Tag Archives: Associated Press

Benghazi Suspects ID’d, But Administration Won’t Nab Them Because It Doesn’t Want to Send Them to Gitmo

Posted on by
1

aaadrones1PJ Media, by Bridget Johnson:

Despite the fact that the Obama administration regularly strike at terrorists with lethal drone hits in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the White House is reportedly not rounding up five suspects identified in the Benghazi attack because of a lack of evidence to try them in civilian court.

The Associated Press cites officials who said there is enough evidence to seize the men as enemy combatants and send them to Guantanamo Bay.

But apparently the Obama administration wants civilian trials for anyone involved in the Benghazi attack and has sent the FBI back to collect more evidence, which could be challenging in a more tumultuous Libya today.

From the AP:

The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores the White House aim to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and holding them at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The preference is toward a process in which most are apprehended and tried by the countries where they are living or arrested by the U.S. with the host country’s cooperation and tried in the U.S. criminal justice system. Using military force to detain the men might also harm fledgling relations with Libya and other post-Arab-Spring governments with whom the U.S. is trying to build partnerships to hunt al-Qaida as the organization expands throughout the region.

A senior administration official said the FBI has identified a number of individuals that it believes have information or may have been involved, and is considering options to bring those responsible to justice. But taking action in remote eastern Libya would be difficult. America’s relationship with Libya would be weighed as part of those options, the official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the effort publicly.

…The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies identified the men through contacts in Libya and by monitoring their communications. They are thought to be members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan militia group whose fighters were seen near the U.S. diplomatic facility prior to the violence.

In March, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) estimated that drone strikes have killed about 4,700, including some senior members of al-Qaeda.

 

What the Obama Scandals Reveal About Progressive Ideology

Posted on by
4

gty_barack_obama_irs_mad_speech_thg_130515_wblogBy Bruce Thornton:

The three scandals dominating the news this week all reveal the moral and intellectual corruption at the heart of progressive ideology. Whether are not these revelations gain enough traction to halt the country’s downward spiral is the more important question.

Benghazi

The moment it came into office the Obama administration bought into the delusional narrative that Islamic jihadist terror is a response to Western historical crimes against Muslims, rather than an expression of Islamic theology. The Israeli “occupation” of Palestine, the depredations of colonialism and imperialism, the resulting dysfunctional economies and oppressive governments in Muslim countries, the arrogant xenophobia and intolerance of American culture, the invasions of Muslim countries after 9/11––all were identified as the “root causes” of terrorism.

Obama’s foreign policy, based on the assumptions of American guilt and the malign consequences of George Bush’s arrogant, unilateralist foreign policy, thus was an attempt to correct the bad policies and behaviors that instigated terror. Thus Obama apologized in his Cairo speech, eagerly extended a diplomatic “hand” to the genocidal mullahs in Iraq, rushed for the exits in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported the dubious “Arab Spring” uprisings and their Islamist prime movers like the Muslim Brothers, and distanced America from Israel.

The intervention in Libya seemed to be an easy way to validate these beliefs, at the same time avoiding the charge of retreat and withdrawal from America’s global responsibilities to advance human rights and protect the victims of tyranny. The overthrow of Gaddafi was sanctioned by the U.N. and engineered by NATO, thus confirming the progressive belief that unilaterally pursuing national interests was, like nationalism itself, immoral, and that only transnational collective action sanctioned by international institutions was legitimate.

For a while the optics were good. A creepy psychopath was eliminated, no casualties were suffered, and a seemingly secular democracy was aborning. The idealism of democracy promotion, one bungled by the unilateral, trigger-happy George Bush, was indulged at little political cost, while the “legitimate” war, against al Qaeda, was being pursued just as cheaply with out-of-sight, out-of-mind drone killings, proving that Obama was no crypto-pacifist squish. Hence the foreign policy narrative peddled during the presidential campaign that al Qaeda was on the ropes and democracy was on the march.

The attack on Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11, eight weeks before the election, exploded that narrative. Al Qaeda and its affiliates were not on the ropes, but were growing and expanding, and could swiftly organize the sack of an embassy office and the murder of four Americans, including an ambassador, humiliating the infidel superpower. Libya was not a democracy-in-the-making, but a Darwinian tribal and sectarian jungle dominated by jihadists armed with the weapons we put in their hands when we destroyed the Gaddafi regime. The refusal to beef up security in Benghazi, which would have been an admission that things weren’t so rosy in the fledgling democracy, now looked like a political calculation that cost American lives. Worse yet, once more the idea that terrorism is a response to our bad behavior was exploded, as many of those Libyans we had liberated turned against us, just as thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have.

