More Pentagon Jihadis

More Pentagon Jihadis In “Pentagon Jihadis,” I listed eight American soldiers and sailors associated with jihad against the United States. But that column came out in September 2003 and their numbers continue to grow. Here is a listing of new jihadis as they appear.

Ryan G. Anderson, also known as Amir Abdul Rashid, was charged today with three counts of helping Al-Qaeda, as an unnamed federal law enforcement official explained, “by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence” to it. (February 12, 2004) May 13, 2004 update: In an undercover tape shown at his Article 32 hearing (comparable to a grand jury in the civilian legal system), reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Anderson gives Jordanian ancestry on his mother’s side of the family as a motivation for defecting, claiming he was sickened when fellow soldiers denigrated Arabs and Muslims without reprimand.” Sept. 3, 2004 update: Anderson was convicted of trying to aid Al-Qaeda and sentenced to life in prison.

Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35, of Falls Church, Va., was convicted today of conspiracy for using his U.S. army-gained expertise to train others for jihad through the paintball games they played in the woods in Virginia. (March 4, 2004)

Hassan Abujihaad, 25, a convert to Islam and a former communications specialist for the U.S. Navy, he stands accused of sending e-mail messages to a pro-Taliban Internet site run by Babar Ahmad while serving on the guided-missile destroyer Benfold in the Middle East during 2000-01. As the Los Angeles Times delicately puts it, “Federal agents are trying to determine how Ahmad ended up in possession of detailed and highly classified information about the San Diego-based aircraft carrier battle group that the Benfold was part of, including its classified travel plans and its vulnerability to attack.” (August 14, 2004)

Yusuf Khalil Jackson, a civilian who worked for a contractor in the Department of Defense, admits making fake military identity cards at Fort Myer in Virginia. In a televised confession to Andrea McCarren broadcast on WJLA-ABC, Jackson ascribed his motive to poverty and desperation and said the thirty or so real military I.D. cards sold to non-military personnel were sold only to underaged people who wanted to get into bars. But the I.D.s would work at any U.S. base and court records indicate the U.S. Park Police seized one of his faked cards from a Pakistani national, and that the identity of the card was that of an American soldier in Afghanistan.(March 16, 2005)

Sadeq Naji Ahmed, 25, an Air Force sergeant. I provide details on him at “Islamists Infiltrate Law Enforcement.” (March 25, 2005) May 18, 2005 update: Testimony at Ahmed’s trial has revealed two points: that he wrote in March 2001 that the United States is “the terrorist” and bin Laden “a righteous holy man”; and that, according to his attorney, the Air Force repeatedly promoted and decorated Ahmed, despite his anti-American record .

Rafat Jamal Mawlawi, 54, a Syrian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, served in the Navy for 12 years and was honorably discharged. While Mawlawi is in a Memphis, Tennessee jail, one of four Muslim men of Middle Eastern origins (the others being Mhammed Kabouchi, Omran Omer, and Karim Ramzi) awaiting trial for operating a marriage scam, the Joint Terrorism Task Force raided his house. It found, reports John Branston in the Memphis Flyer,

a hidden stash of loaded weapons and ammunition clips, $34,000 in cash, two pictures of Mawlawi shouldering a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a gruesome videotape of war casualties with Arabic text and voiceover, and more than 20 passports to Morocco, Syria, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries.

The weapons included a shotgun, a .9-millimeter Glock handgun, a .32-caliber pistol, and a .38-caliber revolver. The guns were loaded with loaded ammunition magazines nearby. The 20 to 30 passports—both current and expired—were made out to Mawlawi, his wife, and their children. Stamps in his passports indicated Mawlawi had traveled to Iran and Pakistan, though he had told law enforcement agents he had only visited the Balkans. Two pictures showed Mawlawi with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. In one picture, the end-cap is removed, rendering the weapon ready to fire. The videotape, with an Arabic voiceover, starts with the words “al Mujahadeen” and pictures of a firearm; it shows graphic images of dead people with injuries that appear to be from combat wounds. (April 15, 2005)

New video: What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad

http://www.terrorismawareness.org/know-about-jihad

Plan for implementing Sharia in the U.S.

