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

For The Record  

FTR #515 Update on the GOP/Islamist Connection

Record­ed June 12, 2005
Lis­ten:
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NB: This stream con­tains both FTRs 514 and 515 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Begin­ning with news of GOP big­wig Grover Norquist’s mar­riage to an obser­vant Pales­tin­ian Mus­lim woman, the pro­gram brings up to date ongo­ing dis­cus­sion of the strong con­nec­tions between George Bush’s GOP and the very Islamist forces he pro­fess­es to be fight­ing. Norquist and Karl Rove were instru­men­tal in set­ting up the Islam­ic Institute—a point of inter­sec­tion between the GOP and the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions Al Qae­da and Hamas. Norquist’s bride worked for his Islam­ic Insti­tute and now works for the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a gov­ern­men­tal depart­ment that often works with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. This pro­gram also enter­tains the [uncon­firmed pos­si­bil­i­ty] that Norquist has con­vert­ed to Islam. Legal inves­ti­ga­tion into the GOP/Islamist con­nec­tion began with the case of Sami al-Ari­an, the North Amer­i­can leader of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood off­shoot. A close asso­ciate of George Bush’s, al-Ari­an had Norquist as his lob­by­ist. This broad­cast exam­ines the fact that the present legal case against al-Ari­an is weak because of the expi­ra­tion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on the acts in which he is known to have par­tic­i­pat­ed. The author­i­ties can only charge him with con­spir­a­cy, and his pri­ma­ry co-con­spir­a­tors are not in the coun­try. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Paul Wolfowitz’s romance with an Arab woman from Sau­di Ara­bia.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the con­nec­tions between the inves­ti­ga­tion into Sami al-Ari­an and the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002; review of the links between al-Ari­an and the Al Taqwa milieu; the role of Wolfowitz’s new para­mour in admin­is­ter­ing funds for Iraqi recon­struc­tion.

1. Point man in the GOP’s Mus­lim out­reach pro­gram, Grover Norquist’s recruits into the GOP include many Islam­o­fas­cists con­nect­ed to ter­ror­ist groups like Al Qae­da, Hamas and Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, as well as the al-Taqwa milieu of Youssef Nada. Norquist has appar­ent­ly mar­ried a Pales­tin­ian Mus­lim woman and may have con­vert­ed to Islam him­self! (For more about Norquist’s links to Islamists, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 415, 425, 435, 454, 455, 462, 467, 514.) “Is Grover Norquist an Islamist? Paul Sper­ry, author of the new book, Infil­tra­tion, in an inter­view calls Grover Norquist ‘an agent of influ­ence for Islamists in Wash­ing­ton.’ When asked by FrontPageMag.com why a Repub­li­can anti-tax lob­by­ist should so pas­sion­ate­ly pro­mote Islamist caus­es, Sper­ry implied that Norquist has con­vert­ed to Islam: ‘He’s mar­ry­ing a Mus­lim, and when I asked Norquist if he him­self has con­vert­ed to Islam, he brushed the ques­tion off as too per­son­al.’ As Lawrence Auster com­ments on this exchange, ‘Clear­ly, if Norquist had­n’t con­vert­ed to Islam, or weren’t in the process of doing so, he would sim­ply have answered no.’”
(“Is Grover Norquist an Islamist?;” by Daniel Pipes; Weblog [of Daniel Pipes]; 4/14/2005.)

2. “Indeed, Norquist mar­ried Samah Alrayyes, a Pales­tin­ian Mus­lim, on April 2, 2005, and Islam­ic law lim­its a Mus­lim woman to mar­ry­ing a man who is Mus­lim. This is not an abstract dic­tum but a very seri­ous imper­a­tive, with many ‘hon­or’ killings hav­ing result­ed from a woman ignor­ing her fam­i­ly’s wish­es.” (Idem.)

