Obama To Europeanize America?

Netanyahu busy building a team. Going for those with integrity. That's novel for Isaraeli politics.(see 1 below.)

Various Israeli poll results. (See 2 below.)

Rosenblum writes America's turn to Europeanism will not be good for Israel. Hell, A Europeanized America wont even be good for America. We broke for Europe centuries and prospered while Europe contracted. Why follow their model? We need to resurrect and rehabilitate our one. (See 3 below.)

It takes more beheading to arouse Afghanistans against the Taliban. These people are beyond help and hope. (See 4 below.)

Daniel Pipes keeps tracing the money trail but to what purpose - no one cares. They may after the election but not before. (See 5 below.)

More on Iranian nuclear double dealing. (See 6 below.)

Have a nice weekend.

Dick


1) Netanyahu Reshapes Likud, Builds Shadow Cabinet



Former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, energized by more than two years in opposition, is launching his Likud party into Israel’s general election campaign with a new look and a new top echelon.

Political sources report he is remolding it into a center-right party with a new leadership made up of the middle generation of Likud stalwarts and an infusion of outsiders from non-political occupations, rival parties, and at least two ex-generals.

Negotiating in person, he is close to deals with a mixed bag of would-be star performers.

They include, according to our exclusive sources, Benny Begin (son of the late prime minister Menahem Begin), Yair Shamir , Dan Meridor , former chief of staff, Lt. Gen. (Res) Moshe Yaalon , NU lawmaker Effie Eyta (a former general, who holds the key to the national religious vote), and former cabinet minister Nathan Sharansky , who is well-connected in Washington.

Likud has also offered incentives to MKs Zeev Elkin and Marina Solodkin for quitting Tzipi Livni’s party and crossing the floor. Both are reputed vote-catchers among the large Russian-born electorate.

Likud’s recast center-right image is directed at drawing the moderate, pragmatic elements of the Israeli right wing, which two years ago voted for Kadima and which have much in common with the traditional base of Labor, the Kibbutz movement.

At the same time, he is offering a home for the Jewish communities of the West Bank (pop: 300,000), their supporters and the security hawks.

Netanyahu calculates that Benny Begin’s name will restore the luster of Likud’s founding fathers and their clean reputations, in contrast to Kadima’s aura of corruption.

Yair Shamir, son of Yitzhak Shamir, another Likud prime minister who was a model of integrity, will add an up-to-date, go-getting business image to the revamped Likud list.

Shamir Jr. after being brought in as chairman, turned the Israeli Aviation Industries round from collapse to profitability. He came from the Air Force, which he left as brigadier after heading its logistics department. Shamir’s inclusion on the list will tell the Israeli voter that better times are ahead for an economy bogged down by a cumbersome, unhealthy bureaucracy and outdated infrastructure.

Dan Meridor, once too moderate for Likud, is invited to rejoin and bring his moderate left-wing connections along.

At the other end of the scale, Effie Eytam is reckoned to be worth two to three Knesset seats at least among the approximately 750,000 national voters, who favor retaining Judea and Samaria and the Golan. Eytam is cast as an insurance policy against the Netanyahu administration tipping over too far to the left. With him aboard, a Likud government would be held back from evacuating Jewish communities from these territories or supporting the broad territorial concessions to the Palestinians and Syria advocated by Kadima and Labor.

Likud leaders hastened to state this week that no government of theirs would honor concessions made to Syria by the transitional prime minister Ehud Olmert, who announced his intention of resuming the indirect dialogue with Damascus before the elections.

Yaalon, designated for the key slot of defense minister, is a critical piece in Netanyahu’s jigsaw puzzle.

A member of Kibbutz Grofit, the former chief of staff may bring Likud its first substantial contribution from the kibbutz movement. It consists of the Labor and Kadima factions, which seriously question the two-state solution of the Israel-Arab dispute propounded by President Bush and embraced by prime minister Ariel Sharon and his leading disciples, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert.

Yaalon’s views on security, the dispute with the Palestinians and Iran, are as hawkish as those of Eytam or the Likud right wing – but on the economy, social gap and education, he would lean to the left of Netanyahu’s free market philosophy.

