Posted on 03/27/2008 6:27:27 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
When a vicious dictator wants a fifth column of Congressmen to run interference, he knows to call the Party of Defeat.
| Saddam's Salesmen |
“If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then yes, we don’t mind being used.” – Rep. James McDermott, D-WA, on his 2002 trip to Iraq, financed by Saddam Hussein.
We’ve long contended the terrorists could not buy better representation than the Democratic Left gives them for free. We never knew how right we were.
The media revealed last night that Saddam Hussein personally funded the trip of three Democratic Congressmen to Iraq on the eve of the war that led to his ouster. Saddam’s Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) reportedly bribed an American Muslim activist with two million barrels of oil to arrange the fall 2002 trip for left-wing Congressmen Jim McDermott, D-WA; David Bonior, D-MI; and Mike Thompson, D-CA.
David Horowitz and I thoroughly chronicled the event in our new book, Party of Defeat. On September 29, 2002, the ignominious trio appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, via satellite hookup from foreign soil, to extol the truthfulness of Saddam Hussein, decry the already weakened sanctions imposed by the United Nations, and call President Bush a liar bent on war. David Bonior – who long served as House Democratic Whip, the second-highest ranking post in the House of Representatives – laid the blame squarely on the United States of America. Bonior denounced the regimen of multilateral sanctions, already weakened by the Oil for Food program, as “barbaric” and “horrific.” He backed this up with anecdotal evidence gleaned from the group’s well-supervised tour of Iraqi hospitals. Worse, the U.S. had been “trying to push and dictate” Iraq, namely by requiring its dictator verify his compliance with the cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War and the 17 UN resolutions he was currently defying. Although Saddam Hussein had frustrated all previous weapons inspections, Bonior blithely announced that he would now allow inspectors the “unrestricted” autonomy “to look anywhere.” (Of course, the inspectors’ job was not to play hide-and-seek with Iraq’s prewar WMD cache; it was to verify that he had destroyed all WMDs, as he had agreed to do as a precondition of peace in 1991.) Rep. James McDermott echoed that none of the arms imbroglio was the Iraqi regime’s fault, anyway, as “Iraq did not drive the inspectors out; we took them out.” Again, the United States was blaming the victim and punishing innocent children for her own misdeeds. When pressed about believing the promises of a murderous international pariah, McDermott said, “I think you have to take the Iraqis at their face value,” but he offered no such quarter to the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. “I think the president would mislead the American people,” he declared.
On the eve of the war, three sitting U.S. Congressmen treated Saddam Hussein as President Bush’s moral superior.
The Iraqi media multiplied the propaganda value of their visit. The Iraq Satellite Channel reported that the three were scheduled to “visit hospitals to see the suffering caused by the unjust embargo.” Yet the three expressed no regrets for acting as Saddam’s stooges. Jim McDermott told CNN’s Jane Arraf, “If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then yes, we don’t mind being used.”
Unholy Alliance, Meet the Party of Defeat
We now know they were indeed being used by a hostile leader with an anti-American agenda. They were also doing the bidding of a domestic fifth column inside the U.S. Islamist movement. The Associated Press has reported that federal officials have indicted Michigan Muslim activist Muthanna al-Hanooti for “conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, illegally purchasing Iraqi oil, and lying to authorities.” For seven years, Al-Hanooti worked for the Detroit-area Muslim charity Life for Relief and Development. Investigators say for the first three of those years, he moonlighted for Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). According to the Detroit Free Press, al-Hanooti is also, coincidentally, “former head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations.” He is current president of Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations. After his stint with Saddam, al-Hanooti went on to become a paid lobbyist for the Iraqi Islamic Party, whose “philosophy is based on the Islamic Shari’a”and which has praised the “heroic Iraqi resistance.” That such a man could operate smoothly in the U.S. Islamist movement speaks volumes about its radicalism.
The feds assert that al-Hanooti earned his money compiling lists of Congressmen favorable to lifting the sanctions against the Hussein regime. This confirms Charles Duelfer’s finding that Saddam Hussein plotted to get UN sanctions lifted, so that he could resume his relentless pursuit of WMDs. To underscore the ineffectiveness of those sanctions, Saddam paid al-Hanooti two million barrels of oil diverted from the Oil for Food program, which he serially abused for his personal aggrandizement and to influence foreign policymakers.
Useful Idiots from Central Casting
What is remarkable about Bonior, McDermott, and Thompson is that apparently no bribe was necessary to procure their services; their ideology placed them at odds with their own nation’s security.
