Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #656 The Obama File, Part III: Badjacketing Obama, Part 2, The Headscarf Incident

MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing explo­ration of the link­ing of Barack Oba­ma with Islamism and (poten­tial­ly) ter­ror­ism, this broad­cast high­lights the role played in the “head­scarf inci­dent” by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ele­ments in the Unit­ed States. (When Oba­ma cam­paign aides asked Mus­lim women wear­ing head­scarves to remove them­selves from view­ing by TV cam­eras at a cam­paign event, the result­ing brouha­ha helped dis­cred­it Oba­ma in the eyes of many–some Mus­lims saw this as demean­ing to them and some right-wingers saw his [Oba­ma’s] elo­quent apol­o­gy as kow­tow­ing to the wish­es of Islamists.) The pro­gram begins by review­ing the ongo­ing, suc­cess­ful effort by the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in estab­lish­ing polit­i­cal fronts in the Unit­ed States, which are then suc­cess­ful­ly and decep­tive­ly mar­ket­ed by the media and Broth­er­hood PR flacks as “civ­il rights” organizations–moderate in scope and char­ac­ter. The two women involved in the inci­dent were both asso­ciates of the Mus­lim Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. One of them–Heb­ba Aref–was in charge of Dawa (prop­a­ga­tion of the Faith) while an exec­u­tive with the MSA’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Michigan/Dearborn chap­ter. That chap­ter was dom­i­nat­ed at the time by Islam­ic reac­tionar­ies close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Hizb ut Tahrir al-Isla­mi, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ate that works with the neo-Nazi NPD in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. MSA women at the time were required to wear the head­scarves. Of para­mount impor­tance in this con­text is the fact that the MSA mem­bers of U. of M.‘s Dear­born chap­ter used vio­lence to attempt to impose their polit­i­cal will on fel­low stu­dents. Anoth­er mem­ber of the group that pre­cip­i­tat­ed this incident–one Bran­don Edward Miller–is linked to the milieu of New Bridge Strate­gies, a busi­ness ven­ture of Mis­sis­sip­pi GOP gov­er­nor Haley Bar­bour that sub­con­tracts in Iraq with busi­ness­es con­nect­ed to Mus­lim Broth­er­hood king­pin (and for­mer Third Reich spy) Youssef Nada. It is crit­i­cal in this regard to remem­ber the pro­found links between the GOP oper­a­tive Grover Norquist, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Karl Rove, Bush aide Talat Oth­man and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood on the one hand, and the slum­lord milieu linked to Barack Oba­ma on the oth­er. It is also vital to remem­ber that both the Broth­er­hood and the GOP are pro­found­ly con­nect­ed to the Under­ground Reich. Lis­ten­ers and read­ers who find this broad­cast use­ful and/or inter­est­ing are strong­ly encour­aged to digest FTRs 654 and 655, antecedent to this pro­gram.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The work of Shi­maa Abdelfadeel (par­tic­i­pant in the inci­dent) on behalf of Sami al-Ari­an; review of Sami al-Ari­an’s links to George W. Bush; review of Sami al-Ari­an’s links to the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids–neutralized through the efforts of Bush asso­ciate Talat Oth­man; review of Hizb ut Tahrir’s oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship with the Ger­man neo-Nazi NPD; the appar­ent involve­ment of Heb­ba Are­f’s broth­er Sharif with the MSA; the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Sharif Aref with the head­scarf inci­dent; review of the links between the milieu of the Bank al-Taqwa, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Mus­lim Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the pro­gram notes that the Broth­er­hood has demon­strat­ed great skill at estab­lish­ing polit­i­cal fronts in the Unit­ed States, which are then suc­cess­ful­ly and decep­tive­ly mar­ket­ed by the media and Broth­er­hood PR flacks as “civ­il rights” organizations–moderate in scope and char­ac­ter.

