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Petrobras, DNO International, and ExxonMobil and their privately funded mercenary armies. Propaganda out of Persepolis is calling for the overthrow of all Sunni elements in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which is all Sunni, even Wahhabi Sunni, except for parts of the Eastern Province. Iran’s aim, reports Ms. Caplan, is the establishment of a “Shiite Crescent,” which would extend from western Afghanistan across Iran and southern Iraq to the Arabian peninsula and whose boundaries would include the vast Rumayla, Umm Qasr, Zubayr, and Majnoon oil fields in southern Iraq and the supergiant Ghawar, Shaybah, and Khurais fields in Saudi Arabia—in other words, three-fifths of the world’s known crude oil reserves.
    Clearly in this scenario, not a single drop would flow to the United States.
    Conventional U.S. and NATO ground forces have been gone from the Middle East for half a generation now, with power projection limited to “standoff” forces—the navy, including missile cruisers and destroyers, nuclear subs and naval aviation; satellite; and drone attack arms, both seaborne and land based in Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE. The United States maintains two MEUs, Marine Expeditionary Units, shipborne out of Djibouti and Diego Garcia, but each of these comprises only a Battalion Combat Team. The only Western troops on the ground are Salter with his four armatures of Force Insertion mercs—and no one seems to know which side he is on, where his formations are, or even if they remain intact and unmassacred. Hysteria reigns on Capitol Hill, gas prices are setting new records, the Dow and the Nasdaq have gone over a cliff. Adding to the delirium, notes Fox/BBC, is the fact that this is an election year and the presidential primaries are in full swing.
    I’m monitoring all this on civilian channels and also on my AKOP, the encrypted mil/net, which gets raw combat feeds, as well as my own bootleg satware that taps into the central database of the AFT, the All Force Tracker—the digital display and comm device onboard all merc aircraft, tanks, and combat vehicles, which links them and shows their locations, as well as those of the enemy.
    At Queen Alia I wind up sharing a lounge alcove with a Lebanese businessman named Nabil al-Aftar, who is probably a spy, judging by the expansion of his irises when he gets a squint at this little beauty. We bond immediately and agree to swap secrets. He helps me log on to an outlet I’ve never been able to get aboard before—Arabic-language al-Manar, Hezbollah’s mouthpiece out of Beirut. The site has footage, which it plays over and over, purporting to be the mass beheading of some forty Saudi rebels, supposedly in “chop-chop square” in Riyadh. It also has edited versions of public statements,with subtitles in Arabic, of both American presidential candidates, including the incumbent Murchison, denouncing the violence in Iran, Arabia, and the Caspian Basin, calling for restraint and moderation while simultaneously threatening nuclear Armageddon. Both candidates cite their “close personal ties” to Gen. Salter and declare, in the tone one reserves for talking a suicide-belt-wearing maniac down from a ledge, their confidence in his loyalty, stability, and self-restraint. “Let’s go back,” I tell my Lebanese friend, “to the beheadings.”
    According to al-Manar, two of the unlucky devils are West Point–trained generals in the Royal Saudi Air Force; a number of others are security force generals and colonels with pedigrees from Annapolis, Sandhurst, and St. Cyr. This intel is probably bogus—but try telling that to the true believers in Sana’a, Dushanbe, and Mogadishu, pumping it at high volume into their earbuds. I’m trying to read between the lines. Has there actually been a rising? Of whom? Against whom? With what aims and what second-generation consequences?
    Do the contents of the briefcase I’m carrying have something to do with this? I have met Mrs. Cole in the past and have