The three had acted on this ideology before and after the 2002 junket to Baghdad. Following the first attack on the World Trace Center, Vermont Representative, and self-professed socialist, Bernie Sanders introduced an amendment to cut a minimum of 10 percent of the funding of each intelligence agency ten times. David Bonior then Democratic Whip, voted for the Sanders amendment all 10 times. Bonior did all he could to end a 1990 FBI program to cultivate intelligence sources within the Muslim community...the kind of sources that could have prevented 9/11, or informed on al-Hanooti earlier. As a reward, Bonior received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Sami al-Arian.
Bonior left the Congress shortly thereafter, but “Baghdad Jim” stayed to carry on the good fight against his own country during the ensuing war. When U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, McDermott accused his miliary of complicity in a Republican war sham, saying they could have nabbed the Tikriti tyrant “a long time ago if the wanted.” After the New York Times and The Washington Post published articles disclosing the existence of classified anti-terrorism programs – the warrantless wiretapping of al-Qaeda partisans and the rendition of those captured, respectively – McDermott hailed the security breaches for “breaking through the administration’s secrecy.” Again, he blamed his own commander-in-chief, accusing President Bush of trying to impose “censorship”...of classified war techniques.
The Irrelevant Fallout
The history and ideological mania of the principals has long been known; only the official Iraqi sponsorship remained a mystery. Last night’s revelation leads to two conclusions:
First, the Democratic Party and its apologists will emphasize that the three Congressmen had no idea Saddam Hussein had financed their trip. They will point out it had been cleared by the appropriate offices of the U.S. government, shifting the blame to Bush administration bureaucracy. McDermott’s office has maintained the Washington State Democrat “thought the trip was put on by a Seattle church,”and a spokesman said the Congressman went only to observe “the plight of Iraqi children.” Rep. Thompson’s office has echoed that he had no knowledge of improprieties in the underwriting of his subversive sojourn.
It is almost certainly true that the three had no such knowledge. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd has stated that investigators “have no information whatsoever” to that effect. However, the government must make an exhaustive investigation to ascertain that this is the case.
Second, what the Left will obscure is the irrefutable fact that their prior knowledge is immaterial. The three knew beforehand that they were traveling to the capital of a nation, which had for years regularly fired on U.S. aircraft, as part of a tightly controlled tour of a dictatorship on the brink of defying its way into full-blown war with their constituents. And they shilled for the man who authorized the torture of rape of his children as though he had only their best interests at heart and as though he were prevented from expressing his immense love for his people only by heartless Republicans. After all, they deny health care to Americans; why wouldn’t they deny it to Iraqis?
In other words, when Third World dictators need someone to run interference, they know who to contact: leftist Democrats. Bonior, McDermott, and Thompson received nothing for their troubles, but al-Hanooti’s more than earned his bounty – yet as we note in Party of Defeat, “moderate” voices of the Democratic Party spoke not a word of condemnation. Democratic Minority Leader and 2004 presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt remarked merely that “every member has to reach...their own conclusion.” [sic.] When asked if he would condemn McDermott’s statements, conservative Texas Democrat and then-Congressman Martin Frost replied with a terse “No.”
When North Korean extremists need to stall for time to develop weapons for nuclear blackmail, they call Jimmy Carter. By 2004, the Axis of Evil nations endorsed John Kerry. On election eve, Osama bin Laden released a tape strongly influenced by Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and his rhetoric since then has hewed closely to the Left’s party line – earning him an increasingly positive assessment from its membership.
Today, even as American troops are succeeding militarily via the surge strategy proposed by John McCain, the Democratic Left’s leadership demands unilateral withdrawal that would not merely maintain a thuggish and repressive, if stabilizing, status quo; it would vacate the battlefield, create a failed state, and give the perpetrators of 9/11 a new national base of operations.
But now, just as six years ago, certain leftists “don’t mind being used” by those with a thirst for massive bloodletting.
Great post!
Of course these traitors will be treated and defended as heroes by the MSM, the rats in Congress and other high profile rats.
A perfidious trio, worthy representatives of the contemporary democratic party.
Dems are a waste of skin.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1992105/posts
US: Saddam paid for lawmakers’ Iraq trip
news.yahoo.com ^
Posted on 03/26/2008 3:07:47 PM PDT by bad company
WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say 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.
An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.
In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.
