Recently in Barack Obama Category

"Vance said members of the local Muslim community were instrumental in thwarting the threat to the president, but did not give specifics." That's good, but why no specifics? And what are the members of the local Muslim community in Birmingham doing to combat this tendency toward "self-radicalization"? What programs do they have in place to teach young Muslims that the jihadist understanding of Islam is incorrect? Why is asking that question "Islamophobic"?

"Uzbek man guilty of plotting to kill President Obama," by Verna Gates for Reuters, February 10 (thanks to Ima):

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - A man from Uzbekistan living illegally in the United States pleaded guilty on Friday to terrorism and weapons charges involving a plot to kill President Barack Obama.

According to court evidence, defendant Ulugbek Kodirov believed he was acting on behalf of an Islamist militant group in his homeland and was plotting to shoot Obama while the president campaigned for re-election this year.

Kodirov 22, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama, to three charges as part of an agreement that spares him from a potential life sentence.

He still faced up to 30 years in prison and $750,000 in fines for providing material support for terrorist activity, being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and threatening to assassinate the president.

Four other charges against him were dropped, and mainly involved additional threats to kill Obama.

U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon set sentencing for May 17.

Kodirov came to the United States in 2009 to study medicine and his student visa was revoked in April 2010 after he failed to enroll in school, investigators said.

He "self-radicalized" through Internet research and sought like-minded individuals, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said.

Kodirov met a mentor he called "Emir," whom he believed to be a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Islamist militant group the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Kodirov conversed with the man and decided to kill the president, according to court evidence.

He determined that the upcoming 2012 campaign would be an opportune time to either shoot the president with a sniper's rifle or shoot him up close, according to evidence read by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Whisonant.

"He did not care if he got shot and killed as long as he killed the president," Whisonant said.

Kodirov was arrested in July at an Alabama motel where he had obtained a fully automatic machine gun and four hand grenades from an undercover agent. "He was attempting to obtain weapons and explosives that he intended to use to kill the President of the United States," Vance said.

According to his plea agreement, Kodirov also showed jihadist Web sites and videos on his computer to another individual and told that person he wanted to assist others in jihad overseas. He also had lengthy conversations with another person about killing Obama, and that person introduced him to the undercover agent.

Vance said members of the local Muslim community were instrumental in thwarting the threat to the president, but did not give specifics. "We have warm relations with the Muslim community - they also want a safe place to live and raise their children," said Vance.

In my FrontPage column this morning I discuss some of the many indications that we are now living through Jimmy Carter's long-delayed second term:

The Egyptian Government has released the names of nineteen American citizens that it intends to prosecute for their role in fomenting anti-government protests – a charge they deny. Protests from the American Government have so far been futile, met with sneers of contempt.

The echoes are unmistakable. On November 4, 1979, Iranian thugs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. Jimmy Carter’s government wrung its hands in futility for the next fourteen months, until finally the Islamic Republic released the hostages on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan took office as President of the United States.

The bitter irony in all that was that Carter had betrayed the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, and thereby paved the way for the ascent to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that has ruled Iran ever since. Rather than feel gratitude toward Carter, however, Khomeini viewed his abandonment of the Shah as a sign of weakness, and pressed forward with his jihad against the Great Satan.

Iran has maintained a hostile posture toward the United States ever since then, including gleeful predictions of our nation’s imminent demise. Just days ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, declared to an enthusiastic Tehran crowd that “in light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated….Allah’s promises will be delivered and Islam will be victorious.”

As the Iranian regime inches ever closer toward constructing nuclear weapons, as even Hillary Clinton has acknowledged it is trying to do, these words become more than just empty braggadocio and saber-rattling. The U.S. and Israel have one man to thank for the advent of a genocide-minded regime that considers them both the most implacable of enemies, is not deterred by the prospect of millions of its own people dead, and is racing toward completion of a nuclear weapon.

That man, of course, is Jimmy Carter. And from the looks of recent events, he is back in the White House.

In June 2009, when Barack Obama made his notorious appeal to the Muslim world from Cairo, he specifically stipulated that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend – despite the fact that at that time the Brotherhood was still an outlawed group. Last March, as the “Arab Spring” uprisings toppled the sclerotic and brutal regime of Hosni Mubarak, Obama hailed “the peaceful transition to democracy in both Tunisia and in Egypt.” As the regime fell, Obama exulted: “We’ve borne witness to the beginning of new chapter in the history of a great country and a longtime partner of the United States.”

At the same time, Obama signaled his willingness to open talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, and gave every indication that he would not oppose the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt.

Now, as Egypt rushes headlong toward becoming a Sharia state and adopts a posture of increasing hostility toward the United States, Obama is scrambling to hold at bay the forces he is largely responsible for unleashing.

There is more.

In Human Events this morning I call for the redress of an injustice:

The Obama administration’s willful blindness about the jihad threat doesn’t just make for bad policy inimical to the genuine interests of the United States – as is if that weren’t bad enough. It also perpetrates injustices against American heroes who deserved to be honored for their sacrifices for our country.

The Purple Heart, a United States military honor awarded for military merit, is specifically to be given, according to U.S. Army regulations, for “wounds received as a result of hostile action,” including fatal wounds. It can be awarded in peacetime “to military personnel wounded by terrorists or while members of a peacekeeping force.” Yet the 12 U.S. military personnel (plus one civilian) murdered by Islamic jihadist Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009 have not been awarded the Purple Heart, and neither has Army Private William Long, who was murdered by Islamic jihadist Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad in Little Rock, Arkansas June 1, 2009.

The reason for this is obvious: the Obama administration has not recognized either the Fort Hood or the Little Rock jihad attack as an act of terrorism. Thus the military personnel killed at Fort Hood and Private Long were not “wounded by terrorists”; hence no Purple Heart. Thus they become casualties not only of the global and domestic jihad, but of the politically correct refusal of official Washington to call that jihad what it is, and to recognize its full dimensions.

Of the facts of each case there is no question. Obama has ignored the Little Rock shooting, and, in one of the most egregious whitewashings of jihad in a field thick with competition, termed the Fort Hood shooting “workplace violence.” Any objective examination of either, however, leaves no doubt that Nidal Malik Hasan and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad were Islamic terrorists performing a terrorist action in the name of Islam, and thus their victims were precisely “military personnel wounded by terrorists.”

In April 2011, Muhammad, an American convert to Islam, explained that he had killed Long in a “jihad operation.” He was not a soldier fighting against Americans on a battlefield, or even apparently an al-Qaeda operative acting on behalf of a recognized terror organization. He was a Muslim who was acting in Accord with the teachings of his religion as he understood them – that is, as giving him a responsibility before Allah to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers. He was acting in imitation of his prophet, who said: “I have been made victorious through terror.” And in his terror operation, he killed Private Long.

The Defense Department has taken no notice of Long’s killing; it doesn’t fit their paradigm of what terrorism is and what jihad is, and so apparently they think it is best ignored. But they could not ignore Fort Hood. In January 2010, the Defense Department released its report Friday on the jihad massacre at Fort Hood, and it is hard to imagine a document more full of denial and deception. The Pentagon seemed intent on ignoring and obfuscating the reasons why Hasan committed his murders.

Hasan had passed out Qur’ans on the morning of the shooting, and shouted “Allahu akbar” as he shot. He had raised alarm among his fellow Army psychiatrists by preaching jihad and hatred from the Qur’an when he was supposed to be giving a lecture about psychiatry. Yet despite these and other indications that Hasan was an Islamic jihadist who believed it part of his religious responsibility as a Muslim to wage war against Infidels, the words “jihad,” “Muslim,” “Islam” and even “Islamist” never appear in the Defense Department’s 86-page mélange of droning bureaucratese.

The irony was thick when the report recommended that the military improve its ability to identify and monitor “potential threats” — this from a report that steadfastly refused to acknowledge the existence of the Islamic jihad doctrine that motivated Nidal Hasan to murder in the first place.

Political correctness was responsible for the murders of 13 people at Fort Hood and the murder of Private William Long in Little Rock. And if political correctness had not held the political and military establishments in a stranglehold, the victims of these jihads would already have received Purple Hearts. That they have not received this honor is yet another monument to the cowardice and myopia that holds sway at the highest levels in Washington during the Obama administration.

The Brotherhood and the Salafis don't even need to collect the jizya from the Copts, as long as they've got Barack Obama.

"Obama set to speed aid to Egypt: official," by Warren Strobel for Reuters, January 25 (thanks to Wimpy):

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama plans to accelerate the pace of American aid to Egypt, a top State Department official said on Wednesday, as the most populous Arab nation reaches a critical stage in its uncertain transition away from autocratic rule.

Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats, part of a U.S. delegation that held unprecedented talks last week with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington wanted to provide "more immediate benefits" to Egyptians, who earlier this month conducted their first democratic elections in decades.

"During this period, we want to be as supportive as we can. This is an historic moment. Egypt's a country of enormous importance," Hormats said.

Under the plan, some non-urgent U.S. aid slated for other countries - he did not name them - would be redirected to Egypt. And funding in the pipeline for long-term programs in Egypt would be shifted to quick-impact projects, he said.

Hormats, speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum, emphasized that the White House had not made any final decisions, and that he was providing Washington's "broad thinking" on the subject.

It was unclear whether the total amount of U.S. aid to Egypt would be increased. "Whether it's an increase or whether it's reprioritizing existing assistance, we're still working this out," Hormats said.

Still, he made clear the United States wants to be seen as doing more to assist a hoped-for democratic evolution in Egypt, where the military still holds ultimate power on the first anniversary of protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak....

Yesterday on Christian Solidarity International (via RaymondIbrahim.com), I discussed the many reasons why a president of the United States -- I don't name any, specifically, lest I be accused of great naivety -- should speak up on behalf of the religious minorities being persecuted, cleansed, or merely oppressed under Islam. [Note: If, while reading the following article, you wish to tell the current president to stand up for religious minorities in the Islamic Middle East, sign CSI's petition]:

On January 24, during his State of the Union Address, the president of the United States has a chance to expose the plight of religious minorities living in Muslim majority nations. Doing so would not merely shed light on one of the most ignored humanitarian crises of the 21st century; it would help alleviate it.

Why should the president speak up on the oppression of religious minorities? For starters, because it is the right thing to do, and reflects American values and principles.

He should speak up because religious cleansing is currently underway in nations like Nigeria, where Boko Haram—"Western Education is Forbidden"—and other Islamic groups have declared jihad on the Christian minorities of the north, killing and displacing thousands, burning and bombing hundreds of churches, most notoriously this last Christmas, where over forty people were killed while celebrating Christmas mass. Likewise, since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, about half of Iraq's one million Christians have been forced by targeted violence to flee their homeland, the most notorious incident, again, being a church attack, where some 60 worshippers were killed.

He should speak up because churches are constantly being attacked, burned, or forced into closure, not just in Nigeria and Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia (click on country-links for the most recent examples). In Egypt alone, after several churches were burned, thousands of Christian Copts gathered to demonstrate—only to be slaughtered by the military, including by being run-over by armored vehicles.

He should speak up because Muslim converts to Christianity are regularly ostracized, beat, killed, or imprisoned—recent examples coming from Algeria, Eritrea, Kashmir, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and even Western nations. Iran's Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, whose plight actually made it to the mainstream media, is but one of many people imprisoned and tortured for simply following their conscience and converting to Christianity. Uganda offers a typical example: there, a Muslim father locked his 14-year-old daughter for several months without food or water, simply because she embraced Christianity. She weighed 44 pounds when rescued.

