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.
See author page
Part of Saddam’s oil for stooges program. Not sure Saddam had enough oil, but I am sure we have enough stooges.
Michael Moore’s F911 movie grossed $224,000,000 in ticket sales and several times that in DVD etc. All of the REAL documentaries about 911 combined don’t equal 1/2 the ticket sales. Why? Because people want to believe the fiction not the truth. They want to believe that it’s all a bad dream. It’s not. It’s the real world.
HOPE is a great thing, but can hope change the world? Can it end the nightmares? Can hope bring down dictators like Saddam, or does it take an army? Can hope fight cannibals in the Congo where 4x as many have died compared to Iraq? Or will it take something else?
They say the war in Iraq is a war for oil; blood for oil. I think they’re right. I think the people who wanted to continue the status quo that brought us the rebirth of Al Queda, never-ending war with Saddam, ruined America’s image in the Middle East, and more…those people wanted the money from Saddam’s oil. They wanted oil money for blood, and they hoped no one would find the receipts. Oil for food? Oil for blood. Way to go dems. Take the oil money…take the blood money. That sure helped-not.
"What is it with the tyrants that draw these Democrats to them? "
Like Bush and Prince Abdullah or Bush and Nazarbayev or Mushariff, oh well, you get the point.
Bush is at least as bad as the idiots going to Iraq on Saddam’s coin. But I am confident that rather than telling me why he isn’t there will be five comments about how I may be dismissed because I have BDS.
Ready, Set…
DDS
Dictator Derangement Syndrome, a condition whereby a person is a dictator not measured by the number of people they kill, but by their wealth and global influence. Often associated with, "Massgravology" the study of mass graves and the measurement of tyranny correlated to the number graves filled by the killer as opposed to the number of gas tanks filled.
Curious, does President Bush travel to Saudi and Pakistan on their dime or funds from those who elected him (the two countries on the planet that have rounded up more Al Queda than any other nation besides the new Iraqi government)?
Easy to round them up when they are in your back yard… Or your own Living Room Scott.
So true!
There was a time in our countries history when sedition was a crime.
Abdallah, the prince of SA…head of state. Musharraf, head of state. Nazarbayev, head of state. None of them we have went to war with, none of them have been put under UN inspections. The President is supposed to meet and negotiate with those types ya know. Putin isn’t that great of a leader either but should Bush just refrain from ever talking to the other state when this is part of his job description? Last I checked it was NOT the job description of McDermett, Pelosi and Dodd.
Now who does that sound like?
Pathetic man….just pathetic.
AS I recall there are pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands withSaddam Hussein, while Saddam was gassing Kurds. But not one single Conservative cares about that, do they?
Actually, Steve, we do care about that — not sure if you were protesting the gassing of Kurds then, were you? Liberals like you only care when Bush and Co. are involved. Have you fretted over the Tibetan people lately? Not likely.
We had a common enemy in Iran then (Iran fresh off their Islamic revolution) — just like we had a partnership with Stalin. Are you implying it would have been better to let someone like Hitler move forward because Stalin was a dictator too? In a crazy world, we sometimes have to make alliances that don’t make sense in order to stop a broader evil.
Steve, he was there to tell Saddam to stop gassing em. Oh yeah…I forgot. You’re only interested in half truths (which aren’t truths at all).
politicans love the sound of their own voices and they love to appear in public. they are egomaniacs and it seems the libs are the worst. they court hollywood and sports stars because they have more visibility and screw the people. i can’t stand them. mcdermitt is a shit, have you met him? i did, once, that was all it took, he was sizing up all the females in the room and acting very selfimportant. what a shit.
And the name of the Michigan non-profit group that Al-Hanooti belonged to was? Could it have been CAIR, perhaps? Coooooould be.
