Rudi Giuliani Calls for MEK Delisting
The Truth about MEK and Terrorism Tag
August 16, 2011 by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reportedly close to announcing her decision to whether remove the Iranian major opposition, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the Department’s list of terrorist organizations or not. The law says this decision must be based on the anti-Terrorism Statute not politics or policy considerations. The US Congress and field experts agree and call for ending the designation.
Her predecessor’s 1997 decision to blacklist the group was definitely a political one and a total disregard of relevant laws. The move by Madeline Albright, the then Secretary of State, was carefully crafted to send a definitive and meaningful welcome-to-office present to the newly-elected president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, the darling of the phantom “reform” movement crowd in Western capitals.
The other component of this welcome package was the White House intervention to prevent the release of the FBI’s investigations which showed Iran was the main culprit in the 1996 Khobar tower bombing in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 American servicemen. Not a bad package for the first day in office.
In 2006, the Wall Street Journal removed any ambiguity about the nature of Madeline Albright’s decision, noting that “In 1997, the State Department added the MEK to a list of global terrorist organizations as ‘a signal’ of the U.S.’s desire for rapprochement with Tehran’s reformists, says Martin Indyk, who at the time was assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs. President Khatami’s government ‘considered it a pretty big deal,’ Mr. Indyk says.”
Few days later after the 1997 designation, the New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman, re-emphasized the importance of the MEK blacklisting gesture for Tehran. “The U.S. press missed it, but the Iranians won’t…The Iranians will get the point: We’ve just made it illegal for Americans to support the [MEK] — a group dedicated to overthrowing the Iranian Government.”
Fast Forward to 2011.
The debate about the de-designation of the group has again flared with US Congress, field experts, national security figures, and legal experts calling on the Secretary Clinton to de-list the MEK on one side, and the Washington-based Tehran lobby and their network of reporters and bloggers on the other. A potentially healthy debate about war on terrorism and the Rule of law has, regrettably, turned into an anti-delisting campaign to demonize the MEK.
Glancing over commentaries by this desperate anti-MEK crowd – popping up like mushrooms on a rainy day as “MEK experts” – shows they clearly suffer from acute case of ignorance about America’s terrorism laws, requirements, and definitions. They are masters of copy-pasting and regurgitation, but they lack basic skill in unbiased and objective research into the case laws and court record and experts’ views. Maybe they do but “can’t handle the truth.”
So, what is the truth about the MEK? Is this group concerned in terrorism? Does it qualify the statuary requirements to be designated as one? Renowned subject matter experts say: No. Let’s see what they say:
Rudi Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York, New York: “I have investigated terrorism and I have seen first hand, in my city the devastation that terrorism can bring about. [MEK] is not a terrorist organization. This is an organization dedicated to achieving freedom and dignity for its people.”
Louis Freeh, Former Director of the FBI, U.S. District Judge: “With respect to the designation of the MEK… I was not consulted in 1997, when the Department of State had listed the MEK… In 1997, the government of Iran duped the U.S. government by inducing it to list the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization, without consulting the FBI… The delisting has to immediately take place.”
Michael Mukasey, Former Attorney General of the United States: “There was simply no basis in law or in fact for continuing MEK on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist.”
Ambassador Dell Dailey, State Department’s Coordinator For Counterterrorism in 2008, Congressional Hearing: “If you take a snapshot [of MEK’s record] back five years, it appears to be somewhat clean. So we are doing a professional effort to review them.”
Ambassador Dell Dailey, Former Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State, 2011: “It is essential that Secretary Clinton . . . revoke the designation and delist the MEK. It is within her ability to do that right now… Delist the MEK from the foreign terror organization list and let the Iranian citizens decide their own form of government.”
Richard R. Schoeberl, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executive with leadership responsibilities at FBI Headquarters and the National Counterterrorism Center: “Based on my experience as a Unit Chief in the Counterterrorism Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there are ample grounds to conclude that the MEK should be removed from the FTO list.”
Terry Arnold, Former Deputy Director of the State Department’s Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning: “Under the law, the group no longer qualifies as an FTO, because the circumstances that led to its previous listing have sufficiently changed as to merit removal.”
