WASHINGTON DC, July 31- After
Iraq, what's next for Uncle Sam
in the Mideast?

Maybe this current number one 
"What's-it-all-about-Archy" has a
clear and present answer. 
 
Maybe all along phase two of the 
Bush mideast crusade was nothing
more or less than a secure pipeline
running all the way to the energy
reserves deep inside Turkish 
Central Asia.

After all, it’s likely one way or
another that Turkestan will become
the site of the globe’s next big 
oil and gas show, so why not have
a nice US owned and operated 
pipeline to the place? 
 
Experts have estimated that the
region's energy reserves may have
a "wellhead value" in the hundreds
of billions of dollars.

"I'd have to figure the group that
arrives up there first has quite a
nice little gravy boat waiting for
them," says long-time energy
forecaster Klem Shanderson of the
Houston-based Petroleum Alert.  

Many others in the field agree with 
Shanderson's appraisal.

"It's the last liberator- the last
megalode," says legendary pipeliner
Joe "Tubesteak" Williams.

According to Williams, "energy
hogs" like him have been longing to
get in there and get started for 
more than ten years. 

"Since the day the old Soviet Union
air-pocketed," he says, "Man alive!
Say no more. I can taste all that
sweet sweet crude already.
 
"Mama, pack my ice chest. I’m ready
to rumble."

But are these energy reserves really
the dream objects of the best and
brightest Bush operatives- the ones
scouting out prospects for their
friends in the biz world?  

"You bet," says one close observer, 
the now well-known whistle blower 
Edward "Tuck" Acheson.

Acheson says he knows just how the
"Bush people" plan to do it, too. 

How come he knows so much?

"It was my idea in the first
place," he says. 

Acheson just last month revealed a
plan he drafted back in '97 as an
NSC staffer for the then
Monica-besieged Clinton Whitehouse. 

His plan, according to Acheson, 
"was just one of those classic 
diversionary crisis gambits." 
 
It called for an emergency
parachute drop of the 101st
airborne division into Iraqi
Kurdestan to scotch a "trumped-up"
immanent genocidal attack against
the Kurds by the Saddam regime.  

"Actually, lots of options for an
armed intervention got a look-over
at that time," says Acheson.  

Besides Kurdish Iraq, Indian 
Kasmir, Zimbabwe, the Dominican
Republic, Burma, Latvia, and even
the Basque region of Spain were 
considered. 

"We covered a lot of ground," he
says. 

All proposed plans were dropped 
by the Clinton Whitehouse,
according to Acheson, "When
Kosovo finally blew up into a
usable crisis." 

With this new revelation, Acheson  
says he’s "just blowing the
whistle a second time," and, he
hopes, "squelching the deal for
Bush and company."

According to Acheson, the plan
now ready for launch by the Bush
team "actually was to be the
second act of my Kurd thing- sort
of a contingency on a
contingency," he says. 

"If the Bush people follow my
scenario," says Acheson, "which
hopefully they can’t now that
I’ve spilled the beans, but if
they had gone ahead with it they
would have sent US armed forces
to seize an area of Iran called
the "Caspian bottleneck."

This is the region of 
northwestern Iran that lies
wedged between the borders of
Iraq and the Caspian sea.
 
For centuries, this area has
been populated by several
embattled minority groups, says
Acheson. 

The action would have been 
"justified" by revelations 
"spun out of thin air by
Whitehouse allies," he says. 

The various storytellers would
make it appear as if yet another
genocidal masterplan was about
to explode; this one hatched by
the fanatic clerical clique 
running the show in Teheran.
 
"The revelations would purport to
show a mission ready to launch," 
says Acheson. A mission to
"liquidate" the minority enclaves
of the bottle neck and repopulate
the highly strategic area with 
"ethnic Farsi." 

"Look at the good press Bush got
when he saved the Iraqis from
Saddam's sadists. This would be
sequel time- marines to the
rescue," he says. 
 
It's not a bad story, say several
experts on the region.  

Three centuries of struggle for
control of this triangle among 
the area's changing cast of big
powers is "one of history's 
longest running scandals," says
Ted Gilbankian, a mideast expert
at the Geovision Factory,  a
self-styled "great game" 
thinktank here in Washington.

"Every expansionist in a
position to try has taken a shot
at this piece of real estate,"
says Gilbankian. 

"The local minorities
unfortunate enough to be in the
way have been bounced around for 
hundreds of years," he says.   

