the contrarian - THE DAY BEFORE TOMORROW

The planes rose into the blackness of the new-moon night and, after reaching their maximum altitude, headed east. The lights of Amman could be seen as the formation left Israel, sped across Jordan and entered Iraq.

Soon other planes joined the original group but as they passed into Iran, they split into several formations with separate destinations. Far below, and to the south, along the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Bushehr Nuclear Power facility, a joint Russian-Iranian project, was left unscathed.

The same could not be said for the Chinese-supplied nuclear research facilities at Ishafan, the heavy water reactor at Arak or the nuclear fuel site at Ardakan. These facilities would soon be reduced to rubble by a variety of explosives including two-ton, bunker-busting bombs.

The largest formation, however, headed straight for Natanz, a heavily protected enrichment site located about 200 miles south of Tehran where it was situated 60 feet below ground.

Although there were a dozen planes in this particular formation, only one was of high importance.

As the first streaks of light announced the break of day, a mushroom cloud rose above Natanz, signaling the fulfillment of president Bush's vow to use nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis to meet threats before they became dire.

The time in Tehran, Iran's capital, was 6:00 AM.

Wave after wave of planes from the aircraft carriers Stennis and Eisenhower were also attacking suspected missile sites in Iran, but despite these efforts, hundreds of multiple warhead missiles were airborne within minutes and headed for Iraq and for our naval facilities in Bahrain.

At the same time, swarms of modern stealth boats, capable of speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, left the Iranian coast on a course that would place them within torpedo range of our fleet. Other Iranian ships were laying a blanket of mines across the 23-mile navigable width of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf's only outlet.

It was not yet 5:00 AM in Lebanon, but the news of the attack on Iran had traveled fast. Hezbollah had a plan of action at the ready and it was immediately activated. Soon, thousands of fighters and their equipment were moving towards the Israeli border.

As word reached the residents of the Gaza strip, the years of frustration and hardship all came to a boil at once.  Hoards of armed Palestinians, some members of Hamas and some not, breached the walls encasing their squalor and overran the vastly outnumbered Israeli soldiers manning their posts outside.

To the northeast, members of Fattah discarded their new-found partnership with Israel and broke out of their walled areas in the West Bank in an organized effort to team up with the Hezbollah forces moving south.

Meanwhile, as the clock moved towards noon in Baghdad, the degree of destruction from the Iranian missiles was becoming clear to the world. It was still before 4:00 AM in Washington, but the U.S. military and political leaders were receiving a briefing on the widespread destruction in the Green Zone and other military facilities as well as serious damage reports concerning the fleet bottled up in the Persian Gulf.

Earlier, the assembled leaders had ordered a full blown attack on all strategic facilities in Iran and the country was taking a pounding. Among the assets that were severely damaged or destroyed was the Yadavaran oil field in southern Iran, the North Pars Gas field in the Persian Gulf, and platforms in the Caspian Sea, all being joint projects of Iran and China. An unknown number of Chinese engineers and construction workers had been killed.

It was around 6:00 pm in Beijing when China began selling its dollar-denominated investments. The first to go were the U.S. government bonds, followed by its holdings of agency bonds, and then other miscellaneous assets. The total held by China, except for the government bonds, had never been revealed, but it was thought to be close to one trillion dollars.  As the fire sale proceeded the American dollar went into a tailspin.

Three hours later, when the New York Stock Exchange opened at 9:30 AM Eastern Time, an avalanche of sales drove the market down to a degree that caused the SEC to determine that a substantial disequilibrium existed and trading was halted in all stock exchanges under the so-called circuit-breaker procedure.

The chaos on the floor of the stock exchange was nothing, however, compared to the bedlam that ensued in the New York and Chicago Mercantile Exchanges. The spot prices of all commodities skyrocketed. Gold was soon approaching $2,000 per ounce and oil was over $170 per barrel and rapidly moving towards $200.

By 10:00 AM eastern time, reports were coming in of lines forming at banks in the New York area.

Meanwhile, Israel was struggling in the late afternoon under a three pronged attack by Hezbollah, Fattah and Hamas and now, Syrian warplanes had joined the fray, elevating the status to "dire."

Haifa was surrounded and under siege. Beersheba was reported to have been overrun by elements of Hamas.

To the east, Iraq was no longer under attack, but massive rescue efforts were underway midst the rubble of the green Zone.

Iran's firepower had finally been muzzled, but at a high cost in terms of ships and sailors lost at sea in the Persian Gulf.

And further east yet, in Pakistan, members of the U.S. Special Forces, making up what had been called "Snatch Squads," were attempting to secure that nation's nuclear arsenal, consisting of 60 warheads stored in multiple locations, but the Pakistani Army had driven them back, and now the Americans were under attack by militants associated with Al Qaeda.

In the United States, panic spread rapidly. Banks, unable to provide the funds demanded by the crush of customers had closed their doors. Supermarkets, initially besieged with shoppers and finally overrun by looters as food disappeared from the shelves, were simply left unattended.

By mid afternoon, the president had used the powers granted him by the Warner Act and activated the national guards of every state. These units, along with all available military personnel and federal marshals had been sent into the streets of America's cities to round up looters and transport them to the nearest detention facilities.

Habeus corpus was suspended under the authority of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

In addition, a 24-hour curfew was in effect and anyone violating it was apprehended. The news media was put under government control and the internet was rendered unavailable to the public.

The Israeli situation deteriorated rapidly during the evening.  As the clock approached midnight, the Jordan Times reported that witnesses had sighted a golden glow followed by a mushroom cloud over Beirut, the Lebanese capital.

Minutes later, a flight of Russian strategic bombers armed with nuclear bombs completed their mid-air refueling and followed orders from Moscow to proceed on a direct course to Israel.

Pakistan and India declared states of high alert and armed their nuclear missiles which were primarily aimed at each other.

In San Diego, Mohamed Askar looked at the long line of sailors' vehicles at his all-night gas station and decided to raise his price to $8 per gallon, realizing that his tanks would be empty by morning.

At that moment, Hu Chang, in a silo outside Hangzhou, China, was reporting to his superior officers that his team was awaiting final orders after fully arming its intercontinental ballistic missile with coordinates for its destination - San Diego.

Dave McGill, News Correspondent

Dave's column, "The Contrarian," generally published every Friday, to Gather Essentials: News will sometimes present a contrary view to various aspects of the news, or an alternate take on the conventional wisdom of the day, and will occasionally also appear on other days of the week

Dave has been a senior officer of a large eastern insurance company, involved in economic projections and investment strategy, president of a Midwestern mortgage banking company, and a financial consultant in Southern California, serving clients in the field of commercial real estate development

You can find all of Dave's "The Contrarian" columns at: http://gather.com/thecontrarian...... Keep up with Dave's other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network - just click here: http://atadaskew.gather.com........ You'll find Dave and other News Correspondents, plus celebrity content and plenty of other News experts at News.gather.com.