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If this was a Republican the press wouldn't miss juicy details like this but would be sure to include them in every article on the guy :

McDermott was one of three Congressmen who went on Saddam’s propaganda tour of Iraq in Fall 2002. The trip was funded by Life for Relief and Development (LRD), a “charity” which laundered money to terrorist group Hamas’ Jordanian operation. LRD is funded in part by Shakir Al-Khafaji, a man who did about $70 million in business with Saddam [Hussein] through his Falcon Trading Group company (based in South Africa). LRD’s Iraqi offices were raided by US troops last week, and the Detroit-area “charity” is suspected of funding uprisings, such as the one in Fallujah. Its officials bragged of doing so at a recent private US fundraiser.
Mr. Alkhafaji, one of two Americans named in Iraqi newspapers as a participant in Saddam’s “Oil for Food” scam, gave Congressman McDermott $5,000 in October 2002 for McDermott’s legal defense fund in a lawsuit against him…. http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/fahrenheit911/terrorists.htm

The legal defense fund to which this agent of Saddam gave money was to defend McDermott from charges relating to his disclosure of the illegally taped conversation between Gingrich and Boehner. In the mind of a liberal, eavesdropping is bad if the NSA does it to terrorists, but perfectly OK if Democrat operatives do it to their political opponents.

Of course, Shakir al Khafaji brings other things to mind:

* Shaker Al-Khaffaji : The beneficiary list (found in the archives of the Iraqi Oil Ministry and translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute) should be deeply embarrassing to many prominent people. In the United States, those listed include Iraqi American businessman Shaker Al-Khaffaji, who put up $400,000 to produce a film by ex-U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, which aimed to discredit weapons inspections in Iraq.
Also, British Labor MP George Galloway, a strident foe of taking action against Saddam, is listed as a recipient or co-recipient of 19.5 million barrels. Other recipients include: former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (12 million barrels); Patrick Maugein, CEO of the oil company Soco International and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac (25 million); former French Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Bernard Merimee (11 million); Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri (10 million); and Syrian businessman Farras Mustafa Tlass, the son of longtime Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass (6 million). Leith Shbeilat, chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Jordanian Parliament, received 15.5 million. 7 posted on 04/21/2004 2:35:40 AM PDT by kcvl