It is so GOOD to hear a Muslim say this...and he is RIGHT to come forward, as frequently and dedicatedly as he has, to tell the story of the clinton refusal to take bin laden when it would have been so much more simple....now we are in a WAR trying to find him because of what laden did due to clinton's refusal to nab him. Outrageous! WHY ISN't THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA PICKING UP ON THIS OUTRAGEOUS TIMELINE OF EVENTS REGARDING BIN LADEN AND THE SUDENESE????????????????????????
SUBJECT - "EXTREMIST MOVEMENTS: THREAT TO THE US"
…In an effort to combat the destructive forces being bred in these Iranian and Saudi-financed Madrassa schools, myself and concerned Americans with Pakistani roots have been building rural schools in Pakistan for the past five years through a private US-based philanthropy.You may be surprised to know that $1,000 builds and operates a normal rural school teaching up to 30 students everything from the Koran to science and math to Urdu and English for a whole year. And, it only takes five years to make a child literate in our programs. But no matter how much we do, our program is only a microcosm of what needs to be done on a much larger scale throughout the region to combat the cancerous spread of extremism.
The young boys and girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan who face a life illiteracy and religious zealotry have not chosen this path voluntarily. To sit idly by and do nothing not only dooms them, in the end I fear it will doom us as well.Mr. Chairman, I would like to also briefly address the issue of developing intelligence liaisons with countries who support extremist and terrorist organizations that are directly at odds with American interests.
I offer as an example my 1996-97 efforts to effect a reconciliation between the militant Islamic government of the Sudan and U.S. authorities through intel-to-intel contacts before the U.S. bombed Sudan's Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998 under suspicions it was producing chemical weapons precursors.
In April 1997, I hand carried an offer by Sudanese strongman Omar Hassan El Bashir to U.S. authorities, including Congressional leaders, the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, in which Bashir stated, "We extend an offer to the FBI's counterterrorism units and any other official delegations...to come to the Sudan and work with our External Intelligence Department in order to assess the data in our possession and help us counter the forces your government and ours seek to contain."
Jim Risen's October 27, 1999 expose in the New York Times is must reading on the internal divisions that occurred in our national security apparatus as well as distasteful efforts by senior administration officials to coordinate a cover-up of the dissension that surrounded the decision to bomb Al Shifa.
What would have happened, following Mr. Risen's timeline, if US authorities had responded to Bashir's April counterterrorism offer and sent the FBI into the Sudan for a good look around before US suspicions arose later in the summer that nerve gas agents were being developed at Al Shifa? The offer was unconditional.On two occasions, I met privately with Sudan's intelligence chief to explore the modus operandi for such interactions.
The reasoning behind my approach to Bashir was simple: if the Sudan was genuinely not harboring terrorists or fomenting radicalism after its 1996 decision to expel Osama bin Laden, the alleged Saudi mastermind of the embassy bombings, the only way to prove Khartoum' s complicity or innocence was to invite America' s premier institutions fighting global terrorism into the country for an unobstructed look. Had we responded, the Sudanese people could be assured America was holding true to its principle of innocent until proven guilty, while U.S. national security advisors would retain their options in dealing with signs of terrorist training camps, illicit chemical weapons factories or other problems associated with the surge in radical Islamic behavior. Equally important, ordinary Americans might not have to face angry Muslim radicals unless the evidence of guilt uncovered was compelling and condemnable not only by the U.S. but by other Muslim nations and the world community at large.
Why wasn't Bashir's offer acted on sooner? In fact, it is precisely this inaction by U.S. authorities that raises the deep skepticism pervading America's Muslims as well as many Muslims elsewhere about the true agenda in Washington for dealing with complex and unstable elements in the Islamic world.
The key to defusing radical Muslim behavior cannot be found by choosing its most vulnerable targets for missile practice.Rather, we should aim to raise up the Islamic world's most disaffected people so they are not as desperate to tear us down. We must resolve to engage rather than contain the elements of Islam we do not understand.
American Muslims can and should be foremost in assisting with this effort.
If we do not, we might find one day soon that terrorism on our soil was born of the unjust and indiscriminate policies we condoned through our complacency, inaction and ignorance.