The Armageddon Plan

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, along with then-President Gerald Ford, April 28, 1975.
Already during 1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11
Sources:
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143034898/centerforcoop-20
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55877-2004Apr6
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416535748/centerforcoop-20

Throughout the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are key players in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan administration. Presently, Cheney is working as a Republican congressman, while Rumsfeld is head of the pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle. At least once per year, they both leave their day jobs for periods of three or four days. They head to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, DC, and along with 40 to 60 federal officials and one member of the Reagan Cabinet are taken to a remote location within the US, such as an underground bunker. While they are gone, none of their work colleagues, or even their wives, knows where they are. They are participating in detailed planning exercises for keeping government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Unconstitutional 'Continuity of Government' - This highly secret “continuity of government” (COG) program is known as Project 908. The idea is that if the US were under a nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to separate locations around the US to prepare to take leadership of the country. If somehow one team was located and hit with a nuclear weapon, the second or third team could take its place. Each of the three teams includes representatives from the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, and various domestic-policy agencies. The program is run by a new government agency called the National Program Office. Based in the Washington area, it has a budget of hundreds of million dollars a year, which grows to $1 billion per year by the end of Reagan’s first term in office. Within the National Security Council, the “action officer” involved in the COG program is Oliver North, who is a key figure in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan’s Vice President, George H. W. Bush, also supervises some of the program’s efforts. As well as Cheney and Rumsfeld, other known figures involved in the COG exercises include Kenneth Duberstein, who serves for a time as President Reagan’s chief of staff, and future CIA Director James Woolsey. Another regular participant is Richard Clarke, who on 9/11 will be the White House chief of counterterrorism (see (1984-2004)). The program, though, is extraconstitutional, as it establishes a process for designating a new US president that is nowhere authorized in the US Constitution or federal law. After George H. W. Bush is elected president in 1988 and the effective end of the Soviet Union in 1989, the exercises continue. They will go on after Bill Clinton is elected president, but will then be based around the threat posed by terrorists, rather than the Soviet Union (see 1992-2000). According to journalist James Mann, the participation of Rumsfeld and Cheney in these exercises demonstrates a broader truth about them: “Over three decades, from the Ford administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never too far away; they stayed in touch with its defense, military, and intelligence officials and were regularly called upon by those officials. Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States.”

USA-Iraq Fail to Meet Long-term Agreement Deadline

These days you are obliged to read Chinese papers and while they write in English about Iraq, you can avoid reading the nonsense about sports.

Iraq and the United States have failed to meet their deadline of a long-term security deal and turn to work on some "bridge agreement" that would set a framework for U.S. troops presence in Iraq after 2008. The deadline of July 31, put forward last November by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and U.S. President George W. Bush, has passed without signing the long-awaited pact, though U.S. officials declared repeatedly both countries were close to conclude the deal. Both countries intended to reach the security agreement by the deadline, but the proposed agreement had always been under fire from U.S. congressmen to Iraq's anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran.
The United States and Iraq were working on two pieces of agreement, one is the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) and the other is Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said in a statement. "The SFA covers the entire range of bilateral relations including economic, cultural, diplomatic, etc. The SOFA covers military cooperation," it said, asserting that United States has such long-term agreements with many countries. The United States and Iraq are working on some short-term "bridge agreement" or a "memorandum of understanding" (MoU) instead, after the long-term agreements of SFA and SOFA missed their deadline amid disputes and criticisms. The reason for such short-term agreement is that signing SFA and SOFA agreements would take several years of negotiations, but the UN mandate for U.S. troops in Iraq will expire by the end of 2008. The MoU "would allow the United States to continue military operations in Iraq until an SOFA could be completed," the U.S. embassy said. The two sides confirmed that negotiations are underway despite the time of the negotiations, which kicked off in March, is running out.
Observers see the U.S. administration is in a hurry to seal a kind of agreement before the U.S. presidential elections this fall. They pointed out that the U.S. administration needs a long-term troops presence to defend its allies and interests in Iraq and to encourage foreign investment in the war-torn country.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed Shiite government is facing harsh criticisms against the agreement with the United States and is trying to balance its attitude in the negotiations. The Iraqi government needs a security agreement with the Americans to protect itself from its foes inside Iraq, while it has to keep in line with other Shiites in Iran and inside Iraq who oppose permanent U.S. troops presence in the country.
Not only Shiites, the majority of Iraqis see the agreement as a surrender of Iraq's sovereignty to an occupying force and fear it would lead to a permanent presence of U.S. troops. Anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr Thursday urged the Iraqi government not to sign the agreement and offered public and political support for Maliki's government if it refrains from signing the agreement.
Earlier, Sadr called on followers to hold weekly protest against the negotiations until the government agrees to a referendum on the U.S. presence. Thousands have responded to his call.
Iran opposes any deal between Baghdad and Washington extending the presence of U.S. troops in its neighbor.
Iraq's Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite, went further and doubted whether his country could sign a security agreement with Bush's administration or even with the coming administration after the presidential elections in the United States. "I am not sure whether this will happen during either administration, but if Iraq's demands are met, then we may reach a protocol or a sort of agreement," Mahdi was quoted as saying in an interview with local media issued on the website of the Iraqi presidency council. "We are not going to sign a treaty, this is unlikely," he said, adding that Iraq needs agreements that could control the actions of foreign troops on its land.
Observers questioned how strong Iraq's negotiation position is in such agreement with the world supreme power. It is believed that the Iraqi government's room to maneuver may be limited due to its dependence on U.S. troops to secure its borders and protect it from armed groups that defy its authority. However, if Baghdad fails to reach agreement with Washington, it could seek a further extension of the UN mandate, though it has said the current extension is the last one.