So of course the attack had to be spun into something closer to Obama’s foreign policy narrative: the attack was caused by a “spontaneous” protest against an Internet video insulting Mohammed. The administration knew this was a lie the day of the attack, but could not admit this repudiation of Obama’s foreign policy claims so close to the election, and so kept repeating the lie for two weeks, trusting the media spaniels to spin the attack and collude in the still on-going cover-up.

IRS Political Harassment

The IRS’s targeting of groups associated with conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status is a predictable consequence of the progressive narrative that conservatism is a form of neurosis, the lashing out of ignorant, violent “bitter clingers” against a changing world that challenges their racial privilege, economic power, and religious superstitions. The fondness of groups like the Tea Party for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution reflects this psychopathology, the desire to “turn back the clock” and restore their once exalted social and political position. As such, they are dangerous––and armed to boot––and so require monitoring by all right-thinking people who are progressing towards the utopia of “social justice.”

So it’s no surprise that IRS functionaries would create investigative rubrics like “Tea Party” or “patriot” that reflect these assumptions in order to guide them in their scrutiny of groups seeking tax-exempt status. These bureaucrats have absorbed the narrative from the mainstream media and popular culture, both of which are steeped in the two-bit pop psychologizing that passes for wisdom among those who fancy themselves the enlightened “anointed,” as Thomas Sowell calls them. Nor are they troubled at using the coercive power of the state to pursue these political agendas, for one of the most important progressive principles is that righteous ends can justify a whole range of brutal means.

Whether or not someone in the Obama administration directly ordered the IRS to pursue this partisan harassment is irrelevant. Like the Corleone family, the administration has a lot of “buffers.” No one had to be told, just as the progressives don’t have to tell anyone in Hollywood to make yet another movie or television show denigrating and demonizing corporations, conservatives, Christians, or the CIA. That is what’s so insidious about this ideology: it has permeated the minds of people to the point that unsavory actions advancing the cause are never questioned or doubted. In the progressive mind, dogma rules, not principle. Hence the righteous act to advance ideologically sanctioned political ends without bothering about coherent or consistent principle.

Read more at Front Page

Related articles

 

The Muslims with No Name: Islamists Cover Up Their Existence in the Media

Posted on by
2

20130407_AP_SHSSSBy ANDREW E. HARROD, SAM NUNBERG:

As reported by U.S. News & World Report on April 4, 2013, the Associated Press (AP) has revised its definition of “Islamist” in the latest edition of the AP stylebook after the AP announced that it would likewise no longer approve of “illegal immigrant.”  This move, advocated precisely by a troubling Muslim group justifiably called Islamist in the past, shows once again how difficult it is for modern free societies even to identify their Islamist foes in the face of politically correct pressures.

Added to the AP stylebook in 2012, Islamist initially had the following entry: “Supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam.  Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.”  The updated entry reads:

An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam.  Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists.

Where possible, be specific and use the name of militant affiliations:  al-Qaida-linked, Hezbollah, Taliban, etc.  Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.

Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), praised “this revision” as a “step in the right direction” that “will result in fewer negative generalizations in coverage of issues related to Islam and Muslims.”  Hooper considered the “key issue with the term ‘Islamist’” to be “not its continued use,” but rather “its use almost exclusively as an ill-defined pejorative.”

Hooper had previously recommended on January 3, 2013, that the media “[d]rop the term ‘Islamist,’” which had “become shorthand for ‘Muslims we don’t like.’”  This term’s “almost exclusively pejorative context” has an “even more negative slant” when “often coupled with the term ‘extremist.’”  By analogy, Hooper rejected any hypothetical media references to the “‘Judaist government of Israel,’ the ‘Christianist leader Rick Santorum’ or ‘Hinduist Indian politician Narendra Modi’” when describing “those who would similarly seek governments ‘in accord with the laws’ of their respective faiths.”

