US: Saddam paid for lawmakers' Iraq trip

[kaydee457 13]

WASHINGTON - 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.

source

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.

At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.

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.

"Obviously, we didn't know it at the time," McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said Wednesday. "The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That's the only reason we went."

Both McDermott and Thompson are popular among liberal voters in their reliably Democratic districts for their anti-war views. Bonior is no longer in Congress.

Thompson released a statement Wednesday saying the trip was approved by the State Department.

"Obviously, had there been any question at all regarding the sponsor of the trip or the funding, I would not have participated," he said.

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, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats "sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government." Seattle-are 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 group 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.

In exchange for coordinating the congressional trip, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil, prosecutors said.

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.

Is there anyone that doesn't believe that Obama wouldn't be manipulated similarly?

Edited March 27, 2008 by kaydee457

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

what a shock

[Ban Hammer 14,636]

what a shock

likewise.

[Teacher Mark 53]

Probably paid for with some of this money:

Oakland Tribune, Jan 12, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Now assigned the task of reducing Iraq's debt, presidential envoy James A. Baker III once gave crucial support for continuing a billion-dollar loan program to Saddam Hussein's government that accounts for most of the money Iraq still owes the United States.

As secretary of state in 1989, Baker urged the Agriculture Department to offer $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq to buy U.S. farm products after Iraq said it would reject a smaller deal.

"Documents indicate he intervened personally to make sure that Iraq continued to receive high levels of funding," said Joyce Battle, Middle East analyst for the National Security Archives, a foreign policy research center with a vast collection of declassified documents from the era.

Only half the guarantees were provided before the program was suspended amid allegations of improprieties and deterioration of relations with Iraq in the months before the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The guarantees were an important part of the first President Bush's effort to improve relations with Iraq in hopes of boosting commercial ties and gaining leverage with a powerful and strategically important nation.

U.S. officials were well aware at the time that Saddam had used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. Iraq also was believed to have biological and nuclear weapons programs and to be harboring terrorists -- reasons the current Bush administration has used to justify toppling the Iraqi leader.

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But in 1989, Baker and other officials hoped incentives might change Saddam.

"That turned out to be unsuccessful, but I don't think it was necessarily a bad approach to try," said John H. Kelly, who led the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau under Baker.

After invading Kuwait, Iraq defaulted on its debt to the United States; the debt has grown to more than $4 billion. That includes $1.9 billion in principal and $1.1 billion in interest on Agriculture Department-guaranteed loans.

"The Iraq loss was certainly a shock to the system because of the magnitude," Clayton Yeutter, agriculture secretary at the time, said in an interview. He said the Iraq experience taught officials to be careful about guaranteeing too much debt for a single nation.

The U.S. debt is a small part of Iraq's overall $120 billion debt. Baker is now traveling the world as Bush's envoy, seeking relief for Iraq.

The United States began providing loan guarantees to Iraq in the 1980s. Iraq was at war with Iran and the United States wanted to prevent advances by Iran's clerical government.

When the first President Bush took office in 1989, the Iraq-Iran war was over and Iraq was not a U.S. priority, Baker wrote in his 1995 memoirs, "The Politics of Diplomacy."

To the extent it was considered, however, there were reasons to seek better relations.

Iraq was a major oil supplier. It was the ninth largest customer of U.S. agricultural goods, with most purchases backed by U.S. loan guarantees. U.S. companies were competing with foreign rivals for postwar business opportunities. Iraq was then the most powerful Arab country, and the United States hoped it might help Middle East peace efforts.

Some U.S. officials and members of Congress opposed attempts to improve relations, given Iraq's record of gassing of Kurds and other abuses. The State Department's human rights bureau described Iraq's record as abysmal, and its director, Richard Schifter, argued against any assistance.

But some U.S. officials saw signs of change. Iraq appeared willing to discuss chemical weapons and human rights issues. Also, Iraq agreed in March 1989 to pay $27 million to the families of 37 sailors killed by a 1987 Iraqi missile attack on the USS Stark.

Bush spelled out his policy in a national security directive from Oct. 2, 1989: "The United States government should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq." The policy left open the possibility of punitive measures if incentives failed.

"We were under no illusions about Saddam's brutality toward his own people or his capacity for escalating tensions with his neighbors," Baker wrote. "We fully recognized at the time that it was entirely possible any carrots we offered him would fail to produce the desired result."

Baker tried to improve relations. In March 1989, he assured an Iraqi diplomat that he would take a personal interest in Iraq's request for expanded loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank. Later, when Congress barred Iraq from participating in bank programs, the State Department drafted a waiver to override the sanctions. Bush signed the waiver in January 1990.

The big issue, however, was the agricultural loan guarantees, which provide producers and lenders with assurances that loans will be repaid. The guarantees helped Iraq obtain financing to buy U.S. farm products.

By 1989, Iraq had been receiving about $1 billion a year in guarantees. The Agriculture Department proposed reducing that to $400 million for 1990, with the possibility of more money later. Officials were concerned about Iraq's creditworthiness, about corruption in the Iraq loan program and about a brewing scandal involving unauthorized loans to Iraq by the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.

Edited March 27, 2008 by WideAwakeInTheUSA

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

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.

But since when did facts matter to the right wing lynch mob?