These Liberals areall "useful idiots" to those that are our enemies. These 3shouldbe charged with sedition. Talking to our enemies over the Presidents back is against the law. Baghdad Jim remindsme of Baghdad Bob during the war. He has no clue what he is talking about, they only speak about what their handlers are telling them. If we had it their way, Saddam would be in power and the WMD programs would be up and running because sanctions would have been lifted on Saddam. If you on the Left haven’t heard Saddam wanted us to believe he had the WMD as abargaining chip against his rivals Iran. But as soon as the sanctions were lifted his programs would start back up.
And talking to Musharrif, an ally i the Waron Terror, is different than talking to someone that has been shooting at our planes and thuming his nose at the US and UN for years. The BDS has clouded your minds so bad that you can not see what the truth is out there.
CentFla says:
You believe Musharraf to be a tyrant? Perhaps you bought into the western media’s canonization of Bhutto… the Pak prime minister who, together with her ministry and ties to the JUI-F,created and funded the Taliban who played host to Bin Laden. Another, besides corruption, of her legacies ignored by the media.
Did you rejoice when Bhutto’s PPP swept the elections in February? Did you also believe it would bring us a Pak democracy who would be more cooperative with controlling the AQ and Taliban jihad elements in their tribal regions?
Then, CentFla, you do not know Pak history, Muslim nations relations with militants, or Pak’s current events.
Musharraf had to covertly co-op with the US on joint military missions to keep Pakistan from being viewed as a US puppet. Now Gilani and the new PPP/PML-N majority are breaths away from ousting Musharraf… the man you distrust.
And this new "democracy" in Pakistan has promised a new way to deal with militants. No more military. It’s all talk from here on out, folks.
Sharif and Zardari… now there’s a pair themselves. I’ll take Musharraf any day, thank you. And the amount of failed truces with militants on record in Pakistan disproves the “failed” military vs negotiations bit.
Needless to say, this new and lesser approach by a perceived ally will present problems for either candidate landing in the Oval Office. McCain will face resistance for cooperative joint missions, formerly granted by Musharraf on the sly.
And the presumed DNC nominee, Obama, is now on a direct collision course with Pakistan unless he starts furiously backpeddling after his promise to go into Pakistan without permission on any “actionable intelligence”.
These events will give new meaning to Joni Mitchell’s lyrics, "Well, don’t it always seem to go – That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone"….
The media drove the US into a frenzy of hate against Musharraf.
Yet he shall be sorely missed when those chickens do indeed come home to roost.
<blockquote>"What is it with the tyrants that draw these Democrats to them? "Like Bush and Prince Abdullah or Bush and Nazarbayev or Mushariff, oh well, you get the point.</blockquote>
<blockqupte>Abdallah, the prince of SA…head of state. Musharraf, head of state. Nazarbayev, head of state.</blockquote>
So Curt are you suggesting that Price Abdallah is not a tyrant?
ty·rant (tī’rənt) Pronunciation Key
n. An absolute ruler who governs without restrictions.The Saud’s do not fit this bill? Nazarbayev? Of course they do and you know it and heck – Bush knows it. It Took W five years and 20 billion dollars to get him to take the freakin’ uniform off!
Don’t change the argument. Bush is in the sack with plenty of Tyrants, not just the three irrelevant twits in the article. But as always Curt, when you don’t scream BDS, you make a lot more sense – thanks.
And Mata – do me a favor. Don’t put words… er sentences… er TWO PARAGRAPHS!!!!! In my mouth. You obviously have no idea whatsoever of my feelings toward the previous two administrations in Pakistan, nor her son who has never been to Pakistan nor of her husband who bled the country of millions stashed in Swiss bank accounts. If you just want to read stuff that you randomly feel like writing start a blog. Don’t pretend to be speaking for others.
They are heads of state. Bush is head of state. That is their job, to talk to and negotiate with other heads of state. Whether you believe him to be a tyrant or not is irrevelant. If Pelosi’s, McDermott, and Dodd’s job description included talking to heads of state I would have no problem with them doing it. But its not and they are still drawn to them.
