There is no other story right now but this war.

We should be embarrassed to be thinking of anything else. The NCAA pools seem disrespectful. The Oscar fashions and fantasies are tastelessly indulgent.

I looked at Thursday morning's front page - the one with the story on it about the Black United Front pulling out of Cincinnati's collaborative to improve race relations - and my first reaction was "who cares?"

Not "who cares?" because race relations isn't an important issue in our little corner of the world, but "who cares?" because our little corner of the world just doesn't seem to matter much any more.

Two years ago one unarmed man was shot to death by a Cincinnati cop and the city erupted. Despite the best efforts of a lot of people, we have had nearly unending acrimony ever since. But half way around the world we are involved in a conflict that may kill thousands of people in the next few days.

In Cincinnati we are worried about the impact of the Black United Front's boycott on city business. In Baghdad they are worried about the impact of smart bombs on top of their heads.

People I talk to here are worried about those bombs too. Ask the people around you. How many of them haven't been sleeping very well for the past few days? How many of them can't seem to stop watching the all-war-all-the-time cable channels, even though, as one colleague remarked Thursday, "Watching the video of the Baghdad skyline is a lot like watching the ARTIMIS traffic cameras."

I'm not just talking about people who opposed the war. I'm talking about people who support the administration and encouraged the president to ignore the sentiment of the United Nations. We are worrying because we understand the reality of what is happening. This could be over quickly, surgically almost. We could cut the cancer out of Iraq and leave a healthy nation to heal. Or maybe not. Our action could metastasize into countless new tumors that will multiply faster than we can cut them out.

President Bush says we have to have this war because Saddam Hussein is willing to unleash terror upon us. He says Saddam has stockpiled chemical and biological agents that he will use the first chance he gets. He says given the opportunity Saddam will develop nuclear weapons that he wouldn't hesitate to use on his neighbors to provide to terrorist willing to use it for him.

The president insists that Saddam has been playing a game of freeze tag with the United Nations for 12 years. As soon as the U.N. inspectors turn their backs, he rushes ahead with his weapons programs. When they turn back to him, he freezes. In freeze tag, the object is to get to your opponent before he turns around and catches you one last time.

I used to hope Bush was wrong. I hoped that the United Nations inspectors would signal an all-clear. I hoped that they would find Saddam had long ago destroyed all his canisters of poison gas and all of his vials of toxins. It would have been great if the French and Germans were right - that there was nothing in Iraq worth going to war over. Sure, Saddam was a bully and a despot, but he was contained and relatively harmless to those outside his reach. I wanted to believe that we could keep him penned up with sanctions and the opprobrium of world opinion. I very much wanted to believe that we didn't need to use bombs and tanks; that we didn't need to risk making enemies out of our friends and that most of all, we didn't need to send an army of our young men and women to risk their lives rooting him out and to kill a lot of other people in the process.

But now that this war has started, I hope with all my heart that George Bush was right. It will be so much more horrible if he is wrong.

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Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Wells.