Netanyahu went to work on his dream team after his earlier back-door, power-sharing deal with Labor leader Ehud Barak and talks with Livni’s Kadima rival Shaul Mofaz foundered.

The former has since opted for contesting Livni for the left-wing margin, while Mofaz has been too slow to decide where he belongs.

By February 10, 2006, when Israel votes for a new parliament, government and prime minster, the next US president will have spent 20 days in the White House and Iran will be assembling its first nuclear bomb or warhead. The newly-elected government in Jerusalem will need all its energy and resources to confront the problems which the outgoing administration has long avoided.

2) 3 polls Likud 25-31 Kadima 22-31, Israelis oppose negotiating Jerusalem 55%:36%

3 polls with different results for Likud Kadima and Labor, Israelis oppose
negotiating Jerusalem 55%:36%
Dr. Aaron Lerner

Poll #1 Telephone poll of a representative sample of adult Israelis
(including Israeli Arabs) carried out by Shvakim Panorama for Israel Radio's Hakol
Diburim (It's All Talk) 29 October 2008.29.8% undecided.

The outcome shown below shows a range based on two models:
#1 Seats based only on the 70.2% who indicated who they would vote for

#2 Seats based on allocating the undecided vote based on their background -
including: party they voted for in the last elections, self identification
between "right" and "left", positions expressed on various issues that make
it possible to identify the ideological position of the respondent and/or
socio-demographic profile.

Poll #2 Telephone poll of a representative sample of 501 adult Israelis
(including Israeli Arabs) carried out by Smith Consulting Shvakim 29
October 2008 and published in The Jerusalem Post on 31 October.

Poll #3 Telephone poll of a representative sample of 490 adult Israelis
(including Israeli Arabs) carried out by Dialog poll under the supervision
of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University on 28 October 2009 published in
Haaretz on 31 October

--#1-- #2 #3
22-23 27 31 [29] Kadima headed by Livni
16-17 14 10 [19] Labor
25-26 27 31 [12] Likud
11-12 11 10 [12] Shas
10-11 11 11 [11] Yisrael Beteinu
07-08 09 03 [09] Nat'l Union/NRP
06-07 06 06 [06] Yahadut Hatorah
05-06 05 05 [05] Meretz
02-03 ** 02 [00] Green Party
00-01*** ** [00] Social Justice (Gaydamak Party)
01-02*** ** [07] Retirees Party
09-10 10 11 [10] Arab parties
* does not get minimum votes for Knesset representation

Additional Poll#3 questions:

Did Netanyahu learn from the mistakes he made as prime minister?
Yes 49% No 34% Don't know 17%

Did Barak learn from the mistakes he made as prime minister?
Yes 25% No 55% Don't know 20%

Who is responsible for the failure of the negotiations to form a government?
Livni 29% Shas 37% Both same extent 9% don't know 25%

Should negotiations with the Palestinians include the issue of Jerusalem?
Yes 36% No 5% Don't know 9%

Which candidate is most appropriate to be prime minister?
Netanyahu 38% Livni 30% Barak 9%

Which candidate for prime minister will best handle the following:
Economy: Netanyahu 45% Livni 22% Barak 8%
Security: Netanyahu 33% Livni 14% Barak 26%
Diplomatic process: Netanyahu 32% Livni 29% Barak 10%

3) Think Again: The end of the special relationship?
By JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

For those inclined to see the workings of divine providence in human history, the special affinity of the American people for Israel provides a happy example. If Israel could have only one consistent ally in the world, it would surely have picked the world's (still) most powerful nation. Without the United States, Israel would be hard pressed to obtain the weapons needed to defend itself.


American popular support for Israel has many sources. The first is historical. The Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony self-consciously modeled themselves on the ancient Hebrews and styled themselves as the New Israel. The Hebrew Bible provided their guidance. All the early presidents of Yale were Hebraists, and the college's insignia was patterned on the urim vetumim worn by the high priest.

To this day, Americans remain by far the most religious people in the Western world. Seventy million American Evangelicals constitute Israel's most ardent supporters. Americans have always tended to be jealous of their sovereignty and willing to defend themselves against any threat to their liberty. The state motto of New Hampshire, "Live free or die," captures that spirit. As such, they admire Israel's doughty self-defense against far more numerous enemies.

