Chapter 182

I knew Frank and the Generals and Secretary of State Amos Dean would be my first visitors. Frank and Amos were waiting for me with a handful of papers.

Being a lady, “Which one of you wants to go first?”

Amos said, “I’ll go first; I have another meeting I need to go to.”

“The Iranian Ambassador assigned to Pakistan and the Iranian Ambassador assigned to Afghanistan met the Iranian Ambassador assigned to Iraq at Dubai. They requested safe passage and escort as instructed. They flew over multiple major cities and military bases before landing in Tehran.”

“The Air Force supplied four F16s to fly escort. They landed and stayed on the ground at Tehran for four hours. Surveillance aircraft covered the meetings and captured their attempts to contact multiple individuals by phone.”

“After an hour they were met by about a dozen individuals. Those individuals carried them to the remains of the parliament and the IRG compounds and several other sites that had been bombed.”

“Our US Ambassador to UAE met them when they landed. There was a short conversation but the group would not discuss anything to do with surrendering the government,” he said.

“Ok, then they aren’t convinced yet,” I said.

“Keep me informed if you hear anything,” I added.

Frank placed out the papers and pictures.

“The people that met the Ambassador were observed going to a residence. There was no way to monitor what they said.”

“What we do know is several left the residence and traveled to a large compound just over the Pakistan border. We have been watching the compound for a while in association with other Pakistani terrorist groups.”

“Kill one pack of rats and more take their place within hours,” I said.

“Give the locations to the Navy. When the bombing resumes, put a couple missiles in the house and enough in the compound to do the job,” I said.

“Bombing is going to resume?” General Ingram had just walked in.

“Yes and send in the next group of troops and equipment and keep moving forward. Follow up with more as long as the logistics and supplies can keep up,” I said.

“We can send forty thousand more then we have to let logistics catch up,” the General said.

“While you are letting logistics catch up for the foot soldier, keep the Navy and Air Force hammering them,” I said.

“Bring me the list of restricted targets. It’s time to reduce the list and be a more aggressive,” I said.

I went through the restricted list and approved fifteen types of government buildings and establishments to be bombed at midnight. There were a total of seven hundred new targets for the Navy and Air Force. While some of them could be military targets in a guerrilla type war, they weren’t very important as a large military target but their destruction would be demoralizing to the population. All of them were close to sizable population centers.

“The pamphlets told the people what was going to happen if they didn’t surrender. Make sure you drop more MOABs and closer to the population centers, time for shake rattle and roll part two,” I said.

General Ingram nodded his head as acknowledgment and just smiled. Politics was going to capture a couple of hours out of my day. The party leader had called wanting an emergency meeting. It was scheduled for after lunch.

Technically I was the party leader as President but I had shoved it off onto the Vice Chairman of the party. I assumed he wanted me to pull in the reins over Iran. I was wrong.

I worked with Vice Chairman Howard Workman to schedule the fundraisers and he attended all of them. He was a straight shooter; if he didn’t like an idea he said so and aggressively argued his position. He would yield if facts proved otherwise.

Since there was no impending leader of the conservative party with the stalemate in the candidates until after the convention, the liberal party was making hay of the situation.

What they were doing was being portrayed as televised debates between the two presidential candidates. The dates had already been chosen months ago by the parties. The TV slots from all networks were approved and paid. Both conventions were to have been over and the candidate from each chosen.

The liberal party then changed the date of their convention to a month earlier. The attendees were notified by mail and there was no public announcement until a week before the opening day of the convention. All the posturing and date movements were done to reduce the number of attendees and have a closed convention.

They were using a blacked out chair with an off screen voice as the conservative candidates. They had molded all the sound bites and promises at whistle stops by all the candidates as the position of the party.

It was a well-planned and well-choreographed propaganda event for the liberal party.

The party chairman didn’t want to use the candidates because they had been so stubborn about deciding the leader. He was furious they would not come to some agreement.

No matter whom he asked, the others would react like you had thrown a bucket of fire ants on them. The back biting and bickering issues were getting worse and starting to hurt the party.

We talked about the mess - and that was all one could call it - before he flat out asked if I would represent the party at the next so called debate instead of the empty chair and programmed voice.

It would not be announced until an hour before show time that I was going to be there. In my mind I was sure the liberal candidate would refuse to debate under those circumstances.

Our real goal was to force him to refuse to debate, thereby throwing a chock in front of their smooth rolling wheel. Any way he tried to get out of the debate could only make him look bad.