The Justice Department said Wednesday (3/26/08) that Saddam Hussein’s principal foreign intelligence agency and an Iraqi-American man, Muthanna al-Hanooti, had organized and paid for a 2002 visit to Iraq by three House Democrats whose trip was harshly criticized by colleagues at the time for allegedly at the time, and confirmed now being funded by the Iraqi government. The illegal arrangements for the trip were described in the indictment of a former employee of Life for Relief and Development, and was charged Wednesday with accepting millions of dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil contracts in exchange for assisting the Iraqi spy agency in projects in the United States. The indictment, which was dated Feb. 13 and unsealed Monday (3/24/08) in Michigan, said the trip had cost at least $34,000.

Two of the used democrats continue to serve in the House: Jim McDermott of Washington State and Mike Thompson of California. The other, David E. Bonior of Michigan, has since retired from Congress.

Bonior is known to be empathic to terrorist, who lost a bid to become Michigan's governor, also took campaign contributions from Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor said to be Islamic Jihad's front-man in the United States. Al-Arian and his wife, Nahla, donated at least $3,450 to Bonior's campaigns. Al-Arian also raised funds for Islamic Jihad – an ally of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. What did such campaign contributions buy for Al-Arian? We got a clue in June 2001, just three months before the terror attacks on the U.S. During a White House meeting on President Bush's "faith-based initiatives" that month, a uniformed Secret Service officer felt compelled to remove a 20-year-old Muslim intern working for Bonior. Apparently the young man was seen as a security threat – and understandably so. The intern's name was Abdallah Al-Arian – the son of Sami Al-Arian.

Mr. McDermott said through a spokesman that he had been invited on the trip by church groups in his home state and that he assumed that the trip had been paid for by legitimate charitable organizations. Mr. Thompson said in a statement that the trip was approved by the State Department and that “obviously, had there been any question at all regarding the sponsor of the trip or the funding, I would not have participated.”

The three-man Congressional delegation was criticized on its return to Washington as having undermined the Bush administration’s campaign to gather international support to disarm and later invade Iraq.

Mr. Hanooti is suspected of having gone to work for the Iraqis in 1999 or 2000, specifically by publicizing efforts in the United States to lift international economic sanctions on Iraq. As part of that effort, the indictment said, he organized the October 2002 visit and accompanied the three lawmakers to Iraq. In December 2002, the indictment said, the Iraqi government secretly arranged to allocate two million barrels of oil to Mr. Hanooti; he then turned over the rights to the oil to a company incorporated in Cyprus for an amount of money that was not identified in the court papers.

The charges against Mr. Hanooti, who was released from custody on Wednesday (3/26/08) after posting $100,000 bail and agreeing to wear an electronic ankle bracelet, include conspiracy, making false statements and criminal violations of the American embargo on Iraq.

---> October 03, 2002 – FoxNews <---

Three congressmen who raised eyebrows during a recent trip to Iraq repeated their assertions that the war drums in Washington are beating too loudly.

On Wednesday, Reps. David Bonior, D-Mich., and Jim McDermott, D-Wash.-- who were joined by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., on the trip -- held a press conference to further their argument that the United States should allow more time for international diplomacy rather than rushing off to war.

They said the Bush administration should give weapons inspections a chance to work before taking any military action.

Bonior suggested that the sanctions placed on Iraq by the United Nations at the end of the Gulf War to make sure Iraq complied with cease-fire agreements had led to the starvation and malnutrition of Iraqi children, and the death of 50,000 annually who suffer from a lack of access to basic needs.

Bonior also said that U.S. and British airplanes have been bombing illegitimate targets as part of their effort to man the no-fly zone, put up by the United Nations as a means to keep Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from attacking his own people.

The remarks were blasted by Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., who said, "both sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government."

McDermott said he was stunned by "the extent to which the Iraqi people are ready to fight house-to-house" against any U.S. military action.

But McDermott and Bonior both rebuffed criticism of their comments saying that accusations that they're un-American are untrue.

---> September 30, 2002 - San Francisco Chronicle <---

With Congress nearing a vote on a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, a North Bay congressman visiting Baghdad says he has delivered a blunt message -- U.N. weapons inspectors must be given unfettered access or President Bush will carry out his threatened invasion.

But Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, one of three Democratic House members who are on a five-day mission to Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra, also said by telephone that Bush should give U.N. inspectors a chance to find and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before invading Iraq.

While all three members who are visiting Iraq have questions about whether they would vote for a congressional resolution authorizing military action, Reps. David Bonior, D-Mich., and James McDermott, D-Wash., sounded more dovish notes than Thompson when they appeared on TV on Sunday.

Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran, said that even after meeting with several Iraqi government officials and touring woefully equipped hospitals, a children's diarrhea clinic and water filtration plant, he was blunt in his talks with Iraqi officials.

"I have not tried to be provocative, but I have been outspoken about the need for complete cooperation and in my criticism of Saddam Hussein," said Thompson. The delegation hasn't met with Hussein but has met with the foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz.

Thompson defended his decision to go to Iraq at a time of war tensions and intense Bush administration activity by saying he felt compelled as a war veteran to try to deter war.

But he said he knew that Iraqi cooperation with the U.N. had been spotty. "Hopefully, the Iraqi government will obey the promises made to us. I don't know if I believe them," Thompson said, adding that he feared a war could badly damage stability across the Middle East.

---> September 28, 2002 – News Max <---

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Three Democrat U.S. congressmen arrived Friday to inspect health conditions and try to help prevent war between the United States and Iraq.

Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., David Bonior, D-Mich., and James McDermott, D-Wash., described their mission as mainly humanitarian. They want all possible diplomatic efforts made to settle the crisis in U.S.-Iraqi relations without recourse to war, which should be the last option Thompson said on arrival at Baghdad's Saddam Hussein International Airport.

Thompson urged Iraq to allow international arms inspectors to visit all the places they wished without restrictions.

The congressmen were met on arrival by Iraqi Health Minister Omdet Medhat Mubarak, who briefed them on the health situation in Iraq and the effects a U.S. military strike could have.

The congressmen were to visit a Baghdad hospital and clinics in addition to a water filtration plant and a food-distribution center run by the United Nations under its food-for-oil program.

Another congressional team, led by Rep. Nick Rahal, D-W.Va., visited Iraq on Sept. 14, to inspect children's hospitals and sites alleged to be used for the production of weapons of mass destruction.

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."

But McDermott and Bonior only accept Iraq's more conciliatory statements at face value. They selectively ignore those statements by Iraqi officials defying the international community's demand for unfettered inspections. Even after Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan made clear that inspectors would not be allowed into presidential sites--some 12 square miles of Iraqi territory--McDermott claimed the Iraqi regime really wanted to be accommodating. "They have given us assurances that there will be unfettered inspections," McDermott said at an October 2 press conference he held with Bonior after returning from Iraq. "In the United States, we have a tradition, we have a Constitution that says if there's a bad person there, we give them due process and inspections is the due process in this example."

At the same press conference, McDermott and Bonior retrospectively revised the primary goal of their trip. (Thompson, who wasn't at that appearance, kept a relatively low profile both on the trip and after his return. He was the only one of the three to emphasize that Saddam Hussein, and not the U.S. government, bears responsibility for conditions in Iraq.) "First of all," said Bonior, explaining the objectives of the trip, "we wanted 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." It was such an important point that he revisited it later.

"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. And that was in the best interest of not only Iraq, but the American citizens and our troops. And that's what we were emphasizing. That was our primary concern--that and looking at the humanitarian situation."

But if the return of inspectors was the "first" and "primary" purpose of the trip on October 2, it wasn't quite as important on September 25. In the joint press release all three congressmen issued before their trip, posted on each of their websites, there were many stated goals, and plenty of criticism of U.S. saber rattling and pounding of war drums. But there was no mention of inspections at all.

Instead there was much talk of "gaining insight into the humanitarian challenges another war on Iraq would have on innocent Iraqis and the dangerous implications of a unilateral, preemptive strike on U.S. national security."

It's reassuring to know that these congressmen were concerned about our national security, even if the source of their concern was our president rather than the brutal dictator with weapons of mass destruction the United States is trying to stop. What apparently didn't concern the congressmen was the damage their trip might do abroad to any U.S.-led effort to 

deal with Saddam. Or any difficulties they may have created for U.S. efforts to fashion a friendly post-Saddam Iraq.

EVEN BEFORE the Baghdad boys left Iraq, media outlets throughout the Middle East gleefully highlighted divisions in the U.S. government and the travels by the "antiwar" congressmen. The Iraq Daily, for example, published by Saddam's Ministry of Information, printed daily updates of the trip and posted them in English on their website.

For example, a September 30 report says, "the members of the U.S. Congress delegation has underlined that this visit aims to get acquainted with the truth of Iraq's people sufferings due to ongoing embargo which caused shortage in food and medicine for all Iraqi people." (That article appeared next to a report on Saddam's continuing financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or, to use the paper's formulation, "intrepid Palestinian uprising martyrs." Also in that issue is an article by American white supremacist Matthew Hale, "Truth About 9-11: How Jewish Manipulation Killed Thousands.")