“Many Muslims,” Hooper stated, who wish to serve the public good are influenced by the principles of their faith.  Islam teaches Muslims to work for the welfare of humanity and to be honest and just.  If this inspiration came from the Bible, such a person might well be called a Good Samaritan.  But when the source is the Quran, the person is an “Islamist.”

The “frequent linkage of the term ‘Islamist’” to various human rights violations was “strongly promoted by Islamophobic groups.”  This appeared to Hooper as attempts “to launch rhetorical attacks on Islam and Muslims, without the public censure that would normally accompany such bigoted attacks on any other faith.”  “Islam-bashers,” Hooper elaborated, “routinely use the term to disingenuously claim they only hate ‘political’ Islam, not the faith itself,” yet “fail to explain how a practicing Muslim can be active in the political arena without attracting the label ‘Islamist.’”

If retained at all by “media professionals,” Hooper recommended that “Islamist” appear only when a “group applies the term to itself,” analogous to the AP’s treatment of “fundamentalist.”  Absent such elimination or modification, “Islamist” entailed a “political and religious value judgment” that “is hardly fair or balanced.”

Hooper might well reject the “Islamist” label, for this term has in the past denounced CAIR in, for example, the Investigative Report on Terrorism (IPT)’s exhaustive 118-page report on CAIR.  IPT documents how CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful 2008 prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for financing Hamas terrorists, has its origins in American entities of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Hamas.  Accordingly, CAIR has an extensive history of apologizing for militant jihad and repressive sharia practices as well as CAIR functionary convictions for supporting Islamic terrorism.  Hooper himself has in the past stated that he would like to see the United States government become “Islamic” and implement sharia.
Read more: Family Security Matters

Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School.  He is admitted to the Virginia State Bar.  He has published various pieces concerning an Islamic supremacist agenda at the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project, American Thinker, and Faith Freedom International.

 

None Dare Call It Islamism

Posted on by
1

islamist-450x252By Daniel Greenfield:

The Associated Press, after putting up a brief defense of the English language, ceded the term “gay marriage,” then “illegal immigrant” and finally “Islamist.” The left has a long history with political language and the media, so these latest triumphs were only a matter of time.

“Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Obama once said, while insisting that they meant the opposite of what we thought they meant. The left believes that words matter because they allow people to communicate the wrong sort of ideas. Change the words and you change the ideas.

Islamism is one of those ideas. The idea is that people ought to live under Islam. This was thought to be a bad idea, back in those dark days before we learned that Islamism is as American as Mom, Other Mom and Apple Pie.

Now we know that Islamism is actually the best defense against Islamism so long as it’s the good kind of Islamism that involves terrorist groups winning elections and shooting their people in the streets instead of the bad kind of Islamism which involves terrorist groups shooting people in the streets without first running for office.

The Muslim Brotherhood used to be the bad kind of Islamists that set off bombs and shot people in the streets, but then they disavowed violence, ran for office, shredded what was left of the law and began torturing and killing their opponents who protested the shredding.

Opponents of Islamism, the word not the idea, warn that if we associate Islamism with Islamist terrorist groups, then Muslims will get the idea that Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are the same thing. The only argument that they present in favor of them not being the same thing is that the media always calls the Muslim Brotherhood a moderate group. And if they’re a moderate group, they clearly can’t be torturing and killing their opponents, even if the same news stories that call them moderate also report that they are torturing and killing their opponents.

Read more at Front Page

Related article

In Timbuktu, al-Qaida left behind a manifesto

Posted on by
1

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press

TIMBUKTU, Mali     (AP) — In their hurry to flee last month, al-Qaida fighters left behind a crucial document: Tucked under a pile of papers and trash is a confidential letter, spelling out the terror network’s strategy for conquering northern Mali and reflecting internal discord over how to rule the region.

The document is an unprecedented window into the terrorist operation, indicating that al-Qaida predicted the military intervention that would dislodge it in January and recognized its own vulnerability.

The letter also shows a sharp division within al-Qaida’s Africa chapter over how quickly and how strictly to apply Islamic law, with its senior commander expressing dismay over the whipping of women and the destruction of Timbuktu’s ancient monuments. It moreover leaves no doubt that despite a temporary withdrawal into the desert, al-Qaida plans to operate in the region over the long haul, and is willing to make short-term concessions on ideology to gain the allies it acknowledges it needs.

