World Poker Tour Comes to Baghdad

The World Poker Tour Comes to Baghdad

We haven’t found any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Politicians think this indiscovery watershed. Leno gets hoots from left coast crowds about it. Pop culture has made WMD the trendiest abbreviation since WWJD.

And for some reason, everybody thinks that the nonexistence of nukes or bioweapons in Iraq is a bad thing, that we messed up—that our country stepped in it and now has to take that same foot and put it in our collective mouth.

This proves to me that The World Poker Tour will never make it to prime time.

Only Sadaam knew the cards in his hand. As I write this, we still don’t know if he slid them under the table before leaving the casino or if he was pulling a bluff. For this essay only, I’m guessing the latter to be true.

He knew that we knew he had held them in his hand before. He knew the other players at the table would all accuse each other of playing the game just for his chips. He knew that his was a neighborhood in which you don’t want to get lost without some friends.

So, he had his minister of misinformation tell his truth badly. When he knew the inspectors would be looking, he put minders on scientists and moved trucks around the country to make it look like he might have something to hide. Then he slid more chips to the center of the table to scare away the noncontenders.

And we called.

He laid down his cards. A two and seven of clubs, a four of spades, a five of diamonds, and a Jack of hearts—to our royal flush. Apparently, he’d sneaked some Kenny Rogers into his musicless country, and knew when (though apparently not where) to run.

While we’re busy passing out his (and our) chips to the Iraqis now, the world, the democrats, and Katie want to fault our win—to cheapen the victory, because poor old Sadaam didn’t play a good hand. They want to pin the war on politics, as if the Bush administration had Sidney Bristow in a blue hairpiece, sitting in Sadaam’s lap, relaying his cards to us via wig cam during the game—then sat on the intel for November sweeps.

It’s all a bluff to cover their empty hand, one without even a Jack of solutions. So, I hope they go all in. I hope they raise the stakes.

Because the last time I checked, we were playing Texas Holdem.