Complete and utter BDS.
I have a blog, CentFla. That’s why my name, like yours, is in red for a hotlink. I have actually visited yours. And wish you all the best in your personal life, and hope every minute is filled with joy.
As for my putting words in your mouth… LOL… I know what that feels like, as Phillie Steve’s done it a few times. Didn’t mean it that way, and forgive the perceived harshness.
I just find it ironic to hear Musharraf so demonized when, in fact, he has been a good ally and taken life threatening chances to aid the US in intel and military efforts. Not perfect, mind you. But we’re now in for a rougher road after their Feb election. Big problems on the horizon.
Why don’t you also mention that the Dems had no idea that Saddam was funding this trip? It’s absurd to think that any U.S. lawmaker would knowingly take a trip on Saddam’s dime.
On the other hand, Bush DOES know who is funding his library and pumping billions into the coffers of his rich buddies: the Saudis.
Hmmmm, I guess this explains why Bush has never seriously pushed the Saudis on the 9/11 investigations. (The Saudis have steadfastly refused to cooperate with U.S. investigators who’re pursuing the 9/11 hijackers’ money trail).
This, of course, explains why Bin Laden remains a free man 7 years after 9/11 and why the Taliban and Al Qaeda have experienced a remarkable comeback in Afghanistan and Pakistan since then.
Oh, and according to our own military intel, Al Qaeda WANTS us to stay in Iraq—not only do they get to kill our sitting-duck soldiers, but it’s a propaganda bonanza that has thousands of angry young newly radicalized Muslim men queuing to sign up for jihad across the globe.
This is the end of this Reality Check segment from the real world. Now go back to listening to Fox News/Rush/Hatewing Radio and turn off your brains once again.
If we lived in a world where the media did their job objectively, they would be asking the question "What did Baghdad Jim know, and when did he know it?" As it is he gets an automatic free pass, because he is a Democrat. What are the chances that a church is Seattle could afford to send three congressmen to Iraq in style? You would have to be an idiot not to wonder about that, and a Democrat to assume nobody would question you on it.
"not only do they get to kill our sitting-duck soldiers"
You mean like these sitting ducks?:
http://terroristdeathwatch.com/?p=549
Go back to your Ron Paul headquarters, Thomm C.
But not absurd to believe Bush is in cahoots with the Saudi’s to allow OBL to roam free.
Wow!
You guys are always good for entertainment purposes.
re:
>>But not absurd to believe Bush is in cahoots with the Saudi’s to allow OBL
>>to roam free.
That’s a straw man argument. Typical Fox New/right-wing argument.
But it’s clear that Bush’s policy is influenced by Saudi money. The Saudis do have trillions of dollars in our nation’s stock market and banks. The Bush family is also very close to top Saudi leaders. In case you haven’t heard, money buys favors in D.C.
Bush has treated the Saudis with kid gloves and has never seriously pushed them to cooperate with our 9/11 investigators.
If something other than Saudi money is responsible for this shocking behavior, then please: enlighten all of us.
Actually, I never bought into the 9/11 conspiracy theories, as far as all this talk about controlled demolitions impoding the WTC.
But there is no goddam f*cking way you will ever convince me that the top Saudi leaders didn’t know about 9/11 in advance.
Saudi Arabia, after all gave birth to Al Qaeda and funds them to this day.
Bush invaded the wrong country—and everyone but you 29 percenter/Kool Aid drinkers knows this.
Oh, and Iraq was NOT behind 9/11 no matter what you Bush cultists say. Repeating a lie over and over doesn’t make it true.
Not once has anyone on this site said that they were…
Your just letting your BDS shine through with the rest of your naive and utterly simplistic comment which obviously comes from a conspiracy fixated mind.