Starting with personal arbitration courts — similar to the attempt made awhile ago in Canada. “Native American Courts: Precedent for an Islamic arbitral system” by Issa Smith was originally published in 1993, but was reprinted several weeks ago at The American Muslim (thanks to all who sent this in):

The process of implementing Muslim family law will not be accomplished overnight. Changes of their type take place very slowly in American society, and our community is far from being prepared for this tak. I commend the continental council of Masajid for organizing this conference, and bringing together so many workers and thinkers. I pray to Allah the real decisions are made here that can be implemented by those ready to work. However, I strongly urge that consideration be given to political realities and the sensitivities of the American public. Such a radical change in American law—allowing Muslims to take control over their family law issues – must be initiated from the indigenous Muslim community here in the United States. To have it seem that this initiative is originating from overseas or from organizations financed overseas, would create a very negative impression that would likely destroy this effort.

Even Al Jazeera Sees Improvement in Baghdad Situation

Even Al Jazeera Sees Improvement in Baghdad Situation
By Mark Finkelstein
CNSNews.com Correspondent
March 07, 2007

(CNSNews.com) – Indications that the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq is starting to improve conditions in Baghdad came from an unlikely source Wednesday — the Qatar-based al Jazeera television network.

“I was just earlier this afternoon [Iraq time] with Al Jazeera English, talking to their reporter,” Multi-National Force spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told Cybercast News Service from Baghdad.

“She gets downtown [Baghdad] a lot. She was the one who told me, ‘You know, General, there’s a real change in the city right now.’ And I said, ‘Well, I can’t tell you I definitely know that.’

“But she said, ‘No, there is. I’m down there all the time, and there’s a positive change in the city. The people are feeling like something is different – not able to articulate exactly what’s different, but they’re feeling that something is different.’”

Caldwell, who made the comments during a conference phone call, was responding to a question about whether he has seen any change in media coverage of the situation in Iraq in recent days.

He predicted that the improved conditions in the capital would “speak for themselves” and in time be reported by the U.S. media when reporters are embedded with military units in the days ahead.

Caldwell told Cybercast News Service that reporters have begun to embed with the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, operating in Sadr City, and he expected positive media reports soon.

“Everybody had predicted that the Sadr City movement would be very challenging, but it’s actually proving to be very much a cooperative effort between us, the Iraqi security forces and the citizens, the residents, of Sadr City.

“It’s very positive,” he said. “Not a shot’s been fired, and everything seems to be moving along in a positive vein.”

Caldwell cited the success of the “joint security stations” – combat outposts where U.S. troops are based within Baghdad neighborhoods alongside Iraqi policemen and soldiers. There are currently 23 such stations in operation, with another scheduled to be set up in the next two days.

The initial plan was to establish 35-40 such stations, but Caldwell said, “given the interaction with the people, the successes we’re starting to have in terms of receiving more information, tips, and the level of violence going down where these things exist, we’re now looking at [creating] about 70 of them” in the capital.

Al-Jazeera is often accused of having an anti-American slant and has been criticized for its frequent dissemination of threatening messages from top al-Qaeda terrorists and of video clips depicting hostages held by terrorists in Iraq.

The Arabic-language network launched its English-language version last November.

Cuba Has Biological Weapons

Cuba Has Biological Weapons
By Frances Robles
Miami Herald | March 8, 2007
The former chief of Cuba’s military medical services is calling for international weapons inspections of a secret underground lab near Havana, where he says the government is creating biological warfare agents like the plague, botulism and yellow fever.Roberto Ortega, a former army colonel who ran the military’s medical services from 1984 to 1994, defected in 2003 and now lives in South Florida.

After living here quietly for four years, this week Ortega went on the Spanish-language media circuit to denounce what he claims is an advanced offensive biological warfare weapons program. He spoke Tuesday night at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies where one angry heckler stormed out accusing him of deliberately sowing fear among Cuban exiles.

”They can develop viruses and bacteria and dangerous sicknesses that are currently unknown and difficult to diagnose,” Ortega told The Miami Herald. “They don’t need missiles or troops. They need four agents, like the people from al Qaeda or the Taliban, who contaminate water, air conditioning or heating systems.”

He said Cuba was ready to use the biological agents ”to blackmail the United States in case of an international incident” such as the threat of a U.S. invasion.

