Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

FIVE YEARS AFTER 9/11: WHO IS OUR REAL MORTAL ENEMY?
by Terry Heath, 2006

A newly inaugurated, yet frustrated American president is having trouble contending with extremist Muslim terrorists who are kidnapping U.S. citizens for ransom and are demanding cash, gold and jewels for their release or they will begin a holy war or Jihad against us in an attempt to destroy America if we don’t pay.

Is that the scenario we as a nation have faced since September 11, 2001?

No. Those incidents occurred two hundred years ago when Thomas Jefferson took on the Muslim terrorists of that era who were more commonly known then as ‘the Barbary Pirates.’ That group of bandits had begun hijacking merchant ships of our new country in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea along the coastlines of northern Africa and capturing the crews of those vessels.

These Muslim pirates demanded monetary payments as a ‘tribute’ to their cause in exchange for the release of the sailors and to ensure we recognized their power and influence in that part of the world in the same manner most European countries did since they had been paying extortion funds to those leaders for decades.

Jefferson got tired of the bribe money being paid to these sultan pirates that had been established by the two previous presidential administrations and ordered our navy to head to that region of the world and confront the Islamic bandits in war. And despite a few setbacks in our early battles with them he and our military eventually achieved success. The Muslim provocations against us stopped when they saw our resolve to keep battling them and our unwillingness to compromise or give up when things got tough.

Two centuries have gone by since that first encounter and it is five years after the terror attacks on 9/11/2001 by this new generation of fanatical Muslim extremists. Yet there are too many short-sighted individuals in this country only interested in themselves who seem to forget what we are facing and who we have to confront. So do we as a nation still have the long-term resolve to stop the one Islamic country that we seem destined to do battle against in the next ten years?

The Muslim state of Iran, as led by its current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is being obstinate in making any type of concessions in delaying or stopping the development of an atomic energy program in that country which could eventually lead to the creation of operational nuclear weapons for potential use against us, the states of Europe or Israel. What options can we do to prevent that from happening short of nuking the seventy million Koran followers of that nation back into the Stone Age?

Our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq this last half-decade in response to the attacks from Osama Bin Laden and his ilk of Islamic thugs following 9/ll have, ironically, helped Iran as those two now weakened countries have put their Persian neighbor in a stronger position in that region to rattle their sabers at us American infidels whom they believe are the ‘Great Satan of the world.’ But our problem in dealing with this potential and rapidly approaching crisis is that we have no relationship with Iran now, preceded by decades of interference into their internal affairs in the years since 1945. They have responded through our previous interdictions by funding Hezbollah in Lebanon to bother Israel and promoting Al-Qaida throughout the remainder of the Middle East to cause us trouble.

Now they want the bomb! And it’s obvious they intend to use it against us.

The nuclear proliferation deterrence the United States used as the major point of our foreign policy since World War Two to prevent other nations from developing their own weapons program does not work anymore because the other countries in the world have realized that once they attain such destructive bombs they join the big boys club and get better treatment from the atomic powers.

Iraq threatened to develop the bomb so we invaded them and deposed Saddam Hussein to make sure they didn’t. Yet North Korea has apparently developed several atomic devices and instead of an attack from us we have begun negotiations with them that includes the promise of monetary aid if they agree to not threaten their nervous Asian neighbors.

So let’s be realistic. Once a country obtains nuclear weapons they find they get better treatment from the superpowers. So it’s not surprising that Iran is in a quest for such weaponry since it has worked well for their neighbors India and Pakistan who enjoy good relations with Washington now that both have the bomb and added leverage when negotiating with us for the foreign aid goodies we offer those lucky nations possessing such weapons.

So what do we do about this potential cataclysmic situation from a country whose fanatical leaders despise us and may choose to begin a collision course against our interests some point in the future? And will we be forced to go alone when we have to confront this Persian behemoth potentially possessing their own ultimate weapons of destruction to use against us?

Should we consider a military invasion of Iran? That would be unpractical at the moment since most of our soldiers and marines are bogged down in neighboring Iraq in a guerilla war that could still blow up into a civil war amongst the three ethnic tribes living there some three years after George W. Bush announced to the world ‘mission accomplished.’

What about an economic blockade to starve them out? That also won’t work since we haven’t had a relationship with Iran since 1979 once our friend the Shah was deposed. And since they are the world’s fourth largest oil exporter and have just concluded lucrative deals with Russia and China for the delivery of crude to help power those two nation’s economies then how could a world-wide embargo against purchasing their particular goods work anyway since that would only drive up the price of a gallon of gas for the rest of us?

How about undertaking a long-term non-nuclear bombing campaign against their suspected weapon sites? That might potentially work but would take weeks or months of bombing runs by our flight crews since there would be too many installations across the Iranian frontier needed to be destroyed and most have been built underground. Iran learned the lesson when Israel bombed the newly constructed above ground Osirak, Iraq nuclear reactor in 1981 with its fighter jets in that you must put your atomic facilities deep underground and dispersed throughout the country to minimize your losses. But how long could we bomb without world opinion beginning to complain that we are being the unprovoked aggressor in the matter.

So are we left with having to choose the ultimate destructive power we possess to ensure we stop their atomic dreams? Would we dare use our own nuclear weapons to stop Iran’s program when it comes down to them or us?

Every president since Harry Truman used the atomic bomb to end World War Two have had to consider the nuclear option to potentially resolve some crisis presented to them. Yet all have declined that choice because they feared a potential retaliation against us by the other countries also possessing such weapons.

It’s apparent we chose the wrong Middle East country to invade in 2003 in the post 9/11 hysteria of seeking revenge against those who attacked us. But instead of Iraq, whom we could have kept under control with a continued economic blockade, we should have taken on Iran because it’s obvious that Persian country poses the greatest risk against us and the nation of Israel for the foreseeable future until someone does act.

So what do we do?

Whatever we decide to do to eliminate this problem, it should be done sooner rather than later. Every day we wait in making a response lets Iran get that much closer to having an operational nuclear bomb with a madman as their leader who may wish to hasten the arrival of Armageddon for everyone on the planet. Because if we wait too long, a future American president will have the unfortunate duty to explain to the shocked citizens of this nation why one of our major cities has just been vanquished by our mortal enemy.

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com