Why in the world would Bush invade SA? Did the 9/11 Commission find evidence SA was involved in 9/11? Nope. Did they find the Taliban and OBL was…yup. We invaded the right country for 9/11, Afghanistan. Iraq was because of Saddam’s repeated violations of the cease fire, his support of terrorists, and his repeated non-compliance with the UN over WMDs. In a post-9/11 world it would have been criminal to have NOT invaded.
To have invaded SA for no other pretext other then OBL was born there along with most of the 9/11 hijackers is ludicrous.
"Repeating a lie over and over doesn’t make it true"
How about applying this little maxim to yourself, hmm Mr. Thom C.?
"…hasn’t it occurred to anyone in Washington that sending Dick Cheney out to champion an invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is a "murderous dictator" is somewhere between bad taste and flaming hypocrisy? When Dick Cheney was CEO of the oilfield supply firm Halliburton, the company did $23.8 million in business with Saddam, the evildoer "prepared to share his weapons of mass destruction with terrorists. So if Saddam is "the world’s worst leader," how come Cheney sold him the equipment to get his dilapidated oil fields up and running so he could afford to build weapons of mass destruction?"
— syndicated columnist Molly Ivins
Realizing that Molly Ivins can’t possibly know that this topic is about the three Democratic stooges that allowed Saddam Hussein to use them as useful idiots….not Dick Cheney or Halliburton’s legal sale of parts through the UN for the OFF program, one wonders what david l’s excuse is for straying so off topic.
Nothing to add to the discussion about the above mentioned stooges?
Nope, David L. is probably a Ron Paul/D. Kucinich supporter who is sublimating his pain by commenting on blogs. They are mindless robots — how else do you explain people who support these nitwits for political office?
This is going to sound snarky, but I suspect that it’s the same sort of loyalty that led people to support a particular crop of Republicans (led by Dennis Hastert) after they went to Columbia, railed against the sitting President/Administration to foreign leaders, and told that country’s military leaders to "bypass" the Executive Branch and make their wishes known directly to Congress.
(Source: GWU’s National Security Archive)
This is why this makes a lousy point of attack; the minority can almost always be counted upon to do this sort of thing, regardless of their party identity.
Re: "So if Saddam is "the world’s worst leader," how come Cheney sold him the equipment to get his dilapidated oil fields up and running so he could afford to build weapons of mass destruction?""
Because when Dick Cheney did it, it was DIFFERENT.
.
Re: “Nope. Did they find the Taliban and OBL was…yup. We invaded the right country for 9/11, Afghanistan.”
I haven’t checked in a while. did we get OBL yet? It has been more than six years. Less than four years after the Japanese leadership launched the attacks on Pearl harbor, all of the Japanese leadership was dead or in US custody. Let me know.
re:
>>>Not once has anyone on this site said that they were…
LOL! You gotta be kidding. Just like Bush has supposedly never tried to link Saddam and 9/11, huh? (He only has mentioned the topics in the same sentence thousands of times, doing his best to try to link the two topics and muddy the waters on the issue).
Oh, BTW, whatever happened to that idiotic section on this blog that purported to show Saddam’s connection to 9/11?
You regurgitated a load of Rush/Fox/Drudge Kool Aid crap. Never mind
that Bush’s OWN 9/11 Commission said there was no Saddam/9/11 link.
It wouldn’t make any sense anyway. Saddam ran a SECULAR state.
He was DESPISED by Bin Laden (and he in turn despised and mistrusted Al Qaeda).
You keep trying to put Saddam and Osama in bed together and you don’t know sh*t about the Middle East. To call ME "simplistic" when you babble on with your Rush/Fox News/Drudge lies and propaganda is truly laughable and nauseating. You 29 percenters are truly frightening.
Oh, and far as "BDS" goes, it’s clear the vast majority Americans share this "ailment." The country despises your hero. YOU Kool Aid drinkers are in the minority. The rest of us laugh at you robots worshipping your pathetic little draft-dodging coward, who dragged America into a $3 trillion fiasco that has become the biggest single disaster in U.S. history.
