Chance favors the prepared mind - Louis Pasteur

What He Didn’t Tell You

by Lee

Odd, isn’t it, that Michael Moore will summon up every six-degrees-of-separation link between Bush and assorted nefarious characters to try and prove some kind of a grand conspiracy, but somehow manages to neglect to mention this.

Rep. Jim McDermott, who represents the coffee houses of liberal downtown Seattle, was treated like a rock star at the Democratic convention. Everywhere he went, he was recognized as the man whom filmmaker Michael Moore threw Bush Bashing softballs to in “Fahrenheit 9/11.” He was especially popular with a group college Democrats, who sobered up one morning when he told them: “Everybody in this room who is 17 years old should know that the likelihood of a draft in a second Bush administration is almost a certainty.”

Mr. McDermott said he was proud of his appearance in the Moore film because the public’s reaction has “really saved the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” When students told me about Mr. McDermott’s comments here, I suggested his track record of political acumen had included a lot of running off the side of the road. As the Iraq war loomed in September 2002, Rep. McDermott and two other Democratic congressmen accompanied a politically connected Detroit businessman named Shakir al-Khafaji to Baghdad. The trip proved to be something of a propaganda coup for Saddam Hussein, with Mr. McDermott suggesting in a televised interview from Baghdad that President Bush “would mislead the American people” while saying “I think you have to take the Iraqis at face value.”

Mr. al-Khafaji seems to have taken a particular shine to Mr. McDermott, resulting in another contribution—$5,000—to a legal defense fund that had been set up for the congressman in an unrelated case. “He’s a friend and he gives me money,” Mr. McDermott told Roll Call. Apparently, he is no longer a friend. This year, Mr. As-Khafaji’s name appeared on a recently published list of individuals who received oil money from Saddam Hussein. That’s a story you won’t see in Mr. Moore’s film.

What?  You mean Baghdad Jim’s friends were Saddam’s paid whores, being showered in filthy lucre acquired through the UN’s corrupt oil-for-food program?  I’m shocked, I tell you… shocked!

Update: Welcome Instapundit readers!  Please see the follow-up to this story here.

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