On this festive day, this seems like the right kind of post. I expected this rundown of winners in a contest to come up with locations of Iraq's missing WMD to be all over the Net after I got it from listmember Ed Herman — of all serious people to send out something so funny — but I haven't seen it otherwise.  Thanks Ed.  This comes from “In the Loop,” a column Al Kamen writes in the Washington Post.

Where Are the WMD? The Winners Are . . .

By Al Kamen, 6/30/03

Finally, we have some solid clues as to the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of Loop Fans submitted excellent suggestions, which we'll be forwarding to the appropriate authorities.

Here are the top 10 entries, in no particular ranking:

• “He changed the invoices and had them shipped to, and stored at, the National Records Center in Suitland, Md. All we need to find them is the right reference number. I believe they are next to the box which has the Ark of the Covenant.” — Alfred H. Novotne, an attorney with the Army at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.

• “Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of weapons have been ground into radioactive bird feed in order to raise a species of super chickens capable of scratching out simple subtraction problems in the dirt. These new chickens will be known as Capons of Math Deduction.” — Lewis Roth, assistant executive director of Americans for Peace Now.

• “He gave them to Martha Stewart to conceal. She hand-gilded the shells and used her hot-glue gun to attach them to wreaths and swags. Surrounded by tinted seed-pods, dried hydrangea blossoms and sprigs of eucalyptus, they hang now upon doors and over windows across New England and the mid-Atlantic.” — Brenda Clough, financial manager of the U.S. Army Warrant Officers Association.

• “I saw them in a white van with a ladder rack, somewhere o­n the road in the D.C. region. Maybe Chief Moose can help us find it.” — John Raffetto, a vice president at Infotech Strategies, a D.C. public relations firm.

• “They're hiding the WMD in the Boston Red Sox bullpen: Those guys are getting paid a lot of money to protect something, and it ain't leads.” — Keith Cunningham, a senior analyst with the General Accounting Office.

• “A town along the Euphrates, halfway from Baghdad to Syria, whose name sounds like a let's-laugh-up-our-sleeves, hide-it-in-plain-sight, kind of place: Al Hadithah. That would be how someone with a southern accent (perhaps a Texan?) might say, 'I'll hide it there.' ” — the Rev. Peter W. Rehwaldt, coordinator, office of institutional research at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

• “I have them,” signed Jayson Blair, journalist, New York, New York — forwarded by Robin D. Grove, an environmental consultant in Maryland.

• “At the Lost and Found/Bell Captain's Desk of the hotel in Baghdad where Donald Rumsfeld stayed in Dec. 1983.” — Byron Sigel, director, Japan Program, the Nature Conservancy, Tokyo.

• “Saddam lost them to Bill Bennett in a high-stakes game of Caribbean Poker.” — Notre Dame student John T. Long of Daytona Beach, Fla.

• “WMD will be found lying o­n the ground in a walkway behind Saddam Hussein's house, probably next to an ill-fitting glove.” — Sara Ulyanova, an English teacher in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

There were five honorable mentions.

• “Saddam returned his WMD to the Baghdad Wal-Mart for credit. They're in the stock room with seasonal goods.” — retired Foreign Service officer Gerald C. Mattran, Springfield, Va.

• “A thorough search of the Gulf of Tonkin might be revealing.” — Kim Schmidgall, Oxnard, Calif.

• “They have been secreted away in Sammy Sosa's bats.” — Washington lawyer Asheesh Agarwal (the first of many).

• “The WMD are in the same place as all the loans we made to Ghana.” — Alex Riley, relationship officer at the Export-Import Bank.

Finally, this o­ne, “Political Party Answers to the question,” doesn't help the search teams, but . . .

• “Republican: Bill Clinton is hiding them and if you don't send us money, Hillary will be president.

Democrat: Ronald Reagan got them back in 1986 and forgot to tell anyone.

Green: Ralph Nader would have found them.

Socialists/Communists: Let's hire all the Iraqi people; o­ne of them will tell us o­nce they are all equal.

Independents: The administration lied about WMD? And this is news, how?” — Bill Lawhorn, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From: Allen Branson [allen@mightycompanions.org]

Here is David Letterman's Top Ten List o­n WMD:

Top Ten President Bush Excuses For Not Finding Weapons of Mass Destruction

10. “We've o­nly looked through 99% of the country”

9. “We spent entire budget making those playing cards”

8. “Containers are labeled in some crazy language”

7. “They must have been stolen by some of them evil X-Men mutants”

6. “Did I say Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I meant they have goats”

5. “How are we supposed to find weapons of mass destruction when we can't even find Cheney?”

4. “Still screwed up because of Daylight Savings Time”

3. “When you're trying to find something, it's always in the last place you look, am I right, people?”

2. “Let's face it — I ain't exactly a genius”

1. “Geraldo took them”