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** Junior-level military intelligence sources will leak classified info on war plans to the press in October or November making it clear that Bush plans to attack Iran.
** In a reverse of Abu Ghraib, senior generals will be blamed for the leak and a purge of generals opposed to the Iran war will proceed, with prosecutions for leaking classified information and possibly treason. This will not occur until after the war began, however.
** Before this occurs, JCS will see the writing on the wall and go to ground. Bush will spend lots of time fighting with UN and flying around the world talking about "point of no return" and "another 9-11". Meanwhile, the media, having primed the pump already in October, will stop talking about the impending attack, but "sources will say" that "the" war with Iran "may happen after all" if Bush does not get his way (which he will of course won't.)
** Escalating the conflict, Ahmadinejad will unexpectedly go before the media and announce that Iran is prepared to take "pre-emptive action" to block the Straits of Hormuz if American minesweepers (on their way to the Persian Gulf as of Oct. 1) do not stand down. US will disregard the threat and, indeed, step up preparations. MSM will ask: "Is this the start of the war we have been waiting for?"
** A sigh of relief will be breathed when "nothing happens". Columnists will write op-eds saying that Iran is clearly weak and ready to topple from within, as shown by its Soviet-style bluffing, and that no military action on US part will even be needed. Pentagon will report that Iran is making pre-emptive preparations to blockade the Straits before naval ships reach Hormuz, but will decide to keep it secret in order to avoid messing up their strike plans.
** A secret neutrality pact will go into effect between Iran, Oman, and the UAE. Part of the deal will entail no additional US troops in UAE or Oman (beyond the token presence that exists.) The assumption of the deal will be that Dubai will be the last stable financial center left in the region if Iran is attacked. US intel will know nothing about the deal beyond a hunch.
** Suddenly, "heavy" airstrikes will occur at Bushehr and Tehran. These airstrikes will have limited effect on Iranian military or civilian infrastructure, but will wipe out the nuclear facility at Bushehr and several Russian technicians along with it. The Russians will have been warned ahead of time by CIA, but will have disregarded the warning.
** Ahmadinejad will go before TV and announce that "Iran has been attacked" and "a state of war exists". Pentagon will wait to see what Iran does. Media talking heads will flood the airwaves with patriotic anthems ("Mideast War", "War with Iran", "War in the Persian Gulf", "Standoff with Iran"). The question of the hour will be strategy: Where should we bomb next? Since Iran is too weak to retaliate, should we decapitate the regime?
** Iranian diplomats, pre-positioned in Bahrain and Qatar, will promise senior emirs that they have no plans to target those countries. In any event, they promise not to target civilian infrastructure even if attacked by US troops in Bahrain & Qatar directly. To the extent that US intel learns of the conversations, which they will, neocons will portray it as evidence of weakness on Iran's part, saying they so not have the capability to hit those countries.
** Days after the initial airstrike on Bushehr, Iranian agents will complete preparations for the blockade of the Straits.
** US will announce that it is not at war with Iran. Bush will address the nation saying that the strike was successful and "Iran is no longer a nuclear threat". At Russia's prompting, he will apologize for civilian deaths and delcare he is willing to meet with Ahmadinejad to let bygones be bygones. Meanwhile, Air Force will continue top-secret plans for second wave of attacks in the event "Iran attacks the US or a terrorist attack occurs".
** 2 days later, US minesweepers and a battleship will advance into straits to demonstrate that Iran is pacified. Bush will go on the air and announce that Iran has blocked the straits "in violation of international treaty and a clear act of war against the US". He will declare "no more negotiation" and say "the Iran regime is evil".
** A US battleship in the Western Hemisphere, possibly at Guantanamo will mysteriously blow up in a COle-style attack, rallying nervous Americans to Bush's side. "Remember Guantanamo Bay" columnists and Republicans will self-consciously declare, pre-empting the expected, and inadequate, sneering from educated (but not radicalized) Dems about William Randolph Hearst, the Maine, etc., references which most Americans will not understand anyway.
** Airstrikes will immediately be launched against hundreds of Iranian targets, including nuclear sites deliberately not targeted in the initial airstrike because they were "difficult to get to".
