Most of the US embassies have secure rooms for dignitaries and the people of power - the President, ex-Presidents and their families, etc.

I had the honor to fly into (location undisclosed), meeting the President's dad in one of these back rooms.

Yes, the wheels of power keep turning and my stomach was churning. Having not quite fully recovered from the Afghan flu - a wretched experience, I caught a ride in a F/A-18D (the C model is not a two-seater) and we were refueled enroute by a huge KC130J.

The majesty of that experience is underrated and pilots (especially fatigued ones) deserve a lot of credit for making it happen.

"Glad you could make it Mr. ----. We have a lot of things to discuss and only a short time to do so."

"Pleased to be here with you again, Sir."

Yes, here I stood with mr.Big himself.

The power in the small, quiet room was deafening and the President's personal guards were hand picked from Delta Forces. I had served with one of them in 88 as the whole Iran-Contra thing was blown out of proportion.

I could tell, just with a quick assessing glance, that the world was going to be in for a heckuva ride.

"I want you to come up with a feasible Iraq strategy. My son has great faith in your abilities to think up novel solutions to novel problems. Iraq is a novel problem."

You will find that SDAI has been credited with more funds from the NFIP. (National Foreign Intelligence Program;-)

"We need to put more assets into the theatre and just like I was telling Barb the other day - the Pakistan incident was not your fault but rather a lack of assets in the region and a leaky faucet in the mansion."

"I appreciate your view of the situation sir. Circumstances sometimes conspire to screw things up."

"Hey, don't I know it. You think I knew that -rick Stephanopolous was going to be allowed to call in on Larry King's show?"

(The room erupts in Laughter)

"That's right. That's right. Look at that election thing there. George was in real peril. Thank goodness Clarence and Sandra and the rest helped fix the flat. Speaking of which, have you seen Sandra lately? I know she has a place out where you are."

"No George... our golf schedules never match up."

(more laughter)

"Well back to the matter at hand...you got any ideas how we can cook Saddam's goose and feed it to that leashed parrot Aziz?"

I put my hands together, placing the fingertips, fingerprint to fingerprint - and rubeed them - an unconscious action I do when in thought.

We were now sitting in very soft brown leather chairs. The wallpaper of this Embassy room's walls looked like 'A Rumanian attempt at French Provincial'

"There are several methods I have been pondering - some which have a greater chance of success than others."

Just then Rumsfeld walks in...

The former President rises to meet him at the door.

"Don, come join us, we were just talking about Iraq."

Rumsfeld looks over at me and I see he's in a happier mood than at our last meeting in the WH. He must've had a lot of Thanksgiving Turkey.

"Well...fill me in."

I was going to say...'no the turkey has already done that Don.' but resisted.

The fate of the world was in the balance and I didn't want to ruin Rumsfeld's mood.

I opened my laptop, adjusted the 'accu-pointing device' with a single finger, extended the GOTS satellite receiving unit's antenna and brought up some raw intelligence data.

"Iraq has been building up it's defense force with some purchases of Chinese PL8 surface to-air missile. As you know, since Israel's Python 3 missile is an exact duplicate - we know that Israel has been selling data and weapons to the PRC since 1992. We know that Patriot missile schematics have also been sold by Israel to Beijing.

Iraq has been purchasing Patriot missile knock offs by the dozens and even more PL8's"

"Ok...now tell me something I don't know."

Rumsfeld looked at me with that 'look' again. However, I had no time to squabble, but continued:

"Iraq is getting desperate. Your son's call on Putin to flood the market with oil is working. The coffers are running slightly drier than just six months ago. A sustained campaign will deplete his resources quickly if oil prices stay low. He has been spending 100 million a month on munitions purchases - that we can track. His nuclear weapons program is exorbitantly expensive and intelligence data shows he is at least ten months away from nuclear capability - possibly longer."

The senior Bush moved in his seat and bent forward.

"We better move on him quickly then."

I nodded.

"If we strike in the next two month's the world should be safe."

"Now the plan ------

(You didn't think I was going to give that away did you?!)

SDAI-Tech1

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Note: The above is a hypothetical event with characters which may resemble persons living or dead. As a card bearing member of the US Disinformation Agency (USDA) all therein is filled with as many half-truths and distortions as the author can find feasible in a post of this size. *(aka Grade A) ;-)
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