Obama - Rezko - Auchi - Saddam Hussein?
FROM:
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/03/obama-—rezko-.html
.....One wonders if public sentiment would change (Yes, “CHANGE!”) if it could be shown that Barack “CHANGE” Obama’s strong opposition to the War in Iraq was based on financial ties to a Saddam Hussein arms dealer?
Obama buys a house in a land deal with Tony Rezko’s wife, whose income at the time was $35k/year. In the days before the papers were signed, Rezko gets a loan from Auchi. Auchi and Rezko are pizza and real estate partners — you know, little ol’ harmless “Tony” Rezko, the small time Chicago operator.
Then mysteriously last month, Rezko goes to jail for breaking a bail agreement because he gets another $3.5 million loan from Auchi, the man who became the 279th richest man in the world partially by making arms deals with Saddam Hussein.
No, not a discredited urban legend about Obama’s connections to terrorists, but this time a viable direct connect? RealClearPolitics.com’s Jack Kelly comes thisclose to connecting the poisonous dots between Obama and Nahdmi Auchi:
A British citizen of Iraqi descent, Mr. Auchi, 70, is a billionaire, the 279th richest man in the world, according to a Forbes magazine survey last year.
A great deal of Mr. Auchi’s money was made doing business with the regime of Saddam Hussein, much of it under the table. In 1987, Mr. Auchi helped French and Italian firms win a huge oil pipeline contract in Iraq, chiefly by paying off Iraqi officials, according to testimony given by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan. In 2003, he was convicted for his role in what was then the largest scandal in French history, involving payoffs from executives of the oil company now known as Total to political figures in Spain, Germany and Africa.
Kelly tells more:
Mr. Auchi was a leading supplier of arms to Saddam’s regime. A former Belgian ambassador to Luxembourg charged that a bank in Luxembourg owned principally by Mr. Auchi laundered funds — including oil for food money — for Saddam and other Islamic dictators.
FROM:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-29-jan29,0,128860.column
....snip....
His name is Frank Calabrese, the former Chicago Outfit Chinatown crew boss, convicted of racketeering conspiracy involving seven murders in the FBI’s historic Operation Family Secrets case of 18 unsolved hits. Six other bodies were attributed to Calabrese at his sentencing.
....snip.....
During the Family Secrets trial, the connection between Chicago politics and the Outfit came up often. In one bit of testimony in 2007, Mayor Richard Daley’s friend Fred Bruno Barbara, the trucking boss and Rush Street investor, was identified by Nick Calabrese as a willing driver for mob boss Angelo “The Hook” LaPietra on bombing runs.
,,,snip....
Daley got so angry when asked about Barbara that he turned purple and shrieked. The governor of Illinois could have called him “cuckoo.”
For generations, the Outfit has formed the base of the iron triangle that runs things, and no understanding of politics in Illinois is complete without them.
Was Obama's Iraq War Opposition Based upon a Relationship to Saddam's Arms Dealer?
That is the theory being floated by conservative blog Illinois Review, and frankly one I've heard speculated about before... but does that speculation hold water?
The theory goes like this:
Barack Obama has had questionable dealings (including the purchase of his home) with Tony Rezko, who is on trial on corruption charges, and who may have directed kickbacks to Obama.
Rezko has had numerous business deals with Nahdmi Auchi, who once sold arms to Saddam Hussein and had other dealings with the Hussein regime.
Rezko and Auchi also had business dealings with Aiham Alsammarae, a fugitive from Iraqi justice who allegedly stole $650 million from the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, who is now apparently living in Chicago, despite having been convicted and sentence to 14 years in prison in Iraq. . .