The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. There was no indication the three lawmakers knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1992105/posts
JIM MCDERMOTT
In October 2002, Congressman Jim McDermott -- along with Representatives David Bonior and Mike Thompson -- took a trip to Iraq that had great propaganda value for Saddam Hussein’s regime. During the trip, the trio publicly expressed doubt about the Bush administration's claims that Saddam’s regime had manufactured and stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Now federal prosecutors charge that the lawmakers’ trip was secretly financed, through an intermediary named Muthanna Al-Hanooti, by Saddam’s intelligence agency. According to the indictment, Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit organization named Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations (FAAIR), arranged the trip at the behest of Saddam’s regime. In exchange for his efforts, Al-Hanooti was allegedly rewarded with 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Responding to the foregoing revelations, McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said, “Obviously we didn't know it at the time. The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That's the only reason we went.”
Jim McDermott is a Democratic Member of Congress who represents the Seventh District of Washington State, located in the heart of Seattle.
McDermott was born in 1936 in Chicago, earned a B.S. degree from conservative Wheaton College (the same Alma Mater as Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert) in 1958 and an M.D. degree from the University of Illinois in 1963. After serving in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps from 1968 to 1970, he took a job at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle.
Drawn to politics, McDermott ran for a seat in the lower house of the state legislature in 1970 and won, moving up to the state Senate four years later. In 1980 he ran for Governor, ousting moderate Democratic incumbent Dixy Lee Ray in the primary but losing in November to a Republican in that year’s Ronald Reagan landslide. McDermott retired from the state legislature in 1987, served briefly as a medical officer with the U.S. Foreign Service in tropical Africa, but returned to Washington State in 1988 to run for an open Seventh District seat in Congress. He won the Democratic primary with a 38 percent plurality and the general election by 76 percent.
McDermott quickly became, and remains, one of the farthest left members of Congress. He belongs to the radical Progressive Caucus, and has been rated 95 percent liberal in his voting by the progressive Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).
The only certified psychiatrist in Congress, McDermott advocates Canadian-style socialized medicine.
In 1996, while sitting as ranking minority member of the House Ethics Committee then hearing charges against Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, McDermott received an illegally-recorded cell phone conversation among Republican congressional leaders. McDermott himself then apparently violated the law by giving access to this stolen conversation to the New York Times, which quoted excerpts in a story days later. McDermott agreed to apologize to the House for his behavior, but not to admit wrongdoing.
McDermott voted against the use of force in Iraq and against allowing oil drilling on 20 acres of the 1.2 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
In September 2002 he traveled to Baghdad along with fellow Progressive Caucus member Rep. David Bonior (D.-Michigan) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D.-California). These lawmakers embraced Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein and created propaganda in his behalf. Interviewed upon his return by George Stephanopoulos on ABC, McDermott declared, as U.S. News & World Report senior writer Michael Barone noted, that President George W. Bush was “trying to provoke a war.”
McDermott told the startled Stephanopoulos that he found Saddam Hussein more credible than the President of the United States. “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their value -- at their face value,” said McDermott, but “I think the president would mislead the American people.”
At the time, it was believed that the $5,510 travel expenses of McDermott’s trip to Baghdad were paid by the nonprofit organization Life for Relief and Development. This organization shipped food and medicine to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One of its financial supporters was Detroit-area Iraqi-American businessman Shakir al-Khafaji, who according to an April 2004 investigation published by the Seattle Times received “lucrative vouchers for Iraqi oil from Saddam’s government.”
In addition to his $5,000 luxury junket to Baghdad, McDermott also received a $5,000 check from al-Khafaji that got deposited in the Congressman’s legal fund set up to pay for lawyers in the case involving McDermott’s involvement in the aforementioned cell phone case. McDermott returned this $5,000 -- but not the travel money -- in April 2004. He told the Seattle Times that he was unaware of the close links between his benefactor al-Khafaji and Saddam Hussein.
But this link between Saddam, al-Khafaji and the money McDermott pocketed should have been easy to see. “Since 1992,” reported Stephen Hayes in a May 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard, “al-Khafaji has served as president of the regime-backed Expatriate Conferences…. The government provided subsidized travel for Iraqis living outside the country.” The conferences were used to create leverage, pro-Saddam lobbying and a kind of political Fifth Column via Iraqis living in the U.S. and other nations.
“No one has accused McDermott of being a mouthpiece for Saddam Hussein simply for financial reasons,” wrote Hayes. “…McDermott has been saying stupid things for years with no evidence anyone has paid him to do so.”
