BAGHDAD, IRAQ- With only a week to go before the weapons inspectors in Iraq must present its report to the United Nations, team leader Hans Blix spent the weekend attempting to coax Iraqi President Saddam Hussein into cooperating more fully. Blix, a student of the Neville Chamberlain school of diplomacy, began his hard-nosed negotiation by saying "please" then "pretty please" and finally pulled out all the stops, giving Hussein his final offer of "pretty please with sugar on top."

At the same time, White House and Pentagon officials are growing increasingly impatient with the inspections process. "Make no mistake about it," chanted a visibly frustrated President Bush. "We are going to find the evidence against Iraq- even if we have to manufacture it ourselves."

Recent polls indicate that Americans would stop asking so many questions about the proposed Iraq war if the government were to present some kind of irrefutable evidence. But what kind of proof? The trickle of information coming from Baghdad has been less than thrilling and the 15 gazillion page weapons inspection report came back stamped "too long; didn't read."

We fed a year's worth of opinion polling and psycographic research into our Content-O-Matic extrapolative server to discover just what the public wants to see: video of Hussein himself caught in the act of supporting a nuclear weapons program.

According to sources deep inside the President's inner circle, a CIA-sponsored offshoot of Industrial Light and Magic have been working for months on constructing just such a shot.

EXT. IRAQI WEAPONS LAB MORNING Several lab-coated scientists gather around an observation window. Beyond the window, several scientists in radiation suits handle glowing green rods. Hussein enters the frame from the right side. Though he is dressed in a protective suit, he still wears his trademark beret atop his hood. HUSSEIN How's the highly illegal nuclear weapons program coming, guys? LACKEY Swimmingly, fearless leader. Hussein wanders around the lab, twisting knobs and breaking glassware until he happens upon a large, shiny red button with the words "do not push this button" written in Arabic. HUSSEIN What's this button do? LACKEY We're not sure, sir. It might launch anthrax-laden Sud missiles at Israel, but we're not positive. Hussein rings his finger around the button for a few moments, reading the horrified expressions of his subordinates. Eventually, he lets out an apathetic sigh. HUSSEIN I'm bored. I think I'll gas some more Kurds.

One of the reasons the war wasn't able to start in mid-January as predicted is that the production crew ran into technical problems and cost overruns. Expect to see the tape leaked [wink wink] onto Fox News just before Valentine's Day.

According to our source, the effects professionals working on the tape are the best of the best, some of the very same people who created the Zapruder film and the Apollo moon landing.

None of this may matter in the end, however, since the evidence the inspectors so desperately seek would likely have no effect on the current debate.

If the UN team finds no convincing evidence of an Iraqi nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons program, those opposed to the war will claim victory while hawks will argue that the lack of proof only shows that the rogue nation is hiding something unspeakably sinister.

The discovery of nearly a dozen empty warheads last week and the subsequent uncovering of a further handful have only deepened the divisions in popular public opinion. Americans in favor of going to war with Iraq played up the significance of the warheads, claiming that the empty metal shells may be the closest thing to a "smoking gun" the inspectors may ever find. At the same time, anti-war pundits pointed to the development as proof that a military solution would only result in unimaginable devastation for the region.

Still, many Americans remain unconvinced. Even after a year of talking about it, Bush has yet to make a compelling case for a war with Iraq. For instance, why Iraq? Why now when the War on Terror and domestic issues need so much attention?

Sensing a political problem, Bush senior advisor Karl Rove insisted that his staff come up with a compelling answer to that question. However, when White House officials checked their dayplanners, they discovered that the first opportunity to brainstorm would come in early March, several weeks after the supposed beginning of the war and a few days after its projected end.