Original BBC news story on the trip dated September 2002: US lawmakers push diplomacy in Iraq

Prosecutors Say Saddam Officials Arranged Secret Pre-War Iraq Trip for U.S. Lawmakers :

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. Al-Hanooti is charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, illegally purchasing Iraqi oil and lying to authorities. 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.

“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.”

“War is not the answer,” Bonior, who is no longer in Congress, said at a news conference while on the trip. “There is a way to resolve this.”

Though weapons of mass destruction 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.”

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.  

Essentially Saddam Hussein paid off Al-Hanooti to provide a list of U.S. lawmakers who favored lifting economic sanctions against Iraq and these three Democrats, who spoke out against President Bush’s buildup to war while on their Saddam sponsored trip in Iraq, unknowingly took the Saddam-sponsored trip “for the children” of Iraq.

QUESTIONS:

1. If these Democrats cared about Iraq’s children then, why don’t they care about Iraq’s children now?
2. Was it anti-Bush or anti-war theology that blinded these Democrats to the fact that they were being used by Saddam as his spokesmen?
3. If war wasn’t the answer to toppling Saddam, what was?

Two words: George Galloway

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