When coalition forces entered Baghdad late last month they didn’t get a friendly greeting. They didn’t get any greeting at all. The place was empty. Not a person was seen nor a telltale artifact that makes a place lived in. Apparently, like renters the inhabitants hired all the Budget Rent-A-Van in town during the wee hours of the morning and left with everything not tied down.

Our troops expected to meet limited resistance after the Fatima and Hammer-a-Victim Republican guards threw down their guns and ran in the direction of France. Instead they met thousands of landlords and mortgage company bill collectors protesting 4 million Bag dads and moms owing back rent and payment for extensive damages.

Not only did they take fixtures; they stripped the properties of anything that could be resold on the black market. Copper piping, toilets, hot air ducts, shingles, Andersen Windows and crates of halvah to name but a few of the items gutted from hundred and thousands of properties all over the city. Newer model cars and diesel buses just vanished also.

Several ingenious tenants, probably licensed electricians, actually removed whole elevators and their huge motors, cables and electronic control units.

How did almost five million people disappear overnight despite our state of art surveillance technology?

General Franks, more candid than most commanders, told the assembled press, "We were prepared for resistance, even biological attacks on the United States and Britain, but not witchery. Millions of people don’t drop off our satellite screens, heat sensors and tracking by undercover agents without leaving behind footprints, fingerprints and droppings of litter."

The General further bemoaned "how am I going to turn this country over to a civilian authority when we don’t have any civilians to turn over? I just know Chirac has a hand in this. When we figure out what it is, we are going to level Paris, something their now German buddies couldn’t get themselves to do in two wars."

Orders went out from Donald Rumsfeld at the Defense Department. "Find those suckers before I start firing senior commanders and when I say "firing" I mean squad.

Several hours later a Marine unit, picked up the path of an unshaven man dressed in a oversized Brooks Brothers suit and pushing a supermarket refrigerator display case full of meat and other provisions. He scurried around a corner and dumped the jumbo refrigeration unit down a flight of stairs. It rumbled like 2000 lb. blockbuster bomb. He disappeared into the crater it created.

The Marine unit followed him down the stairs. They couldn’t believe what they saw, a platform with hundreds of tunnels going off in every direction. Thousands of people in cars, busses, horse carts, whole families riding atop camels, dromedaries and horses filled the tunnels.

Marine unit sergeant Archie "Stonewall" Beauregard picked up his twenty first century cellular device. He contacted his immediate superior who passed the call to Frank.

"What have you been drinking?" "Are you one of those long-haired homosexuals shoved down our throats by Congress?

"Unnoticed?" We verified Saddem Hussein’s death or serious injury from 50,000 feet through cloud cover and you’re telling me this underground system didn’t show up on surveillance? Impossible!"

"They parallel exactly the streets above. Maybe that camouflaged them."

"O.K." Split up your unit. I don’t want to call in any more troops and have this screw up get out especially to French reporters. Half of you line up a bunch of these sneaky Iraqi men. Interrogate them with pistols cocked and pointed at the brains. Get to the bottom of this. But for God’s sake, leave no telltale marks. Don’t kill them unless they can’t speak English."

"Sir, if I may interrupt your hyperventilation, this is no ordinary subway system. There are no tracks, no trains and no schedules. Everyone leaves when there’s room. These are underground paths like prairie dogs build to move around unnoticed. Some of our men have embedded in the mass migration and are sending back reports that these tunnels go on for thousands of miles. They end up in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and the basement of the New York Times and in Chirac’s closet in Paris.