In Western terms, America is a center-right country. A major aspect of the American exceptionalism discussed by historians is its failure to develop a class-based political movement. That too has strengthened the bonds to Israel. Among American liberals, who tend to see the world in terms of victims and oppressors, 59 percent view the Palestinians more or equally sympathetically (according to a 2002 Gallup poll). Among conservatives, whose focus is on particular values and the determination to defend them, 59% view Israel more favorably.

The presence in America of the world's largest Jewish community - a community that is both wealthy and politically active - has also shored up American support for Israel. (That community, however, is diminishing both in numbers and concern with Israel; many of the most active supporters of Israel in Congress come from states with few Jews.)

BELIEF IN American exceptionalism, its chosenness, has always played a major role in American civic religion. The two dominant conceptions of American foreign policy - isolationism and liberal internationalism - are both predicated upon an assumption of American moral superiority. Isolationists fear contamination from the "foreign entanglements," of which president George Washington warned in his farewell address. Liberal internationalists seek to remake the world in America's image.


Sen. Barack Obama represents a third foreign policy approach - what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington calls the "cosmopolitan." Far from taking American virtue as its starting point, the cosmopolitan seeks to remake America in Europe's image.

Thus Obama presented himself to Europeans last summer as a citizen of the world, one of them. "Mr. Obama," in the words of Fouad Ajami, "proceeds from the notion of American guilt. 'We called up the furies...'" He accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness and seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world.

He shares the Europeans' contempt for the terminology of good and evil: "A lot of evil's been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil," he says. If his heart thrilled at the sight of Iraqis twice braving suicide bombers to go the polls, he kept it to himself. The war in Iraq, in his view, was nothing more than a "cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors... to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the cost in lives lost and in hardships borne."

And he expresses understanding for the grievances of the perpetrators of evil - Hamas, Hizbullah, even the perpetrators of 9/11, which he characteristically portrayed as part of "an underlying struggle between worlds of plenty and worlds of want" (despite the affluent backgrounds of the attackers). He voted against a Senate bill to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Obama's most fervent support has come from the university campuses and cultural elites - where attitudes tend most to resemble those of Western Europeans, and where scorn for those who "cling to guns or religion" runs rampant. These campuses also happen to be the redoubts of the greatest hostility to Israel.

AN AMERICA that more closely resembles Western Europe will not be good for Israel. Western Europeans consistently deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace. And they are remarkably cavalier about Israel's defense of its own existence. Recent memory does not include any Israeli response to attack that the Europeans did not deem disproportionate. The Western European countries have done little to prevent the United Nations from degenerating into an anti-Israel debating society, and a number have supported or abstained on UN Human Rights Council resolutions supportive of anti-Israel "resistance" - i.e. terrorism.

Many commonly held attitudes predispose Europeans against Israel. Western Europe is far along a project of transferring political legitimacy from nation-states to supranational organizations like the European Union, the UN and the International Criminal Court. Having achieved their nation-state rather late in the day, the Jews of Israel remain proud of it. To the Europeans, however, a non-Muslim state based on national/religious identity seems an atavism.
Western Europe's almost religious faith in international institutions of open membership, like the UN, and a declining concern with national sovereignty threaten Israel. International criminal jurisdiction has already rendered Israeli military personnel wary of traveling abroad. Obama frequently demonstrates a similar reverence for the UN, and has a long list of international treaty obligations to which he is eager to submit the US.


Europe has adopted a stance of appeasement toward both external threats and to Islamic minorities within. (Ironically, the US, which offers no special dispensation to Muslims, has done a far better job of integrating Muslim immigrants than European countries.) Europeans' abhorrence of any resort to military action causes them to instinctively recoil from Israel, the superior military power in the region.


Having moved beyond simplistic categories of good and evil, Europeans try to take, at best, an even-handed approach to any conflict, invariably warning, for instance, against a "cycle of violence" whenever Israel responds to attack. Obama's immediate call for "mutual restraint" after the Russian invasion of Georgia was a classic example of that tendency.

Worse, European sophistication favors whichever party can present itself as the aggrieved underdog, or serves to mask an ugly cynicism, as in the recent multi-billion-dollar deals signed by Austrian and Swiss energy companies with Iran.