The Cuban government has denied such programs exist, but if Ortega’s allegations are true Washington could face the prospect of an enemy nation 90 miles away with the capability of launching germ attacks.

UNDERGROUND LAB

Ortega said he told the CIA nearly two years ago about an underground Cuban facility southwest of Havana. The maximum security lab dubbed ”Labor One” has an above-ground civilian cover and employs dozens of scientists, he said.

But in the underground facility, scientists reproduced and stockpiled deadly germs and bacterias collected in Africa, he added.

He visited the lab in 1992 when he accompanied a high-level Russian military delegation, he said.

”I saw it,” Ortega said. “I lived it.”

Ortega is believed to be the first defector with details of such an alleged biological warfare facility, said University of Miami professor Manuel Cereijo, who studies Cuba’s biotechnology and terrorism issues.

Ortega said he has come forward now because he did not see the CIA taking public action on his information. The CIA and the U.S. State Department declined to comment.

”He talks about a place I never heard about,” Cereijo said. “There are many other places where there exists the capacity to develop bioweapons. That doesn’t mean they are doing that. Only a person like him would know.”

ADVANCES KNOWN

Cuba’s advanced biotechnology industry is well-known, having produced vaccines for hepatitis and meningitis B and exported them to dozens of countries around the world. In 2002, John Bolton, then a top U.S. State Department official for arms control, said Cuba “has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.”

In a report last year, the State Department acknowledged analysts were divided on the issue of whether Cuba has such a program. Experts also argue that the U.S. government is unlikely to have high-level spies in Cuba feeding it information on what must be, if it exists, a highly secret program.

Ken Alibek, former deputy director of the Soviet Union’s bioweapons program, said Russian scientists always suspected the Cubans were developing a biological warfare program, but said he doubts that any Soviet military delegation would have been invited to visit it.

”If you ask whether the Cubans are capable, I’d say easily,” he told The Miami Herald in a telephone interview from Virginia. “Are they doing it? I can tell you when I was involved in the late 80s, we suspected so.”

The Last of the Moderates

The Last of the Moderates
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 8, 2007
If you had to place Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) in a political box back in 2002, you would have been hard-pressed to pigeonhole her as a by-the-book liberal.

On national security, Tauscher boasted stellar credentials. She had voted to authorize the Iraq war, and she had stood boldly alongside Joe Lieberman and Tom Delay when President Bush signed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, establishing the Department of Homeland Security and, to the outraged horror of the ACLU, investing it with a range of counterterrorism powers. If Dennis Kucinich and his proposed “Department of Peace and Nonviolence” validated every tie-died stereotype about the post-Vietnam Democrat, Ellen Tauscher’s presence on the Democratic bench argued that the party was not so easily to be dismissed.

Tauscher’s economic instincts, likewise, ill-conformed to the cliché of the tax-and-spend liberal. As a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a centrist group of Congressional Democrats that advocates “robust foreign policy” and “economic growth,” she railed against “counterproductive” taxes and staked out a hawkish line on the budget. An unapologetic free-trader, she touted her commitment to “forging new trade agreements” and broke with all but 24 House Democrats to back the Trade Act of 2002, which laid the scaffolding for free-trade agreements with Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Morocco, Oman, and Singapore among other nations.

Not least noteworthy, Tauscher had a justly earned reputation for defying pressure from her party’s Left flank. In 2002, she stood up to Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for trying to redraw her congressional district along more partisan, and inevitably more liberal, Democratic lines — retribution, as Tauscher saw it, for her earlier support of the more moderate Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) over Pelosi for House minority whip. Pelosi, and much of the party’s ideological core, were apoplectic.

It’s a very different Ellen Tauscher that sits in the House today. Where the Tauscher of 2002 was known for breaking ranks with her Democratic colleagues, the Tauscher of today appears eager to play the proverbial good soldier.

Take the war in Iraq. When Ted Kennedy announced in January that he was submitting legislation to block an escalation of troops in Iraq without express Congressional consent, Tauscher promised to put forward a version of Kennedy’s surge-busting bill in the House. Last month she backed the “nonbinding” resolution denouncing the surge. Tauscher has even co-sponsored H.R. 808, Dennis Kucinich’s inadvertently comical legislation to establish the Department of Peace and Nonviolence and a national “Peace Day,” on which occasion citizens will “endeavor to create peace.”

