Barack Obama Part 20

Seeking to Revive and Strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act

Notwithstanding the economic calamity brought about by the CRA and similar policies, in the latter part of June 2009 the Obama administration sought to strengthen the CRA. Specifically, the administration laid out its position in a Treasury Department white paper titled “Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation,” which called for the creation of a new super-regulator, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, whose “core function” would be, among other things, to promote “rigorous application” of the CRA.

Along the same lines, Obama also supported the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009, which was introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) and 50 other co-sponsors (all Democrats). This bill called for expanding the CRA to include not just banks but also credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders.

In July 2011 it was reported that the Obama Justice Department was again pressuring banks to either increase the number of risky loans they made to minority applicants, or face charges of discrimination. Justice Department prosecutors had already wrested more than $20 million in set-asides from lending institutions fearful of being branded as racist for maintaining common-sense loan standards.

In April 2013 the Washington Post reaported that the Obama administration was pushing banks to make more loans to people with weak credit ratings; that Obama and his economic advisers had concluded that the “housing rebound” was “leaving too many people behind”—most notably, undercapitalized first-time homebuyers and nonwhite minorities with low credit scores. To remedy this situation, the administration instructed banks to rely less on the time-tested, race-neutral lending criteria that historically had served as reliable barometers of credit-worthiness—income, net worth, credit history, etc.   Instead, the administration said that banks should “use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan” because, as Obama's Federal Housing Administration (FHA) commissioner put it, “there are lots of creditworthy borrowers ... all the way down the credit-score spectrum.” And if this policy ultimately caused borrowers to default on their loans, “taxpayer-backed programs”—including those offered by the FHA—would pick up the tab.

THE "FAST & FURIOUS" GUN SCANDAL

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In the fall of 2011, controversy arose over the role that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder may have played in approving “Fast & Furious,” a program which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (ATF)—an agency of the Justice Department—had administered during 2009-10. In that initiative, the ATF sold some 2,500 guns—including 34 sniper rifles with an effective lethal range of approximately 2,000 meters—to “straw purchasers” in the U.S. who agreed to subsequently smuggle the guns into Mexico and put them in the hands of cartel leaders, who supposedly were to be arrested at some subsequent point.

The entire “Fast & Furious” operation ended with only 20 indictments of straw purchasers—all of whom were already familiar to U.S. authorities from the outset. Moreover, the program was linked directly to two weapons found on the scene where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona in December 2010. By the fall of 2011, the weapons that had been transferred as part of “Fast & Furious” had been used in at least 200 murders in Mexico. They also had been identified at 11 additional crime scenes in the United States.

RedState.com offers an incisive analysis of the political motivations underlying Fast & Furious:

... The Obama Administration knew that they had to find a new way to justify restrictions on American gun owners, preferably without having to deal with the legislature.

Enter the “Fast and Furious” program, a plan that would let a bunch of weapons cross the border into Mexico, knowing full well that eventually, some of those guns would be bound to turn up in criminal hands there, perhaps being used in violent confrontations between gangs, or even in shoot-outs with Mexican law enforcement. With the levels of drug and gang violence in Mexico, it was a good bet.

Then, after a number of the tracked guns were used in criminal acts, the plan was that Mexico would make a very loud and vigorous “protest” to the U.S. government, demanding that “something be done” about all those American guns that are “flooding into Mexico” -- giving Obama a talking point in order to ratchet up U.S. gun control, while providing Mexican officials with a convenient scapegoat for their own inability to stop the carnage. Both the American and the Mexican administrations win.

Which brings us to the essence of the strategy behind “Fast and Furious.” Once the “gun problem” involved relations between two sovereign nations, it would then no longer be merely a domestic matter, it would be an international “crisis” -- a matter of foreign policy. And in case you forgot your high school civics, foreign policy is the sole province of the Executive Branch, in other words, the President.

Which means Barak Obama would have had a whole range of options previously unavailable in his war on guns.

The president could push through an international agreement with Mexico, which would naturally involve “measures to control the flow of illegal guns” -- like closing down gun shows, for example. He could also sign on to an even broader “small arms” treaty like the one the U.N. has had simmering on the back burner for several years. Or, he could simply issue a series of  Executive Orders....

But then Agent Terry was killed, placing both the ATF and the Obama Administration in an embarrassing predicament, exposing the fact that the United States government was “holding the door open” for gun runners, who had now killed an American, enraging civilians and law enforcement alike. That was not in the plan....

