The first black widow was spotted 10 days ago, strolling across the floor while I watched the baseball playoffs. Without consulting my roommate, constituents or members of Congress, I acted alone. A nearby shoe came down on the spindly devil, and the threat was crushed. As I cleaned up the squashed body full of chemical and biological poisons, it was more than clear who sent this demon to my house. None other than Saddam Hussein.

That man is so evil that pretty much every affront to the American way of life goes back to him. I watched the President speak on Tuesday about how bad Saddam Hussein is. Incidentally, I find it odd that the president spoke to the nation about going to war, and none of the networks chose to cover the event. Makes me wonder where our interests as a nation really lie. After listening to the accusations from Bush, I wouldn't be surprise to hear people blaming everything lousy that has happened in the last 10 years on the malevolent Iraqi leader.

There's an idea: All the girls who left me, all the unsuccessful auditions, the leaky roof, broken down cars, boring jobs, confrontations, miscommunications, stupid movies, bad hair days, mice in the house and basically all the failures I've experienced could really be Saddam Hussein's fault. That's why the president wants to destroy him. Hussein has done evil things for years. He's a student of Stalin, a pal of Pol Pot, and an advocate of Adolf. It used to be that the current administration blamed its failings on Clinton, but having used up that excuse, it has moved on to a more distant yet recognizable target.

Just when I thought things were getting back to normal, two more black widows took up residence in the laundry room. One strolled by the aluminum cans, and another spun a web in the top corner. Hussein, you devil! Unleashing your biological beasts upon my abode! To war! To war! Follow me to freedom! Being a simple civilian soldier in the fight against terrorism, I grabbed the closest conventional weapon (a fly swatter) and struck hard and fast. Zop! Bam! Two elements of evil filled to the brim with chemical weapons crunched against the wall.

I searched desperately to find more pockets of Hussein's special ops forces, but it was to no avail. They have either dug themselves in deep for a long winter struggle or fled to avoid destruction. A victory for the old US of A.

After a hard fought battle, I collected myself and thought about how serious such an offensive was. Three black widows. None of them really put up a fight. In fact, it didn't seem like they were concerned with me at all. Just going about their business. They didn't know they were such a threat to the American way of life. Suddenly, I realized that these black widows didn't represent the Elite Republican Guard of Hussein. The black widows were more like the Iraqi people themselves. They weren't doing anything wrong except being known as agents of evil.

If we go to war (again) with Iraq, there will be plenty of black widows to step on along with their vicious leader. And what happened to our last offensive? You know, the one in Afghanistan. Is it done? Did we win? Did we fix the problem? What happened to bin Laden? Will all of our wars nowadays have ambivalent conclusions?

I had a old man in my cab the day after Bush spoke, and he asked me if I saw the president speak. He was very surprised when I said yes and asked what I thought about it. I politely said that it seemed like Hussein wasn't the most important problem we need to be dealing with at the moment. There is evil all over this world (even in the laundry room), and spending a couple hundred billion to get rid of one guy doesn't seem like the way bolster freedom homeland security.

The man smiled and said there should be more young people like me. Sure, he was drunk and handicapped. Sure, I picked him up at a Chinese buffet in the war zone. But this guy was a veteran and fought in Vietnam thirty years ago. He said he loves the dinks. He loved them when he fought against them, and he loves them now.

I can't say I love black widows, but I do know that I have nothing really against them either. Even when I have to step on them.

Chris Jungle is a one-man militia.