Summary: Need help with PR? If you are looking for a great PR firm, you've found one. Walker Sands is a leading Chicago PR firm with a strong track record that makes it one of top national PR agencies..

We are finding a lot of company in our appreciation of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf - also known as the Sultan of Spin, Baghdad Bob, the Blowhard of Baghdad, the Lovable Liar, Uncle Mo, Little Al, MSS, Comical Ali and the Iraqi information minister.

Al-Sahhaf, you will recall, was the fellow whose daily press briefings provided comic relief while bombs were dropping and bullets flying. Wearing a jaunty beret and a Mona Lisa smile, he doggedly delivered zesty insults and extravagant claims of stupendous victory.
(article continues below useful links)

"Everyone enjoyed what Arab TV viewers called "The al-Sahhaf Show." Displaying an unintended gift for diplomacy, he gave them common ground with pro-war and anti-war Americans alike. He mounted a defense no army could match.

"We will welcome the Americans with bullets and shoes."

"Americans are wild donkeys!"

"We are going to tackle them and destroy them."

"I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad."

"We are winning!"

"Those rascals are now committing suicide on the gates of Baghdad. I would encourage them to increase their rate of committing suicide."

"God is grilling their bellies in hell. I think we will finish them soon."

"My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all."

As usual - perfect.

An Iranian news agency carried a report he hanged himself, but no one really buys it. He's on a leave of absence, and readers have offered ideas for his postwar employment.

They've suggested he should have been the emcee when the Cavaliers unveiled their new uniforms, that he ought to be a broadcast commentator for the Indians, that he should be available to any team that needs him on draft day in the NFL or NBA, that he should be Michael Jackson's spokesman or Phil Mickelson's caddy.

How many al-Sahhafs does it take to change a light bulb? "There is no need to change the light bulb. It glows brilliantly, basking in the power of the wholly intact and fully functional local power station. The room is not dark, and there is no bruise on your knee from the furniture you didn't walk into."

That's from WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com, a Web site created by a former Greenpeace activist in Alaska with four of his friends, as a "coalition effort of bloodthirsty hawks and ineffectual doves." At one point last week they said it was getting 4,000 hits a second.

Besides a "treasury of deathless quotes," the site features casting ideas for an al-Sahhaf miniseries that range from Elmer Fudd to Jon Lovitz, casts al-Sahhaf in such movies as "Jaws" ("For the last time, Chief Brody, there is NO SHARK in these waters!") and places him at battles including Waterloo, Normandy ("Americans? What Americans?") and Little Big Horn, where "heathen infidel pagan louts" will "scalp themselves before we do it for them."

They're also selling al-Sahhaf T-shirts, mugs, mousepads and "roast stomach" barbecue aprons. They say proceeds will pay the site's expenses and a portion of anything that might be left will go to Red Cross/Red Crescent relief work.

Not that there isn't profiteering. A Connecticut company, Herobuilders.com, offers a 12-inch, $36 talking "Dis-information Minister Action Figure Doll" as well as figures of President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Osama bin Laden in a pink dress. Elsewhere, you can find Bomb Saddam hot sauce, Iraqi Road ice cream, "Shock and Awe" underwear and Saddam soap-on-a-rope.

The playing cards with 52 of Iraq's "most wanted" leaders are being sold by the company that made them (greatusaflags.com), or can be downloaded free at the military site www.centcom.mil.

Al-Sahhaf didn't make the deck.

One contributor to his tribute site figures he's "the only national treasure remaining to the Iraqi. My feeling, as usual, is that MSS should be appointed Minister of Information for the new administration. In a part of the world where no US or UK infidel spokesman has any credibility, MSS could give out credible daily press conferences on how the reconstruction efforts are going."

Copyright © 2003. The Cleveland Plain Dealer.