Should this guy head the CIA?
May 2009: Brennan offered a public apologia for the Obama Administration’s policy of discarding basic, factual terms like ‘radical Islam,’ ‘Islamism,’ and ‘jihad’ in reference to the war being waged against America and its allies by Muslim extremists. Addressing the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Brennan said that “describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism, that the United States is somehow at war against Islam. The reality, of course, is that we have never been and will never be at war with Islam. After all, Islam, like so many faiths, is part of America … Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself of one’s community” (Rowan Scarborough, ‘Obama at odds with Petraeus doctrine on “Islam,”’ Washington Times, July 11, 2010).
In August 2009, Brennan again addressing the CSIS, said the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah, “started out as purely a terrorist organization back in the early ’80s and has evolved significantly over time. And now it has members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization … Hamas, on the other hand … developed an extremist and terrorist element to it that, I think, has unfortunately delegitimized it in the eyes of many.” The Nation contributing editor Robert Dreyfuss also disclosed that, before assuming his current position as President Obama’s top counter-terrorist adviser, Brennan told him that talking to Hamas and Hezbollah is the right thing to do (Robert Dreyfuss, ‘White House Opening to Hezbollah, Hamas?’ The Nation, August 10, 2009).
December 2009: When would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a U.S.-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009, Brennan was criticized because British intelligence authorities had notified their U.S. counterparts of an “Umar Farouk” meeting with al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, and Abdulmutallab’s father had warned of his son’s increasing extremism to CIA officials at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. However, Abdulmutallab was never added to the U.S. no-fly list, nor was his U.S. visa revoked. This led by the House and Senate Intelligence oversight committees to call for Brennan’s resignation (Patrick Poole, ‘The unprecedented power has even Obama administration officials worried,’ PJ Media, June 6, 2012).
February 2010, Brennan defended the policy of treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal by having his rights read to him upon arrest and trying him in civilian court, rather than transferring the would-be bomber to military custody as an enemy combatant, claiming during a speech at New York University’s Law School, that he supported the administration’s highly unpopular move to try al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court (Joel Gerstein, ‘Brennan, unruffled, talks terror at NYU,’ Politico, February 28, 2010). In the same speech, he also referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al-Quds, saying, “In all my travels the city I have come to love most is al-Quds, Jerusalem” (‘Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of Islam,’ Fox News, May 27, 2010).
May 2010, in a speech to the CSIS, Brennan called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used to describe America’s enemies.” He described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces” but said that those plotting attacks on the U.S. should not be described in “religious terms” (‘Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of Islam, Fox News, May 27, 2010).
September 2010: On Brennan’s watch, a top U.S. Hamas official, Kifah Mustafa, was permitted to tour of the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., and the FBI training academy at Quantico. Mustafa had already been named in 2007 and 2008 as an unindicted coconspirator as a registered agent for Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas fund-raising front closed by the Bush administration after the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history. Evidence produced in court showed Mustafa to have participated in a fundraising troupe singing “‘I am a member of Hamas’ as well as other songs glorifying violence and inciting the murder of Jews” (Patrick Poole, ’10 Failures of the U.S. Government on the Domestic Terrorism Threat,’ Center for Security Policy, 2010). Following this, several former top intelligence and defense officials again called for his resignation (‘National Security Hawks Call for Brennan’s Resignation,’ Fox News, September 28, 2010).
May 2012: Brennan was implicated in a serious intelligence breach detailing an ongoing counterterrorism operation led by British and Saudi intelligence agencies that had placed an operative inside the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) organization. The White House leak forced the termination of the operation and the immediate withdrawal of the double agent (‘Exclusive: Did White House “spin” tip a covert op?,’ Reuters, May 18, 2012).With Brennan as director of the CIA, what could go wrong?
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, Islamist, John Brennan
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:44 PM
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