartment was lined with electronics, and racks of equipment were ablaze with flashing lights, miniature screens and displays. The overhead fluorescent lights beat at 50 Hertz and created an eerie clash with some of the displays that had a clock speed of 60 Hertz. It took a little getting used to.

Peled picked up the ringing phone. “Shalom. Uh huh. Lo. Ken, ken. Peled. Ken. Todah (pause) Shalom.”

“Was that it?” asked Captain Ben-Tzvi.

“That was it,” responded Peled. “That was Ehud Barak asking me to confirm our moving target.”

“So now you can tell me what we’re watching?” asked Alon Rosen. Rosen had been recently conscripted into the gang of Israeli geeks because of his incredible electronics skills, particularly in nano technology, the microscopic electronics that could place complex circuitry on small bits of metal or silicon that were the size of a grain of sand. Rosen had conceived of a nano chip that would emit energy when struck by a specific radio frequency. Hit the chip with frequency A and it emits frequency B. The emission was weak, but if it were on a clear space on the dial in an ultra high frequency, it could be detected from a long way away. Rosen had named the chips “translators,” because they translated frequency A to frequency B. He hadn’t bothered to developed an application.

“Jael, play the disk for Alon,” ordered Danny Peled.

Jael leaned down to find the disc on a well-organized shelf beneath the disc player. Her wavy blonde hair dropped off her shoulders and framed her beautiful face. She felt Alon’s eyes on her and she looked up to meet his eyes and then back again to the shelf. In a moment the disk was in and video appeared.

Jael narrated, “You see who we have on tape. It’s Mr. Ahmadinijad. Look carefully. What do you see?”

“Ah, he is speaking to a few politicians, the media I think, maybe that’s a Mullah over his shoulder. He’s signing something. He’s left handed. Is that it?” asked Rosen.

Peled interjected, “Play it again.”

Jael objected, “He’s not going to get it. Just tell him.”

“Just tell me,” pleaded Rosen.

“He’s a genius. He’ll get it,” insisted Peled.

The disk had already started again.

“Wait for the next cut,” suggested Jael. Rosen glanced again at her and thought he noticed she had undone one additional button on her light blue IDF blouse. Again she caught his eye. “I’m quite certain he’ll get it.” and she and Rosen shared his embarrassed grin - which he promptly turned against her with a finger wag.

“Alright,” Rosen continued the narration,”He is at another meeting. Again he is signing something. He’s still left handed. He...wait. I want to see the first one.”

“No,” said Jael. “It’s gone. Watch the next one.” And almost immediately another cut and another signing ceremony.

“Why do you suppose he signs so many documents?” asked Rosen.

“It looks like he’s in charge, like he’s doing something,” suggested Ben-Tzvi. Scribes have always been honored, he thinks he’s a scribe.

“I’ve got it, you know.” said Rosen without much enthusiasm.

“I knew you would eventually,” replied Jael, and for some reason, Alon Rosen thought her words were filled with the promise of deliberate double entendre. He looked her straight in the eye and she just grinned, until the edges of her olive-shaped eyes collapsed into narrow lines. Rosen finally had to look away. The other two men just exchanged glances and shook their heads. Both had hoped to get closer to Major Jael Simcha - with no response. Suddenly, this Rosen walks into their midst and she practically throws herself at him.

“So tell us, now” commanded Peled.

“He is using the same gold pen.”

“Very good. Where is the pen from?”

“Where is it from?” asked Rosen. “How the hell would I know that?”

“Look at it,” demanded Peled.

“Yes! I am looking at it. It’s a nice gold pen.”

“Does it look like this?” asked Peled, handing Rosen a gold pen.

“I suppose it looks exactly like this, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Because they all have the UN logo on them. Do you see it?” inquired Peled.

“Of course, that is the UN logo. What Israeli doesn’t recognize the UN logo? But why does he have a UN pen?”

Jael took the question, “Because he stole it. He stole a whole box of them. In 2008, when he first went to New York to speak at the Security Council he went into the ready room. They have coffee and make-up for the camera if the speaker wants it. They have a telephone and pastries and pads and pens. He stole the box. We noticed that before his most recent trip in August he was no longer using the UN pens. So we placed a box in the room and he stole the pens again.”

“I am shocked. You have proved that Ahmadinijad is a thief.” said Rosen with sarcastic emphasis.

“You should be upset,” said Ben-Tzvi. “He also stole some of your nano chips that we put inside those pens.”

“Shit!” exclaimed Rosen. “They work!”

“Of course they work, you Einstein!” glowed Simcha. That’s him blinking away on the screen.”

“Damn!” said Rosen, his thoughts reeling.”Are they going...?”

Ben-Tzvi knew where he was going with that question, so he interrupted, “We don’t know. One of our jobs was to establish contact. We have our hooks into a number of satellites from this room and we found the signal. As long as the local FM radio station stays on the air, we’ll have an eye on him.”

“What they do with him is not our business,” Peled added hastily.

“So are we done?”

“No, Rosen, we have one more job. It starts when the war starts.”

Rosen turned to face Peled, “I thought the war had started.”

“Not until they start shooting back, Alon. Until then, it’s just an attack.”

As Israeli fighters approached the Iraq/Iran border, Ari Ma’oz typed a code word into a computer and hit the return key. Somewhere in the Negev desert, concrete pads rose from the ground and were rolled by a chain drive 3 meters from their initial position. Water could be heard rushing into the deep wells that lay below the holes the pads had covered moments before. Suddenly, great plumes of yellow smoke shot like a geyser from each opening. One at a time a great green missile rose from each, and, by the time the tail was visible leaping from the ground, the projectile was already traveling east at over 120 miles an hour. It would reach out to one of several pre-selected targets; a radar center, an airfield, a missile site, a command bunker or an anti aircraft emplacement.

On a hillside near Dimona, a Bedu was startled by a spine-chilling roar arising from beyond the nearby wadi. He had awakened to relieve himself and had decided it was time to find his blanket and pray.

To his left, eight ribbons of smoke rose into the moonlit sky. His two camels were growling and pulling at their leads. They were frightened. To his left, another set of ribbons were visible, one by one another group arose from where the roar emanated. Suddenly, from behind him, there were more, and soon the sky was filled with streamers of silver smoke, the second full October moon dancing off the particles that grew thicker and rose like towers.

“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” he shouted ecstatically with his hands over his kufiyya and his ears, and not knowing what else to say.