On trade, too, Tauscher is singing a different tune. No longer stressing the virtues of free-market outcomes, Tauscher now says that trade agreements have to be “balanced and fair,” a familiar code for saddling trade pacts with protectionist clauses. Her pledge to forge new trade agreements notwithstanding, in 2005 Tauscher opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, charging that it would “weaken labor rights protections”(read: the union lobby had declared against it) and was therefore “unacceptable.”

Finally, Tauscher has been tamed by the party’s Left. Of her onetime nemesis Nancy Pelosi she now raves that as majority leader Pelosi is “absolutely perfect — and she looks so beautiful doing it!” Goodbye political centrist, hello party loyalist.

What accounts for Tauscher’s abrupt transformation? In a word, the Left. In her dissent from the antiwar hymnal, Tauscher has incurred the ire of her party’s dogmatic base, especially the online activists — the so-called “netroots” — who congregate around DailyKos.com and likeminded sites. Incensed at her refusal to toe the Left’s line on defense and the economy, party messengers have been hitting her hard.

Throughout her 2006 re-election run, Tauscher was savaged by left-wing blogs and advocacy sites like Dump Ellen Tauscher and Ellen Tauscher Weekly, which kept a running count of her political heresies. When last October Tauscher hit back that the party should make a place for centrists and warned against “running over the left cliff,” her cyber-critics lost their already precarious grip on reality. “If we lose this election, it will be the fault of the Ellen Tauschers of the Democratic Party,” seethed Chris Bowers, a blogger for the well-trafficked left-wing site MyDD.com days before the election.

Tauscher’s re-election has only enraged her enemies. The political action committee Working for Us, which polices left-wing loyalty among members of Congress, recently dubbed Tauscher the Democratic Party’s “#1 Worst Offender.” Just last month, Working for Us board member and DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga vowed that the activist community would field a candidate against Tauscher in her district’s 2008 primary.

Such threats have had the desired effect. Instead of cautioning against capitulation to the party’s leftwing margins, Tauscher has moved on to the same page. She now urges Democrats to consider that “we want to remain in the majority,” an appeal that carries the unmistakable whiff of desperation. Concerned Democrats have taken note. “To attack Ellen Tauscher because of her apostasy on national security, and to call her a tool of corporate interests because she wants to promote economic growth — this is a death wish for out party,” a Democratic strategist familiar with Tauscher’s travails told FPM.

The internet-based insurgency against Tauscher is representative of a larger political phenomenon. Much of the post-election media coverage has focused the Democratic Party’s supposed pragmatism. In this account, the selection of conservative Democrats like James Webb and Heath Schuler to stand on the party ticket in conservative-leaning states like Virginia and North Carolina, with the approval of DailyKos.com, is said to illustrate the broadmindedness of the party.

One flaw in this big-tent theory is that it confuses tolerance with utility: Left-wing candidates of the kind favored by the netroots would not have a prayer in red states, and conservative Democrats represent their best hope. A bigger hole is that this theory is strikingly at odds with the ongoing campaign, waged by the grassroots Left and aided by the Democratic leadership, to purge the party of centrist voices. That’s nowhere more true than on the issue on which the party’s base will brook no disagreement: national defense.

Consider the case of Ellen Tauscher’s California colleague, Rep. Jane Harman. In the days before the grassroots Left had appointed itself the judge and jury of permissible liberal politics, Harman was a no-nonsense advocate of an assertive American role on the global stage. In a May 1995 speech to the House of Representatives, Harman urged policy makers to move beyond the timidity that had led some to counsel the “containment” of communism rather than the resolute promotion of American values. American foreign policy, Harman insisted, should seek to “expand peace and prosperity.” The attentive observer would have discerned echoes of Ronald Reagan, who vowed in his 1984 state of the union address to “strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals.”

True to those Reaganite views, Harman was an early and vocal supporter of holding Saddam Hussein to account for his continued defiance of the international community. In 2002, she voted to authorize the use of military force against Iraq. The vote put her at loggerheads with Democratic leaders like her longtime ally Nancy Pelosi; antiwar activists grumbled.

But Harman stood her ground. “Do I think what we’re doing today means we’re going to war?” she asked rhetorically. “No. I think we’re standing up to evil.” Rather than renounce her vote at the first sign of struggle on the ground, Harman joined the likes of the John McCain in calling for a troop increase to pacify Iraq.