To the extent that Obama's likely election betokens a move toward a more European America, the special ties that have bound the people of America and Israel show signs of fraying.

4) In Afghanistan, Beheading of Bus Passengers Sparks Anti-Taliban Protests Not Seen Since 9/11

On October 16, 2008, Taliban militants in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar hijacked a bus and killed 27 passengers. The bodies of the bus passengers were recovered three days later; some had been beheaded. The manner of the killings has for the first time aroused popular opinion against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Although he confirmed that the Taliban had seized the bus in the Maiwand district of southern Kandahar province, a Taliban spokesman nevertheless said that no civilians were on the bus. Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, explained that the bus was taking Afghan National Army reinforcements to the restive province of Helmand. [1] This claim by the Taliban was later denied by the Afghan government. Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense clarified that the bus passengers were not troops.

Independent media investigations have since found out that the 27 passengers, who were from the eastern Afghan province of Laghman, were civilians on their way to Iran for work. The discovery of the Taliban's killing of 27 innocent civilians has sparked anti-Taliban protests, something not seen in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Recently, the protests have spread to other provinces.

Taliban Accused of Being Inhuman, Un-Islamic, and Anti-State

A day after the bodies were recovered, hundreds of people turned out in streets in the eastern Laghman province, where the workers were from, to protest against the Taliban. Abdullah, a local man who joined the protesters in the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam, told local journalists that the victims were innocent laborers en route to Iran in search of jobs. [2] It is common for jobless Afghans to illegally sneak into Iran in search of a livelihood.

Soon the anti-Taliban protests spread to the eastern Paktia province. In Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, hundreds of protesters turned out in streets, shouting slogans against "anti-state elements." [3] They were joined by local elders, Islamic clerics from the city of Gardez and Abdul Rahman Mangal, the Deputy Governor of Paktia province.

The protesters described the killing of civilians as "un-Islamic and inhuman by the country's enemies." [4] They demanded that the Taliban stop shedding the blood of the Afghan people immediately.

Anti-Taliban Protests Spread to Kunar, Khost, and Bamian Provinces

By late October, the anti-Taliban protests over the killings of the bus passengers had spread to the provinces of Kunar, Khost and Bamian, as local people, students and tribal elders joined the demonstrations. [5]

In the eastern Kunar province, activists of the Islamic Youth Organization, a local youth group, staged a protest in the town of Asadabad to condemn the killings. Hundreds of protesters, including students and tribal elders, marched through the streets and shouted slogans against the Taliban.

In Khost, the capital of eastern Khost province, a number of people, including students and soldiers from the Afghan National Army, held a meeting and condemned the workers' killings by the Taliban. A similar meeting was held in the central Bamian province, where a large number of citizens from all walks of life attended the gathering and accused the Taliban of cruelty.

According to another report by Pashtu-language Afghan website Benawa.com, the relatives of the deceased in the eastern Laghman province held a protest, vowing to avenge the killing of the 27 laborers. During a protest, the relatives were joined by local people who condemned the killings and offered the Afghan government to help wipe out the Taliban. [6]

By the end of October the anti-Taliban protests had continued in different parts of Afghanistan. In Kabul, the Afghan capital, the clerics of Afghanistan's Hajj and Auqaf Ministry came out protesting against the Taliban. Expressing their sympathies with the families of the deceased bus passengers, the clerics observed that killing and abduction of Afghan civilians and foreign workers reminded the Afghan people of the dreadful civil war when un-Islamic acts like these had affected the country during the 1990s. [7]

Calling the Taliban's killing and abduction of civilians and foreign workers un-Islamic and against Afghan tradition, the clerics stressed that it is the responsibility of all Muslims to protect the lives of foreigners who work for the welfare of Afghan people.


[1] The News, Pakistan, October 20, 2008.

[2] Wrazparana Wahdat, Pakistan, October 24, 2008.

[3].Wrazparana.Wahdat, Pakistan, October 27, 2008.

[4] Wrazparana Wahdat, Pakistan, October 27, 2008.

[5] Wrazparana Khabroona, Pakistan, October 29, 2008.