“Cer­tain jour­nal­ists from respect­ed media out­lets — most recent­ly Mary Beth Sheri­dan of the Wash­ing­ton Post — con­tin­ue to dis­play a cer­tain naiveté in report­ing sto­ries on extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions who false­ly pro­fess to be main­stream mod­er­ates. Mere­ly par­rot­ing their words with­out exam­i­na­tion cre­ates arti­cles that are void of fact and nuance. Per­haps it is well inten­tioned, as it is very appeal­ing to take orga­ni­za­tions such as the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (MPAC) and the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety (MAS) at their word. We want to believe that there are author­i­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tions out there to deflect and ulti­mate­ly defeat rad­i­cal­ism. How­ev­er, in an August 8 arti­cle titled “Edu­cat­ing Against Extrem­ism; Mus­lims Reach Out to Youths Who Could Be Sus­cep­ti­ble to Rad­i­cal­ism,” Sheri­dan neglect­ed to men­tion that MAS is inti­mate­ly and pub­licly con­nect­ed to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a secre­tive soci­ety ded­i­cat­ed to the estab­lish­ment of Islam­ic rule, who recent­ly issued a pub­lic appeal for sup­port of the forces fight­ing the coali­tion in Iraq. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Sheridan’s omis­sions are part of a larg­er prob­lem of jour­nal­ists who have wit­ting­ly or unwit­ting­ly become defac­to pub­lic rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tives for extrem­ist Islamist groups. Tak­ing their press releas­es at face val­ue, jour­nal­ists have helped effec­tive­ly to cov­er up the larg­er, seri­ous issue of the grow­ing secret net­work of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the US. . . .”

“The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: What Do They Real­ly Want To Teach Amer­i­can Mus­lim Youth?” By Andrew Cochran; Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Blog”; 9/10/2005.

2. Dur­ing the cam­paign, Oba­ma was attacked by an aide’s removal of two Mus­lim women wear­ing head­scarves. Deemed vis­i­ble in the sched­uled TV appear­ance, the aide felt that their vis­i­ble appear­ance on stage might play into the “Oba­ma is a clos­et Mus­lim” canard (dis­cussed at length in FTR #655).

“Sen. Barack Oba­ma has per­son­al­ly apol­o­gized to two Mus­lim women who were kept from sit­ting behind the podi­um dur­ing his ral­ly in Detroit because they wore Mus­lim head scarves.

Heb­ba Aref and Shi­maa Abdelfadeel said in a joint e‑mail state­ment Thurs­day that they are grate­ful and ready to move for­ward after each receiv­ing calls from the sen­a­tor with apolo­gies.

In his own state­ment, Oba­ma said he reached out to the women Thurs­day to express his deep­est apolo­gies.

‘The actions of these vol­un­teers were unac­cept­able and in no way reflect any pol­i­cy of my cam­paign,’ he said in the state­ment. ‘I take deep­est offense to and will con­tin­ue to fight against dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple of any reli­gious group or back­ground.’

On Mon­day, the women attend­ed a ral­ly in Detroit, where vol­un­teers sep­a­rate­ly said that they could not sit in the area behind the stage because they were wear­ing hijabs. The spe­cial seat­ing area is vis­i­ble dur­ing video and pho­tographs of the event.

‘This inci­dent was unfor­tu­nate and extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ing,’ they wrote. ‘Sen­a­tor Oba­ma has called us each to per­son­al­ly con­vey his deep­est apolo­gies and acknowl­edge that this was inex­cus­able. We both immense­ly appre­ci­ate the sen­a­tor’s phone call and his com­mit­ment to rem­e­dy this issue.’ . . .”

“Oba­ma Aplo­gizes to Mus­lims Kept from Ral­ly” by Katie Fret­land; Chica­go Tri­bune; 6/19/2008.

3. Before exam­in­ing the back­ground of the Mus­lim women in involved in the inci­dent, let’s look at the media reaction–like this col­umn by for­mer George H.W. Bush PR man Michael Smer­con­ish:

“Doc­tors and cam­paign advance men share an invi­o­late rule: Do no harm.

It’s a mantra I learned 25 years ago when I began doing advance work for George H.W. Bush, which entailed work­ing with the Secret Ser­vice to scout out the vice pres­i­den­t’s appear­ances and pro­duce a minute-by-minute itin­er­ary. At first, I was assigned to the less-glam­orous des­ti­na­tions (But­ler, Pa). Lat­er, some of the assign­ments were plums (Brus­sels). . . In oth­er words, mis­in­for­ma­tion is being spread that Oba­ma is a Mus­lim who was sworn into office with his hand on a Koran. And, pre­sum­ably, the vol­un­teers thought they’d be fuel­ing Inter­net rumors about the can­di­date’s reli­gion if they allowed the women to sit right behind him.

That mis­in­for­ma­tion has found an audi­ence broad enough to war­rant con­cern. Polling by the Pew Research Cen­ter indi­cates that one in 10 reg­is­tered vot­ers believes Oba­ma is secret­ly a Mus­lim. And that 10 per­cent con­tin­ues to flum­mox his cam­paign.

