Oil for anti-war talking points?

Michigan Man Accused of Helping Saddam Set Up Pre-War Visit to Iraq by U.S. Lawmakers

WASHINGTON — Muthanna Al-Hanooti was given an offer that federal prosecutors say he couldn't refuse: Set up a trip for U.S. lawmakers to pre-war Iraq and earn 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil in return.

An indictment unsealed Wednesday in Detroit accuses Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of making those arrangements in 2002 at the behest of Saddam Hussein's regime. The deal allegedly was financed by Iraqi intelligence officials through an intermediary....

At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. The three anti-war Democratic lawmakers apparently targeted by Al-Hanooti used their October 2002 trip to call for a diplomatic solution in Iraq....

The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington and Mike Thompson of California, and former Rep. David Bonior, a Democrat from Michigan.

McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare told FOX News his boss did not know Al-Hanooti and "would not have gone" had he known who paid for the trip to Iraq in the fall of 2002.

So is it standard operating procedure for Congressmen to visit state sponsors of terror without knowing who is funding it? Who did they think paid for the trip, Santa Claus?

Although, I'm guessing these guys were not chosen because of their superior analytical skills.

He added that McDermott cleared the trip in advance with the House Ethics Committee.

Ah, yes, the "House Ethics Committee." That's a body paralleled in effectiveness only by the Stover Diet and Exercise Committee.

DeCesare said McDermott went with a Seattle church group to study "the plight of Iraqi children" and that while on the trip, McDermott met with doctors and visited children at a hospital.

That's good. Now, for comparison's sake, maybe the three wise men should go back to Iraq and see how the children are doing now -- particularly those that weren't murdered or raped because Saddam and his goons were taken out.

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....

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.

Again, remember that it's the Democrats that won back Congress in 2006 by claiming that they would clean up the Culture of Corruption.

Physician, heal thyself.