[6] Benawa.com, Afghanistan, October 29, 2008.

[7] Wrazparana Khabroona, Pakistan, October 30, 2008.

5) Obama's Mansion, Saddam's Money
By Daniel Pipes


Barack Obama appears to have personally benefited from funds originating in Saddam Hussein's regime. It's a complicated connection, but one that deserves the consideration of Americans voters.

Nadhmi Auchi (left) with Illinois' governor, Rod Blagojevich, in 2004.
Two similar figures, Nadhmi Auchi and Antoin S. "Tony" Rezko, served as the intermediaries. Both are Middle Eastern males of Catholic Christian heritage who left Baathist dictatorships for Western cities (Auchi from Iraq to London, Rezko from Syria to Chicago). Both became successful businessmen who hobnobbed with politicians and promoted Arab interests. Both have been convicted of taking kickbacks and both stand accused of other shady dealings.

Auchi, born in 1937, is the more successful. When young, he joined Saddam in the Baath Party. He founded his main financial instrument, the General Mediterranean Holding SA in 1979 – revealingly, while still in Iraq. A year later, he emigrated to the United Kingdom. GMHSA now describes itself as a diverse group of 120 companies with consolidated assets of over US$4.2 billion. The Sunday Times (London) recently estimated Auchi's personal wealth at £2.15 billion, making him the 27th richest person in Britain. He garnered many honors along the way.

On the dark side, a French court in 2003 convicted Auchi of taking kickbacks in the Elf Affair and handed down a suspended jail sentence and fine. One analyst, Hector Igbikiowubo, calls this "probably the biggest political and corporate sleaze scandal to hit a western democracy since World War II." Also in 2003, one of Auchi's firms was accused of taking part in a price-fixing cartel of prescription medicines. In 2004, a report by the Pentagon's International Armament and Technology Trade Directorate found "significant and credible evidence" that Auchi organized a conspiracy to offer bribes to win mobile telephone licenses in Iraq. He was barred from entering the United States in 2005.

Tony Rezko (left) with Illinois' junior senator, Barack Obama.
Rezko, born in 1955, arrived in the United States in 1974 to study civil engineering. After some work on road construction projects, he went into the fast-food business, then into real estate, with help from Auchi. His political involvement began in 1983 with a mayoral campaign, after which he acquired a taste for cultivating up-and-coming politicians, notably Obama and the current governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.

Rezko too has extensive legal problems, starting with a June 2008 conviction on sixteen counts of taking kickbacks from companies wanting to do business with the State of Illinois. He also stands accused of evading Las Vegas gambling debts and using false information in the sale of his pizza businesses. In contrast to Auchi's wealth, Rezko is said to be over $50 million in debt.

In three steps, these corrupt businessmen tie the Democratic Party presidential candidate to the executed Iraqi tyrant:

1. Saddam Hussein made use of Auchi: Auchi's fortune largely grew through his Iraq government connection, much of it sub rosa. In the 1980s, he procured Italian military ships. By 1993, the Italian banker Pierfrancesco Pacini Battaglia testified about Auchi bribing Iraqi officials for an Italian engineering company and called Auchi "one of the most important intermediaries in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries." Auchi is also a major shareholder in BNP Paribas, the French bank deeply implicated in the U.N.'s corrupt Iraq oil-for-food program.

2. Auchi made use of Rezko: Rezko lobbied for Auchi to be allowed into the United States. A wholly-owned GMHSA subsidiary, Fintrade Services Inc., transferred a loan of $3.5 million on May 23, 2005 to Rezko.

3. Rezko cultivated Obama: Rezko offered Barack Obama a job in 1990, which Obama declined. Still, Rezko persisted, hiring him for legal work and hosting in 2003 an early fundraiser that, writes David Mendell in Obama: From Promise to Power, proved "instrumental in providing Obama with seed money" for his nascent U.S. Senate campaign. Then, on June 15, 2005, just twenty-three days after receiving Auchi's $3.5 million, Rezko partnered with Obama in a real estate deal: while Rezko's wife paid the full asking price, $625,000, for an empty adjoining lot which they then improved, subdivided, and partially sold to Obama, Obama acquired a mansion for $1.65 million, $300,000 under the asking price.

