Saddam-Boosting Congressman McDermott: Obama's Secretary of State?

October 25th, 2008 3:39 PM

If we elect President Obama, will he appoint a Saddam-funded spokesman as Secretary of State? The Chicago socialist magazine In These Times recommends in its "Twenty-Two to Know" cabinet picks that Rep. Jim McDermott be named Secretary of State and former Rep. David Bonior be tagged as Secretary of Labor. Brent Baker reported earlier this year that McDermott and Bonior were funded by Saddam's regime before the war as they appeared on ABC from Baghdad to oppose the war:

“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. 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's regime.”

When two of those Congressmen, Democrats Jim McDermott of Washington and David Bonior of Michigan, appeared from Baghdad on the September 29, 2002 This Week on ABC, George Stephanopoulos -- the MRC's Rich Noyes reminded me -- chastised a critic, not McDermott and Bonior, for daring to condemn the loaded charges against the U.S propagated by the two left-wingers. After McDermott blasted U.S. foreign policy from Baghdad, a shocked George Will remarked, "Why Saddam Hussein doesn’t pay commercial time for that advertisement for his policy, I do not know." Turns out, he did.

When liberals across America expressed outrage that Rep. Michele Bachmann would suggest the media investigate for anti-American members of Congress, these two names popped right into my head.