None of this, it goes nearly without saying, endeared Harman to her party’s anti-war footsoldiers. “Progressive” media outlets and blogs blasted her as a “warmonger” and a “Bush apologist.” Activist anger at Harman culminated in a primary challenge against her in the 2006 election. The anti-Harman camp’s candidate of choice was Marcy Winograd, a far-Left sloganeer who accused Harman of being “treacherously” complicit in the “Bush agenda of eternal war“ and its attempt to impose “corporate empire” on the world.

Despite Winograd’s decidedly fringe roster of supporters, among them antiwar agitator Cindy Sheehan, political activist and conspiracy theorist Daniel Ellsberg, and radical author Howard Zinn, she won nearly 40 percent of the vote in loosing the primary — a nerve-wracking result for Harman, a six-term incumbent who sank more than $550,000 into her campaign.

The final insult came just after election, when Nancy Pelosi denied Harman chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a post she had sought for years. Because Harman’s qualifications were not in dispute — she had a reputation as a foreign policy wonk and her national security résumé ran to eight years on the intelligence committee — Pelosi’s move was perceived as political payback for her firm stand on the war.

And with good reason: Pelosi’s initial choice for the post had been Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings, an undistinguished legislator whose main claim to fame is being just the sixth federal judge in history to be removed from office by Congress. Pelosi’s eventual selection, Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes, was scarcely more qualified, something he confirmed in December when he assured a reporter that Sunni al-Qaeda was “predominantly probably Shi’ite” and declined even to guess the religious dispensation of Hezbollah. Reyes’ rise was as a revealing commentary on Harmon’s fall from party grace.

Harman now knows her place. From a national security pragmatist in the stamp of Joseph Lieberman — Harman was one of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” who supported the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program — she has been reborn as a shrill partisan. In a détente with her former adversaries of the DailyKos, Harman last May posted an entry on the site denouncing the surveillance program she had once supported. “What we’re seeing now is a lawless White House out of control — and that must stop,” Harman wrote. The old Harman urged a troop increase in Iraq. No more. “I said a surge in troops was a good idea three years ago — but not now,” Harman recently said, adding, “Other strategies — political and diplomatic — right now are more critical.” Harman was talking about Iraq policy, but the comment was a fitting epitaph for her career as a tough-on-defense Democrat.

For their part, Harman’s critics couldn’t be happier. DailyKos proprietor Zúniga is happy to claim credit for Harman’s volte-face. In the past, he noted, Harman would cause friction by challenging the party’s base, but an activist-backed electoral challenge has put the fear of the Left into her. “She’s been great ever since,” Zúniga boasts. Harman’s opponent Marcy Winograd is similarly pleased, praising Harman for her “increasingly confrontational” stance toward the Bush administration and its national security policies. “I see it as an accomplishment,” Winograd says.

Intense though it may seem, the disdain that liberal bloggers and activists have leveled at the likes of Tauscher and Harman is practically a love fest next to the ceaseless torrent of abuse that has rained down on the man the Left loves to hate: Senator Joseph Lieberman. One reason for this, no doubt, is the fact that unlike some of his colleagues Lieberman has stood on principle, refusing to change his views on defense, and especially the Iraq war, in order to appease the party’s angry partisans. Indeed, Lieberman’s victory last fall is often held up as an example of the limitations of the Democratic party’s Left. In one sense, that’s correct. Lieberman’s successful campaign showed in stark terms that the interests of left-wing activists are not necessarily synonymous with those of mainstream voters, even in liberal blue-states.

In a crucial way, however, the Connecticut election was also a win for the Left. After all, Lieberman won as an Independent after being ousted from the party by the DailyKos-endorsed Ned Lamont. Lieberman maintained his independent streak, but the Democratic Party, particularly on the issue of national security, took on a darker shade of blue. Dan Gerstein, a Democratic strategist and a consultant to Lieberman, is worried about the political effects of the party’s Left turn. “There’s a growing feeling in the [Democratic] base that winning elections is not about reaching out to the mainstream but about being more aggressive in confronting Republicans and promoting a more full-throated liberal platform,” Gerstein told FPM. In Gerstein’s view, that approach misreads the political landscape. He argues that the “more extreme elements” within the base have created “the perception that our party doesn’t take seriously the threat of jihadism to our national security. That’s not going to convince voters that we know how to keep America safe.”

