Alleged Terrorist Met With Bush Adviser (Al-Arian Part of Muslim Outreach)

CHENEY TO HOST PRO-TERRORIST MUSLIM GROUP
By Melissa Radler
Jerusalem Post

NEW YORK (June 22) - The White House and Vice President Dick Cheney are hosting a Muslim organization whose leaders have voiced support for Hamas and Hizbullah, as well as calling for "death to the Jews."

Representatives from the American Muslim Council (AMC), which has also outraged anti-slavery activists by calling slavery in the Sudan a "sham," are meeting with Cheney this morning at the White House for a briefing on the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies of interest to the American Muslim community, according to an AMC
release. "It will be the first time in the history of the AMC conventions that a US vice president will personally address an exclusive Muslim audience at the White House," the statement noted.

In October, then-presidential candidate George W. Bush returned a $1,000 campaign contribution to former AMC executive director and current secretary of the board Abdurrahman Alamoudi, due to his support for terrorist groups including Hamas. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton also returned a $1,000 contribution from Alamoudi.

Cheney's decision to address the AMC came as a surprise to Jewish leaders and terrorism experts, many of whom have viewed Bush's refusal to meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat as a sign that the White House is committed to fighting terrorism and supporting a secure Israel.

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who has reported extensively on the Clinton administration's courting of radical Islamic groups, "This an alarming development that unfortunately legitimizes militant Islam, especially groups that support
terrorism... It perpetuates a very bad precedent set by the [former president Bill] Clinton."

In press releases and statements attributed to AMC leaders, the "apartheid-like existence of the Palestinian people" is lamented and Israel is termed "a regime that does not observe any rules of morality or humanity." On June 5, the AMC called on the Bush administration to "stop aid to Israeli occupation," which they said began in 1948.

Immediately after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, the AMC cosponsored a rally in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, where a member of AMC's board of advisers, Dr. Ayman Serajoudin Alouri, led the chant: "O Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you."

Alouri also stated: "A Jew has no morals, unless they stand up to tell the State of Israel that you are killers and there is no difference between Barak and Sharon and Hitler."

Following Sen. Clinton's decision to return AMC-related campaign contributions, Alamoudi was videotaped in front of the White House voicing his support for Hamas and Hizbullah. In January, he participated in a Beirut conference alongside leaders of Hamas,
Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, and Osama bin-Laden's terrorist network. A communique issued by the groups called for a boycott on American and Israeli products, stating: "America today is a second Israel."

Last June, Alamoudi was quoted in the US-based publication Al-Zaitunah stating: "[AMC's] position with regard to the peace process is well-known. We are the ones who went to the White House and defended what is called Hamas."

Four days after the June 1 suicide bombing that killed 21 mostly teenage disco-goers in Tel Aviv, AMC executive director Aly Abuzakouk said during a demonstration in front of the State Department: "In all world international law, it says that people under occupation have the right to resist occupation. That's what the Palestinians are doing."

Officials at the AMC and Cheney's press office did not return calls seeking comment.

The director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, said the AMC "is a group that represents fringe, radical views that are outside the mainstream of the political spectrum. And the leaders of this country are ill-advised to cooperate with it and thereby boost its standing."

Also concerned is Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who said the scheduled meeting "runs in the face of everything the administration supports and believes in."

The AMC has also tackled slavery in Sudan, which it says does not exist. A June 1 press release titled "Slavery in Sudan is a sham" urged Muslims to attend educational seminars refuting "the current rash of allegations and disinformation campaign against the Sudanese government," and examining "the underlying agendas behind them."

Since taking office, Bush has taken a strong stance on Sudan, where an 18-year civil war has seen more than 2 million fatalities. In addition, the country's Muslim government has enslaved some 12,000 to 15,000 Sudanese Christians and animists, according to the UN.

"We must turn the eyes of the world upon the atrocities in the Sudan" said Bush in a May 3 speech to the American Jewish Committee.

"No official should meet with any group that defends Sudan and denies the slavery there," said Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, whose Web site on slavery in Sudan includes letters of support from Coretta Scott King, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Rev. Jesse Jackson. "The American Muslims continue to circle the wagons, that nothing any Muslim state does could be bad, which is not good for them when they say they want to be seen as any other Americans."

It remains unclear how many of the country's 6 million Muslims are represented by groups such as the AMC. According to former congressman Paul Findlay's recent book Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam, fewer than 200,000 American Muslims,
or 3 percent, are active on issues taken up by these groups. "The rest ... remain silently on the sideline, unsupportive even with their checkbooks," writes Findlay.

