McCain hires Saddam Hussein's corrupt lobbyist as his transition chief.

[choie]

Ain’t this a kick in the head? As McCain promises to attack Obama for his alleged Ayers connection in the debate, a new investigative piece reveals that McCain’s the proverbial pot calling the kettle black when it comes to being associated with scuzzy figures. Difference is, McCain actually hired these sleazoids, and they’re working for him now. And the connection involves no less a gentleman than one of the world’s most notorious boogeymen, Saddam Hussein.

From Article by Murray Waas* for The Huffington Post:

@Journalist Murray Waas

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein’s government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

. . .

Later, when Timmons pressed the case even more aggressively that sanctions against Saddam’s regime be eased, he, Vincent and Park hoped to profit as well, according to the Volcker report. “Continuing through 1994 and 1995, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Park, along with Mr. Timmons and others, persisted in their efforts to establish a foothold in the Iraqi oil business,” the report stated.

At one point, Timmons even boasted to investigators that it was his ideas that later became the basis for the United Nations’ oil-for-food program.

Under that program, the United Nations allowed Iraq to sell its oil under U.N. supervision, with the proceeds placed in U.N. escrow accounts to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.

However, a major flaw in the program was that Saddam Hussein’s regime was allowed to play a role in the selection of oil companies awarded contracts. Because of lax oversight of the program, Saddam’s government was able to demand that foreign oil companies – including American ones – provide more than $1.7 billion in kickbacks to his regime.

One of the most outspoken critics in the U.S. Senate of the oil-for-food program was John McCain.

Topics for discussion:

• The obvious: how damning is this, and will it stick? What does this say about McCain’s judgment in picking a team (as if going with Palin weren’t enough)?

• The right are up in arms over Obama’s tenuous connections to a guy whose despicable acts were 40 years ago, when Obama was probably watching Underdog and SuperFriends. Ayers reformed himself and turned into a highly respected, much-praised citizen, and the link to Obama now is still vague at best. What, if anything, will the right’s defense be for McCain choosing to place in charge of his transition team (which I pray he will not need) a man who lobbied for a despicable regime and a program McCain himself spoke against?

• Doesn’t this make McCain a massive hypocrite, for a couple of different reasons? (First, hiring a lobbyist who worked for a pernicious regime McCain obviously disagreed with, and second, bitching about Ayers when his own connections are just as, if not more, odious?)

• Do you think Obama might mention this during the debate if McCain brings up Ayers? For that matter, will/ought these revelations cause McCain to think twice about bringing up Ayers?

• For anyone curious about Waas’s credentials, or who feels ready to bitch that he’s a muckraking nobody, here’s what some peers say, according to Wikipedia:

In June 1998, J.D. Lasica published “The Web: A New Channel for Investigative Journalism”, a “sidebar” to his article entitled “Salon: The Best Pure-Play Web Publication?”, published in American Journalism Review, assessing reporting on the Impeachment of Bill Clinton in Salon.com by Waas and his colleagues, observing that “Salon’s coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky matter—its first sustained foray into classic investigative journalism—has served as a counterweight to the mainstream media’s wolfpack mindset” and citing the view of Andrew Ross (then-managing editor of Salon); according to Lasica, “Salon’s investigative journalism … has raised old media’s hackles because, Ross says, it was done the old-fashioned way: shoe leather, cultivating sources, working the phones—no new-media tricks here.” Indeed, Lasica continues the 1998 account, by pointing out that Waas, who has written a dozen stories for Salon, is [at that time] a bit of a technophobe; he never signs onto the Web and has never seen his stories online. He writes for Salon, he says, because ‘I like the daily rhythm and the immediacy.’"

Waas’s reporting on the administration of George W. Bush, especially with regard to the Plame affair, has been called “groundbreaking” by New York University journalism Professor Jay Rosen, who considers Waas the “new Bob Woodward”: “By Woodward Now,” Rosen writes of Waas, “I mean the reporter who is actually doing what Woodward has a reputation for doing: finding, tracking, breaking into reportable parts—and then publishing—the biggest story in town.”

