Hugh Hewitt's Gaffney-Norquist Debate (four reviews)

HughHewitt.com, Captain's Quarters, Powerline Blog, Little Green Footballs, | December 11th, 2003

[Travis McGee]

After the CFR (and other fiascos) there is no way I will vote for Bush in '04.

Hello President Dean, AG Schumer, SecState Gore, SecDef Wrangel.

[witnesstothefall]

What's with all the navel-gazing by the spinmeisters? Who cares what pundits think of the "debate". Forward the evidence to the FBI and shun this f'ing traitor and his associates as of yesterday.

It won't be the first or last time that greed won out over conviction, even among conservatives.

Or do 3 dozen literary or journalistic careers need to be advanced in the process?

[Fred Mertz]

I suggest you read the reviews on their little debate.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Hello President Dean, AG Schumer, SecState Gore, SecDef Wrangel.

This better not happen. I'm going to be where a feller can get hurt at election time/swearing in, and I don't want to have guys like that calling the shots.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Travis McGee]

Can you imagine? Rear-guard duty as they evacuate from the roof of the embassy becomes a real possibility.

[LurkerNoMore!]

Thanks for the ping, Fred.

I'm no longer in Norquist's corner on this.

[abner]

Marking for when I am awake enough to read this coherently.

[JohnHuang2]

[Brimack34]

Read Malkin's latest article. She nails Grover but good!!

[MEG33]

Thanks,I fault Norquist for not cutting his ties and seeing that the world is now a different place.He needs to be forthright.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[JohnHuang2]

Welcome :-)

[Nick Danger]

Forward the evidence to the FBI and shun this f'ing traitor and his associates as of yesterday.

Bingo! That's what keeps me suspicious about Gaffney's charges. This is all happening right under the nose of the Secret Service, the FBI, and the entire National Security establishment. Grover Norquist is in and out of the White House all the time. He's not some guy they have to go looking for. To hear Gaffney tell it, Norquist should be in Guantanamo, but no one who actually has a job worrying about this is acting like that's true. Toss in the fact that these two guys hate each other's guts, and you have to at least consider the possibility that this is a spear-throwing contest and nothing more.

Here's Frank Gaffney telling us that he's smarter than the Bush White House about who ought to be going in there. Frank Gaffney is well connected. He can get ahold of people to make his concerns known. Yet here he is throwing these spears on the radio and in magazines. It cannot be true that his concerns have not been heard in the right places. They've been heard; they are being ignored. The people who actually run the National Security show in the United States have heard Frank Gaffney up one side and down the other. But they are not reacting the way he thinks they should, and he's pissed about that, and so he's running around acting like he has to save the country all by himself.

I'm not so quick to believe that the Bush White House is stupid, or incompetent, or oblivious to the dangers of Wahhabi Islam, or naive about why people curry favor with the White House.

Frank Gaffney has a bunch of scary names to throw around, but what he doesn't have is a reason why no one who actually has the job of worrying about this is paying any attention to him. It's not like Arab terrorism is a low priority for the Bush White House. There is something here that doesn't meet the eye. Bush Administration naivete about Arab terrorism is not it.

[witnesstothefall]

Bingo my butt. Your penchant for hyperbole and conspiracy is distorting the issue. Gaffney doesn't recommend Norquist be treated as a criminal. He's just raising an alarm about political subversion, and backing it up with facts not fantasy like you.

The only crime Norquist can even be suspected of at this point is acting an an unregistered foreign agent. But that's a legal matter, which is not Gaffney's subject. Gaffney's intent is to reveal the agent of enemy influence regardless of whether he's a criminal. The Beltway is crawling with traitors and as you know, close to none ever get busted for it.

You may have no doubt the LEO's are aware of Norquist and more likely than not, find him a useful scrap of flypaper.

It doesn't require 10,000 of my words to simply point out that Gaffney's piece is CHOCK FULL of verifiable facts which have not been refuted. I'll take that over any conspiracy theory navel-gazers can hatch to make this go away.

Finally, I find it telling that you pooh-pooh away the gravity of Norquist's terrorist associations as a bunch of "scary names". They are scary people, not just names. They and their associates would like to destroy us all. Pooh pooh that.