Abdelmalek Droukdel

Abdelmalek Droukdel

The more than nine-page document, found by the AP in a building occupied by the Islamists for almost a year, is signed by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the nom de guerre of Abdelmalek Droukdel, the senior commander appointed by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaida’s branch in Africa. The clear-headed, point-by-point assessment resembles a memo from a CEO to his top managers and lays out for his jihadists in Mali what they have done wrong in months past, and what they need to do to correct their behavior in the future.

Read more

The Jihad On Free Speech

Posted on by
Reply

speechIBD:

Islamofascism: Islamists have launched a hostile takeover of American  language through an increasingly aggressive and organized censorship campaign  that threatens free speech.

Over the past few weeks, there have been an alarming number of cases of  Muslim pressure groups trying to force Americans to conform to a pro-Islamic  speech code.

They’ve insisted on censoring any speech or expression that offends them,  including TV ads, Christian symbols, speeches and even parts of speech.

In some cases, the targets of their wrath have caved in to their demands.

•  Last week, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester, Mass., canceled a talk  on Islam by author Robert Spencer after local Muslim groups, egged on by  Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, enlisted a sympathetic  Boston Globe reporter to smear Spencer as a “bigot.”

“We applaud the diocese’s decision,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper  gloated.

•  Last month, Hooper penned a column demanding the Associated Press drop  from its new Stylebook the word “Islamist” to describe militant Muslims who  support jihad and Islamizing the West, such as members of the Muslim Brotherhood  and CAIR itself. He doesn’t like the “pejorative” ring to it, accurate as it  is.

CAIR already got the U.S. government to scrub the term. Now it’s bullying the  press not to use it.

•  CAIR at the same time is running ads on buses in Chicago and San Francisco  redefining the term jihad. The whitewash campaign, dubbed “MyJihad,” aims to  convince Americans that jihad merely means “to struggle,” not wage war.

•  Speaking of ads, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the  Muslim Institute for Interfaith Studies joined forces last week to condemn as  “racist” a light-hearted Super Bowl commercial featuring an Arab walking through  a desert with a camel. Coca-Cola dropped everything and consulted with the  groups on bended knee.

“We did express regret that the ad had been misunderstood,” Coke said.

•  Islamist groups like CAIR are feverishly trying to insert their own word  “Islamophobia” — into the popular lexicon. They use this term, ad nauseam, to  describe anyone who speaks critically of the violent nature of Islam.

•  Recently they petitioned the United Nations to take action to limit free  speech when it’s deemed offensive to Muslims, citing a “striking increase in  Islamophobia.” They hope to one day criminalize it, and they’re inching closer  and closer to that goal.

•  Swayed by such international pressure, the Pentagon last month ordered  crosses and other Christian symbols removed from military chapels where our  soldiers pray in Afghanistan. Why? They insult the local Muslims.

Crescent moons and other Islamic symbols are perfectly fine, however, and  will remain at the mosques the U.S. has erected on those same bases for Afghan  interpreters and security trainees.

Here’s what’s really outrageous about this trend: In many cases, the Muslims  demanding greater respect for Islam are the very reason it gets such a bad  rap.

Some of the same Islamic groups arguing that their religious rights supercede  everyone else’s free-speech rights have actually been read their rights as  terrorist suspects.

Several former officials of CAIR, for example, now sit in prison on  terror-related convictions.

And the Justice Department has ID’d its founder and the entire organization  itself as unindicted terrorist co-conspirators, after linking them to both the  terrorist group Hamas and the radical Brotherhood in the largest terror-finance  case in U.S. history.

Unless Americans want to live under de facto blasphemy laws, they’d better  start standing up to these Islamofascists.

 

Egypt: Free People Not Going Quietly Into the Sharia Night

Posted on by
2

4490204-3x2-700x4671By Robert Spencer

Survey after survey, as well as the election results that put the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in the presidential palace, show that most Egyptians want Islamic law. But those who do not are not submitting quietly to Sharia tyranny.

Morsi has declared a state of emergency and given the military the power to arrest civilian protesters, yet still the anti-Morsi demonstrations continue. And while he quickly endorsed the demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak that ultimately led to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascent to power, Barack Obama has been reticent about supporting these demonstrations, as he was in 2009 when thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest against the mullahcracy.