It might be added that the party’s case is not improved when one considers that the only other Democrat with an inspiring defense record apart from Lieberman, Georgia’s Zell Miller, retired in 2004 to jeers from his own party. The result is that those seeking candidates to confront the global surge of Islamic jihadism have little to choose from in the Democratic Party. “In following the course of the base,” Dan Gerstein observes, “the party has gone over the deep end.”

Partisans may be tempted to see the deficit of reasonable Democratic voices as a positive development. But it comes with a significant downside. Crafting a pragmatic consensus on national security becomes an impossible challenge when one party has, in effect, retired from the fight. Doubtless, the DailyKos crowd rejoices every time Ellen Tauscher or Jane Harmon lashes out against the president or Joe Lieberman signs his editorials as the “Independent senator from Connecticut.” Their gain, though, is the country’s loss.

The Lost Scandal

The Lost Scandal
By Robert Novak
March 8, 2007

WASHINGTON — Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: “It was said a number of times. . . . Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?” Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Dick Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.

“It’s about time,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rejoicing in guilty verdicts against Scooter Libby, “someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics.” But Libby was found guilty only of lying about how he learned Valerie Plame’s identity. Reid and Democratic colleagues were after much bigger game than Cheney’s chief of staff.

Democrats had been slow reacting to my column of July 14, 2003, that reported former diplomat Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger was suggested by his CIA employee wife, Valerie Plame. By September, when the Justice Department began investigating the CIA leak, Democrats smelled another Iran-Contra or Watergate. They were wrong.

The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House. The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his “day job” (as U.S. attorney in Chicago). With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson’s identity.

While my column on Wilson’s mission triggered Libby’s misery, I played but a minor role in his trial. Subpoenaed by his defense team, I testified that I had phoned him in reporting the Wilson column and that he had said nothing about Wilson’s wife. Other journalists said the same thing under oath, but we apparently made no impression on the jury.

The trial provided no information whatever about Valerie Plame’s status at the CIA at the time I revealed her role in her husband’s mission. No hard evidence was produced that Libby ever was told she was undercover. Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and Federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled. Yet, in his closing arguments, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson’s secret status, and in answer to a reporter’s question after the verdict, he said she was “classified.”

In fact, her being classified — that is, that her work was a government secret — did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage) under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That statute limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas, whose revelation would undermine U.S. intelligence. That is why Fitzgerald did not move against Armitage.

Some questions asked me in television and radio interviews after the verdict implied that I revealed Armitage’s name to Fitzgerald. Actually, in my first interview with Fitzgerald after he had been named special prosecutor, he indicated he knew Armitage was my leaker. I assumed that was the product of detective work by the FBI. In fact, Armitage had turned himself in to the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case, without notifying the White House or releasing me from my requirement of confidentiality.

On Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” Tuesday night, super-lawyer David Boies said Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald’s contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity. Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute, is hardly a Bush sympathizer. But neither is he a Democratic partisan trying to milk this obscure scandal.

George W. Bush lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political. It would have taken courage for the president to have aborted this process. It would require even more courage for him to pardon Scooter Libby now, not while he is walking out of the White House in January 2009.

———

To find out more about Robert D. Novak and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

Siraj Wahhaj to raise funds for mosque building in New Hampshire — If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

Siraj Wahhaj to raise funds for mosque building in New Hampshire

He called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a “respected scholar” and “strong preacher of Islam.” It is not “guilt by association” to bring this up. It raises the question of how his views of Islam and jihad coincide with those of Sheikh Omar.

“Leading Muslim to speak in city,” by Kathryn Marchocki for the New Hampshire Union Leader, with thanks to Chrys:

MANCHESTER – The Islamic Society of Greater Manchester will host a renowned and, to some, controversial American Islamic scholar as keynote speaker at a fundraiser to help finance their continuing efforts to build the first mosque in New Hampshire.Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the religious leader of Masjid at-Taqwa in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the first Muslim to give the opening prayer before the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991, will be guest speaker at the group’s April 20 dinner at the Radisson Hotel.