[O]ne would have to be terminally naive, or simply clueless, to actually believe that an operation of this magnitude, especially one that involved allowing guns to illegally flow into a foreign country, could have been created, let alone implemented, without the direct involvement and approval of both the Attorney General’s office and the White House. That Obama and Holder weren’t even aware of it is simply inconceivable.

Thus we are left with only one inescapable conclusion, and that is that the President of the United States and his Attorney General Eric Holder were complicit in an attempt to fabricate an international crisis in order to advance their anti-gun agenda, and in doing so, have facilitated the deaths of an untold number of innocent victims. Which also means that, in a very real sense, Agent Brian Terry’s blood is on their hands.

(Columnist Ann Coulter offers additional insights into the motivations that underpinned "Fast and Furious," which she characterizes as "the most shockingly vile corruption scandal in the history of the country." To read Coulter's analysis, click here.)

While being questioned under oath during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3, 2011, Holder indicated that he had known nothing about "Fast and Furious" until about April 2011. But soon thereafter, a newly discovered memo (dated July 2010) showed that Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, had already told Holder that straw buyers in the "Fast and Furious" operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels." Other documents also indicated that Holder had begun receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center no later than July 5, 2010. Moreover, former ATF special agent William Newell testified under oath that “the DHS, IRS, DEA, ATF, ICE and the Obama Justice Department were all involved” in the operation.

In 2011 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa) issued a subpoena instructing Holder to turn over all internal Justice Department documents related to the Fast and Furious program -- in particular, documents explaining how DOJ first learned that there were problems with the operation. But Holder refused to comply. By June 2011, the attorney general's delaying tactics were so transparent that Issa began threatening him with contempt citations.

As of late June 2012, DOJ had supplied fewer than 8 percent of the 80,000 documents the congressional investigators sought. (Further, DOJ had blocked 48 of the 70 Justice Department officials who were  involved in Fast and Furious, from testifying.) House Republicans continued to pressure the Attorney General to turn over the remaining documents, but Holder refused.



On June 20, 2012, President Obama granted a request by Holder to exert executive privilege over the documents in question. That same day, the House Committee—having exhausted all other means of obtaining the documents from the Justice Department—voted 23 to 17 (in a vote that was split along party lines) to hold the Attorney General in contempt of Congress for failing to produce the missing documents.



As it was abundantly clear that the Obama administration had no intention of providing the subpoenaed documents, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch in June 2002 filed a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the records that were being withheld from the Oversight Committee by Holder and Obama.

On June 28, 2012, the full House of Representatives voted 255-67 to uphold the criminal contempt charge against Holder. Most Democrats walked out of the vote in a gesture of protest led by the Congressional Black Caucus, but 17 Democrats sided with the majority Republicans. The vote represented the first time a sitting Cabinet member had ever been held in contempt by a chamber of Congress.

Minutes after the criminal contempt vote, the House voted 258-95 (with 21 Democrats joining the Republican majority) to pursue a civil contempt case against Holder in court.

On September 19, 2012, the Justice Department's inspector general issued a report saying there was no evidence that Holder had known about Fast & Furious. Instead, the report blamed a total of 18 DOJ officials, most notably the high-ranking Jason Weinstein (number two in the Justice Department's Criminal Division) and Kenneth Melson (former head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) for "a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgement and management failures."

In July 2014, Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered DOJ to turn over a “Vaughn index” of all Fast and Furious-requested documents. Bates’ ruling was clear: “In the [February 15, 2013] order granting the stay, this court explicitly noted that the DOJ ‘does not seek, and the court will not award, an indefinite stay pending ultimate resolution of the House Committee litigation,’ and  that ‘the benefits of delaying this case might well [become] too attenuated to justify any further delay …Because many of the issues to be resolved in this case do not overlap with the House committee, and because resolving those issues will not risk upsetting the delicate balance of powers in subpoena disputes between the political branches, the Court will require DOJ to produce a Vaughn index here.” Bates also noted that no court has ever “expressly recognized” the executive privilege claims made by Obama preventing these documents from being seen by Congress and the American public.

