It surprised some, but it’s no surprise here.
From Fox News:
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of refugees who sought shelter in the United States during the early years of the Iraq war are coming under fresh scrutiny from U.S. government security officials for possible links to Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq.
FBI Director Robert Mueller surprised some terrorism experts Thursday when, in response to a question about threats inside the United States, he said the FBI was closely monitoring Al Qaeda’s Iraq-based offshoot. The group has killed thousands in Iraq but had not been viewed as a threat inside the United States.
Mueller said the possible threat rested with “individuals who may have been resettled here in the United States that have had some association with Al Qaeda in Iraq.”
Lawmakers did not follow up on the remark, but a U.S. intelligence official confirmed that multiple agencies were working to determine whether the group posed a domestic threat. A second U.S. official said the focus was primarily on Iraqis who arrived in the early years of the war. Security screening was not as rigorous then as it became in 2007, when the U.S. significantly increased the pace of resettlement.
Unfortunately, sometimes I think the only way the refugee program will come into the national spotlight is when there is some horrible terror attack and we find its perpetrated by some legal immigrant. The mainstream media will gasp and wonder how it escaped them. It escapes them because they are too busy writing puff piece stories about refugees seeing their first snow!
Not really related unless you have been following the kerfuffle surrounding the Conservative Political Action Confab going on in DC as I write this—-about conservative stalwarts and CPAC board members David Keene, Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan being soft on the Muslim Brotherhood (best summary of that controversy is here by Don Feder), but I just came across this post I wrote in 2007 about Keene pushing the Kennedy bill to bring more Iraqis to the US.