Tag Archives: Terrorist

Obama’s latest nominee defended a convicted supporter of Islamic terrorism

Megyn Kelly and Monica Crowley explain. (H/T Gates of Vienna)

Robert Spencer writes about it in Human Events. (H/T Jihad Watch)

Last Saturday, in a video message to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, Barack Obama appointed Rashad Hussain to be his administration’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Rashad Hussain several years ago defended a leader of a jihad terrorist group — and now the record of his doing so has been deep-sixed.

Journalist Patrick Goodenough of CNS News has discovered that in 2004 Hussain denounced the prosecution of University of South Florida professor Sami al-Arian as a “politically motivated persecution” designed “to squash dissent.”

[…]All of Al-Arian’s defenders had egg on their faces when Al-Arian pled guilty to charges involving his acting as a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a deadly terrorist group that has employed suicide bombings and other terror tactics to murder over one hundred Israelis.
And among the egged faces was Rashad Hussain, apparently. Goodenough reports that Hussain’s remarks defending Al-Arian appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in 2004. But now the Washington Report’s website carries a version of this article from the passage referring to Rashad Hussain has been removed. Nothing else in the article has been changed.

[…]Even aside from this there was enough disquieting about the appointment. In a 2007 article Hussain criticized focusing on Muslims in anti-terror efforts: “Federal law should adopt a standard that protects national security while forbidding the targeting of non-citizens solely on the basis of their racial, religious, or ethnic backgrounds.” When the overwhelming majority of terror attacks are committed by young Muslim males acting in the name of Islamic teachings, this is just a call for the waste of resources.

Spencer wonders if the Obama administration was involved in hiding the details of Hussain’s real views.

Canadian federal government defunds anti-Israel organizations

Stephen Harper: not a primping peacock bitterly clinging to his teleprompter

Story from the National Post. (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Excerpt:

Since last fall, the federal Conservative government has been withdrawing taxpayer funding from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that use their grants to take sides against Israel in the Middle East conflict. Now comes word that last week, Ottawa told the United Nations it would no longer fund the world body’s Palestinian refugee agency. From now on, Canadian aid to Palestinians will be directed to specific projects. We will no longer give lump-sum aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), since most of that money simply goes straight into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) general treasury, where it might be used for humanitarian projects or might be used to arm and train terrorists.

This is a bold move for Ottawa, which is the first Western government to cut off funding for UNWRA.

Although UNWRA has long been a biased player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is seldom criticized for its incitement of anti-Israeli hatred and violence by Palestinians. It has funded textbooks that deny the right of Israel to exist and paid teachers who call on Palestinian children to push the Jewish state into the sea. It harbours radical Islamists and anti-Semites on its payroll and was even caught in 2004 using its own ambulances to ferry terrorists away from Israeli sites they had just attacked.

[…]Ottawa also announced it would defund Alternatives, a Montreal NGO that two summers ago organized an education camp in Quebec, welcoming “500 motivated militants” from Lebanon, Iraq, “Palestine” and Venezuela.

International Development Minister Bev Oda withdrew $7-million in tax dollars, too, from KAIROS, an “ecumenical partnership” that had adopted a vehemently anti-Israel policy and been at the forefront of boycotts against the importation of Israeli goods and visits by Israeli professors.

Now there is some real leadership on foreign policy, from prime minister Stephen Harper.

What are the consequencs of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue?

Story from the UK Telegraph. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

The chance to secure crucial information about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen was lost because the Obama administration decided to charge and prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal, critics say. He is said to have reduced his co-operation with FBI interrogators on the advice of his government-appointed defence counsel.

[…]”He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up,” Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.

[…]Abdulmutallab could have been held and interrogated in military custody under existing US legislation before a decision was taken whether to charge him before a military tribunal or a civilian court, according to Michael Mukasey, the last Attorney General under President George W Bush.

Mr Mukasey argues that it was crucial to gain intelligence from him immediately as details about locations, names and other plots is subject to rapid change. For the same reason, he dismissed the argument by John Brennan, Mr Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, that investigators will garner valuable data during any plea-bargaining talks.

Democrats are not serious about counter-terrorism.

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