Congressman McDermott was one of 14 leftwing Democrats in 2002 who refused to support a resolution condemning the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional and had to be prohibited in public schools and other government forums because it contained the words “under God.”
In 2003 McDermott was one of only 11 Members of Congress who voted against a non-binding resolution “expressing the support and appreciation of the nation for the President and the members of the armed forces who are participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
McDermott’s biggest source of campaign funds by a wide margin is organized labor, and one of his largest donors has been the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (which in 2006 was renamed the American Association for Justice). Other large McDermott donors are the pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough, the Seattle area-based Microsoft Corporation and Costco, and the American Psychiatric Association (whose members have an interest in the government subsidizing mental health care).
Truly Saddam’s angels.
those three are the definition of USEFUL IDIOTS !
These three seditious scumbags should thank God they live in this country. In many other countries, they would be hanging from the gallows for there actions.
Wonder if they got to use the rape room while there, too....
Mike Thompson’s home newspaper has a front page article on this.
http://www.naparegister.com/articles/2008/03/27/news/local/doc47eb248b00b7f287404342.txt
Did Saddam pay for Thompson’s 2002 Iraq trip?
Thursday, March 27, 2008
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — 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.
The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. While traveling, they called for a diplomatic solution.
Prosecutors say that trip was arranged by Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Michigan charity official, who was charged Wednesday with setting up the junket at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Iraqi intelligence officials allegedly paid for the trip through an intermediary and rewarded Al-Hanooti with 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.
The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, Jim McDermott of Washington state and David Bonior of Michigan. None was charged and Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators “have no information whatsoever” any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
Thompson released a statement Wednesday saying the trip was approved by the State Department.
“Obviously, had there been any question at all regarding the sponsor of the trip or the funding, I would not have participated,” he said.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Thompson said prosecutors have not suggested improper conduct by the members of Congress. The charity was investigated two years ago and was cleared to continue its work.
“The charity that paid for the trip, they didn’t do anything wrong,” said Thompson. “It was somebody involved with them that is alleged to have taken money inappropriately.”
As for his trip, Thompson said this week’s action do nothing to change what he witnessed.
“The people I saw in Baghdad, the people I talked to and the input I got from them certainly were not influenced by this charity or the donors to this charity,” he said.
“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.”
Both McDermott and Thompson are popular among liberal voters in their reliably Democratic districts for their anti-war views. Bonior is no longer in Congress.
During the trip, the lawmakers expressed skepticism about the Bush administration’s claims that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Though such weapons ultimately were never found, the lawmakers drew criticism for their trip at the time.
Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, then the second-ranking Senate Republican, said the Democrats “sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government.”
Seattle-area conservatives dubbed McDermott “Baghdad Jim” for the Iraq trip.
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.
Between 1999 and 2006, he worked on and off as a public relations coordinator for Life for Relief and Development, a charity formed after the first Gulf War to fund humanitarian work in Iraq. FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents raided the charity’s headquarters in 2006 but charged nobody and allowed the agency to continue operating.
McDermott identified that charity as the group financing the Iraq trip. In House disclosure forms, he put the cost at $5,510. Thompson also understood the charity to be financing the trip, spokeswoman Anne Warden said.
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.
Thomas said Al-Hanooti would “vigorously defend” himself against the charges but he could not discuss the specifics of the case since he had seen none of the evidence.
Register staff contributed to this report.
When his lips are moving...
How can you tell when a DemocRAT is lying...
When his lips are moving...
That is one of my favorites. I have adapted it to “When does a rat quit lying? When hesheit dies, unless they keep voting.
THERE IS NOT AN ANTIAMERICAN DICTATOR WITH WHOM MCDERMOTT DIDN’T FEEL IN COMPLETE SOLIDARITY.
CASTRO’S COCKROACHES
by Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
On December 14, 1999, Granma, the official Castro regime newspaper published an interview with Castro. In it, referring to the Elián González’s affair Castro said that the struggle would be “a battle of national and world opinion and that the battle will not cease until that child returns.” Making an obvious reference to his extensive U.S. support network, he said, “there are important sectors in the United States that want the child returned. So when we protest and denounce to the world what is happening and unleash a battle, we are unleashing a battle for those persons within the United States.”
Castro’s statement exposes that there are many high-profile Americans that are members of his support network. Looking at the backgrounds and past actions of some of them in relation to the totalitarian regime in Havana, their membership is clear. For example, Rep. José Serrano (D-NY), who courted the Cuban American votes in 1992 campaigning against Castro to later become an apologist and an advocate for his regime, actively lobbied for the return of Elián González. What accounts for this change of position? Does Castro know something about Serrano and other American politicians and members of the U.S. media that accounts for their behavior supporting his tyrannical ways?
