Who's with President Bush?

President Bush has characterized the choice to be made in this war on terror: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." The stark clarity of this binary decision has served the United States well in marshaling a large number of nations in the fight against al Qaeda and a smaller, but still ample, number for the next phase of this war: the liberation of Iraq.

Regrettably, in the months since September 11, 2001, people who have made no secret of their sympathy for terrorists, provided them financial support, excused their murderous attacks and/or sought to impede the prosecution of the war against them have repeatedly been put in the company of the President. In other words, individuals and organizations who appear to be "with the terrorists" have time and again been allowed to be with the President in the White House and elsewhere.

For example: o On September 20, 2001 -- just nine days after the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- Shaykh Hamza Yusuf was the Muslim representative in a small ecumenical gathering held in the Oval Office.

At the same time, FBI agents were trying to interview him at his house in California since he had declared two days before the attack: "This country is facing a terrible fate....This country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did -- and lest people forget that Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands." His wife told the incredulous agents Yusuf wasn't home, he was with the President. o Six days later, President Bush met in the Roosevelt Room with a Muslim imam by the name of Muzammil H. Siddiqi. Siddiqi is a long-time board member of several organizations in the United States funded by, and closely tied to, Saudi Arabia's radical state religion known as Wahhabism. Two of these groups, including one where Siddiqi still sits on the board, were raided in March 2002 by Federal authorities in pursuit of terrorist financing.

This presidential meeting was all the more puzzling since the imam had shown his true colors by claiming, at a rally the previous October: "America has to learn...If you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.

Please, all Americans. Do you remember that? Allah is watching everyone. God is watching everyone. If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come." o On September 17, 2001, President Bush paid a visit to the mosque in Washington. There he was photographed flanked by Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

CAIR has long been an admirer and public defender of terrorist organizations whose attacks against even innocent women and children it sees as legitimate acts of "liberation." Awad has personally declared, "I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." o Also in the picture with President Bush at the mosque was Khaled Saffuri, currently chairman of an organization called the Islamic Institute, which he co-founded with conservative activist Grover Norquist.

Saffuri previously served as the development director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it made no bones about using terrorism for political purposes. He went on to become deputy director of the radical American Muslim Council (AMC), under then-director Abduraman Alamoudi -- a publicly declared supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, whose statements of solidarity with these groups prompted the Bush 2000 campaign to return his contributions. Under Saffuri's leadership, the Islamic Institute has attacked the Bush Administration's investigations of radical Muslim groups and closures of organizations suspected of funding terrorists.

The Institute has been funded by groups raided in the above-mentioned terrorist financing investigations. It lobbied intensively against portions of the USA Patriot Act. And Saffuri has personally denounced the President's listing of the Holy Land Foundation as a charity that supported terrorist organizations. He has acknowledged sponsoring the children of suicide bombers through the Foundation, even after its closure by the government.

In addition to the President, a number of his senior subordinates -- including Cabinet officers -- have met, in some cases more than once, with members of the aforementioned and other organizations with troubling attitudes towards jihadist terrorists. A particularly bizarre instance was FBI Director Robert Mueller’s keynote address last year to the American Muslim Council.

The AMC has a long record of activities hostile to the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the war on terror. It has even urged Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI! Nonetheless, according to a press release dated last Thursday, Mr. Mueller has invited the AMC’s chairman, Dr. Yahya Mossa Basha, to attend an upcoming meeting with him and “leaders of major Muslim and Arab-American organizations.”

It is very much in the President's interest -- and the Nation's -- that moderate, law-abiding, peace-loving and patriotic American Muslims be embraced and empowered by the Bush Administration and all those who support it in waging a war on terror, not on Islam.

To do so, however, the Administration must not allow those who are “with” its enemies in that struggle to continue being with the President and his team.

I stopped posting yesterday on this thread and I was going to look into it more.

I do not think President Bush is a traitor and I never said he was but I am searching why Frank thinks there is a problem and I believe it goes to Norquist as he says and Norquist is the key to this mystery.

What I think is Norquist is leeding President Bush astray.

.......
The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror
by Stephen Schwartz

LAMB: You also say that Grover Norquist, who -- who is he, by the way?

