Saddam bagman help Obama buy mansion?

Obama mansion "given" by a terrorist.

All that fuss over a $150,000 wardrobe of Sarah Palin and no MSM mains-stream media is reporting this $3.5 million mansion of Obama bought and given by a terrorist?

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Did Saddam bagman help Obama buy mansion?

Photo confirms Rezko financier linked with late Iraqi tyrant

Posted: October 28, 2008
9:22 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Just 23 days before a crooked fundraiser helped Sen. Barack Obama buy his Chicago mansion, a billionaire bagman for Saddam Hussein wired millions into the crook's account.

"Barack Obama appears to have personally benefited from funds originating in Saddam Hussein's regime," said Mideast expert Daniel Pipes.




Former Baathist official Nadhmi Auchi with cousin Saddam Hussein




Former Iraqi official Nadhmi Auchi bankrolled his longtime friend and business partner, Syrian immigrant and Chicago slumlord Tony Rezko, who in turn bankrolled Obama's political career before being convicted this year of fraud.

That much is known. What's not known is whether any Auchi funds aided Obama's 2005 purchase of a $1.65 million mock-Georgian mansion in the leafy Kenwood district of Chicago. On the same day, Rezko purchased an adjacent lot from the same seller.

In addition, Rezko personally toured the house with Obama before their same-day purchase of the adjoining parcels. He also advised Obama on negotiating his end of the deal.

Obama ended up buying his side of the property for $300,000 below the asking price, while Rezko, through his wife, paid full price, $625,000, for the adjacent vacant lot.

Just three weeks earlier, Rezko – who at the time was under indictment and virtually bankrupt – received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Auchi, his "close friend" and partner, who smuggled weapons to Saddam's regime.




Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones Jr. and his protege Barack Obama





A year before their real estate deal, Obama, fresh off his U.S. Senate win, attended a dinner that Rezko hosted honoring Auchi at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Chicago. There, he met with Rezko, as well as his career mentor, Emil Jones, president of the Illinois senate, where Obama had previously served. Jones also is close to Auchi.

While Obama acknowledges attending the 2004 event, he claims having no memory of meeting Auchi there.

"I just don't recall," he said, even though the dinner was held in Auchi's honor and Rezko had invited Obama to meet him and other friends.

What's more, Rezko that same year had held another reception for Auchi, this time at his mansion; and according to court testimony in Rezko's trial, both Barack and Michelle Obama attended the reception and met Auchi.

Auchi at the time was under investigation by the U.S. government. The Pentagon had accused him of perpetrating fraud in Iraq, and he was subsequently barred from future entry into the U.S.

Auchi turned to Rezko to lobby several politicians in an unsuccessful bid to reinstate his visa.

It's not clear if Obama, a vocal Iraq war critic, was one of those politicians. But the senator did intervene on behalf of another shady Iraqi official at Rezko's request.




Emil Jones and Nadhmi Auchi






After Aiham Alsammarae was jailed in Iraq for fraud in 2006, Obama's Senate office sought information from the State Department about his status and relayed it to his family living in Chicago.

Alsammarae, a dual Iraqi-U.S. citizen who donated the maximum $2,300 to Obama's campaign, attended the same Four Seasons reception for Auchi attended by Obama.

A 2004 Pentagon report identified Auchi as an Iraqi billionaire and global arms dealer "who behind the facade of legitimate business, served as Saddam Hussein's principle international financial manipulator and bag man."

The report states that "significant and credible evidence has been developed that Nadhmi Auchi has engaged in unlawful activities," such as bribing "foreign governments and individuals prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom to turn opinion against the American-led mission to remove Saddam Hussein."



Obama and top fundraiser Tony Rezko, a business partner and close friend of Auchi








He also helped "arrange for significant theft from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program to smuggle weapons and dual-use technology into Iraq."

Since October 2002, Obama has publicly opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom, which ousted Saddam Hussein. Auchi was a cousin of the executed dictator.

As for Rezko, the Obama campaign says the presidential hopeful was unaware of his dirty dealings and has returned more than $200,000 in donations tied to him.

Obama has confessed misjudgment only in the subsequent purchase of a 10-foot strip of the adjacent S. Greenwood Avenue property from Rezko, not the original seemingly coordinated purchase of the parcels with Rezko on the same day, which political watchdog groups have called a "sweetheart deal."



Plot of land Rezko bought on same day Obama bought $1.65 million Georgian mansion next door







Obama described his subsequent $105,000 transaction a "boneheaded move," only because Rezko was under indictment at the time for bribing elected officials and other influence-peddling charges. He denies they coordinated their bids on the adjoining parcels so the Obamas could buy their dream home at a discount.

And his campaign has reiterated that Obama has no recollection of meeting Iraqi bagman Auchi, while adding that Auchi does not recall meeting Obama.

"There are no skeletons with this guy," Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power has insisted regarding her candidate. "He's clean."

Coincidentally, Obama's national campaign co-chairman, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Chicago, also purchased a mansion under similarly mysterious circumstances.