But aren’t these “pro-democracy” protesters? After all, Morsi has been notably inhospitable to dissent, arresting his critics and overseeing the adoption of a constitution that Egyptian Christians fear will be used to deny them basic rights, in accord with Sharia provisions institutionalizing discrimination against non-Muslims. Videos have come to light in which he lashed out against Jews with venomous hatred, referring to Qur’anic curses of them as “apes and pigs” and declaring that there could be no negotiations with Israel.

Those who are protesting against his regime, on the other hand, are in favor of genuine democratic rule, without Sharia restrictions on the freedom of speech and its denial of equality of rights to large segments of the popular.

Yet Obama is silent. The only two mass popular uprisings in Muslim countries that he has not supported have one thing in common: both have been against pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist regimes. All the popular uprisings he has supported, meanwhile, have resulted in the installation of pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist regimes.

One might be pardoned for thinking that Obama is in favor of pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist regimes. In any case, so are most Egyptians: a Pew Research Center survey conducted in Spring 2010, before the chimerical “Arab Spring” and the toppling of Mubarak, found that no fewer than eighty-five percent of Egyptians thought that Islam was a positive influence in politics. Fifty-nine percent said they identified with “Islamic fundamentalists” in their struggle against “groups who want to modernize the country,” who had the support of only twenty-seven percent of Egyptians. Only twenty percent were “very concerned” about “Islamic extremism” within Egypt.

Another survey in May 2012 found little difference. 61 percent of Egyptians stated that they wanted to see Egypt abandon its peace treaty with Israel, and the same number identified the hardline Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the country that should serve as Egypt’s model for the role Islam should play in government. 60 percent said that Egypt’s laws should hew closely to the directives of the Qur’an.

Yet these surveys show that a substantial minority in Egypt does not want Sharia, and the demonstrations this week demonstrate that they’re determined to make a stand. They oppose the new Egyptian constitution that, as the Associated Press reported, “largely reflects the conservative vision of the Islamists, with articles that rights activists, liberals and Christians fear will lead to restrictions on the rights of women and minorities and civil liberties in general.” They have every reason to be concerned, for the constitution reflects in numerous particulars Sharia restrictions on their rights. AP noted that the constitution’s wording “could give Islamists the tool for insisting on stricter implementation of rulings of Shariah.”

Read more at Front Page

Manufacturing ‘Islamophobia’ at UC Berkeley

Posted on by
Reply

razieh20100831063916560By Cinnamon Stillwell

Scholars of the Middle East would do well to follow the lead of the Associated Press (AP), which last year struck the political term “Islamophobia” from the new edition of its widely used Stylebook, explaining that “‘-phobia,’ an irrational, uncontrollable fear, often a form of mental illness should not be used in political or social contexts, including ‘homophobia’ and ‘Islamophobia.’” Given that the word was invented in the early 1990s by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, the Northern Virginia-based International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), in order to silence critics of Islamism by branding them as irrational racists and hate-mongers—according to former IIIT member Abdur-Rahman Muhammad who was present at the time—AP made a wise decision.

In contrast, the field of Middle East studies—in partnership with organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist outfit linked by the United States government to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood posing as a defender of civil rights—has become one of the key proponents of the myth that “Islamophobia” is sweeping the nation. Professors of Middle East studies regularly use the phrase in both public lectures and the classroom, while producing books, op-eds, reports, and programs devoted to the promulgation of this deliberately misleading term.

At the forefront of this effort is the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP), a program of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender directed by Near Eastern studies senior lecturer and notorious anti-Israel activist Hatem Bazian. Bazian, co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has links to Hamas through his work with KindHearts and through SJP’s sister organization, the Muslim Students Association. In addition to annual conferences devoted to the subject beginning in 2010 (information is available here and here), the IRDP produced the inaugural edition of its Islamophobia Studies Journal in late 2012.

As with IRDP conferences, the journal was fashioned in collusion with CAIR and Berkeley’s “Islamic University,” Zaytuna College. Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area chapter, and Zaid Shakir, Zaytuna College cofounder and senior faculty member, serve on its advisory board, along with controversial Oxford University Islamic studies professor Tariq Ramadan and University of California, Davis anthropology and women’s studies professor Suad Joseph. Editorial board members include Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University associate professor of ethnic studies and race and resistance studies, and a senior scholar in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative;  Munir Jiwa, founding director and assistant professor of the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; and Hatem Bazian. All share the dubious achievement of furthering the politicization of Middle East studies.