Oliver “Buck” Revell, Former Associate Deputy Director of FBI: “There is no evidence that the group is engaging in terrorism, and having been under the watchful eye of the U.S. military for over five years, there is no evidence that the group retains the capability or intent to commit terrorist acts.”
Prof. Yonah Alexander, Director of Int’l. Center for Terrorism: “[MEK] repudiated violence, ceased all military operations, and voluntarily surrendered its weapons. These actions were substantiated by U.S. intelligence and military bodies…It is amply clear that there is no factual basis for retaining the current FTO status of the [MEK].
Dr. Patrick Clawson, Deputy Director for Research of Washington Institute for Near East Policy: “The State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism contain numerous non-terrorist allegations against [MEK] without offering any indication that the group continues to engage in terrorism.”
Dr. Walid Phares, Director of Future Terrorism at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies: “Tehran’s regime, designated as Terrorist by Washington, considers the MEK as terrorist. This puzzling situation is due to the fact that pro-Iranian pressure groups consider the Mujahidin Khalq [MEK] as a real threat to the regime and thus put significant pressures internationally to keep the designation of the MEK as is.”
There you have it; the views of experts, the real terrorism and national security experts, not of those who just jumped on the anti-MEK band wagon of Tehran lobby, driven by the notorious mullah Heydar Moslehi, head of Iran’s feared Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
In 1997, Madeline Albright disgraced herself by giving in to pressure coming from Tehran’s tyrant rulers and their US-based advocates, and designated the MEK as a terrorist group. Fourteen years later, Secretary Clinton must refrain from yielding to similar pressure from the same bunch. She must de-list. It would be a huge disgrace if she ignores the massive volume of experts’ views, Congressional resolutions, and the court findings and maintain the stigma of terrorism on the MEK.
Navid Dara is a Washington-based analyst of US policy towards Iran.
Tehran’s ‘Butler’ in Iraq
August 16, 2011 by
Uinted Press International
LONDON, Aug. 16 (UPI) — Unimaginable to say the least; recent remarks made by Ambassador Lawrence E. Butler, a top U.S. State Department official, about the status of 3,400 members of an Iranian opposition group taking refuge in Iraq has left him being labeled mockingly as “Tehran’s Butler.”
Outrage quickly spread in political circles, with many quite rightly appalled and in fact bemused that Butler, tasked with ensuring 3,400 members of the Mujahedin e Khalq are kept safe from an Iraqi government loyal to Tehran, took the opportunity in speaking to The New York Times to make disparaging comments about the group.
Not only do Butler’s comments play directly into the hands of the Iranian regime and, in fact, spout the misinformation that Tehran’s leadership spends millions to achieve, it unfortunately reiterates the belief of many that U.S. President Barack Obama remains clueless in ensuring Iraq makes its way to full democracy.
The culmination of what is being called the MEK saga in Iraq will tell us much about whether a future Iraq is gobbled up by Tehran quicksand, falling into the hands of an Iranian regime intent on setting up a satellite state or an Iraq which moves forward both in terms of democracy and economic development which has fallen foul of Iraq’s current corrupt leadership.
Based in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, the MEK is Iran’s principle organized opposition group. At Iran’s behest, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an armed attack on the camp in April leaving 36 residents dead and hundreds wounded.
To further cozy of the mullahs in Iran, Maliki has ordered the camp be shut down and the residents transferred to a prison camp entirely under his control elsewhere in Iraq.
To the residents, going there would be suicide. Butler has supported the plan.
To justify this humanitarian catastrophe-in-the-making, Butler spoke of attacks against U.S. personnel allegedly carried out by the MEK in the 1970s, the exact misinformation and falsities which the Iranian regime espouses to taint the image of the MEK.
His open attack on Iran’s brave democrats came even as evidence was being revealed by U.S. military commanders in Iraq of Tehran’s direct involvement in the recent deaths of a large number of U.S. soldiers. Iran-backed militias were behind the deaths of 12 U.S. soldiers while explosively formed projectiles and improvised rocket-assisted mortars supplied by Tehran were the cause of 14 U.S. deaths.
Butler, however, appeared more interested in regurgitating misinformation about the MEK than understanding the Iranian takeover in his backyard in Iraq, which is leading to numerous U.S. casualties each and every month.