He should speak up because Christian girls are being abducted, raped, and forced to convert to Islam—recent examples coming from Egypt, India, Pakistan, and Sudan. In Pakistan alone, "a 12 year-old Christian [was] gang raped for eight months, forcibly converted and then 'married' to her Muslim attacker." Now that she has escaped, instead of seeing justice done, "the Christian family is in hiding from the rapists and the police." Earlier in Pakistan, a 2-year-old Christian girl was savagely raped and damaged for life because her father refused to convert to Islam...

In "New Docs Reveal How DOJ Kowtows to Muslim Brotherhood" at The American Thinker today, Pamela Geller reveals the Justice Department's obsequious dealings with Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the U.S.:

In what promises to be an enormous document dump, I have received the first in a series of DOJ bundles in response to my FOIA request filed close to a year ago. Specifically, I asked for "records relating to the meeting of the 'Monthly Outreach Meeting' with Muslim and Arab groups at the Civil Rights Division. Specifically, include lists of attendees at each monthly meeting, the agenda of each meeting and any minutes or summary prepared subsequent to each meeting. Please also specifically note the meetings at which the Attorney General of the United States attended."

The principal impact of reading through the material is the sheer bulk of it. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of emails, documenting nearly daily friendly contact, consultation, cooperation and collaboration between the DOJ and Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood groups. One thing is clear, the Muslim Brotherhood has fully infiltrated command and control at the Department of Justice civil rights division.

 

The total located on a preliminary search totals 14,100 documents. The Civil Rights Division's Nelson Hermilla complained that "it is not clear in what manner the collection of all five-year's records might contribute to the general public understanding." A knowledgeable Justice Department insider told me: "You couldn't generate 14,000 pages of documents if you asked for communications with lenders or apartment or hotels as part of the Housing Section enforcement activities. There are very few things in Civil Rights that would generate 14,000 pages of anything. It has got to be a treasure trove of information."

Indeed. It is also remarkable that the Justice Department would deny that these records would advance "the general public understanding."

Going through the first batch, what struck me almost immediately was the casual familiarity between ISNA, the ADC, and senior officials of the Department of Justice, all the way up to Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez. They discuss lunch, vacations, job changes -- always with the Muslim Brotherhood groups pushing their narrative, even in these casual exchanges.

Even more striking was the servile demeanor of the Civil Rights Division official Eric Treene, Special Counsel for the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, and the demanding condescension of Muslim Brotherhood operatives. Muslim and Arab operatives treat Treene and Co. like an errand boy, asking them for email addresses of other contacts and setting them to perform the most menial gofer duties. The DOJ even takes lunch orders and picks up the tab, and in some cases asks them how much money they need for a little soiree they're holding. It is astonishing.

In a rational society, these Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups would be marginalized. Instead, the DOJ is playing Stepin Fetchit for them. They're using the DOJ as their legal arm.

The depth and the breadth of the penetration is difficult to fathom until you see all of these documents going back and forth, and the players, who include Nihad "I am in support of the Hamas movement" Awad of Hamas-tied CAIR; Suhail Khan, who accepted an award in 2000 from the now-imprisoned al-Qaeda financier Abdurrahman Alamoudi; and James Yee. James Yee a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo who was charged with sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage, and failure to obey a general order. He was charged along with three others. The charges were later dropped, when Major General Geoffrey Miller cited "national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence." The notorious Yee gave an interview on Syrian television in Arabic, in which he repeated Gitmo detainees' lies of Quran abuse on the part of the U.S. Military.

Those three and many others received a September 8, 2011 letter from Perez touting all the DOJ's actions on behalf of Muslims, including a suit against the city of Lilburn, Georgia for resisting the expansion of a mosque and amicus participation calling for dismissal of a suit brought by Murfreesboro, Tennessee patriots against an Islamic supremacist mosque there....

Read it all.

Racing to surrender. "LEAD: US Afghan envoy confirms talking to Haqqani insurgents," from DPA, January 22 (thanks to Wimpy):

Kabul - The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan on Sunday confirmed a meeting with the Haqqani insurgent group, as signs of a dialogue between the United States and rebels continue to grow.

'We had one meeting with Haqqani network,' Marc Grossman told a news conference in Kabul.

His remarks come after US and the Taliban militants confirmed preliminary talks for opening an liaison office for the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha - increasing speculation of an end to the decade-long bloody insurgency in this war-torn country.

'I think, from the Afghan prospective anyway, this is an inclusive process but we will have to see what turns out,' Grossman said, after a two days trip to Afghanistan.

'I am looking forward to the Taliban being clear about breaking ties with international terrorism, denouncing it, distancing them salves from it.'

Grossman however did not say when and where the meeting with the Haqqani network took place.

The Taliban are demanding the release of captives held at the US prison camp at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

'We haven't made any decisions and it's no surprise to any of you that this is an issue in the Unites [sic] States of law. We have to meet the requirements of our law,' Grossman said, referring to the demand.

'No decision has been made about this,' he said.

President Hamid Karzai on Saturday said that he personally held a meeting with another insurgent faction, Hezb-i-Islami, recently....

The Center for American Progress is the extraordinarily well-funded hard-Left organization that published a highly deceptive and misleading report on the Muslim Brotherhood neologism "Islamophobia" last year. It is no surprise that it would turn out to be antisemitic as well, given its energetic water-carrying for Islamic supremacists and jihadists.

And now its antisemitism has gotten to be too much even for the notoriously anti-Israel Obama White House.

An update on this story. "White House troubled by ‘anti-Semitic think tank,'" by Benjamin Weinthal for the Jerusalem Post, January 20 (thanks to Wimpy):

BERLIN – The media firestorm unleashed by allegedly anti- Semitic bloggers at a prominent think tank affiliated with the US Democratic Party resulted Thursday in a White House Jewish affairs official terming the situation at the Center for American Progress to be “troubling.”

According to a Washington Post online article on Thursday, Jarrod Bernstein, the new White House liaison with the Jewish community, told Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, that what was unfolding at CAP was “troubling,” and, “that [the attitude toward Israel at the think tank] is not this administration.”

The Washington Post wrote that the Cooper met last week with Bernstein to convey the Wiesenthal Center’s worries about CAP’s hostility toward Israel and American supporters of the Jewish state.

CAP is a Washington-based policy organization that serves as a source of Middle East ideas for President Barack Obama and the party.

Zaid Jilani had blogged for the Center for American Progress’s ThinkProgress website; he used Twitter to call US supporters of the Jewish state “Israel Firsters” and compared Israel to the former apartheid regime in South Africa.

A CAP employee who said her name was Amanda told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that Jilani was no longer employed by ThinkProgress.

Jilani’s biography and photo no longer appear on the ThinkProgress website “About” section. His Twitter feed no longer identifies him as a reporter for ThinkProgress. His last CAP blog posting was on January 12.

E-mail queries and telephone calls to senior CAP representatives, including Faiz Shakir, editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress, were not returned.

Cowards.

The Jerusalem Post exclusively obtained an e-mail in January in which Shakir described Jilani’s words charging supporters of Israel with dual-loyalty as “terrible anti-Semitic language.”

As a result of the alleged Judeophobia at CAP, the Jerusalem Post has learned from a Democratic Party source that CAP has introduced a new social media policy to monitor and prevent prejudicial writings. CAP declined to confirm the existence of the new policy.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have all termed the anti-Israeli rhetoric of Jilani and fellow CAP writers Eli Clifton, Ali Gharib, Matt Duss and Ben Armbruster to be infected with Jew-hatred and discriminatory policy positions toward Israel.

Duss, CAP’s Middle East Progress director, wrote on ThinkProgress that “the entire Israeli occupation” of the Gaza Strip is “a moral abomination” comparable to the former Jim Crow South in the US.

Armbruster, who has attacked Jewish critics for pointing out alleged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic tirades from CAP writers, wrote “no comment” in an e-mail response to a query last week.

The think tank has been engulfed in the affair since December, electrifying the blogosphere and print and online publications in the US and Israel...

According to her article, shortly after a Jewish NGO slammed CAP for trafficking in hatred of Israel on its website in December, “Six days later, President Obama met for coffee with the man who oversaw the offending content — Faiz Shakir, the site’s editor-inchief.”...

Taunting the weak. "U.S. drone that crashed in Iran goes miniature," by Thomas Erdbrink for the Washington Post, January 17 (thanks to Benedict):

TEHRAN — For the American government, the crash of the RQ-170 drone in Iran was an embarrassment. For the Iranian government, it was a propaganda victory.

And for at least one company, according to state radio, it could be a windfall.

An Iranian firm, seeking to capitalize on the frenzy that followed the crash of the drone — and American calls to have it returned — is now producing miniaturized toy versions of the craft. Most of the toys, which come in several colors and are made of Iranian plastic, have already been snapped up by Iranian government organizations, according to the group that manufactures them.

At least one model — a pink one — has been reserved for President Obama.

“He said he wanted it back, and we will send him one,” said Reza Kioumarsi, the head of cultural production at the Ayeh Art group....

In Human Events this morning, I discuss some recent jihad plots and then examine DHS policies in light of them:

...Instead, the Obama Administration has succumbed to pressure from Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the United States and has promised to scrub all training materials for the FBI and other agencies of any reference to Islam or jihad in connection with Islamic terrorism. That means that law enforcement officials are now effectively forbidden to study the motives and goals of the Alabama shooter, the Florida and North Carolina plotters, the former military man, and so many others like them, for to do so would necessarily involve study and discussion of the texts and tenets of Islam.

It cannot be said, however, that the Obama Department of Homeland Security is lying down on the job. Recently it has come to light that for over a year, DHS agents have been monitoring a large number of websites. The purpose of this monitoring, according to a DHS report, is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”

Situational awareness? A common operating picture? It’s hard to tell whether this wretched English is intended to obfuscate deliberately, or if it was simply written by someone whose thoughts barely rise above the level of incoherence. Either way, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But this bureaucratic gobbledygook apparently means that the DHS is watching the sites in question in order to become aware of situations involving terror plotting, and that DHS agents will share this information with other agencies so that they won’t be working at cross purposes.

So far so good -- if the DHS were monitoring jihadist websites, which proliferate on the internet. But it isn’t. Instead, it is watching sites where it is extremely unlikely ever to encounter a jihad plotter saying anything to indicate that he is up to no good. To be sure, the monitored sites are all over the map ideologically: they include Live Leak, Vimeo, Youtube, and Flickr, as well as the Huffington Post, Newsweek Blogs and the New York Times Lede Blog -- along with the Middle East Media Research Institute, the global intelligence site Stratfor, and many, many others, including my own website, Jihad Watch. Nonetheless, given the Obama DHS’s stated emphasis on “right-wing extremism,” it is much more likely that when they visit Jihad Watch and other counterterror sites, agents are on the hunt for dangerous conservatives, not hoping to learn anything about jihadist beliefs, motives or activities.

The plots and attacks of the past week illustrate how foolish that is, as well as ominous for loyal citizens who oppose the administration and its policies, and are being watched despite having no intention of ever engaging in any illegal activity whatsoever. The DHS’s slumber will not come without a cost -- for as administration officials continue to make good on their promise to embrace willful ignorance about the Islamic jihad threat, agents will grow ever less equipped to spot and to stop plots such as the one uncovered last week in Florida. To do so will be inexcusably “Islamophobic,” DHS agents will tell each other, as they sip coffee and monitor those crazy right-wingers at Jihad Watch.