In keeping with the postcolonial, postmodern, racialist language that characterizes UC Berkeley’s Center for Race & Gender, the Islamophobia Studies Journal is filled with the sort of ideological jargon that radical academics habitually substitute for reasoned debate. In the table of contents and the editorial statement alone, terms such “Otherness,” “social justice,” “speak truth to power,” “racial formations,” “the Muslim Other,” “the ‘inferior’ global other,” and “Western epistemic racisms” numb the mind and deaden the senses. Ahistorical and culturally relativistic comparisons to the Jewish experience serve to comfort those inclined to view all “Others” in the same light. Bazian’s contribution, “Muslims – Enemies of the State: The New Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO),” paints Muslim-Americans as victims of a persecutory fervor he likens to anti-communism—a trope he has been hawking furiously since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Read more at Front Page

Only Terrorist in Custody for Benghazi Attack is Freed for Lack of Evidence

Posted on by
2

l43-libia-ambasciatore-america-120912151455_mediumBy Daniel Greenfield at Front Page

But don’t worry, Barack Hussein Obama has got this, just like he had the defense of Benghazi. Any century now, we’re going to catch the “folks” who did this and give them a stern talking to. And if we don’t… the media will lie and pretend we did.

Ali Harzi, the only person who had been known to be in custody in connection with last September’s attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, has been released by authorities in his native Tunisia

Harzi is one of two men who were detained by authorities in Turkey last October when they reportedly tried to enter that country with fake passports. After about a week in Turkey, according to The Daily Beast, Harzi was sent to Tunisia. Last month, the AP says, he was questioned by FBI agents.

Tunisia happens to have an Islamist government now, courtesy of the Arab Spring so this latest development is not terribly shocking.

It’s also the latest botch in a string of errors and embarrassments for Obama Inc. which botched the investigation from the start.

A media outlet for Ansar al Sharia Tunisia has released pictures purportedly showing three FBI agents who interviewed Ali al Harzi, a suspect in the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The FBI had failed to interrogate the actual leaders of the attack in Benghazi for security reasons, but it wasn’t the fault of the FBI that Obama had unfairly tasked them with a job that should have gone to the military.

Expecting the FBI to handle Benghazi is as ridiculous as sending them to arrest Osama bin Laden. But Obama refuses to understand the difference between war and criminal investigations. This obtuse liberal idiocy means that instead of sending the SEALS to deal with the perpetrators of Benghazi, we’re sending FBI agents to interview them.

And this is what it has gotten us so far.

Related articles

Islamist Group Tries to Kill Use of “Islamist”

Posted on by
2

IPT News - January 4, 2013

After doing everything it can to ensconce a new word, “Islamophobia,” into conversational English, the nation’s most visible Islamist group is trying to stop use of a well-established word: Islamist.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper released a column urging journalists to “Drop the term ‘Islamist.’”

It was added to the latest Associated Press Stylebook – the guide for spelling, punctuation and other rules – that is used by journalists at the smallest community papers and the largest television networks, Hooper wrote. AP defines Islamists as “Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.”

Journalists should ignore that, Hooper argued, because it is used in a negative way, and used by “Islam-bashers” who really hate the faith of Islam but want to cover their tracks. “Yet they fail to explain how a practicing Muslim can be active in the political arena without attracting the label ‘Islamist.’”

Plenty of practicing Muslims work bravely in opposition to Islamist ideology. Britain’s Quilliam Foundation was started by Muslims who walked away from radical Islamist thought and now counter the arguments Islamists offer.

“Challenging extremism is the duty of all responsible members of society,” the foundation’s website says. Not least because cultural insularity and extremism are products of the failures of wider society to foster a shared sense of belonging and to advance liberal democratic values. With Islamist extremism in particular, we believe a more self-critical approach must be adopted by Muslims.” [Emphasis added]

Hooper may have had the Investigative Project on Terrorism in mind with his comment, as we try to distinguish between the faith of Islam as practiced by individuals, and its application as the foundation for political action and law. When devout Muslims espouse this “separation between mosque and state,” Hooper dismisses them as “a mere sock puppet for Islam haters and an enabler of Islamophobia.”