LINK

((((((growl)))))

And Hillary and Billie Bob met and posed with Arafat. That was a nice picture.

And Hillary and Billie Bob met and posed with Arafat. That was a nice picture.

Which just goes to prove that you can't trust anyone nowadays.

I'll post it again...from salon want a source pay your own subscription, this is like your 3rd or so post on this topic, so what? He probably paid to sleep in the White House when Bill was there. That way he could say he did. BTW maybe Cheney skipped the meeting because he doesn't suffer fools well.

"A White House Welcome On June 20, 2001, dressed in one of his best blue suits, Sami Al-Arian strolled through security checkpoints at the White House. This was his fourth visit; his first to a Republican administration. He'd never encountered trouble before and didn't expect any. He was part of a delegation of Muslims invited for a briefing by Karl Rove, a senior White House adviser"

I thought this guy met more with Clinton/Gore

I thought this guy met more with Clinton/Gore

He did, and he also contributed money to David Bonior. But they're amoral Democrats, what's our White House's excuse? Fortunately, Dick Cheney had the good sense to duck this meeting.
Who arranged the invitation for Sami Al Arian to visit the Bush White House?
Was it Grover Norquist? Suhail Khan? Ali Tulbah?
What other terrorist sympathizers, supporters, and co-conspirators have also been invited?

I'll post it again...from salon want a source pay your own subscription, this is like your 3rd or so post on this topic, so what?

Who invited Sami Al Arian, and a number of other terrorist sympathizers and supporters, to the Bush White House?
There will be many, many more threads on this. This story isn't going away, it's only starting. The Washington Post has picked it up. The Boston Globe is on it. The Sunday Morning talk shows will be all over it tomorrow.
That's what.

Washington Post: Terrorist suspect was part of White House outreach to Muslims

People are asking: Who is responsible for getting terrorist figures into the White House?

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, arrested this week by the FBI as an alleged mastermind and funder of suicide bombings, was part of the White House's controversial outreach plan to Muslims and Arab-Americans, the Washington Post reports. In a separate story, the Wall Street Journal reports that the alleged terrorists were running influence operations to penetrate the US political system and influence policy.

The news confirms what the Center for Security Policy has warned the Bush administration - first privately and later publicly - for nearly two years: That the architects of the White House's well-meaning Muslim outreach program paid little or no regard to national security issues, and ignored information about alleged extremists, including supporters of terrorism, who had hijacked the administration's initiative.

According to the Post, Al-Arian was invited to the White House as part of an American Muslim Council (AMC) delegation on June 22, 2001: "The meeting was controversial within the White House even before it took place. The group that included Al-Arian was scheduled to be briefed by Vice President Cheney, but Cheney canceled. That morning, the Jerusalem Post had run a front-page article headlined, 'Cheney to host pro-terrorist Muslim group.'"

Al-Arian's arrest under a 50-count federal grand jury indictment is sure to prompt the Secret Service and others to revisit the issue, and to investigate just who has manipulated the White House to allow extremists and terrorists into the presidential compound where they have been treated as legitimate representatives of moderate, non-violent causes.

On Friday, February 21, the Wall Street Journal reported that Al-Arian's arrest "likely will inflame a debate embroiling the Republican Party over efforts to court Muslim Americans." The battle, according to the Journal, is led by conservative activist Grover Norquist, "a close ally of the Bush White House who spent years wooing Muslims through a group he founded called the Islamic Institute," against Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney and American Conservative Union President David Keene.

Norquist's Islamic Institute, the Wall Street Journal continued, has received money from "a network of Islamic organizations in Virginia under investigation by federal authorities for suspected ties to terrorism." Meanwhile, Norquist has been a vocal attacker of key provisions of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism legislation proposals, and has led an effort to discredit and undermine Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Insight magazine is reporting that Al-Arian and Norquist have worked together, and that Norquist has gone on record saying he is "proud" to have accepted an award in July 2001 from Al-Arian's National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), which is described as a legal and political support group for international terrorist organizations.

According to the federal grand jury indictment, Al-Arian and his confederates tried to penetrate the mainstream political system to influence U.S. government counterterrorism policy. The Wall Street Journal states, "the indictment alludes to efforts by the defendants to gain political clout, alleging that they sought 'to obtain support from influential individuals in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights."