Unfortunately this appears to be the clueless reality of foreign policy under President Obama, the shutting of one’s eyes to the realities in Iraq, hailing the mission as a success and using the plan to withdraw U.S. fighting battalions as a propaganda tool. If President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do not comprehend the realities taking place in Iraq, what is left behind in Iraq could be considerably worse than that found on arrival in 2003.
Now in a strange turn of events, the status of the 3,400 members of the MEK will be the test of President Obama’s morality upon which he ran his presidential campaign.
The members of the MEK have been resident in Camp Ashraf in Iraq for more than 20 years. Having provided the residents with personal guarantees to protect them from threats posed by the Iranian regime, the U.S. authorities handed over control of Camp Ashraf to an Iraqi government whose loyalty to the Iranian regime was undoubted. In the two years that have followed some 50 residents have been killed, having been attacked in two separate military assaults on their homes by Iraqi forces, and more than 1,000 wounded.
Now the man tasked with ensuring more residents are not massacred by an Iraqi government, which has vowed to close the camp by the end of 2011 by any means, has spoken in defense of a proposal to move the residents to a new home inside Iraq under Maliki’s full control.
Once again senior U.S. and European parliamentarians have reacted with shock that Butler is forwarding a plan supported by the Iranian regime. This proposal has done little to shed the Tehran’s Butler image or the clueless nature of Obama’s leadership in Iraq.
It is high time President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton took note of the U.S. responsibilities in relation to Camp Ashraf while waking up to understand the realities in Iraq.
The United States has a clear legal, moral and humanitarian responsibility to protect the Camp Ashraf residents. This can easily be achieved with direct intervention in assisting the facilitation of the United Nations taking over control over the safety and security of the camp.
Once this is achieved and the residents are safe from further attack by an Iraqi regime loyal to Tehran, a European Parliament plan to voluntarily transfer the residents to third-party states where their safety can be guaranteed in the long term can be achieved.
Ambassador Butler and President Obama must see this as the only solution to the MEK saga and rid themselves of what is an embarrassing image.
(David Amess, a Conservative Member of the British Parliament, is a leading member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.)
(United Press International’s “Outside View” commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
New Push For Resistance
August 16, 2011 by
The Washington Times (Embassy Row)
U.S. supporters of unarmed Iranian dissidents in Iraq are mounting a campaign to persuade the State Department to remove the exiles from its terrorist list and protect them from retaliation by pro-Iranian officials in Baghdad.
Prominent Iranian-American professors, doctors, scientists and scholars from Los Angeles to Miami last week appealed to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. They asked Mrs. Clinton to order her subordinates to comply with a year-old federal court ruling that ordered the State Department to justify keeping the Iranian resistance on the terrorist list.
On Monday, two top officials appointed by former President George W. Bush and one named by former President Bill Clinton accused the White House of “turning its back on the Iranian exile group whose network supplies key operational intelligence on the [Iranian] Mullahs’ Islamic nuclear bomb project.”
Allen Gerson, a former counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and now an attorney for the exiles defended his clients in an article on the Huffington Post, which carried an earlier article calling the resistance a terrorist group.
Members of Congress also are urging President Obama to appoint retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, a Democrat and former NATO commander, to serve as an envoy to the Iraqi government to negotiate the fate of 3,400 Iranian dissidents in Camp Ashraf, a compound about 40 miles from Baghdad.
Gen. Clark is among the former U.S. officials who support removing the resistance from the terrorist list.
The State Department has accused the resistance of terrorist acts for killing U.S. officials in the 1970s. The department also says it is preparing a response to the court order. President Clinton added the resistance to the terrorist list in 1997, when he was trying to open talks with the Iranian regime.
U.S. forces disarmed the resistance in 2003 after toppling the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had given the dissidents safe haven to undermine the Iranian regime.
The new campaign is the latest development in a growing effort to take the Iranian resistance off the list. Britain removed the dissidents from its terrorist list in 2008, and the European Union dropped the resistance from its list a year later. In April, French courts dismissed terrorism-related charges against resistance supporters, many of whom live in Paris.
