Hugo Chavez, Self-proclaimed "Second Fidel"

Assassination: “If they kill me, there will be a really guilty party on this planet whose name is the President of the United States, George Bush”

Bush’s Administration: “It is a mafia, a true mafia of murderers”

Cuba: “I am the second Fidel Castro of Latin America”

Capitalism: “The Devil’s economic model . . . The capitalist exploitation model has destroyed oceans, entire oceans”

Saddam Hussein: “A brother”

Condoleezza Rice: “I cannot marry Condolencia (condolence), because I am much too busy. I have heard she dreams about me”

Gaddafi’s Libya: “A model of participatory democracy”

US relations: “We have invaded the United States, but with our oil”

His ‘revolution’: “Every little grain of sand goes toward building the mountain . . . It’s like love. You have to make love every day in many ways. Sometimes carnally, sometimes with your eyes, sometimes with your voice. A revolution is love”

Jack Kemp, the businessman, was recently negotiating a highly questionable billion-dollar oil deal with Venezuela's Chavez. Kemp stood to make up to $50 million in commissions. Kemp is currently under considerable media scrutiny for another association: Samir A. Vincent, a secret agent of Saddam Hussein recently convicted in the U.N. oil-for-food scam.

Kemp has used his political capital to open doors for Chavez. In May of 2003, he tried to charm the staff of The Wall Street Journal editorial page into abandoning its opposition to Chavez's undemocratic behavior. Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez accompanied Kemp on his visit to Journal headquarters.

Alvarez was once the No. 2 man in Venezuela's Energy Ministry -the very agency that discussed business with Kemp - and yet the former Buffalo, congressman conveniently failed to disclose to the Journal his personal stake in the proposed contract between himself and the Chavez government.

That relationship only emerged when Mary Anastasia O'Grady's chronicle of Kemp's visit to the Journal aroused the suspicions of Venezuelan journalists. They eventually obtained a leaked copy of the contract and publicized the connection that Kemp concealed.