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Thursday, July 26, 2007

COMPROMISED AT THE TOP

Compromised at the Top

- by Paul & Phillip D. Collins ©, July 9th, 2007

How do you conduct an imperialist campaign abroad and erect a police state domestically? You launch a phony war on terrorism to act as the pretext. How do you prevent the phony war on terrorism from becoming a genuine war on terrorism? You make sure you have a thoroughly compromised individual acting as your Commander in chief. On June 20, 2007, the Bush administration made moves demonstrating that the President is just such a compromised individual. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department hosted a meeting with other intelligence community representatives to discuss the opening of "more formal channels" to the Muslim Brotherhood (Lake, no pagination). This is just the latest in a series of moves made by the administration to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood (known in Arabic as Ikhwan) (no pagination). One of the Brotherhood supporters at the June 20 meeting was Robert Leiken (no pagination). Robert Leiken, a scholar at the Nixon Center, was commissioned by the National Intelligence Council to put together a paper on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood earlier in 2007 (no pagination). According to administration officials, Leiken's paper to the National Intelligence Council drew the attention of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior members of the National Security Council (no pagination).

Other acts of bridge building between the administration and the Brotherhood are worth mentioning. On April 7, 2007, Congressional leaders went to a reception where Muslim Brotherhood representatives were present (no pagination). The National Security Council and the State Department had an indirect meeting with the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2006 through discussions with the National Salvation Front, a new Syrian opposition group (no pagination). Even Iraq's Vice President, Tariq al-Hashemi, is the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's Iraq branch (no pagination). Hashemi was encouraged by George W. Bush to form an alliance that would replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government (Slavin, no pagination). This move was supposedly to counter the influence of Muqtada al-Sadr (no pagination).

By courting the idea of official diplomacy with the Muslim Brotherhood, the President is overtly jumping into bed with the very enemy he claims to be fighting. The Muslim Brotherhood has several close ties to Al-Qaeda. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the September 11 attacks, joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of sixteen and attended the Brotherhood's desert youth camps (Mintz and Farah, no pagination). Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Egyptian branch (no pagination). According to Seymour Hersh, the Brotherhood may have even been involved in the September 11 attacks. Hersh states: "Many of the September 11th hijackers had operated out of cells in Aachen and Hamburg, where Al Qaeda was working with the Brotherhood" (no pagination). Given the connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, one would think that the United States government would be interested in cracking down on the Brotherhood. However, that has not been the case. After September 11, Syria's leader, Bashar Assad:

initiated the delivery of Syrian intelligence to the United States. The Syrians had compiled hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on the men who participated - and others who wanted to participate - in the September 11th attacks. Syria also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. That data began flowing to C.I.A. and F.B.I. operatives. (Hersh, no pagination)

Syria was willing to seek a security relationship with America because of Al Qaeda's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood's Syrian branch (no pagination). Syria felt that it shared a common enemy with the United States in the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria's rivalry with the Muslim Brotherhood began with Bashar's father, Hafez Assad. Seymour Hersh elaborates:

In 1982, after years of increasingly violent terrorist attacks throughout Syria, Hafez Assad ordered a massive military assault on the Muslim Brotherhood in the northern city of Hama. He saw the group as a threat to his control of Syria, and his forces, showing little mercy, killed at least five thousand people, many of them civilians, in a month long battle that left the city in ruins. (No pagination)

According to former CIA operative Robert Baer: "The Syrians know that the Saudis were involved in the financing of the Muslim Brotherhood and they for sure know the names" (no pagination). The Syrians were willing to share the names of the Muslim Brotherhood's members with the United States on the condition that an invasion of Iraq would be avoided (no pagination). America declined the offer and the security relationship with Syria broke down (no pagination).

Instead of confronting the Muslim Brotherhood, the United States government seems to have actually collaborated with them. Former CIA official Graham E. Fuller's words seem to sum up the government's position:

"It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world," said Graham E. Fuller, a former CIA official specializing in the Middle East. "It's something we can work with." Demonizing the Brotherhood "would be foolhardy in the extreme," he warned. (Mintz and Farah, no pagination)

John Mintz and Douglas Farah elaborate on the relationship between the United States government and the Muslim Brotherhood:

For years, State Department and CIA officials have met with Brotherhood activists in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere to track currents within Islamic politics.

"We want to know where they're coming from, to influence them," said Edward P. Djerejian, a former top State Department official who now runs Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

At the same time, host governments in Cairo, Tunis and elsewhere warn that the Brotherhood is dangerous. So do many in U.S. law enforcement. "There were debates all the time about meeting with them," Djerejian said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, pockets in the government -- including officials in State's Near East bureau and diplomats posted overseas -- have quietly advocated that the government reach out to the Brotherhood and its allies. These officials and some in U.S. think tanks hope the Brotherhood can temper its anti-U.S. stance and become a barrier against jihadists worldwide. (No pagination)

Does the government really believe the Brotherhood will abandon its anti-American sentiments and act as a bulwark against jihadists? So far, neither has happened and the United States government still seems to be in a cozy relationship with the Brotherhood. If the Bush administration fully embraces the Brotherhood, that relationship will become formal and official. The unholy alliance between the Bush administration and the very terrorist threat it is supposed to be fighting will be out of the closet and in our faces. And, of course, it will be impossible for Bush to fight with someone who is his ally.

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