Even Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that the Iranians want a bomb. They have already made their genocidal dreams abundantly clear. This nuclear scientist was part of a program that clearly is aspiring to murder of millions. Taking him out could have saved millions of lives.

"Santorum: US wrong to condemn Iran scientist death," by Thomas Beaumont in the Associated Press, January 14 (thanks to Wimpy):

GREENVILLE, S.C.—Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Saturday the U.S. was wrong to condemn the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist this week.

The Obama administration's public posture on the death Wednesday of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan does not reflect the hard line Santorum supports in keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the former Pennsylvania senator said while campaigning in conservative upstate South Carolina.

"Our country condemned it. My feeling is we should have kept our mouth shut," Santorum told about 200 people packed into a popular breakfast diner in Greenville....

And while Santorum stresses values issues, he has also argued for a tough stand on Iran's nuclear capability. Responding to a question in Greenville, he said he supports missile strikes to stop its nuclear program, if Iran refuses to submit to inspections.

"If these are people who are developing a weapon to be used to either destroy the state of Israel or to spread terror -- a reign of terror -- around the world, we shouldn't be sitting on the sidelines and letting it happen," he said. "They cannot have a nuclear weapon, because you, in Greenville, will not be safe."...

The Assistant Secretary of State Feltman's remarks about the importance of actions sound good, but at what point would the U.S. actually pull the plug, if it has stood by this long in the face of human rights abuses in Egypt? If they are afraid to rock the boat now, when would be a good time?

For that matter, since there has been no action in governance yet, the U.S. is engaging what would at best be unknown quantities, but are in reality are only "unknown" through willful denial. As this report notes, the Islamic parties "have continued to use traditional extremist rhetoric in addresses to their political base, and several Islamist groups also support a policy of gradualism."

The possibility of duplicity appears to be off-limits in foreign policy toward Islamic countries, and that continues the practices of the previous administration. Both seem frequently surprised and in denial at being deceived. "U.S. Official on Propping Up Islamist Democracies," from the Investigative Project on Terrorism, January 6:

Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, stated in a recent editorial for Dar al Hayat, that American officials will work with Islamist parties to prop up emerging Arab democracies.

"We are less concerned what a political party or organization calls itself than what it does in practice, and we will reach out to those who act according to democratic principles, respect their fellow citizens' rights, and do not use force or violence to impose their views," Feltman explains in the op-ed.

The Obama Administration's goal is "to reach out beyond the traditional government and business elites not only to articulate clearly our own goals but to listen to a wide spectrum of views. This includes reaching out to Islamist parties, who now play an important role in the political transformation of many countries in the region."

The United States intends to support the new democracies with both governmental aid and private economic investment. Feltman saluted the efforts of major American firms like Pfizer, Marriott, and Microsoft, who have already invested in Tunisia's new Islamist-led democracy. He also discussed the Administration's effort to convince Congress to facilitate job creation in Egypt, academic exchanges between the countries, and to "develop […] 'Enterprise Funds' to foster private-sector development."

The commitment of Islamist parties to democracy and human rights remains to be seen. While officials from Tunisia's Al-Nahda party and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood have said all the right things to Western news sources, they have continued to use traditional extremist rhetoric in addresses to their political base. Several Islamist groups also support a policy of gradualism, by incrementally introducing Islamism into local society and building their relationship with other Islamist regimes in the direction of a renewed Islamic empire [Caliphate].

The Center for American Progress is the extraordinarily well-funded hard-Left organization that published a highly deceptive and misleading report on the Muslim Brotherhood neologism "Islamophobia" last year. Now it is unmasked not only as an enabler of jihad and Islamic supremacism, but as -- surprise, surprise -- antisemitic as well.

"E-mail reveals anti-Semitism at US think tank," by Benjamin Weinthal in the Jerusalem Post, January 7 (thanks to Joseph):

A senior employee of the US think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) appears to have admitted in an e-mail sent from his CAP account that a blogger for the policy organization used anti-Semitic language to attack supporters of the Jewish state.

CAP advises the Democratic Party on Middle East policy and is an important source of ideas for the Obama administration.

The Jerusalem Post last week obtained the first CAP acknowledgment of Jew-hatred stemming from a group of Mideast bloggers affiliated with CAP’s ThinkProgress website.

In the e-mail that the Post obtained exclusively from the CAP account of Faiz Shakir, who serves as editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress.org website and is a vice president at CAP, he wrote, “Yes, I agree ‘Israel Firster’ is terrible, anti-Semitic language. And that’s why that language no longer exists on Zaid’s personal twitter feed, because he also knows and understands the implications.”

Zaid Jilani wrote on his Twitter account, where he identifies himself as a “Reporter-Blogger for ThinkProgress,” that “...Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$.”

The e-mail recognizing the anti-Semitism of a CAP blogger was sent from FShakir@americanprogress.org in December.

US-Jewish and Israeli NGOs accused a faction of ThinkProgress bloggers that month of stoking modern anti-Semitism. The anti-Israel scandal saw two CAP writers, Jilani and Ali Gharib, issue apologies for asserting that American Jews and a non-Jewish Republican senator serve the interests of the Israeli government over the security of the United States.

Speaking with the Post from Washington on Thursday, Shakir declined to comment on the e-mail from his account.

He did not respond to a followup Post e-mail sent on Friday.

In a lengthy article on Friday on the Daily Beast news website, Ken Gude, the managing director of CAP’s National Security and International Policy Program, denied any anti-Semitism or anti-Israelism at CAP. He told the Daily Beast that the allegations were “wildly unfair” and “flatly untrue.”

The Post sent an e-mail to Gude on Friday citing the quote in question from the email that had been sent from Shakir’s account. He did not respond to the Post e-mail or to a follow-up telephone query.

Critics accuse CAP of failing to combat rising anti-Israel sentiment among a group of bloggers who write about the Middle East and have created an anti-Jewish state environment at the mainstream policy organization. The e-mail conceding anti-Semitism at ThinkProgress underscores an internal rift at the think tank.

CAP bloggers have attacked their critics. The ThinkProgress blogger Ben Armbruster wrote an article last month titled “The Secret, Coordinated Effort To Smear ThinkProgress As Anti-Semitic And Anti-Israel.”

He authored a second blog entry, “TAKE ACTION: Tell The Washington Post To Retract Jen Rubin’s Charge That ThinkProgress Is ‘Anti-Semitic.’” Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told the Post last week, “Instead of playing the victim, CAP has an obligation to implement concrete guidelines demonstrating that this language is unacceptable and that it will not be used by CAP employees in the future.”

When asked about NGO Monitor’s criticism of CAP and the Shakir e-mail account statement, Andrea Purse, a CAP spokeswoman, declined to comment. She wrote the Post last week that the articles in the Post were not helping “to defeat anti-Semitism.

The attacks and their repetition here do a disservice to all of us who fight for a strong US-Israel relationship.”

In an e-mail to the Post last week, Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, wrote, “The prominence of CAP in the Obama administration has been recognized by news outlets like Time and Bloomberg News, both of which describe the think tank as the president’s ‘Ideas Factory.’ The fact that CAP has staffers who disseminate this kind of virulent, poisonous anti-Israel material points to a serious problem – that there is a strain of hostility toward Israel running through elements of the mainstream Democratic Party.”

Matt Duss, director for the Middle East at CAP, compared Israel’s security policies to the racist “segregated South” in the United States. Duss declined to respond to queries about this statement on the ThinkProgress website. The disclosure of the e-mail from Shakir’s account comes after a series of dire developments for CAP’s reputation, culminating in sharp criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center – all of which slammed CAP for promoting hatred of Jews and Israel.

The antisemitic Duss, like many other Leftists and their Islamic supremacist allies, has tried to intimidate conservatives into shunning the perspective I represent. I responded here.

Reaching out in friendship to a group dedicated in its own words to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within." "Overtures to Egypt’s Islamists Reverse Longtime U.S. Policy," by David D. Kirkpatrick and Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times, January 3 (thanks to all who sent this in):

CAIRO — With the Muslim Brotherhood pulling within reach of an outright majority in Egypt’s new Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests.

The administration’s overtures — including high-level meetings in recent weeks — constitute a historic shift in a foreign policy held by successive American administrations that steadfastly supported the autocratic government of President Hosni Mubarak in part out of concern for the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology and historic ties to militants.

The shift is, on one level, an acknowledgment of the new political reality here, and indeed around the region, as Islamist groups come to power. Having won nearly half the seats contested in the first two rounds of the country’s legislative elections, the Brotherhood on Tuesday entered the third and final round with a chance to extend its lead to a clear majority as the vote moved into districts long considered strongholds.

The reversal also reflects the administration’s growing acceptance of the Brotherhood’s repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel....

Naive? Maybe. "Israel Security Council: Obama Naive on Muslim Brotherhood," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu in Israel National News, January 3 (thanks to Twostellas):

Israel’s National Security Council thinks that President Barack Obama is naïve in his attitude towards the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which stated Sunday it can’t fathom the idea of recognizing Israel.

Dr. Rashad Bayumi, the Brotherhood’s number two leader, said on Sunday, "No Muslim Brotherhood members will engage in any contact or normalization with Israel.”

President Obama has asked the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to mediate secret talks between the United States and the Taliban, according to The Hindu newspaper. The jurist previously has called for killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and has vowed that Islam “will conquer Europe [and] will conquer America,” whether by force or by the spread of radical Islam.

In early 2010, when American foreign policy experts could not imagine that the radical Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the most powerful political force in Egypt, President Obama dismissed the party as a “faction,” adding that “they don’t have majority support in Egypt. But they’re well organized. There are strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S.”...

Strains? They're dedicated in their own words to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within."

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has been praised by Saudi-funded dhimmi pseudo-academic John Esposito as a champion of a “reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism and human rights.” But numerous statements of Qaradawi demonstrate that he anything but a “reformist” or a genuine champion of “democracy, pluralism and human rights” – and is, in fact, positively Hitlerian in his Jew-hatred and bloodlust.

During the uprising against the Mubarak regime, a Muslim website published a chapter from Qaradawi’s book Laws of Jihad, including this passage: “One of the forms of jihad in Islam is jihad against evil and corruption within [the Islamic lands]. This jihad is crucial in order to protect society from collapse, disintegration, and perdition — for Muslim society has unique characteristics, and if these are lost, forgotten or destroyed, there will be no Muslim society.”

Qaradawi also enjoys a reputation as a moderate beyond just Esposito: the former Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is himself widely assumed to be a “moderate” despite evidence to the contrary, has hailed Qaradawi as a “very very well known Islamic jurist, highly regarded all over the Muslim world.” And another Muslim leader whose moderate bona fides have been questioned, the vaunted “Muslim Martin Luther” Tariq Ramadan, wrote a foreword to one of his books in 1998, and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone welcomed him to the city in 2004 and praised him repeatedly, despite the fact that during that visit Qaradawi explained to the BBC that suicide attacks against Israelis were not actually suicide at all, but “martyrdom in the name of God.” (Qaradawi has since been banned from Britain, as well as from the U.S.)

And the things that Qaradawi tells the millions of Muslims that he reaches are anything but moderate. In January 2009, during a Friday sermon broadcast on Al-Jazeera, he prayed that Allah would kill all the Jews: “Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.” He also declared: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler.”

And now he is a mediator for the U.S. Government.

"Report: Radical Sheikh a Key Mediator in U.S.-Taliban Talks," from IPT News, December 28 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Radical Islamist cleric and longtime Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide Yusuf al-Qaradawi serves as a "key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban," according to unnamed government sources referenced in a report published late Wednesday in The Hindu.

