~There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. ~
Frank Zappa
The ‘Baghdad Quartet’
Singing the Blues For Saddam
Bonior, Thompson & “Baghdad” Jim McDermott with “Baghdad Bob’
during the Saddam financed trip in 2002
Officials in the State Department revealed Wednesday that Saddam Hussein’s foreign intelligence agency with an Iraqi-American sympathizer organized and paid for a visit to Iraq in 2002 by three House Democrats. The trip was criticized by colleagues upon their return.An indictment of a former Iraqi citizen and employee of a charity group in Detroit was issued Wednesday. He was charged with accepting multi millions of dollars in Iraqi oil contracts for helping the spy agency with projects in the United States.
The three lawmakers Jim McDermott of Washington State, Mike Thompson of California and David E. Bonior of Michigan made the five-day trip to Iraq five months before the American invasion.
Although the trip was financed by Saddam Hussein no one knows for sure there wasn’t any involvement with the Iraqi Intelligence by any of these Representatives. They were not accused of anything illegal as of yet.
The indicted Iraqi-American is Muthanna al-Hanooti was employed by Life for Relief and Development, a Michigan-based charity.
The trip had cost a minimum of $34,000.
al-Hanooti was released on $100,000 bail.
More from The AP via Breitbart:
During the trip, the lawmakers expressed skepticism about the Bush administration’s claims that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Though such weapons ultimately were never found, the lawmakers drew criticism for their trip at the time.
Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, then the second-ranking Senate Republican, said the Democrats “sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government.” Seattle-area conservatives dubbed McDermott “Baghdad Jim” for the Iraq trip.
Al-Hanooti was arrested Tuesday night while returning to the U.S. from the Middle East, where he was looking for a job, his attorney, James Thomas, said. Al-Hanooti pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, illegally purchasing Iraqi oil and lying to authorities. He was being held on $100,000 bail.
Between 1999 and 2006, he worked on and off as a public relations coordinator for Life for Relief and Development, a charity formed after the first Gulf War to fund humanitarian work in Iraq. FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents raided the charity’s headquarters in 2006 but charged nobody and allowed the agency to continue operating.
McDermott identified that charity as the group financing the Iraq trip. In House disclosure forms, he put the cost at $5,510. Thompson also understood the charity to be financing the trip, spokeswoman Anne Warden said.
Prosecutors said Al-Hanooti was responsible for monitoring Congress for the Iraqi Intelligence Service. From 1999 to 2002, he allegedly provided Saddam’s government with a list of U.S. lawmakers he believed favored lifting economic sanctions against Iraq.
Thomas said Al-Hanooti would “vigorously defend” himself against the charges but he could not discuss the specifics of the case since he had seen none of the evidence.
…
Here is part of an interview broadcast on CNN in October, 2002:
…So how does it feel to be used as a propaganda tool against your own country? McDermott, who was asked that question by CNN’s Jane Arraf when he was still in Baghdad, said it feels fine. “If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then, yes, we don’t mind being used.”
These 3 clowns knew what the charity was and where it was located but their staffs did no investigation of this organization? Hard to believe….
So does anyone think that al-Hanooti will show up for trial on these charges? McDermott’s office probably supplied him with a passport back to the middle east.
The probable Democrat response; This is old news let’s just move on…..
McDermott and Bonoir are not only useful idiots they are treasonous idiots. When they began reading off the cue cards Saddam’s Regime provided for them without doing any independent research on depleted uranium munitions they crossed that line. They toured a cancer ward and were told ‘it was caused by depleted uranium munitions’ and bought it without question. As the report below states, this is line taken by the Taliban, Serbia, and Saddam: odd coincidence.
Newsbusters has a great segment on this–
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/03/26/flashback-stephanopoulos-scolded-critic-bonier-mcdermott
George Will’s statements were especially damming.
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.”
It turns out he did.
Facts, myths, and propaganda in the debate over depleted uranium weapons
http://www.wise-uranium.org/pdf/dumyths.pdf
Saddam’s apparatus of Lies 1990-2003
“It’s not a lie when you are ordered to lie”—senior Iraqi biological weapons official
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/apparatus-of-lies.pdf
PROPAGANDA – General (theory, practice and history)
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vf01.cfm?folder=715&outfit=pmt
“They were not accused of anything illegal as of yet.”
Yet you feel compelled to mention it.
May be they cannot be proven to have done anythinng ILLEGAL YET.. But Mc Dermott sure made an ASS of itself over the POST Iraq Invasion… so was there some Kind of ” Pay off” yet Undiscovered???? HELLOOOO!!!
Treason has multiple definitions, one being betrayal. McDermott and Bonior betrayed their most basic allegiance as elected officials. Elected officials should seek the truth first, then render a verdict, and do their utmost to leave partisan bias out of it. If a jury skipped the deliberation process or pronounced its decision after hearing one side of a case the judge would instruct them to listen to both sides and then consider all facts, evidence and deliberate for an adequate amount of time.