According to official U.S. sources and academic studies, the former Soviet Union-built Lourdes espionage station near Havana poses a threat to the U.S. Introduced in the House of Representatives on March 29, 2000, the Russian-American Trust and Cooperation Act of 2000 (H.R.4118) Section 2. Findings, paragraph (8) states: this facility “is being used to collect personal information about U.S. citizens in private and government sectors, and offers the means to engage in cyberwarfare against the United States.” Is this facility providing Castro blackmail material on U.S. politicians, influential citizens and news media people?
If Serrano and other Americans have any doubt to whom Elián belongs, they just have to read the Cuban Communist Constitution and listen to Luis Fernández, a “diplomat” at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. who said, “He [Elián] is a possession of the Cuban government. No other entity can remove this.” According to J. Michael Waller and Jamie Dettmer of the Insight Magazine, Fernández was identified as one of the attackers of the group of peaceful demonstrators outside the Cuban “diplomatic” section last April 14 in Washington DC.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the U.S. It is affiliated with the Socialist International. Fifty-four U.S. Congressmen are members of the DSA. Coincidentally (?), 34 of these “socialists” are among the most militant members of the pro-Castro lobby. To name just a few, on Capitol Hill we find in the pro-Castro gang Representatives Barney Frank (D-MA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC-AL), Jesse Jackson (D-IL), Julian C. Dixon (D-CA), James A. McDermott (D-WA), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA), etc.
All of them have been faithfully executing the orders of their tyrant-in-chief “unleashing a battle for” Elián’s return to Castro. They are the dependable, fanatical and vociferous taxpayer-paid pro-Castro crowd on Capitol Hill. Many of them have participated in press conferences and interviews promoting the tyrant’s crusade. By their actions they have condemned an innocent 6-year-old child to a life of abuse in the hands of Castro’s infamous psychiatric re-education facilities to eradicate from him the taste of freedom he experienced before being illegally kidnapped under false pretences by Clinton-Reno’s Gestapo-like troops to ultimately being sent back to Cuba.
Washington’s James McDermott, is a fanatical supporter of Castro and the infamous Venceremos Brigades which in the 60s and 70s brought thousands of American students to Cuba under the guise of cutting sugar cane. But these Americans students also received indoctrination so that in the future (we are now seeing the results) they would help the Castro regime’s campaign in the U.S. to favor his goals and serve as access to economic, political and military intelligence. These Venceremos Brigade graduates have effectively infiltrated the foundations of our society. There are unconfirmed rumors that Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 70s was a Venceremos Brigade graduate. If that is true, we have at least one of them very close to the president.
New York’s Charles Rangel’s love affair with Castro dates back to 1959, when Castro stayed at Harlem’s Hotel Theresa and Rangel sat beside him at the dinner table. Ever since he has been the useful servant and he travels to Cuba often bringing members of the U.S. Congress’ Black Caucus and TransAfrica to marvel at the socialist “paradise,” that his friend, Castro - probably the biggest slave master in the history of slavery - has created in Cuba.
Apparently Rangel and company couldn’t care less about the reigning apartheid in Cuba and that their black Cuban brothers are, at 80%, overpopulating Castro’s jails and labor camps and they are hardly in important positions in that socialist utopia. I do not have any recollection of Rangel and company protesting the gross institutional violations of human rights in Cuba, including against the many black pro-democracy activists and independent journalists in Cuba. Rangel and company, in their constant meddling in Cuban affairs and actions of support for the Castro regime, in their myopic view, do not want to meet any of the black political prisoners and harassed activists inside Cuba.
Another faithful servant of slave master Castro is California’s Representative Maxine Waters who has worked actively on his behalf in detriment of the most famous innocent 6-year old in the world. Rep. Waters travels to Cuba often, apparently for guidance or orders from her socialist comrades. She recently was in Havana cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony of a Medical Convention with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA).
Waters is siding with Fidel, because she apparently is repaying his favor of hiding for her a former Black Panther convicted of murder in the U.S. On September 29, 1998, Rep. Waters wrote a “Dear President Castro” letter saying, “I, and some of the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, mistakenly voted for House Concurrent Resolution 254 which called on the Government of Cuba to extradite to the United States Joanne Chesimard and all other individuals who have fled the United States from political persecution [!] and received political asylum in Cuba. Joanne Chesimard was the birth name of a political activist known to most Members of the Congressional Black Caucus as Assata Shakur.”