3. Note that Norquist’s new wife worked for his Islam­ic Insti­tute and now works for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a branch of the gov­ern­ment that fre­quent­ly works with intel­li­gence agen­cies. Is she anoth­er part of the Under­ground Reich/Islamofascist Fifth Col­umn that exists in this coun­try? “Alrayyes has rad­i­cal Islam­ic cre­den­tials of her own; she served as com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at the Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute, the Islamist orga­ni­za­tion Norquist helped found. Now, she is employed as a pub­lic affairs offi­cer at the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, and so it appears that yet anoth­er Islamist finds employ­ment in a branch of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment.” (Idem.)

4. “Norquist has for some years now been pro­mot­ing Islamist orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing even the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions; for exam­ple, he spoke at CAIR’s con­fer­ence, ‘A Bet­ter Amer­i­ca in a Bet­ter World’ on Octo­ber 5, 2004. Frank Gaffney has researched Norquist’s ties to Islamists in his exhaus­tive, care­ful, and con­vinc­ing study, ‘Agent of Influ­ence’ and con­cludes that Norquist is enabling ‘a polit­i­cal influ­ence oper­a­tion to advance the caus­es of rad­i­cal Islamists, and tar­get­ed most par­tic­u­lar­ly at the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion.’ But if Norquist is indeed a con­vert to Islam, it could be that he is not just enabling the Islamist caus­es but is him­self an Islamist. (April 14, 2005)” (Idem.)

5. Among the Islamists that have wormed their way into the GOP’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion is Sami al-Ari­an. (The inves­ti­ga­tion into Sami al-Ari­an led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. For more about the tar­gets of the raids, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 382, 415, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 454, 455, 456, 473, 514.) Al-Arian’s tri­al is under­way, with the lapse of time threat­en­ing the integri­ty of the case. Although al-Arian’s mon­i­tored com­mu­ni­ca­tions revealed his strong oper­a­tional links to Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad (an off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood), the statute of lim­i­ta­tions has expired on pos­si­ble indict­ments. Only charges of con­spir­a­cy could be brought at this time, and the fig­ures with whom he con­spired are out of the U.S. “Three co-defen­dants of accused ter­ror­ist leader Sami al-Ari­an, a for­mer Flori­da uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor on tri­al here, staunch­ly deny any con­nec­tion to the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group at the heart of the case, their lawyers said in court Tues­day. . . . There is a vast dis­crep­an­cy between the grav­i­ty and detail in the charges against al-Ari­an, and those against the oth­er three on tri­al, whom the pros­e­cu­tion calls rank-and-file mem­bers of the Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad (PIJ) orga­ni­za­tion, which spon­sors sui­cide attacks on Israelis, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments.”
(“Co-Defen­dants in Fla. Deny Ties to Con­spir­a­cy” by John Mintz; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 6/8/2005; p. 1.)

6. “Some defense attor­neys said out­side the court­room in recent days that the three defendants—Ballut, for­mer uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent Sameeh Taha Ham­moudeh and Illi­nois char­i­ty man­ag­er Hatim Maji Fariz—were swept into the case because of pros­e­cu­tors’ need to build a crim­i­nal case of conspiracy—in this case, con­spir­a­cy to kill and maim hun­dreds of Israelis since the 1980’s. Legal experts said that the U.S. gov­ern­ment had lit­tle choice but to craft a con­spir­a­cy case. The vast bulk of their evi­dence, derived from years of secret wire­taps and mon­i­tor­ing of fax­es, cen­ters on the ear­ly to mid-1990s, before al-Arian’s offices and home were searched and he became more cir­cum­spect over the tele­phone.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

