YOU SEE THEM popping up on the roads, more and more of the mean-looking behemoths that fill the width of a highway lane with a "What's-it-to-you?" sort of attitude. These 4-ton machines are called Hummers and word is that General Motors can't make them fast enough. Such popularity, on the eve of another possible war with Iraq, comes with exquisite irony.

The Hummer is the civilian version of the Humvee, the big four-wheel-drive military vehicle whose popularity can be dated to the first gulf war of 1991 when it appeared on television carrying victorious American troops over the dunes of Iraq. It took on the military potency of that victory as it tapped into the enchantment that sport utility vehicles were beginning to hold on a significant portion of the American population.

A few people forked out well over $100,000 for the Humvee. Though it topped the scales at more than 10,000 pounds and was powered by a diesel engine that roared like an angry bear as it worked for 18 seconds to get the machine up to 60 mph - top speed was slightly more than 80 mph - the Humvee was a definite winner in the highway version of mine-is-bigger-than-yours. It made other gargantuan models like the Ford Excursion or the Chevrolet Suburban look like so many Honda Civics.

The civilian version of the Humvee developed when GM bought the company that made the Humvee for the military - is the Hummer 1. GM's Hummer 2, the one selling like hotcakes, tones the Humvee down a bit with reduced size and a powerful gasoline engine and creature comforts demanded by those who want to appear to be ready to rough it in some exotic off-road locale.

But it is still going to win the size battle with any other passenger vehicle it encounters. And, since it now carries the military patina originally claimed by the civilian version of the World War II Jeep - a faded memory for the SUV generation - it provides its owners with an additional vicarious pleasure. Not only can they pretend they are prepared to climb boulders, scale fallen trees, ford streams and traverse glaciers, they also get to play G.I. Joe.

As might be expected, the Hummer drinks gas like a camel that has just found an oasis in the middle of the Sahara. According to various Web sites, owners report getting 10 miles per gallon on a good day. They also say it is a chick magnet. But that's another story. The gas mileage is where the irony comes in.

As anyone who has perused, say, the continent of Africa, knows, Iraq's Saddam Hussein is far from unique in the world.

A long list of heinous dictators is ready, willing and sometimes able to torture, kill, maim and mutilate their own people and those in neighboring lands as well.

If the United States pays any heed to them at all, it is usually with condemnations, some sanctions and a variety of other measures that do little to lessen these tyrants' hold on power. Certainly the United States does not mass troops on their borders and issue ultimatums of clean-up-your-act-or-else.

There is, of course, a big difference between Hussein and these petty despots - they do not have weapons of mass destruction and have never begun to develop a nuclear capability. These are the capabilities that elevate Iraq's leader to a world threat and puts him on the regime-change short list.

But that raises the question of why Hussein would be developing these weapons in a way that, say, the late Mobutu Sese Seko of the late Zaire never did?

The main reason is money. We're not talking a couple of diamond and gold mines, the type of money that fills up a few Swiss bank accounts these days. We are talking oil money, currently the big bucks of world's commodities.

Iraq has made billions off its oil over the years and continues to get enough of it onto the market to keep Hussein's mansions well-stocked. That kind of money buys lots of things - including planes, guns, missiles and the equipment, education and expertise you need to develop effective ways to kill a lot of people.

So who buys the oil that makes Iraq rich enough for such programs? Mainly the Western industrialized nations, led by the United States, in large part because of Americans' dependence on the automobile for transportation.

Ways exist to reduce that dependence - imposing the type of gasoline taxes they have in Europe, increasing funding for public transportation, pushing the hybrid gasoline-electric engines that are supposed to make their way even into SUVs. But these measures have little support. And so the popularity of a gas sponge like the Hummer as war with Iraq looms takes on its irony - without such a thirst for oil, we might not have had even to consider such a fight.

Then again, maybe it's not ironic. Maybe the Hummer's appeal is making a direct, declarative statement - an in-your-face message not just to the other cars on the road, but to the rest of the world.

Just as the Hummer's 5-foot-wide track takes a Colossus-like stance astride the highway, its presence says the United States has a similar domination of the international community - and of the petroleum fields of the Arabian peninsula.

The popularity of this vehicle seems to be saying that if you don't like the fact that the United States sucks down the oil of the gulf like a parched 10-year-old taking on a glass of Kool-Aid, that's your problem.

So if you get irritated when you see a Hummer coming down the narrow roads of your neighborhood, well, there's not much you can do about it. Just get out of the way.