Posted on 10/30/2001 3:16:13 AM PST by JCG
Bush Apologizes for Muslim Removal
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, described as very upset about a Muslim leader being ordered out of the White House, issued an apology Friday for the incident.
``The president is very concerned that an action was taken that was wrong, inappropriate and the president apologizes for it on behalf of the White House,'' press secretary Ari Fleischer said.
A group of Muslim leaders walked out of a White House meeting Thursday, angered when a uniformed Secret Service officer ordered one of them - Abdullah Alarian, a congressional intern - out of the building.
Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin later said his agency erred in ordering Alarian out. Once the Secret Service realized its mistake, it offered Alarian re-entry, but the group declined.
``In this one instance, the Secret Service made a mistake. The president is concerned about it to the point where he does apologize,'' Fleischer said.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who participated in Thursday's aborted meeting, welcomed Bush's apology and said, ``We hope this will lead to better interaction between the White House and the Muslim community.''
The council had sent Bush a letter after the incident asking him to meet personally with Muslim leaders and appoint a special White House liaison to the Muslim-American community in order to ``dispel impressions within the Muslim community that there's some kind of exclusion from his policy-making circles,'' Hooper said.
Alarian is the nephew of Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian who was jailed in Florida for three years after the government alleged he used an Islamic think tank as a front for terrorism. He was released last December after a panel of judges and Attorney General Janet Reno agreed there was no reason to keep him behind bars.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
That's what my brain says too, but apparently GWB doesn't see it that way. I'm afraid this validates the point I've been trying to make, which is that he's so insulated that it's obvious not one single, solitary person has his ear who can convince him that people known to be connected to terrorism should not be allowed in the White House, for heaven's sake. He buys the peaceful nature of Islam hook, line, and sinker.
MM
VERY WELL SAID!
I've seen you around and I think you and I are largely on the same wave-length, politically speaking.
Lately, I'm getting this unsettling feeling from Washington DC. Something like what those with some foresight might have felt at the beginning of the Vietnam War.
To wit:
Rumblings about no bombing during Ramadan;
Pinpoint (prick?) missile attacks that leave Taliban troop concentrations in place. Where are the B-52's? Why aren't we carpet bombing those bastards? On the Northern Front, we know where they are, right?
Kow-towing to our Paki and Saudi "allies";
Ummmm, when do we start destroying Saddam's WMD facilities? Can't we walk and chew gum at the same time?
Better start preparing people for civilian casualties and stop reacting to every lie re: same from the Taliban.
I don't know, maybe I'm over-reacting, but it doesn't seem like we've taken the necessary steps to accomplish our goals here. Krauthammer has a great column in the Washington Post about this today. Powell is making a fetish out of coalition building and I think we are seeing that this is an impediment to accomplishing our objectives.
I wonder if he has apologized to the FBI agents..He should do it on TV!
I should HOPE they're being excluded from EVERY decision loop. What do they want, a Cabinet position?
Director of Homeland Insecurity
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press
MIAMI (July 20, 2001 6:08 p.m. EDT) - A federal appeals court has upheld the deportation order for a Palestinian jailed for three years on secret evidence that purportedly links him to terrorists.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Mazen Al-Najjar and his wife, Fedaa, failed to show enough evidence that they should receive asylum. It denied their request for a new hearing.
The government is trying to deport the couple.
Ethan Kanter, a Justice Department lawyer involved in the case, did not return a phone call Thursday. Calls to Al-Najjar's home were not answered.
Al-Najjar, who has a doctorate in engineering and has taught at the University of South Florida, was jailed in May 1997 after being ordered deported for overstaying a student visa.
A judge denied him bond based on government allegations that Al-Najjar used an Islamic think tank at the university as a front for terrorism. The FBI had seized the records, computers and software of World and Islam Studies Enterprise and froze its bank accounts when it said the group was raising money for terrorists in the early 1990s.