In early December, the report said, "Qaradawi helped draw a road map for a deal between the Taliban and the United States, aimed at giving the superpower a face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan." The United States is expected to begin pulling out of Afghanistan in 2014.

The Qaradawi-brokered deal calls for significant American commitments, including "the release of prisoners still held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, the lifting of United Nations sanctions on its leadership and its recognition as a legitimate political group." In return, the Hindu's sources say, the Taliban would be "expected to sever its links to transnational organisations like al-Qaeda, end violence and eventually share power with the Afghan government."

If true, the report raises significant questions about American strategy in the talks and the enhancement of a radical cleric's stature.

Qaradawi repeatedly has lashed out against Jews, glorifying violence against them and calling for Allah to "count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one." In 2009, he prayed for the chance to kill a Jew before dying. He has readily encouraged suicide bombing as "the greatest of all sorts of Jihad in the Cause of Allah." And, perhaps most troubling when considering the nature of the talks, Qaradawi actively supported the killing of U.S. servicemen and women, writing in 2003:

"Those killed fighting the American forces are martyrs given their good intentions since they consider these invading troops an enemy within their territories but without their will…Although they are seen by some as being wrong, those defending against attempts to control Islamic countries have the intention of Jihad and bear a spirit of the defense of their homeland."

With Hillary Clinton trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. "Clinton cleaning up after Obama’s Middle East policy," by Neil Munro in the Daily Caller, December 21:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is taking on a new role — patching fractures in President Barack Obama’s Muslim outreach policy.

Clinton’s role is highlighted by a new White House policy announced Dec. 19, which makes the roles and rights of women a central element of U.S. foreign policy. The policy is titled “The United States National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.”...

Her new role comes as she and other feminists increasingly voice their worries about the impact on Arab women of the burgeoning Islamist political movements that are religiously committed to the subordination of women.

“We’ve seen this already happening in countries where proposed legislation rolls back women’s rights,” said Jolynn Shoemaker, director of the Women in International Security organization. In Egypt and Libya, “it is a very critical time,” said Shoemaker, who is based at the Center for Strategic and International Studies....

But Obama’s initial outreach policy in 2009 invited the Islamist parties to pay a large role in the region’s politics. For example, he insisted that several members of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend his much-lauded 2009 speech in Cairo....

This year, however, Obama reacted to the growing role of the Islamists by offering some support for Western ideas. On May 19, for example, Obama declared that peoples’ rights “include free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders — whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.”

However, in that speech and since then, Obama has focused on pressuring Israel to make further concessions prior to hoped-for talks with Arab and Islamic advocates.

Also, Obama and White House officials have refused to condemn the Islamist parties’ political gains, or their advocacy of policies that subordinate women in the workplace, in politics and in family life....

“The White House warmly applauded the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and actively aided the one in Libya, while brushing aside abundant indications that each was powered largely by Islamic supremacists who would deny rights to women,” said Robert Spencer, an expert on Islam and a best-selling author. “By helping pave the way for pro-Sharia regimes in the ‘Arab Spring’ countries, they’ve become women’s worst enemy,” he said.

Clinton is now stepping into this gap, partly because Obama is focused on his 2012 election, and partly because U.S. policymakers need to influence the newly empowered Islamist governments and movements.

On Dec. 14, for example, Clinton subtly challenged Obama’s conciliatory approach to the Islamist parties.

She used a speech at a department-hosted conference on religious freedom to taunt Islamist advocates and governments about the possible weakness of their religious faith. “Everyone one of us who is a religious person knows there are some who may not support or approve of our religion, but is our religion so weak that statements of disapproval cause us to lose our faith?” she said to attendees, which included numerous officials from Islamic countries in the 57-national Organization of Islamic Cooperation....

Read it all.

No one is in favor of actual "stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion." The problem is that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is driving this resolution, considers any truthful speech about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism to be "stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion." This is an attempt to quash truth-telling about Islamic jihad so that the West stands mute and defenseless before its advance. And now the Obama Administration, fresh from a secret meeting with the OIC on just this topic, joins in.

Free Speech Death Watch Alert: "U.N. Adopts ‘Religious Intolerance’ Resolution Championed by Obama Administration," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, December 20 (thanks to Wimpy):

(CNSNews.com) – The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents.”

No member state called for a recorded vote on the text, which was as a result adopted “by consensus.”

The resolution, an initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), is based on one passed by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva last spring. The State Department last week hosted a meeting to discuss ways of “implementing” it.

Every year since 1999 the OIC has steered through the U.N.’s human rights apparatus a resolution condemning the “defamation of religion,” which for the bloc of 56 Muslim states covered incidents ranging from satirizing Mohammed in a newspaper cartoon to criticism of shari’a and post-9/11 security check profiling.

Critics regard the measure as an attempt to outlaw valid and critical scrutiny of Islamic teachings, as some OIC states do through controversial blasphemy laws at home.

Strongly opposed by mostly Western democracies, the divisive “defamation” resolution received a dwindling number of votes each year, with the margin of success falling from 57 votes in 2007 to 19 in 2009 and just 12 last year.

This year’s text was a departure, in that it dropped the “defamation” language and included a paragraph that reaffirms “the positive role that the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information can play in strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance.”

The nod to freedom of expression won the resolution the support of the U.S. and other democracies, with the Obama administration and others hailing it as a breakthrough after years of acrimonious debate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity of the State Department-hosted talks with foreign governments, the OIC and other international bodies last week to stress the importance of freedom of speech in the U.S. She argued that “the best way to treat offensive speech is by people either ignoring it or combating it with good arguments and good speech that overwhelms it.”

Saudi initiative singled out for praise

Nonetheless, the resolution adopted in New York on Monday does contain elements that concern some free speech and religious freedom advocates.

It calls on states “to take effective measures to ensure that public functionaries in the conduct of their public duties do not discriminate against an individual on the basis of religion or belief.”

Governments also are expected to make “a strong effort to counter religious profiling, which is understood to be the invidious use of religion as a criterion in conducting questionings, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures.”

“Effective measures” to counter cases of religious stereotyping and stigmatization include education, interfaith dialogue and “training of government officials.”

And in the worst cases, those of “incitement to imminent violence” based on religion, the resolution calls on countries to implement “measures to criminalize” such behavior....

All such things are in the eye of the beholder, meaning that the enforcement agency will decide what is offensive and what is incitement, and silence people accordingly.

Biden continues here the Obama Administration's narrow focus on al-Qaeda as the enemy. Not even the Taliban are included anymore, despite their obvious involvement in 9/11 plotting and more. And the ideology that al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as many other jihad groups around the globe? Off the table. Cannot and must not be examined.

"Joe Biden On Iraq, Iran, China and the Taliban," by Leslie H. Gelb for Newsweek via The Daily Beast, December 19 (thanks to Wimpy):

On Thursday, Dec. 15, Vice President Joe Biden sat down in his sunlit White House office adjoining the Rose Garden to do what he loves best—talk about foreign policy—with Leslie H. Gelb of Newsweek/The Daily Beast. What follows are excerpts of their exclusive review of the year’s hotspots....

NEWSWEEK: What are our vital interests in continuing to fight a major war in Afghanistan?

BIDEN: We were in Afghanistan for two reasons. One is to deal with, curtail, begin to dismantle, and eventually eliminate al Qaeda. Not only from being able to come back into Afghanistan and control Afghanistan but from the region—to decimate al Qaeda.

NEWSWEEK: Almost an impossible goal to achieve.

BIDEN: No—to fundamentally alter their capacity to do damage to American allies and vital U.S. interests, to fundamentally alter that. We have done that. It doesn’t mean they’re not capable.

NEWSWEEK: It means we’ve done it for the time being, but depending upon who comes to power in Afghanistan in the future, they can come back. I know you don’t favor staying there ad infinitum to prevent that.

BIDEN: I would argue they are not able to come back. I would argue that there has been serious damage done to their infrastructure in a way that the coherence of this thing called al Qaeda and their ability to metastasize has been severely damaged.

NEWSWEEK: So we no longer have to stay in Afghanistan to fight for it?

BIDEN: No, let me finish. That is not fully achieved, it is close. The second reason for us to be in Afghanistan was to make sure that a country with tens of millions of people and nuclear weapons called Pakistan did not somehow begin to disintegrate or fall apart. That is a hell of a lot tougher job....

Great job on that score, Joe. Pakistan is a paragon of anti-jihad Islamic moderation, now, ain't it?

NEWSWEEK: I know you don’t believe we can reshape Afghanistan and make it into a caramelized democracy.

BIDEN: Look, look, Les, let’s posit that your statement is that it’s clear that Pakistan could live with an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.

NEWSWEEK: They did.

BIDEN: We could not. We could not because they harbored, sheltered, and supported an outfit that created a real threat to the United States.

NEWSWEEK: And we told them if you stop harboring al Qaeda, we’ll live with you too.

BIDEN: Yes, but they didn’t.

NEWSWEEK: And we can make that deal now.

BIDEN: We didn’t. That is part of what the reconciliation process is about right now. We are not just deciding that all we are doing is supporting a government and building up their military capability. We’re engaged in a reconciliation process. Whether it will work or not is another question. But we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:

One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies....

Pamela Geller has the incredible story here: "Emulating their Sharia Partner, the OIC, State Department Detains Andrea Lafferty as 'Threat,' 'The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me'":

The Obama administration is harassing and detaining law-abiding patriots.

SIOA and the Traditional Values Coalition have been carefully monitoring the anti-constitutional collusion of Obama's State department and the global Islamic supremacist org, the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation). Today, SIOA partner and TVC president, Andrea Lafferty, was detained by the State department as a "threat" merely for covering the secret event....

On Monday, I wrote in the American Thinker, the respect and deference that the United States is paying to the OIC amounts to surrender in installments. The call for "respect and empathy and tolerance," coming from the most brutal and oppressive ideology on the face of the earth, reminds me of the "peace and equality" that was promised in Hitler's campaign posters for the Nationalist Socialist Workers (Nazi) party.

How prescient:

Andrea Lafferty Targeted, Detained By State Department Security Personnel as “Threat”

Washington D.C. (December 15th, 2011)-- Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) president Andrea Lafferty was targeted and detained by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security personnel this Wednesday during the closing event capping the three day closed-door conference advancing the implementation of U.N. Resolution 16/18.

“For weeks we have been asking whether the true aims of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and U.N. Resolution 16/18 would be used to apply “old fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to chill and coerce those critical of the Islamist agenda,” said Lafferty.

“Hillary Clinton was as good as her word,” said Lafferty.

Lafferty was circled by several members of Secretary Clinton’s staff before being approached by a member of the security detail, demanding Lafferty follow him. When asked why she was being removed from the reception hall, the security detail announced that a phone call had identified Lafferty as a “security threat” to Secretary Clinton.

“I was shocked and angry at the pressure and shameful intimidation tactics our State Department put on, even to the point of identifying me as a threat to Hillary Clinton.”

Secretary Clinton in a June 2011 conference in Istanbul, Turkey remarked how certain comments from those concerned about Islamic fanaticism have been deemed as “incendiary” and looked to sympathize with efforts that would criminalize certain speech that is “an incitement to imminent violence.”

“This language -- “incitement to imminent violence” -- has been used time and time again to close events here in the United States concerning the impact of Islamic shariah law, detain law-abiding Christians elsewhere, and now even target and detain as security threats people from State Department events,” said Lafferty.

