Or 12 reasons why the U.S. wants to bomb Iraq even farther back than the Stone Age we've already sent them to:

12. There's only so much you can can do, only so far you can go, only so much you can add to your virility in a sport utility vehicle.

11. Trent Lott wants to "go all the way" with Saddam Hussein...well, anyone, really. He just wants the attention.

10. So British Prime Minster Tony Blair can have a slumber party with Bill Clinton and compare pee-pees.

9. So the Clintons can publish a new book: "It Takes A Child To Flatten a Village."

8. The State Department is finally learning to use diplomacy ... to cajole U.N. security council members into supporting the bombing. If that doesn't work, you'll know why Bill Clinton's been fundraising nearly full-time--to bribe them.

7. To restart the Cold War with Russia and China (oh, yeah, and France--those pinko socialists!). The Pentagon's worried about possible budget cutbacks in 2026.

6. TV networks need to boost their ratings during the lull between the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics.

5. So clueless Congresspeople can run for re-election this fall claiming they saved us from the threat of random international violence terrorizing millions ... um, wait, let's rephrase that .... WORSE THAN HITLER! YES! THAT'S IT!

4. Advertising!

3. So the Dow gets to 10,000 before more of those nice Japanese gentlemen jump.

2. Exxon is set to make a bundle from rising oil prices (again).

1. So the U.S. government can distract the world from its real motives in Iraq: not to find and dispose of any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons under the Security Council's mandate (oops, that would be Israel), but to find and assassinate Saddam Hussein. It's so embarrassing when old CIA assets go bad.

We could print the same article every six months. The temptation is unbelievable--after all, isn't that what the Seattle Times/Fishwrapper does? Fortunately, we never tire of revealing the insanity of U.S. policy regarding Iraq. Well, actually, we're pretty sick of the whole damn thing. U.S. policy hasn't changed one bit since 1990--or accomplished any of its stated objectives. The U.S. has consistently been more interested in using Saddam Hussein as an all-purpose bogeyman--citing threats not even its allies see, at a cost so far of over 1,000,000 civilian Iraqi lives--to advance its own economic and geopolitical interests, than in any "resolution" of its endless sequences of manufactured "crises."

Once again, the U.S. stands alone in its rabid insistence on bombing a country that's been all but obliterated by seven years of disastrous economic sanctions. Only two of the U.N. Security Council's 13 members support a military strike against Iraq (our own representative, and Britain's), and the rest of the U.N. member nations are appalled by what they rightly view as Clinton's self-serving attempt to draw media attention from his personal misdeeds, and to compensate for negative publicity that has made him look morally weak. Clinton's additional not-so- veiled threats to use nuclear weaponry against Iraq are, quite simply, viewed with abject horror.

Granted, Saddam Hussein is a genocidal despot; however, remarkably, the Iraqi government has come through this crisis looking the far more reasonable party than our own government. Iraq has continued to negotiate with the U.N. and has offered access to eight of the 14 disputed potential weapons sites (referred to as "presidential sites" by the U.N. inspection team), while U.S. Congressmen have talked openly about the need to assassinate Saddam Hussein at all cost. The U.S. has rabidly supported seven years of crippling economic sanctions that have denied food, medicine, and humanitarian aid to the Iraqi population and been responsible for the death of three-quarters of a million Iraqi children. Iraq's quite reasonable demand that U.S. personnel be kept off the U.N. inspections team was blatantly ignored, and a U.S. Gulf War veteran was appointed to lead the inspection team. And now, the Joint Chiefs of Staff want to add the offices and homes of Saddam's senior government ministers to their list of bombing targets.

All of which makes other Middle Eastern dictatorships very uneasy. Secretary of State Madeline Albright has rushed from one Middle Eastern nation to the next in an attempt to solicit support for the bombing, all in vain. In the end, she whined: "None of the Arab leaders said, go home and tell the President that he should not use force!" She may not be lying, but it's a misstatement of enormous proportions. For example, Al- Ahram, Egypt's state-owned newspaper, openly expressed disgust with the U.S.: "The American position toward Iraq cannot be described as anything but coercive, aggressive, unwise, and uncaring about the lives of Iraqis ..." This, from one of our strongest allies in the region. (What is our money and all those weapons sales to a repressive regime supposed to be buying, anyhow?) Jordan, Syria, and the Arab League have expressed similar opinions and, indeed, the rest of the world agrees with them--although you can't find this information anywhere in the U.S. press.

Even our main ally, Britain, is against a bombing raid. The U.S. press has hailed Prime Minister Blair's recent three-day trip to Washington D.C. as an unequivocal show of support for Clinton's position. Blair's own aides, however, say that he's anticipating a two to three week period of negotiations to work on diplomatic options first, before even considering the use of force. This casts his visit in another light. Imagine a newspaper headline: "Blair Travels to U.S. to Calm down Extremist Clinton and Avert Military Slaughter in the Persian Gulf." Or, in Rupert Murdoch tradition: "TONY TO BILL: TAKE A COLD SHOWER!"

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has proposed that the Security Council double the amount of oil Iraq can sell to buy food and medicine for its 22 million starving people. Annan is still for a diplomatic solution, but is having a hard time keeping the U.S. at bay. Major members of the U.N. Security Council strongly oppose bombing Iraq--both France and China have made harsh statements against the U.S. position. In Russia, President Boris Yeltsin is so confused by the U.S.'s blatantly militaristic and murderous rhetoric, that he assumes Clinton and the Pentagon are planning to nuke Baghdad, and thereby start a world war. Indeed, nothing seems to be beyond a nation that's overseen seven years of punishment that amounts to genocide against the Iraqi people.

Here in Seattle, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) are urging people to phone the White House to complain about the bombing and the economic sanctions. On the day that any bombing begins, FOR and AFSC will sponsor a demonstration at the Federal Building in downtown Seattle at 2nd and Madison. Call FOR at 789-5565 or AFSC at 632-0500, extension 112 for more information; Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia (206-547-0952) is also planning public street theater in the coming days.