The government, citing national security concerns, refused to reveal detailed evidence against Al-Najjar to his lawyers
. Al-Najjar was released in December after a panel of judges - and Attorney General Janet Reno - agreed there was no reason to keep him behind bars. Al-Najjar denied any links to terrorists.
Deportation orders would send Mazen Al-Najjar to the United Arab Emirates and Fedaa Al-Najjar to Saudi Arabia, their last places of residence before coming to the United States in the 1980s.
Lawyers for the couple argued that they would face persecution if they were deported because of their support of Palestinian autonomy.
"It's a very disappointing decision. It's a shock that they won't let him have a new hearing on asylum," said Al-Najjar's attorney, Martin Schwartz.
David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who also represented Al-Najjar, said the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia rarely accept Palestinians. He said the court ruling leaves the couple, parents of three daughters who are U.S. citizens, in a potentially permanent "stateless limbo."
"They will be in a situation where they're deported but not deportable," Cole said.
Al-Najjar's lawyers said they would likely request a rehearing.
In February, leaders of the American Bar Association called for changes to a 1996 anti-terrorism law that has made it easier for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to use secret evidence against noncitizens.
It is a gagger alright. And it will keep up so long as we need a route into Afghanistan through Pakistan (I don't think we can fly all our craft out of range of Paki weapons). The real world is full of semi-"friends" like this.
We are going to have to lean hard on those "folks." Or maybe we can plop him in that new Palestinian state </sardonic>
Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who worked at the Tampa think tank, now runs the Islamic Jihad militant group from Damascus, Syria.
The U.S. government maintained that the Florida organizations fronted for the Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for bombings aimed at Israeli civilians in the Middle East.
As for American Muslims why can't we at least be playing a bit of straight up political hardball? Bush should be giving access and exposure to the more conservative and mainstream American Muslim Council, and freezing out the liberal, special interest, minority mongering, peaceniking, and arrogant arabist oriented CAIR. Why are we ignoring the political fundamentals here? While they are paying close attention we have a great opportunity to be sending signals to American Muslims about where their best interests lay, but we are blowing it.
Wednesday's session in Bradenton, where Al-Najjar is jailed, opened with a debate over the admission of videotapes. The tapes depict five political conferences held from 1988 through 1992 and were seized by FBI and INS agents in a 1995 search.
The government introduced a 13-minute, 26-second excerpt culled from more than 1,500 hours on the tapes. INS attorney Daniel Vara said it would show Al-Najjar participating at conferences that raised funds for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and advocated the violent overthrow of Israel.
When the videotape was played, Al-Najjar appeared in a single, 20-second segment, making an introduction of a conference speaker.
Two portions were of events Al-Najjar did not attend, said Cole, his attorney.
Nowhere was there evidence of fundraising by Al-Najjar.
The government alleges a political think tank, known as WISE, and an organization called the Islamic Committee for Palestine, both founded by Sami Al-Arian, were fronts for terrorists. Al-Najjar worked for WISE, and attended ICP conferences. But it is Al-Arian who was the political activist and the person many believe is the government's target.
Cole noted that Al-Arian's name appears 44 times in the affidavit for the search warrants. Al-Najjar's does not appear at all.
Neither Al-Najjar nor Al-Arian, a tenured computer engineering professor at USF, has been charged with a crime.
If we don't get a war mentality in this country soon, we are not going to win.
Sheesh if W. didn't apologize, Bonior and his friends in the press would have gone nuts.
That all changed on 9/11/01.
It's either discrimination or pure partisan politics... after all the previous Presidential office holder entertained all kinds of security risks and unsavory characters. He had Chinese military officials and convicted drug smugglers over for fundraising coffees. These people weren't even given the standard security background check.
Obviously there is a breakdown in communication as GW has not informed the press of this change in policy.
For more on AlArian, check WorldNetDaily's archives for Debbie Schlussel's columns on his and other Islamic radicals' ties with the Prez. It's scary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.