OBAMA APPOINTEE A FAN OF CONVICTED TERRORIST?

This story involves men named Rashad Hussain, Barack Hussein Obama, and Sami al-Arian, a man convicted of conspiring to aid an Islamic terrorist group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On Saturday, February 13th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Qatar, in attendance with Rashad Hussain at an Islamic World Forum meeting. Barack Obama, through video, announced the appointment of Rashad as his envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is comprised of 57 Islamic countries.

The controversy that is developing involves an article that appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), in which Rashad Hussein was quoted as saying things sympathetic to Sami al-Arian. Some time later, those quotes were removed and the story was re-published.

CNS News has an incredibly eye-raising report:

President Obama’s newly appointed envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference was quoted in 2004 as saying an American who aided a Palestinian terrorist group was the victim of “politically motivated persecutions” who was being used “to squash dissent.”

Rashad Hussain was quoted as telling a Muslim students’ event in Chicago that if U.S. Muslims did not speak out against the injustices taking place in America, then everyone’s rights would be in jeopardy.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) cited Hussain as making the remarks in connection with Sami al-Arian, a university professor and activist sentenced in 2006 to more than four years in prison (including time already spent in custody) after he had pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Here is one of the paragraphs that was removed from the WRMEA article:

Al-Arian’s situation is one of many “politically motivated persecutions,” claimed Rashad Hussain, a Yale law student. Such persecution, he stated, must be fought through hope, faith, and the Muslim vote (…) Along with many others, said Yale’s Hussain, Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been “used politically to squash dissent.” The Muslim community must speak out against the injustices taking place in America, he emphasized. Otherwise, everyone’s rights will be in jeopardy.

Click here to see scanned images of the article both before and after the edits.

To this point, the White House has been silent with respect to responding to this extremely curious situation. The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which reported the story first has posted the White House response to these inconsistencies.

Interestingly, the White House is claiming the quotes attributed to Rashad were actually uttered by his daughter, Laila. Fox News deserves much credit for covering this story, which appeared on Megyn Kelly's program on February 16th. Fox's Shannon Bream did much of the work.

From the Fox story:

The White House says the controversial remarks defending al-Arian two years earlier were made by his daughter -- not by Hussain. Both were part of a panel discussion at a Muslim Students Association conference, but the reporter covering the event told Fox News she stands by the quotes she attributed to Hussain, who was a Yale Law student and an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

What's not reported here but should be is that even if true, the fact that Hussain was at a Muslim Students Association (MSA) event, should also be cause for concern due to its alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is an important reality that needs to be brought to light but is not mentioned in any of these reports.

Fox also reports that the editor of the publication that posted the quotes, Delinda Hanley claims the edit was made in February, 2009.

The Web version of the 2004 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs was later edited to delete all of Hussain's comments. Editor Delinda Hanley told Fox News she believes the change was made in February 2009, though she does not recall who requested the edit.

Hanley remembered telling the group's webmaster: "Let's just take out the quotes since they have been attributed to the wrong speaker."

The author of the original piece is a woman named Shereen Kandil and while she is no longer with WRMEA, she insists that she attributed the quote correctly to Rashan.

What is also extremely interesting here is the timing of the edit, which Hanley reported to be February of 2009. Hussain began his work with the Obama administration one month earlier according to the CNS News report:

Among those sympathizers, evidently, was Rashad Hussain, who at the time of the cited remarks was a Yale Law School student and an editor, from 2003-2005, of the Yale Law Journal. He went on to serve as a Department of Justice trial attorney and in January 2009 was appointed White House deputy associate counsel.

Here is a video of one of the exchanges between Fox's Kelly and Bream:



Also, take a look at this post from the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report's website.

Lastly, I posted the transcript of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Sami al-Arian in September of 2001 last week. It would seem to me that Bill O'Reilly - not Megyn Kelly - should be reporting on this story. Is it possible that O'Reilly isn't touching it because of this? It is refreshing to see Fox News finally cover a story like this but it needs to be doing SO much more.

h/t to Jawa for the Video

Here is another video report from Fox featuring Monica Crowley on the subject.