Fifty-eight Iranian-Americans professionals last week appealed in a letter to Mrs. Clinton to remove the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) from the terrorist list.
“The continued designation of the PMOI is unfounded, unjust, inhumane and to the detriment of the Iranian-American community,” they said.
They noted that any U.S. citizen who aided the resistance in any way could face charges of supporting terrorism, and that the Iranian regime uses the U.S. terrorist designation as an excuse to arrest and execute domestic opponents.
They also warned that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is determined to shut the camp this year and move the residents to another location. They fear Mr. Maliki, in his efforts to build relations with Iran, could deport them to Tehran, where they would be executed. Iraqi forces repeatedly have attacked the residents of Camp Ashraf, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.
Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge – both Bush appointees – and former FBI Director Louis Freeh – a Clinton appointee – defended the resistance in an article Monday on FoxNews.com.
They complained that the State Department has “slow-rolled” the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by taking more than a year to meet the court order and “infuriated the Congress.”
Writing in the Huffington Post last week, Mr. Gerson called the charge of terrorism “spurious.” He criticized an earlier article as a “mind-boggling attempt” to defame Mr. Mukasey, Mr. Ridge and Mr. Freeh for defending the resistance.
He said the earlier article “makes the sensational charge that the [resistance] is, indeed, a terrorist organization and that former top U.S. national security officials are willing to prostitute themselves by saying the opposite.”
• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297 or email jmorrison@washington times.com. The column is published on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
My Brother Is Not a Terrorist
August 16, 2011 by
This article was originally published in CampAshraf.org
Born in Iran 2 years following the Islamic Revolution, my brother Ali Reza Hassani was only three years old when my parents fled Iran for Greece and ultimately immigrated to Canada to seek a better life for their children. Upon graduating from high school with honors, a then 17 year-old Ali made a difficult and life changing decision. He could study and go on to medical school at home in Canada or he could dedicate himself to the cause of bringing democracy to a country he remembered very little about.
Highly educated on the plight of youth in Iran and uncomfortably aware of the tragic execution his uncle faced at the innocent age of 27, my brother was determined to help rid his homeland of the theocratic regime abusing its people in any way he could. That is when Ali decided to join the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) a decades-old resistance movement based in Ashraf Iraq, with the sole aim of overthrowing the regime in Tehran in favor of democracy, secular government and gender equality.
What my brother did not know then is that his life and the life of 3400 of his fellow comrades would be used as bargaining chips under the Clinton administration. As part of a goodwill gesture to Tehran, the Clinton administration added the PMOI to the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. The United States naively believed that in doing so they could appease the then President of Iran Khatami who had promised various reforms to the people of Iran and feared the existence of an organized opposition movement, namely, the PMOI.
Fast-forward to nearly 14 years later, the United States has seen their policy of appeasement fail time and time again. Today, Iran poses a perilous threat to international security with its pressing nuclear program and following the 2009 student uprisings the world audience seldom doubts their brutal ways. Moreover, this past month Secretary of Defense Panetta recognized the need to end deadly Iranian interference in Iraq.
The listing of the PMOI went so far as to be deemed unfounded by the U.S Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit in July of 2010 following their de-listing in both the United Kingdom and European Union. How, then, can U.S foreign policy reconcile the assertion that Iran is one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism meanwhile hold that PMOI-who tirelessly oppose Tehran’s radical agenda- are terrorists as well?
The answer is as clear as it seems, they cannot. What remains logically inconsistent is the United States government’s unwillingness to remove the terror-tag unlawfully placed on a group of law-abiding, freedom loving and democracy-espousing individuals like my brother.
The unsubstantiated terrorist label has already cost the lives of nearly 50 unarmed dissidents in Ashraf, Iraq since 2009 and it must not continue. Upon the list’s review this August, I urge Secretary of State Clinton to remove the PMOI granting them the lawful recognition they deserve. Amidst a wave of anti-authoritarian movements sweeping the Middle East now is the time for the U.S to side with the people of Iran and not those who silence them. The very cause to which my brother devoted his life, is in their hands.
