Hundreds of dead Mexicans; whistleblowers who put their necks on the line; Justice Department officials who committed perjury; evidence that Fast and Furious was authorized at the highest levels of DOJ; a President who asserts Executive Privilege to prevent the production of documents in response to a lawful subpoena; and an Attorney General found in criminal contempt of Congress. Yet, Congressional investigators appear to be content with letting five ATF leaders take the fall. "Miscarriage of Justice" doesn't begin to explain this.
WASHINGTON -- Republican congressional investigators have concluded that five senior ATF officials -- from the special agent-in-charge of the Phoenix field office to the top man in the bureau’s Washington headquarters -- are collectively responsible for the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation that was “marred by missteps, poor judgments and inherently reckless strategy.”
The investigators, in a final report likely to be released later this week, also unearthed new evidence that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix initially sought to hide from the Mexican government the crucial information that two Fast and Furious firearms were recovered after the brother of a Mexican state attorney general was killed there.
According to a copy of the report obtained Monday by The Times, the investigators said their findings are “the best information available as of now” about the flawed gun operation that last month led to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. being found in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents.
Two more final reports, they said, will deal with “the devastating failure of supervision and leadership” at the Department of Justice and an “unprecedented obstruction of the [congressional] investigation by the highest levels of the Justice Department, including the attorney general himself.”
On one hand, Issa fought both the DOJ and Republican leadership valiantly. In the end, however, it was Republican leadership that carries the most disgrace. Nonetheless, this news amounts to an armistice on the part of Issa.
It's a sad day when not enough political will can be mustered to get to the bottom of a program that led to the death of at least one Border Agent (Brian Terry) and hundreds of Mexicans, all in the name of a gun control agenda.
We've come to expect the Democrats to close ranks and defend their own, no matter the cause; we've come to expect Republicans will cry and wilt when it's time to fight but this is the first time they've done so in the face of a potential mass murder conspiracy. If John Boehner is really worried about future generations, he has a strange way of showing it. Fast and Furious appears to be winding down without justice being served and much of that reality can be laid right at the feet of Boehner, who has turned his back on those who stuck out their necks and sacrificed their children:
Once again, I give you John Boehner's 'fight or flight' response:
After publishing this post yesterday, which included a photo circa 2000 that shows Abdurahman Alamoudi meeting with George W. Bush and Karl Rove, I decided to look into the book that Rove was quite likely given by the delegation seen in the photo. It's entitled, The Cultural Atlas of Islam and was written by a man named Ismail Al Faruqi in 1986.
Now, obviously, Karl Rove cannot be held accountable for accepting a book from a group he met with; it happens all the time. In fact, in 2009, Barack Obama accepted a far left-wing book from Hugo Chavez. That made news because Chavez wanted to make a public spectacle of himself.
However, there were red flags raised by the Secret Service and Intelligence officials relative to both Alamoudi and Sami Al-Arian. Yet, Bush and/or Rove met with them on more than one occasion after this book was put into Rove's hands. If there were suspicions about Alamoudi prior to these meetings, wouldn't it have been prudent to investigate the author of material this group felt was important enough to put into Rove's hands?
...Alamoudi and the AMC had been previously criticized for their ties to Hamas and other militant groups and figures (see March 13, 1996). Bush and/or Rove will meet with Alamoudi on other occasions (see (see July 2000, June 22, 2001, September 14-26, 2001). US intelligence learned of ties between Alamoudi and bin Laden in 1994 (see Shortly After March 1994);
Yes, Alamoudi visited the White House after 9/11. As it turns out, Al Faruqi is identified as the founder of one of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial (HLF). That group is the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS). Here is what Discover the Networks says about AMSS:
Established in 1972 by Temple University professor Ismail Raji al-Faruqi and University of Pennsylvania graduate student Abdulhamid AbuSulayman, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS) is a constituent organization of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and a sister organization of the International Institute of Islamic Thought.
