Part 11 (A serial book excerpt)
Previous installments: After Flight 93 crashes into the White House on 9/11/2001 killing President Bush as was originally planned, Dick Cheney, the Vice President, is made the leader of the country. He begins immediately to make changes.
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McGurty announced himself to Cheney’s secretary through the intercom. He was immediately entered in, an entitlement usually reserved only for high ranking political and military officials and oilmen.
“So, what have you got for me? “ Cheney asked his slightly timid assistant.
“We can get Rumsfeld in, sir. Bolton would be a much tougher goal.”
“Good, good!’ said Cheney pleasedly. “Let’s get the ball rolling on that then.”
“Is Mr. Rumsfeld aware of the situation, sir?”
“No, but he will be very shortly, McGurty. I wanted to make sure it was feasible first. Thanks for working on that.”
“My pleasure, sir!”
He exited.
It was a meeting with the real big boys that ran things. The head honchos. The Man in plurality.
Still they all sat patiently in their lavishly comfortable chairs wearing suits just like so many other men across the world, only far better crafted. They are expectant, but unsure. Cheney was animated, excited. His eyes glowed with an intensity radiating from them.
“Gentlemen, as you can probably already imagine, we have made a decision for war. We are going after those who are responsible for the 911 tragedy.”
Bravos sounded around the table.
“This is grim news for us as a nation, but we should also rejoice for we at last are seeking blood from those who dealt us the deal.” Enthusiastic hand claps erupted.
“It is been a cloud hanging over us for a long time, now, but now we have the chance to experience its good potential. The promise of a silver lining holds especially true for we gentlemen in this room.” He unveils a map of the Mideast on the easel board set up before them. “We have already begun our buildup for a campaign against our hidden enemies. Our researchers in the CIA and FBI have led us to the lair of our cowardly foes. And that lair is in…” he points to the map with his pointer, “Iraq.” He points to the nation which is suddenly highlighted on the map and grows in proportion to be dominant. “This is our enemy. It is believed that Osama bin Laden is hiding out in its midst, probably in a remote desert area. In two days from now we will be hitting them with everything we got. They will experience a shock and awe that they will never forget.”
“Iraq? Aren’t they finding that the Arabs flying the planes into New York were Saudi’s?”
“Yes, indeed. But who was their motivator? Bin Laden. And where is he?’ He points to the map.
“We have to make sure we go after the cats and not the kittens. We will hit Iraq so hard they will be whirling like dervishes for weeks.”
Cheney paused a moment, then added with an expressible smirk upon his face, “And that is where the silver lining is. Gentlemen, the benefit of raining fire back upon our enemies is that once they are vanquished along with that despot who runs the place, we will have control over the world’s third largest oil producing country.”
A few oohs issued out. Others gloated upon an inner knowledge of it that they had already surmised.
The man from Shell Oil spoke up. “Who would be the beneficiaries of this situation?”
“Oh, we would! To the victors go the spoils. And those spoils would be around two million barrels of oil a day. And who is the ‘we’? Those of us who hold the reins!”
A couple wolf’s whistles sounded from around the room. “Are you sure these Iraqis ragheads aren’t going to hold on to them?”
Cheney’s expression got darker and more suggestive. “We will make sure they won’t!” the smirk appearing upon the corner of his mouth again. “We can’t have a bunch of Medieval beggars getting in the way of our profits!”
There was a pause at this, then a healthy round of ‘Bravos!’ and false ‘Hurrahs” resounded around the room accompanied by a tinny form of applause.
Pleased with the response to his speech, Cheney went into a back room and sat heavily down upon a chair. He covered his eyes with a towel and leaned back.
His aide McGurty entered the room, easing the door behind him.
“It sounds like you impressed them, sir.”
“Yes, that I believe I did.” stated Cheney from beneath the towel.
“It sounds like they are with you on it.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“So the next step is war?”
“Yes it is.”
“So we have any alternatives?”
Cheney whipped the towel off his face and sat bolt upright, pointing a finger at McGurty.
“No, Mr. McGurty, here is the way it is now. These religious nuts in the Mideast have proved that they can now get to us if they want to. And believe me, they want to. They have finally wised up to the fact that although we’ll let them have as much money as they need have to run their puppet kingdoms and get so much rich food and golden crap as they want, but we won’t let them have the reins to the whole deal. Even when they nationalized the oil companies, they were still dependent on our engineers to run the show. And on us to buy the stuff and to run the companies that pulled it out of the ground. Now they want the whole schmeil. They are not going to get it. We have the chance now to get a permanent slice of the oil pie. We get rid of this ape Hussein and Iraq will be ours. That will alone cover 60% of our energy needs. We will no longer have to go begging to every Mideastern despot who makes it to the top of the pile when we need our oil.”
“Once we have Iraq under our control, we can fortify it and make it our base in the Mideast. We will no longer have to rely on Israel being our eye over there. From a strong base in Iraq we can launch an offensive against any problem anywhere from Somalia to the Crimean to Kazakhstan to Bangladesh. We won’t have any more incidents like Iran taking over our embassy and holding hostages that happened under weak-kneed liberal leadership.”
“I don’t think the Iraqis will take lightly to us taking over their country. A poor and backwards as they may be, they are a proud and fierce people.”
Cheney, again sporting that evil smirk that come so much more frequently to his face now that he was President, leaned into the man and stared directly into his face. “Mr., if we can’t make this bunch of modern day nomads eat their own sand then we need to take our entire military and sell it to the Chinese. Were it not for all the UN bans on using nuclear weapons we could have them on their knees in two days.”
McGurty winced at this. “You mean you would seriously use a nuclear weapon?”
Cheney grimaced something that remotely resembled a smile. “Oh, you bet I would. If it would clean up this mess and get those Arabs back in line, then you bet I would.”
McGurty shivered at the man’s coldness. As he left he was relieved when the Presidents door fell shut behind him cutting him off from that other world that seemed embraced by darkness.
TO BE CONTINUED
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