of the days of Arab glory" (two names he self-applies), and as a restorer of Arab grandeur along the lines of Saladin, the Islamic general who defeated the Crusaders and retook Jerusalem. He has had a children's book about Saladin produced, complete with his own picture on the front and his own life in the text.

One of his main tacks in this striving for immortality is his desire to be the one to expel the Israelis from Palestine. To this effect, it is known that if his life is under threat he will attempt to, as a last ditch effort, bomb Tel Aviv with whatever he has, be it conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. This was his plan in the first Gulf war, though at the time his worst weapons were biological. He instigated a crash course to try to build a nuclear weapon quick enough to have it ready for a possible invasion of Baghdad by the allied forces. He speaks about Israel so often that there is little doubt he will carry through with this plan if he can.

OIL
In spite of all I've said about Saddam's unpredictability and delusions of grandeur, it is not so unreasonable to believe that even he wouldn't just indiscriminately launch a nuclear weapon at Tel Aviv or Kuwait or New York City. The real crux of the issue here, though, and what separates Iraqi nuclear weapons from Pakistani nuclear weapons or even North Korean nuclear weapons, is oil.

Let me just digress here and say that I personally deplore the world's dependence on oil, and I dream of taking every American who surrounds themselves with 3 tons of SUV steel to make the trek between home and the office every day, dragging them from their vehicles and putting them in a Yugo, as punishment, until such time as they can afford more reliable and economical transportation. Even though some of these people are my family and friends and are actually very decent people. I would also like to tear down all the suburbs of the world and build real communities with walking distance shopping, and connect these with quality public transportation. And to put duct tape over the mouth of every American who complains about a 5 cent rise in the price of gas when the rest of the world is still paying twice as much due to lack of clout. Not to mention our sluggishness in adopting alternative energy sources.

But, the fact remains that right now we are dependant on it. And, though the U.S. is the most flagrant, we are certainly not alone. The entire world is dependant on it. Most important to this discussion however, is the fact that we're not just talking about convenient transportation when we talk about oil; we're talking about industry and the world economy.

This is the hypothetical situation: Saddam gets some nuclear weapons. He aims a couple at Tel Aviv and just lets them sit there. Then, he invades Kuwait again. He thinks that his biggest mistake in the first Gulf war was not acquiring nuclear weapons before he invaded, so this is plausible. What do we