Sleepers awake

Over five years after 9/11, it is inexcusable for the Bush administration to be treating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a bona fide civil rights group. It isn’t. Its origins lie in a shuttered Hamas front group. It has been a fundraiser for the shuttered terrorist front group known as the Global Relief Foundation. Up until the guilty plea of Sami al-Arian to terror-related charges, CAIR’s chairman was an enthusiastic supporter of al-Arian, the undisputed North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 1994 CAIR’s executuve director expressed support for Hamas as opposed to the PLO because the PLO’s willingness to feign acceptance of Israel’s right to exist marked it as too moderate for his tastes. He prefers Hamas’s frankly exterminationist approach to Israel and as recently as last week apparently refused to condemn Hamas. He was as a matter of fact an officer of the Hamas front group that was CAIR’s immediate forebear. For those with short attention spans, the case against CAIR has been formulated in something close to irrefutable fashion in a single essay by Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha: “Islamists fooling the establishment.”
Over the weekend I wrote here about CAIR in connection with the Transportation Security Administration’s special Hajj sensitivity training courtesy of CAIR. Today Andrew McCarthy explains that matters are even worse than we thought; the Bush administration has moved beyond sleepwalking to active connivance with CAIR: “Singing CAIR’s tune, on your dime.” McCarthy has transmuted righteous anger into a devastating column.
To comment on this post, go here.