The Rule of Law and MEK’s FTO Designation
August 16, 2011 by
By all indications, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is about to release the result of her Department’s court-mandated review of the January 2009 designation of the Iranian opposition MEK, as Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Legal experts agree that the mere observance of the Law, subtle suggestions of the US Court of Appeals, and the statuary requirements, would lead her to one and only one outcome: End the MEK’s designation. This could very well explain the State Department’s delaying tactics to announce the review.
It also explains the impetus behind the frantic outburst of the anti-MEK Tehran-instigated propaganda campaign in recent weeks. The main goal of this campaign, orchestrated by well-known Tehran lobbies in Washington and implemented by a web of similarly well-known advocates of the status quo in Iran is to shift the focus of Sec. Clinton’s review from a “Rule of Law” foundation and prevent the de-designation.
The truth – very hard to swallow by this anti-MEK crowd – is that the Sate Department does not have even an iota of credible evidence satisfying the statuary requirements. Members of Congress are at awe why the State Department does not remove the group from its blacklist or why it is so reluctant to even share its credible evidence – if it has any – with the Congress.
Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation and Trade noted last year when he chaired the Subcommittee that:
“I have been an advocate year after year for having the State Department explain what are the criteria under which the MEK has been put on the terrorist list … I have difficulty understanding what has the MEK done, anything remotely, in recent times, that causes the MEK to be on that list. I do know there is no entity more feared, more hated by the mullahs who run Iran than the MEK, which is perhaps the finest compliment that could be paid to that organization.”
Later in 2010, he remarked that:
“Our focus is on: Should the MEK be on the foreign terrorist list? The European Union says no, the US Court of Appeals says that the State Department failed to do its job, and sent them back to do their job… I asked the State Department for a classified briefing on this issue. Any of you who have gotten to know foreign policy from a congressional standpoint will understand when I say, “sometimes you learn more from the classified briefings they won’t give you than from the classified briefings they do give you.”
“The refusal to provide this not just to me, but to the relevant subcommittee was received just yesterday. I therefore asked the intelligence community to provide such a briefing… I’ve been pressing for this briefing for over a month and the variety of different excuses that I got shows that creativity is alive and well in the State Department…
Rep. Sherman, well-known for his anti-terrorism credentials and expertise, offers a very illuminating explanation for the State Department’s foot-dragging. “What it comes down to is that the State Department doesn’t know which way they want to slant the facts before they present it to us because they haven’t figured out what they’re going to do.”
Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) has also echoed similar dismay about the non-existence of terrorism-related evidence in the “classified” documents of the State Department. Late last year he told a Congressional briefing that:
“Why has the State Department refused to brief the Subcommittee chaired by Mr. Sherman on the delisting of the MEK?… I want to know what information the State Department has that it’s so relentless on your part that they should remain on this list. Do you know that information?”
The Texas lawmaker, after months of delay, eventually received the “classified” information and in June told the Houston Chronicle that “I have not been convinced they should remain on the list,” adding that he has received both classified and non-classified briefings from the State Department and has yet to see evidence that marks the group as a terrorists. “Iran wants them on the terrorist list. That should be a red flag,” Rep. Poe added.
Many respectable and die-hard patriots in America’s national security circles, from four-star generals to former heads of Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have gone on the record to say the MEK is not a terrorist entity, far from it; it is an ally and a regional partner for fight on terrorism and the Islamic fundamentalism.
Against this backdrop, Secretary Clinton must de-designate the MEK. To maintain the designation would constitute a travesty of justice and the Rule of law and would be viewed as a clear sign of submission to the pressure brought upon by the anti-MEK Tehran-apologists and their anti-Iranian sinister campaign against the MEK.
Time for America to drop ‘terror’ tag on Iranian group
August 15, 2011 by
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Sir, As an Iranian woman who has lost her husband for freedom and democracy in Iran and as the director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, I was disappointed to see the article “Iran exile group should stay on terror list” (August 11) and the publication of an antagonistic statement by 37 so-called experts on Iran policy against the removal of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran from the US foreign terrorist organisations list (FT.com, August 10).
The reason the PMOI was put on the terror lists has always been crystal clear. The west did it to appease the Iranian regime and in return Tehran would stop nuclear enrichment and stop sponsoring real terrorists such as Hamas and Hizbollah. Jack Straw who first placed the PMOI on the UK terror list has stated on various occasions that he did so when home secretary in return for Tehran stopping its support for terrorist groups. He also told the BBC in February 2006 that he did what was agreed but the Iranians never kept their promises!