Chesimard, AKA, Shakur, a militant member of the Black Panthers was not politically prosecuted in the U.S., rather she was a convicted killer of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster, who was murdered execution-style in a turnpike shootout in 1973. She also wounded his partner. She was not a civil rights leader but a convicted murderer and one of New Jersey’s 12 most wanted fugitives widely sought by various government and law enforcement agencies. She escaped from prison in 1979 and surfaced in Cuba in the 1980s where she has been living since. In her September 1998 letter Rep. Waters encouraged Castro not to extradite her and the other criminals hiding from U.S. justice in Cuba. That speaks volumes about a member of Congress!
Also among the crowd of influential and puzzling Americans that have worked so hard to push Castro’s agenda in the U.S. we have Senator Christopher Dodd, who on May 11, 1999 was heavily criticized in an article written by Angel Pablo Polanco. As an independent journalist living in Cuba, Polanco says, “Senator Dodd is not interested in the reality of the Cuban people, he is interested only in business.” He and his followers show “disloyalty to the principles of freedom.”
The now jailed black human rights activist Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet expressed “consternation” for the statements made by Dodd in relation to the lifting of the U.S. embargo published on April 27, 1999 in Miami’s El Nuevo Herald. A document released by the Lawton Human Rights Foundation in Cuba, founded by Dr. Bicet, says, “The communist system is the source and cause of the Cubans’ hardship. The people suffer under the communist boot. Communism is the new slavery. The lifting of the embargo must be conditioned to the respect of the human rights, freedom of all political prisoners, a multi-party system and free elections, this is a matter of principles not business.”
But, apparently, principles are lacking from Castro’s U.S. fan club. As we see, the above-mentioned and others unmentioned (including the National Council of Churches, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the United Methodist Church, Pastors for Peace, Randall Robinson, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda, Greg Craig and many prominent members of the media like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumble, Gerardo Rivera, Ted Turner, Lucia Newman, etc.) reveal by their actions their part in the infestation of Castro’s cockroaches.
They are more than useful idiots, they are committed Marxists who hate their own country.
CONGRESSMAN MCDERMOTT IS AMONG THE TEN MOST DISHONORABLE AMERICANS.
The Ten Most Dishonorable Americans
By Ben Johnson and John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/3/2003
Americans are a resilient lot. The attacks of September 11th showed, despite progressive urbanization and isolation, Americans pull together when under attack. Those of all political, economic, racial and religious backgrounds renewed their commitment to the United States and to their fellow countrymen - and their resolve to stand against their common enemies. However, even in this changed environment, some side with the enemy - while the enemy is killing American citizens. These ten people, presented in no particular order, deserve the title “the most dishonorable Americans.”
6. Rep. James McDermott, D-WA: He may be a U.S. Representative, but one could argue whether Jim McDermott is “honorable” after becoming a willing accomplice in Saddam Hussein’s international propaganda war. Just after the anniversary of 9/11, McDermott set off for Iraq with fellow Congressmen David Bonior, D-MI, and Mike Thompson, D-CA, and concluded President George W. Bush is a liar. “I think the president would mislead the American people,” he thundered. After all, maniac-in-chief Bush is “trying to provoke a war.” However, the jaded McDermott had not lost faith in all of humanity. “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value,” chirped the credulous Congressman. McDermott claims Tariq Aziz and other Iraqi officials “said they would allow us to go look anywhere we wanted”; evidently, Hans Blix didn’t get the memo. For honoring the word of a maniacal dictator over that of President Bush, the U.S. intelligence establishment and 12 years of UN consensus, McDermott & co. garnered the title “spokespeople for the Iraqi government” from the always-perceptive
Thanks for posting!!!
HYPOCRISY IN SEATTLE © ABIP 1999
By Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
The 1968-1973 report “Cuban War Crimes Against American POWs During The Vietnam War” by ex-POW Michael D. Benge, confirms that over 20 American POWs were tortured and murdered by Cuban agents during the Vietnam War.
Michael D. Benge, spent 11 years in Vietnam - over five as a prisoner-of-war (1968-1973). Benge was held in numerous camps in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam. He spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a “black box.”
The issue of Cubans torturing American POWs in Vietnam has been known for decades, once surviving prisoners reported it to Defense Department officials in 1973. According to Benge’s report, however, the Pentagon kept the lid on the matter because of national security.