“The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me,” said Lafferty.

“I had warned previously how members of the U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton have pointedly remarked that part of the implementation of U.N. Resolution 16/18 will be an effort to utilize “techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to silence critics of Islamic shariah,” said Lafferty. “Little did I realize how quickly Clinton and her Islamist friends were set to make examples out of law-abiding Americans."

Read it all.

I was on Eric Bolling's Follow the Money on Fox Business tonight to discuss Iran's latest belligerent moves and Barack Obama's supine response.

Of course Clinton would think Gingrich's factual statements were not "helpful," even if she knows they were true. Her entire career as Secretary of State, after all, is built upon fantasy-based policymaking: pretending, as matters of policy, that Islam is a Religion of Peace, that Pakistan is our ally, that Iran is no threat, etc.

"Clinton slams Gingrich comments on Palestinians," from Reuters, December 14 (thanks to Wimpy):

WASHINGTON - Newt Gingrich's comment that the Palestinians are an "invented people" was unhelpful, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday, saying the Republican presidential candidate had realized this.

Gingrich, a former speaker of the US House of Representatives, stirred controversy on Friday when told the Jewish Channel cable television broadcaster he saw the Palestinians as an invented people who want to destroy Israel.

"Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire" until the early 20th century, Gingrich said in the interview.

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic," he said.

Asked by PBS Newshour Executive Editor Jim Lehrer at an event on economic innovation whether Gingrich's comment about the Palestinians being an "invented people" was helpful, Clinton replied: "No."

"I think he recognized that, from what I read," she added, speaking at an event on Innovation and the Global Marketplace. "I think he realized that was, you know, one of those innovative moments that happen."

Huh? Does she mean that the invention of the Palestinian nationality was an "innovative moment"?

Human Events calls this piece "Obama's Anti-Terror Plan Protects the Threat's Identity." I had sent it in with the title "Palestinian Islamic What?"

The Obama administration unveiled a new anti-terror strategy on Thursday that for the first time in history aims to battle a foe without naming it, and while denying that foe’s stated beliefs, identity and motivation. This recipe for disaster is so profoundly ridiculous that even as they were unveiling their plan, administration officials found themselves tangled up in logical absurdities.

Obama officials decided that the new strategy was necessary after a hard-Left reporter, Spencer Ackerman​, published several articles detailing how FBI agents and other law enforcement officials were being taught about the Islamic texts and teachings that jihad terrorists use to justify violence and supremacism. That would never do in Obama’s politically correct America: NPR reported with breathless horror that “Islamophobia had crept into both federal and local law enforcement training.”

“Islamophobia” is a term devised by a Muslim Brotherhood​ organization, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, in order to stigmatize any criticism of the global jihad or Islamic supremacism. Analysts who dare note that Islamic jihadists are, well, Islamic jihadists are branded with the label. The enemy freely says they’re fighting us because of Islam, based on Islamic principles. But to notice that would be “Islamophobic,” no matter how helpful such notice might be for understanding the motives and goals of the enemy and devising an effective way to defeat him.

No one can call the new Obama strategy Islamophobic: When Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Calif.) asked Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism,” Stockton did his best to dodge the question and finally answered: “I don’t believe it’s helpful to frame our adversary as Islamic with any set of qualifiers that we might add, because we are not at war with Islam.”

What linguistic gymnastics will Stockton and his colleagues employ to avoid framing our adversary as Islamic when the adversary frames himself as Islamic? How will they refer to Palestinian Islamic Jihad? What about Hamas, which is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement​? Or Hezbollah, the Party of Allah​? What will Obama officials call the unfortunately acronymed Moro Islamic Liberation Front​ (MILF)? Moros I’d Like to Frag?

There is more.

Shameful indeed: the Obama State Department is meeting today with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss ways to sweep away our fundamental protection against tyranny: the freedom of speech. More on this story. "A Shameful State Department Initiative," by Pamela Geller in the American Thinker, December 12:

Today the Islamized State Department will be meeting with the Islamic supremacist Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to discuss strategies and develop action plans in which to impose the restriction of free speech (or blasphemy, as truthful speech about Islam is considered in Islamic law) under the Sharia here in America.

Photos accompanying news reports about the upcoming meeting shows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at a meeting last summer in Istanbul. Such prominence is given to this totalitarian organization. That photo reminds me of Neville and Adolf.

The respect and deference that the United States is paying to the OIC amounts to surrender in installments. The very idea that the U.S. Secretary of State is meeting with the OIC to discuss "religious tolerance" is like having Himmler meeting with Jews to condemn Jew-hatred. Under Islam. there is a complete and utter absence of "religious tolerance" of non-Muslims living in Muslim countries under the Sharia.

The call for "respect and empathy and tolerance," coming from the most brutal and oppressive ideology on the face of the earth, reminds me of the "peace and equality" that was promised in Hitler's campaign posters for the Nationalist Socialist Workers (Nazi) party.

The OIC is comprised of 56 governments along with the Palestinian Authority. It also asserts authority over the Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, claiming that "Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation." It also recommends, according to the renowned historian Bat Ye'or, "a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture."

The OIC's foremost target is truthful dialogue about Islam, which it calls "Islamophobia" and claims hysterically is a "a crime against humanity" that must be criminalized. In line with that initiative, back in July, Obama's State Department reached a Sharia blasphemy agreement with OIC in Turkey. Hillary Clinton actually said this to the OIC:

We each have to work to do more to promote respect for religious differences in our own countries. In the United States, I will admit, there are people who still feel vulnerable or marginalized as a result of their religious beliefs. And we have seen how the incendiary actions of just a very few people, a handful in a country of nearly 300 million, can create wide ripples of intolerance.

She wasn't referring to Islamic jihadists. Clinton meant that the "ripples of intolerance" were those fighting against those jihadists.

Clinton went on to say:

We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don't feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

"Peer pressure and shaming." That is exactly what these useful idiots try to do with anyone and everyone who tells the truth about Islam and jihad: me, Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, and more.

Read it all.

Jihadists are escalating the terror battle even as Obama forbids all investigation of their motives and goals. "Pentagon: Terrorist threats by al-Qaida sympathizers against U.S. troops are real," by Leo Shane III for Stars and Stripes, December 7 (thanks to Kenneth):

WASHINGTON – Terrorist attacks by al-Qaida sympathizers against troops living in the United States or their families remain a real and disconcerting threat, defense officials told Congress on Wednesday.

But lawmakers at that hearing criticized Pentagon officials for their continued refusal to identify “radical Islamist extremists” as the core threat to military personnel, saying their insistence on being politically correct might be jeopardizing America’s safety.

The language semantics have been an ongoing fight between defense officials and members of the congressional homeland security committees since the 2009 Fort Hood attacks, a shooting where 56 base personnel were killed and wounded by a Muslim Army psychiatrist....

See how the Obama Administration's new See-No-Jihad policies entangle officials in self-contradiction here and here.

It couldn't happen here, right? We have the First Amendment, right? Well, look at how the Second Amendment has been interpreted almost out of existence in some areas. The same thing could happen to the First -- and the process is already underway. "Criticism of Islam Could Soon be a Crime in America," by Clare M. Lopez for Family Security Matters, December 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Six years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to host OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Washington, DC in mid-December 2011 to discuss how the United States can implement the OIC agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. Cloaked in the sanctimonious language of Resolution 16/18, that was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2011, the WDC three-day experts meeting is billed as a working session to discuss legal mechanisms to combat religious discrimination (but the only religion the Human Rights Council has ever mentioned in any previous resolution is Islam). The UN Human Rights Council, which includes such bastions of human rights as China, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, introduced Resolution 16/18 to the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where it was passed in March 2011.

The Resolution was presented to the UNGA by Pakistan (where women get the death penalty for being raped and "blasphemy" against Islam is punished by death). Ostensibly about "combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and…incitement to violence against persons based on religion or belief," the only partnership mentioned in the text is the one with the OIC. The U.S., whose official envoy to the OIC, Rashad Hussain, helped write Obama's Cairo speech, actively collaborated in the drafting of Resolution 16/18.

Now, the OIC's Ihsanoglu will come to Washington, DC, the capital of one of the only countries in the world with a Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and a judicial system that consistently defends it, with a publicized agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. His agenda, and, apparently that of his host, the U.S. Department of State, seek to bring the U.S. into full compliance with Islamic law on slander, as noted above.

Events in the nation's capital seemed timed to ensure Ihsanoglu a warm welcome. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party and Obama White House, published "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" in August 2011. Disturbingly specific in naming individuals associated with speaking truth about the doctrinal foundations of Islamic terrorism, the report is a blatant assault on the First Amendment and free speech in America—at least as far as Islam is concerned.

The Justice Department soon got on board the "Islamophobia" bandwagon. In the wake of the cancellation of a number of scheduled official training sessions at national security agencies by deeply knowledgeable scholars of Islamic doctrine, law, and scriptures, such as Stephen Coughlin, Steven Emerson, William Gawthrop, John Guandolo, and Robert Spencer, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed at an 11 October 2011 press conference that the Obama administration was pulling back for review all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities in order to eliminate all references to Islam that Muslim Brotherhood groups have found offensive....

Read it all.

David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics brilliantly dissects the Obama Administration's determination to deny the truth about Islam.

David will be speaking at our AFDI/SIOA Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference in Dearborn, Michigan on April 29, along with Pamela Geller, Nonie Darwish, Simon Deng, James Lafferty and me. See you there.

The enemy freely says they're fighting us because of Islam, based on Islamic principles. But political correctness forbids the Obama Administration from noticing that, despite how helpful such notice might be for understanding the motives and goals of the enemy and devising an effective way to defeat him. And so watch the redundantly-titled Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Defense, Paul Stockton, dance and shuffle and obfuscate and dodge in order to avoid even admitting that "violent Islamist extremism," whatever that is, is at war with us. (As opposed to the nonviolent Islamic mainstream, doncha know, which is perfectly chummy with us, cf. Pakistan.) That would empower the enemy, you see, because we all know that Muslims routinely look to non-Muslims to validate their understanding of Islam.

Stockton, grabbing every available chair to keep the lion at bay, even once insists that he is not being politically correct. Why, only a blackguard would ever have thought otherwise, old boy!

"Anti-Islamic Hyperventilation….," by Mark Thompson in Time Magazine, December 8:

[...] Check out this surrealistic exchange from Wednesday’s hearing, between Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., and Paul Stockton, Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Defense:

REPRESENTATIVE DANIEL LUNGREN (R-CA): Secretary Stockton, are we at war with violent Islamist extremism?

MR. STOCKTON: No, sir. We are at war with al-Qaida, its affiliates –

REP. LUNGREN: OK, I understand that. My question is, is violent Islamist extremism at war with us?

MR. STOCKTON: No, sir. We are being attacked by al-Qaida and its allies.

REP. LUNGREN: Is al-Qaida — can it be described as being an exponent of violent Islamist extremism?

MR. STOCKTON: They — al-Qaida are murderers with an ideological agenda –

REP. LUNGREN: No, I — that’s not my question. That wasn’t my question. My question was, is al-Qaida acting out violent Islamist extremism?

MR. STOCKTON: Al-Qaida is a violent organization dedicated to overthrowing the values that we intend to advance –

REP. LUNGREN: So is it yes or no?

MR. STOCKTON: Can I hear the question again? I’ll make it as clear as I can. We are not at war with Islam. And it is not –

REP. LUNGREN: I didn’t ask that — I did not ask that, sir. I asked whether we’re at war with violent Islamist extremism. That’s my question.