Even the vehi­cle the cam­paign rolled out this month to fight what it con­sid­ers untrue charges (fightthesmears.com) has stirred com­mo­tion. Some Mus­lims won­der why the cam­paign con­sid­ers being called a Mus­lim a ‘smear.’

Rep. Kei­th Elli­son, an actu­al Mus­lim, says fel­low Mus­lims haven’t been ‘ful­ly engaged’ in Oba­ma’s mes­sage of inclu­sion, and says he was recent­ly asked not to speak in a mosque on Oba­ma’s behalf.

Obvi­ous­ly the cam­paign vol­un­teers erred when they denied the women their promised seats. They vio­lat­ed the first rule of advance: they did harm, and it was both pre­dictable and avoid­able. . . .”

“Michael Smer­con­ish: Oba­ma Slips Start­ing to Show” by Michael Smer­con­ish; Philadel­phia Dai­ly News; 6/26/2008.

4. The polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of the women involved with the inci­dent are impor­tant. Heb­ba Aref belonged to the Mus­lim Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion chap­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan at Dear­born. She was involved with “Dawah”–the prop­a­ga­tion of the faith.

2002–2003 Exec­u­tive Board
Pres­i­dent Nasir Gre­w­al
Vice Pres­i­dent Lin­da Mroueh
Bud­get Rizwan Sheikh
Edu­ca­tion Razi Jafri
Dawah Heb­ba Aref” [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

Web­site for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan at Dear­born Mus­lim Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion.

5. The oth­er woman in ques­tion, Shi­maa Abdelfadeel, was also a mem­ber of the MSA at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, where she worked on behalf of Sami al-Ari­an, the North Amer­i­can head of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ter­ror­ist group. Note that al-Ari­an (whom Mr. Emory refers to as “Sam­my the Aryan”) was an ardent sup­port­er of George W. Bush dur­ing the 2000 cam­paign. It was the inves­ti­ga­tion into Sam­my the Aryan that led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of March 20, 2002. Those raids exposed the link between the GOP and Bush admin­is­tra­tion ele­ments involved with the slum­lord milieu of which Oba­ma is a part.

“LSA Senior Shi­maa Abdelfadeel is mail­ing some­thing oth­er than fruit­cakes this hol­i­day sea­son.

Abdelfadeel, polit­i­cal chair of the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Mus­lim Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion, has col­lect­ed about 20 let­ters of sup­port to send to Sami Al-Ari­an, an out­spo­ken pro-Pales­tin­ian activist and for­mer engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da.

Fed­er­al author­i­ties jailed Al-Ari­an in 2003 on charges that he sup­port­ed a cell of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, a ter­ror­ist group linked to the deaths of Israelis in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Cur­rent­ly, Al-Ari­an is in a Flori­da jail. . . .”

“Stu­dents Sup­port Embat­tled Prof” by Kel­ly Fras­er; The Michi­gan Dai­ly; 12/12/2005.

6. Of para­mount impor­tance in analy­sis of the head­scarf inci­dent is the fact that the MSA–to which both Heb­ba Aref and Shi­maa Abdelfadeel belonged–is a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tion! Note that Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi is the spir­i­tu­al advi­sor to the Bank al-Taqwa, tied direct­ly to al Qae­da, as well as the GOP/Norquist/Rove/Talat Oth­man milieu exposed by the inves­ti­ga­tion into “Sam­my the Aryan”!

” . . . A U.S. offi­cial famil­iar with fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions of for­mer Broth­er­hood mem­bers said some devel­oped ‘a dis­ci­plined strat­e­gy, spe­cif­ic goals’ to act on their plan to con­vert Amer­i­cans, start­ing with U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel, prison inmates and black peo­ple.

Many Broth­er­hood lead­ers advo­cate patience in pro­mot­ing their goals. In a 1995 speech to an Islam­ic con­fer­ence in Ohio, a top Broth­er­hood offi­cial, Youssef Qaradawi, said vic­to­ry will come through dawah — Islam­ic renew­al and out­reach — accord­ing to a tran­script pro­vid­ed by the Inves­tiga­tive Project, a Wash­ing­ton ter­ror­ism research group. “Con­quest through dawah, that is what we hope for,” said Qaradawi, an influ­en­tial Qatari imam who pens some of the reli­gious edicts jus­ti­fy­ing Hamas sui­cide bomb­ings against Israeli civil­ians. ‘We will con­quer Europe, we will con­quer Amer­i­ca, not through the sword but through dawah,’ said the imam, who has con­demned the Sept. 11 attacks but is now barred from the Unit­ed States.