Benge’s report quoted Air Force Ace Major James Kasler as saying, “for days in June 1968, I was tortured by [an agent named] ‘Fidel.’” The report describes in gruesome detail what Kasler and other POWs went through at the hands of their Cuban torturers under the names of “Fidel,” “Chico” and “García” (also nicknamed “Pancho”) who were sent to North Vietnam by Castro’s regime to deal with American POWs.
Kasler said in Time Magazine on April 9, 1971, “at least 15 men” were killed by the Cuban torturers in what became the infamous “Cuban Program.”
An emotional hearing was held on November 4 of this year before the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations seeking to re-open a long overdue investigation about the Cuban regime’s involvement in torturing and killing American POWs.
Retired U.S. Navy Captain Ray Vohden and Air Force Colonel Jack Bomar gave chilling testimony on their treatment by three Cuban officials at a Hanoi prison camp known as “the Zoo.” They said that one of their colleagues, Air Force Captain Earl G. Cobeil was beaten so badly by the Cuban agents that he lapsed into a coma and subsequently died.
Retired US Air Force Colonel Ed Hubbard, during a press conference last September 8 at Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s Miami office, identified the Cuban torturer known as “Fidel,” as Castro’s current Minister of Higher Education, General Fernando Vecino Alegret, corroborated by the fact that he was known to have been in North Vietnam around 1967.
Benge’s report states that the torturers “were part of a Cuban diplomatic contingent assigned to Hanoi’s Enemy Proselytizing Bureau, and were directly responsible for the murder and torture of a considerable number of American POWs.” And “According to one CIA dispatch, the Cuban Program was conducted at the Cuu Loc PW camp from August 1967 through July 1968.
“There were two other prison camps located near Cuban facilities in North Vietnam where American POWs were held. One, located at ‘Work Site 5’ (Cong Truong 5), just north of the DMZ, was adjacent to a Cuban field hospital that Fidel Castro visited in 1972.”
The report continues, “According to the Baltimore Sun (8/15/77), CIA analysts identified two Cuban military attaches, Eduardo Morejón Estevez and Luis Pérez Jaén, who had backgrounds which seemed to correspond with information [on two of the torturers] supplied by returning POWs.”
In his recent bestseller, Faith of My Fathers, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a former POW, also recounted the torture of American servicemen by Cuban agents. McCain, after his return from Vietnam in 1973, identified one of the Cuban torturers by photographs and composite drawings in CIA files.
Benge’s report says that McCain was told that the responsibilities of one of the Cuban torturers included the coordination of the American contingent of the Venceremos Brigade.
According to S. Steven Powell’s 1987 book, Cover Cadre, Inside the Institute for Policy Study, the Venceremos Brigade was an “arm of the DGI [Cuban secret police]” which by 1970 was controlled by the Soviet KGB.
The express purpose of this brigade was to recruit young American activists. Under the guise of going to Cuba to help harvest sugar cane, these Americans were given indoctrination so that in the future they would help the Castro regime’s campaigns in the U.S. to favor his goals and serve as “access to economic, political and military intelligence.”
McCain was told that this brigade “was also responsible for funneling Soviet money to the Americans to support anti-war activities.”
However, recently, Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) proudly wrote “Seattle was one of the most ardent supporters of the Venceremos Brigade in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Several of Seattle’s prominent political and business leaders were Venceremos Brigade graduates or supporters.”
Another report cited by Benge about the Vietnam War states, “U.S. prisoners-of-war captured in Vietnam were reported transferred to communist prisons in Cuba during later 1965 and throughout 1966.
Some former POWs, angry at the way the US government has handled the Cuban involvement during the Vietnam War, are even considering suing Cuba.
In spite of what is known for decades about the Castro regime’s involvement in vicious and brutal tortures of U.S. POWs in North Vietnam, Congressman McDermott - who in the past several years has been seen attending many Veterans Day events - sent an invitation letter to Castro to visit Seattle.
On July 15, McDermott wrote to Castro, “I am hopeful that your visit will give us an opportunity to educate the American public about Cuba.” And, “You will be received respectfully, graciously and warmly.”
McDermott’s warmth for Castro overlooks the fact that his tyranny is the longest and cruelest in the history of the Americas. And that Castro’s regime caused the death of 86,000 Cubans. In addition, his military interventions in Latin America, Africa and other places have caused thousands of deaths and brought misery to millions.
