dueling

What a brilliant idea. I can’t see a downside to this. There’s just no way we could lose.

An Iraqi vice-president has proposed that Saddam Hussein and George W Bush should fight a duel to settle their differences.

“Bush wants to attack the whole [of] Iraq, the army and the infrastructure,” the Iraqi vice-president said.

“The American president should specify a group, and we will specify a group and choose neutral ground with Kofi Annan as referee and use one weapon with a president against a president, a vice-president against a vice-president, and a minister against a minister in a duel.”

Update: got a message from a fellow named Ron Pawlikowski in response: “If I recall my duelling rules, the one who is challenged gets to pick the weapons. So obviously, GWB should choose ICBM’s at about 20 million paces. Since Saddam doesn’t have any, we win!”

Of course, I replied to point out the error in his thinking: “If you recall all of the dueling rules, you’d realize that whoever chooses the weapons has to provide them to both parties on the morning of the duel, and then the other fellow, the challenger picks the time and place. So I don’t think the ICBM choice would be the best for GWB, although I can see him being brainless enough to make that choice.”