The Center for American Progress and Islamist Influences over the White House

cfap-450x243By Daniel Greenfield

To sign our petition to stop the witch hunt against Rep. Michele Bachmann, click here.

Over the last four years, the United States has suffered a series of comprehensive intelligence failures. These intelligence failures ranged from a lack of preparation for the attacks of September 11, 2012, the misguided assessment that there was a moderate group of Taliban willing to form a government and the refusal to believe that the Arab Spring would lead to Islamist takeovers, rather than liberal open societies.

The Obama Administration’s foreign policy has been one disaster after another and it has been quick to blame intelligence failures for its own mistakes. When accounting for its lies about a YouTube trailer leading to the attack on the Benghazi mission, Obama blamed the intelligence. But it turned out that the intelligence had been edited and censored for political reasons. What appeared to be an intelligence failure in Benghazi was actually political manipulation. And the same may well be true of the entire Arab Spring, of Afghanistan and the entire spectrum of attacks on September 11, 2012.

As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was proven correct in all the areas where the Obama Administration and its political allies suffered from intelligence failures.

In September 2011, one year before the attacks, Michele Bachmann warned that the Arab Spring was a disaster that would lead to the rise of radical elements across the Middle East. Widely ridiculed for it at the time, she was demonstrating the insight and foresight that a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is supposed to have.

Where Obama was proven wrong; Bachmann was proven right. When Michele Bachmann first warned about the Muslim Brotherhood, it was an obscure organization to most people in Washington D.C. After its successful seizure of power in Egypt however, Bachmann’s critics no longer have any excuse for pretending that condemning the group’s ruthless manipulations is a conspiracy theory. Not when Egyptian liberals are among the loudest voices warning about the Muslim Brotherhood threat; not just to Egypt or the Middle East, but to America as well.

A recent article in the Egyptian magazine, Rose El-Youssef listed some of the prominent and influential Muslim Brotherhood figures with access to the policymaking apparatus of the Obama Administration. Two of those figures were in the Department of Homeland Security. This article was another piece of evidence in a mountain of evidence, much of it collected by the FBI, about the conspiratorial activities of the Brotherhood and its front groups in the United States.

It wasn’t the intelligence that failed. It was the political operation that allowed Muslim Brotherhood operatives close access to the policymaking apparatus of the United States government that led to the politicized intelligence and the policy failures. Those policy failures led to the ascendance of Al Qaeda in North Africa and the Middle East, the triumph of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the attacks of September 11, 2012.

Nevertheless liberal organizations have launched a petition demanding that she be removed from the intelligence committee for spreading “conspiracy theories” and attacking “dedicated public servants”. After the complete implosion of Obama’s foreign policy, such attacks should be seen for what they are; an attempt to silence one of their critics who had been right all along while covering up their own lies.

To understand the source of the politicized environment that led to the foreign policy disasters, we need look no further than the Center for American Progress and its tentacle, Think Progress.

The Center for American Progress is a secretive think tank funded by covert donors which was described by Time Magazine as Obama’s idea factory and the single greatest influence on his administration. For all intents and purposes, CAP was the criminal brain in the Frankenstein of old Clinton staffers that would become the Obama Administration.

Read more at Front Page

CAPs “Islamophobia” report author linked to Muslim Brotherhood, defended Hamas funders

via Creeping Sharia:

A little sunlight to disinfect the Sharia Lobby. via | Washington Free Beacon

The co-author of a provocative report on “Islamophobia” has ties to a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organization and is the host of a website known for trafficking in radical, anti-Israel propaganda.

Wajahat Ali is a self described “playwright, essayist, and attorney.” He is also the co-author of “Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” a Center for American Progress-sponsored report that purports to expose the “small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts” on the right who aim to reach “millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grass-roots organizing.”

In the 132 page report, Ali and his cohorts at CAP attempt to take a scholarly approach to Islamophobia, building the case that a small faction of well-funded right-wing activists are solely responsible for perpetuating pernicious stereotypes about American Muslims. A number of critics have objected to the report as misleading.

Ali, however, has long aligned himself with a cadre of radical commentators who routinely condemn Zionism and attack the state of Israel as racist.

Last month, Ali waded into the “Israel firster” debate when he promoted a Twitter message from the left-wing agitator Max Blumenthal.

“Is it me or are the Israel Firsters stupidly overplaying their hand?” Blumenthal wrote, employing a borderline anti-Semitic slur.

The use and promotion of this type of language has damaged the reputation of several CAP employees, including Zaid Jilani, who resigned from the think tank soon after the scandal broke.

Faiz Shakir, CAP’s vice president and editor of its ThinkProgress blog, subsequently conceded in an internal e-mail that “‘Israel Firster’ is terrible, anti-Semitic language.” Shakir is a co-author of the Islamophobia report.

Ali’s own writings, which have been published on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, among other outlets, reveal a deep-seated hostility towards the Jewish state.

Given his views, observers on Capitol Hill and elsewhere said that they are troubled by Ali’s participation in CAP’s Islamophobia report.

Short of a convicted terrorist, it’s hard to imagine a co-author who more undermines the report’s credibility on this subject—not to mention that this report will have zero impact on any policy on the Hill,” said a Capitol Hill source who requested anonymity. “If anything, Mr. Ali’s presence on this supposedly academic document may have the exact opposite reaction they’re looking for.”

In addition to his writings, Ali has stated that he was elected as a board member to the Muslim Students Association, a group that unites Muslims on college campuses across the nation. The MSA is one of several organizations listed in a May 1991 document alleged to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Moreover, Ali is on record defending the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity that was convicted by the FBI on charges that it provided material support to the terror group Hamas.

Read it all via Wajahat Ali co-authors Center for American Progress report on Islamophobia

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