10/14/08: McCain's Transition Chief lobbied for Saddam??!!

OK, I was going to analyze McCain's long awaited and much delayed response to the economy - and I still will do that later. But this story just broke on the Huffington Post - admittedly very pro-Obama - and if there's even an inkling of truth in this, it blows McCain's Ayers strategy out of the water.
McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

Basically, it says that "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." It goes on to say that for about 5 years starting in 1992, Timmons worked closely with 2 other lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, who were guilty of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government. Vincent pleaded guilty and turned informer against Park, who went to jail.

As I said, I'll reserve judgment on this till it's confirmed by others, but by golly - what is McCain thinking? Is he even thinking at all?? Does he pick his associates out of a hat with no prior thought or vetting, kinda like the way he picked his running mate?

We all know about Sarah Palin's abuse of power and also about Palin's association with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, as well as Todd Palin's bona fide membership in this wacko organization till 2002. BTW, CNN is carrying this story TODAY, so don't miss it; I heard they showed this video of Sarah Palin addressing this year's AIP conference.

But as bad as this is for a would-be VP of the United States, this just pales in comparison to some of the other unsavory characters McCain associates with. As oft-reported, his campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $2.5 million by Freddie Mac until last month; it's reported that he was a paid lobbyist for the warlord Mobutu Sese Seko, who stole $6 billion (that's right, billion) from Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), and was responsible for the ongoing bloody civil war which is estimated to have cost MILLIONS of lives.

Then we have McCain's ill-timed appearance on the radio show of and close friendship with G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate felon, who wanted to blow up the Brookings Institution, assassinate politicians and journalists, offered advice to the Waco nuts on how to shoot FBI agents, and named his shooting targets Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Then there is John Singlaub, whose U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. McCain sat on the board of this extremist organization in the early 80s and was a strong proponent of the Contras.

And now we have McCain's transition chief Timmons lobbying for Saddam Hussein.

I'm not even including Charles Keating or his various other shady mobster and financier friends - I'm just looking at these and thinking, this guy wants to question Obama's guilt-by-association with an anti-Vietnam 60s radical? I mean, come on. I think he'd best stay off that subject in the debate. Or if he doesn't, it should be interesting watching him being taken apart on his netherworld associations that he so "carefully" selected and cultivated.