In the Summer of 2006, writing in Nieman Reports, Jim Boyd, former deputy editorial page editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for twenty-four years, prepared an “exclusive list” of newspaper reporters whom he considered “courageous,” including among them Murray Waas: “People I consider courageous are Murray Waas at the National Journal; Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com and niemanwatchdog.org; Warren Strobel and several of his colleagues at the Knight Ridder Washington bureau (soon to be the McClatchy Washington bureau); Walter Pincus and Dana Priest of the [Washington] Post. And, of course, Helen Thomas.”

[Euphonious_Polemic]

<Right wing hat>

I demand that Obama repudiate this cowardly attack upon Mr. McCain by this Marxist sleazebag, Murray Waas. Obama obviously has no shame, and is not a character that you should vote for.

[descamisado]

Besides, if Obama had agreed to the number of town halls McCain wanted, Hussein never would have been born.

[Lakai]

The Senate ethics committee never convicted McCain for any of this, so it doesn’t matter.

Look, McCain knows how to hire his transition team. He knows how to pick qualified people to run this country.

You know when McCain did not have ties with Saddam Hussein? When he was in Hanoi getting tortured for his country. When he was being a Maverick in the Senate reaching across party lines.

You know who was never American enough to get tortured for America? Obama and the members of the far left that he associates himself with.

[mswas]

@Lakai

The Senate ethics committee never convicted McCain for any of this, so it doesn’t matter.

Look, McCain knows how to hire his transition team. He knows how to pick qualified people to run this country.

You know when McCain did not have ties with Saddam Hussein? When he was in Hanoi getting tortured for his country. When he was being a Maverick in the Senate reaching across party lines.

You know who was never American enough to get tortured for America? Obama and the members of the far left that he associates himself with.

You forgot “My Friends”

[Fear_Itself]

Obama’s middle name is Hussein.

[choie]

Okay, heh, I suppose we all know what the right will say. I can come up with the stereotypical Republican response as well as anyone. But what about the few conservatives whose responses aren’t knee-jerk predictable? And what do y’all think, is this something that could have legs? This isn’t some obscure radical group from the 1960s, it’s the regime we fought for nearly two decades. If nothing else, could it at least neutralize the Ayers crap once and for all?

Or are you basically saying that this is unimportant and no one will care? Does it Seem too much like tu quoque?

[rocking_chair]

whoa! john kerry just brought it up on rachel maddow’s show (the lobbyist), as well as others that mccain has had dealings with.

great, sen. kerry, now you get tough.

[Lakai]

@rocking_chair

whoa! john kerry just brought it up on rachel maddow’s show (the lobbyist), as well as others that mccain has had dealings with.

great, sen. kerry, now you get tough.

Nice. This means the Obama camp is going to run with this. After weeks of William Ayers, no one will blame Obama for bringing this up.

[choie]

@rocking_chair

whoa! john kerry just brought it up on rachel maddow’s show (the lobbyist), as well as others that mccain has had dealings with.

great, sen. kerry, now you get tough.

Oh HELLS yeah. Good for Kerry! Man, I didn’t think a mainstream Dem would address this so quickly!

[WF_Tomba]

@choie

Okay, heh, I suppose we all know what the right will say. I can come up with the stereotypical Republican response as well as anyone. But what about the few conservatives whose responses aren’t knee-jerk predictable? And what do y’all think, is this something that could have legs? This isn’t some obscure radical group from the 1960s, it’s the regime we fought for nearly two decades. If nothing else, could it at least neutralize the Ayers crap once and for all?

Or are you basically saying that this is unimportant and no one will care? Does it Seem too much like tu quoque?

It doesn’t matter because political smears only work when they seem to confirm something people already suspect based on broad identity stereotypes. So as long as McCain remains a hawkish Republican, no one will suspect him of sympathies with Arab dictators. Even if he had such sympathies, no one would suspect it. No one has ever suspected the Bush family of being sympathetic to fundamentalist Islam, despite their extensive business links with the Saudis.

On the other hand, if someone dug up a supposed association between McCain and a white supremacist group, it would be all over the news, despite there being no evidence at all that he is a racist.

[rocking_chair]

sen. kerry was a mere hour behind the teeming millions! once again you heard it here first.
it was a bit odd reading this thread and hearing it on tv at the same time.