MR. STOCKTON: No, we’re at war with al-Qaida and its affiliates.

REP. LUNGREN: Well, al-Qaida — how does al-Qaida define itself? Are they dedicated to violent Islamist extremism?

MR. STOCKTON: Al-Qaida would love to convince Muslims around the world that the United States is at war with Islam.

REP. LUNGREN: I didn’t say that.

MR. STOCKTON: That’s a prime propaganda tool.

REP. LUNGREN: Sir –

MR. STOCKTON: And I’m not going to aid and abet that effort to advance their propaganda goal.

REP. LUNGREN: No, no, my question is, is there a difference between Islam and violent Islamist extremism?

MR. STOCKTON: Sir, with great respect, I don’t believe it’s helpful to frame our adversary as Islamic with any set of qualifiers that we might add, because we are not at war with Islam.

If you close your eyes and pretend hard enough, the bad guys will go away, and the unicorns will appear!

REP. LUNGREN: I understand that. I never said we were at war with Islam. One of the questions we’re trying to deal with is the radicalization of Islam, is the radicalization of Islamic youth. And if we can’t distinguish between violent Islamist extremism and Islam, then all this stuff about behavioral indicators doesn’t mean anything.

Let me — let me ask you this question. Is it a behavioral indicator to put on your card that you’re a soldier of Allah?

MR. STOCKTON: A behavioral indicator that you have a copy of Inspire magazine on your desk –

REP. LUNGREN: That’s not my question. That’s not my question. My question is, is it a behavioral indicator to put on your card that you are a soldier of Allah, as Major Hasan did?

MR. STOCKTON: We have behavioral indicators now that enable our personnel, our supervisors, to focus on detecting indicators of violent extremism that reflect the lessons learned from Fort Hood.

REP. LUNGREN: OK, is that a lesson learned, that if you put a soldier of Allah on your card, that you’ve got to follow up and investigate that?

MR. STOCKTON: We are training our supervisors to follow up on appropriate indicators and exercise the leadership they need in order to provide for effective reporting and intervention.

He doesn't, and cannot, answer about whether "Soldier of Allah" is a behavioral indicator, because to affirm that it was one would be to contradict himself. Everything about Islam is great and we are not at war with Islam and terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, and so "soldier of Allah" cannot, must not, be a behavioral indicator -- and yet it obviously was one in Hasan's case. So Stockton can either affirm indirectly that Islam does have something to do with terrorism, contrary to all his positive statements, or he can deny that "soldier of Allah" is an indicator and look like a fool who is endangering our troops. Instead, he dodges the question altogether.

Does this mean that the Obama Administration is not as stupid as it looks, and that law enforcement officials really are looking at Islamic piety as a behavioral indicator for terrorism, but won't say so publicly? That is a distinct possibility, given weight by Stockton's ultimate admission below. But time will tell. If things start blowing up all over, we will know that they believed deeply in their politically correct nonsense about Islam, and so Americans started getting murdered by jihadis in record numbers, unhampered by agents rendered clueless by the prohibition on understanding anything about the enemy ideology. If, on the other hand, jihadis keep getting caught, we'll know that officials are saying one thing in public and doing another in private, hoping to keep the likes of Hamas-linked CAIR and useful idiots like Spencer Ackerman, Adam Serwer and Matt Duss at bay.

REP. LUNGREN: You agree with the statement, as someone representing the Department of Defense, on the weekend after the shooting, that it would be a greater tragedy to lose our program of diversity than what had occurred?

MR. STOCKTON: Well, let me go back to something Secretary — Chairman King said. I was trained up by Senator Moynihan. There was nobody less politically correct than Senator Moynihan. I follow the truth wherever it takes me, and I strongly support the programs of the Department of Defense that focus on al-Qaida and behavioral indicators.

REP. LUNGREN: I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

MR. STOCKTON: This is not about political correctness. This is about defeating our adversary.

REP. LUNGREN: Well, sir, I would disagree with you that it may not be about political correctness. We are here talking about the fact that we now have to have behavioral indicators. I agree with that. But my question is, if someone gives inflammatory remarks, as did Major Hasan, in an open setting, if he has on his card that he was a soldier of Allah, it seems to me to be beyond common sense to think those are not behavioral indicators.

So my question is, if I’m a member of the military today and I see those two events or those two circumstances, would it be appropriate for me to report those as behavioral indicators? Now, that’s not a question of whether or not you’re being political (sic) correct, sir. I’m asking you to answer that specific question. If I’m a soldier and asked you that question, what do you tell me?

MR. STOCKTON: Inflammatory rhetoric of the sort associated with Major Hasan — that needs to be reported, and our officers are trained up now to report on that behavior.

REP. LUNGREN: I thank you, and I appreciate that.

Uh oh. Looks as if Stockton is a greasy Islamophobe. He admitted, finally, that a hyperpious Muslim like Hasan would raise alarm bells. Honest Ibe Hooper, call your office! (Hooper, of Hamas-linked CAIR, has Jihad Watch bookmarked.) Demand Stockton's resignation! Demand his replacement by a more compliant useful idiot! Such types are plentiful enough in Washington -- it will be no problem.

"Islamophobia" -- i.e., the truth about Islam and its jihad doctrine -- had "crept in" to law enforcement training. Now that is all over, and we will all pretend that Islam and terrorism have nothing to do with one another, nothing whatsoever, and that jihad terror is a "public safety issue." And what about Islamic supremacism and the stealth jihad? Such things do not exist at all!

However, in unveiling this ridiculous new strategy for defeat, Quintan Wiktorowicz of the National Security Council ticks off a few warning signs that someone might be a terrorist. Among them: "Are they talking about the kuffar [unbelievers]?" Now, wait a minute. "Wiktorowicz said the new program will focus on behavior, not religion or appearances." But then moments later he turns around and says that a "behavioral signal" could include "talking about the kuffar." But that's what Muslims do, Wiktorowicz! The Qur'an is full of imprecations against, appeals to, warnings about, and exhortations to warfare against the kuffar! Are you suggesting that every Muslim who rails against the kuffar is a potential terrorist? Isn't that focusing on religion, which is exactly what you said you would not do?

This just shows that the Obama Administration is trying to do something that is simply impossible: fight against jihad terror without naming it as such, or saying anything about it that Muslims might find offensive. But Islamic supremacists in the U.S. claim to be offended by any mention of anything Islamic in connection with jihad terror.

And so I am sure that once Honest Ibe Hooper of Hamas-linked CAIR (he has Jihad Watch bookmarked) reads this, he will get Quintan Wiktorowicz on the phone pronto, and tell him to cut out all this talk about how a Muslim railing against the kuffar might be someone worth watching for possible jihad terror activity. And I am just as certain that Quintan Wiktorowicz will meekly comply, and vacuum even his own statements and his own mind of any and all traces of truth or accuracy about the jihad terror threat, and further cripple law enforcement agents' ability to understand what they're dealing with in regard to jihad terrorism.

"Officials Detail Plans To Fight Homegrown Terrorism," by Dina Temple-Raston for NPR, December 8:

The White House will unveil a broad, new strategy Thursday aimed at battling homegrown terrorism in the U.S. The program aims to empower communities by teaching local officials to recognize violent extremism and see the threat as a public safety issue, like the battle against gangs and drugs. [...]

Training has become a bugaboo in the wake of revelations about FBI counterterrorism training practices. The first inkling that something was amiss came in March. That's when NPR reported on the cottage industry of independent counterterrorism trainers who signed up to teach local and federal law enforcement officials about terrorism. The report found that the instructors were not being properly vetted and some were presenting skewed views about Muslim-Americans and their potential links to terrorism. Follow-up reports showed how Islamophobia had crept into both federal and local law enforcement training.

Wiktorowicz said the new strategy addresses those issues. A complete training review and specific training standards are expected to be in place by spring. The Department of Homeland Security will review the training and evaluate experts to weed out any lurking anti-Muslim bias. The idea is to inject some quality control into the training process. Wiktorowicz said the new program will focus on behavior, not religion or appearances.

"There are potential behavioral signals," he said. "For example, has someone in the community seen them watching violent extremist videos? Are they publicly coming out in defense of Osama bin Laden? Are they talking about the kuffar [unbelievers]? That's not enough alone, but if that is in a combination of other things, that's what we are looking for."

In "Obama's Shariah-protection racket" at WND, December 6, Pamela Geller discusses some ominous implications of Obama's claim to have the power to decide to kill American citizens at war with the U.S. -- which may be legitimate in itself -- combined with his denial of the truth about the Islamic jihad against the U.S. and other non-Muslim states.

Obama administration lawyers stated Thursday that American citizens are legitimate military targets if they're waging war against the United States. This came just a day after it was revealed that the administration had ordered a Shariah-compliant scrub of all counterterrorism materials, so that they wouldn't say anything about Islam or jihad and would leave law enforcement officials completely unequipped to understand the enemy ideology.

Taken together, these two decisions are ominous. If we are not fighting against Islamic terrorists, then who exactly is the enemy? Which Americans will Obama target? And it is Obama's decision: Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson said Thursday that it was up to the executive branch to decide whether an American citizen was waging war against the United States and thus had no legal immunity, and needed to be taken out.

If you remove jihad from the equation, and Congress has not declared war, then to whom is Obama referring as being at war with the United States?

I think this is a dangerous precedent and beyond the scope of the president's executive powers. He has been a serial abuser of Executive Privilege. Did he consult with the Supreme Court on this question? No, he did not. Did he consult with Congress? No, he did not. Or for that matter, did he consult with Congress on his war in Libya?

Very scary. This sounds more like the old Germany or the USSR, than it sounds like America.

I do agree that Anwar al-Awlaki should have been taken out as an enemy combatant; however, I do not agree with how the decision was arrived at. In fact, it's contradictory: If we're not at war with jihadists, then why take out Awlaki? He wasn't bombing anyone or shooting anyone or slitting anyone's throat. He was just sitting behind his computer encouraging people to wage jihad. But Obama says jihad is not the enemy, so what was the problem?

I am also concerned about this decision relative to the U.N. and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Neither one was mentioned by the Obama lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston or Pentagon counsel Johnson on Thursday.

With Obama now using all branches of government to enforce the Shariah and erase all mention of Islam from counterterror materials, it is easy to imagine him deciding to use this power to take out American citizens against those imaginary groups of "right-wing extremists" his Department of Homeland Security has focused upon rather than on jihadists....

Read it all.

And the U.S. will rue the day when our leaders were this bland and accepting of Islamic supremacist Sharia governments.

"WH: ‘Democratic Process’ More Important Than Islamist Victories in Arab Nations," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, November 29:

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration is again playing down concerns about the rise of Islamist movements in Arab countries in transition, even as developments in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Egypt indicate that the so-called “Arab spring” may leave Islamists in charge clear across North Africa.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is widely expected to dominate parliamentary elections that began without incident on Monday and will be held in three stages over the next six weeks.

“We regard these elections as a blessed portal through which Egypt shall cross safely to democracy and the transfer of power to the Egyptian people,” the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, said in a statement as the polls opened.

Asked during a briefing about the election and the possibility of Islamists winning, White House press secretary Jay Carney replied, “The fact of the matter is, the democratic process is what’s important.”

“Principles matter to this president, not parties,” he continued. “And we hold whatever party prevails or is represented in the outcome of an election like this – whether it’s in Egypt or elsewhere – our standards have to do with respect for human rights, respect for the democratic process, renunciation of violence, and inclusion of and respect for minorities in the process.”

