Why not football, George?

If there’s one thing any casual observer of politics – very much like yours truly – really enjoys seeing, it’s hypocrisy. Before I begin this column, I’d like to ask the doting public to please refrain from sending me email about this week’s installment. That being said …

If I were a journalist, I’d have to qualify mounds of research before I could come to any arguable conclusions on the topic of our country’s current military agenda. Thankfully, I’m as much of a journalist as Dubya is a linguist. Such is the reason I write commentary; I never really need to verify anything.

So here’s what I see: Thousands upon thousands of American men and women about my age from around the country boarded ships this week, heading for a dust-covered, oil-filled part of the world we call the Middle East. Why? Because Saddam Hussein lives there, silly, and we’d very much like to make him defunct, or at least maim him considerably.

I understand the vague reasons we have for starting a war. The totalitarian tortured his people, apparently lies about everything and attacked the free nation of Kuwait 12 years ago. I’m all for freedom, because if my decadent column ran in the Baghdad Beagle, I might not live to read it, and we all know that reading my column is one of life’s joys.

What I do not comprehend, however, is why the Bush administration wants to risk the lives of so many young Americans to, essentially, prove a point.

Again, I’d like to stress that although I read a newspaper and watch the news every day, I don’t really know squat about Iraq. I can, though, locate it on a map, which I believe makes me more informed than something like 80 percent of American college students. I even know that Mesopotamia, famous for appearances in middle school textbooks, existed in modern day Iraq. I also know that the letters i, r, a and q combine to spell no words other than Iraq.

Apropos, these facts are utterly meaningless, much unlike huge bombs.

Iraq might have the feared “weapons of mass destruction,” so we’re going to start a war. It seems to me, after many pondering, fireside nights, that the best way to find out if a country has weapons is to start shooting at them. Supposing they use these weapons and American casualties reach numbers well beyond those of Sept. 11 – is Bush going to be proud and say, “I told you so”?

The whole argument stems from the idea that countries possessing weapons of mass destruction endanger the world.

But North Korea has nuclear capabilities. We can prove it. Heck, Kim Jong Il, who apparently was headed to a rave as a photographer snapped his Newsweek cover picture, brags about his big bombs.

Isn’t he more dangerous than Saddam? Can’t he sell nukes to terrorists just as easily as Hussein?

I’m getting dizzy.

Should we go to war to stop Saddam? The most thoughtful, intelligent answer I have: I dunno. I just wish the overview didn’t make us look so darn hypocritical.

In fact, all this talk about war has made me a little queasy.

In most of my columns, I like to think up cute little ways to end each piece, something that ties it all together. Today, however, I would like to finish by talking about a place where war metaphors and military cliches are commonplace, harmless and fun.

In Superbowl XXXVII, the Oakland Raiders will destroy, obliterate and/or annihilate the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by the score of 103 to 5, even though the organization possesses absolutely no weapons of mass destruction.