The unfair terror tag was later removed both in the UK and the European Union by order of the courts. It is time for the US to do the same and side with millions of Iranians and their organised resistance movement led by the PMOI for democratic regime change in Iran.
Laila Jazayeri,
London W4, UK
American Credibility at Risk On Foreign Policy Front, Too
August 15, 2011 by
FoxNews.com
The Obama administration’s economic policy has suffered some recent highly publicized disasters. But the setbacks of “Obamanomics” should not obscure the administration’s equally critical foreign policy missteps toward Iran and Iraq that threaten to downgrade American credibility in yet another arena.
In particular, the White House seems to be turning its back on the Iranian exile group whose network supplies key operational intelligence on the Mullahs’ Islamic nuclear bomb project. This group – called the MEK – has pointed out the concealed sites of Iran’s nuclear enrichment that were otherwise unknown to the United States.
Despite this, in a panicked haste to exit from Iraq, the Obama White House is abandoning the 3,400 members of the MEK – including young men, women and children – who are living in exile in a camp near Baghdad and intends to leave them to the indelicate mercy of Iraq’s new Shia prime minister, the Mullahs’ good friend Nouri al-Maliki. This is more than a local issue: the people of “Camp Ashraf,” as it is called, have relatives in the United States and Europe who care about their fate.
Until now, the MEK dissidents have lived in the Iraqi camp, 40 miles from Baghdad, with a guarantee of Geneva Convention status as “protected persons” – a promise made in writing by a United States general in 2004 after the MEK disarmed. But now, abandoning America’s solemn promise and undercutting the West’s fight against the Iranian nuclear breakout, the White House is acquiescing in the plans of Maliki to tilt towards Iran by sending the MEK dissidents to face death in the Iraqi desert.
The State Department recently sent a functionary to the camp whose diplomatic skills would have qualified him to sell beer for Al Capone in Prohibition-era Chicago. Accompanied by a New York Times reporter (who was given exclusive news access to the one-sided meeting by agreeing to pose as a member of the diplomatic staff), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lawrence Butler told the beleaguered Iranian exiles that “you only have me” and callously proposed that they should agree to be scattered in small groups around Iraq where they can be killed quietly and out of sight. This, U.S. ambassador James Jeffrey has helpfully added, would be a “a bit safer” than remaining in the Ashraf camp.
Only in the most macabre sense is that true. Rather than use American economic and diplomatic muscle with Baghdad, the Obama White House has meekly surrendered to Maliki’s ambitions. Maliki’s troops, trained by the United States and using American weapons and vehicles, recently made two deadly assaults against the unarmed residents of Camp Ashraf – the first in July 2009, and the most recent attack in March 2011, killing 34 and wounding hundreds of others, shooting them and running them down with armored vehicles.
The intended humiliation of U.S. power was evident; both attacks occurred during official visits to Iraq by then Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who murmured only mild words of concern. Attempts by members of Congress and the European Parliament to visit the camp after the attacks were defiantly rebuffed by Maliki.
The Obama administration is, of course, eager to complete a formal agreement with Prime Minister Maliki concerning the status of American troops remaining in Iraq after 2011. But the rush to please Maliki undermines the credibility of our promises around the world and is an affront to the sacrifices of countless U.S. service men and women who died for a free Iraq.
At the same time, as if to frame the stage for an imminent Srebrenica-styled slaughter, the Obama administration has failed for over a year to answer the challenge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The federal judges said that there was no evidence to sustain the State Department claim that the MEK should be listed as a “terrorist” group when the group has foresworn the use of violence. Rather than ending this inappropriate listing – as our European allies have – the State Department has slow-rolled the Court and infuriated the Congress.
The administration’s weak-kneed accommodation to the wishes of Prime Minister Maliki has little to show for it. Unique among all his neighbors, and in defiance of U.S. policy, Prime Minister Maliki has also openly supported Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the slaughter of pro-democracy dissidents in Syrian towns such as Hama and Latakia. Malaki’s axis with Iran will help to destabilize the whole region.
