Bush administration has some explaining to do on Hamas

Material Support to."Business Professionals" The Bush administration has some explaining to do on Hamas.

Back in July, the Justice Department held a bells-'n-whistles press conference to announce a major case: a 42-count indictment, charging seven men and an ostensible charity with underwriting Hamas to the tune of nearly $60 million. Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and responsible for numerous gruesome attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims - including Americans - has been formally designated as a terrorist organization under various U.S. laws for many years.

In announcing the indictment, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft could not have been more straightforward: "To those who exploit good hearts to secretly fund violence and murder, this prosecution sends a clear message: There is no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance terrorist attacks. The United States will ensure that both terrorists and their financiers meet the same, certain justice."

Evidently, Scott McClellan did not get the memo. At his press briefing Wednesday, President Bush's spokesman was asked about the very real possibility that Hamas could come to dominate what will pass for the "legislature" of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Question: In the event that Hamas, a terrorist organization not yet disarmed by the PA, wins a majority in the legislative PA, will the Bush administration still send $350 million U.S. taxpayer dollars to the PA, or not?

McCLELLAN: It's - the one thing that you see when people have elections that are free and fair is that they tend to choose people who are committed to improving their livelihood, not people who are committed to terrorist acts. And I think if you look back at the previous Palestinian elections, the people that were elected, while they might have been members of Hamas, they were business professionals. They were people that ran on talking about improving the quality of life for the Palestinian people and addressing their economic needs and addressing other needs that are important to them - not terrorists. [Emphasis added.]

This assertion, by the public face of the Bush administration, is breathtaking. Here's hoping it will be corrected, resoundingly, with due haste.

What is McClellan thinking about here? All terrorist organizations engage in this kind of beguiling propaganda. That Nazis had lots of spiffy spokesmen talking about improving people's lives. So does the IRA. So does Hezbollah.

Osama bin Laden's construction concerns built roads and infrastructure to improve people's lives in Sudan and Afghanistan - all the better for ingress and egress to the many terror training camps he ran in those countries with impunity.

The rationale for the Bush presidency, the bedrock basis for reelection, is that the President has been clear-eyed and unflinching on the central issue of the day: the threat posed by militant Islamic terrorism. Again and again, he has said it: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. This was the firm foundation of the Bush Doctrine - no quarter for terrorists, no place, no how. And no exceptions for the Palestinian Authority.

We have structured our law around it. Numerous people have been prosecuted under beefed up laws that forbid providing any kind of material support to terrorist organizations. In case after case, those defendants plead the same thing - what we might now call the "McClellan Defense": "Sure the government might say they're a terrorist organization, and sure they might mass-murder civilians, but they do a lot of good, too. They run charities. They run social service organizations. They have a lot of good business people who talk about improving the quality of life. I was only contributing to this happy-face side of the house, not the bad terrorists." The defense gets laughed out of court, because most people are not fools. As a practical matter, people know dollars are fungible. If you give money to a terrorist organization - like the $350 million McClellan indicates we are thinking about giving to a Hamas-dominated PA - you don't control it; the terrorists do, and they decide whether to channel it to healthcare or bomb-building.

More importantly, as a behavioral incentive, people understand and endorse what antiterror law seeks to achieve. If an organization practices the savagery of terrorism, if it seeks political accommodation by murdering its way to the bargaining table, it must forfeit any right to be heard or, bluntly, to exist. No matter how many hospitals and charities it runs. No matter how many nice men in nice suits it trots out to prattle about social justice. End of story.

President Bush has always seen the likes of Hamas as Hamas - i.e., as thugs, not businessmen. It was because of this that he was preferable to Senator Kerry, who saw terrorism as a problem to be managed in conjunction with the international community and its nuanced view of the world's Hamases as "political resistance movements" that, alas, occasionally strap explosives to adolescent suicide bombers - a somewhat less-than-nuanced way of killing lots of civilians.

It was because President Bush insisted, as a premise of his "roadmap" for Middle East peace, that terrorism be halted and terror groups be disarmed, that he was preferable to President Clinton, who labored eight long years trying to groom an incorrigible terrorist, Yassir Arafat, into a statesman - in a "peace process" that bred the Intifada and an ever-rising death count. If McClellan is to be taken seriously, it seems we are back to nuance and grooming. Is he to be taken seriously? - Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

This assertion, by the public face of the Bush administration, is breathtaking. Here's hoping it will be corrected, resoundingly, with due haste.

Since the comment's five days old, it's too late for due haste. Admittadly given the statements of the Bush administration post 9/11, accepting Hamas as a partner in peace is a difficult proposition, but it may come to that or turning our back on our palestinian allies.

Yes, there is definitely this worrying soft spot buried within the core of the Bush presidency. This is inexplicable, as is the complete surrender to illegal immigration. These two failures of resolve have been my biggest disappointments of the GWB era, and compared to the rest of the record, stand out like Chandler's tarantula on a slice of angel food.

