Obama’s OIC Envoy Didn’t Just Defend Al-Arian
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/02/23/obama%E2%80%99s-oic-envoy-didn%E2%80%99t-just-defend-al-arian-2/
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He condemned the United States for prosecuting just about everyone who was under indictment on terror charges at the time.
Obama’s newly-named Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, came under fire last week for statements he made in defense of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s leader in the US, Sami al-Arian, as well as for having initially lied about making them. Hussain had said that al-Arian, who pled guilty to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization, was a victim of “politically motivated persecutions,” then claimed that Laila, Sami’s daughter had made the statements, not him.
The cover-up itself is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it was large. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs deleted two paragraphs from a 2004 article – the two paragraphs quoting Hussain – and then claimed that Archive.org was lying and implied that anyone who wonders what happened to the article is a bigot. The White House then erroneously echoed Hussain’s claim that Laila al-Arian had made the statements. Then, last Friday, Hussain came clean and admitted to having said it all, while the White House admits nothing.
Second, the cover-up is intriguing because the reason why Hussain admitted to making the statements was not out of some sense of duty or honor, especially after having shifted the blame to another person, but because he got caught red-handed. Josh Gerstein of the Politico obtained audio from the 2004 Muslim Students Association conference at which he made the remarks. (Hat tip: Creeping Sharia.)
Gerstein’s article also reveals (although the audio above does not) that Hussain’s defense of al-Arian was part of a much broader condemnation of U.S. terrorist prosecutions, which should not be surprising since his speech took place at a conference for Muslim Brotherhood front group and he was a law student at the time. What is surprising is that he stuck up for just about every individual under indictment on terrorism charges at the time.
— The court martial of Capt. James Yee, a Guantanamo chaplain initially suspected of treason and later charged with adultery. All charges were eventually dropped.
— The case of Jose Padilla, who was held without charge for more than three years as an enemy combatant on suspicions of trying to detonate a radiation-laced “dirty bomb” in the U.S. In 2006, more than a year after Hussain spoke, Padilla was charged in a terrorist plot unrelated to the dirty bomb allegations. He was convicted by a jury in 2007 and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
— The imprisonment of Yaser Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan, held as an enemy combatant and released to Saudi Arabia weeks after Hussain spoke.
— The prosecution of an imam and a pizzeria owner in Albany, N.Y., for conspiring with an informant in a fictitious plot to use a missile launcher to attack a Pakistani diplomat. The men were convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, though their lawyers claimed the pair were entrapped.
— The prosecution of a Somali man, Nuradin Abdi, in 2004 for plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio. He pled guilty in 2007 to conspiring to support terrorism and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
— The imprisonment of an Oregon lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was jailed for more than two weeks in 2004 as a material witness on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings that year. He was never charged with a crime, received an apology from the FBI, which said it misidentified his fingerprints, and brought a lawsuit that led to a reported $2 million settlement from the government in 2006.
— The prosecution of four men as alleged members of a Detroit-based Al Qaeda “sleeper cell” plotting an attack. Two of the men were convicted on terror charges in 2003 but the convictions were thrown out at the government’s request after evidence emerged of prosecutorial misconduct and an unreliable informant. The prosecutor was charged criminally with concealing exculpatory evidence but later acquitted.
He then backtracked, calling his remarks about al-Arian “ill conceived.” He did not, however, retreat in his condemnation of the prosecution (or his perceived motivations for prosecution) of nearly every individual indicted on terrorism charges between September of 2001 and September of 2004, when he made the statements, nor has he repudiated any of his many troubling ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a genocidal organization whose stated purpose in the U.S. is to undermine our government and replace it with Sharia law. He spoke at a leadership summit hosted by a roll call of Holy Land Foundation unindicted co-conspirators as recently as last May.
The case of Rashad Hussain is disturbing on too many levels. One should not surprised that Obama appointed someone like Hussain as Special Envoy to the OIC, which seeks to outlaw free and honest discussion of Islam and undermine the national sovereignty of free nations. His counterrorism approach (why are lawyers crafting approaches to combating terrorism?) is one which essentially bends over backward to avoid dealing with the Islamic texts and tenets which call for violence, and which is pacifistic and appeasing in response to violent jihad both at home and abroad.
Van Jones may be a 9/11 Truther who defended a Marxist cop killer, but he never defended any leaders of explicitly genocidal international terror organizations or attempted mass murderers like Jose Padilla, and Jones’ ties to terror organizations pale in comparison to Hussain’s. Jones seems as innocuous as Opie from the Andy Griffith Show next to Rashad Hussain, yet, given the extent of the Obama administration’s dealings with individuals and entities affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and given the fact that Obama appointed an envoy to the fascist murderers of the OIC at all, I do not expect Rashad Hussain to quietly resign in the middle of the night any time soon.
The author writes for NewsReal Blog. She also runs The Force of Reason.
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