In August 2014, DOJ was also ordered to turn over a “privilege log,” a.k.a. a list of the documents being withheld. Both orders were supposed to be fulfilled by Oct. 1, 2014. But in a motion filed on September 15, 2004, lawyers from DOJ asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson not to require the transfer of Fast and Furious-related documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, until after her rulings could be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As journalist Arnold Ahlert observed: "If their bid is successful, it could push the appeals process past the Obama administration’s time in office. In short, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is trying to run out the clock."

The Motivation Behind Fast & Furious

RedState.com offers an incisive analysis of the political motivations underlying Fast & Furious:

... The Obama Administration knew that they had to find a new way to justify restrictions on American gun owners, preferably without having to deal with the legislature.

Enter the “Fast and Furious” program, a plan that would let a bunch of weapons cross the border into Mexico, knowing full well that eventually, some of those guns would be bound to turn up in criminal hands there, perhaps being used in violent confrontations between gangs, or even in shoot-outs with Mexican law enforcement. With the levels of drug and gang violence in Mexico, it was a good bet.

Then, after a number of the tracked guns were used in criminal acts, the plan was that Mexico would make a very loud and vigorous “protest” to the U.S. government, demanding that “something be done” about all those American guns that are “flooding into Mexico” -- giving Obama a talking point in order to ratchet up U.S. gun control, while providing Mexican officials with a convenient scapegoat for their own inability to stop the carnage. Both the American and the Mexican administrations win.

Which brings us to the essence of the strategy behind “Fast and Furious.” Once the “gun problem” involved relations between two sovereign nations, it would then no longer be merely a domestic matter, it would be an international “crisis” -- a matter of foreign policy. And in case you forgot your high school civics, foreign policy is the sole province of the Executive Branch, in other words, the President.

Which means Barak Obama would have had a whole range of options previously unavailable in his war on guns.

The president could push through an international agreement with Mexico, which would naturally involve “measures to control the flow of illegal guns” -- like closing down gun shows, for example. He could also sign on to an even broader “small arms” treaty like the one the U.N. has had simmering on the back burner for several years. Or, he could simply issue a series of  Executive Orders....

But then Agent Terry was killed, placing both the ATF and the Obama Administration in an embarrassing predicament, exposing the fact that the United States government was “holding the door open” for gun runners, who had now killed an American, enraging civilians and law enforcement alike. That was not in the plan....

[O]ne would have to be terminally naive, or simply clueless, to actually believe that an operation of this magnitude, especially one that involved allowing guns to illegally flow into a foreign country, could have been created, let alone implemented, without the direct involvement and approval of both the Attorney General’s office and the White House. That Obama and Holder weren’t even aware of it is simply inconceivable.

Thus we are left with only one inescapable conclusion, and that is that the President of the United States and his Attorney General Eric Holder were complicit in an attempt to fabricate an international crisis in order to advance their anti-gun agenda, and in doing so, have facilitated the deaths of an untold number of innocent victims. Which also means that, in a very real sense, Agent Brian Terry’s blood is on their hands.

(Columnist Ann Coulter offers additional insights into the motivations that underpinned "Fast and Furious," which she characterizes as "the most shockingly vile corruption scandal in the history of the country." To read Coulter's analysis, click here.)

While being questioned under oath during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3, 2011, Holder indicated that he had known nothing about Fast & Furious until about April 2011. But soon thereafter, a newly discovered memo (dated July 2010) showed that Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, had already told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast & Furious operation “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.” Other documents also indicated that Holder had begun receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center no later than July 5, 2010. Moreover, former ATF special agent William Newell testified under oath that “the DHS, IRS, DEA, ATF, ICE and the Obama Justice Department were all involved” in the operation.

In 2011 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a subpoena instructing Holder to turn over all internal Justice Department documents related to the Fast & Furious program. As of late June, 2012, the Justice Department had supplied fewer than 8% of the 80,000 documents the congressional investigators sought. (Further, the Justice Department had blocked 48 of the 70 Justice Department officials who were  involved in Fast and Furious, from testifying.) House Republicans continued to pressure the Attorney General to turn over the remaining documents, but Holder refused.

On June 20, 2012, President Obama granted a request by Holder to exert executive privilege over the documents in question. That same day, the House Committee—having exhausted all other means of obtaining the documents from the Justice Department—voted 23 to 17 (in a vote that was split along party lines) to hold the Attorney General in contempt of Congress for failing to produce the missing documents.