[Sabertooth]

Bingo! That's what keeps me suspicious about Gaffney's charges. This is all happening right under the nose of the Secret Service, the FBI, and the entire National Security establishment.

Have you had much face time with the Secret Service?

What's your experience?

Frank Gaffney has a bunch of scary names to throw around, but what he doesn't have is a reason why no one who actually has the job of worrying about this is paying any attention to him.

One of those names is Khaled Saffuri, co-founder with Norquist of the Islamic Institute.

Saffuri is also the former deputy of Abdurahman Alamoudi at the American Muslim Council. Alamoudi is currently charged with numerous terror-related activities.

Saffuri has also contributed to the Holy Land Foundation, a now banned terror org. The HLF is a sponsor of the families of Palestinian Homicide Bombers.

And what are we to make of the efforts of Khaled Saffuri to intervene on the behalf of the Safa Trust in a meeting with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill last year, after warrants were served on Safa investigating their financial links with terror orgs (link)? Isn't this troubling, given that Norquist has acknowledged that the Islamic Institute has received donations from the Safa Trust (link)?

[Nick Danger]

He's just raising an alarm about political subversion

If Frank Gaffney knows something related to subversion in the United States, he knows whom to call about it, and it isn't David Horowitz. This is public mud-slinging directed at a specific individual, which is a different phenomenon.

[witnesstothefall]

This is public mud-slinging

You sound as though you're ready to refute some of the scores of facts Gaffney cites. I'm all ears.

Mr. Gaffney has done much better than calling the authorities, he has published a well-researched article with which the public can hold the authorities, Mr. Norquist and his apologists all to account in this case.

Why isn't Norquist filing a defamation lawsuit, or threatening to do so, or even, at a minimum, publicly refuting the worst of the allegations and facts? Huge questions that continue unanswered, by Norquist or his "mud-slinging" apologists.

Are you one of the FRN folks associated with his shop? Do you have a dog in the hunt, Nick Danger?

I continue to see lots of attacks on Mr. Gaffney's politics and character, but none at all on his statement of the FACTS.

[Nick Danger]

One of those names is Khaled Saffuri

This is becoming a thoroughly pointless discussion. You seem to think that by repeating how scary this guy is, you are advancing some argument. I don't think you are. Let us stipulate that certain people are creeps. Gaffney's argument is that having them around is dangerous, and mine is that once we know they are dangerous, they aren't dangerous anymore. They become zoo animals that we get to watch. We get to watch what they do. We get to watch what they advocate. We get to monitor their cell phones.

Now comes Frank Gaffney, pointing frantically, saying, "Look, everybody! A scary guy!" And so the villagers grab their tigers and their torches and their pitchforks and chase the scary guy away, and beat up Grover Norquist for good measure.

And the people whose job it is to catch the scary guys we don't know about yet go, "Aww, sh*t. Thanks a lot, Frank."

[Sabertooth]

Now comes Frank Gaffney, pointing frantically, saying, "Look, everybody! A scary guy!" And so the villagers grab their tigers and their torches and their pitchforks and chase the scary guy away, and beat up Grover Norquist for good measure.

And the people whose job it is to catch the scary guys we don't know about yet go, "Aww, sh*t. Thanks a lot, Frank."

Are you kidding?

You think getting Saffuri ongoing face time and photo ops with the President and Cabinet members is part of some sting?

In the case of John Aschcroft, Saffuri attempted to intervene in the investigation of the Safa Trust. Were aspects of the investigation at all hampered due to this intervention? Did people die as a result?

You don't know, and nor do I. But you don't appear to want to know.

Inspector Pangloss is all over the case, and everything is just fine.

[Nick Danger]

You think getting Saffuri ongoing face time and photo ops with the President and Cabinet members is part of some sting?

No, it's more subtle than that. It's what the statisticians would call a "known bad." You watch the known bads to build a model of what unknown bads look like. In order to do that, you have to let your known ones run around and be bad a little bit.

Your Ashcroft incident is a perfect example of that. So he goes in there and he tries to influence them. You act as though removing him from the picture would improve things. No. You're better off with the devil you know. After he leaves you can say, "OK, so that's how the bad guys would want us to behave." The guy you need to worry about more is the guy you didn't know was bad. Don't assume he isn't around, because he is.