Representative Mike Thompson, incredibly stupid, or usefull idiot.

We here in Yolo County know Congressman Mike Thompson as 'Baghdad Mike'. The trip he took to meet with Iraqi dictator Saddam Husein before the war has been a subject of much talk for years.

I'm not sure why you meet with a dictator who actually does all the things the left accuses George W. Bush of doing, you know torture, by torture I don't mean water boarding six high value terrorists in five years, I mean cutting out the tongues of people who don't agree with him, chopping off various body parts as a way to make sure the person knows Saddam is mad at them, that kind of torture. Not to mention slaughtering tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of political, religious or personal enemies, and we won't even start on his two murderous sons who ran the rape rooms and killed Iraqis for the enjoyment of it.

Now it seems that Mike Thompson's trip to get cozy with Saddam was arranged by a one of Saddam's spies working here in America.

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. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.

At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.

The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. None was charged and Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators "have no information whatsoever" any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.

How could Thompson know Saddam had given Al Hanooti 2 million barrels of oil, thanks to the 'Oil for Espionage', I mean 'Oil for food' program to pay for the trip? I will believe the Congressman, that he didn't know a spy was paying for the trip in order to give Saddam some great public relations opportunities, but wouldn't you be curious who was paying for the trip?

I mean when you are being pimped out by a Middle East dictator for some photo ops, one would think you want to know who is picking up the check?

It seems that the mainstream media doesn't want folks to know about Al-Hanooti being the former head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the president of Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations.

For some strange reason the Michigan CAIR web site is under construction, no doubt trying to erase any mention of Al-Hanooti.

There are some good folks running for Mr. Thompson's seat this year. He has lots of money on hand. Well, it doesn't hurt when his largest contributer is one of the biggest developers in the state. I thought developers were evil? I guess when they write huge checks, you can overlook a lot of evil.