"If this story of Acheson's is
true- and it sounds like it
could be true to me- then I
guess it's Uncle’s turn to
rattle their cages,"  says
Gilbankian. "The poor devils."   

According to Acheson, the Bush
team would "forcibly" dislodge
the long-disputed region from
Iran and reunite its two
ethnic enclaves with
neighboring areas where each
group has a homeland. 

According to the plan, the
bottlenecks- local Azeri
majority areas- would merge 
with the former Soviet Republic
of Azerbaijan, now a fiercely
independent oil-rich state on
Iran's northern border, 
creating a unified Azeri state
for the first time in 400 
years, Acheson said.

The second, smaller piece, a 
Kurdish-dominated area, would
amalgamate with the
newly-emerging Kurdish
Autonomous Region of 
Northern Iraq.

"Notice the beautiful
Wilsonian ending to the piece. 
Two lost fragments returned to
the fold, so to speak. National
self-determination and all that,"
said Acheson, with obvious 
devilish pride of authorship. 
"And presto! Suddenly Uncle Sam
has a pathway to the Caspian Sea, 
gateway to Central Asia... has a
TR whiff to it, too, doesn’t it?"

This is heady stuff, but just
why is Acheson so confident the
Bush people were really close to
activating his old plan?  
 
"They as much as told me so when
they went after me last month,"
he said. 

"I purposely left this Caspian
cut-through plan out of my
published stuff last month
because I figured if I did the
Bush people would leave me alone
and maybe pounce away." 

"After all, I’d clobbered
Clinton, hadn’t I, with the
phoney Kurdocide bit- that had
to help them. But, much to my
surprise, the Bushy gang went
for me anyway. Some of those
enforcement-type Aces of his
must have wanted to get the rep
as real hardball guys, I
guess," Acheson continued. 

"But they goofed with me. Who
knows, I might have stayed
silent. But now I’m mad, so
when their to-be-expected 
weirdo-out-of-the-shadows  
offers me a dark-of-the-night
deal- you know, one of those 
'you-no-talk-then-maybe-
charges-we-drop' gimmicks, I
say in clear tones, 'Sorry
Charlie,' and here I am."  

Despite the attack on him,
Acheson maintains that as a
former player himself,  he
can still enjoy their
craftsmanship. 

"Actually, I like Bush's plan
better than mine. A lot 
better," he said. "Taking out
Saddam himself is much cleaner
than my Kurd action. For one
thing, it eliminates the 
Turkish problem. Under my plan,
the pipline would have to run
through Turkey. That's way
worse than straight down to
the Gulf, for a dozen good
reasons.
 
"Obviously, the Bush people 
got green lights from the big
oil and bank boys I couldn’t
get. Not to mention the Saudis
and the the hardhat Zionists. 
Got to give them credit. 
Especially cutting the Saudis
in on the picnic.

"Well, I hope I’ve wrecked
their play," Acheson continued. 
"They’ll find another way, 
though. I promise you that.

"You got to understand, the
smell of all those untapped
reserves up there just waiting
for them- for the boys from
Unocal and Exxon and Riyadh-
that's positively irresistible.   
It's the call of the wild to
gentlemen like that."

As for Acheson himself, he’s
not going anywhere soon-
wild or otherwise. 

The former career foreign-
service officer was just
yesterday released on bail
pending trial after his
controversial indictment for
alleged violations of the
Official Secrets Act. 

Last month in Federal Court,
governmemt attorneys argued
before first-circuit judge
Albert Bornstein that the
corpus of Acheson's earlier
revelations included "the
substance of state papers"
protected under federal
regulations from public
disclosure for thirty years.  

This, argued prosecutor 
assistant AG Jerry
Neugarten, violated the
rarely-invoked State Secrets
Act of 1847. 

Prior to last month, this
1847 act was considered a
long-forgotten relic by
most constitutional
scholars. 

"It's an unremoved blemish
on the statute books from
a silly Whig vs. Democrat
partisan rangling during
the Mexican War," said
lawyer and treason
expert Nick Botwinkle. 

Yesterday, the court upheld
the government’s position 
and Acheson faces charges
that are, according to
Botwinkle, "the legal
equivalent of capital
treason."
 
"Hey," said the unflapped
Acheson, "doing a long
stretch is probably just
what I need to write my
memoirs."
  
"Don’t worry, they won’t
shoot me. This isn’t
Allende’s Chile. 

Well, not yet anyway."