Andy McCarthy: The Government Has Been Systematically and Completely Forbidding Intelligence Agents to Look Into Islamic Sentiments Since Before 9/11, And It's Only Gotten Worse Under Obama

Required reading.

There are two important parts of this. The first important part is McCarthy's contradictions of Obama's spin on this man-made disaster. Obama has, once again, caused people to suffer for his ideology, and he has returned to his old habits of lying and blame-shifting.

It is not enough to say that these signs of the Islamist mindset were missed by security and intelligence agencies. Our government chose to miss them.

As a matter of policy, the Department of Homeland Security -- the bureaucratic behemoth created after 9/11 to enhance protection of our country - -avoids looking at, much less scrutinizing, the publicly available social-media commentary of aliens who seek visas to enter the United States, including from Islamic countries that are jihadist strongholds. You read that correctly.

Now that the story of shocking recklessness is out, the administration is scrambling for cover. The policy, officials stammer, was not really written down and was, in any event more like a loose guideline than a real rule. That is simply false.

The guidance was mandatory, and it even ignited a furious intramural clash at DHS.

In the end, Secretary Jeh Johnson personally refused to countermand the guidance, siding with DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (the radicalism of which is on a par with the Justice Department’s infamous Civil Rights Division) over Homeland Security agents who were worried about, you know, security. Press reports suggest that the guidance was “secret”: adopted out of concerns about antagonizing civil-rights activists in the wake of the hysteria over surveillance provoked by Edward Snowden. Alternatively, the Obama administration floats the suggestion that scrutinizing the social-media commentary of visa applicants would be (a) too difficult because people like Malik use pseudonyms and privacy protocols, and (b) too time-consuming because there are millions of applications. Visa applicants are aliens. They have no right to enter the U.S. and no civil rights under the U.S. Constitution. Each of these rationalizations is bogus.

I've quoted a lot, so I will not quote from the next important part.

However, I'll tell you about it.

The Obama Administration has imposed an intelligence doctrine called "Combating Violent Extremism" (CVE). Among the most important parts of this doctrine is the insistence, essentially, that terrorists have a first amendment right to terrorism.

Yes, that's basically what it boils down to. The CVE insists that no intelligence analyst ever "conflate" belief in certain ideas with any kind of a support for terrorism.

The rationale is this: You cannot punish beliefs and statements. You can only punish actions.

Well, that's true (mostly -- if your statement is direct and unambiguous enough, an exhortation to break the law can be criminal).

But it's also irrelevant. Because the CVE directive doesn't just tell agents they cannot prosecute statements or beliefs; it actually bars intelligence agents from asking about statements or beliefs, or from using statements and beliefs in any part of an investigation.

Not just a ban on prosecution for belief in fundamentalist, jihadi Salafist ideology -- which I suppose most would agree with (begrudgingly). But a ban of any analyst even starting an investigation of someone based on such a belief.

Consider the Lincoln Assassination, and assume, hypothetically, the identity of the assassin was not immediately known. Imagine Booth wore a mask, or retreated back into the corridor connecting to the balcony without being spotted, after killing Lincoln.

Now, Booth was a fairly well known Southern partisan who despised the "Northern War of Aggression."

The Obama Doctrine states that not only could Booth not be prosecuted for his secessionist sympathies -- fair enough on that -- but that his known, public support of the Southern cause could not even be inquired into by investigators attempting to figure out who killed Lincoln.

Well, gee fellas, if someone kills the man leading the Union Army during the Civil War, I think it would be a useful investigative aid to know who in Washington DC that week had strong southern sympathies -- don't you?

And while Booth's public support for the South could not itself land him in prison -- I think that support could justify asking him where he was on the night of the premier of Our American Cousin, n'est-ce pas?

Of course, Obama's policy would not apply to Booth, as it does not apply to Christians. The media and the government wasted no time inquiring into Lewis Dean's ideology.

This policy exist for the benefit of one group and one group only -- Muslims and the Islamists that swim among them.

Any sort of right-tilting ideological statements can be used in an investigation; just not any statements regarding an adherence to hardline jihadist Islam.

And who advised the Obama Administration that this was what was necessary to not appear to be "at war with all Muslims"?

Well I know the answer so I won't be coy: Among the groups advising the Obama Administration, and in the forefront of pushing this idea that Islam shall never be asked about in an investigation, is the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist organization Obama connived to hand the country of Egypt over to as part of his would-be alliance wit them.

So, going back to our 1865 analogy: This would be like asking Jefferson Davis what questions would be appropriate to discover Lincoln's Assassin.

Steve Coughlin has a new book out on this -- it is not just scandalous but impeachable, the degree to which the Obama Administration has taken the advice of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers as to how best to investigate terrorists and terrorists sympathizers, without making terrorists and terrorist sympathizers mad.

Like I said, the article is required reading.

posted by Ace at 03:08 PM

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