Category: Obama

Is Obama abandoning the Iraqi refugees?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From the Pro Publica website comes news that Obama has changed our policy towards Iraq in more ways than militarily. Pro Publica describes itself as “an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” “Public interest” is usually a code word for leftist, and this group is funded by the Sandler Foundation, which also funds the Center for American Progress, the leftist think tank that provides ideas to Barack Obama, and other leftist causes. 

Nevertheless, Pro Publica is providing a good service by tracking changes on the White House website, and this piece on changes on the Iraq page reports a change that may or may not be significant:

Previous to the change, the agenda page was more or less a shortened version of its predecessor [3] at the Obama campaign Web site.

Some differences we found interesting:

  • Nearly one-fifth of the original version was devoted to “Preventing Humanitarian Crisis,” promising “at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees and ensure Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary.” The word “humanitarian” is absent from the new version.
  • The new version flatly states: “Iraq’s future is now its own responsibility.”
  • And in the new version, the administration states outright their interest in “preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon” and for “actively seeking a lasting peace between Israel and the Arab world.”

Looking at their page that shows a direct comparison, I see that the Iraqi refugees have not actually been left out.  The old site says this:

President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that America has both a moral obligation and a responsibility for security that demands we confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis — more than five million Iraqis are refugees or are displaced inside their own country. Obama and Biden will form an international working group to address this crisis. They will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary.

In the new version, the refugee policy is buried inside one sentence:

We will work to support Iraqi national elections in 2010, help improve local government, serve as an honest broker for Iraqi leaders as they resolve difficult political issues, increase support for the resettlement of Iraqi refugees, and help strengthen Iraqi institutions and their capacity to protect rule of law, confront corruption, and deliver services.

I present this just as a possibly interesting development, and to show you the cool capability this website has for comparing before-and-after on the White House website. I never believe anything Obama says anyway, so I don’t think it makes any difference what is on his website. He will say and do whatever suits his agenda. So the answer to my question in the headline is, “Who knows?”

Will the real Ken Bacon please stand up!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

On Monday Reuters published an opinion piece by Ken Bacon head of Refugees International in which he lays out a game plan for the Iraqi displaced people.  He mentions resettlement in passing and tells us that the Obama Administration should increase aid to neighboring countries, Syria and Jordan, who have large numbers of Iraqi people still living in their countries.  

Most significantly he says the following in the Op-Ed entitled, “Obama Pledges To Help Millions of Displaced Iraqis Return Home.”

The next challenge is to convince the UN, the U.S. and the government of Iraq to work more closely together to create conditions for safe return. Some 2.6 million Iraqis are displaced within their own country, on top of as many as 2 million refugees. This population is too large to be resettled or absorbed by other countries; the only reasonable solution is for them to return to Iraq. In fact, Iraq needs them back. Many of the refugees are professionals—lawyers, engineers, doctors and teachers—who are needed to help rebuild their own country.

Where have I heard that before?  Right here!  Judy and I have been saying that for months and months.   We have also pointed out in dozens of posts that the Iraqis coming to the US are not faring well.

Look at this photo published in a Finnish newspaper yesterday of the Iraqi refugee headed home to Iraq from Utah.   For the whole story, see Judy’s post here.  Friends had to scrape together the money for his plane ticket home.   Why aren’t the volags, who obviously did not do a good job of resettling this family, required to pay the airfare home for those who want to leave the US?

The caption (in case this link disappears at some point) on the photo of the man weeping and in a wheelchair is:

Tarek Darwish weeps as his son Husham Shammar, 17, wheels him to the vehicle that will take him to the airport for a three-day journey back to Iraq, away from his family, at right, Thursday Feb. 26, 2009 in Murray, Utah. For former Iraqi attorney Darwish, his wife Nahida Mahmoud and their five children, arrived in Utah as refugees craving a new and better life but instead it has been a list of disappointments.

So, if we can believe that Bacon, whose organization just this past November urged Obama to bring 105,500 Iraqis here this fiscal year, has changed his tune, then we will be right in line to cheer him on in this new, more sensible, and more humane approach.

More details emerging about that Inauguration day terror scare

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We told you about this at the time of Obama’s inauguration, but this week the AP has reported more details on how things went down in the situation room at the White House  just as the transition of power from Bush to Obama was occuring.  According to AP, it seems there was much scrambling going on.  Just how serious was the threat from Somali terrorists that some action would go down that day?

As people crowded into the capital for Barack Obama’s inaugural celebration, senior counterterrorism officials huddled in the White House situation room, frantically trying to unravel intelligence about a possible attack on Washington.

By Tuesday afternoon, as Obama took the oath of office, the threat of a terror plot by the Somalia-based al-Shabab organization had been debunked, but the flurry of activity underscored growing worries about this Islamic militant group.

“I think they are a serious problem, and I don’t think that we should be glib and take it lightly,” said Theresa Whelan, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for African Affairs. “Are they the ones that are going to plan the next major terrorist attack in the United States and carry it out? Probably not. But could they provide some of the foot soldiers for it? Yes.”

Only foot soldiers?  Ms. Whelan, you underestimate the Somalis at your peril.

U.S. counterterrorism officials say they detect a disturbing pattern, one that mirrors al-Qaida methods and could spawn homegrown insurgents and suicide bombers in the U.S.

Counterterrorism officials suspect that al-Shabab is recruiting young men from Somali communities in Minnesota and other Midwestern states, luring them back to their home country for terror training and creating cells of fighters who could travel to other countries, including the United States, to launch attacks.

