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A Web site that pokes fun at Saddam Hussein's minister of information became such a global hit that its operators had to temporarily pull the plug Friday as they scrambled for more powerful computers.

To help pay for the upgrades, the site will sell T-shirts, mugs and barbecue aprons featuring choice quotes from Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who maintained with a straight face that Iraqi troops were routing the Americans even as U.S. tanks busted through Baghdad.

The site, WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com, features quotes as well as obviously doctored photos showing al-Sahhaf boasting of the Confederacy's successes during the Civil War and Darth Vader's victories in the "Star Wars" movies.

"My feelings as usual we will slaughter them all," reads one quote from al-Sahhaf from two days before Baghdad fell.

Until he disappeared Tuesday, al-Sahhaf was the colorful face of Saddam's regime. Some Arabs, getting a kick out of how al-Sahhaf ridicules President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, even called his daily news conferences "the "al-Sahhaf show."

In the United States, Conn Nugent and his friends got a kick out of the comments, too, and decided to create the Web site Tuesday.

The site, Nugent said, was meant as a private joke.

"We didn't advertise it at all," he said. "We just sent it to our friends."

Within hours, someone at the Pentagon got wind of it, and soon word spread to journalists, Nugent said. By Friday, many Web journals, called blogs, referred to the site. Internet users also circulated e-mail telling friends to check it out.

Nugent said the group's contract with its Web host called for a limit of 2,000 hits a month but the site was getting 4,000 per second, putting other businesses sharing that host in jeopardy. The group looked for more powerful servers and decided to shut down after crashing four.

It's not the first time a site got too popular.

One blog, "Live From the Sandbox," had to switch servers and domain names soon after the war began. Another, ostensibly written from Baghdad, was upgraded for free by its hosts.

In this case, Nugent and his pals will essentially be paying for their successes in Internet spontaneity. Technicians were working Friday to find and pay for a Web hosting computer powerful enough to handle the worldwide traffic.

"It's worth it," said Nugent, who runs an environmentalist foundation in New York. "How else are we going to have fun in this world?"

On the Net:

Al-Sahhaf humor:

Live From the Sandbox:

Salam Pax:

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