THE CORRIDOR TO ARMAGEDDON IS LINED WITH STEEL

Far from their offices, in a bar distant even from their usual haunts, with noise all around them, the two men still felt the need to speak in whispers.

Mouth to ear was the only safe way to transmit the thoughts and fears both harboured and which cost them endless sleepless nights.

It was all getting completely out of control.

No one was able to stop the momentum toward nuclear war.

The levers that could be pulled in previous eras to get things back on an even, pragmatic keel, had all been dispensed with in the days after September 11th 2001. Since that time a juggernaut had rolled forward with no one at the wheel.

The decisions made on September 12th 2001 and the days immediately afterwards had been made with goals in mind that could not be countermanded under any circumstances. Those decisions certain things must be brought about no matter what had to be done or what consequences would ensue. The goals enumerated were laid down as if cast in titanium, never to be questioned… ever. To do otherwise was to undermine the security of America and this would be considered high treason if ever attempted.

Now, twenty years on, two men huddled in a bar scared the wits out of each other. They, as with others at their level of government, had seen where the determination of frightened Americans of another time was leading… the potential annihilation of a large proportion of humankind. They had seen that the juggernaut set in motion just after 9/11 was unstoppable, that its course was set and the endpoint inevitable.

It did not matter what present realities consisted of, nor the events which had brought those realities into being. The goals laid down after 9/11 could not be gainsaid, they were impermeable to change and could not even be debated. Anyone who attempted to begin a dialogue based upon changing the 9/11 protocols would lose their position immediately. The goals were laid down with no plan B attached. They demanded that they be achieved, full stop. No debate. No doubt. And they would remain unchanged, totally uncompromised until they were attained to the letter with 100% complete compliance without the slightest shadow of a doubt.

America was to attain 100% security. Nothing less. This demanded that every single entity not in total compliance with 100% American security in perpetuity must be eliminated, never to rise again.

There was to be no reduction of the goals and no compromise regardarding the command to action. There was to be no debate and no flinching from the means to be used to attain the goals laid down.

Ethical and moral questions would not be factors limiting the actions to be taken. Nothing was to be regarded as out of the question for any reason or circumstance. Setting limits of any kind would tie the hands of those whose task it was to deliver the goals as laid out. No questioning or amending these goals was to be tolerated at any level of political or military command.

However, circumstances had changed with the rise of Russia and particularly so in regard to China, but neither development could be factored into the protocols laid down twenty years earlier. The protocols were not to be amended. They could not be amended.

Therefore the inviolate command required that Russia and China, or at least their leaderships, must be eliminated and US-friendly proxies put in place. This was the uncompromising demand made by the 9/11 protocols.

This was the cause of all the heated whispering going on in the busy Washington bar.

The 9/11 protocols were leading inexorably to a nuclear war and there was nothing at all that could be done about it. Every arm of government had been primed to drive forward with the enemy extermination program since the day the protocols had been agreed.

Western mainstream news media had also come fully on board. The die was cast and no single individual or group could or would ever contemplate the monumental and unthinkable revolution necessary to change that fact.

Presidents could do anything, nor could any individual or grouping below that presidential level. None would even broach the subject. To do so was career-ending folly.

Yet the campaign of impotent whispering continued, however ineffective it was… and it was totally ineffective.

Everyone recognised that the corridor to Armageddon had been lined with steel.