Although we have employed unjustified bigotry to crush their bid on the seaport sale, as an ironic twist of fate we may in the long-term find ourselves deeply indebted to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for giving America a wake-up call.

Let’s step back and review the core issue of this debate: not of the port sale, but that of an informed presidency: 

May 1, 2005: There is a Bio attack scare in the U.S. capitol, and everyone  is informed - except President Bush, who was riding his bike at Camp David.

February 13, 2006: The Vice President accidentally shoots his hunting partner,and no one informs the President until 36 hours later.

February 22, 2006: A major negotiation to sell the operational control of six U.S. seaports to the United Arab Emirates is almost a done deal, until a public and congressional uproar forces an investigation.  It is then we learn that the President was never informed of the ongoing negotiations or the deal concluded, until he learned of it like the rest of us from news reports.

Does something not seem a bit strange with such goings on?  The President of the United States, the most powerful nation on Earth, is not consulted and informed as to events of significance taking place around him.

Driven by simple reason and logic, such actions by those directly responsible to the American head of State begs the question - who is really in control at the helm?

All of the pieces fall neatly into place, however, if we view Dick Cheney not as Vice President, but as a titular President.  In many ways, from thevery beginning of this administration, Cheney’s been in control and the sponsor of many of the initiatives attributed to George W. Bush. 

In many ways, the relationship of the two men to each other resembles more that of the 1940’s comedy team of Abbott and Costello; with Cheney being the straight man and George Bush relegated to the post of tragic comic relief. 

Cheney’s unusual state of administrative prominence has not been lost on the White House staff that tends to rally around him; nor has Cheney taken any noted action to discourage the misdirected devotion. 

Without doubt, Dick Cheney is the most powerful Vice President in America’s history. However, by choice or canny planning, he has chosen to remain in the background of day-to-day affairs of the White house; rarely seen or heard from. 

This profile preference on the part of the Vice President naturally moves us to wonder what is he doing back there?  As can best be determined from the results of his actions to date, he has been quite busy selling off the country to the highest corporate bidder, while acting as a defacto president in waiting.

It is a widely held belief among Washington insiders that Cheney was the actual force behind the push to invade Iraq. And evidentiary indications to date supports suspicions that he had such a prioritized agenda when he assumed the post of Vice President.

Cheney’s input has been reflected in the Bush administration’s harking the Weapons of Mass Destruction threat as justification for the invasion of Iraq.  Now listening to the White House rhetoric carefully, the new implied claim is that WMD really stands for  - ‘We Meant Democracy.’

With well over 2000 American deaths and 17,000 severely wounded (along with an estimated 60, 000 Iraqi deaths added to the carnage), this administration continues to harp the theme that all of the bad news coming from Iraq is due to one-sided reporting by the news media: a news media which to date has lost 80 of its representatives to this theater of war.  How can any sane group of leaders possibly make such a claim in the harsh light of day-to-day reality? 

If we take into account the square mileage of the five major cities in Iraq and compare them to the nearest equivalent in the United States (which would probably be New York State), how could any American governor survive in office by making such a claim should an equivalent state of events take place here? 

Iraq sustains a mean average of 30 suicide bombings a day, tens of beheaded bodies discovered routinely, daily assassinations, oil pipelines blown up with random regularity, and a raging insurgency that verges on civil war.  In such an environment is it possible to report the opening of new schools and Iraqis voting as proof of positive progress? 

To wit, with our military dangerously stretched, the Bush Administration insists we are – winning.  At which point one has to ask, how do they define winning?

To date we have spent well over 500 billion dollars on the Iraq war (which does not include the costs of the Afghanistan war):  Our national debt level has been increased to over 9 trillion dollars; our health care system is a shambles; our educational system is collapsing from within; our natural disaster response system has proved virtually useless by Hurricane Katrina, and there is an ever increasing army of undocumented aliens streaming across our southern borders every day, their massive onslaught virtually unabated.

Nor should it be forgotten that by running a prison camp on Guantanamo Cuba, and sending suspected terrorists or their sympathizers to other countries to be tortured (renditions) for intelligence information, we have lost credibility within the world community for violating our own highly held protocols of humane behavior. 

America is being steered toward future bankruptcy by a President, who has refused to veto a single spending bill put before him. And we can now add to the list of misguidance the spying on our own citizens via a convenient political twisting of the Constitution.

With so many things going wrong at the top, it is evident to all (except those politically blind by choice) that America is, at present, being governed by the equivalent of Jimmy Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

Most terrifying however, are the marked indications that the Bush White House is beginning to react to the very real possibility that, in the coming elections of November 2006, they may lose control of both houses of Congress.

It has been noted that in his recent whirlwind tour to build up waning support for the war, George Bush has gone out of his way to state, emphatically, that the United States will defend the security of Israel - even militarily if necessary.

Clearly, he was making a pointed reference to Iran and its accelerating quest to develop a nuclear weapon.  And who would most likely urge him to take such a dangerous stance (one avoided by previous presidents, including his father)?  Why Dick Cheney of course.

With justification born of past history the Bush Administration, having been saved in their first disastrous year by the tragic events of 9-11, may look once again to shield their administrative ineptness via an attack upon Iran.

This suspicion has been hardened by the refusal of any member of Bush’s cabinet to reply affirmatively to the question, “Will the Administration go before Congress for their approval before embarking upon military action against Iran?”

The hint of such a scenario is a scary proposition.  And if and when it does come about, will it be from George Bush, or Dick Cheney through George Bush?

In these times or any others such an ill-defined status, from even a fictional or theoretical vantage, is downright terrifying!

I may be wrong but I suspect that, sometime before the November 2006 elections, the Bush Administration will launch an air attack against Iran’s nuclear sites.  After that, what happens in the Middle East will be a deadly ‘crap shoot!”