When asked about nations on the UN Security Council volunteering to send their own U-2 type spy planes to Iraq and increase the size of the inspection task force, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that he didn't know "how many inspectors it would take to cover a nation the size of France."

Maybe the Secretary has France on the mind because they must be really ticking him off with their resistance to his war, so he simply made a slip-of-the-tongue. But I don't think so, a secretary of defense must know about loose tongues. I think he's tired of referring to Iraq as "the size of California" that Americans can relate to and wants something that most are not as familiar with in terms of size.

Anyway, it sent me rushing to the CIA's web pages where their World Fact Book reports things like this.

There I found France listed with a population of 59 million (59,765,983) and a geographic territory of 547,030 square miles.

Iraq, on the other hand, is listed as having a population of 24 million people (24,001,816) and a territory of 437,072 square miles.

When you consider that a good part of Iraq is not very habitable desert and Saddam Hussein's effective territory lies in between the Northern and Southern "no fly" zones inhabited mostly by Kurds and Shiites respectively, you could probably think of Saddam's territory as half the square miles recorded. Is this central section the part that's supposed to be the "size of California?" Damn, now I've got to look up California’s statistics, the state about to start a recall petition to get rid of the governor.

It turns out that the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the State of California as having 34 million people (34,501,130) meaning that Iraq is only about 70 percent its size in people, considerably smaller. But the really surprising thing is that California has only 155,959 square miles of land. Geographically, it's only about a third the size of Iraq, or Iraq is three times the size of California in territory.

Is this just a happy accident that we can think about Iraq in thirds? Is the battle ground, Saddam's territory, only 150,000 to 160,000 square miles in the middle and that's why our leaders are referring to the country as the "size of California?"

If it's just the middle of the Iraqi country that we are concerned with, then we've got a couple of considerations. First, any movement by our troops other than parachuting into this center region will have to go through the Northern zone from Turkey or the Southern zone from Kuwait. Of course, our "shock and awe" plan of sitting back and throwing 800 cruise missiles at Baghdad, more explosives than Hiroshima raining down on a city of five million within 48 hours will certainly soften things up ahead of their arrival to find Saddam.

This certainly tops the more than 10,000 civilians we wiped out in Panama City to find the notorious drug dealer and ex-CIA employee, Manuel Noriega who took sanctuary in a church.

More importantly, the number of extra inspectors other nations are talking about sending into Iraq to assist Hans Blix and his team should, if the number is sufficient, allow them to cover every inch of habitable land in a much shorter period. The U-2 planes and satellites ought to be able to detect anything underground on the desert.

But then, it really isn't a scavenger hunt for weapons of mass destruction. In the game of "yes, we have no bananas" it's up to Saddam to prove, with proper documentation, that he threw all the skins out with the garbage, right?

Holy cow Batman, did you hear the latest on Iraq's missile development? Instead of staying within allowable limits, they've gone ahead and developed a missile capable of going further without a payload. Can you believe that isn't a clear violation of their agreement with the UN?

The New York Times reports that Iraq's new missiles will be able to go 180 kilometers (114 miles) instead of the 150 kilometers (90 miles) currently allowed for their self defense. Wow, what a dramatic difference that probably couldn't been achieved with anything less than STP fuel additives. Now, they might be able to reach the generals standing behind their troops and we can't have that.

Wait a minute. Are the numbers screwed up again? According to the Times, this is a range increase of 24 miles. But when I translate kilometers to miles, I get an increase of only 18.6 miles. Another distortion for our purposes.

Isn't it obvious, the warmongers will stop at nothing to convince and coerce people in their roar to war. This includes sending Condoleezza Rice, the woman with an oil tanker named after her, to preemptively meet with Hans Blix, the Swedish head of the inspection team, and press him into a deal he can't refuse. Exactly the sort of diplomacy that makes us so popular.

Meanwhile, we found that North Korea may have a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching California. Naturally, we are going to proceed cautiously and diplomatically negotiate with these former enemies, probably while telling Californians to stock up on duct tape.