ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, are we impotent bureaucratic fools or are we really sticking it to Saddam Hussein and Iraq? Rumors of a total international trade embargo imposed on Iraq only negatively impact a million score Arabs and Kurds living in 14th century filth, violently oppressed, diseased, uneducated, undernourished, sweating, and otherwise obliged to Allah for their good fortune re salvation from the Great Satan. A few thousand of Saddam's chosen henchmen run the black market and all else of real or potential value in Iraq, rendering Swiss banking gnomes joyous in ways cuckoo clocks and milk chocolate cannot achieve. Windows of US political serendipity like anthrax bombing of London are being palpated in biennial Presidential advisory committee meetings. Some wag wondered, "what if they do it to us!" and Foggy Bottom dropped its breakfast croissant (then reassigned the wag to youth winter cultural exchanges between Uyo, Nigeria and Tuktoyaktuk, Canada). The US promptly launched full military emergency focus group studies, ascertaining to a recursive statistical nicety that no segment of American society, Arab emigres to the American Civil Liberties Union, would hesitate to transform the entire Middle East into a vast array of green glass caldera. Several think tank CEOs then retired to enjoy their vast wealth in the Virginia countryside hard by retired generals' homesteads. A minority group janitor given a racially-unbiased promotion was assigned to do something or other, allotted a $23 million budget, and sternly admonished not to exceed it by half. Six of MbweBwe Poswilly's (early 1800s honky in the woodpile) seven sons were in their third freshman years at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Princeton, Stanford, and Oxford. !Kung Poswilly, the white sheep of the brood (via his wife), studied chemistry under F. Albert Cotton at Texas A&M. Hiring his entire extended family as Federal contractors, MbweBwe fatefully included !Kung, a perpetual embarrassment for studying instead of demanding his rights and standing stud for bored faculty wives ripped on Prozac and fine scotch. Slow but not stupid, !Kung seized the moment to sell a sweetheart deal to Detroit for Top Secret/Lotus Eater weaponization of limousines. No Arab nation (or American Civil Service doyen) is so stupid as to consider emissions controls for its elite vehicles. When a man of power cleanses his soiled anus with his left forefinger, stands, adjusts his djellaba, and retires to a vehicle waiting at the roadside, he will confront 30 feet of sleek American automotive hegemony glistening in the unforgiving sunlight. VROOOOM! and a billowing cloud of blue exhaust are the stuff of wet dreams worldwide. !Kung added two hundred pounds of nickel shavings to the exhaust train, exercised a hastily granted car dealership license for a day, and retired to Virginia. The CIA took up the slack. Saddam and his minions possess outrageous numbers of posh vehicles, all now quietly retrofitted with !Kung canisters. Copious carbon monoxide in hot exhaust progressively reacts with nickel to spew out the tailpipe into intractable Arabian traffic jams volatile nickel tetracarbonyl (43 C boiling point) which then progressively poisons the urban populace, thereafter oxidizing in air to harmlessness and indetectability. Allergic sensitization, dermatitis, asthma, and pneumonitis are scything Iraqi raghead society. As per international custom and wont, gentry in the cars are isolated from their toxic exhaust. Despotic rulers Idi Amin to Congresscritters are careful not to hurt each other as such, for it smacks of lower class pretensions, fistfights to going postal. How the progressive poisoning of urban populations negatively impacts a despotic ruling clique burdened with too many destitute civilians is left as an exercise for the alert reader, or a sophomore political science class weekend homework assignment. Like the 37-year Cuban trade embargo, American stratagem and tactic against Iraq are hovering at the bleeding edge of total victory. It says so in the instruction booklet, all the portentously complex computer models agree to three decimal places, and empirical reality had better get its act together to meet expectations. While America wielded a leaden hand in a faux fur glove Saddam Hussein was tearing out the Great Satan's guts, and at bargain basement prices. Each time he sent a telegram to the UN telling them to get stuffed the US responded with a $100 million military show of force. A few $million dollars quietly redirected by Iraq into Environmentalist coffers had 270 million Americans hamstrung by caterwauling vegetarians' snit and EPA jackbooted State compassion to the tune of $1 trillion (with a "t") annually. As 1998 drew to a close America had Saddam Hussein right where he wanted us.