A great deal of what I say here is no more radical than what people like Chuck Hagel have said. Are you going to call him a f*cking liar? To his face? I don’t f*cking think so.
Ok, prove it. Link to a post or comment on this blog in which any of the authors stated Saddam was linked to 9/11. And your version of Bush linking Saddam to 9/11 is the fact that 9/11 and Saddam are said in the same sentence…man, you BDS tards are a funny bunch:
He has said that repeatedly but acknowledged what the latest Pentagon report says…Saddam had many connections to terrorists including AQ. You guys spun that to mean he really meant he was involved in 9/11 when he has said nothing of the sort. More evidence of this is in your own ignorant comment:
There was never any section, there was and still is the category of Saddam’s connection to al-Qaeda.
Something that was never disputed by anyone here. That commission did say there were connections tho….may want to read the whole thing sometime instead of spewing your talking points from DummiesU.
ROFL….man, you really are naive aren’t you? You’ve fallen for the whole "Saddam was secular man! No way he would become buddies with Osama dude!" line of trash from your fellow comrades…..but hell, Clinton and his buds didn’t fall for that line of thinking in 1998 when he bombed the aspirin factory did he? You recall why he bombed it?
So lets go through that Pentagon report together and you prove your case that he was too secular to dare work with those religious terrorists.
I recall the same nonsense talk in 2004….didn’t work out to well for ya then did it? You’ve spent way too long in the BDS echo chamber son.
Last I remember Bush served in the military….did you?
Taking out a tyrant and turning a middle eastern country into a democracy with the lowest amount of casualities in any major engagement in US history is and will always be considered a spectacular achievement by our best and brightest. Now we have a friendly nation smack dab in the middle of our enemy……couldn’t ask for anything better.
ROFL…..man, get a grip. Are you for real or just a cartoon character…..
Perfect example of the typical far left loser….so full of hate and ignorance all you can do is spew what your 19 year old neighbor typed onto a DummiesU post.
“Bush is head of state. That is their job, to talk to and negotiate with other heads of state. Whether you believe him to be a tyrant or not is irrevelant. If Pelosi’s, McDermott, and Dodd’s job description included talking to heads of state I would have no problem with them doing it.”So it must have driven you crazy when McCain was speaking with Mushariff and Sarkozy last week. Your argument is silly.
He was on that trip as part of the Senate Armed Services Committee with other committee members in which they discussed issues that are clearly related to that Committee.
McDermott and friends can make no such claim.
LOL, you skipped right over my simple, basic question: are you going to call Chuck Hagel a liar?
Nope, you’re going to run away like a little chickensh*t coward. You wouldn’t dare, because you know you’d get your little pussy ass whipped.
F*cking faggot.
Lemme see: Hagel is a decorated, highly respected war hero.
And YOUR hero, Bush, is a chickensh*t coward who never served his country in Vietnam. He was a f*cking cheerleader at Andover prep school while John Murtha was getting shot at in the jungle in Nam.
I always find it interesting how all these true war heroes (Murtha, Cleland, Kerry, Hagel) are attacked by the chickenhawk war cheerleaders. And yet, to them, Bush is some kind of f*cking war expert.
LOL!
Oh, and as far as the 2000 and 2004 elections, they were both STOLEN by the Bush Crime Family and its allies. I’m sure that’s real funny to you Nazi goose-steppers.
What WON’T be so funny to you is when We The People rise up and overthrow this rotten-to-the-core corrupt government. Get in our way and you’ll die, mark my words.
“Every generation needs a new revolution.”
—Thomas Jefferson
Damn, Thom just totally killed my theory that the nutroots are driven by a sense of political alienation that blinds them to reality and fills them with hate. Now how in the world will I ever prove that theory sound again?
Oh well, I’ve gotta give kudos to him. He’s convinced me not to vote for President Bush ever again.