** Bush will get on the air again and announce that America will not stop bombing until Iran deposes the mullahs and/or unconditionally surrenders. When questioned on the "all-air force" strategy, Bush will cite Clinton and Serbia as his guiding inspiration. Clinton will denounce the comparison but back up Bush's demand that the bombing continue until Iran surrenders.
** After days of sitting in the strait, several US ships busy clearing the straits of mines and chaperoning oil tankers will be unexpectedly sunk.
** Iranian Shahab missiles, having been smuggled out of attack ready position to prepare for the main wave of US bombing, will wait until we run out of initial munitions and reposition themselves in pre-prepatred bunkers not hit in the initial attack. US agents who have identified the initial location of the Shahab missiles will have called in airstrikes on those locations but not most of the empty bunkers, many of whose locations will remain secret or remote.
** On the second day of the mass air assault on Iran, southern Iraq will erupt in flames.
** Congress will pass an emergency resolution permantently diverting 200,000 troops from Asia (at the secret acquiescence of China) to Kuwait in order to "protect our forces in Iraq from Iranian invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq".
** Bush will declare that no option is off the table if Iran "decides to widen the war by invading the sovereign nation of Iraq, whose Shi'ite and Kurdish citizens already desire peace."
** Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Southern Iraq, led by the Badr Brigades, will be shot at.
** The Dawa party and SCIRI will abandon the Iraqi governing coalition. In a good-cop bad-cop strategy US intel will be unaware of, SCIRI will split into a rump Maliki faction, tacitly supporeted by the pro-Iranian elements as a vestigial government (maintaining Shi'ite control over the rump central government and an inside man). Maliki will be percieved as a figurehead by US forces, like Diem. He will spend most of his time hiding in the Green Zone and funneling intelligence to Iranian agents.
** Moqtada Al-Sadr will have a personal hearing with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani before TV cameras. He will emerge and announce that he is choosing to remain in the Iraqi governing coalition while simultaneously asking his followers to "take up arms against anyone who attacks on Shi-ites within the nation of Iraq." In a separate statement, Sistani will denounce the bombardment of Iran and call for peace, having inoculated himself against irrelevance by meeting with the radical Sadr. He will say that he has no position on whether the Iraqi government of Maliki is still legitimate and "that is up to Iraqis to decide." The effect of the press conference will be to make Sadr the second most powerful person in Iraq (after Sistani).
** Badr Brigades and Mahdi Army will declare war on US troops. Sadr will declare that, as a spiritual leader, he has no control over his followers actions but "if US troops attack any Shi-ite, then god willing, they will resist with armed force."
** Senior Shi'ite clerics affiliated with SCIRI will meet with Sistani and come away committed to get out in front of Sadr and the Mahdi. They will announce in sermons at Karbala and Najaf war against the US forces and say that Maliki's government (composed of rump Sunni and Shi'ite factions, and the Kurds) must also reject the US presence or lose legitimacy.
** Under heavy fire, a subastantial portion of existing troops in Iraq will retreat ("reposition") in Kurdistan at the insistence of Kurdish leaders who fear an attack by Turkey or Iran.
** The US port facility AND oil export facility in Kuwait will be bombed by Iran, temporarily severing supply lines as naval skirmishes continue around the Straits.
** Oil exports out of the straits will all but cease.
** Waves of Iranian paramilitary units will cross the Iran-Iraq border and enter into open shooting war with US forces holed up south of Baghdad. US forces will drive them back after heavy losses.
** In response to "attacks on fellow Shi'ites", Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades will enter open combat and pin down US forces in the rear, turning all of Southern Iraq into a free-fire guerrilla warfare zone.
** All US occupying troops will retreat from Anbar province "in preparation for a major assault."
** All US troops will retreat from the east bank of Baghdad, except for the fortresses on the bank itself such as Gunners Palace, creating a state of siege. Mahdi Army will declare Sadr city liberated from US troops.
** Badr Brigades will essentially take over the Marshes and the portion of desert east of Baghdad, creating a beachhead for Iran.
** 100,000 of US reinforcements will enter Iraq in combat mode, while the remaining 100,000 remain in Kuwait to rebuild port facilities there. Several small ships will be lost to mines in the Gulf.