7. Again, with the statute of lim­i­ta­tions hav­ing expired, the only charge that could be lev­eled against al-Ari­an is con­spir­a­cy. As men­tioned above, the fig­ures with whom h

e con­spired are not avail­able to stand tri­al with him. That, cou­pled with the “acci­den­tal” destruc­tion of doc­u­ments dis­cussed below may threat­en the integri­ty of the government’s case. Bear in mind that al-Ari­an was an asso­ciate of Bush and was of great assis­tance in help­ing Bush car­ry Flori­da. “But the statute of lim­i­ta­tions allows the pros­e­cu­tion to charge some­one for crimes going back only five years—unless the charge is con­spir­a­cy, in which case the gov­ern­ment can bring in alle­ga­tions going back decades, as it has done in this tri­al. [Empha­sis added.] The prob­lem for the pros­e­cu­tion, defense attor­neys said, is that those secret­ly mon­i­tored wire­taps and fax­es show al-Ari­an dis­cussing inti­mate details of PIJ’s oper­a­tions not with his three co-defen­dants but with five oth­er men.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

8. “All of those five men were top PIJ lead­ers with al-Ari­an for years, U.S. pros­e­cu­tors said, and all of them have been charged with him with con­spir­a­cy to murder—but they are over­seas and will not be tried in this case. Defense attor­neys and crim­i­nal lawyers who have observed the case said the gov­ern­ment was in a jam—how could it put on a tri­al for crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy and have only one con­spir­a­tor at the defense table?” (Idem.)

9. “The three defen­dants on tri­al with al-Ari­an are basi­cal­ly stage props,’ said Steve Craw­ford, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor who has fol­lowed the case and who recent­ly rep­re­sent­ed Hammoudeh’s wife on an unre­lat­ed fraud charge. ‘The gov­ern­ment didn’t have enough of the big guns [from PIJ] here to give a visu­al show­ing of a con­spir­a­cy, so they sweep in the poor mopes at the bot­tom.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

10. Note that there is abun­dant evi­dence against al-Ari­an and com­pa­ny, but the statute of lim­i­ta­tions has expired. In that con­text, recall John Lof­tus’ frus­tra­tion at the fail­ure of the FBI and relat­ed agen­cies to pur­sue the al-Ari­an milieu and the Saudi/Muslim Broth­er­hood backed 555 Grove Street nexus. (There is good dis­cus­sion of this in FTR#’s 473, 514.) “Defense lawyers and pros­e­cu­tors declined to com­ment. U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Moody has barred them from speak­ing about the case out­side the court­room. The five over­seas defen­dants who are not on tri­al now were caught in hun­dreds of phone calls and fax­es dis­cussing the key strate­gic issues then fac­ing PIJ—deep inter­nal strug­gles, the dis­ap­pear­ances of mil­lions of dol­lars, how to pla­cate its angry finan­cial back­ers in the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment, and whether to merge with the Islam­ic Resis­tance Move­ment, a com­pet­ing mil­i­tant Pales­tin­ian group.” (Idem.)

11. “The five are Ramadan Shal­lah, who worked at an al-Ari­an think tank at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da and who now runs PIJ from Syr­ia; Abd al Aziz Awda, PIJ’s orig­i­nal spir­i­tu­al leader; al-Arian’s broth­er-in-law, Mazen al-Naj­jar; lead­ing Mus­lim schol­ar Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Tasir al-Khat­ib, the group’s alleged trea­sur­er. . . .” (Idem.)

12. The pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#464 about al-Arian’s rela­tion­ship to George W. Bush. “On March 12, 2000, Bush and his wife, Lau­ra, met with more Mus­lim lead­ers at a local mosque in Tam­pa, Flori­da. Among them was Sami Al-Ari­an, a Kuwaiti-born Pales­tin­ian who was an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da. . . . But Al-Ari­an had unusu­al cre­den­tials for a Bush cam­paign­er. Since 1995, as the founder and chair­man of the board of World and Islam Enter­prise (WISE), a Mus­lim think tank, Al-Ari­an had been under inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI for his asso­ci­a­tions with Islam­ic Jihad, the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group. Al-Ari­an brought in Ramadan Abdul­lah Shal­lah, the num­ber-two leader in Islam­ic Jihad, to be the direc­tor of WISE. A strong advo­cate of sui­cide bomb­ings against Israel, Shal­lah was alleged­ly respon­si­ble for killing scores of Israelis in such attacks.”
(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­n­er [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337‑X; pp. 206–207.)

13. More about al-Arian’s asso­ciates: “Al-Ari­an also brought to Tam­pa as a guest speak­er for WISE none oth­er than Has­san Tura­bi, the pow­er­ful Islam­ic ruler of Sudan who had wel­comed Osama bin Laden and helped nur­ture al Qae­da in the ear­ly nineties. . . .Nor were those Al-Arian’s only ties to ter­ror­ists. Accord­ing to Amer­i­can Jihad by Steven Emer­son, in May 1998 a WISE board mem­ber named Tarik Ham­di per­son­al­ly trav­eled to Afghanistan to deliv­er a satel­lite tele­phone and bat­tery to Osama bin Laden. In addi­tion, Newsweek report­ed that Al-Ari­an had ties to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Cen­ter. Among his claims to fame, the mag­a­zine said, Al-Ari­an had ‘made many phone calls to two New York-area Arabs who fig­ured in the World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.’” (Ibid.; p. 207.)

14. “There were also Al-Arian’s own state­ments. In 1998, he appeared as a guest speak­er before the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil. Accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive author Ken­neth Tim­mer­man, Al-Ari­an referred to Jews as ‘mon­keys and pigs’ and added, ‘Jihad is our path. Vic­to­ry to Islam. Death to Israel. Rev­o­lu­tion! Rev­o­lu­tion! Until vic­to­ry! Rolling, rolling to Jerusalem!’ That speech was part of a dossier com­piled on al-Ari­an by fed­er­al agents who have had him under sur­veil­lance for many years because of sus­pect­ed ties to ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. In video­tape in that file, al-Ari­an was more explic­it. When he appeared at a fund-rais­ing event, Tim­mer­man says, he ‘begged for $500 to kill a Jew.’” (Idem.)

15. “Al-Ari­an would be arrest­ed in Flori­da in Feb­ru­ary 2003 on dozens of charges, among them con­spir­a­cy to finance ter­ror­ist attacks that killed more than one hun­dred people—including two Amer­i­cans. The indict­ment alleged that ‘he direct­ed the audit of all mon­eys and prop­er­ty of the PIJ [Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad] through­out the world and was the leader of the PIJ in the Unit­ed States.’ The charges refer to the Islam­ic Jihad as ‘a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion whose mem­bers and asso­ciates engaged in acts of vio­lence includ­ing mur­der, extor­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing, fraud, and mis­use of visas, and oper­at­ed world­wide includ­ing in the Mid­dle Dis­trict of Flori­da.’ Al-Ari­an was still fac­ing pros­e­cu­tion in Decem­ber 2003.” (Ibid.; p. 208.)

16. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion about how the inves­ti­ga­tion into al-Ari­an led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. Those raids stemmed from inves­ti­ga­tions into the over­lap­ping SAAR net­work and Safa Group. (This infor­ma­tion is also reprised from FTR#464.) “The raid on al-Ari­an led to the Safa Group. The FBI found let­ters doc­u­ment­ing Safa enti­ties’ finan­cial sup­port of al-Ari­an to the tune of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars a year. In a Sep­tem­ber 7, 1993, let­ter, Safa Group lead­ers told one al-Ari­an-led group: ‘We con­sid­er you a part of us and an exten­sion of us and we as a part of you,’ adding that their finan­cial dona­tion of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars was ‘for you as a group, regard­less of the par­ty or façade you use the dona­tion for.’” (Blood from Stones: The Secret Finan­cial Net­work of Ter­ror; by Dou­glas Farah; Broad­way Books [HC] {sub­sidiary of Ran­dom House}; Copy­right 2004 by Dou­glas Farah; ISBN 0–7679-15262–3; p. 159.)

17. Note that among the GOP big­wigs extend­ing their wel­come to al-Ari­an was Karl Rove. “But the al-Ari­an and Safa Group inves­ti­ga­tions lan­guished. In the 2000 ele

ctions al-Ari­an sup­port­ed George W. Bush, urg­ing Mus­lims to vote Repub­li­can as the best hope of end­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against Arab-Amer­i­cans. Al-Ari­an and his fam­i­ly were pho­tographed with a beam­ing Bush and his wife, Lau­ra, dur­ing a Flori­da cam­paign stop. Al-Ari­an liked to boast that he had deliv­ered ‘con­sid­er­ably more’ than the 537 votes that gave Bush his vic­to­ry in Flori­da and allowed him to cap­ture the White House. On June 20, 2001, al-Ari­an was invit­ed to the White House as part of a large del­e­ga­tion of Mus­lims to be briefed by pres­i­den­tial advis­er Karl Rove.” (Idem.)

18. Bush asso­ciate Talat Oth­man, a direc­tor of Norquist’s Islam­ic Insti­tute, went to bat on behalf of the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 2002. “In 2002, dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of George W. Bush, Oth­man again won access to the White House and met with Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Paul O’Neill to dis­cuss U.S. gov­ern­ment raids on Mus­lim char­i­ties that were alleged­ly fund­ing ter­ror.”
(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­n­er [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337‑X; p. 125.)

19. Is it a “coin­ci­dence” that fed­er­al employ­ees in Tam­pa “acci­den­tal­ly” destroyed key paper­work in the al-Ari­an case?! “ . . . In Decem­ber 2003, clerks at a fed­er­al cour­t­house in Tam­pa acci­den­tal­ly destroyed search war­rants in the Al-Ari­an case. The doc­u­ments con­tained affi­davits from fed­er­al agents that sup­port­ed 1995 search­es of Al-Arian’s home and offices and were among thou­sands of doc­u­ments shred­ded some­time between 1998 and 2002. As this book went to press, there were seri­ous ques­tions as to whether the destruc­tion of the doc­u­ments might affect his pros­e­cu­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 208.)

20. The pro­gram notes the sig­nif­i­cant over­laps between the SAAR net­work, the Safa Trust and the Al Taqwa net­work. (For more about the Al Taqwa/SAAR/Safa Trust link, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 382, 415, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 454, 455. For more about the Norquist links to the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 415, 425, 435, 454, 455, 462, 467, 514.) Again, the dis­cov­ery of these links stemmed from the inves­ti­ga­tion into al-Ari­an. “ . . . Oper­a­tion Green Quest was launched in Octo­ber 2001 as part of the Cus­toms Ser­vice ini­tia­tive to track bin Laden’s finan­cial empire. In a small, win­dow­less con­fer­ence room Green Quest agents chart­ed the Byzan­tine rela­tion­ships among the more than one hun­dred Safa net­work enti­ties, a spi­der­web of over­lap­ping names and orga­ni­za­tions. Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors also chart­ed the rela­tion­ship among the Safa net­work enti­ties and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood through the Al Taqwa Man­age­ment empire of Yousef Nada. U.S. offi­cials said they had tracked about $20 mil­lion from Safa enti­ties flow­ing through Nada’s Bank al Taqwa, but said the total could be much high­er.”
(Blood from Stones; pp. 154–155.)

21. More about the links between Al Taqwa, Safa, SAAR and the al-Ari­an/Norquist/Bush milieu: “The ties between Nada and Safa lead­ers were many and long-stand­ing, as were their ties to oth­er Broth­er­hood lead­ers. Two mem­bers of the Safa Group helped set up Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas and sev­er­al Safa lead­ers loaned Nada mon­ey. In 1976, two oth­er men who lat­er became promi­nent in the Safa Group found­ed Nada Inter­na­tion­al, a Broth­er­hood bank in Liecht­en­stein. For a time, Sulaiman Abdul al Rajhi, the SAAR Foun­da­tion founder, worked for Nada at that bank. Nada Inter­na­tion­al was des­ig­nat­ed a ter­ror­ist financier by the Trea­sury Depart­ment after 9/11. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 155.)

22. The broad­cast con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary Paul Wolfowitz’s romance with a Tunisian woman who was raised in Sau­di Ara­bia. Employed by the World Bank, Ms. Riza has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly involved with Iraqi reconstruction—a major source of cor­po­rate and gov­ern­men­tal cor­rup­tion. (It should be not­ed that there is no indi­ca­tion that Ms. Riza is an Islamist.) It is inter­est­ing to note the neo-Nazi right and ele­ments of the left have focused on Wol­fowitz as the embod­i­ment of the “Zion­ist Con­spir­a­cy” that the neo-Cons have alleged­ly per­pe­trat­ed in Wash­ing­ton. Wolfowitz’s romance with Riza is an amus­ing nega­tion of those charges. Wol­fowitz is—in Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opinion—a dog of the first order. He is not, how­ev­er, part of some non-exis­tent “Zion­ist” con­spir­a­cy. “Social Wash­ing­ton has been buzzing for months about the dis­creet romance between Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary Paul Wol­fowitz and Sha­ha Riza, an Arab fem­i­nist and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions advis­er at the World Bank. Now that he’s been nom­i­nat­ed to head the bank and their rela­tion­ship has become pub­lic, some of Riza’s neigh­bors have become irked enough to dish.”
(“What Will the Neigh­bors Say? Wol­fowitz Romance Stirs Gos­sip” by Richard Lei­by; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 3/22/2005; P. C03.)

23. “This being Wash­ing­ton, there’s a polit­i­cal under­cur­rent to the gos­sip: Turns out that some Iraq war foes in the diplo­mat-heavy neigh­bor­hood south of Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty don’t seem to appre­ci­ate that Wol­fowitz reg­u­lar­ly spends the night at Riza’s home. Two res­i­dents told us that Wolfowitz’s guards wait in a car out­side until he departs ear­ly in the morn­ing.” (Idem.)

24. “ ‘They kind of picked the wrong place, if they want to be pri­vate about it. I don’t know if it could be more pub­lic if it were on 16th and K streets,’ said one neigh­bor, who declined to be iden­ti­fied, cit­ing a desire to main­tain cor­dial rela­tions with Riza. ‘It’s an inter­na­tion­al neigh­bor­hood and he’s the icon for a fab­u­lous­ly expen­sive trag­ic war. It’s the one thing we talk about now.’ . . .” (Idem.)

25. “ . . . Riza, an Oxford-edu­cat­ed British cit­i­zen, was born in Tunisia and grew up in Sau­di Ara­bia. She’s known for her exper­tise on women’s rights and has been list­ed on the bank’s Web site as a media con­tact for Iraq recon­struc­tion issues.” (Idem.)

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #515 Update on the GOP/Islamist Connection”

  1. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/norquist-calls-attacks-gop-congressman-disgusting-184647810.html

    Norquist calls attacks from GOP con­gress­man ‘dis­gust­ing’
    By Chris Moody | The Tick­et

    (AP) Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Grover Norquist respond­ed to attacks from Vir­ginia Repub­li­can Rep. Frank Wolf Tues­day, call­ing Wolf’s accu­sa­tions that Norquist was con­nect­ed to ter­ror­ists “dis­gust­ing” and say­ing they were copied from “racist web­sites.”

    Norquist, the pres­i­dent of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, a group that has con­vinced all but six House Repub­li­cans to pledge nev­er to raise tax­es, has been spar­ring with with Wolf for some time. Norquist has refused to sup­port a com­mis­sion that would con­sid­er tax increas­es as a way to decrease the fed­er­al deficit–while Wolf has long sup­port­ed a deficit-reduc­tion plan that would com­bine spend­ing reduc­tions with tax hikes, a pro­pos­al Norquist has fought for decades.

    On the House floor Tues­day, Wolf accused Norquist of being asso­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ist financiers, dis­cussed his con­nec­tion in 2006 to dis­graced lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff and said that Norquist has used his orga­ni­za­tion’s pledge “to advance many oth­er issues that many Amer­i­cans would find inap­pro­pri­ate, and when tak­en as a whole should give peo­ple pause.”

    “Some staffer of his went onto the racist web­sites, you know, dug up stuff from ten years ago,” Norquist said in response to Wolf’s floor speech. “I’m mar­ried to a woman who’s Mus­lim, and it’s sad and it’s dis­gust­ing. It reflects poor­ly on him. I think giv­en his dis­trict, he’s going to spend a lot of time apol­o­giz­ing for get­ting into the gut­ter and anti-Arab and anti-Mus­lim big­otry. I sup­pose this staffer who got this stuff off web­sites did as much chuck­ing as the idiots who put it for­ward.”

    Wolf sub­mit­ted a detailed report to the offi­cial record that out­lined his griev­ances with Norquist.
    “Doc­u­men­ta­tion shows that he has deep ties to sup­port­ers of Hamas and oth­er ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions that are sworn ene­mies of the Unit­ed States and our ally Israel,” Wolf’s sub­mit­ted state­ment read.

    Norquist fired back, call­ing Wolf’s com­ments “just a series of rants.”

    “It’s just sil­ly,” Norquist said. “It’s just a series of rants that mean noth­ing and have no effect on any­thing, and are nei­ther hon­or­able or hon­est.”
    A spokesman for Wolf said the con­gress­man stands by his remarks and intend­ed to send a mes­sage to the mem­bers of his cau­cus who have asso­ci­at­ed them­selves with Norquist.

    “There’s a clear pat­tern there,” Wolf spokesman Dan Scan­dling told The Tick­et. “You need to look at who he’s asso­ci­at­ed with.”

    Posted by R. Wilson | October 4, 2011, 6:33 pm
  2. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/04/gop-rep-frank-wolf-grover-norquist-profits-from-unsavory-people/

    GOP Rep. Frank Wolf: Grover Norquist prof­its from ‘unsa­vory peo­ple’

    By Eric W. Dolan
    Tues­day, Octo­ber 4, 2011

    Repub­li­can Rep. Frank Wolf of Vir­ginia on the House floor Tues­day attacked Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pledge, which has been signed by near­ly every Repub­li­can in the House and Sen­ate.

    “My con­science has com­pelled me to come to the floor today to voice con­cerns I have with the influ­ence Grover Norquist, the pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, has on the polit­i­cal process in Wash­ing­ton,” said Wolf, one of only six Repub­li­cans in the House to have not signed the pledge. “My issue is not with ATR’s goal of keep­ing tax­es low.”

    Those who sign the Tax­pay­er Pro­tec­tion Pledge vow to oppose any and all tax increas­es.

    “My con­cern is with the oth­er indi­vid­u­als, groups, and caus­es with whom Mr. Norquist is asso­ci­at­ed that have noth­ing to do with keep­ing tax­es low,” Wolf con­tin­ued.

    He cit­ed Norquist’s rela­tion­ships with dis­graced lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff and ter­ror­ist financier Sami Al-Ari­an, and his ties to Fan­nie Mae and the Inter­net gam­bling indus­try.

    “Sim­ply put, I believe Mr. Norquist is con­nect­ed with or has prof­it­ed from a num­ber of unsa­vory peo­ple and groups out of the main­stream,” the con­gress­man said.

    “I also believe Mr. Norquist has used the ATR ‘pledge’ as lever­age to advance oth­er issues many Amer­i­cans would find inap­pro­pri­ate, and when tak­en as a whole, should give peo­ple pause.”

    Wolf added that the anti-tax pledge — which demand­ed “ide­o­log­i­cal puri­ty” — had par­a­lyzed Con­gress so much that even dis­cus­sion of tax reform was in grid­lock.

    Posted by R. Wilson | October 4, 2011, 7:11 pm

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