On June 28, 2012, the full House of Representatives voted 255-67 to uphold the criminal contempt charge against Holder. The vote represented the first time a U.S. Attorney General had ever been held in contempt by a chamber of Congress. Minutes after the criminal contempt vote, the House voted 258-95 (with 21 Democrats joining the Republican majority) to pursue a civil contempt case against Holder in court.

On September 19, 2012, the Justice Department's own inspector general issued a report saying there was no evidence that Holder had known about Fast & Furious. Instead, the report blamed a total of 18 DOJ officials, most notably the high-ranking Jason Weinstein (number two in the Justice Department's Criminal Division) and Kenneth Melson (former head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) for “a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgement and management failures.” Journalist Joe Klein points out, however, that the inspector general report did not “relieve Holder of responsibility both for the incredible mismanagement under his watch and the obstruction of the investigations that followed.”

OBAMA AND THE IRAQ WAR

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When Barack Obama began his first term as president in January 2009, the U.S. military had overwhelmingly subdued and defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq -- thanks largely to George W. Bush's highly successful "troop surge" of 2007. But Obama's egregious mishandling of America's withdrawal from Iraq turned the U.S. victory into disaster. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer explains:

By 2009, al-Qaeda in Iraq had been not just decimated but humiliated by the American surge and the Anbar Awakening. Here were aggrieved Sunnis, having ferociously fought the Americans who had overthrown 80 years of Sunni hegemony, now reversing allegiance and joining the infidel invader in crushing, indeed extirpating from Iraq, their fellow Sunnis of al-Qaeda.

At the same time, Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki turned the Iraqi army against radical Shiite militias from Basra all the way north to Baghdad.

The result? “A sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.” That’s not Bush congratulating himself. That’s Obama in December 2011 describing the Iraq we were leaving behind. He called it “an extraordinary achievement.”

Which Obama proceeded to throw away. David Petraeus had won the war. Obama’s one task was to conclude a status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to solidify the gains. By Obama’s own admission — in the case he’s now making for a status-of-forces agreement with Afghanistan — such agreements are necessary “because after all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains” achieved by war.

Which is what made his failure to do so in Iraq so disastrous. His excuse was his inability to get immunity for U.S. soldiers. Nonsense. Bush had worked out a compromise in his 2008 SOFA, as we have done with allies everywhere. The real problem was Obama’s reluctance to maintain any significant presence in Iraq.

He offered to leave about 3,000 to 5,000 troops, a ridiculous number. U.S. commanders said they needed nearly 20,000. (We have 28,500 in South Korea and 38,000 in Japan to this day.) Such a minuscule contingent would spend all its time just protecting itself. Iraqis know a nonserious offer when they see one. Why bear the domestic political liability of a continued U.S. presence for a mere token?

Moreover, as historian Max Boot has pointed out, Obama insisted on parliamentary ratification, which the Iraqis explained was not just impossible but unnecessary. So Obama ordered a full withdrawal. And with it disappeared U.S. influence in curbing sectarianism, mediating among factions, and providing both intelligence and tactical advice to Iraqi forces now operating on their own.

The result was predictable. And predicted. Overnight, Iran and its promotion of Shiite supremacy became the dominant influence in Iraq. The day after the U.S. departure, Maliki ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president. He cut off funding for the Sons of Iraq, the Sunnis who had fought with us against al-Qaeda. And subsequently so persecuted and alienated Sunnis that they were ready to welcome back al-Qaeda in Iraq — rebranded in its Syrian refuge as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — as the lesser of two evils. Hence the stunningly swift ISIS capture of so much of Iraq.

OBAMA AND IRAN

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Details of the Obama Administration's Dealings with Iran, see the John Kerry Profile

For details of the Obama Administration's dealings with Iran, particularly as regards negotiations about Iran's nuclear program, see the John Kerry profile.

Iran Is Not “a Serious Threat”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said: “Think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela. These countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.” Obama seemed unaware that a nuclear Iran would permanently shift the Middle East’s balance of power, spark an arms race in the region, and pose an existential threat not only to Israel but also to the United States.

Pledge to Negotiate with Iran

In a January 2009 interview on the Dubai-based television network Al Arabiya, President Obama pledged to negotiate with Iran regarding that nation’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had repeatedly declared that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” and that “the annihilation of the Zionist regime” was imminent.) On the same day as Obama’s interview was aired, an Iranian government spokesman characterized the notion that the Nazis had conducted a Holocaust seven decades earlier as “a big lie.”

