I hate to play Monday morning quarterback (or even Tuesday evening quarterback), but if the United States is going to treat an upcoming war with Iraq like some late-season football game, let's give it the proper big-game treatment, like a Super Bowl.
Let's face it, this is one wacky way to start a war. Or what do you call it when Team USA makes major daily announcements that it's going to attack a country without direct provocation some time in the distant future?
First, Coach Bush and his assistants tell the world they're going to attack Iraq. (Whatever happened to surprise and secrecy? Did the Japanese call ahead and book a date with Pearl Harbor?) Then Coach Hussein says his team will chew up Coach Bush's team and spit them out in the sand (and, by the way, thanks, America, for the warning and the lengthy pre-game preparation period).
Then Coach Bush fires back another verbal salvo about why his team plans to run a zone blitz, and then Coach Hussein fires off some more bravado — from the other side of a couple of oceans.
I'm no general, but is it a good thing when the enemy can get a decent scouting report just by reading the New York Times?
If we're going to continue this silliness, then let's bring the teams together at the war site, like Super Bowl week. Put them up in a couple of one-star hotels in downtown Baghdad, preferably on opposite ends of town. Each day they'll whisk the respective coaches and their teams to an interview session at the local Marriott, la Super Bowl week.
Coach Bush will say, "We're taking this one war at a time. We've just got to focus."
Coach Hussein will say, "We've just got to execute." (Ha, ha, get it? Execute?)
Coach Hussein will be a big hit with the media, a regular quote machine. He is a strong preseason candidate for the all-interview team. He's got Jimmy Johnson's bluster, except he can't back it up. He lost Gulf War I by a score of 200 to nothing, and he was still talking trash.
Gulf War I got so lopsided that one group of 40 Iraqis tried to surrender to a Marine airplane — even though it didn't have a pilot. How embarrassing. Even more embarrassing: Other Iraqis surrendered to journalists. This was the sports equivalent of running up the score. And yet, after the cease-fire, Hussein said Iraq wasn't defeated.
If this man had been Custer at Little Bighorn, his dying words would have been, "If you attack us, your forces of evil will carry your coffins on your backs to die in disgraceful failure."
Which he said the other day, by the way. Can you say "selective memory"? Like Carrot Top and Mike Tyson, this guy just won't go away. He is a thorn in the buttocks of the world.
Coach Bush will be more sensible during the interview sessions but not by much. The other day, after announcing that a time had not been set for the opening kickoff of the war, he added, "And if I did, I wouldn't tell you or the enemy."
Now he decides to keep some secrets?
The look-out-here-we-come pre-war buildup gets stranger and stranger. So far, the United States has done everything but make hotel reservations in Baghdad and release battle plans to the media. Meanwhile, Iraq has already begun holding pep rallies for the home team. Thousands of people marched the streets, holding signs that read, "Long live Saddam," and "Down with USA!" Congress discusses the war regularly out in the open. Saddam addressed the nation while sitting behind a desk spread with white lilies (the flowers were a nice touch, don't you think?).
What next, a preseason poll? Picture day with the teams? Injury reports (Captain Mullah goes on IR with a pulled hammy). Las Vegas odds?
Coach Bush will get back to us with the game time.
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. E-mail drob@desnews.com.