As an expert religious witness at the 2001 federal trial of four Muslims convicted of bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa, Wahhaj testified there is nothing in Islam that endorses killing people and was described by the prosecutor as someone whose “jihad is a real struggle to do good” for his efforts to combat drug addiction in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

In the same courtroom six years earlier, Wahhaj was a character witness for Sheik Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993 and other New York-area landmarks. At trial, Wahhaj described Abdel-Rahman, who had visited Wahhaj’s mosque in the early 1990s, as a “respected scholar” and “strong preacher of Islam,” the Wall Street Journal reported in an in-depth article on the imam published in 2003.

Before the landmarks-bombing trial got under way, then-U.S. Attorney for New York Mary Jo White wrote a letter to defense attorneys in the case identifying Wahhaj as among about 170 people as “unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Wahhaj was never charged; White offered no further comment, the newspaper reported.

“That is kind of a meaningless, but indefensible, slander,” Dartmouth College profession of religion Kevin A. Reinhart said of Wahhaj’s name being included on the list.

“Knowing (Abdel-Rahman) before he is convicted is not a crime. Guilt by association is just an un-American concept,” Reinhart added of Wahhaj’s hosting the visiting cleric at his mosque in the early 1990s.

Sure. But the problem here is that Wahaj didn’t just know Sheikh Omar; he invited him to speak. How much congruence was there between their views?

“I’ve seen no evidence that suggests that (Wahhaj) is either a terrorist or a sympathizer of terrorism. He is, like a lot of Americans, very critical of American policies. But that’s true of evangelical Christians as well as orthodox Muslims,” added Reinhart, who specializes in Islamic studies and currently is teaching a course on “Islam in North America.”Islamic Society of Greater Manchester members said they hope Wahhaj’s reputation as a leading, respected Islamic scholar and dynamic speaker will make for a successful fundraiser for the mosque they have been striving to build on Karatzas Avenue for several years….

Wahhaj was a former Nation of Islam member whose has emerged as a “significant figure” in Islam following his studies at the University of Saudi Arabia in Mecca, according to Reinhart and trial transcripts.

Wahhaj later returned to Brooklyn, where he established his mosque and “turned it into an attractive religious center and a force for good in the neighborhood,” Reinhart said. But Wahhaj “has been made a controversial figure” by people “who believe he has been too critical of American policies,” he added….

The Wall Street Journal, citing one of Wahhaj’s audiotaped sermons available for purchase online, quoted Wahhaj as saying: “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”

Wahhaj told the newspaper he regretted “some of his harshest comments about democracy,” saying he hopes “Americans one day will be persuaded — not coerced — to embrace Islamic law.”

Persuaded? Actually, he has said, “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

Re-Christianize Europe: As Christianity Fades, Islam Beckons

By The Brussels Journal

Created 2007-03-07 10:47

A quote from Joseph Farah at World Net Daily, 27 February 2007

Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said the growing Muslim presence in Europe is “a fascinating issue and one that the American government is just now trying to get its mind around. It’s a huge problem, we are thinking about it seriously, and we’ve tried to do some intellectual framing-up.”

What does he propose? He says Europe is to blame. “You have a weird nativist surge in Western Europe, and a kind of odd panic: Aliens are here, they don’t accept our values, they are a threat to our way of life and turn to radicalism,” says Fried.

So [the] State [Department] is going to bring American Muslims to Europe to meet with their counterparts in an effort to “break down stereotypes” and help them end their “self-isolation.” [...]

On one point, however, I think the eggheads at the State Department are right. The key to the outcome of this global conflict is in Europe. Do you want to know how to win the fight against the global jihadists? I’m going to tell you how, and I’m serious. Re-Christianize the continent. […] No, I don’t think sending American Muslims to Europe is a good idea. I think sending American Christians there would make much more sense.
A quote from Daniel Pipes in The National Interest, 1 March 2007

[E]xtreme secularism pervades Europe, especially among its elites, to the point that believing Christians are seen as mentally unbalanced and unfit for public office. In 2005, Italy denied Catholic politician Rocco Buttiliglione the European Union commissionership – because of his views on issues like homosexuality. Entrenched secularism also means empty churches: London is home to seven times more born-Christians than born-Muslims, but more people attend mosques on Friday than churches on Sunday. As Christianity fades, Islam beckons; Prince Charles exemplifies many Europeans’ fascination with Islam. The continent could see many conversions, for as the saying ascribed to G. K. Chesterton contends, “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

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Al-Arabiyya TV Director-General: ‘Why Do Islamist Extremists Who Incite Against the West Insist on Living There?’