Obama invited Iran to “unclench its fist” and meet him at the negotiating table for “unconditional talks.” While noting that “Iran has acted in ways not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region,” he suggested that Tehran’s support for terrorists, though “not helpful,” was largely a problem of the past. This was untrue; Iran was still actively supplying weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, which remained firmly committed to the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews.

Iran nonetheless continued to pursue its unrestrained pursuit of nuclear weaponry. In response, President Obama imposed a set of economic sanctions that exempted all 20 of Iran's major trading partners from compliance.

Obama Says That Iran's Supreme Leader Claims to Be Opposed to Nuclear Weapons for His Country

In a February 9, 2015 joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama said he believed that a nuclear-weapons agreement with Iran was possible for the following reasons:

"The issues now are sufficiently narrowed and sufficiently clarified where we’re at a point where they need to make a decision. We are presenting to them in a unified fashion, the P5+1 supported by a coalition of countries around the world are presenting to them a deal that allows them to have peaceful nuclear power but gives us the absolute assurance that is verifiable that they are not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And if in fact what they claim is true, which is they have no aspiration to get a nuclear weapon, that in fact, according to their Supreme Leader, it would be contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon, if that is true, there should be the possibility of getting a deal. They should be able to get to yes. But we don’t know if that’s going to happen."

OBAMA AND EGYPT

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Obama and the Fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt

In early 2011, as masses of Egyptian protesters forced their longtime president Hosni Mubarak to step down from power, Barack Obama declared that all opposition groups in Egypt should have some representation in the country's next government. He made no mention of the fact that such a development would essentially ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood—Egypt's largest opposition group—would be in a position to steer the new regime toward adopting Sharia Law and increasing its hostility toward the U.S. and Israel.

Throughout the weeks of Egyptian rioting, the Obama administration repeatedly shifted its posture, initially expressing confidence in Mubarak's government, later threatening to withhold U.S. aid to that regime, and finally pressing Mubarak to loosen his grip on power. “We want to see free, fair and credible elections,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on February 2. “The sooner that can happen, the better.”

Obama and his administration took the foregoing positions even though the Muslim Brotherhood had made it explicitly clear that it favored the dissolution of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; even though the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef, had stated that his organization would never recognize Israel's legitimate right to exist; and even though Muhammad Ghannem, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, had told the Iranian news network Al-Alam that "the people [of Egypt] should be prepared for war against Israel."

On February 3, 2011, Israeli lawmaker Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who until recently had been a cabinet minister, criticized President Obama for having called on Mubarak to allow open elections in Egypt, a prospect that undoubtedly would spell the end of Mubarak's long reign—a reign which, despite all its faults, was reliably pro-West and reasonably friendly toward Israel. Stating that Obama was repeating the mistakes of predecessors whose calls for human rights and democracy in the Middle East had backfired by bringing anti-West regimes to power, Ben-Eliezer said: “I don't think the Americans understand yet the disaster they have pushed the Middle East into. If there are elections like the Americans want, I wouldn't be surprised if the Muslim Brotherhood [wins] a majority, it would win half of the seats in parliament. It will be a new Middle East, extremist radical Islam.”

Three decades earlier, President Jimmy Carter had urged another staunch American ally—the Shah of Iran—to loosen his own grip on power, only to see the Shah's autocratic regime replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic. More recently, U.S.-supported elections had strengthened such groups as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, and anti-American radicals in Iran. “Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as 'the president who lost Iran,'” analyst Aluf Benn wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who 'lost' Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled.”

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu similarly warned that “if extremist forces [in Egypt] are allowed to exploit democratic processes to come to power to advance anti-democratic goals—as has happened in Iran and elsewhere—the outcome will be bad for peace and bad for democracy.”

Obama Official Calls the Muslim Brotherhood “Largely Secular”

During a February 10, 2011 House Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said, erroneously: “The term 'Muslim Brotherhood'...is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc.... In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.”

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood is the ideological parent group of both Hamas and al Qaeda. It also seeks to create a worldwide Islamic caliphate governed by strict Sharia Law.

Obama Happily Reports that “We Are Witnessing History Unfold” in Egypt

On February 10, 2011—as Mubarak was being driven from office—President Obama said: “We are following today's events in Egypt very closely. We'll have more to say as this plays out. But what is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold. It's a moment of transformation that's taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change.”