Two days earlier, on September 28, the Iraq Daily carried this report: The "U.S. Congress delegation saw a woman supplicating to Almighty God to revenge from criminal Bush and U.S. administration for the criminal crimes he and his administration perpetrated against Iraqi children through preventing them from the simplest life necessities due to the continuation of the unjust sanctions on Iraq."

On September 27, viewers of Iraqi Satellite Channel Television learned the following (this translation comes from U.S. government sources):

"Three U.S. Congressmen arrived in Baghdad this morning on a visit lasting several days. The delegation will hold several meetings with Iraqi officials and members of the Foreign Relations Committee at the National Assembly. They will also visit hospitals to see the suffering caused by the unjust embargo and the shortage of medicines and medical supplies. Congressman Jim McDermott told reporters upon arrival at Saddam International Airport that the delegation members reject the policy of aggression dominating the U.S. administration."

The video then showed McDermott talking, with a voiceover translation in Arabic. Here is what Arabic-speaking audiences heard from McDermott:

"We are three veterans of the Vietnam War who came over here because we don't want war. We assert from here that we do not want the United States to wage war on any peace-loving countries. As members of Congress, we would like diplomatic efforts to continue so as not to launch any aggression. We will visit children's hospitals to see the negative impact of the sanctions imposed on Iraq. We hope that peace will prevail throughout the world."

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."

And while some Democrats may not be so happy about McDermott and Bonior being used, few are willing to say so. Senator John Breaux lamented McDermott's "overstatement" on the question of the president's veracity. House minority leader Dick Gephardt, who helped the Bush administration craft a White House- friendly congressional resolution, was equivocal about the Bonior-McDermott affair: "I don't agree with his views on some of the facts, and obviously we may not be in agreement on his conclusion about what to do about those facts. But every member, as I've said over and over again, has to reach their own conclusion."

A reporter followed up. "Mr. McDermott implied that the president could not be trusted and Mr. Saddam Hussein could be trusted. That's gotta evoke some sort of feeling within you as to the properness of that comment."

"I don't have all that was said and I'm not here to parse over every word," said Gephardt. "I don't, I don't, I do not agree with his views of the facts, some of the facts, and obviously probably don't agree with his conclusion about what to do with the facts. But that would be the case with a lot of the members of this caucus. And of the other caucus. And that's why we're here."

But at least Gephardt said something. THE WEEKLY STANDARD contacted several other prominent Democrats for comment on the Bonior-McDermott apostasy, including Bill Clinton, Reps. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, and Sens. Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, John Edwards, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman. The only comment we received came from Senator Kerry's spokesman David Wade, who said simply that his boss "disapproved of McDermott's comments."

Republicans say they will continue to raise the issue until Democratic leaders speak out against McDermott and Bonior. "Why haven't Democrat leaders denounced McDermott's odious words? Every American is free to speak their mind, but hurling reckless charges from hostile soil strays over the edge," says House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

Will other Republicans, either in the House or in political campaigns, follow DeLay's lead? Can the GOP hang Bonior and McDermott around the necks of other Democrats? As Election Day approaches, count on hearing more about the Baghdad Democrats.

Congressman Jim McDermott this week returned a $5,000 contribution made to his legal defense fund by an Iraqi-American businessman who has admitted to financial ties with Saddam Hussein's regime.

Shakir al-Khafaji, a Detroit-area businessman who had been active in the anti-Iraq-war movement and who accompanied McDermott, D-Seattle, on his highly publicized trip to Iraq in 2002, acknowledged to the Financial Times of London this week that he received lucrative vouchers for Iraqi oil from Saddam's government.

The oil-voucher story surfaced in January, when a Baghdad newspaper published what it said was an Iraqi government document naming 270 recipients of oil vouchers from around the world. Al-Khafaji was one of two Americans on the list, which included French, British and Russian political and business leaders and many prominent opponents of the war.

In 2002, Al-Khafaji accompanied McDermott and Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and David Bonior, D-Mich., on a trip to Iraq, during which McDermott gained national attention for criticizing President Bush and calling for an alternative to war.

After the trip, Al-Khafaji donated $5,000 to McDermott's legal defense fund set up by the congressman to pay expenses from an unrelated lawsuit.

A nonprofit organization, Life for Relief and Development, paid McDermott's $5,510 travel expenses for the Iraq trip, according to a disclosure form filed with the House clerk. Al-Khafaji has been named as a financial supporter of the organization, though the extent of his support is not known. The group says it ships humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, to Iraq.

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