Is anyone really shocked that the man who was the “star of Fahrenheit 9/11” and has said that the capture of Saddam was a staged act to help Bush would of taken a all-expense paid for trip to Baghdad on Saddam’s dime?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.
The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. None was charged and Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators “have no information whatsoever” any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
And while on that trip they told the world that Saddam was to be trusted and Bush was not….
The controversy ignited on September 29 when Bonior and McDermott appeared from Baghdad on ABC’s “This Week.” Host George Stephanopoulos asked McDermott about his recent comment that “the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.”
McDermott didn’t backpedal at all: “I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation. . . . It would not surprise me if they came out with some information that is not provable, and they, they shift it. First they said it was al
Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass destruction. Now they’re going back to and saying it’s al Qaeda again.” When Stephanopoulos pressed McDermott about whether he had any evidence that Bush had lied, the congressman replied, “I think the president would mislead the American people.”
An American official floating unsubstantiated allegations against an American president during a visit to Baghdad would be troubling enough. But McDermott compounded his problem by insisting, despite its twelve years of verifiable prevarication, that the Iraqi regime should be given the benefit of the doubt on inspections and disarmament. Said McDermott on “This Week”: “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value.”
George Will took them to task at the time, but they weren’t listening of course:
Later, during the roundtable segment, George Will reacted with outrage to what hadn’t inflamed Stephanopoulos: “Let’s note, that in what I consider the most disgraceful performance abroad by an American official in my lifetime — something not exampled since Jane Fonda sat on the anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi to be photographed — Mr. McDermott said in effect, not in effect, he said it, we should take Saddam Hussein at his word and not take the President at his word. He said the United States is simply trying to provoke. I mean, why Saddam Hussein doesn’t pay commercial time for that advertisement for his policy, I do not know.”
While I’m sure there is no smoking gun that tells us that these three bozos knew where the money was coming from, I don’t doubt for a minute that they didn’t ask….better not to know those sorts of things.
But it doesn’t end there for McDermott. A month after making the idiotic trip and the idiotic charges he took money from Shakir al-Khafaji to help defend himself against a lawsuit in which he helped someone illegally wiretap another (oh the irony). Debbie Schlussel has done work on Al-Khafaji and the newly indicted folks for years:
The “third party,” not identified in the indictment, is a man I’ve complained about for some time–Shakir Al-Khafaji. He owns gas stations and Italian restaurants, and property all over Michigan. He was one of three Americans–and the only one not prosecuted–named by Iraqi newspapers and Saddam government documents as a participant in the oil-for-food scam billions. A company he ran out of South Africa made $70 million. And yet he is free. I regularly have seen him pumping gas into his car and tooling about town. And I’ve also regularly written that he financed the trip with Saddam’s money.
Again, none of this is news to me. What is and continues to be news is that Shakir Al-Khafaji has gotten away with it and has been allowed to invest Saddams millions to make millions more for himself, all with impunity and under the knowing eye of the Justice Department.
It was always well known that he was Saddam Hussein’s agent, and that’s why far-left Democrats–and rudderless Republicans, like Hezbollah’s Congressman, Joe Knollenberg–got Saddam’s, er . . . Al-Khafaji’s cash, as did former U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, who got $400,000 from Al-Khafaji for a pro-Saddam propaganda film.
We’ve known for sometime that McDermott and his fellow stooges have been nothing but puppets for men like Saddam and Al-Khafaji. What is it with the tyrants that draw these Democrats to them? Men like James McGovern are drawn to terrorists like FARC, Women like Pelosi are drawn to dictators like Assad, and a many more are drawn to raving lunatics like Chavez:
Many U.S. lawmakers buy into the idea that Chavez is a social democrat. Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) has defended Chavez as a democratically elected president. When coup-plotters briefly ousted Chavez from power during a 48-hour period in April 2002, Dodd attacked the Bush Administration for not denouncing them. Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.) and 12 other Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to Bush the following year complaining that the United States was not doing enough to protect Chavez.
In 2004, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) signed another joint letter endorsing Chavez’s re-election and calling on President Bush and Congress to look upon Venezuela “as a model democracy.” Other signers included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, actor Ed Asner and the Marxist writers Howard Zinn and Naomi Klein. In 2006, Rep. Brad Sherman (D.-Calif.) reminded the international terrorism panel of the House Committee on International Relations that Venezuela traditionally had “a strong free press and respect for important freedoms.” But in May 2007, Chavez pulled the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television and the popular cable TV station went off the air despite mass protests in Caracas. Sherman, who became chairman of the House subcommittee last year, admits to being troubled by Chavez’s actions and his association with sponsors of terror, but says that the U.S. government must be patient in dealing with him.
Snookered by Saddam, snookered by FARC, snookered by Assad, and snookered by Chavez….and that’s not even mentioning Castro….
What a track record these guys have.
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