Hooper’s demand that “Islamist” be removed from the lexicon is ironic, since his bosses seemed more than comfortable placing themselves firmly in the world of “Islamists” back in 1993. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad joined two dozen Hamas supporters in Philadelphia for a fall weekend in an urgent meeting called to discuss ways to “derail” the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords.

The FBI bugged the meeting room. Transcripts entered into evidence during a 2008 Hamas-financing trial show the participants referred to “Islamists” dozens of times. Ahmad helped lead the meeting, helping determine who might attend and calling it to order.

The FBI described the group as Hamas members and supporters. “Hamas’ agenda was not only to eliminate Israel,” prosecutors wrote, “but also to sabotage the Oslo Accords and to replace the secular PA regime with an Islamist government that would control all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.”

Awad, who remains CAIR’s executive director nearly 20 years later, addressed the meeting about media strategies.

“The fourth goal is becoming open to the media in the U.S. and the Western society to ease the intensity of the campaign and to explain the legality of the opposition led by the Islamists,” he said. [Emphasis added]

Ahmad, who served as CAIR chairman emeritus until 2009, also discussed media strategy for Islamists in America.

“The first goal was relating to activism among Muslims and Palestinians but we must broadcast our point of view in U. S. media. There is a very good reason for that which is bringing the voice of the Islamists to the surface, keeping them informed and explaining their positions in order to case the severity of allegations of radicalism and other things,” Ahmad said. [Emphasis added] “This will also make our position known to Muslims and sympathizers whom we cannot reach via our media tools.”

A speaker identified only as “Akram” told the group opposition to the Oslo deal did not “have anything to do with any living conditions. We have undisputable rights in Palestine as Islamists. They don’t change with the changing of the events.” Later, he said Islamists were the only ones willing to oppose the agreement publicly.

“We must be clear that we oppose this thing 100% and that we, the Islamists … different from what is being suggested for Palestinian activism,” Akram said. No one disagreed.

Their claim on Palestine was not limited to the West Bank and Gaza, Ahmad said, agreeing it was not a wise strategy to say so publicly.

“We’ve always demanded the 1948 territories,” Ahmad said.

“Yes,” an unidentified speaker responded, “but we don’t say that publicly. You cannot say it publicly. In front of the Americans…”

“No,” Ahmad agreed, “we didn’t say that to the Americans.”

Nearly 20 years later, Ahmad’s organization doesn’t want Americans to say the same words he and his colleagues embraced.

“Unfortunately, the term ‘Islamist’ has become shorthand for ‘Muslims we don’t like,’” Hooper wrote. “It is currently used in an almost exclusively pejorative context and is often coupled with the term ‘extremist,’ giving it an even more negative slant.”

This is revisionist history. In addition to Hamas supporters, fundraisers for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used the “Islamist” in laudatory fashion. During a 1989 conference by Sami Al-Arian’s Islamic Committee for Palestine, Cleveland Imam Fawaz Damra described heroic battles Islamists waged in sparking the intifada against Israel.

“We acknowledge that Islamists were absent from the arena of jihad for a long while, Damra said. “This is not the time to examine the causes of that absence. But this was their return with an unflagging spirit, determined to do battle and to confront ….an important development. Then occurred the fleeing operation, executed by six mujahideen towards the middle of the fifth month of ’87. This was followed by specific operations executed by these youth, one of the most important of which was the killing of the Military Police chief in Gaza. In other words, the events rekindled the spirit of hope and the spirit of self-confidence in the people.”

Damra would later describe Al-Arian’s committee as “the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine” and urge people to write checks intended for the Jihad to “write it in the name if the Islamic Committee for Palestine, ‘ICP’ for short.”

Evidence also showed that Al-Arian served as secretary on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s governing board.

CAIR defended both men.

CAIR officials also have supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, even as it rammed through a constitution that epitomizes Islamist aspirations and makes religious law the law of the land. The Brotherhood has no problem calling itself Islamist.

If the word is to be used, Hooper wrote, it “should not be used unless a group applies the term to itself.” So the Brotherhood can be called “Islamist.”

CAIR doesn’t use the term itself, not “to the Americans,” anyway, but we’ve offered a tiny sample of the examples of Islamists using the word privately. CAIR’s background – the FBI cut off contact with the group in 2008 over questions about “whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS – should be taken into consideration by anyone entertaining Hooper’s request to serve as language cop.

By the way, the AP did remove a related word from the newest Stylebook: Islamophobia.