Officials don’t know if Somalis who have left the country are returning.  Homeland Security has the intelligence framework in place to know that and I suspect they do.  I suppose the larger question is, will they tell the public if these men do return?

And, darn,  it just occured to me that since the FBI is in AG Eric Holder’s Justice Department and they are running the investigation in cities with significant Somali populations, are they sharing their information with agencies like the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in Homeland Security?  

U.S. officials aren’t sure who is recruiting for al-Shabab, or whether recruits trained in Somalia have been returning to the United States. That uncertainty increased the concerns about the inaugural weekend intelligence reports. Counterterrorism officials described the time as tense as they faced a threat that appeared to grow in credibility as the hours passed.

Furthermore, Ms Whelan who is quoted extensively here is in yet another department—the Defense Department.  I hope this isn’t evolving into a government terrorist investigation (like how 9/11 happened) where walls between agencies with knowledge of the Somalis in the US are firmly in place.  Indeed yet another agency knows a whole bunch about who is and who isn’t in the US, and that is the US State Department.  I sure hope they have some interagency working groups on the subject.

Whelan, who has been a senior policy adviser on African issues at the Pentagon for 14 years, said the al-Shabab threat is complex and evolving, potentially becoming more serious as al-Qaida or other Islamic ideologues try to make inroads into the Somali communities in the U.S.

“There has been a lot of movement back and forth (to Somalia) for a long time, and that leaves us open to the potential that weaknesses will be exploited by those that have jihadist aims,” she said. “We need to be very careful because we have seen that we are internally vulnerable because of the Somali Diaspora.”

And how did we get this large Somali Diaspora in the US?   Ask the State Department and the volags busy lobbying for more Africans to resettle in your town!

Lets see how much of this story Senate hearings might reveal!

The al-Shabab threat also has attracted attention in Congress, where the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is planning to hold a hearing on the rise of al-Shabab.

Wanting a favor, Ethiopian refugee sends Obama HIV-infected blood

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Fox news reports:

A man from President Obama’s hometown of Chicago has been arrested for allegedly sending Obama and his staff envelopes containing HIV-infected blood, in the hopes of killing or harming them.

It’s only the second time ever that HIV-infected blood has been sent with malicious intent through the U.S. mail system, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said.

In the weeks leading up to Obama’s inauguration, Saad Hussein, an Ethiopian refugee in his late 20s, sent an envelope addressed to “Barack Obama” to offices of the Illinois government in Springfield, Ill., according to court documents. 

The envelope contained a series of curious items, including a letter with reddish stains and an admission ticket for Obama’s election-night celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. Court documents said Hussein, who takes drugs to treat a mental illness, later told FBI agents he is “very sick with HIV” and cut his fingers with a razor so he could bleed on the letter.

I wondered at first why he would want to harm Obama. I thought all foreigners loved Obama. (Except the people of Macedonia, who, I’m told, were the only Europeans to prefer John McCain to Obama.) It turns out Hussein does like Obama. He just wanted something from him: help from the government and tickets to the inauguration. Maybe someone should have told him that in America it is not the custom to send somebody your infected blood if you want a favor.

Hussein, who has never held a job in the three years he’s been in the United States, was arrested last month….[He] is currently being detained in a Chicago correctional facility.  A judge ordered he receive a mental examination to see if he’s fit for trial, but as of two weeks ago the court couldn’t locate a translator to conduct the examination, according to court documents.

Earlier the article said his brother acted as translator during an interview with FBI agents.  But the guy needs more help than anybody is providing.  He’s been here three years and hasn’t had a job. He’s mentally ill. He doesn’t speak English well enough to have a mental exam without a translator.  And he doesn’t keep his mental illness to himself.

This is not the first time law enforcement officials have had to take Hussein into custody. He was arrested by police in 2006 after starting a fire in the middle of a crowded Chicago intersection. When officers arrived on the scene, he was waving the Koran in the air and yelling”Allah Akbar,” or “God is Great” in Arabic. Court documents say he was transported to a hospital, where he called President Bush a terrorist and criticized American foreign policy. He was not formally charged, but he did spend time in the mental health unit of the hospital.

I hardly know what to comment. I imagine he’s not the only refugee with mental problems, considering what most of them have gone through, but we don’t hear much about that aspect of refugee resettlement. What can be done with him? I hope he has some family besides his brother. But getting him English lessons and a job might help orient him a little in reality. 

Note how much the guy seems to resemble members of ANSWER and other radical groups. I’ve always thought they were mentally ill.

CAIR wants AG Holder to go after “Muslim-bashers”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has written to Attorney General Eric (we are a nation of cowards) Holder to ask that he go after Muslim-bashers and presumably shut them up.    I was interested to see that two cases of so-called bashing listed in their letter to Holder are ones we have written about here recently.

You will remember that CAIR was found to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s HolyLand trial which involved terrorist funding.    Their press statement yesterday begins:

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to protect the right of American Muslims to participate fully in the political process and to practice their faith without fear of government intrusion.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued that appeal following a number of recent government-related incidents targeting Islam, American Muslim lobbying efforts, American mosques, and Muslim religious practices.

Two of the cases they cite of “bashing” include the story we reported on two weeks ago when a retired FBI agent visited Shelbyville, TN and briefed local law enforcement about radical Islamic activities in the US.

And, of course the missing Somali youth case in Minnesota, as we reported last week, has brought the crybabies out to complain about FBI profiling.   But, what the heck, since Somalis are missing, who better to ask for help in finding them than their fellow Somalis.

I don’t have enough time today to do this justice, so go read the rest of their letter and learn about all the interesting cases of  supposed ‘Islamophobia’ cited by CAIR.