Carney said it was “unfair to assume that any party that has a religious affiliation cannot adhere to democratic principles. It is simply not the case and has not been borne out by the facts.”

What facts? When has a ruling Islamic party ever hewed to democratic principles except for short-term pragmatic gain?

“So, before we judge the disposition of a government or a parliament that is only just beginning to take shape through elections that have started today, I think we need to let the process run its course, continue to espouse our firm support for democratic principles and for civilian control of the government, and then judge the outcome by the actions of those who prevail,” he said.

At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner adopted a similar stance.

“We’ve been very clear about how we view the Muslim Brotherhood, which is that if they’re committed to the democratic process, we welcome them as a part of the political process,” he said.

Asked about organization’s support for Hamas and its views on the Arab-Israel peace process, Toner said only that “we would call on any Egyptian government to adhere to its previous commitments and agreements.” [...]

Monday’s remarks build on earlier ones by administration officials, emphasizing the view that – in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s words – “what parties call themselves is less important than what they do.”

“The suggestion that faithful Muslims cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous and wrong,” Clinton told a National Democratic Institute awards dinner earlier this month.

What was important, she said, was an adherence to democratic principles.

During a press briefing on Oct. 25, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also disputed a reporter’s premise that there was a “rise of fundamentalism in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.”

“I think what we are seeing is we are seeing newly democratic, newly free people and populations feeling their way forward,” she said.

A day earlier, she responded to a question about shari’a forming the basis of countries’ legal systems by saying that the term shari’a “has a broad application and is understood differently in different places and by different commentators.”

Whenever confronted with the elements of Sharia that outrage human rights, Islamic supremacists and Leftist useful idiots pretend that Sharia is completely nebulous. Yet there is agreement among the various schools of Islamic law over 75% of Sharia rulings, and whenever Sharia is implemented, it looks the same.

“We’ve seen various Islamic-based democracies wrestle with the issue of establishing rule of law within an appropriate cultural context,” Nuland said. “But the number one thing is that universal human rights, rights for women, rights for minorities, right to due process, right to transparency be fully respected.”

Good luck with that.

Of course. It was the Mossad that managed to insert into the Qur'an the idea that the Jews were the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82).

And what a surprise that Barack Obama, who has never met an antisemite he didn't like, would be associated with yet another anti-Israel, pro-jihad, self-hating Jew. Obama's many antisemitic associations are detailed in The Post-American Presidency.

"Obama Ambassador Under Fire For Blaming Israel For Muslim Anti-Semitism," from Fox News, December 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Republicans are urging President Obama to reconsider his ambassador to Belgium after the ambassador told a conference in Europe that Israel is causing a new and understandable strain of anti-Semitism among Muslims in Europe, altogether separate from traditional hatred of Jews.

Speaking to the European Jewish Union and an association of Jewish lawyers in Brussels, Ambassador Howard Gutman said a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which is the purview of people who hate everyone and not just Jews, and Arab and Muslim hatred for Jews, which can be explained by an inability to reach a two-state solution in Israel.

"There is significant anger and resentment and, yes, perhaps sometimes hatred and indeed sometimes an all too growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East," Gutman told the group, according to a transcript of his remarks published in the European Jewish Press.

Gutman, who is Jewish and described how his father survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, also shared a video of himself receiving a warm welcome at a Muslim school in Brussels, and said it showed proof that Muslims are not anti-Semitic in general....

Gutman, who was a bundler for Obama in 2008 and raised $500,000, later reportedly said he regretted that his Nov. 30 remarks were misinterpreted.

Misinterpreted. Of course. They always are. No Leftist antisemite and no Islamic supremacist has ever made a statement that has been properly interpreted, just as no non-Muslim has ever quoted the Qur'an in context.

These statements could only have been spoken by a man lacking the first foggiest idea about what jihad is, and why the Arab and Muslim states are so dead-set against Israel that only the destruction of the Jewish State will satisfy them.

"Panetta Scolds Israel on Peace Talks," from the Associated Press, December 3 (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged Israel on Friday to "reach out and mend fences" with Turkey, Egypt and other security partners in the Middle East, saying he is troubled by the Jewish state's growing isolation in the volatile region.

He also pressed Israeli leaders to do more to restart peace talks with the Palestinians -- "Just get to the damned table" -- and underscored President Obama's determination to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He called Iran "a very grave threat to all of us" and said any Iranian disruption of the free flow of commerce through the Persian Gulf is a "red line" for the U.S.

In a speech at a Brookings Institution forum, Panetta said that while Israel is not solely responsible for its isolation, it could more actively attempt to reverse the trend.

"For example, Israel can reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability -- countries like Turkey and Egypt, as well as Jordan," he said. "This is not impossible. If the gestures are rebuked, the world will see those rebukes for what they are. And that is exactly why Israel should pursue them."...

Addressing an issue that is in the primary domain of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Panetta urged Israel to "lean forward" to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Peace talks have been moribund for more than a year.

"Rather than undermining the Palestinian Authority, it is in Israel's interests to strengthen it by ... continuing to transfer Palestinian tax revenues and pursuing other avenues of cooperation," he said.

Jizya!

Panetta spoke starkly of the challenge of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"No greater threat exists to the security and prosperity of the Middle East than a nuclear-armed Iran," he said, adding that Obama has not ruled out using military force to stop Iran from going nuclear.

In a question-and-answer session with his audience after his speech, Panetta laid out in detail his thinking on the arguments against an Israeli or U.S. military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

He said such an attack would "at best" delay Iran's nuclear program by one or two years. Among the unintended consequences, he said, would be an increase in regional support for Iran and the likelihood of Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces and bases in the Middle East. It also would have harmful economic consequences and could lead to military escalation, he said.

"We have to be careful about the unintended consequences" of an Israeli or U.S. attack, he said.

He is counseling capitulation.

Over at Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller provides inside information on an all-too predictable and patently unjust Obama Administration practice:

US policy regarding the refugee resettlement program would shock most Americans if they only knew. The UN picks who becomes US refugees. Christians are being refused refugee status and face persecution and many times certain death for their religious beliefs under the sharia, while whole Muslim communities are entering the US by the tens of thousands per month despite the fact that they face no religious persecution.

It is horrifying that Afghan Christians are being refused refugee status by the UN and many Western nations, including Britain. The UN claims that Afghan Christians do not meet the criteria for refugees under Statute 6B of the UN High Commission of Refugees (UNHCR), which requires refugees to have "a well founded fear of persecution by reason of his race, religion, nationality or political opinion."

Since 1976, millions of new citizens have entered America as legal humanitarian refugees, according to reports of the US State Department. The Somalis are certified as "humanitarian refugees" under our State Department rules. Whole Muslim communities are imported into the United States, and they are supported by social services provided by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The cities who receive these huge numbers are determined by Refugee Councils. And yet back in October 2008, Muslim UN employees were "discouraging" applications for resettlement from the desperate Christian Iraqis. The Christian Iraqi population has since been decimated. By buying into the argument that Islam is a religion of peace and ignoring the penalties for apostasy, we are sentencing thousands of Christians to martyrdom and forcing others to live in the shadows in dire poverty. We need to demand that our government provide protection and asylum for Christian apostates.

Indeed. Read it all.

Heh. Just as Islamic supremacists and their useful idiots in the mainstream media such as Spencer Ackerman, Matt Duss and Adam Serwer are crowing over their apparent victory in intimidating the FBI into dropping all materials that tell the truth about Islam and jihad from agent training, Obama signs a law prohibiting FBI cooperation with Hamas-linked unindicted co-conspirators such as CAIR and ISNA -- which shows the hazards of not reading the bill.

"PJM Exclusive: New Law Cuts Ties Between FBI and Terror-Tied Groups," by Patrick Poole at PJ Media, November 22 (thanks to Wimpy):

When Barack Obama signed the continuing resolution this past weekend averting another potential government shutdown, it’s doubtful that he was aware that tucked into the bill, which funds several federal agencies through the fiscal year and extends the continuing resolution for the rest of the government until December 16, is a provision that may dramatically impact what Islamic groups and leaders the FBI and other law enforcement agencies can continue to work with.

Under Division B, Title II of the bill, under the Federal Bureau of Investigation-Salaries and Expenses section, is the following provision:

Liaison partnerships- The conferees support the FBI’s policy prohibiting any formal non-investigative cooperation with unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism cases. The conferees expect the FBI to insist on full compliance with this policy by FBI field offices and to report to the Committees on Appropriations regarding any violation of the policy.

The most obvious group that this will impact is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case — the largest terrorism-finance trial in American history. During the trial, FBI Dallas Agent Lara Burns testified that CAIR was a front for the terrorist group Hamas.

Following the trial, which resulted in guilty verdicts on all counts and lengthy prison terms for all five Holy Land executives, the FBI was forced to cut ties with CAIR – a decision that CAIR claimed would hurt local communities and that prompted other Muslim groups, like the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), to threaten to stop cooperation with the FBI unless CAIR was reinstated. In a February 2010 letter to members of Congress, Assistant Attorney General Robert Weich forwarded evidence submitted by federal prosecutors in the trial and court testimony concerning CAIR’s ties to the Hamas-controlled Palestine Committee and that committee’s role in supporting Hamas.

Stung by their loss of access to federal law enforcement agencies, some of the Islamic organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in the case unsuccessfully sued to have their names removed from the list. In a 2009 unsealed decision by federal Judge Jorge Solis, the court found that the government should have submitted the unindicted co-conspirators list under seal, and ordered the list resealed (a hollow victory since the list is readily available), but declined to remove the groups and individuals named.

In fact, in his decision Judge Solis recounted the evidence submitted by the government that justified CAIR’s being named unindicted co-conspirator in the case:

The Government identifies four portions of the record from the first trail that purportedly established that CAIR was a “joint venturer and co-conspirator”: (1) a Government exhibit showing the objective of the Palestine Committee is to support Hamas; (2) a Government exhibit showing CAIR founder Omar Ahmad is part of the Palestine Committee and Mousa Abu Marzook is its head; (3) a Government exhibit listing CAIR as part of the Palestine Committee; and (4) the testimony of Special Agent Lara Burns and accompanying exhibits placing the CAIR founder at the 1993 Philadelphia conference and describing the CAIR founder’s mediation of a dispute between HLF and Ashqar over Hamas fundraising . (Resp. at 12-13.) The Government does not mention any occasion where it used the 801(d)(2)(E) hearsay exception to introduce a statement of CAIR. The four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR‘s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas. (p. 6-7) (emphasis added)

But it wasn’t just CAIR among the unindicted co-conspirators that Solis focused on, but also the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which bills itself as the largest Muslim umbrella group in the country, and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which owns the property to more than one-quarter of all mosques in North America. Solis wrote that the government had “produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (‘IAP’), and with Hamas.” He also wrote: “The Muslim Brotherhood supervised the creation of the ‘Palestine Committee,’ which was put in charge of other organizations, such as HLF, IAP, UASR, and ISNA.” And also: “During the [1993 Philadelphia] conference, Palestine Committee members discussed using ISNA as official cover for their activities.”

What impact this new legislation will have remains to be seen, but it is clearly intended to roll back the Obama administration’s penchant for relying on groups identified by government prosecutors as fronts for designated terrorist organizations as partners for “outreach.”

Read it all.