AMSS describes itself as “an independent membership-based organization that encompasses the United States and Canada.” It has no corporate, legal or financial relationship with any organization bearing the name of AMSS in any other country. Its mission is “to provide a forum through which Islamic positions on various academic disciplines can be promoted, with an emphasis on the social sciences and humanities”; to further “the continuity of the Islamic intellectual heritage”; and “to serve the interests of the larger Muslim community by bringing together Muslim and non-Muslim scholars in an academic setting to examine and define Islamic perspectives on issues of global concern that contribute to the prosperity of Muslims around the globe and the betterment of humanity.”
AMSS collaborates with the International Institute of Islamic Thought to publish the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), which is distributed in more than 50 countries around the world. Launched in 1984, AJISS is an interdisciplinary publication of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: politics, history, economic philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, religious law, and Islamic thought.
So, the author of the book given to Rove in 2000 was closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has pledged to work toward the destruction of the United States. The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), another unindicted co-conspirator in HLF also lists al-Faruqi as its founder.
Are we to believe that the Bush administration did not know of the nefarious intentions of these individuals and groups?
Take a look at an article written by Franklin Foer on November 12, 2001 that was published by The New Republic:
On the afternoon of September 26, George W. Bush gathered 15 prominent Muslim- and Arab-Americans at the White House. With cameras rolling, the president proclaimed that "the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good." It was a critically important moment, a statement to the world that America's Muslim leaders unambiguously reject the terror committed in Islam's name.
To the president's left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the American Muslim Council, an organization whose leaders have repeatedly called Hamas "freedom fighters." Also in attendance was Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who on the afternoon of September 11 told a Los Angeles public radio audience that "we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list." And sitting right next to President Bush was Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America, who last fall told a Washington crowd chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans, "America has to learn if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come." Days later, after a conservative activist confronted Karl Rove with dossiers about some of Bush's new friends, Rove replied, according to the activist, "I wish I had known before the event took place."
Again, it's time for the highest members of the Bush administration - including Karl Rove - to come clean about who they met with, what they knew about them, and why they continued meeting with them after they knew it.
The stakes are too high and the jig is very close to being up.
Just some comments before I get to the video of Dick Cheney telling Americans that McCain's decision to name Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 was a 'mistake.'
On today's program, I looked at the string of head-scratching incidents relative to the Bush administration's refusal to deal with the Islamic threat to the United States by the likes of Al-Qaeda Godfather Abdullah Omar Naseef. If you've ever wondered about the root causes of the animosity for the Tea Party that exists within the Republican establishment, the intelligence available to the Bush administration both before and after 9/11 about the perpetrators of 9/11 is something the establishment doesn't want Tea Partiers like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann getting too close to.
Naseef had distinct ties to the Saudi Arabian government; he was named in a civil lawsuit in 2004 by the families of 9/11's victims. However, he wasn't identified by the Bush administration as a target of American ire after 9/11, which he definitely should have been. Here is what Andrew McCarthy had to say about Naseef's history of escaping U.S. accountability relative to his ties to al-Qaeda:
…in 2004, he was named as a defendant in the civil case brought by victims of the 9/11 atrocities. (In 2010, a federal court dropped him from the suit — not because he was found uninvolved, but because a judge reasoned the American court lacked personal jurisdiction over him.)
The questions I posed were simple: Why was Naseef merely relegated to being a defendant in a civil case? Why wasn't he targeted by the Bush Administration? Why wasn't he prosecuted by Bush's Justice Department like, say, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who had been a State Department employee during the Clinton administration? In October of 2003, Alamoudi was arrested and ultimately convicted of financing terrorism.
If Alamoudi's background was given even a cursory look, it would have become obvious that Naseef was a bigger fish the administration should have been very interested in; it wasn't. Naseef skated and the threats posed by him and his underlings to America are graver than they've ever been. There was the reality of Bush granting access to Alamoudi despite big red flags. Here's a photo of Alamoudi standing with George W. Bush, circa 2000.