Later, in an address to students at Northern Michigan University, he praised Egypt's youth movement for its role in fomenting the movement for political change. Noting that the Egyptian demonstrators had “turned out in extraordinary numbers representing all ages and all walks of life,” Obama emphasized that it was “a new generation—your generation” that had been “at the forefront” of the activism. “And so, going forward we want those young people, and we want all Egyptians, to know: America will continue to do everything that we can to support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy in Egypt,” he said.

The Muslim Brotherhood Gains Political Control of Egypt

During the campaign for the Egyptian presidency, the eventual winner, Mohammed Morsi, who was a longtime prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, was candid about his preference for Sharia-based governance. On one occasion, for example, Morsi vowed that under his leadership, Egyptian law would be “the Sharia, then the Sharia, and finally, the Sharia.” And in a May 13, 2012 speech, Morsi passionately recited the pledge of the Muslim Brotherhood, which states: “Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.”

In June 2012, Morsi won the first free presidential election in Egyptian history. After being sworn into office on June 30, he announced that Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel would eventually have to be “revise[d]”; he blasted Egypt’s military leaders for having recently dissolved the nation's Islamist-dominated parliament; he asserted that his eagerness to develop closer ties with Iran was “part of my agenda” to “create a strategic balance in the region”; he pledged to seek the release of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal penitentiary for his role in numerous terrorist plots; and he pledged that the new Egyptian constitution would be founded on the Koran and a strict version of Sharia law.

In September 2012, Morsi lectured the United States, saying that in order for the U.S. to repair its relations with the Arab world, America would need to show greater respect for Arab values and traditions.

When a reporter asked Morsi whether Egypt and the U.S. were still allies, he replied that it would depend on the definition of an ally.”

OBAMA AND LIBYA (AND THE SEPTEMBER 11, 2012 TERROR ATTACK)

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Obama Orders Military Intervention in Libya

On March 21, 2011, President Obama, without consulting Congress, authorized the involvement of the U.S. military in imposing a “no-fly zone” over Libya, to prevent President Gaddafi's forces from bombing rebels who were challenging his regime. That same month, Obama signed orders allowing the U.S. to offer its covert support (via secret operations) to the rebels trying to topple the Gaddafi from power.

In a March 28, 2011 speech justifying his decision to use such measures in Libya, Obama cited Gaddafi’s track-record of brutality and his recent declaration that he would “show ‘no mercy’ to his own people.” Added Obama: “We knew that if we waited ... one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.... [W]hen our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”

Obama's decision to intervene militarily in Libya represented a stark departure from the positions he had staked out as an Illinois state senator in 2002, when he criticized President Bush's planned invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Speaking at an anti-war rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002, Obama had said that Saddam's brutality did not constitute sufficient cause to use military force to remove him from power: “What I am opposed to is … the cynical attempt by … weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.... I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history....”

Obama's 2011 decision in Libya also contradicted statements he had made in December 2007, when a Boston Globe interviewer had asked for his opinion regarding the U.S. President's constitutional authority to bomb Iran—if the need to do so should arise—without first seeking authorization from Congress. At that time (2007), Obama said: “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. As commander in chief, the president does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the president would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.”

On March 22, 2011, author and scholar Robert Spencer offered the following analysis of Obama's actions: “As the U.S. fired more than 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya on Saturday, the objective seems clear. Barack Obama declared that … 'we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world.' But he didn’t explain how acting forcibly to remove Muammar Gaddafi would indeed be in America’s interests. And that is a case that is not as easily made as it might appear to be. How could removing Gaddafi, who is undeniably a tyrant and fanatically anti-American, not be in America’s interests? The simple answer is that it is unlikely that he will be succeeded by Thomas Jefferson or John Adams.  The fact that Gaddafi is a reprehensible human being and no friend of the U.S. does not automatically turn his opponents into Thomas Paine.... [Obama] has praised 'the peaceful transition to democracy' that he says is taking place across the Middle East, and yet the countries where uprisings have taken place have no democratic traditions or significant forces calling for the establishment of a secular, Western-style republic. In fact, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Eastern Libya, where the anti-Gaddafi forces are based, is a hotbed of anti-Americanism and jihadist sentiment.”