In his speech, Qaradawi said the dawah would work through Islam­ic groups set up by Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers in this coun­try. He praised sup­port­ers who were jailed by Arab gov­ern­ments in 1950s and then came to the Unit­ed States to ‘fight the sec­u­lars and the West­ern­ized’ by found­ing this coun­try’s lead­ing Islam­ic groups. . . .”

“In Search of Friends Among the Foes” by John Mintz and Dou­glas Farah; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 9/11/2004.

7. Even more impor­tant for our analy­sis of the head­scarf inci­dent is the fact that the MSA branch at U. of Michigan/Dearborn was large­ly con­trolled by vio­lent, fascis­tic Mus­lims, who attacked and bru­tal­ized MSA mem­bers who opposed their agen­da. Note that the fol­low­ing inci­dent took place in 2004. Heb­ba Aref was in charge of Dawah in 2002–2003. Note what was con­sid­ered the norm at the MSA’s branch at U. of M. at Dear­born.

“Farhan Latif always knew it was only a mat­ter of time before the slow-burn­ing anger would erupt. His con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim ene­mies had made their inten­tions clear to him. They had sent threat­en­ing e‑mails and left men­ac­ing mes­sages on his cell phone. In their eyes, Farhan’s ideas were crim­i­nal. The West­ern world might call him a mod­er­ate Mus­lim, but his foes thought he was an apos­tate, lur­ing young Mus­lims away from the faith.

The day Farhan feared came in Sep­tem­ber 2004. As he was about to enter his mod­ern apart­ment in Dear­born, about one mile from his uni­ver­si­ty, three young men jumped him and pushed him to the ground. They beat and kicked him with­out say­ing a word. Farhan recog­nied one of his attackers–the guy did not both­er to hide his face under a mask. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Farhan cried, try­ing to shield his face from their blows.

The attack­ers did not reply. With­in min­utes, they got back into their car and tried to run Farhan over before they sped away. He man­aged to avoid the oncom­ing wheels by rolling away just in time.

As he rest­ed in the hos­pi­tal, nurs­ing a swollen head, sev­er­al cracked ribs and a bro­ken arm, Farhan was depressed more than shocked over the beat­ing. it was one thing to endure the dai­ly blows from the non-Mus­lims who crit­i­cized Islam. But now he was in a bat­tle with his fel­low believ­ers. ‘I fight against every­thing peo­ple say against my reli­gion every day, on tele­vi­sion, on the radio, every­where,’ Farhan remarked, reflect­ing on the inci­dent lat­er. ‘I was not so much scared when this hap­pened but sad that fel­low Mus­lims would do this.’

Months before the attack, in the spring of 2004, Farhan was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Mus­lim Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion at the Uni­vesi­ty of Michi­gan’s Dear­born cam­pus. In a short time, he rev­o­lu­tion­ized the asso­ci­a­tion, mak­ing it more attrac­tive to a major­i­ty of Mus­lim stu­dents on campus–many of whom had refused to join when the con­ser­v­a­tives were in charge. [Ital­ics are mine–DE].

Farhan and the new lead­ers decid­ed there would no longer be rad­i­cal imams unleash­ing hate speech at Fri­day prayers. All lec­tur­ers would be required to fol­low cer­tain rules. They lift­ed the ban that pre­vent­ed women with­out head­scarves from join­ing the asso­ci­a­tion. [Ital­ics are mine–DE].

All Mus­lims would be wel­come, no mat­ter their polit­i­cal ideas or their sect–minority Shi­ites, often scorned for their sep­a­rate ways and dif­fer­ent approach to the faith, were just as accept­able as the Sun­ni stu­dent major­i­ty. . . . None of this sat well with mem­bers of Dear­born’s Mus­lims’ Stu­dents’ asso­ci­a­tion who were either rad­i­cal Salafis or affil­i­at­ed with the Hizb ut Tahrir al-Islami–the Par­ty of Islam­ic Lib­er­a­tion.

The move­ment (Hizb ut Tahrir al-Islami)–a clan­des­tine, rad­i­cal Sun­ni Islam­ic group that is banned in sev­er­al coun­tries around the world–advocates the replace­ment of indi­vid­ual Mus­lim gov­ern­ments with sin­gle caliphate gov­erned under a strict read­ing of the sharia. The stu­dents who are mem­bers of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Isla­mi share a com­mon creed that calls for strict adher­ence to the Koran and the rejec­tion of apply­ing human rea­son and log­ic when inter­pret­ing the Islam­ic holy texts.

