{"id":2790,"date":"2008-03-27T04:28:33","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T04:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/saddam-paid-for-congressmen-trip\/2790\/"},"modified":"2008-03-27T04:28:33","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T04:28:33","slug":"saddam-paid-for-congressmen-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/saddam-paid-for-congressmen-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Saddam paid for Congressmen trip&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana\" id=\"ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_lblBody\"><strong>Saddam Hussein&#8217;s intelligence agency had secretly financed a trip to Iraq by US lawmakers before the US invasion, federal prosecutors say. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s regime.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange for coordinating the trip, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.<\/p>\n<p>The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott, David Bonior and Mike Thompson.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>During the trip, the lawmakers expressed skepticism about the Bush&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Don Nickles, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats &#8216;sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.presstv.ir\/detail.aspx?id=49104&amp;sectionid=3510203\">AGB\/PA<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saddam Hussein&#8217;s intelligence agency had secretly financed a trip to Iraq by US lawmakers before the US invasion, federal prosecutors say. 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&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-2790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"category-usa-news","8":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}