Again, the question must be answered: Who invited and cleared Al-Arian and other suspected terrorist supporters into the White House?
LINK

I missed the other thread before it got pulled.

Rove, according to Al-Arian and other attendees, used the meeting to talk of White House efforts to embrace the Muslim community. Al-Arian said he sat in the front row.

...
I have not heard that the WH has dumped Grover yet have you?

Whoo-whee Deputy Dawg ! Thanks for the post and the ping ...

bttt........

BTTT

Islam isn't Peace its a bloody cult........

On Friday, February 21, the Wall Street Journal reported that Al-Arian's arrest "likely will inflame a debate embroiling the Republican Party over efforts to court Muslim Americans." The battle, according to the Journal, is led by conservative activist Grover Norquist, "a close ally of the Bush White House who spent years wooing Muslims through a group he founded called the Islamic Institute," against Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney and American Conservative Union President David Keene.

Then let me ask you why David Keene is so pissed off at Atty. General Ashcroft.

David A. Keene Ashcroft: Good intentions on a bad road July 31, 2002

Last week’s New York Times story made it official: Many conservatives are sorry they ever supported former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft’s appointment as attorney general. They are upset at him for eviscerating the Constitution since Sept. 11 by sending the PATRIOT Act and other anti-terrorist legislation to the Hill, loosening strictures on the FBI imposed by Congress and some of his predecessors years ago, and being, shall we say, overzealous in his willingness to ignore liberty in the quest for security. As a result, they’ve concluded that he’s no longer deserving of conservative support

Ashcroft: Good intentions on a bad road

Then let me ask you why David Keene is so pissed off at Atty. General Ashcroft.

I looked at your link, and maybe I missed something, because I didn't come away from this with the same impression you have.
From Keene's column...
I’m glad that George Bush sits in the White House and that Ashcroft is his attorney general. I even believe them when they say that they are only doing that which they believe they need to do to protect us. They argue convincingly, I think, that roving wiretaps, reading people’s e-mail, putting video cameras on every corner, and perusing their library habits will make it easier to catch terrorists before they act. They can even make a case that by establishing a Castro-like system of informants or requiring us all to carry ID cards they will be able to make it more difficult for terrorists to move around.
The problem is that, once all of this is in place, we will no longer be living in the same country we lived in prior to Sept. 11. It may still look like the United States, but one wonders if it will feel like the United States.
I suspect we’ll survive these excesses as we have in the past, but those asking us to give up liberty for security should be careful. That liberty survives such crises at all is an amazing endorsement of the wisdom of the Founders, but each time we face such a crisis, we seem to lose more freedom than we get back when it ends.
Young conservatives of my generation read a slight volume penned at the turn of the last century by a fellow by the name of William Graham Sumner titled The Conquest of the United States by Spain. It was an attack on the Spanish-American War, but raised a perplexing and enduring question: What does a nation gain if, in its quest for security, it surrenders that which it set out to secure?
Those who seek to protect us must keep one eye on that they seek to protect. Ashcroft is a good man trying to do a difficult job, and for that, I admire him. But I would advise him to read Sumner’s little book lest we end up with a new one titled The Conquest of the United States by al Qaeda.

If I understand this correctly, Keene supports Ashcroft, the President, and the Patriot Act in principle, although he sounds a few cautionary notes about the survival of our liberties. That's about where I stand on that particular matter. I agree on the general need for the measures implemented by the Patriot Act, as we are at war (although I reserve the right to nit-pick various particulars).
To me, it appears that in the paragraph you excerpted, Keene was talking about the feelings of other conservatives. As I read his column, it seemed to me that those weren't reflective of his feelings.
Thanks for the link to the other thread.

Good question that Bob Barr wants answered too.

I agree on the general need for the measures implemented by the Patriot Act, as we are at war (although I reserve the right to nit-pick various particulars).

JMO, but nit-picking seems to be your forte, nothing wrong with that. Just remember that while all your focus is on picking nits, the big picture and goal of fighting terroism gets lost, IMO.

Just remember that while all your focus is on picking nits, the big picture and goal of fighting terroism gets lost, IMO.

Fair enough. So let me ask you...
How is the War on Terror advanced by the activites of as-yet unnamed, though suspected operatives (Grover Norquist) and White House aides (Suhail Khan and Ali Tulbah), who are rolling out welcome mats for terrorist sympahizers, supporters, and co-conspirators at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave?