re: "Terrorist group’s supporters throw party in U.S. Congress"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") reported from bizarro-world (which is to say: Capitol Hill).

Money quote(s):

"It's not every day that groups supporting a State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization hold a party in the U.S. Congress, but that's exactly what happened today when the friends of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) threw their Nowruz party in the hearing room of the House Foreign Affairs Committee."

Okay, they didn't bill themselves as the FOMEK (friends of the MEK), but that's essentially who they were. See below.

"(T)he event is sponsored by "Iranian American communities" from around the United States, but the mention of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty is a clear reference to the MEK, a group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization that has about 3,000 members living in the secretive Ashraf compound in Iraq.

The U.N. and the State Department are working to move them to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport, but the MEK is resisting that move, and has enlisted its many supporters in the United States to decry the conditions at the former military base. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani even went so far as to call Camp Liberty a "concentration camp." "

Normally, I have every respect in the world for the former mayor, but in this case he's either a willing dupe or being played.

No shame in being played by the PMOI; they're quite good at it after all.

"(T)he Treasury Department's counterterrorism unit has issued a subpoena to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for records related to his paid advocacy of the MEK, as part of an investigation into the web of organizations that support the terrorist group.

There is a long list of Iranian-American organizations that fund pro-MEK events and pay speakers fees to MEK supporters. Many of these organizations - such as the "Global Initiative for Democracy, whose homepage is entirely devoted to the MEK's concerns and who hosted an MEK conference in January -- seem to have no other function other than to advocate for the MEK, and the actual sources of their money is unclear.

Receiving funding from a terrorist organization or even providing it with "material support," which could include advocacy, is a crime." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Crime is in the eye of the prosecuting (nor non-prosecuting) attorneys, it would seem.

"The campaign by the MEK's supporters to disparage Camp Liberty and lobby for the MEK's removal from the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations has included huge rallies outside the State Department, massive sit-ins at Congressional hearings, and an ongoing vigil outside the State Department's C Street entrance."

The vigil seems to have evaporated of late, just to give an update on that.

"Congressional aides attended the event on Thursday in the hearing room both out of curiosity and hunger for free food. But multiple aides told The Cable the event was bizarre, even by Congressional standards." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA has never worked on Capitol Hill, himself, although he's worked in the vicinity at two different executive departments. Still, at least some the of the "hill rats" got a nice kabob lunch out of this.

3/22

re: "The MEK is the new Code Pink"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") told us about the PMOI's visit to Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom.

Money quote(s):

"About 50 supporters of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) took over the first three rows of the audience at Tuesday morning's hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the Senate Hart Office Building. The hearing was to examine President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year, and featured testimony by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey."

This was in mid-November of last year.

(Sorry about the time it took for me to get to this.)

"(T)he MEK supporters at the Hart building today sat politely in their bright yellow sweatshirts and ponchos, which had slogans printed on them calling for the State Department to take the MEK off of their list of foreign terrorist organizations -- a move that is supposedly under consideration.

We overheard one staffer at the hearing quip, "When your critics allege you are a cult, you probably shouldn't dress like one." "

Good one.

On the other hand, you see tour groups doing the same thing abroad. Maybe they just didn't want to lose anyone?

"The MEK, whose ideology fuses Islam and Marxism, was formed in Iran in 1965. It allied itself with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and fought against the Shah and his Western backers during the Iranian Revolution. After falling out of favor with Khomeini, the group was given shelter in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, who used them to conduct brutal cross-border raids during the Iraq-Iran war.

After the fall of Saddam, the United States helped broker an agreement whereby 3,400 MEK members were confined to a complex in northeast Iraq called Camp Ashraf, protected by the U.S. military. The camp was handed over to the Iraqi government in 2009."

Fusing "Islam and Marxism." Check. Very good. Now: what could possibly go wrong there?

"(F)alling out of favor with Khomeini"? You've got to be kidding me? The PMOI and the Revolutionary government went to war with each other!

"Since 2009, the MEK has conducted a multi-million advocacy and lobbying campaign in Washington, with the help of dozens of senior U.S. officials and lawmakers, many of whom have been paid for their involvement. The list includes Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Sen. Robert Torricelli, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former CIA Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations John Sano, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Gen. Wesley Clark, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, former CIA Director Porter Goss, senior advisor to the Romney campaign Mitchell Reiss, Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, former Sen. Evan Bayh, and many others.

In an August rally outside the State Department, Kennedy declared, "One of the greatest moments was when my uncle, President [John F.] Kennedy, stood in Berlin and uttered the immortal words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,'" Kennedy exclaimed. "Today, I'm honored to repeat my uncle's words, by saying [translated from Farsi] ‘I am an Iranian, I am an Ashrafi.'"

Kennedy admitted he was paid $25,000 to emcee the rally."

CAA would have served as "emcee" for free, but wouldn't have done it in as cheerleaderly a fashion as 25k to a Kennedy will buy you.

11/15

re: "US Policy and the Middle East"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog*") had a recap of some Israeli-Palestianian issues.

Money quote(s):

"Any border between Israel and Palestine is going to be imposed, not "mutually agreed". If Obama does not know know this -- and it's very difficult to believe that he does not -- Secretary Clinton and the Foreign Service certainly do, as does most of Capitol Hill. There is not going to be any mutually agreed border between Palestine and Israel. There is not going to be any contiguous Palestinian state that unites Gaza and the West Bank. (The Camp David Accord proposal included an elevated railway and an elevated freeway between Gaza and Judea.) Israel is not going to give up the settlements, the Golan Heights, or the fortifications in the Jordan River Valley, nor will the IDF give up unmonitored and unrestricted access to the Jordan Valley. Israel does not have the resources to force the settlers to leave the West Bank. The IDF won't do it; the experience in Gaza was too traumatic. Nor could any Israeli government survive an hour after Palestinian police began forcibly removing Jewish settlers from homes around Bethlehem or in Samaria.

This is reality; but assume that somehow it happened and there were "mutually agreed swaps" leading to some kind of border: there remains the question of the refugees who claim a right of return. After the 1948 war, and again after the 1967 war, a number of Arabs fled Israel, in both cases at the encouragement of Arab governments. Most expected to return after the Arab victories. When those victories didn't materialize, they became refugees. How many is controversial, but a half million is a not unreasonable compromise. There are now more than a million who claim refugee status and a right of return to Israel. That includes the surviving original refugees and their lineal descendents including heirs to property to which they have a nearly indisputable title going back to the Turkish government that preceded the British League of Nations Mandate that created Trans-Jordan and Palestine. Some are Christians. I know some of these people. As one put it, "I know that the Germans did terrible things to those people, but I do not know why that gives them the right to my home." The home she describes is in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem corridor, and she grew up in it as a girl. Their family has always been Christian, and they claim descent from the original first generation baptized by the Apostles. Whatever the truth of that claim, they certainly owned that property under the Turks and under the British Mandate government, and it is certainly occupied by European born Jews whose title comes from the Israeli government. No compensation has ever been paid -- not that such compensation would be accepted. "It is not for sale. It has never been for sale."

That story can be multiplied by thousands. How many thousands is not clear. Some of the refugees are descendents of nomads of no fixed address -- much of Palestine in 1948 was undeveloped desert. Some have questionable origins or questionable titles to land in Israel. Discard all those of questionable status and there remain hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees displaced from land in pre-1967 Israel, and who claim a right of return. Add the the others whose status cannot be determined and the number climbs toward a million, perhaps more. While my friends have homes and jobs in Bethlehem (one is a physician married to another Palestinian who is legally resident in Jerusalem although he is not allowed to live there), most of those claiming refugee status live in poverty in refugee camps.

The Arab Israeli wars also produced tens to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, who were forced out of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and other Arab lands. They fled to Israel, where they were absorbed into the Israeli economy and have long since ceased to have any kind of refugee status. That did not happen with the Arab refugees. They were put up in refugee camps and kept there. They were not absorbed into any Arab countries, and most of them remain stateless refugees" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

S&S - AFRICOM pleased with Capitol Hill trip. No talk of budget cuts or restructuring during Gen. Ward’s appearance before House panel.

From my archive of press clippings:

Stars and Stripes

AFRICOM pleased with Capitol Hill trip

No talk of budget cuts or restructuring during Gen. Ward’s appearance before House panel

By John Vandiver, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Sunday, March 29, 2009

Gen. William "Kip" Ward, Commander of the U.S. Africa Command.

STUTTGART, Germany — Gen. William "Kip" Ward couldn’t be blamed if he thought he was headed for a grilling from the congressional subcommittee that controls the purse strings for defense programs.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Following its rollout in 2007, AFRICOM has been engaged in something of a public relations war as it seeks to explain itself to people far and wide."

"Perhaps the lack of a showdown on Capitol Hill is a sign that the new command is making progress on the PR front. A Government Accountability Office report released this month noted that AFRICOM has made strides in its efforts to explain itself in Africa and to other U.S. agencies that feared a further militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Still, skepticism persists about AFRICOM both in Africa and within U.S. diplomatic circles and nongovernmental aid groups, with which the command works in partnership, according to the GAO report. "

&

"An African headquarters was part of the initial plan, announced by President George W. Bush in 2007, but the concept provoked a firestorm of controversy and suspicion in Africa about U.S. intentions on the continent. It didn’t take long for the military to abandon the idea, but suspicions linger."