He also donated $2300 to Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. Barack Obama will be donating Mr. Alsammarae’s contribution to charity now. Seems fair, right?

Alsammarae — a friend of Rezko’s since their days as classmates at the Illinois Institute of Technology — once was accused of corruption in Iraq, but he broke out of a Baghdad jail, returned to the U.S. and has since said the charges against him have been vacated.

Being the Obama-Skeptic that I am, you just know I had to find out more about who Aiham Alsammarae is besides Iraq’s former Electricity Minister who was charged with corruption in Iraq, escaped from jail, bailedout his smarmy friend Rezko and contributed to Barack Obama’s campaign.

It didn’t take long to find out that, among other slimey activities, Rezko is accused of giving Alsammarae a $1.5 million bribe for the electrical contract to train Iraqi power plant security guards. Friends are wonderful things, aren’t they? (more…)

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That, beyond the corrupt influence-peddling and Obama’s exploitation of these associations for his own personal and political gain — as Mike Howell pointed out in a comment tonight — there were poor people in Chicago who did not get decent housing (as shown graphically in the video below), even though Rezko got millions in government monies for supposed rehabilitation. This infuriates me. So why didn’t it infuriate Obama? Why did “Mr. Community Organizer” hang around Rezko, giving him a tour of his prospective new home and getting Rezko to buy the adjacent lot, knowing that this man misused millions and denied people decent housing – including heat in the winter? How could Barack Obama bear to be in the same room with such a man who’d put his OWN constituents through hell? Let alone cook up a cozy home purchase with him since he couldn’t afford the home and lot on his own — when there were surely other wealthy patrons and friends who might have helped instead? Why choose the man who’s under active federal investigation? Does such a man have any morals? In my book, such a man does not have morals and is only interested in the influences and monies that a “fixer” like Rezko can bring him.

Note the afterword in the above video. UPDATE: Mel wrote this comment below.

Small-time slumlord? Come on! Rezko milked the taxpayers of over $100 million and is a benefactor of Auchi, banker for Saddam Hussein and banker for the oil for food Iraq UN set up who misused funds as well as an associate of Alsammarae who stole $650 million from the Iraq reconstruction funds and a wanted criminal!

Small time my foot, wake up and learn more than a lousy stump speech!

And now the next video, which delves far more into the troubling associations with the iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi: (more…)