By M.T. Haded
True Dork Popular Music Editor

BAGHDAD (TDT).  Desperate for additional funding for their chemical and biological warfare programs, Iraqi premier Saddam Hussein and rogue ex-Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden have joined forces, preparing to captivate the hearts and wallets of teenage girls worldwide as the newesy boy band, N*2 Her.

"Osama and I had always been tossing the idea around," Hussein told reporters for 'Entertainment Tonight.' "We both love singing and dancing, and whenever we get together, we're always bouncing around to the classics, like Michael Jackson and New Kids on the Block.  It just seemed inevitable that some day we'd have to put an album out."

Response to the duo's debut album, "We Really Want to Marry You," which has already been released in the Middle East, has been overwhelming, according to their label, Interscope. The album hits U.S. shores later this month, and is sure to be a massive hit.  Operators at MTV were inundated with requests for the group's first video, "We Are Sexy Men," and the video debuted at the number one position on "Total Request Live," where it has reigned for two straight weeks.  Sales of the CD single have shot to the top of Billboard's "Hot 100" chart, logging 1.4 million copies sold in the first week, according to SoundScan, the computerized sales-tracking system.

"I just think they are two sexy men, and I want to marry them," giggled 12-year-old Heather Stewart of Gainesville, Florida, who waited forty-eight hours in a frigid Times Square for a chance to glimpse the duo as they arrived for an in-studio "TRL" appearance.  Stewart added that she especially loved "the one with the beard [bin Laden]... he's so handsome and mysterious."

Critics took a dim view of the duo's work, with Rolling Stone deriding the first single as "Derivative, trite palaver designed solely to pander to pre-pubescent girls." Hussein, in a letter appearing in next month's issue, responded "Exactly."

Sponsors are frantically bidding for product placement opportunities on the duo's upcoming world tour, with Pepsi-Cola, Raytheon, Boeing and General Dynamics leading the charge.  Consumer watchdog groups have questioned the wisdom of handing millions in corporate dollars over to known sponsors of global terrorism, but President Bush, smirking broadly, issued an executive order circumventing any government interference, stating, "There are too many regulations on industry as there is. We have to let the market guide itself."