Andromeda

Well, due to our powerful opposition to the Iraq War and tremendous influence among young people, naturally Andromeda has been dragged into this oil-for-food scandal. We were really impressed with Mr. Galloway's remarks and we would like to strike a similarly eloquent and defiant pose when we appear. Here is a first draft of our opening statement. (Actually, it's the second draft -- the first draft had a lot more "A-ha!"s.)

"Senator (here we will fix Senator Coleman with a steely gaze, or possibly our 'crazy-eye look' which would have the advantage of not seeming like just a copy, and also of being comfortable and familiar), we are not now, nor have we ever really been an oil trader, and neither has anyone been one on our behalf, except in the larger sense, of course, that we don't actually drill for oil ourselves and pump it and refine it into gasoline for the Geo Metro, in that sense, someone is an oil dealer on our behalf, but we don't need to talk about that now, right? Right? Why are you just looking at me? Turn the mike on? You mean my mike isn't on?

"Sorry about that. So we were saying, we have met Saddam Hussein. Yes, we have. Exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has. A-ha! (Pause for steely gazing during applause.) But we were only meeting with him to get a slice of the oil-for-food deal, whereas Rumsfeld was there for the guns-and-gas deal. We were not there for the guns-and-gas deal, no, not us, because we didn't hear of that until it was too late. We barely heard about the oil-for-food deal in time. We are very busy. We just got digital cable.

"We had very little oil to offer, so the meeting with Saddam did not last long. He told his henchmen to throw us off a roof, and shoot us, and throw us off a roof again, but they let us get away with just the whipping followed by the open-wound-sewage-swim. The only food we got out of it were some stale mints in the waiting room. They looked like they had *dust* on them. What does that say? Poor housekeeping has brought down many a regime.

"The second time we met Saddam was right after the war. He was on the run. We ran a little cafe outside the Green Zone. He needed forged papers to get out of the country and, well, that just happened to be a side business of ours. We were maintaining the oil-for theme, because we still had hopes of some franchising opportunities. He was hauling bales of currency, but had very little oil. We were reluctant to break with the theme and start accepting cash-for-food, or cash-for-false-papers, but he convinced us, after taking us for a swim around the treatment plant. The papers worked like a charm. A few weeks later, they dragged his crazy cousin out of that spider hole."