Summing up: Barack Obama's house purchase depended on favors from Rezko, flush with a "loan" from Auchi, whose fortune derived in part from Saddam Hussein's favor.

When seen in the context of Obama's other dubious connections (Ayers, Davidson, Wright, Khalidi, et al.), this network is all the more alarming.

Oct. 29, 2008 update: WorldNetDaily.com has published an unsigned article, "Did Saddam bagman help Obama purchase mansion? Photo confirms Rezko financier in bed with late Iraqi tyrant," that asserts many new points salient to the Barack Obama-Saddam Hussein connection. Concerning Auchi, it asserts that:

*

Auchi and Saddam Hussein were cousins.
*

Auchi joined Saddam Hussein's regime as an official in the Ministry of Oil in 1967.


6) Report warns of covert Iranian bid to expand nuke program

Islamic Republic secretly tested more uranium enrichment methods, according to intelligence assessment obtained by AP; American official says effort may eventually be used to produce nuclear weapons



Iran has recently tested ways of recovering highly enriched uranium from waste reactor fuel in a covert bid to expand its nuclear program, according to an intelligence assessment made available to The Associated Press.


The intelligence, provided by a member of the 145-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, also says
Op-Ed
Don’t appease Iran / Ophir Falk
Should Obama win elections, he must not repeat pre-World War II mistake
Full Story
a report will soon be submitted to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project.


The alleged tests loosely replicate Saddam Hussein's attempts to build the bomb nearly two decades ago. But experts question the conclusion by those providing the intelligence that Tehran, too, is trying to reprocess the fuel to make a nuclear weapon.


They note that the spent fuel at issue as the source of the enriched uranium is not enough to yield the approximately 30 kilograms of weapons-grade material needed for one simple warhead.


Still, they say that the alleged experiment appears plausible – if not as a fast track to weapons capability then as an incremental step that could move it further along that path.


The laboratories and the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, where the research reactor is located, have figured in numerous experiments that have raised the suspicion level about Iran, including plutonium separation attempts that Iran owned up to only after it was pressed by IAEA experts probing its nuclear past.


'Iran trying to get nose in tent'

If the information is accurate then Iran is "trying to get their nose in the tent" of reprocessing material potentially suitable for a warhead, said David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks suspect secret proliferators.


"On the surface it may have nothing to do with making a bomb, but in the end that's what it could be about."


For the US and others, Iran is a top proliferation concern because of suspicions it had at least drafted concepts of nuclear weapons programs during nearly two decades of covert atomic activities discovered six years ago.


Tehran denies past, present or future nuclear arms ambitions. But it is stonewalling IAEA attempts to probe alleged past weapons program experiments and continues to expand its uranium enrichment program.


Iran has shrugged off UN Security Council sanctions prompted by fears that through enrichment, it may want to produce the fissile core of nuclear warheads instead of the fuel the Islamic Republic says it needs for a future civilian program. Those fears are stoked by Iran's refusal to consider foreign nuclear fuel deliveries.


"It's the idea that Iran wants to slowly develop nuclear weapons capability under the tent and it does it slowly so that people will accept it," said Albright. "It's (a matter of) keeping your head down, moving slowly and deliberately and winning at each step."

Auchi began bankrolling Rezko's real estate deals in the 1980s.
*

The 2004 Pentagon report quoted in my article also: (1) Called Auchi someone "who behind the facade of legitimate business, served as Saddam Hussein's principle international financial manipulator and bag man." (2) Stated 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." (3) Accused him of helping to "arrange for significant theft from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program to smuggle weapons and dual-use technology into Iraq."

The Obama mansion in the Kenwood district of Chicago.
Concerning Rezko:

* Rezko personally toured with Obama the house that Obama bought and advised Obama on the negotiations to purchase the house.
* In 2005, at the time of his empty lot purchase, Rezko was "virtually bankrupt."
* Obama attended two events hosted by Rezko honoring Auchi in 2004, one at the Four Seasons Hotel and another at Rezko's house; Michelle Obama also attended the latter occasion.

Comment: These additional pieces of information significantly confirm my conclusion that Obama "personally benefited from funds originating in Saddam Hussein's regime."