Presidential candidate George W. Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove meet with Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi. The meeting is said to have been brokered by Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist. Little is known about the meeting, which will not be reported until 2007. At the time, Alamoudi is head of the American Muslim Council (AMC), which is seen as a mainstream activist and lobbying group. But Alamoudi and the AMC had been previously criticized for their ties to Hamas and other militant groups and figures (see March 13, 1996). Bush and/or Rove will meet with Alamoudi on other occasions (see (see July 2000, June 22, 2001, September 14-26, 2001). US intelligence learned of ties between Alamoudi and bin Laden in 1994 (see Shortly After March 1994); he will be sentenced to a long prison term in 2004 (see October 15, 2004).
Then, of course, there was Bush's decision to stand with CAIR six days after 9/11, at a mosque:
In 2002, a terrorist entity known as the SAAR Network was targeted by U.S. authorities. Both Naseef and Alamoudi were connected to SAAR (Alamoudi was an executive assistant). Yet, despite all of the evidence required to convict Alamoudi, we're to believe that the Justice Department just overlooked Naseef?!
Hardly.
Alamoudi wasn't the only terrorist who was given access to Bush. Sami al-Arian was another, via History Commons:
Sami al-Arian attends a meeting in the White House complex with President Bush’s adviser Karl Rove. Al-Arian is one of 160 members of the American Muslim Council who are briefed on political matters by Rove and others. Al-Arian had been under investigation for at least six years by this time, and numerous media accounts reported that US investigators suggested al-Arian had ties to US-designated terrorist groups. Yet al-Arian passes the Secret Service’s stringent security check, enabling him to attend the meeting.
NEWSWEEK, 7/16/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 2/22/2003] “A law-enforcement official… [said] the Secret Service had flagged al-Arian as a potential terrorist prior to the event,” Newsweek later reports. “But White House aides, apparently reluctant to create an incident, let him through anyway.” [NEWSWEEK, 3/3/2003] In 2005, al-Arian will be found innocent of serious terrorism charges, but sentenced to almost three years in a US prison on lesser charges (see December 6, 2005). Abduraham Alamoudi is also at the meeting. US intelligence have suspected Alamoudi of ties to bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman since 1994 (see Shortly After March 1994). Rove and Bush met with Alamoudi in 1999 and 2000 as well (see 1999 and July 2000). Alamoudi will later be sentenced to 23 years in a US prison for illegal dealings with Libya (see October 15, 2004). [WASHINGTON POST, 2/22/2003]
Here's a photo of Alamoudi (far left), George W. Bush (center), and Karl Rove (far right):
So what does all this have to do with Dick Cheney telling ABC News that selecting Sarah Palin as the VP running mate in 2008 was a mistake? It's anecdotal as much as anything. The Republican establishment in general and the Bush administration in particular messed up in a major way by not going after the government of Saudi Arabia after 9/11. Any serious attempt to find out the truth would have led to Abdullah Omar Naseef - an al-Qaeda leader who was connected to the Saudi government.
We're left to conclude that the establishment will fight tooth and nail to prevent the truth about what it did (and failed to do) both before and after 9/11. Until these people come clean and 'fess up, America will be placed in ever increasing danger.
When the establishment relinquishes power within the GOP, the Tea Party movement will not only seize it but will finally have access to all of the intelligence about how the establishment so roundly miscalculated; that establishment will do all it can to prevent that from happening.
Take a look at what Cheney said today, when viewed within that context:
Of course, if you remember being taken aback by what Barbara Bush said about Sarah Palin back in 2010, maybe we're getting closer to understanding why. Perhaps it has something to do with the threat to the establishment of the group Palin represents. That threat very well could be the truth about our flawed post-9/11 strategy being revealed:
**UPDATE** In light of this angle, I thought it relevant that Liz Cheney would tweet in disagreement with her father about Palin:
