We rightly celebrate heroism today on the anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11/2001 at the same time as we mourn.

It was a day of pride as well as grief. But it was also a day of failure and shame.

Whose failure? Whose shame?

Brandon J. Weichart writes at American Greatness:

The September 11, 2001 attacks were the result of an unmitigated intelligence failure. No, 9/11 was not an “inside job”, as many conspiracy theorists believe. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network were responsible. But, the 9/11 plot did not happen in a vacuum.

In reality, America’s elephantine national security state had known of bin Laden and his network years before the horrific events of 9/11. Some of the most powerful people in the national security state routinely downplayed and ignored the threat al-Qaeda posed to the United States before 19 hijackers murdered 2,911 people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.

More troubling, though, is the fact that many of the same people who downplayed or ignored the threat of 9/11 and al-Qaeda were also intimately involved in nearly every foreign policy disaster of the last 18 years—from the Iraq War blunder to the inexcusable plot to frame President Donald Trump as a Russian agent.

The enduring failures of the national security state—from its inability to anticipate 9/11 in spite of clear warning signs, to advocating boneheaded Mideast policies—can be plotted in the career paths of individual members of the so-called deep state.

Consider John Brennan. Here is a man who was a self-described Communist when he joined the CIA in the Reagan Administration, at the height of Cold War against the Soviet Union. A supposed expert in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, as well as a fluent Arabic speaker, Brennan eventually rose to the rank of CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (where he may or may not have converted to Islam).

While there, Brennan apparently developed a powerful case of “clientitis” (a term for when U.S. foreign policy experts become so involved in their regions of focus that they start substituting for U.S. national interests those of the countries they are observing).

Brennan routinely ignored calls from his colleagues to pressure his Saudi counterparts to hand over more information on bin Laden and the rising al-Qaeda terrorist network in the 1990s (al-Qaeda was, first and foremost, a political and religious movement consisting of and controlled mostly by Saudi nationals).

Things got so bad with Brennan that when the Clinton Administration considered using force either to kill or capture bin Laden in the 1990s, Brennan led the effort to stop it. Had Clinton followed through with his earlier promises of bringing bin Laden to justice, instead of listening to compromised bureaucrats like Brennan, 9/11 might have been avoided. Of course, it did not help that Clinton’s own CIA director, George Tenet, backed Brennan’s opposition to the proposed bin Laden raid.

When George W. Bush took office, inexplicably he chose to keep Tenet on as the director of central intelligence. Tenet, in turn, kept incompetents like Brennan in place (while either marginalizing or forcing out those few intelligence officials who actually took the al-Qaeda threat seriously, such as Richard Clarke and Michael Scheurer, the original head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit).

Sadly, Brennan would go on to enjoy a long career, even after 9/11. This is as much a failure of the permanent bureaucracy (which is supposedly a meritocracy) as it is of the political establishment for leaving people like Brennan atop the sprawling intelligence community and not demanding answers for how such “wise men” could have missed 9/11. In a bygone era, after enduring a catastrophic professional disaster, men like John Brennan would have been forced to resign.

Instead, Brennan got a promotion. Barack Obama elevated him to CIA director in his second term. Brennan’s short-sightedness and incompetence eventually calcified into outright hostility for the very democratic ideals that he was purportedly defending. For instance, when the American people began questioning the authority that our opaque intelligence services had assumed in the dark days following the 9/11 attacks, Brennan used the potent power of the CIA to spy on members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were charged with investigating reports that detainees in CIA custody may have been subjected to abuse.

Then, as the coup de grace to his otherwise disturbing career, Brennan oversaw one of the greatest abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). He, along with several other fellow travelers in the national security state, concocted a counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

The investigation was based on innuendo and lies that Brennan knowingly (and wantonly) perpetuated, which claimed that Trump and key members of his presidential campaign were aided and abetted by the Kremlin to swing the 2016 presidential election in his favor. Other Obama national security officials, including former Undersecretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas, proudly proclaimed in 2017 that this cabal had “buried” the details of the investigation deep in the federal bureaucracy, so as to prevent Trump from using the power of his office to end the investigation.

Where was this zeal in the 1990s, when it came to an actual threat like al-Qaeda?

The trajectory of Brennan’s career is a perfect snapshot for the growth—and compounding failures—of the U.S. national security state since 9/11. Many of the same people who refused to accept that al-Qaeda was a threat, or who advanced equally disastrous policies in the Middle East, are the same individuals who launched a frightening covert, rolling, administrative coup against a duly elected president. Not only is our deep state painfully incompetent but it is also clearly corrupt.

How might the last 18 years have turned out if ignoramuses like Brennan, who downplayed al-Qaeda’s threat to the United States in the 1990s, and who had refused to pressure our Saudi “allies” into being more forthcoming with information about Osama bin Laden, had been fired for failing to anticipate 9/11? Instead of being fired, though, these bumbling bureaucrats were given more power and money to run roughshod over our democracy in the name of protecting us. They had no clue how to protect us before 9/11—and they were certainly clueless about how to protect us after that terrible day.

When Americans say, “We will never forget 9/11,” they should add: “Or how U.S. intelligence failed us!”

Will the guilty men and women ever be made to pay a price for their betrayal?

At the very least, may their names live in ignominy.

Further to yesterday’s post, The Left’s abuse of children, and our argument that the best way to deal with the flood of illegal aliens crossing into the US over the southern border is to send them straight back to where they came from, here’s an authoritative opinion that the President has the power to do this.

Daniel Horowitz* examined Article II of the Constitution which gives the President control foreign affairs – reiterated as delegated congressional authority under 8 U.S.C. §1182(f) (Sec. 212(f) of the INA) – and writes at Conservative Review:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

There are three important observations to be made here:

1. The criteria for exclusion is not based on “national security concerns” or “terrorism.” It’s anything that, in the determination of the president, would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” That includes public welfare, health concerns, values, attitudes, etc. Thus, in this case, where the surge has already created the worst drug and gang crisis in the history of the country, the president would be justified in invoking this power.
2. Just like the president has the authority to completely shut off immigration, he may impose any restrictions on entry even if he chooses to continue various forms of immigration. Thus, in order to abide by the Geneva Conventions on asylum, the president can condition any asylum claims on applying at a U.S. consulate in Mexico, not at the border – or turn them back immediately.
3. This is not the type of provision in which a court can demand evidence that the condition of “detrimental to the interests of the United States” was met. The delegation of authority was designed as plenary power. The courts have absolutely no authority to second-guess the president’s determination. That is up to Congress and the electorate. As a recent Congressional Research Service report observes, from the House report on the 1952 immigration bill that granted this authority: “The bill vests in the President the authority to suspend the entry of all aliens if he finds that their entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, for such period as he shall deem necessary” (H.R.RPT.1365, 82d Cong.,2d Sess., at 53 (Feb. 14, 1952)).

Section 212(f) has been invoked 43 times since 1981, 19 of which were by President Obama. The one major Supreme Court case covering 212(f) was Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc. (1993), which dealt with a policy established by Bush 41 and Clinton to apprehend Haitians traveling by sea to our shores. The policy was designed to return these Haitians to their home country before they could land in the United States and apply for asylum. In a clear 8-1 decision authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court fully upheld the act and made it clear that there are no limitations on 212(f) authority.

Similarly, the few lower court decisions on this matter clearly affirmed long-standing settled law. Any alien who enters the country without lawful status or against the president’s 212(f) proclamation is considered to be outside our borders and has no right to apply the due process of deportation procedures to his predicament.

In one of the few cases on 212(f) (Encuentro del Canto Popular v. Christopher, 1996), a district judge in California made it clear that not only does the president have the delegated authority from the legislature to cut off visas, but he also has his own powers to conduct foreign affairs:

The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation. When Congress prescribes a procedure concerning the admissibility of aliens, it is not dealing alone with a legislative power. It is implementing an inherent executive power” [930 F. Supp. 1360, 1365 (N.D. Cal. 1996)]. …

In addition to INA 212(f), there is another section — INA 215(a)(1) — that grants the president an almost equal level of authority to regulate entry of all aliens, which includes both immigrant and non-immigrant visas:

Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful–

(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe;

If demanding that all immigrants enter legally or apply for asylum in a safe and controlled environment at a consulate rather than at a border controlled by some of the most dangerous people in the world is not a “reasonable rule”, I’m not sure what is. According to the Congressional Research Service, President Carter used 215(a)(1) authority to suspend immigrant and non-immigrant visas from Iran following the Iran hostage crisis. Bill Clinton also used it to prevent Haitians from landing on our shores. These regulations clearly cover even legal permanent residents; they therefore certainly cover people who have no ties to our country and are seeking entry at our border for the first time.

The point is that nobody ever has a claim to land on our shores without the consent of the president, and the president can block such entry using both his inherent Article II powers and these two sections of the INA. As the Supreme Court said in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, “When the president acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate.”

Also, let us not forget that even if individuals find a way onto our soil, that does not give them any affirmative rights. Constitutional rights on our soil only apply to a person who comes here with consent. That is deeply rooted in social compact theory and settled law. As the court said long ago in United States v. Ju Toy, a person who comes to the country illegally is “to be regarded as if he had stopped at the limit of its jurisdiction, although physically he may be within its boundaries”. 

Trump is reportedly looking for a way to go big on immigration using executive authority. He already has the ultimate authority to shut off the migration completely. And that is all the leverage he needs over Congress.

*Find Daniel Horowitz’s book Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges from Transforming America here.

“Resist not evil”, Christianity teaches. “Forgive.” “Love your enemies.”

Thus does Christianity absolutely repudiate the principle of justice.

One would think that Obama really is a Christian, the way he’s treating the evil despots of Iran.

What does Iran deserve? What would be just?

This is from Front Page, by Daniel Greenfield:

“The worst part for me is that nobody remembers,” Mark Nevells said last year on the anniversary of the Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

A Marine had thrown his body in front of the truck to try stop the vehicle and afterward for five days, Nevells and other Marines had dug through the rubble for the bodies of the men they had served with.

One of the first Marines on the scene heard voices coming from underneath the rubble. “Get us out. Don’t leave us.”

The Marines lost more people that day than at any time since Iwo Jima and the number of Americans murdered that day by a terrorist group was a record that would stand until September 11.

In Washington, the murder of 220 Marines and the Iranian, Ismail Ascari, who drove the truck full of explosives that tore through their barracks, are inconvenient truths and lost memories. And it has always been that way.

Before the attack, the NSA intercepted a message from Iranian intelligence in Tehran to the Iranian ambassador in Damascus ordering “a spectacular action against the United States Marines.”

Mohsen Rafiqdoost, Khomeini’s bodyguard who helped found Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and served as Minister of Revolutionary Guards during the bombing, boasted, “both the TNT and the ideology, which in one blast sent to hell 400 officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marines headquarters, were provided by Iran.”

Today Mohsen is a millionaire and stands to make a huge profit from the flow of goods after Obama’s weakening of sanctions on Iran. He also boasts of being the “father of Iran’s missile program” …

The Marines who died in the bombing were lucky. Another Marine did not die as quickly.

Colonel William R. Higgins was captured by Hezbollah, the terrorist group acting as Iran’s hand in Lebanon, and tortured for months until his body was dumped near a mosque. An autopsy report found that he had been starved and had suffered multiple lethal injuries that could have caused his death. The skin on his face had been partially removed along with his tongue and he had also been castrated.

Fred Hof, a diplomat who had been a friend of the murdered man, said, “I am one of a small handful of Americans who knows the exact manner of Rich’s death. If I were to describe it to you now – which I will not – I can guarantee that a significant number of people in this room would become physically ill.”

“The State Department, not the Defense Department, had the lead. That meant diplomacy, not military might. It meant no retribution, no retaliation, no rescue,” Robin L. Higgins, his wife, wrote.

Colonel Higgins’ wife and daughter sued Iran for the murder and won a $355 million judgment from seized Iranian assets. The court found that, “Although an act of cruel savagery, the mutilation of the Colonel’s body was apparently consistent with the Islamic Guard’s fulfillment of Iranian foreign policy.”

Like Higgins, William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief, was also captured and tortured for months. On video tapes released by his Hezbollah captors, he was incoherent and his mind had been broken by the horrors inflicted on his ravaged body and his soul.

“They had done more than ruin his body,” CIA Director William Casey said. “His eyes made it clear his mind had been played with. It was horrific, medieval and barbarous.”

Imad Mughniyah was reportedly one of Buckley’s main interrogators and Iran passed along messages offering to trade Buckley in exchange for weapons sales. Robert Stethem, a Navy diver, was brutally murdered when Hezbollah terrorists took over TWA flight 847. The Iranian-backed terrorists, one of whom was Imad Mughniyah, beat and kicked him to death.

“They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken,” Uli Derickson, the stewardess, described. “I was sitting only 15 feet away. I couldn’t listen to it. I put my fingers in my ears. I will never forget. I could still hear. They put the mike up to his face so his screams could be heard by the outside world.”

Stethem’s screams, like those of the other American victims of Iran, have yet to be heard in Washington.

After the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut, the terrorist group that took credit for the attack warned, “This is part of the Iranian revolution’s campaign against imperialist targets throughout the world.”

It may be tempting to dismiss all this as ancient history, but the terror never stopped. In 1996, 19 Air Force airmen were killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers with another truck bomb. “The Khobar Towers bombing was planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the judgment in yet another case by victims of terrorism against Iran found.

President Clinton responded to the Iranian act of terror with a conciliatory message to Mohammad Khatami, another newly elected phony reformer playing the part of the President of Iran. “The United States has no hostile intentions towards the Islamic Republic of Iran and seeks good relationships with your government,” Clinton wrote. “In order to lay a sound basis for better relations between our countries, we need a clear commitment from you that you will ensure an end to Iranian involvement in terrorist activity.”

The Iranians rejected the call for peace and Clinton, who had earlier told advisors, “I don’t want any pissant half-measures”, backed down, as he usually did when confronted with Islamic terror.

The 9/11 Commission found evidence that the majority of the “muscle” operatives who would terrorize the crews and passengers had “traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.” After September 11, top Al Qaeda officials fled to Iran as part of its policy of covertly allowing Al Qaeda terrorists to travel across its border without passport stamps. The key figure in the cooperation between Iran and Al Qaeda was once again Imad Mughniyah who met with and influenced Osama bin Laden.

The 1998 indictment of Al Qaeda stated that the terrorist group had “forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with representatives of the government of Iran, and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah, for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

After the Israelis finally took out Mughniyah with a bomb in his headrest, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared, “The pure blood of martyrs like Imad Mugniyah will grow hundreds like him.”

Last week, even while the pro-Iran leftist activists of MSNBC and the Huffington Post were furiously defending Obama’s Iran nuke sellout, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs placed a wreath on Mughniyah’s grave thereby pledging allegiance to everything that the terrorist mastermind stood for.

Even as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani boasted that the nuclear deal meant that the United States and other world powers had “surrendered before the great Iranian nation” and its true ruler, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, described the United States as “Satan” and declared it an enemy, the cloud of wishful thinking still lingers in Foggy Bottom breathed by the career diplomats of the State Department.

Jimmy Carter, whose empowerment of the Ayatollah Khomeini left his hands covered in the blood of Americans murdered by Iranian terror, has come out to praised Obama and Kerry for “doing the right thing” while warning that sanctions on Iran would be a “devastating blow”.

All these horrific acts of terror took place as a result of Jimmy Carter’s appeasement of Iran.

What blood price will be exacted for Obama’s appeasement of Iran?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants, “should be abolished”.

Of course. But who says so now?

No other than their greatest champion through the many years of their corrupt practices – Representative Barney Frank.

It was because Barney Frank defended Fannie and Freddie from investigation and oversight that the subprime mortgage disaster pitched the world into economic crisis.

That is why Barney Frank bears a personal responsibility for the recession and the debt Americans have to bear.

Okay, he’s not the only one to blame, but he’s one of the most guilty, along with Presidents Carter and Clinton, and Senator Chris Dodd.

From our post Moment of decision, Sept 29, 2008:

Jimmy Carter, 1977. The Community Reinvestment Act. Banks must make loans to high-risk borrowers.

Bill Clinton, devotee of multiculturalism, pressed for more home-ownership by those who could not afford it, minorities and in effect even illegal immigrants, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac responded, buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of the bad loans and sellng them on the world markets.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who ran Congress’s banking panels, vigorously and persistently opposed Republican Party efforts to regulate Fannie and Freddie.

From our post Free market not to blame for economic crisis, Oct 4, 2008, quoting Thomas Sowell:

It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years –  including the present year – denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.

From our post Ten most corrupt politicians, December 31, 2009, quoting Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs)… Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Obama blamed Wall Street and the banks for the crisis, and did nothing to stop the real culprits. Instead of shutting down Fannie and Freddie, he made its easier for them to carry on undermining the economy.

From our post Fannie and Freddie: the dirty dance goes on, January 4, 2010, quoting Bruce Bialosky at Townhall:

[Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac], which together own or guarantee over one half of home mortgages, and which had previously been injected with a $111 billion bailout, received an unexpected Christmas present from the Obama Administration: an executive order, issued in the dark of the night … The Treasury announced they were eliminating the $400 billion limit available to these two entities – in essence giving them license to fritter away as much money as they want while the American people (and their grandchildren) pick up the tab …

What seems to be missing is major reform of the lending practices. There’s no evidence that they’ve become more vigilant in their loan procedures, or more attentive to the credit-worthiness of the borrowers. In fact, it seems pretty clear that they have resumed their lending habits of old.

Proportional fault has never been placed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the subprime loan crisis.

Because these entities have been protected by Barney Frank in the House and Christopher Dodd in the Senate, the two lenders have escaped the kind of brutal public scrutiny visited upon banks and other lenders. While bankers have been on the hot seat and skewered by late night comedians, the people who run these behemoths have escaped unfazed.

And now it is Barney Frank, of all people, who want them to be abolished.

Investor’s Business Daily comments today:

After years of dissembling and denial, Rep. Barney Frank has finally come out. He now says bankrupt government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “should be abolished.” Better late than never.

‘There were people in this society who for economic and, frankly, social reasons can’t and shouldn’t be homeowners,” Frank said in an interview with the Fox Business Network and sounding a lot more like an elephant than a donkey. “I think we should, particularly, stop this assumption that you put everybody into homeownership.”

Barney Frank said that?

(What else is happening today? Are pigs flying? Is the Pope denouncing Christianity? Is Obama siding with America?)

After years of blaming heartless Republicans and Wall Street for the crisis caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and their predominantly Democratic supporters in Congress — it’s refreshing to hear a member of the Democratic Party admit his mistakes.

It’s especially true of Frank, who, more than any other elected official, championed the cause of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Indeed, Frank is most responsible for stopping GSE reform in the early 2000s, at a time when such a move might have prevented the financial meltdown. …

In 2000, when Rep. Richard Baker proposed more oversight for the GSEs, Frank called concerns about Fannie and Freddie “overblown,” claiming there was “no federal liability whatsoever.”

In 2002, again, Frank said: “I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems. I regard them as assets.”

In 2003, he repeated himself in opposing reform, saying he did not “regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems.”

Even after a multibillion dollar accounting scandal hit Freddie Mac just a month after those remarks, Frank insisted nothing was wrong. “I do not think we are facing any kind of crisis,” he said.

By 2004, Fannie had its own accounting scandal. Frank again insisted it posed no threat to the U.S. Treasury. …

As late as 2008, after the tide of losses and foreclosures washed away Fannie’s and Freddie’s remaining capital, Frank was adamant that it was all Wall Street’s fault: “The private sector got us into this mess … the government has to get us out of it.”

Of course, he had it exactly backward. We’ve already spent $148 billion of taxpayer money on the two losers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will ultimately cost taxpayers $389 billion to bail them out. Even that may be too little; at least one private estimate put the final toll at $1 trillion. …

We’ve spent a lot of money for Barney Frank’s education in financial reality. Today, he’s basically saying he and his party were wrong all along.

That’s a good start. But how about an apology? Or even a frank admission that his party’s indefatigable support of Fannie and Freddie — which, prodded by the Community Reinvestment Act, created and funded the massive subprime market that later collapsed — was to blame for our multitrillion dollar meltdown and the loss of millions of jobs? …

Let’s get government out of the business of encouraging homeownership, an undertaking at which it has failed miserably.

Now that the idea is dead, let’s bury it once and for all.

In addition to terrorist war against non-Muslim countries, Islam also pursues a campaign of infiltration, gradually Islamizing the institutions.

We call this “soft jihad” or “stealth jihad“, because although the method is different the aim is the same: conquest, and the imposition of sharia law.

An example of how “stealth jihad” is carried out step by step, comes from Sound Vision Islamic Products and Information, via Atlas Shrugs: detailed instructions for Muslim parents on how to introduce Islamic practices into whatever public school their child attends in America.

This is a shortened version. Read the whole disturbing thing here.

ISLAM: HOW TO GET RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM: A SIX-STEP GUIDE

… Whatever Islamic obligation you want accommodated at your child’s school, it must be done in a methodical, clear and proper manner.

Shabbir Mansuri is founding director of the Council on Islamic Education in Fountain Valley, California.

He provides tips and advice on how to get religious accommodation for your child.

Step #1: know the laws about religious freedom

Knowing what laws and regulations govern the issue of religious accommodation is crucial before attempting to reach the right authorities…

In the United States, one of the strongest arguments in favor of seeking religious accommodation for your child is former President Bill Clinton’s 1995 statement of principles addressing the extent to which religious expression and activity are permitted in public school. This was given to every school district in the US. …

Step #2: get the support of a teacher …

Set up a meeting with the principal of the school along with one of [the] teachers at the school who will be very supportive, requesting that [the] son or daughter should be either permitted to [for example] go out to perform Juma prayer at a local Masjid and/or be allowed to perform Juma prayer along with other Muslim students on the school campus …

If the principal refuses to grant the accommodation, step three will be necessary.

Step #3: leave a paper trail …

If you find the meeting is not going anywhere then leave a paper trail, meaning, write letters. …

This  process …  [should not create an impression of] us versus them, but simply the notion of my exercising my constitutional rights in the most respected [respectful] way, with compassionate manners …

Mansuri even suggests inviting the teacher and principal over for dinner as a gesture of goodwill.

Step #4: writing to the supportive teacher

“My first letter would be to my kid’s favorite teacher to ask the person’s advice,” advises Mansuri. “The letter will be to request to meet with teacher, and it will indicate I want to discuss with you my child’s religious needs and I would like to share with you what our president has instructed the teachers and schools to accommodate them.” … teacher)

Following the meeting, a thank you letter to the teacher should be sent. It will also indicate you would like to set up [a] second meeting with the school’s principal, and ask the teacher if s/he would be kind enough to go with you to discuss the topics the two of you talked about in your first meeting …

Step #5: meeting a second time with the principal

Before attending this second meeting with the principal and teacher, “I would also arm myself with the district’s education code along with the state educational code as it relates to the topics that I’m going to discuss,” says Mansuri. …

“While meeting with the teacher and/or principal, I’m not trying to win an argument by telling them how much I know but rather giving them a very clear understanding that while I understand my rights as a parent, I’m simply there to help them accommodate my child’s needs that they are supposed to do anyway,” explains Mansuri.

“Make it a win-win situation, not an us versus them situation, and that in itself is the message of Islam.“ …

Step #6: if necessary, repeat these steps with the school district’s superintendent …

Since the president’s instructions were issued to districts, it is possible superintendents may be more familiar with them. This should mean your son or daughter will get religious accommodation with no further problems.

…. and Osama bin Laden.

It seems that bin Laden is not in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, but in Iran. And it is possible he is being held captive there.

Ken Timmerman tells the story:

A new documentary film premiering at the prestigious Tribeca film festival in New York this week presents stunning new evidence that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is living in Iran, where the Iranian regime is sheltering him. 

The film, “Feathered Cocaine,” began as a simple documentary of the illicit trade in hunting falcons to Middle East desert sheikhs. But as filmmakers Thorkell (Keli) Hardarson and Örn Marino Arnarson delved deeper into their subject, they discovered a dark underworld in which terrorism and falcon smuggling met with astonishing regularity.

In March 2008, the filmmakers ventured into Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics along with Alan Parrot, the head of the Union for the Conservation of Raptors, a conservationist group that seeks to protect wild falcons, to interview a falcon smuggler they code-named “T-2.”

For three days, the team waited in a mountain village while the smuggler kept them under surveillance from afar. Satisfied that they hadn’t been followed, he granted them a 55-minute interview — only if they agreed to disguise his voice and his appearance. …

“T-2” told the filmmakers that he met bin Laden by chance in late November 2004 at a falcon-hunting camp in northeastern Iran.

“I met him five times after 2004,” he said. “The last time we met was in October 2007. Every time, it was in Iran.”  …

“Feathered Cocaine” includes excerpts from the footage with “T-2,” as well as interviews with lawyer John Loftus, former CIA clandestine officer Bob Baer, and others, including this reporter and former Washington Post reporter and terrorism expert Steve Coll.

Loftus revealed that “T-2” provided the filmmakers with the specific frequencies of small transmitters bin Laden had strapped to the backs of his hunting falcons so he could find them if they failed to return to base. Loftus said the CIA could use that information to track bin Laden and capture him, and that he offered it to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and to the heads of other U.S. intelligence agencies at the request of the filmmakers, with no response. 

Last year, they approached “Rewards for Justice,” the State Department office that is offering a $50 million reward for information leading to bin Laden’s capture, but never received any acknowledgement of their information.

Speaking to a packed house after the Tribeca premier on Friday, Parrot was asked to speculate about why “T-2” agreed to talk to the filmmakers, because the details surely would allow bin Laden to guess his identity.

“I believe that bin Laden wanted ‘T-2’ to send a message through us,” Parrot said. “He wanted the world to know that he was in Iran, but that he couldn’t leave.”

In the movie, Parrot said the Iranian regime is giving bin Laden “a long leash” but is holding his family hostage in Tehran in the event bin Laden revealed his relationship to them. “This was confirmed by one of bin Laden’s sons last year,” Parrot said.

Omar bin Laden, who married a British woman and broke with his father before the 9/11 attacks, revealed in December 2009 that seven of his siblings were living in Tehran and seeking to leave the country.

The story of American-born falconer Alan Howell Parrot lies at the center of this extraordinary tale and lends it credibility. Parrot began breeding falcons and selling them to the king of Saudi Arabia and then to the president of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) in the late 1970s, and was a frequent guest at their royal palaces and elaborate hunting camps in the wilds of southern Afghanistan.

In the late 1990s, so was renegade Saudi financier Osama bin Laden. Parrot described the royal hunting camps “al-Qaida’s board room,” because they gave bin Laden the opportunity to spend weeks of quality time with wealthy backers from the U.A.E. and other gulf states.

Parrot alleges that bin Laden’s royal backers transferred “hundreds of millions of dollars” in cash to him during these hunting expeditions, as well as military equipment and off-road vehicles. The movie includes footage of a U.A.E. military C-130 transport plane landing at a makeshift airstrip in western Pakistan to deliver equipment to the hunting camps.

“I see bin Laden as a falcon smuggler,” Parrot states in the film, “and in that capacity I went after him. All the locals in Kandahar hated bin Laden because he stole all the falcons.”

If only that had been his worst crime!

Osama bin Laden could have been eliminated at one of those camps. The CIA was for doing it, but President Clinton decided against it.

After al-Qaida blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa in July 1998, the CIA also began hunting for bin Laden in earnest. Local agents in Afghanistan spotted him at a royal hunting camp near Kandahar in February 1999, according to an account that appeared in the final report of the 9/11 Commission.

CIA Director George Tenet asked the White House for permission to launch a cruise missile strike on the camp on Feb. 8, 1999, but soon ran into interference from an unusual source: Richard Clarke, the top counter-terrorism adviser to President Clinton.

As the 9/11 Commission report concluded, “policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with bin Laden or close by,” so they called off the strike.

On March 7, 1999, Richard Clarke called Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the U.A.E. defense minister, to “express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and bin Laden,” the 9/11 Commission report states.

It is not clear whether Clarke told Mohammed that U.S. intelligence had evidence that U.A.E. officials were with bin Laden in Afghanistan, but after the call, bin Laden and his patrons quickly dispersed and the camps were dismantled.

Clarke claims the CIA approved the tip-off call. However, former CIA official John Mayer III told the commission it was “almost impossible” for the CIA to have approved Clarke’s move.

“When the former bin Laden unit chief found out about Clarke’s call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such a clearance,” the report states. “Imagery confirmed that, less than a week after Clarke’s phone call, the camp was hurriedly dismantled and the site was deserted.”

This article discusses the revelation made by Dick Morris that Bill Clinton himself, not his attorney general Janet Reno, was primarily responsible for the Waco massacre:

It looks like somebody is going to have to update the Waco Siege page on Wikipedia. Apparently the whitewashed history that former President Bill Clinton would like us to believe regarding the 1993 federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is missing important details regarding his own personal involvement.

In response to Bill Clinton’s highly publicized linking of the Tea Party movement to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris disclosed on Monday that it was Clinton himself, and not Attorney General Janet Reno, as Americans have been led to believe for the past 17 years, who called the shots during the 1993 botched invasion that led to the death of seventy-six people.

Speaking on the Hannity program on the Fox News Network, Morris criticized Clinton for his Oklahoma City comments: “Let’s understand what was Timothy McVeigh’s motivation …he himself had said that it was the reaction to the Waco takeover. Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover.”

Morris went on to say, “Clinton in fact was so ashamed about what he did in Waco that he was not going to appoint Janet Reno to a second four-year term. She told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day … ‘If you don’t appoint me I’m going to tell the truth about Waco.’ And that forced Clinton’s hand … It’s never been said (publicly) before.”

For years, Clinton has been criticized for his leadership of the federal government during the Waco crisis, but he has managed to escape personal responsibility for the tragedy. With Morris’s statements, it appears this may no longer be possible. It would seem that Clinton was far more intimately involved with the government response at Waco than previously reported. …

For Clinton to associate such a horrible act of violence with freedom loving [Tea Party] Americans, especially given the fact that he must be fully aware that it was his decisions that led to the Waco catastrophe which in turn inspired Timothy McVeigh, is remarkably shameless.