McDermott and Bonior had made up their minds that “Bush was lying” out of partisan hostility, not a thoughtful review of the facts. The distorted lens with which they interpret America’s actions and then relay them to their constituency is a major disservice to the electorate. We [used] to have “yellow journalism”; I would say this is yellow politics.
McDermott and Bonior did not even stop to notice that Saddam was the main cause of the Iraqi people’s suffering. Saddam’s violations of the “food for oil” and “medicine for oil” sanctions kept him living in luxury while the Iraqi people lived in deprivation. In effect, McDermott and Bonior were repeating al Qaeda propaganda as well: one of their casus belli for 9/11.
Just as McDermott and Bonior failed their allegiance to truth test, Saddam’s allegiance was never to the Iraqi people, but to power and wealth. For McDermott and Bonior not to grasp this shows a naiveté about international affairs that is truly staggering. The McDermotts and Boniors assume the best of the rest of the world and the worst of the U.S.
Saddam’s Cash
From the May 5, 2003 issue: And the journalists and politicians he bought with it.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/605fgcob.asp
McDermott, in particular, caused quite a fuss when in a September 29 appearance on ABC’s “This Week” from Baghdad, he claimed, “The president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.” Moments later, despite 12 years of evidence that the Iraqi regime had lied about its weapons program, McDermott said, “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value.”
The same day, Babil ran a brief item in its local news section. “Saddam Hussein received cable of support from Shakir al-Khafaji, president of the 17th Iraqi Expatriate Conference, on behalf of Iraqis who are living abroad.”
The members of Congress returned to the United States facing intense criticism, and quickly sought to reassure an angry public that the objective of their mission was, in Bonior’s words, “to impress upon the Iraqi government and the people of Iraq how important it was for them to allow unconditional, unfettered, unrestricted access to the inspectors.” He reiterated the point at an October 2 press conference, telling reporters, “The purpose of our trip was to make it very clear, as I said in my opening statement, to the officials in Iraq how serious we–the United States is about going to war and that they will have war unless these inspections are allowed to go unconditionally and unfettered and open. And that was our point.”
Of course, no one can say what the congressmen’s motives were for their trip. But judging from a press release the trio issued before they left, on September 25, it’s clear it wasn’t to secure unfettered inspections. Although the congressmen warned about the “dangerous implications of a unilateral, preemptive strike,” they didn’t mention inspections once.
On October 25, McDermott received a check for $5,000 from Shakir al-Khafaji. The money, first reported by Amy Keller in Roll Call, had been deposited in an account for the McDermott Legal Expense Trust, a fund the congressman set up to pay legal bills in a lawsuit brought against him by Rep. John Boehner. (In 1996, McDermott had released to the media the transcript of a phone conversation between Boehner and Newt Gingrich, taped by a Florida couple.)
Court sides with Boehner in ethics case
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/court-sides-with-boehner-in-ethics-case-2007-05-01.html
“I’m encouraged by the court’s ruling, as well as the findings of the bipartisan House ethics committee months ago,” Boehner said. “As I’ve said many times: When you break the law in pursuit of a political opponent, you’ve gone too far.”
McDermott said in a statement that the decision “sharply limited the free speech protections of the First Amendment in violation of binding Supreme Court precedent.”
Appeals court rules against McDermott
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002895236_webmcdermott28.html
Lawyers for 18 news organizations — including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post — filed a brief backing McDermott.
But Boehner’s lawyers said McDermott’s actions were clearly illegal.
By leaking the tape McDermott “chilled the free speech of others,” namely Boehner and Gingrich, lawyer Michael Carvin said following a court hearing in November.
Court Says Congressman Must Pay Damages
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/washington/02court.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
“When Representative McDermott became a member of the Ethics Committee, he voluntarily accepted a duty of confidentiality that covered his receipt and handling of the Martins’ illegal recording,” the decision said. “He therefore had no First Amendment right to disclose the tape to the media.”
Boehner sued McDermott that year, and a federal court found McDermott liable for $60,000 in damages. A Boehner spokesman said that legal fees, which McDermott would also have to cover, could easily surpass $700,000.
That all comes to a price tag that is significantly more than it was several years ago, when McDermott refused Boehner’s offer to drop the suit if the Washington Democrat would apologize to the House and donate $10,000 to charity.
Ethics Ruling Against Congressman
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/washington/12brfs-ETHICSRULING_BRF.html?pagewanted=print
[...] This has not been a good week for the Clintons. Sniper-Gate now this ‘Oil For Food ‘Travel Agency’ Scandal.’ [...]
“They were not accused of anything illegal as of yet.”
Strange that you mention this.