In "Why Obama Betrayed the Iranian People" in the American Thinker, November 9, Pamela Geller exposes the agenda behind the Obama Administration's advisers on Iran:

Why did President Obama refuse to support the demonstrators in Iran in 2009, but supported the "Arab Spring" in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere more recently?

In 2009, demonstrators filled the streets of Iran, denouncing the regime and crying out for freedom. It was a glorious opportunity for the leader of the free world to demonstrate his support for free people everywhere and strike a decisive blow against the bloody regime that had considered itself at war with the United States for three decades.

But Barack Obama didn't help them. Quite the contrary. The leader of the free world was too busy extending his hand to those same mullahs.

It was monstrous when Obama stood by and did nothing during the abortive Iranian revolution; instead, he bought ice cream and posed for photo ops on the golf course while the only revolution against Islamic rule in a Muslim country was taking flight in Iran.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed one reason why last week: the Obama administration's Iranian advisers told them not to express support for the protesters.

"At the time," Hillary said, "the most insistent voices within the Green Movement and the supporters from outside of Iran were that we, the United States, had to be very careful not to look like what was happening inside Iran was directed by... the United States. So we were torn. ... [W]e kept being cautioned that we would put people's lives in danger, we would discredit the movement, we would undermine their aspirations."

Now the Foundation for Democracy in Iran has revealed that Hillary's advisors on Iran included Trita Parsi.

Trita Parsi is the president of the George Soros-funded National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a powerful Iranian lobbying group in Washington. Arash Irandoost of the Pro-Democracy Movement of Iran calls Parsi "an intellectually dishonest regime apologist and an unofficial and unregistered lobbyist for the Iranian regime." According to Irandoost, "Trita Parsi contributes to the regime's agenda and serves the interests of those in power in the Islamic Republic of Iran, not the Iranians, nor the Iranian-Americans."

And the Progressive American-Iranian Committee says that when NIAC and Parsi received funding for various projects from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), "NIAC's projects were approved and welcomed by the Iranian regime." NIAC coordinated its work inside Iran with Hamyaran, a "government initiated agency incepted [sic], initiated, founded and managed by the Iranian regime." NIAC and Parsi even lobbied the U.S. Congress to "stop appropriating funds for independent democratic movements and NGOs that were not under Hamyaran or regime's control."

Not surprisingly, Parsi opposes sanctions against the Islamic Republic, claiming that "imposing new sanctions prior to diplomacy having begun will only decrease the chances of successful diplomacy." The NIAC has opposed sanctions for quite some time. Iranian dissident Hassan Daioleslam notes that "in 2008, when [the] U.S. Congress was showing some teeth to the Iranian regime," a coalition of Islamic groups, antiwar groups, and others founded the Campaign for New American Policy on Iran to fight against new sanctions against Iran called for by the advisory resolution H.R. 362. This resolution was not passed, and "NIAC and Parsi," says Daioleslam, "were on top of this event."

No strike on Iran. No sanctions. Just diplomacy -- with a genocidally inclined and fanatically intransigent regime whose contempt for Obama's overtures made the president look increasingly beggarly as his presidency wore on.

It is no mystery why many wonder which side NIAC is really on. And as long as it continued to wield such influence in Washington and held the ear of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the freedom-fighters in Tehran didn't stand a chance....

Read it all. It is noteworthy also that in another revelation of his true agenda, the adolescent and intellectually dishonest pseudo-moderate Reza Aslan is a NIAC board member.

Why was the CIA lazy? Perhaps because no premium is put on gather information on Hizballah and Iran in this administration -- the name of the game is outreach. "Exclusive: CIA Spies Caught, Fear Execution in Middle East," by Matthew Cole and Brian Ross for ABC, November 21 (thanks to all who sent this in):

In a significant failure for the United States in the Mideast, more than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught and the U.S. government fears they will be or have been executed, according to four current and former U.S. officials with connections to the intelligence community.

The spies were paid informants recruited by the CIA for two distinct espionage rings targeting Iran and the Beirut-based Hezbollah organization, considered by the U.S. to be a terror group backed by Iran....

In Beirut, two Hezbollah double agents pretended to go to work for the CIA. Hezbollah then learned of the restaurant where multiple CIA officers were meeting with several agents, according to the four current and former officials briefed on the case. The CIA used the codeword "PIZZA" when discussing where to meet with the agents, according to U.S. officials. Two former officials describe the location as a Beirut Pizza Hut. A current US official denied that CIA officers met their agents at Pizza Hut.

From there, Hezbollah's internal security arm identified at least a dozen informants, and the identities of several CIA case officers.

Hezbollah then began to "roll up" much of the CIA's network against the terror group, the officials said.

One former senior intelligence official told ABC News that CIA officers ignored warnings that the operation could be compromised by using the same location for meetings with multiple assets.

"We were lazy and the CIA is now flying blind against Hezbollah," the former official said....

At about the same time that Hezbollah was identifying the CIA network in Lebanon, Iranian intelligence agents discovered a secret internet communication method used by CIA-paid assets in Iran.

The CIA has yet to determine precisely how many of its assets were compromised in Iran, but the number could be in the dozens, according to one current and one former U.S. intelligence official.

The exposure of the two spy networks was first announced in widely ignored televised statements by Iranian and Hezbollah leaders. U.S. officials tell ABC News that much of what was broadcast was, in fact, true....

Good. With Obama in the White House, Israel would be unwise, perhaps suicidally so, to do otherwise. "Israel refuses to tell US its Iran intentions," by Adrian Blomfield in the Telegraph, November 12 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities, raising fears that it may be planning a go-it-alone attack as early as next summer.

The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to "seek Washington's permission", sources said. The disclosure, made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America's most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hawkish prime minister, comes amid concerns that Iran's continuing progress towards nuclear weapons capability means the Jewish state has all but lost hope for a diplomatic solution.

On Tuesday, UN weapons inspectors released their most damning report to date into Iran's nuclear activities, saying for the first time that the Islamic republic appeared to be building a nuclear weapon. It was with that grave possiblity [sic] in mind that Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, flew into Israel last month on what was ostensibly a routine trip.

Officially, his brief was restricted to the Middle East peace process, but the most important part of his mission was a private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak. Once all but a handful of trusted staff had left the room, Mr Panetta conveyed an urgent message from Barack Obama. The president, Mr Panetta said, wanted an unshakable guarantee that Israel would not carry out a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear installations without first seeking Washington's clearance.

The two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States.

"They did not suggest that military action was being planned or was imminent, but neither did they give any assurances that Israel would first seek Washington's permission, or even inform the White House in advance that a mission was underway," one said.

Alarmed by Mr Netanyahu's noncommittal response, Mr Obama reportedly ordered the US intelligence services to step up monitoring of Israel to glean clues of its intentions.

What those intentions might be remains distinctly murky. Over the past fortnight, Israel's press has given every impression that the country is on a war footing, with numerous claims that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Barak are lobbying the cabinet to support the military option.

Two weeks ago Israel tested a long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching Iran, its first since 2008. Shortly before, the Israeli airforce took part in Nato exercises in Sardinia that involved air-to-air refuelling, a key component of an aerial strike on Iran. A separate exercise in and around Tel Aviv tested civilian readiness in the event of a missile strike against the city. In a sign of the febrility of the public mood, many beach-goers apparently mistook the air raid sirens for a genuine Iranian attack and fled in panic for their cars. There were similar jitters in Iran yesterday, when a huge but apparently accidental explosion at arms dump outside Tehran killed at least 27 soldiers and shook the city....

“Abolition of this body would send an unintended message to the rest of the world. Oppressive groups may come to believe that the United States is not committed to the protection of religious liberty.” Indeed. But since Muslim states commit most of the violations of religious liberty, and the victims are mostly Christians, the shutdown of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is consistent with the Obama Administration's clear determination to say and do nothing at all that Muslims might construe as offensive.

"Senate May Force Shutdown of Religious Freedom Watchdog," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, November 11 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

(CNSNews.com) – For more than a decade, an independent, statutory monitor has been advising the U.S. executive and legislative branches on international religious freedom, drawing attention to the persecution of people of faith under Muslim, communist and autocratic regimes from Riyadh to Rangoon. But by this time next week, it may have to close its doors.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) will shut down unless the U.S. Senate approves a reauthorization bill before then, or unless funding is included in a new continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government through the end of the year.

Last September the House of Representatives passed by an overwhelming vote a bill extending the USCIRF’s life for another two years. The bill was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where it has been held up – by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), according to published reports.

Durbin’s office has not responded to inquiries and requests for comment....

It has drawn attention to the plight of Christians in predominantly Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Iraq and Nigeria; to ongoing religious restrictions and harassment of believers by Vietnam’s communist authorities; to incitement in Saudi school textbooks and materials used in mosques in the U.S.; to attempts by the Islamic bloc at the U.N. to outlaw religious “defamation” and promote blasphemy laws; and to the persecution of Baha’is in Iran, Buddhists and Protestants in Burma and Uighur Muslims in China.

A key function of the USCIRF has been its recommendations for the State Department to designate “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) under the International Religious Freedom Act, the same 1998 legislation that created the commission.

The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all followed some recommendations, but not others. The Obama State Department recently overruled USCIRF recommendations to designate Pakistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria and Turkmenistan as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs), in addition to those currently on the list (Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.)

CPCs are countries whose governments either perpetrate or condone “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” abuses of religious freedom. The U.S. may impose sanctions or take other diplomatic steps as incentives to improve....

When the House debated the reauthorization bill on Sept. 14, its author, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) voiced frustration with the situation in the Senate, saying some members there “are trying to kill this commission, for some reason.”

“Quite frankly, I believe that some over there [in the Senate] and this very administration would not mind seeing this commission shut its doors,” he said.

During the same debate Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) described the USCIRF as “the quintessential watchdog agency in this town.”

“It doesn't get the big press, as Mr. Wolf said,” Smith said. “It doesn't have the big bucks – no K Street lobbyists – but it is a wonderful and a very important and effective commission that keeps track of religious persecution globally, that keeps us in line in the House and the Senate and also the State Department.”...

CitizenLink, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, is urging Americans to contact their senators to urge reauthorization of the USCIRF.

Above all, the United States must not look as if it were trying to humiliate Osama bin Laden. He had vowed to destroy our nation and had murdered 3,000 Americans, a fate worse than humiliation as far as many are concerned, but we must not look as if we were out to humiliate him.

And why not? If the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims abhor and repudiate bin Laden's supposed hijacking of their allegedly peaceful religion, why would his "humiliation" bother them? And if it would bother them, what does that suggest about the actual nature of their beliefs?

"GREEN: Body of evidence: Americans need proof of dead villain like Libyans were given," by Anneke E. Green for the Washington Times, November 9 (thanks to Inexion):

Five days after being killed, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was finally buried at dawn in an undisclosed location in the Sahara desert. This would have been five days too late had President Obama been calling the shots. Osama bin Laden’s remains were famously disposed of within hours of his death and “eased into the sea” in conformance with Islamic practice, according to the White House. Families of the victims of bin Laden’s atrocities have to take the government’s word for it that he’s actually dead because the Obama administration continues to refuse to provide proof.

To date, no photos or video of bin Laden’s body have been released despite numerous requests and a lawsuit filed by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The Obama administration made clear in a recent response to the lawsuit that presidential preference is the driving force behind its stonewalling. Oddly for a legal brief, its very first background point of reference quoted a transcript of an interview Mr. Obama gave to “60 Minutes”: “It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence.” The brief additionally fretted, “The mere release of these images of Osama bin Laden could be interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the United States to humiliate the late al Qaeda leader.”...