With this record at hand, McDermott has the audacity to invite Castro and to say that he will be received in Seattle “respectfully, graciously and warmly”, this to the greatest violator of human rights in our hemisphere.
I wonder how the former POWs who survived Castro’s Vietnam torturers “Fidel,” “Chico” and “García” feel about McDermott’s statements.
According to the October issue of the U.S. Cuba Policy Report, “In September, leaders of the Seattle-Cuba Friendship Committee, Chris Pforr, Doug Barnes and Chris Laroche hosted Cuban officials Félix Wilson Hernández and José Imperatori given the possibility Castro may attend the WTO [World Trade Organization] meeting.”
The U.S. Cuba Policy Report says, “Attendance by Castro at the WTO meeting in Seattle is dependent upon approval by the State Department which must grant a visa as has been done in the past by the Clinton Administration when approval was granted for a visit to New York during the 50th United Nations anniversary held in October 1995.”
In the past, the Clinton Administration’s State Department has granted visas to Castro’s thugs. For example: Eduardo Bernabé Ordaz, M.D., on September 1997 and May 1999, notorious director-for-life of Mazorra, a mental hospital documented in the 1991 book The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba by Charles J. Brown and Armando Lago, to use heavy doses of psychotropic drugs and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to punish human rights and pro-democracy activists.
The September issue of the U.S. Cuba Policy Report says that currently, the State Department is considering granting a visa to Fernando García Bielsa to work at the Cuba Interests Section in Washington, D.C. García Bielsa, according to U.S. records revealed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, is “a notorious Cuban intelligence operative, known for his support of terrorism and espionage [throughout Latin America and the Caribbean].”
Karen Howard, from Washington State, outraged by the possible visit of Castro to Seattle during the WTO meeting, November 30 through December 3 of this year, contacted McDermott’s office on November 8.
She asked if the current revelations of Cuban torturers in North Vietnam might change his mind about his personal invitation to Castro. But she was told that “he does not intend to rescind the letter.”
On November 17, for this article, I called McDermott’s Washington D.C. office and asked the same question as Ms Howard. The answer given by Legislative Assistant Christopher Dumm was, “Not at all.” When I asked why, he said, “This is an excellent opportunity to reassess our policy toward Cuba.”
Apparently, as the record shows, McDermott is an unrepentant fanatic of Castro. We know of his admiration of the infamous Venceremos Brigades, his apparent disregard for the POWs victimized by Castro’s torturers and profound disregard for Cuban’s suffering, by supporting their oppressor. Or is he just desperate for the publicity he would certainly get for rubbing elbows with Castro? The press is sure to cooperate!
In opposition to McDermott, Donald Trump said recently in Miami that to get rid of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship, the United States must retain its economic embargo of Cuba. “He’s been a killer, he’s a criminal, and I don’t think you should reward people who have done what he’s done.’’
Commenting on McDermott’s adamant inflexibility, Ms. Howard said, “Don’t we owe it to our veterans not to reward dictators who ignore the Geneva Convention and send mercenaries to beat and torture American POWs?
The hypocrisy in Seattle is reaching alarming proportions. The officials at the University of Washington, in an outrageous act of insensitivity to Castro’s victims are inviting Castro to speak on December 2 in their 1,200-seat Meany Hall. They plan to simulcast Castro’s speech over the university cable access channel and to Kane Hall on campus.
I wonder if Richard McCormick, UW President, in the name of freedom of speech, would also invite Augusto Pinochet, David Duke or Adolf Hitler to speak to the students and faculty of his university.
It is no secret: Castro is the darling of and is very well entrenched in the influential U.S. academic left who, in spite of Castro’s known criminal record, continue with their blatant insults directed at his victims. This situation as of late is becoming increasingly classifiable as hate crimes against Cubans because of their dislike of their oppressor.
What’s next? Will the UW proudly display Castro’s swastika: “Socialism or Death!”?
When Castro’s control of Cuba is finally over and the atrocities are publicized for the world to see, many people and institutions in the U.S. will have to run for cover in shame. Since these people and institutions have been warned for years about the crimes and they refuse to listen, relationships will be strained for years to come.
Do not forget that over a million victims of Castro have been living as exiles in the U.S. for decades and are witnesses of this hypocritical conduct.
© ABIP 1999
Agustín Blázquez, Producer/Director of the documentaries COVERING CUBA and CUBA: THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES
“...we don’t mind being used.”
Because... the enemy oy my enemy ( the US Constitution and individual liberty) is my friend.
*of
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