The MEK, on the other hand, enjoys bipartisan support in both the House and Senate as a group that shares a key objective of American foreign policy – namely, changing Iranian nuclear policy and dislodging the radical rule of the Mullahs. As a matter of supporting their own American constituents who are heart-sick at the impending slaughter of family members at the camp, the Congress has also pressed an unresponsive administration to make sure that the Ashraf residents are not led like lambs to the butchery.
In evaluating the bona fides of the MEK movement and its public commitment to a democratic and liberal Iran, the American people and the Congress have never had the benefit of hearing from its charismatic Paris-based leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. She has not been permitted a visa to visit the United States. But perhaps the time has come for a first-ever Congressional “Skype” hearing – allowing Senators and Representatives to put directly the questions that administration skeptics have floated for an answer by this intelligent woman who has endorsed a liberal democratic future for Iraq.
The recent decision by Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s credit rating and subsequent stock market plunge are symptoms of a new loss of confidence in America’s ability to live up to its commitments – an assessment in no small measure caused by congressional rancor and stalemate. American credibility is equally at stake on the foreign policy front as the U.S. military mission in Iraq draws to a close.
But this time, Congress is united about what needs to be done. Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems not to be listening – and the result may be the further downgrading of American political credibility, with deadly and tragic consequences for the Ashraf residents and their U.S. families who relied on our word.
Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge, served as Attorney General of the United States from 2007-2009. Tom Ridge, a former governor of the state of Pennsylvania, served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003-2005, and is now president of Ridge Global. Louis Freeh, a former federal judge, served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1993-2001, and is now senior managing partner of Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan.
“All the News That’s Not Fit to Print”: USCCAR Condemns New York Times’ Malicious Hit-Piece
August 15, 2011 by
PRNewswire
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR) deplores Elizabeth Rubin’s unfounded and malicious assertions against the main Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) and its 3400 members in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The piece appeared in the Review and Outlook section of the Times on August 14.
The latest in the venomous anti-MEK smear campaign by the pro-Tehran lobby inside the Beltway, the piece represents a desperate, albeit futile, attempt to block, in contravention of the Rule of law and the statutory requirements, the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).
At a time when Camp Ashraf residents are facing the specter of another slaughter at the hands of Nuri Al-Maliki, Ms. Rubin has provided fodder for Tehran and its Iraqi proxies to again attack and murder our loved ones there.
For a person who admittedly spent only a few hours in Camp Ashraf back in early 2003, and opted to use the notorious agents of Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) as her source, Rubin’s shedding of crocodile tears for the residents of Camp Ashraf appears disingenuous given the absence of a mere criticism, let alone condemnation, of two deadly attacks on defenseless residents in July 2009 and April 2011, which Chairman John Kerry of Senate Foreign Relations Committee described as a massacre.
By recycling the made-in-Tehran collection of lies and stale allegations, Rubin regurgitates what has been debunked repeatedly by the highest courts in the United Kingdom, the European Union and France. More significantly, U.S. military officers, who have collectively spent years in Camp Ashraf with MEK members, have gone on the record in U.S. Congress to refute these baseless allegations.
Rubin’s August 14 diatribe was preceded three weeks earlier by another New York Times hit-piece, which also demonized the leadership and rank-and-file at Camp Ashraf. It blamed our loved ones for not kowtowing to a plan of relocation to remote Iraqi detention camps – as insisted by a U.S. embassy official – which is tantamount to providing the Maliki government a license to murder. Members of U.S. Congress and thousands of their European counterparts as well as international human rights organizations have vehemently condemned this proposal.
In breach of basic journalistic and professional standards and principles, the author of that story, Tim Arango, sat in on a confidential and sensitive discussion about the future of Camp Ashraf residents, falsely introducing himself as an Embassy staff member. Instead of publishing even a single one of the many letters to the editor by the MEK counsel, Camp Ashraf family members and Iranian Americans, The Times’ editors published Rubin’s piece without bothering to fact and source check the article.
This unethical and unprincipled modus operandi by a newspaper which boasts of printing “all the news that is fit to print,” only serves to pave the way for another massacre at Camp Ashraf.
SOURCE: U.S. Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR)