http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapc....ap/index.html
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Scores of semi-naked cowboys, a couple of Saddam Husseins and a handful of Kate Moss impersonators joined thousands of other people parading through Sydney's streets on Saturday for the city's annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival.
The glitzy street parade was launched in 1978 as a gay rights protest, but has since transformed itself into a vibrant festival celebrating all aspects of gay culture.
Tens of thousands of people lined the route through Oxford Street, the center of the city's gay scene, to watch the colorful mix of 120 floats pass by.
It was a night for political campaigning, irreverence or just sheer exuberance.
One partygoer bearing a striking resemblance to the former Iraqi dictator mingled with the crowd carrying a sign which read "Wheat for Iraq" -- a reference to an ongoing inquiry into whether Australia's monopoly wheat exporter, AWB Ltd., paid kickbacks to Saddam's regime to win lucrative contracts.
Another reveler wearing a George W. Bush mask whipped a fellow parader clad in an orange boiler suit and black hood -- an apparent portrayal of a prisoner at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"Brokeback Mountain" -- Ang Lee's saga of gay cowboys -- inspired several other floats carrying skimpily dressed men dressed in ten-gallon hats and leather chaps.
The "Friends of Dick Cheney" float paid apparent tribute to the U.S. vice president, who has stood by his lesbian daughter and publicly disagreed with President George W. Bush's advocacy of a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages.
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