Al-Arabiyya TV Director-General: ‘Why Do Islamist Extremists Who Incite Against the West Insist on Living There?’

In an article in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Al-Arabiyya TV Director-General Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed criticized the hypocrisy of Islamist extremists who live and operate in the West. He said that while these extremists spread hatred for the West and incite against Western culture, at the same time they fight for the right to stay there. [1]

The following are excerpts:

“All of Them Want To [Live] In The West”

“The common denominator shared by Abu Qatada, [2] currently under arrest in Britain, Osama Nasser, who was kidnapped in Rome, [3] and Omar Bakri, who fled from London, [4] is that all of them want to [live] in the West, rather than in their native Islamic countries. Abu Qatada prefers to remain under arrest in Britain, and not to be deported to Jordan. The Italian imam Abu Omar Osama Al-Masri, who was kidnapped by the CIA [and taken] to Egypt, is likewise demanding to return to Milan, the fashion capital, and is even suing for financial compensation. As for the most famous of the three, [Omar] Bakri, he hurried to the airport and grabbed a flight to Lebanon when the [British] government prepared [to take] punitive measures against [individuals] who incite to violence. [But] now, after spending some time in his homeland, he is begging to return to London, despite all the [British] decisions, and despite all his statements against them.

“What makes fundamentalist extremists, who incite against the West and its culture, the first to run into its arms, and to fight [for the right] to stay there? Do they suffer from a split personality, with one [personality] endorsing an ideology of hate, and the other wanting to enjoy the principles [that form the basis] of life in the West? We have never heard of [these extremists] wanting to immigrate to Somalia or Pakistan, or [wanting to return] to their countries of origin. [This], despite all their sermons and writings about religious duty and love of the homeland, [and despite the fact that] they characterize others as ‘infidels,’ to the extent that some [extremists] even call to fight [these infidels].”

“[The Extremists] Are Enjoying All the Benefits of the Regime They Despise”

“What makes Omar Bakri, who enjoys liberty in Britain, spread hatred [against Britain], fight its culture, and say obscenely that [Britain] is a toilet in which he lives in order to defecate there? Does it make sense for someone like him to express a desire to return to Britain after everything he has said and done?

“As for Abu Qatada, he prefers to remain in prison and not to return to his homeland Jordan, just like [Osama Nasser], the imam from Milan, who is protesting about being taken to Egypt and about being imprisoned there. Not only is he protesting his abduction; he has also decided to sue for 20 million Euro in damages…

“It is blatantly obvious that all three are enjoying all the benefits of the [government] they despise: They want the financial aid, the security, the [rule of] law, the justice and the freedom of expression afforded by this government. Is this not the epitome of hypocrisy? When they preach, aren’t they greatly deceiving their followers – [considering this discrepancy] between what they say and what they do?

“It is some of the extremist hate-mongers living in the West who are inciting the Muslims in the East against Western countries… – those [same] countries that have hosted them, given them protection and shelter, and in many cases also financed the education of their children, including their Islamic and Arabic language studies. It is also revolting to see writers denouncing the actions of [Western] governments that wish to get rid of the extremists by sending them back to their Islamic countries.

“Instead of demanding that the Arab [countries] mend their legal and security deficiencies, they ask the [Western] countries that have thrown out these extremists to spare them and to tolerate the ideological damage that they inflict upon their societies.”

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[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), March 1, 2007.

[2] Abu Qatada is the nickname of Omar Mahmoud ibn Omar, a Jordanian-born Palestinian who is currently under arrest in Britain on suspicion of affiliation with Al-Qaeda. He is currently facing extradition to Jordan.

[3] Osama Nasser, nicknamed Abu Omar Osama Al-Masri, was the imam of a mosque in Milan. In 2003, he was kidnapped by the CIA and taken to Cairo, where he was incarcerated for several years until his recent release.

[4] Omar Bakri, originally from Syria, headed the British-based Islamist organization Al-Muhajiroun, which has been banned under anti-terrorist legislation. Bakri left Britain and now resides in Beirut.