TIMELINE:

1967 – Nadhmi Auchi joins Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime as Oil Ministry official

1974 – Antoin Rezko immigrates
to U.S. from Syria





Another view of Obama's mansion







1979 – Auchi founds General Mediterranean Holding, procuring arms for Saddam's regime

1980s – Auchi begins bankrolling Rezko real estate deals in Illinois

1991 – Barack Obama interviews with Rezko for a position at his low-income housing development business, Rezmar

1993-1996 – Obama takes on Rezko as a client at his Chicago law firm, representing various Rezmar housing projects

1995 – Rezko starts to bankroll Obama's political career, in the end raising a total of more than $250,000 for his various campaigns

October 2002 – Obama gives speech opposing war with Iraq

June 2003 – Rezko holds lavish fundraiser for Obama at his Illinois mansion, providing key seed money to launch his U.S. Senate campaign

April 2004 – Auchi meets with Rezko, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and State Senate President Emil Jones Jr., Obama's career mentor, at the Four Seasons hotel in Chicago. Newly elected U.S. Sen. Obama also attends event

2005 – U.S. bars Auchi from entry, after Pentagon accuses him of Iraqi fraud

2005 – Rezko lobbies Illinois and U.S. officials for Auchi to be allowed back into the U.S.

May 23, 2005 – Auchi wire-transfers $3.5 million to Rezko

June 15, 2005 – Obama partners with Rezko in purchasing adjacent properties on South Greenwood Avenue in Chicago's leafy Kenwood district

January 2006 – Rezko sells Obama adjoining 10-foot strip of land

June 2008 – Rezko convicted of taking kickbacks from companies wanting to do business with the state of Illinois


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++++++++++

L.A. Times refuses to release Obama video

Republicans slam newspaper, urge evidence be made public

Posted: October 28, 2008
7:15 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily


JERUSALEM – The Los Angeles Times says it will not release a video it obtained of Sen. Barack Obama attending an anti-Israel event in which he delivered a glowing testimonial for an anti-Israel professor who excuses terrorism.



Rashid Khalidi



"When we reported on the tape six months ago, that was our full report," Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan told the Politico website, refusing to elaborate on the reason behind keeping the tape under wrap.

Sen. John McCain's campaign, in response, accused the Times of intentionally suppressing the video.

"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb.

"The election is one week away, and it's unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job – make information public," he said.

Goldfarb was referring to videotape the Times said it obtained of Obama delivering in-person testimonial in 2003 at the farewell party of anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, who at the time was departing the University of Chicago for a new teaching position at Columbia University.



In a piece last April, L.A. Times writer Peter Wallsten reported that while praising Khalidi, Obama reminisced about conversations over meals prepared by the professor's wife Mona Khalidi.

Unreported by Wallsten was that the event was sponsored by Mona Khalidi's anti-Israel Arab American Action Network, which, as WND first reported, received large sums of money from the Woods Fund, an ultra-liberal Chicago nonprofit for which Obama served as a board member alongside Weather Underground radical William Ayers.

According to a Times account of the farewell dinner, Obama said his talks with the Khalidis served as "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. … It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation – a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Khalidi's farewell dinner was replete with anti-Israel speakers.

One, a young Palestinian American, recited a poem in Obama's presence that accused the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticized U.S. support of Israel, the Times reported.

Another speaker, who reportedly talked while Obama was present, compared "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden.

In the kicker, Wallsten wrote, "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times."

But that detail went largely unnoticed until this past weekend, when the Gateway Pundit blog made an issue of the tape.

Wallsten did not immediately return a WND e-mail and phone call seeking comment.

Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel. He has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

During documented speeches and public events, Khalidi has called Israel an "apartheid system in creation" and a destructive "racist" state. He has multiple times expressed support for Palestinian terror, calling suicide bombings a response to "Israeli aggression."

He dedicated his 1986 book, "Under Siege," to "those who gave their lives ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon." Critics assailed the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism.

Obama, Khalidi closely tied

According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, the Democratic presidential hopeful first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. The professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of Chicago until 2003, while Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the Senate in 2004.

Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a fact not denied by Khalidi.

Speaking in a joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor radio show, Khalidi was asked about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama.

"I was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local politician," Khalidi stated.

Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."

Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran. If the U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is no reason it can't talk with the Iranians."

In 2001, the Woods Fund, which describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to Mona Khalidi's Arab American Action Network, or AAAN. The fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.

Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line. The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.

Obama hijacked phrase from Khalidi?

In May, WND noted Obama termed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a "constant sore" in an interview just five days after Khalidi wrote an opinion piece in the Nation magazine in which he called the "Palestinian question" a "running sore."

In his piece, "Palestine: Liberation Deferred," Khalidi suggests Israel carried out "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians; writes Western powers backed Israel's establishment due to guilt of the Holocaust; laments the Palestinian Authority's stated acceptance of a Palestinian state "only" in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern sections of Jerusalem; and argues Israel should be dissolved and instead a bi-national, cantonal system should be set up in which Jews and Arabs reside.

To interview Aaron Klein, contact M. Sliwa Public Relations by e-mail, or call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.

Related offers:

THE SECRET LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA

THE REAL McCAIN: What you urgently need to know

Defeat Obama, Osama and Chelsea's Mama: Go ahead – say what you really think with WND's newest bumpersticker

President Barack? Just say NObama!

McCain, Obama or 'none of the above'?

"Time to ignite the Second American Revolution. … Let's take America back."



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