SCHWARTZ: Well, Grover Norquist is a very prominent fund-raiser, and what can I say, wheeler dealer and fixer in the Republican Party, Republican circles and in the conservative movement. And Mr. Norquist is someone who had -- prior to September 11, had cultivated the Muslim leadership in the United States, the Arab-American leadership in the United States, and had attempted to bring the American Muslim and Arab-American communities into the Republican camp, kind of as a parallel, I think, to the role of Jews in the Democratic Party. And he had formed an alliance which still he maintains with, essentially, the same group of people, the same Wahhabi, Saudi-backed radical Muslim figures who have had and had taken over and continue to exercise great influence in the leadership of the American Muslim community.

http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1713

Wahhabi

Saudi Smokescreen
By Rebekah E. Reese
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 16, 2002

The Saudis are selling themselves as abused good guys and the State Department and the White House are buying it.

There is a tug of war going on in America between those who believe that the Saudis are directly or indirectly responsible for a good portion of Islamic terrorism, and those who believe the Saudis are good, long-standing allies of the United States and are doing everything possible to assist the U.S. in its fight against terror. The Saudis have of course been avidly promoting the false latter angle, but have simultaneously done little about the real sources of terrorist support in their country.

The Saudis are only willing to address terrorism and their role in financing it when confronted directly. Otherwise, they equivocate, hesitate and glad-hand with American politicians and reporters to prove to the world how moderate, modern and congenial they are.

Since 9/11, the Saudi public relations machine has been trying to convince the American public and government of their friendship while ardently disavowing Saudi involvement in the attacks or in al Qaeda. Shortly after the attacks, the King's nephew Prince Alwaleed bin Talal attempted to appease America with a $10 million contribution to New York City. The Saudi royal family has purchased full-page newspaper ads in national papers as well as national TV spots. Several American PR firms have been retained by the Saudis. One was used to distribute a document to Capitol Hill staffers, another is placing ads proclaiming the Kingdom as a staunch U.S. ally, and yet another was hired to push the Saudi's "peace plan," after it was released last winter. Their smiling, American and Americanized spokespersons are on a campaign to spread love of this quasi-medieval kingdom that is deeply ambivalent about America.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah leaked his "peace plan" for Israel and Palestine to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in February 2002. The plan was a distraction attempt, since there was nothing in the peace plan that had not already been suggested, save that after Israel and Palestine became peaceful, the Saudis would graciously recognize the state of Israel. When news of the plan came out, the Saudis had been taking a beating in the American court of public opinion due to their unwillingness to work with the U.S. in the war on terror. The peace plan and the media frenzy that followed temporarily distracted attention away from the Saudi's connections to terrorist organizations, and gave them breathing space. The Saudi government, or at least its paid consultants in Washington, are nothing if not shrewd, being gifted with the political skills of the bazaar and those required to stay alive in the lethal but always-shifting political sands of the Middle East.

The Saudis did something similar in November 2002, when the news broke that Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to America, indirectly financially supported two of the 9/11 terrorists. A firestorm of outrage and accusation broke out against the Saudis. Adel al-Jubeir, a top foreign affairs aide to Crown Prince Abdullah, was the main spokesperson at a news conference December 3. He tried to put a good spin on the recently publicized details regarding how frequently Saudi royal funds end up directly supporting terrorists. Al-Jubeir, incidentally, announced new Saudi measures to regulate the flow of such funds.

The American-educated al-Jubeir, also known among the media as "the Sultan of Spin," is smooth and articulate. He presents Saudi Arabia as being much-abused and insulted by the accusations against his beloved nation. He portrays himself as the voice of reason who must somehow explain the simple ‘truth’ to befuddled American masses - who do not truly understand the real issues. He is tasked with communicating how hard the Kingdom is trying to halt terrorism. Al-Jubeir gently condemned allegations of terrorist funding, proclaiming that they were "More a function of domestic American politics. We're just the political football."

Although the Saudi government presents a friendly, supportive face to the West, it presents an entirely different one to Muslims. The Saudi state religion, Wahhabism, is an extreme sect of Islam invented in the 18th century and intimately tied up with the legitimacy of the al Saud family as rulers of the kingdom. Its closest analogy within the Judeo-Christian tradition would be one of extreme varieties of Protestantism that once existed: perhaps Calvinism in its original form, or perhaps the militarist Puritanism of Oliver Cromwell. The Sauds feel obliged to support it, both for the practical reason of maintaining the support of local clergy, and for the ideological reason that they have no other political philosophy. The two main Saudi exports are oil and religion. Without their religious foundations, it is unlikely that the nation of tribes could have held together. The discovery and drilling of oil cemented the foundation. The Saudis deliberately export, at huge financial expense, their peculiar brand of Islam around the world in an attempt to gain political influence and to placate their own extremists. The money that the Saudis receive from oil exports has been used to support various terrorist organizations and Wahhabi indoctrination centers worldwide. A majority of American mosques are Wahhabi-financed.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=5104

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