Chapter 25

"Mr. Vice President. Going after Somalia al-Qaeda is not like other operations we have considered, constructed, or carried out. It is going to be more like a full-scale war than a targeted operation. We can short cut things by ignoring standard strategies, using our extensive intelligence assets to locate, pinpoint, and destroy the people leading al-Qaeda, but to wipe them out is going take years, if it is even possible."

The speaker was Mr. No-Name. He had no idea I knew him from another life, and there was no reason to share it with him, but his points were valid. We needed a specific strategy, and a series of goals that were both possible, and useful.

"Can we identify and kill specific leaders, often enough to cause them to fold up and go home?" I asked with a perfectly straight face. I knew that flew in the face of the entire détente, get-along, let's all hold hands and sing "kum-by-yah," mentality of the former government.

"Mr. Vice President. Are you testing me?" Mr. No-Name got it. I intended to operate outside the lines and kill the people between me and our goal of freeing Somalia from al-Qaeda interference.

I smiled and waited for him to decide if he trusted me before answering.

Mr. No-Name came out with it, and it was brutal and brilliant. "You know that standard tactics have not worked against these extremist religious fanatics. In part, this is because they want to die a martyr. Another part is that they position their atrocities as Jihad against Christianity, the USA, or whatever convoluted nonsense they use to stir people up. Because this will be a non-government operation, completely dissociated from the USA or any known organization, I propose that we escalate the level of brutality to an extreme they haven't yet dreamed of, and we make it personal - VERY personal.

"For example, we identify a leader and go after him, but we don't kill him. Instead, we make him wish we had. We blind him, cut off his eating hand, and forcibly feed him pig blood. Now he is totally dependent on his fellow ass holes for everything.

"Whenever we capture a rapist; he is tied in the street, castrated, smeared with secretions from a sow in heat, and a boar pig is turned loose to rape him.

"We make the punishment directly fit the crime AND leave them alive and dependent.

"Whenever possible, we have someone recite from the Koran those passages prohibiting the "sin" they committed. If we can find a rational Imam to declare Jihad against these extremists, so much the better.

"Maybe brand or carve the Crescent and Star into their forehead - or whatever the punishment symbol represents their crime. The idea is to make it clear that moderate Muslims abhor their actions and their ideology.

"Above all - we don't martyr them."

That's when I had an epiphany. "What we need to do, Rick, is set up a make-believe 'moderate' Muslim group to take credit for everything we're doing. It will drive the crazies even crazier! There has to be absolutely no way to connect the fake group to any living person, just to make them go even crazier trying to identify the new enemy and exterminate them.

"Think about the fury those knuckleheads will feel when they find out that other Muslims have decided to fight back. It never happens, and now their psycho brothers are being raped by wild boars, and being forced to drink pig blood.

"The karma is too exquisite to pass on."

Rick got an evil grin on his face and began to write out plans for the front group, furiously.

We set a date for my visit, and he left as quietly as he arrived.

Oh...

His name is Raymond Glassner.

Who knew?

Rick was all over our plan from the moment we set foot back in the states, and his action team was a mixture of military supermen, Internet hackers, history majors, and techno-geeks. "We will need all kinds of information as we go," he said. "Our geek squad will have the ability to give it to us instantly, and our hackers will be able to alter records to say whatever we need them to say, whenever we need them to say it. Once our agents have the facts, they can hit and run with impunity, but only once they have all the facts. Our intel guys are geniuses at ferreting out the necessary facts.

"As for historians - let's face it – we need to understand the native population and how they relate to the invading hoard of Muslim extremists, to make sure we don't make enemies out of simply missteps. It will help to know, before we hit it, that an ugly building is the town's mosque, and how much local loyalty we can win by protecting it, while evicting and killing the lunatics that took it over.

"Historians and social scientists will know the stuff that will help our side to not make stupid mistakes out of ignorance."

Ok. Who was I to argue?

I left planning to Rick, and operations of Jack's 'special' friends. Charles sent me off to build support for his repatriation bill that would incentivize bringing manufacturing jobs back to America that had been lost to Malaysia, and China, and Indonesia.

The bill should have appealed to both sides, which was why neither felt strongly about supporting it. The idea of non-political law, that actually benefits all Americans, was just too good to be embraced by those who live, sleep, and eat politics and politics only.

I spent two months meeting with state party officials, attending awful dinners, giving speeches, and generally play acting that their pet projects to build personal wealth for themselves were really important. Some days I had to convince myself to stay with it.

Other days I just got up and got it over with.

"America's working families have a RIGHT – that's correct – a RIGHT to have the United States government act is such a way to bring their manufacturing jobs back home. That means a tax scheme that doesn't incentivize moving our factories out of the country, and a long-term strategy to bring those jobs back without the punitive tax code now in force.

"We need to be leading the world in new manufacturing technologies, cutting edge development, and public education that prepares our young people to compete in the workplace, not the unemployment line."

The applause was deafening. Oklahoma City, like Dallas, and Houston, turned out huge crowds to hear what I had to say. Of the one-thousand, two-hundred and eighty people in attendance, the "Repatriation of Jobs" speech hit over ninety percent right on the breadbasket. Charles was going to have a softer struggle getting congress to pass his bill, because we cut the ground out from under the special interests by getting the state delegations on our side from the start.