Have you noticed anything fishy about the inspection teams who went to Iraq? They're all men! How in the name of the United Nations did anyone ever expect men to find Saddam's stash? We all know that men have a blind spot when it comes to finding things. For crying' out loud! Most men can't even find a dirty clothes hamper. Most men can't find the jar of jelly until it falls out of the cupboard and splatters on the floor.... and these are the people we sent into Iraq to search for hidden weapons of mass destruction?

I keep wondering why groups of mothers weren't sent in. Mothers can sniff out secrets quicker than a drug dog can find a gram of dope. Mothers can find gin bottles that dads have stashed in the attic beneath the rafters.

They can sniff out a diary two rooms and one floor away. Mothers instinctively know within minutes when a mattress is concealing a well-worn copy of Playboy or its gateway drug for preteen boys, National Enquirer. They can tell when the lid of a cookie jar has been disturbed and notice when a quarter inch slice has been shaved off a chocolate cake. A mother can smell alcohol on your breath before you get your key in the front door and can smell cigarette smoke from a block away. By examining laundry, a mother knows more about her kids than Sherlock Holmes. And if a mother wants an answer to a question, she can read an offender's eyes quicker than a homicide detective.

So... considering the value a mother could bring to an inspection team, why did we send a bunch of old men under the supervision of an even older man who would make a good housewife, but never a mother, and who relied on electronic equipment to scout out hidden threats?

My mother would walk in with a wooden soup spoon in one hand, grab Saddam by the ear, give it a good twist and snap, "Young man, do you have any weapons of mass destruction?"

And God help him if he tried to lie to her. She'd march him down the street to some secret bunker and shove his nose into a nuclear bomb and say, "Uh, huh, and what do you call this, mister?"

Whap! Thump! Whap! Whap! Whap!

And, she'd lay some stripes across his bare bottom with that soup spoon, then march him home in front of the whole of Baghdad. He'd not only come clean and apologize for lying about it, he'd cut every lawn in Baghdad for free for the whole summer.

Inspectors ? ... You wanted the job done?

Call someone's mother.