Before Farhan had arrived on the cam­pus, rad­i­cal stu­dents had turned the Mus­lim Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion into a vir­tu­al train­ing camp for con­ser­v­a­tive ide­o­logues. Under the influ­ence and guid­ance of an Imam at a Dear­born mosque, the stu­dents believed their fel­low Mus­lims were stray­ing dan­ger­ous­ly from the faith. In their eyes, being a ded­i­cat­ed Mus­lim meant that men should work to pres­sure the U.S. gov­ern­ment to change its poli­cies in the Islam­ic world, Mus­lim women should wear head­scarves and Mus­lims should have lit­tle to do with Jews and Chris­tians. [Ital­ics are mine–DE.] . . .”

“The Future of the Faith” by Geneive Abdo; The Glob­al­ist; 6/13/2008.

9. As seen above, the MSA chap­ter to which Heb­ba Aref belonged was strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Idem.

10. Hizb ut-Tahrir works with  the Ger­man NDP, the top Ger­man neo-Nazi par­ty. Achmed Huber of the al-Taqwa milieu also works with the NPD.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was found­ed by a Pales­tin­ian in 1953, came to the atten­tion of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment in the wake of the attacks on New York City and Wash­ing­ton on Sept. 11, 2001. Sev­er­al of the hijack­ers and oth­er fig­ures in that plot belonged to rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups in Ham­burg. It is not clear if mem­bers of Hizb ut-Tahrir are linked to Al Qae­da, but its Web site calls on its mem­bers to fight against the Unit­ed States because of what it calls America’s ‘cru­sade’ against Mus­lims. Last Octo­ber, the group staged a demon­stra­tion at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin at which anti-Amer­i­can speech­es were made. In what would seem to be an odd coali­tion, the group main­tains at least some ties with a right-wing Ger­man fringe group, the Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, some of whose mem­bers attend­ed the Berlin ral­ly. The com­mon ground between the two groups would seem to be a hatred of Jews.”

(“Ger­man Police Raid an Islam­ic Mil­i­tant Group” by Richard Bern­stein; The New York Times; 4/11/2003; p. 1.)

Descrip­tion for FTR #408.

11. Accord­ing to this cached arti­cle, Heb­ba Are­f’s broth­er Sharif Aref (also involved in the head­scarf inci­dent) was also in the MSA at U. of Michi­gan at Dear­born.

12. In addi­tion to Sharif Aref, a lawyer named Bran­don Edward Miller was involved in the event.

” . . . That inci­dent began when the vol­un­teer asked Are­f’s friend Ali Kous­san and two oth­er friends, Are­f’s broth­er Sharif and anoth­er young lawyer, Bran­don Edward Miller, whether they would like to sit behind the stage. The three young men said they would, but men­tioned they were with friends. . . .”

“Mus­lims Barred from Pho­to at Oba­ma Event” by Ben Smith (Politico.com); USA Today; 6/18/2008.

13. At Har­vard Law School, Miller was close to Glenn T. Ware.

” . . . This year, Bran­don will be writ­ing a case study on the UN’s Oil for Food Inves­ti­ga­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC under the direc­tion of HLS alum­nus Glenn T. Ware, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Dili­gence LLC, an intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and risk man­age­ment firm, and Pro­fes­sor Philip Hey­mann. . . .”

http://www.law.harvard.edu/ils/people/students/student_profiles/miller_brandon_edward.php

14. Miller’s law school mentor–Glenn T. Ware man­ag­ing direc­tor of Dili­gence, LLC.  asso­ci­at­ed with New Bridge Strate­gies.

” . . .The com­bined World Bank/UN staff acquired by Dili­gence is lead by their new Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Glenn T. Ware. . . .”

“For­mer World Bank, U.N. Oil-for-Food Lead Inves­ti­ga­tion Teams to Join Dili­gence LLC; pressemeldinger.no.

15. Dili­gence, LLC is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with New Bridge Strate­gies, the oper­a­tion of Mis­sis­sip­pi Gov­er­nor Haley Bar­bour.

“Dili­gence LLC was formed by past mem­bers of the CIA and Britain’s MI5 Intel­li­gence Ser­vices. They have includ­ed experts in inter­na­tion­al law, jour­nal­ism and intel­li­gence ser­vices from post-Cold War which enables them to vet all sorts of future invest­ment projects while pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty advice. More than half of their around 100 employ­ees are for­mer mem­bers of an intel­li­gence ser­vice.[1] They are relat­ed to New Bridge Strate­gies, shar­ing address­es and many of the same board mem­bers.