I'm hoping these maddening lapses are due to concentration on bigger fish, such as Iranian regime change.

The Jews have a very small country and the arabs have vast land holdings. The Palestine's should be resetled in other arab nations so they can be with their own rotten kind and leave the Jews alone. Only then can there be peace. A similar resettlement happened with the indians and the pakistani, without this occurring, short of killing them all, lasting peace will never occur.

And the deficit. The Euros will accept Hamas as a legitimate political organization in a heartbeat once we do. Give them a base of power in the region, a look forward a few years to elections in Iraq, and the development (questionable) of "democracy" in places like Jordan and Egypt. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that developments could be hostile to the US.

I somehow forgot about the deficit. I suppose like many, I've been rationalizing it away, in light of 9/11, Iraq, etc. but, yes, it is getting ridiculous, isn't it?

Oh well, this will all be meaningless in the long run anyway as Western Civilization is essentially doomed, due to demographic suicide brought on by the death culture of abortion, negative birth rates, gayification of everything, euthanasia, etc.

The Palestine's should be resetled in other arab nations

This may be a good idea, BUT it ain't gonna happen.

A similar resettlement happened with the indians and the pakistani,

And it was one of the great bloodbaths of the XXth century.

IT IS SIGNIFICANT THAT ONE OF THE FEW PLACE NAMES ON EARTH THAT REMINDS US NOT OF THE VICTORY OF THE WINNERS BUT RATHER THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LOSERS, CONCERNS A GENOCIDE OF HINDUS BY THE MOSLEMS (13).
Unlike the Jewish holocaust, the exact toll of the Hindu genocide suggested by the name Hindu Kush is not available. However the number is easily likely to be in millions. Few known historical figures can be used to justify this estimate. Encyclopedia Britannica informs that in December 1398 AD, Timur Lane ordered the execution of at least 50,000 captives before the battle for Delhi, .. and after the battle those inhabitants (of Delhi) not killed were removed (as slaves) (17), while other reference says that the number of captives butchered by Timur Lane's army was about 100,000 (18). Later on Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that the (secular?) Mughal emperor Akbar 'ordered the massacre of about 30,000 (captured) Rajput Hindus on February 24, 1568 AD, after the battle for Chitod' (19). Another reference indicates that this massacre of 30,000 Hindu peasants at Chitod is recorded by Abul Fazl, Akbar's court historian himself (20). These two 'one day' massacres are sufficient to provide a reference point for estimating the scale of Hindu genocide. The Afgan historian Khondamir records that during one of the many repeated invasions on the city of Herat in western Afganistan, 1,500,000 residents perished (11).
Source: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_kush.html

Clearly I'm a HateAmerica proponent utilizing free speach (why do I detect that you don't consider that a good idea?) to undo America. You flushed me out. Like most supuporters of Israel, I'm the enemy.

Says more about you than me.

Rather than palestinian allies (I don't capitalize palestinian like you, since there's no real context for using it as a proper noun), what would you like me to call them? Terrorists they're clearly not.

I somehow forgot about the deficit. I suppose like many, I've been rationalizing it away, in light of 9/11, Iraq, etc. but, yes, it is getting ridiculous, isn't it?

While it may be necessary in the short term, it's an issue Republicans need to address before it's turned against them politically. I can see Hillary and other dems running on 1-Immigration, 2-the Reagan-Bush-Bush deficit, leaving gay marriage, abortion (should I have mentioned that as a Bush shortcoming?), gun control and socialist health farther down the list. Most voters who pay attention, only pay serious attention to 2 or 3 issues, the rest is the domain of interest groups.

The guilty Dog barks? More hopeless hatred from the clueless left.
You and your ilk are empty suits. No agenda save for how you are going to foil the incumbent with tricky sets of cagey embarrassments calculated to have him lose all his support.(Shazam!)
As for your "freedom of speech": in time of war it has another definition. But then 7-letter words are probably not clever enough for your lot.
Too busy telegraphing your punches.

Bush calls them our palestinian "partners for peace."

It's disgusting.
There should NEVER be a palestinian state.
Their goal is the destruction of Israel.

Bush's soft spot and policy failure lies in his unrealistic love of globalism. He won't change it in time to repair the damage it has done.

No pussy-footing around here Eh? "Our Palestinian Allies"?
Speak that we may know you.
Just another case of our free speech being utilised by the enemy to undo us.
Another "friend of the court" out to smear our President in time of war.
Your HateAmerica friends earning their pay.
The guilty Dog barks? More hopeless hatred from the clueless left.
You and your ilk are empty suits. No agenda save for how you are going to foil the incumbent with tricky sets of cagey embarrassments calculated to have him lose all his support.(Shazam!)
As for your "freedom of speech": in time of war it has another definition. But then 7-letter words are probably not clever enough for your lot.
Too busy telegraphing your punches.

....................

You got it all figured out bart. Quite an intellect.

Yawn

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