Events at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya -- Prior to, During, and Before the Deadly 9/11/12 Terrorist Attack

In March 2011, American diplomat Christopher Stevens was stationed in Benghazi as the American liaison to Libya's “opposition” rebels—among whom were many al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists—who were fighting to topple the longstanding regime of President Muammar Qaddafi. Ambassador Stevens' task was to help coordinate covert U.S. assistance to these rebels.

Following Qaddafi's fall from power in the summer of 2011, Ambassador Stevens was tasked with finding and securing the vast caches of powerful armaments which the Libyan dictator had amassed during his long reign. In turn, Stevens facilitated the transfer of these arms to the “opposition” rebels in Syria who were trying to topple yet another Arab dictator—Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As in Libya, the rebels in Syria were likewise known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups. In addition to facilitating arms transfers, Stevens' duties also included the recruitment of Islamic jihadists from Libya and elsewhere in North Africa who were willing to personally go into combat against the Assad regime in Syria. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi served as a headquarters from which all the aforementioned activities could be coordinated with officials and diplomats from such countries as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Throughout 2012, violent jihadist activity became increasingly commonplace in Benghazi and elsewhere throughout Libya and North Africa. At or near the U.S. mission in Benghazi, for instance, there were many acts of terrorism featuring the use of guns, improvised explosive devices, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, and car-bombs, along with explicit threats against Americans issued by known terrorists like al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. As a result of such developments, Ambassador Stevens and others at the U.S. mission in Benghazi repeatedly asked the Obama administration for increased security provisions during 2012, but these requests were denied or ignored.

Then, on the night of September 11, 2012, the U.S. mission in Benghazi was attacked by a large group of heavily armed terrorists. Over the ensuing 7 hours, Americans stationed at the diplomatic mission and at the nearby CIA annex issued 3 urgent requests for military back-up, all of which were denied by the Obama administration. By the time the violence was over, 4 Americans were dead: Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALS, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who fought to drive away the attackers.

The Obama administration immediately and persistently characterized what had occurred in Benghazi not as an act of terrorism, but as a spontaneous, unplanned uprising that happened, coincidentally, to take place on the anniversary of 9/11. Moreover, the administration portrayed the attack as an event that had evolved from what began as a low-level protest against an obscure YouTube video that disparaged Muslims and their faith. In reality, however, within a few hours following the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had already gained more than enough evidence to conclude unequivocally that the attack on the mission in Benghazi was a planned terrorist incident, not a spontaneous act carried out in reaction to a video. Indeed, the video had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack.

Given these realities, it is likely that the Obama administration's post-September 11 actions were aimed at drawing public attention away from a number of highly important facts:

the U.S. mission in Benghazi had never adopted adequate security measures;

the administration had ignored dozens of warning signs about growing Islamic extremism and jihadism in the region over a period of more than 6 months;

the administration, for political reasons, had ignored or denied repeated requests for extra security by American diplomats stationed in Benghazi;

the administration had failed to beef up security even for the anniversary of 9/11, a date of obvious significance to terrorists;

the administration, fully cognizant of what was happening on the ground during the September 11 attacks in Benghazi, nonetheless denied multiple calls for help by Americans who were stationed there;

the administration had been lying when, throughout the presidential election season, it relentlessly advanced the notion that "al Qaeda is on the run" and Islamic terrorism was in decline thanks to President Obama's policies; and perhaps most significantly,

throughout 2011 and 2012 the administration had been lending its assistance to jihadists affiliated with al Qaeda, supposedly the organization that represented the prime focus of Obama's anti-terrorism efforts; moreover, some of those same jihadists had personally fought against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For comprehensive details of the events that occurred before, during, and after the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, click here.

OBAMA AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

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In July 2012, author and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy noted the following items about the Obama Administration's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood:

The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures.

The State Department announced [in November 2011] that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt.

Secretary Clinton personally intervened to reverse a Bush-administration ruling that barred Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood’s founder and son of one of its most influential early leaders, from entering the United States.

The State Department has collaborated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of governments heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, in seeking to restrict American free-speech rights in deference to sharia proscriptions against negative criticism of Islam.

The State Department has excluded Israel, the world’s leading target of terrorism, from its “Global Counterterrorism Forum,” a group that brings the United States together with several Islamist governments, prominently including its co-chair, Turkey — which now finances Hamas and avidly supports the flotillas that seek to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas. At the forum’s kickoff, Secretary Clinton decried various terrorist attacks and groups; but she did not mention Hamas or attacks against Israel — in transparent deference to the Islamist governments, which echo the Brotherhood’s position that Hamas is not a terrorist organization and that attacks against Israel are not terrorism.

The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer $1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in the parliamentary elections.

The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian territories notwithstanding that Gaza is ruled by the terrorist organization Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch.

The State Department and the administration recently hosted a contingent from Egypt’s newly elected parliament that included not only Muslim Brotherhood members but a member of the Islamic Group (Gama’at al Islamia), which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization — so that providing it with material support is a serious federal crime. The State Department has refused to provide Americans with information about the process by which it issued a visa to a member of a designated terrorist organization, about how the members of the Egyptian delegation were selected, or about what security procedures were followed before the delegation was allowed to enter our country.

On a just-completed trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military junta currently governing the country, to surrender power to the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who is a top Brotherhood official.

Huma Abedin, who has close personal and familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, is a close aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In 2011 the Obama administration turned to the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to mediate secret negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Qaradawi's anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are legendary.

Who Is Yusuf al-Qaradawi?

Qaradawi has written: “There is no dialogue between us except by the sword and rifle. We pray to Allah to take this oppressive Jewish, Zionist band of people … do not spare a single one of them … count their numbers and kill them down to the very last one.”

Qaradawi has declared that suicide bombings in Israel “are not in any way included in the framework of prohibited terrorism, even if the victims include some civilians.” This, he explains, is because Israel is “a society of invaders” whose “nature” is “colonialist, occupational, [and] racist.”

In 2004, Qaradawi said: “All of the Americans in Iraq are combatants, there is no difference between civilians and soldiers, and one should fight them … The abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] obligation so as to cause them to leave Iraq immediately.”

Prior to 2005, Qaradawi issued a fatwa (religious edict) permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli military.

During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Qaradawi declared that Muslims were obliged to support the terrorist group Hezbollah in its combat operations against Israel.

In a January 2009 speech that aired on Al Jazeera, Qaradawi said: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.”

At a January 2009 “Gaza Victory Rally” in Qatar, Qaradawi declared: “The only thing that I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah's enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom.”

In an October 2010 interview Qaradawi said that Muslims have both a right and a duty to try to acquire atomic weapons, in compliance with Koranic verses exhorting Muslims “to terrorize thereby the enemy of God and your enemy.”

OBAMA AND JIHAD: APPEASEMENT & DENIAL

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Assistant Attorney General Refuses to Say Whether Justice Department Might Ever Criminalize Speech Against any Religion

In early August 2012, Obama's Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez (of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division) was asked, by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a member of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution: “Will you tell us here today that this Administration's Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?” Perez refused to answer, four separate times.

Breitbart.com provided some context for this: “Last October [2011], at George Washington University, there was a meeting between DOJ officials, including Perez, and Islamist advocates against free speech.... At the meeting, the Islamists lobbied for: cutbacks in U.S. anti-terror training; limits on the power of terrorism investigators; changes in agent training manuals; [and] a legal declaration that criticism of Islam in the United States should be considered racial discrimination. Aziz said that the word 'Muslim' has become 'racialized' and, once American criticism of Islam was silenced, the effect would be to 'take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.' And what was the response from Perez and the DOJ officials? Nothing. That’s right: no objection, no defense of our first amendment right to free speech.”

Obama Bans any Mention of Jihad from Federal Counter-Terrorism Training Materials

In 2011, shortly after hard-Left journalist Spencer Ackerman wrote a series of “exposes” that supposedly exposed “Islamophobia” in government counterterror training, Farhana Khera, executive director of an Islamic organization called Muslim Advocates, wrote a letter (on October 19 of that year) to Barack Obama’s then-Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (and later CIA director) John Brennan. The letter was signed by 57 organizations, including many with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Among these were the Council on American-Islamic Relations; the Islamic Circle of North America; Islamic Relief USA; the Islamic Society of North America; the Muslim American Society; and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

The letter demanded that Obama officials “purge all federal government training materials of biased materials”—that is, materials that they claimed were biased against Islam—and “implement a mandatory re-training program for FBI agents, U.S. Army officers, and all federal, state and local law enforcement who have been subjected to biased training.”

The Obama Administration immediately complied. Dwight C. Holton, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, emphasized that same day that training materials for the FBI would be purged of everything that Islamic supremacists deemed offensive: “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”