[choie]

@WF_Tomba

It doesn’t matter because political smears only work when they seem to confirm something people already suspect based on broad identity stereotypes. So as long as McCain remains a hawkish Republican, no one will suspect him of sympathies with Arab dictators. Even if he had such sympathies, no one would suspect it. No one has ever suspected the Bush family of being sympathetic to fundamentalist Islam, despite their extensive business links with the Saudis.

On the other hand, if someone dug up a supposed association between McCain and a white supremacist group, it would be all over the news, despite there being no evidence at all that he is a racist.

Hmm, that’s quite possible. Yet I can’t help but think that some will still find it troubling that McCain hired someone who has such sleazy connections to one of the US’s most notorious enemies. Others on the SDMB are bitching about Obama’s alleged “pattern” of associations. What about a pattern of hand-picking team members who have ties to America-hating groups like the Hussein regime and AIP sesessionists?

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@WF_Tomba

It doesn’t matter because political smears only work when they seem to confirm something people already suspect based on broad identity stereotypes.

But part of the McCain stereotype that’s been developed over the last few months is his close ties to lobbyists. Lobbyists are all over his campaign like fleas on a cur. The Saddam-McCain tie runs directly through a lobbyist. That, it seems to me, would be the glue to make this issue stick.

[mswas]

Did you hear that Obama was once seen snorting blow off of Satan’s titties?

[DSeid]

@Lakai

The Senate ethics committee never convicted McCain for any of this, so it doesn’t matter.

Look, McCain knows how to hire his transition team. He knows how to pick qualified people to run this country.

You know when McCain did not have ties with Saddam Hussein? When he was in Hanoi getting tortured for his country. When he was being a Maverick in the Senate reaching across party lines.

You know who was never American enough to get tortured for America? Obama and the members of the far left that he associates himself with.

Nah. “That one.”

[choie]

I guess I have the answer to one of my questions. Here on the SDMB, magellan01’s utter bullshit thread dredging up old news dating back to the primary trying to link Obama to a Kenyan nutter has nearly 60 responses. 99% are people understandably debunking this transparent attempt, but nevertheless, it’s got legs.

Meanwhile, here is an actually well-researched news article by a respected journalist, cited up the wazoo, revealing that McCain fucking hired Saddam Hussein’s corrupt lobbyist to run his transition team. And apparently it’s not very interesting. Some jokes and silliness (all of which, don’t get me wrong, I understand and appreciate as par for the course!), but not much real discussion.

Maybe it’s my fault, I should’ve titled it better. Think a mod will let me change it?

Otherwise, I fear this is why Republicans are so successful at their slander. The shit they fling at the walls sticks. All we have is the truth … and a depressing outrage overload.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Always remember:

It’s okay if you’re a Republican.

[MEBuckner]

Moderator’s Note: Thread title changed from “Dubious Associations: Obama has Ayers; McCain has … Saddam Hussein?” to “McCain hires Saddam Hussein’s corrupt lobbyist as his transition chief” at request of the thread starter.

[tagos]

@choie

I guess I have the answer to one of my questions. Here on the SDMB, magellan01’s utter bullshit thread dredging up old news dating back to the primary trying to link Obama to a Kenyan nutter has nearly 60 responses. 99% are people understandably debunking this transparent attempt, but nevertheless, it’s got legs.

Meanwhile, here is an actually well-researched news article by a respected journalist, cited up the wazoo, revealing that McCain fucking hired Saddam Hussein’s corrupt lobbyist to run his transition team. And apparently it’s not very interesting. Some jokes and silliness (all of which, don’t get me wrong, I understand and appreciate as par for the course!), but not much real discussion.

Consider it a demonstration of the corrupt, self-interested cynicism of the Republicans here. There is simply no way anyone who expressed (faux) concern over Obama’s ‘associations’ can be anything but apoplectic over this.

But they are not. They would rather see a self-evidently incompetent and honorless pair from their own ‘side’ in office, no matter what 'associations they had in the past. Like Keating and nutbar Alaskan Independence parties. They will even swallow having lobbyists for a vicious murdering enemy of the USA at the heart of government.

It shows them in their true light.