“Dili­gence first set up in Bagh­dad in July 2003. They start­ed by pro­vid­ing pay­roll pro­tec­tion and deliv­ery, per­son­nel and facil­i­ties secu­ri­ty, due dili­gence on poten­tial Iraqi busi­ness ven­tures, train­ing and man­age­ment of per­son­al secu­ri­ty forces, and intel­li­gence briefs.

“The suc­cess of the busi­ness led to the devel­op­ment of the sub­sidiary, Dili­gence Mid­dle East, LLC, a part­ner­ship with the Amer­i­can com­pa­ny New Bridge Strate­gies and the Al-Mal Invest­ment Com­pa­ny, a Kuwaiti com­pa­ny chaired by Mohammed Al-Sagar, the chair­man of the For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee of the Kuwaiti par­lia­ment.[2] The new part­ner­ship pro­vides clients with a range of ser­vices through out the Mid­dle East and espe­cial­ly in Iraq [3]. . . .”

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Diligence%2C_LLC

16. Haley Bar­bour’s Iraqi oper­a­tions uti­lized some of the al-Taqwa busi­ness inter­ests as sub­con­trac­tors.

“One rea­son the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion gave for going to war in Iraq was Sad­dam Hussein’s alleged ties to ter­ror­ists. So it is iron­ic that one of the part­ners in a big Iraqi firm being used US con­trac­tors in Iraq is also a found­ing part­ner in an orga­ni­za­tion that’s been iden­ti­fied as help­ing fund al Qae­da. So far, how­ev­er, nei­ther the gov­ern­ment nor the con­trac­tors have shown much con­cern. Sadoon Al-Bun­nia is one of three prin­ci­pals in one of Iraq’s old­est com­pa­nies, the Al-Bun­nia Trad­ing Com­pa­ny. The Iraqi firm has become a major sub­con­trac­tor for US firms work­ing under US gov­ern­ment con­tracts in Iraq. But, as doc­u­ments obtained by The Nation from the Lugano office of the Swiss Fed­er­al Com­mer­cial Reg­istry show, Sadoon al-Bun­nia is also a found­ing part­ner of a Swiss-reg­is­tered firm called the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Cham­ber (MIGA), which the US gov­ern­ment and the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil have des­ig­nat­ed as fun­ders of Al Qae­da. MIGA is one of four­teen busi­ness­es con­trolled by Ahmed Idris Nasred­din and Youssef M. Nada. Then-Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill said in an August 29, 2002, news release that busi­ness­es in the Nasred­din-Nada net­work ‘appeared to be pro­vid­ing a clan­des­tine line of cred­it to a close asso­ciate of Usama bin Laden and as of late Sep­tem­ber 2001, Usama bin Laden and his Al Qai­da orga­ni­za­tion received finan­cial assis­tance from Youssef M. Nada. . . Anoth­er firm with close ties to the White House that’s angling to help clients win Iraq con­tracts, GOP lob­by­ist Haley Barbour’s New Bridge Strate­gies, proud­ly announces on its web­site that its local part­ner in a con­sor­tium bid­ding on a con­tract is ‘led by the Al-Bun­nia fam­i­ly, who are a lead­ing com­mer­cial group in Iraq with over 80 years expe­ri­ence in Iraq.’ [Ital­ics are mine–DE.] . . .”

(“Strange Bed­fel­lows [The AIQ/Al-Bun­ni­a/Bech­tel Links]” by Lau­ra Rozen; The Nation; 11/10/2003.)

Descrip­tion for FTR #433.

17. Exem­pli­fy­ing the right-wing smear­ing of Oba­ma is an arti­cle from the Free Repub­lic web site, com­ment­ing on the head­scarf inci­dent.

“Oba­ma Bows to Mus­lim Demands” by Austin Hill; freerepublic.com; 6/22/2008.

 

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #656 The Obama File, Part III: Badjacketing Obama, Part 2, The Headscarf Incident”

  1. [...] such as for exam­ple, Tony Rezko. You can know more about of this by vis­it­ing these shows here, here, here and [...]

    Posted by Ayers and Dohrn, Barack Obama, the death of Andrew Breitbart and the rise of Third Position fascism | Lys-d'Or | June 8, 2012, 5:44 pm

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