** Instead of relieving Baghdad, troops will turn right and invade Iran. They will immediately sieze almost all of Khuzestan province, further cementing the Gulf oil shutdown since remaining Iranian oil personnel will have no incentive to repair damaged Iranian oil facilities.
** Khuzestanis and Luri Shi'ites will reaffirm their commitment to drive off "the invaders", dashing US hopes that non-Persians would break with the regime.
** US Paratroops will relieve forces in Kurdestan and prompt a US invasion of the Zagros mountains where they will encounter little opposition in a Kurdish area. However, Iranian Kurds will ally themselves with Iran in response to aggression "sanctioned by rival Kurdish leaders" that would at this point, essentiallty run the US-controlled portion of Iraq. Offensive will grind to a halt in the mountains.
** US troops advancing into Iran will stop at the near-impenetrable southern Zagros and await orders.
** 2 US Battleships will be sunk by Iranian missiles in response to ground invasion.
** Anbar tribal leaders will declare themselves an independent Sunni sheikhdom. In a midnight purge, the Saudi members of Al Qaued in Iraq will be lynched and burned in the souk of Ramadi and Fallujah, along with dozens of captured "US agents" who had penetrated factions of Al Qaeda in Iraq, in a repeat of the Erbil disaster of the 1990's.
** Under intense pressure from Shi'ites and Palestinians, Syria will commit to send troops and arms to Iran by way of Kurdish smugglers in Turkey from ports in the Mediterranean, after having recieved private "assurances" from US that Syria will not be invaded at the present time. Huge shiplents of arms will be financed this way by shadowy interests connected to Pakistan and possibly China. Pakistani operatives, including senior Al Qaeda terrorists, will infiltrate Anbar province this way for the first time. A parallel terrorist shadow government, answerable to no one and having no real constituents, will be set up in the desert by "the Saudis", at war with Iraqi sheikhs and the US. US will tacitly back the sheikhs and make no move to reclaim Anbar region.
** Ayman Al-Zawahiri will send a tape from Pakistan announcing that a "new Caliphate" has been established in Anbar province.
** Bush will reinstate the draft, starting with "special skills", with near-unanimaous support from Congress.
** Having established a beachhead in Khuzestan, another 100,000 troops will enter the
** Shahab-III missiles, held in reserve in case of a US penetration deep into Iran, will launch a wave of attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, the Ghawar oil field, US bases in Bahrain and Qatar, and the Green Zone. Massive casualties will occur in the Green Zone as Iranian paramilitary forces penetrate under cover of missile fire in a Tet-style attack.
** Mass protests in the US are met by deployment of nonlethal military weapons producing dozens of casualties. Riots break out in Seattle, Chicago and New York City.
** Violence will occur in small towns in the midwest, as angry working-class youths, mostly unemployed, hostile to both urban Democrats and Republicans, and libertarian in outlook, fight it out with freepers over the consequences of the attacks.
** Troublemakers will be interviewed by reporters and declare that they have been drafted and are eager to serve in Iran/Iraq to fight the Muslims. However, "None of us are fighting for Bush, we're doing it for the American people, and when we get back, there's gonna be hell to pay." Reporters will declare that nothing is amiss and both sides are patriotic, red-blooded Americans who merely disagree about whether to kill or merely imprison anti-war protestors.
** World Can't Wait and other leftist activist groups will announce a "new boston massacre". over the consequences of the microwave attacks.
** Columnists, Democratic leaders, and Municipalities of wealthy, blue urban areas present a united front against "unpatriotic radicals" who would destroy the strategy of Congressional Democrats, which is to let Bush dig himself in deep enough in Iran that public opinion once AGAIN turns against the war, and THEN start investigations as close to the 2008 election as possible, with the assumption that Bush will be pardoned by either Hillary or McCain.
** DLC-led Municipalities such as New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and DC, led by real estate interests reeling from sudden stagflation, pass emergency crackdown laws on what is left of the urban poor, declaring the remaining ungentrified areas "havens for domestic terrorism" caused by "anarchists and Iranian sympathizers" from "outside city limits".
** To the sound of cheers from the urban elite, who control most of the neighborhoods in the aforementioned cities, ID Curfews go into effect by DLC run city councils, allowing non-city residents to be arrested on the street after 10 PM unless they can prove (by way of a theater ticket or bar tab) that they are in the city to partake of its nightlife. At the instigation of DLC-led local governments, random ID checkpoints are set up on major arteries leading into major US cities.
** The overwhelming object of curfews and ID checks, ostensibly to "protect against domestic and Iranian terrorism" is to prevent anti-war rioting from precipitating the impending real estate collapse.
** Drained of law enforcement by the war, and battered by a flood of heroin from Afghanistan by way of the Pakistan/Kurdish/Syrian connection, as well as crashing real estate ill-timed with the impending depreciation of houses built in the 1960s, inner suburbs around major US cities, including southern Prince George's and central Fairfax County in the DC area, parts of Baltimore county, East LA, southern areas of Seattle, San Jose and Richmond CA, the inner ring suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, parts of Brooklyn beset by anti-war violence brought on by white student agitators, and towns in New Jersey such as Edison, Passaic, Bayonne, Elizabeth and Perth Amboy, plunge into a deep real estate and crime depression, with no-go zones in the outlying areas.
** In the interests of "safety", the Federal government DHS suspends service on DC Metro, Chicago's EL, and BART.
** Real estate prices crash. Police barricades are set up between fully-gentrified zones and "no longer safe" zones in urban areas, as during the 1970s. "Yuppie flight" enters the lexicon.
** Sweeping NSA wiretap bill passes under the new Congress. DLC Dems declare victory, having sponsored the bill in conjunction with McCain in opposition to an even more radical 2007 proposal by the Bush admin.
** The Federal Government nationalizes all low-lying parts of New Orleans, not including the wealthy Lakeview subdivision. Remaining residents are classified as squatters or anti-government activists. Attempts at "clearance" are beset by sabotage. Sporadic violence breaks out between African Americans and Hispanics brought into the city to clear it. Bush condemns anti-war activists for blocking the reconstruction effort of "another US city that was attacked" and gets wide applause. His popularity in the South shoots up. Freepers urge Bush to go in and "root out all the remaining ----- in the low-lying parts of new Orleans if they refuse to work to help rebuild the city" into an air-base.
** Anti-war activists in Seattle and New Orleans declare a "free city" movement and start pirate radio stations urging residents to "refuse and resist the Bush regime". Bush orders local officials to engage in crackdowns similar to the major Northeastern and Californian cities, but is met by intransigence on the part of city officials, some of whom side with the protestors and say "the war in Iran is a war for America's soul."
** One city councilman and several journalists is arrested and detained on charges of "aiding and abetting terrorists". Large parts of the anti-war movement are declared criminals or terrorist sympathizers, and a dragnet is instituted, using NSA wiretaps, to interview and "name names" from all individuals associated with the "more radical anti-war groups".
** UFPJ breaks apart into factions, split between radicals, fed-up mainstream democrats and libertarian independents, loyal oppositionists (a coalition of naive grassroots centrists, party operatives of uncertain political leanings, and affluent hardcore leftists seeking to develop connections with the DLC, like the trotskyist and stalinist neocons did in the 1970s) and agent provocateurs. The loyal oppositionists tacitly support the curfew policies on the basis that "regardless of the criminality of the Bush regime, we cannot let thugs destroy our US cities or we will have another New Orleans."
** Prompted by whistleblowers inside the system, NSA blackmailing scandal breaks wide open, eventually leading to the downfall of large parts ofthe Bush administration and the Republican party.
** The US is bogged down in Iraq and Khuzestan and has been driven back in the northern Zagros Mountains. US Paratroopers and special forces engage in guerrila warfare throughout Iran, with heavy casualties that are kept secret from the media because they are covert missions.
** Khuzestan is an armed camp with non-functioning oil pipelines, although Iran has lost the ability to attack it from without.
** Iranian troops pour across the Iran-Iraq border near Baghdad, where the Zagros is close to the border and the front lines are porous.
** US casualties in Iraq are double or quadruple those at present. In an attempted PR flourish, US "turns over" the Green Zone to the "newly empowered, nationalistic" Maliki government which is nominally opposed to the Iran invasion and nominally wants both US and Iranian troops out of Iraq, which has become the main battlefield. In a repeat of Lebanon (1999) and Saigon (1975), US troops depart the Green Zone under sporadic small-arms fire.
** Public opinion turns decisively against the War and Republicans throughout the country, except in Idaho, Utah, western Oklahoma, parts of Texas, and white parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, where polls show a majority of residents beginning to hold near-fascist viewpoints.
** Emboldened by revelations of blackmail, brave politicians begin holding hearings on the Bush administration, with or without the permission of senior Democrats. Major (though not all) shoes begin to drop. Major issues that sites like DU think important are put by the wayside as seemingly lesser issues become huge in the media. Media revolt within corporate newsrooms, prompted by blackmail and other revelations, results in a lack of coordinated effort to quash revelations.
** Pat Robertson and other right-wing leaders declare that "the Messiah is on earth and is ready for the final battle."
** Frightened by Robertson's and other statements, evangelical groups begin deserting the pro-war American camp in droves and ally themselves with various libertarians, leftists, and various unheard-of populists and independents. Several Huey Long-style politicians emerge who fall somewhere between Buchanan and Kucinich in their political views.
** "Anti-government" emonstrations break out in small towns in the South and Midwest. Freepers and Fundies loyal to the Bush regime engage in violence against "atheist liberals" and "apostates" (libertatians and anti-war christians).
** Newly radicalized groups of religious libertarians declare that the Anti-christ is in the Middle East and that he is in the employ of the Bush administration, in accordance with their interpretation of Revelations.
** They are given more reason to think so when the US unexpectedly invades Syria, sending a line of troops through the hostile Anbar province to quickly take Damascus. In response, Iran instigates Hezbollah to attack Israel.
** In a momentous photo-op that is on the front page of newspapers across the world, American and Israeli generals shake hands across the Litani river near the Syrian border.
** US is Diplomatically isolated in the world as Russia, Latin America, and various European countries boycott US Exports. China dumps US bills, prompting the dollar to go in the toilet. Double-digit inflation in the US. The Strategic Petroleum reserve begins to run out, forcing gas lines (exacerbated by the "temporary wartime shutdown" of mass transit systems in the US).
** Mysterious financiers begin shipping oil and gas from Russia TO Iran by way of tankers in the Caucasian Sea, in return for credits on future exports. Russia takes no credit for stopping the tanker shipments, which are leaving Uzbek and Khazak facilities. In defiance of the US, "Belarussian" engineers construct an underground pipeline between Tehran and the Caucasian Sea, passing throguh the Elburz. US ceases to recognize Belarus.
** "Anti-Regime" Iranian expats form a "free Iranian Government" in the UAE, citing security concerns in Khuzestan and a desire not to be associated with the US invasion. US lauds the expats as successors to de Gaulle and the Free French.
** "Anti-Regime" expats with extensive contacts to the Pentagon form an off-shore Oil Bourse in Abu Dhabi, fincanced by credits from future Iranian oil exports. Extensive capital flight from Saudi Arabia.
** Despite heavy pressure from US officials, the "free Iranian" expats insist on Bourse trades in Euros, double-crossing the Pentagon. One of the Emirs of Abu Dhabi agrees to grant the concession for the off-shore Bourse. He is later assassinated.
** Overnight, the UAE becomes the Hong Kong of the Middle East.
** The US enters a severe recession, coupled with Argentine-style inflation and infrastructure decay. Americans begin to lose customer confidence sufficient to keep many chain stores afloat, and a wave of consolidation occurs. Retail centers and speculative office buildings become abandoned, making it difficult for would-be terrorists to find suitable targets. Squatting becomes commonplace.
** An epidemic of assassination occurs in the UAE, with various victims turning out to have ties to the US, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Al Quaeda, the "pro-neuteality" emirs who authorized the creation of the Bourse, and the "anti-regime" Iranian elements, who turn out to have ties to the Iranian regime after all...
** US, having occupied southern portions of Syria, attempts and fails to establish a second, secure supply line into Iraq through the Bekaa Valley from the Mediterranean via Tyre.
** Hezbollah enters into direct conflict with US troops in Lebanon.
** Israel, suffering from popular and electoral revolt, withdraws from Lebanon and Syria as US troops advance into northern Israel to "protect" the Holy Land. In a side-agreement, Israel withdraws troops from the West Bank on the grounds that both Israel and Palestine are now occupied by outside forces.
** Palestine declares independence on condition with the new Israeli PM that they declare neutrality and mutual non-agression with Israel, and opposition to US presence in the region. The Israeli PM is assassinated by pro-US radical Orthodox settlers.
** The Palestinian PM, heavily funded by Russia and intimately familiar with by-now co-opted Hamas elements, declares martial law and exiles the hard-line wing of Hamas to Lebanon, Jordan and Hejaz. Faced with a population crisis and regional war, the "Right of Return" is ignored. Gaza becomes independent and declares war on Israel. On the ground, nothing changes in Gaza.
** Al Quaeda bombs go off in US shopping malls. To divert attention from the administration's failure to quash Al Quaeda in Pakistan and the irredentist "Caliphate of Al-Anbar", Hezbollah is blamed for the attack.
** US troops give Hezbollah fighters, most of whom are Lebanese citizens, no quarter, and accede to no law or convention in treatment of captives. Hezbollah does the same.
** Athough unable to infiltrate the US, Hezbollah stage bombing attacks against US facilities throughout the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf Coast of Saudi Arabia oil fields where many Shi'ites are employed.
** US troops in Kuwait drive south into Saudi Arabian Gulf coast to "defend the Saudi regime from attack by Iranian forces".
** The Saudi Monarchy splits apart. Radical Wahabi elements form a separate, hostile to the US government known as "The Kingdom of Hejaz and Mecca". The weakened Saudi central government is confined to Riyadh, with the Gulf Coast of Saudi under US protectorate and nominally part of Saudi. As in the case of Somaliland, US does not recognize the existence of "Hijaz and Mecca" and thus has no reason to attack it (which would be militarily and politically impossible.)
** Realizing the threat of Al Qaeda has actually materialized, US forces move quickly to decapitate Al Quaeda in Pakistan, previously ignored. Osama bin Laden is killed. In a gruesome episode of media curiosity, instead of a trial or resultant follow-up operations to wipe out Al Quaeda from Pakistan, bin Laden's body is brought back to Manhattan morgue to be examined by reporters and officials. US troops leave Pakistan and abandon southern Afghanistan to Taliban warlords on the basis that "we've won". Western Afghanistan allies itself with Iran.
** In response to the formation of an American Viceroyalty of, essentially, Syria and Mesopotamia extending across the Fertile Crescent:
Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Libya and Hejaz form a mutual defense pact known as the Suez Pact, surrounding Israel and the American corridor to the sea, after clever negotiation by Jordan, a moderate goverment now surrounded by hostile forces on all sides.
** The decision by Turkey to join the coalition splits apart NATO.
** Knowing that they are too weak to besiege Israel, US counts on Turkey not to allow Hijaz to declare war on Israel.
** With US tacit approval, Turkey invades and occupies the northeastern portion of Syria, where US forces are bogged down in desert guerrilla warfare. Declaring itself in opposition to "Kurdish separatists" and its desire to "liberate" the rump northern portion of Syria as a nominal member of the Suez Pact, Turkey ignores US requests and invades Kurdistan as well, annexing the KDP held areas and confining US troops to the areas around Kirkuk and Sulaymania, now the only US-friendly territory in the Middle East.
** US troops are ordered to stand down from Turksh agression; however, Jalal Talabani, who runs Kurdistan as an independent state, allies himself with the occupied areas commanded by the Kurdistan Democratic Party's Barzani (conveniently in a Turkish jail and scheduled to be executed) and the terrorist PUK organization inside Turkey, who suddenly recieve a fresh infusion of US cash and supplies, channeled through Kurdish smugglers; and against the Iranian Kurds who are allied with the Iranian government in a stand-off on the Iran-Kurdistan border. Talabani declares a Free and Independent Republic of Kurdistan encompassing all of the Kurdish areas in surrounding states.
** Al Quaeda's senior terrorist cells in Pakistan, mostly Saudi, Yemeni and Egyptian, decimated by a (finally) serious US response unencumbered by the Pakistani secret service, pack up and leave for Saudi Arabia, chiefly the mountainous interior between the pro-US Saudi kingdom based in Riyadh and Hijaz. Unfortuneyrly, this places Al Qaeda in a black hole impenetrable to US special serivces.
** Pakistan's military government is overthrown. US forces guard nuclear facilities in and around Islamabad and elsewhere. Fears of an Al Qaeda bomb and nuclear annihilation of SE Asia are neutralized when anti-US Sikh leaders sieze power and establish a national unity government. US siezes and destroys Pakistani nuclear infrastructure. The President of India, a Sikh, pledges not to engage in offensive or defensive operations against Pakistan south of the Kashmir border.
** The Republican successor to Bush, having defeated McCain and Giuliani (in the Primary) and Hillary Clinton to become president, declares martial law.
** From their base in the ostensible and unpopulated "Caliphate of Baghdad and Mecca", which includes desert areas of Al Anbar province and Hijaz, Al Quaeda stages another massive attack on the US, destroying the reputation of Homeland Security and the martial law proponents.
** The 44th president, having pardoned Bush 43, is impeached. The Republican party dissolves, amidst factionalism and popular rejection.
** The Democratic party, having absorbed a massive influx of secular, conservative professionals in favor of martial-law, curfews and domestic spying, splits apart into the New Democrats (based in Eastern Seaboard, Illinois, newly-Democratic Texas and the Southwest, and California), the Democratic Populist Party (in northern New England, the northern tier, of the Plains/Northwest, and Pacific Northwest) and the Constitutionalist/Dixiecrats (based in the Deep South, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Utah and Idaho, as well as Florida where Hispanic voters and Midwestern transplants have been radicalized in favor of "law and order" national security and against the still-surviving Raul Castro regime.)
** The Dixiecxrats are considered the successors to the fundamentalist wing of the GOP. Big Business flees to the New Democrats, who already control most of the nation's richest cities, which are now islands of extreme wealth in a sea of decaying sprawl.
** Development and Social Service regulations go out the window in city centers as the New Democrats, backed by the DLC, pledge to "restore America's entrepreneurial spirit in the new economic war with China", which mostly consists of trying to replicate the booming economy of Dubai.
** America enters a prolonged Cold War with China...
*** ...which we lose when the Dominionists, having siezed control of the Dixiecrat party, wins the Presidency as the Populist faction, backed by anti-government and civil-rights activists in the northern tier, gains ground against the New Democrats, splitting the vote.
** Taking advantage of the split, Dominionists sieze the presidency in a reverse of Lincoln's first election and attempt to institute a theocracy, causing the US to split apart, Soviet Union-style.
** The US reaches an armistice with Iran.
** Texas and California become independent (and formidable) states. Asian, European, and Middle Eastern countries rush to curry favor with Austin and Sacramento.
** The Pacific Northwest, now known as Cascadia, collapses into libertarianism when the State of Jefferson declares independence from California and Oregon. Anti-PRC Chinese financiers purchase and keep Seattle afloat.
** Pennsylvania and the Midwest, in response to tanks in the streets sent from the new Dominionist "national capital" of Springfield, Missouri, declare themselves the Federated States of America (headquartered in Philadelphia, but with most of its political support in Chicago and Minneapolis).
** North Carolina, finding itself suddenly on the front lines between a DLC-controlled urban East Coast USA and the Dominion of the US, requests and is granted independence and neutrality to serve as a buffer between the two.
** The (internationally recognized) United States of America consists of Virginia, DC, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York State, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as (nominally) Arizona and New Mexico.
** US troops, still controlled from Washington, finally leave Iraq in 2035.
** Remaining Al Qaeda elements in Anbar and Hejaz are promptly rounded up and executed in mass graves by frightened Arab successor regimes.
** Dominionist elements sieze control of the overseas military and invade Israel and Palestine from the American base in Damascus.
Note: I am writing this out because, in talking about it, it does not have to happen. Predictions, when publicized, generally are either self-fulfilling or self-negating. Let us hope that predictions of these sorts of consequences can be self-negating by preparing ourselves for these sorts of consequences by understanding the implications. We know that the Bush admin cannot plan its way out of a paper bag, so let us "arm ourselves with foreknowledge".
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