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.

GEORGE W. BUSH’S IRAQ PROBLEM
by Terry Heath, 2007

President George W. Bush spoke to the nation on Jan. 10 in a somber twenty-minute address on how he intends to solve our seemingly endless war a half-world away in Iraq against those religious insurgents we can’t seem to destroy some three and a half years after this same chief executive stood on the deck of an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and declared major U.S. combat operations had ended in that Middle East country.

So what did the president reveal on how he intends to end the conflict with this prime-time fireside chat from the White House? Was it more of the same he’s previously advocated, something new or an admittance his previous policies in Iraq have failed?

A little of all three, as he broadcast his plans to stabilize that country by sending more troops in the short-term to save Baghdad and the central part of Iraq, helping to speed up the training of Iraqi military forces so they can eventually take over jurisdiction of that whole nation and try to work with the citizens there to reduce future potential terrorist attacks.

So we’re getting more troops in the short term, new commanders at the top, but no truly new policy. And this decision by the president is apparently based on his own staff’s recommendations. Yet this is the same group that believed our invasion there would be a cakewalk with our troops being greeted by the locals as liberators.

But what happened to the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group that was researched and put together by a bi-partisan collage of political elites from both political parties? The nation heard for months on the build-up for the issuance of that study and how it would solve all of our problems. But once it came out the president seemed to dismiss those suggestions within days of it being released last month in a manner that could be interpreted as a slap in the face to those respective members of the commission and their offerings.

The Bush speech and its proposals have gotten a cool reception from both Republicans and the new majority of Democrats on Capital Hill and it looks like the president is finding out he no longer gets things his way in this new political reality he faces as a lame-duck chief executive.

Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts spoke the sentiments from many in his party on Jan. 9 at Washington’s National Press Club who are opposed to continuing this war in that increasing the size of troops in Iraq would be the wrong thing to do at this time and that Congress should block any attempt to send additional soldiers to that Middle East war zone.

He stated, “I’ve said that my vote against the war in Iraq is the best vote I’ve cast in my 44 years in the United States Senate. But no matter what any of us thought then, the Iraq War resolution is obviously obsolete today.”

Kennedy believes any change in the war aims that President Bush advocates must be approved by Congress.

In speaking of the 2002 Senate resolution allowing the use of force in Iraq, Kennedy subsequently said, “it authorized a war to destroy weapons of mass destruction. But there were no WMD’s to destroy. It authorized a war with Saddam Hussein. But today, Saddam is no more. It authorized a war because Saddam was allied with Al-Qaeda. But there was no alliance.”

Kennedy then makes the claim that the administration refuses to accept that Iraq is now engaged in a civil war.

“Sectarian violence is on the rise,” the senator stated. “Militias continue to commit unspeakable acts of violence and torture. Ethnic cleansing is a fact of daily life. Millions of Iraqis are fleeing the violence and leaving their country. No one can seriously deny that this civil war is radically different from the mission Congress voted for in 2002.”

Other Democrats have also urged the president to not increase our troop size in an attempt to militarily defeat the insurgents.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Bush to urge him to reject his reported plan to escalate the war by increasing troop levels and delaying the ability of the Iraq government to take control of their own future. They then cite in the letter the burden of the nation’s already overtaxed military, the likely failure of a surge strategy to quell the violence and the dangers of placing America’s military into the middle of a civil war.

They called on Bush to instead head the will of the American people, listen to the advice of America’s military and recognize the need for a significant change in strategy that begins with a political solution and a phased withdrawal of American forces from the war-torn country.

The president also addressed the potential threat of Iran and Syria interfering into the affairs of Iraq during his speech and raised the specter of the conflict spreading to those two neighboring nations as insurgents from both of those countries keep entering and attacking our forces.

So it’s obvious that how the U.S. and this president resolve our Iraq problem will affect for the next decade on our main problem in that part of the world which happens to be the Muslim revolutionaries based in Tehran who seem to want some type of confrontation with us.

Yet our potential future Iran problem is also Israel’s current dilemma. And it seems that Israel might not wait for America to take care of Iran’s growing nuclear threat against them and us.

Even though the Israeli government is denying the London Times Jan. 7 story that they are planning to destroy Iran’s numerous nuclear plants with atomic-tipped bunker buster bombs it seems apparent they are preparing a military scenario in which they have to go alone in defending themselves in case the United States can’t do the task.

Iran is this nation’s long-term problem in the Middle East for the considerable future. Yet we’ve helped them out on their eastern border by knocking out the Taliban in Afghanistan and eliminating Saddam Hussein and his minions in Iraq that were a threat on their western frontier.

The longer the United States is stuck with our Iraq problem we brought onto ourselves, the later it will be before we can finally deal with Iran which, unfortunately for us, will have to be on our side from an obvious position of lessened strength as our military is being decimated from our current unwinnable war and will need time to rebuild.

Does any American leader ever learn from the mistakes of history when going to war against a country that obviously posed no immediate threat to us to the detriment against those who do hate us?

Future 16th President Abraham Lincoln was just an obscure member of the House of Representatives for the Whig Party in 1848 and serving his only term in that body of Congress when he spoke of another American chief executive of that era named James Polk who had decided to attack a country which at that time was posing no threat to American sovereignty.

He wrote to a former law partner following this country’s invasion of Mexico that to, ‘allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You must say to him, “I see no probability of the British invading us,” but he will say to you, “Be silent, I see it, if you don’t.”’

The Vietnam War broke Lyndon Johnson and ruined his legacy and dreams of creating America into a ‘Great Society’ of prosperity for everyone. Will the Iraq War be George W. Bush’s only legacy in the pages of history? Win or lose, it’s apparent he is tied to the fate of that Middle East country whether it succeeds as a democracy or bitterly splits apart in a religious civil war. So will he get that situation resolved within these last two years of his presidency with what he’s now planning or is he hoping to dump the whole problem on his successor come January 20, 2009?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com