One trusts that an American electorate mesmerized by Reality TV and the NFL/NBA regular season schedules will stop long enough to contemplate the apocalyptic implications of Gordon Thomas's October 27th exclusive for the American Free Press: that George Bush's neo-conservative regime has secretly flown 100 Harpoon cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads to the joint American-UK military base stationed on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Thomas informs us that it is now known where 72 of these Harpoons have been subsequently assigned--to three Israeli Dolphin-class submarines (24 apiece) that have subsequently left Diego for the Gulf of Oman. The purpose? To target Iranian nuclear facilities well within the range of the Dolphins and their collective nuclear-tipped payload supplied by the United States. Most ominously, these instruments of mass death and destruction are under the command-and-launch decision making authority of one Ariel Sharon, whose moral, political, and military mindset is best revealed by his pivotal role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres in southern Lebanon in 1982, along with occupational policies on the West Bank and Gaza that have recently included the deliberate IDF bulldozing to death of Olympia, Washington's Rachel Corrie, an unarmed peace activist protesting Palestinian house demolitions sanctioned by the Sharon government.

It gets worse. The Thomas story has subsequently been confirmed by a senior aide to Bush National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice for both the Los Angeles Times and London's Guardian newspaper.

Where, pray tell, is the American media and Congress in confronting George Bush with the absolutely incomprehensible decision to supply any government--much less the Sharon regime in Tel Aviv--with American nuclear weaponry and the accompanying authority to decide if, when, and against whom the Apocalpyse is to be unleashed? Who are the powers in his Administration who have set this obviously reckless and derailing course of action in motion? May we conclude that they are largely the same advisors--with direct connections to the Likud regime in Israel--who urged the President to involve American men and women in an ill-conceived preemptive strike against Iraq, where the fraudulent Administration claims about Weapons of Mass Destruction in that country are made all the more maddening by the obvious, enveloping quicksand of death, debt, and international ill-will increasing exponentially by the day? And where are the medallioned luminaries of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in this nightmare--scheduling this week's tee times at the Congressional Country Club?

Pat Buchanan correctly observes that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Wurmser and Company have now placed themselves, and their countrymen, in mortal peril with the neo-conservative strategy on preemptive military action against Iraq and the subsequent occupation. As Mr. Buchanan analyzes things, the Project for the New American Century crowd has only three options in the political and military morass created since March. The first is to withdraw from Iraq completely, an option made problematic by the subsequent power vacuum, civil war, and outside interventionism that would surely follow. A second involves continuing the present course of action by priming the pump of American lives and dollars in the elusive hope that a responsible government and economic infrastructure for the Iraqi people can emerge from the present chaos and violence. Buchanan notes here that the elusiveness of the goal is matched by the thinning of the patience and political will of the American electorate for Mr. Bush's version of the War on Terrorism and For World Democracy. The third is the most ominous of all--a deliberate escalation of American military interventionism in the Middle East by preemptive attacks against Syria and Iran, with all of the attendant risks.

The Thomas report on Harpoons for the American Free Press must be seen as the most significant sign yet that it is the third option which has been selected in the secret and dark inner counsels of the Bush national security team. The Boys of Empire and Sharon lead us to Apocalypse Future.

(Mark Dankof is a correspondent for Uncensored News and Views. A 3rd party candidate for the U. S. Senate in Delaware in 2000, he is an ordained Lutheran pastor and post-graduate student in systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. His web site is entitled Mark Dankof's America at www.MarkDankof.com)