Obama administration approved $200G grant to group with Al Qaeda ties

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 4:32pm

One of the things that I really really resent is that thanks to The Clinton Creature, the DNC, and (ta da) The Empty Suit, I now have to wade through places like Faux or Juducial Watch or Pat ‘Freaking’ Buchanan to find out what’s really going on in the world. That SERIOUSLY pisses me off.

Basically all of the so-called ‘left leaning’ media have abandoned all pretense of caring and honesty in order to cover for and prop up the lying DNC, Clinton, and the 21st century’s biggest fraud, Barack ‘Empty Suit’ Obama.

Obama administration approved $200G grant to group with Al Qaeda ties

The Obama administration approved a $200,000 grant to a group in Sudan with ties to Al Qaeda even though it had been designated a terrorist-financing organization by the U.S. years earlier, a conservative think tank revealed this week.

Further, an agency official acknowledged the prior administration allowed taxpayer money to flow to the group even after its designation was discovered.

The 2014 grant to the Islamic Relief Agency, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, was revealed by Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum in a story for the National Review.

“More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization,” Westrop wrote in the article.

*

According to the National Review story, there was pressure from inside USAID at the time to still pay ISRA, even after the designation was revealed. USAID’s mission director for Sudan, Larry Meserve, warned colleagues that the organization’s “whole program will be jeopardized” if ISRA was not paid, the story said.

*

USAID now says the grant should not have been made. Because of the grant, the USAID said Friday, they have since conducted a review of policies on the screening of awardees.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/27/obama-administration-approved...

The National Review article:

Exclusive: Obama Administration Knowingly Funded a Designated al-Qaeda Affiliate

By SAM WESTROP
July 25, 2018 1:00 PM

The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.

The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.

*

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.

ISRA’s influence also spread to Washington. Former U.S. congressman Mark Siljander (R., Mich.) pled guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors found that IARA-USA had paid him $75,000 — using misappropriated USAID grant money — to lobby the government, in an attempt to remove the charity from the government’s terror list.

Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/obama-admini...

No money to feed the hungry or shelter the homeless but President Austerity-for-WIC-families found plenty of money for his sneaky, inhumane, deadly little projects like this one.

Tags:

Money for terrorists but not hungry Americans

Vote

Comments

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 5:39pm

No person who served in these wars is surprised...

It always about bribing the biggest shit to keep the rest in line. Until he became too ambitious, then we'd suddenly find that this other guy was the one who we made our little "Visits" to. (Standing watch outside while the Captain walked in, did the requisite bullshit, and handed over the cash.)

Silly me, I thought Obama was going to change the way the war was fought. Instead he just shot the excuse for the war and carried on as if the excuse was still valid. And for some reason NOBODY CALLED HIM ON IT.

—

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 6:48pm

A few years ago I read an article about how our troops

@detroitmechworks

were training terrorists in Syria and one guy was pissed. He said that he would feel responsible for anything they did either in Syria or possibly over here. This was the same group was the same ones that his buddies fought against in Iraq. Some had died and others injured.

Two articles about the terrorists that Obama used to overthrow Assad.

Russia now runs the peace process to end Syria's War

Obama knew that Nusra was his only hope for overthrowing Assad; and, so, he quietly decided to back them.

Al Qaeda in Syria has been absolutely central to America's war-effort in Syria — it has provided not only America's proxy 'boots on the ground' (which Obama backed up with American air power) but the leadership of America's other proxy 'boots on the ground' in that war. (Since they were mere proxies, instead of actual U.S. troops, they also had the advantage for Obama, of the press not blaming the U.S. for their terror-acts. By quietly arming the jihadists, their mass-murders wouldn't be blamed on Obama — especially because Obama himself condemned Nusra as being a "terrorist" organization. For American 'news' media, this put the necessary verbal distance between himself and what Nusra and the other jihadists did — which he quietly backed.)

America’s Deceitful Secret Support of Al Qaeda

The US, and the royal family of Saudi Arabia, had created Al Qaeda back in 1979, to be their "boots on the ground" against the Soviet Union, and used them not only in Afghanistan but also in Russia's own Chechnya region, to weaken, first the Soviet Union itself, helping to break it up, and then, after the Cold War ended on the Russian side in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance all ended, America and the Sauds continued arming and funding Al Qaeda, so as to create terror in Russia, and to overthrow Russia's allies abroad, such as Assad.

As I said in Amanda's other essay, this is the definition of treason because Al Qaida is supposed to be our sworn enemies and yet we've been supporting them since we created them. How many deaths are on their hands? And people refuse to believe that our government would fly planes into buildings and kill 3,000 of us just so they could get people to give their permission for us to go to war. Silly people!

Great finds, Amanda. No matter the sources.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 9:58pm

You know, it’s getting so weird out there

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

you can't tell the good guys (are there any?) from the bad guys (there’s a shitload of them). Anymore America definitely isn’t the former and most of the world is starting to believe we’re definitely the latter.

You know who Obama reminds me of? This sure dates me but I think he’s a cross between Mordecai Jones (The Flim Flam Man), a personable, likeable, duplicitous conman, and Reverend Harry Powell (The Night of the Hunter). I know that’s pretty drama queenish but Powell was smooth, charismatic, plain flat evil, and on a mission to rid the Earth of ‘undesirables’ and so was/is Obama.

EDIT: knoe/know

#1 were training terrorists in Syria and one guy was pissed. He said that he would feel responsible for anything they did either in Syria or possibly over here. This was the same group was the same ones that his buddies fought against in Iraq. Some had died and others injured. Two articles about the terrorists that Obama used to overthrow Assad. Russia now runs the peace process to end Syria's War Obama knew that Nusra was his only hope for overthrowing Assad; and, so, he quietly decided to back them. Al Qaeda in Syria has been absolutely central to America's war-effort in Syria — it has provided not only America's proxy 'boots on the ground' (which Obama backed up with American air power) but the leadership of America's other proxy 'boots on the ground' in that war. (Since they were mere proxies, instead of actual U.S. troops, they also had the advantage for Obama, of the press not blaming the U.S. for their terror-acts. By quietly arming the jihadists, their mass-murders wouldn't be blamed on Obama — especially because Obama himself condemned Nusra as being a "terrorist" organization. For American 'news' media, this put the necessary verbal distance between himself and what Nusra and the other jihadists did — which he quietly backed.) America’s Deceitful Secret Support of Al Qaeda The US, and the royal family of Saudi Arabia, had created Al Qaeda back in 1979, to be their "boots on the ground" against the Soviet Union, and used them not only in Afghanistan but also in Russia's own Chechnya region, to weaken, first the Soviet Union itself, helping to break it up, and then, after the Cold War ended on the Russian side in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance all ended, America and the Sauds continued arming and funding Al Qaeda, so as to create terror in Russia, and to overthrow Russia's allies abroad, such as Assad. As I said in Amanda's other essay, this is the definition of treason because Al Qaida is supposed to be our sworn enemies and yet we've been supporting them since we created them. How many deaths are on their hands? And people refuse to believe that our government would fly planes into buildings and kill 3,000 of us just so they could get people to give their permission for us to go to war. Silly people! Great finds, Amanda. No matter the sources.

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 7:30pm

Many of us did, Detroit

@detroitmechworks

Silly me, I thought Obama was going to change the way the war was fought. Instead he just shot the excuse for the war and carried on as if the excuse was still valid. And for some reason NOBODY CALLED HIM ON IT.

People voted for him instead of Her because of her Iraq war vote and his saying that he wouldn't do stupid wars. Then he started doing stupid shit. I called him out for increasing the troops in Afghanistan, when he started his drone program, the continuing renditions and his invasion of Libya and then Syria, but it fell on deaf ears. . I also called him out on his deportations and just about everything else that he said he wouldn't do but did. I wasn't alone in this either. There were many others who did that and they got the same reaction to their comments.

But you are right. The anti war movement died during his presidency and people said that he had good reasons for doing what he did.

I got a lot of my comments hidden, got numerous timeouts and so I quit calling him out on the things he did. I got tired of trying to get people to see reality when all they cared about was how charming his family was.

A big part of why wealthy white liberals are so angry at @SusanSarandon is that they’re indignant at being forced to confront the horrible realities they would be contented to ignore had Hillary won.

There, I said it.

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) July 1, 2018

Just like they ignored those things when Obama was president.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by WaterLily on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 9:31pm

"Share if you think he was the greatest President!"

@snoopydawg Yep, this has been all over Farcebook the past week.

I keep hitting "hide post" when I see it, while simultaneously chuckling: wouldn't it be Hillar-ious if bots were propagating that meme?

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 10:03pm

Probably not the usual RUSSIAN! bots

@WaterLily

that rig all our other ‘elections’ though.

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 10:37pm

Post this one in response

@WaterLily

When you say that you miss Obama

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sun, 07/29/2018 - 10:21am

I’m surprised that hasn’t been taken

@snoopydawg

down as RUSSIAN! propaganda and election interference.

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by Tall Bald and Ugly on Sun, 07/29/2018 - 4:26pm

Bookmarked that,

@snoopydawg thanks. I got a feeling it's gonna come in handy.

—

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 11:38pm

And this one

@WaterLily

Obama's Crappy Legacy

It has even more things that Barry did or did not do. Poor Barry. When his real legacy is written he will probably be down there with Hoover.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 9:36pm

That Tweet says it all doesn’t it?

@snoopydawg

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 10:50pm

It sure does

@Amanda Matthews

Of course Hillary would be doing much of the same things that Trump is, but just like Obama they wouldn't have the hard edges to them.

One of the best things that showed how Obama was no different than Trump was the picture of the two boys in a cage that was taken during Obama's tenure. People are absolutely aghast that young children are having to appear in court without a lawyer present. Guess who fought for that to happen? Yup. Obama's DHS. Every war that Trump is involved in is because Obama started them. Millions of Yemen children starving? Thank Obama. Drones dropping bombs and killing innocent civilians? Thank Obama. Of course he was just continuing what Bush started, but that wasn't what he ran on now was it? This amnesia that has swept through the country is nauseating. And the number of immigrants that Obama deported over 56% didn't have a criminal record. Best president my ass.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 8:26pm

A few hundred thou to entities affiliated with Al Qaeda,

$535 million to an allegedly green company in which a big Obama campaign donor was an executive. Pretty soon, you're talking real money. https://www.factcheck.org/2011/10/obamas-solyndra-problem/

Thank heaven New Democrats ended welfare as we know it and don't dabble in New Deal-style socialist job programs. /s But, watch and listen to their fans blame everything on Ronald Reagan.

And yeah, establishment media is the propaganda arm of establishment politicians, be they descended from Samuel Prescott Bush, war czar industrialist, or Stanley Ann Dunham, who had ties to the Geithners, parents of former NY Fed head while the economy crashed, then Secretary of the Treasury of the US, and the Ford Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Bush; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham
This goes for the once-revered NYT and LAT, which have become almost as shameful as either MSNBC or Fox.

I don't know if we get truth from the likes of Buchanan, either, though, or even foreign news sources, who used to tattle on the US. I don't know if truthful, unbiased media exist anymore anywhere.

(Edited to corrected name of Foundation.)

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 9:41pm

I get a lot more truth out of Buchanan than

@HenryAWallace

I do any of the pundits at ‘leftie media’ sites like the WP, NY/LA/Chicago Times, Time, Salon...

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/28/2018 - 10:59pm

Remember Obama's sad story about how he had to fight

@HenryAWallace

insurance companies when his mom was dying from cancer? I got the impression that she had regular health insurance and was almost destitute. This is why he said that he didn't want any of us to have to go through that and that he was going to fix our inadequate health insurance. Great job, Barry. I'm sure that your mom would be proud of your passing the Heritage foundation's health care plan. You know, so people didn't have to fight with their insurance companies when they were dying. You had the votes to pass single payer and you know it! This will always be your legacy. That you could have been, but wasn't the greatest president since FDR.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Mon, 07/30/2018 - 6:35pm

Every year or two, Conyers filed another HR 676, aka

@snoopydawg

Medicare For All. By about 2007, HR 676 had 100 co-sponsors, which at that time was the same number as the number of members of the House Progressive Caucus. However, all the HR 676 bills had been dying in committee. After Pelosi became Speaker (2007), Weiner got her to promise it would finally come up for a vote.

In back-of-my-hand "fairness" to Obama, he never campaigned on Medicare for All. He did, however, campaign on a strong public option, adding that it was the only way to control costs of insurance. I was okay with that. Had he kept that promise, insurance companies would either have had to compete with low cost government insurance or find another line of work. Of course, he also campaigned on no individual mandate...until Hillary lost the primary, anyway. (She said an individual mandate was the only way.)

As we all know, Obama got a lot of popular and electoral votes in 2008; and Democrats won strong majorities in the House and Senate. Even according to center right Nate Silver's website, polls were showing that Americans were favoring Medicare for All. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/public-support-for-public-option. (My own recollection is that it was polling in the 70s.) It was the perfect storm (in a good way) to pass Medicare for All.

Around 2009, Weiner tried to get Pelosi to make good on her promise. She reneged, saying they had to wait for Obama's plan. Meanwhile, Obama changed his tune on the public option from "the only way to control insurance costs" to "only a sliver." https://www.politico.com/story/2009/08/wh-backs-away-from-public-option-... Please see also http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/march/obama_to_single_paye.php

Then, Democratic politicians and their minions started the stupid "Joe Lieberman won't vote for a strong public option, so it can't get 60 votes" fairy tale, which was convenient since Lieberman did not plan to run again. Well, sure. Neither Joe Lieberman nor anyone else will vote for something that never made it into a bill that came up for a vote. (Another fairy tale was that there was no way to pass a health care bill without sixty votes. There are ways. Just ask Mitch McConnell.)

Coda: Of course, in 2009, Obama had promised to deal with "entitlements;" and, in 2011 Obama put BOTH and Medicare and Social Security on the negotiating table. Fortunately, Boehner and Cantor did not take the bait. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR200901... http://www.crewof42.com/news/conyers-on-jobs-weve-had-it-lays-out-obama-... Then, in 2016, with Republicans then controlling the House and Senate, Obama said he would like to see a strong public option added to Obamacare. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-public-option-health-care-2...

Let's play a game: Name a possible position on US healthcare that Obama never took? (You win; I got nothing.)

*Guess who controls Crew of 42 now.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock Also media matters.com

Submitted by lotlizard on Sun, 07/29/2018 - 12:20am

The building blocks of war — Tom Tomorrow comic, September 2014

https://medium.com/the-nib/the-building-blocks-of-war-aa592fd1bb5e

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Mon, 07/30/2018 - 6:54pm

@lotlizard

@lotlizard

LOVE Tom Tomorrow! Especially The Sensible Liberal.
http://thismodernworld.com/2009/1689

I believe that the inspiration for The Sensible Liberal may have been the home page of the Progressive Policy Institute (an offshoot of the DLC), which used to read "Progressive Policy Institute, Home of Pragmatic Progressives." Now it refers to "radically progressive." Anything to disguise the fact that PPI, like the DLC and Third Way, is Pub Lite.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Mon, 07/30/2018 - 7:01pm

LOVE Tom Tomorrow!

@lotlizard

Especially The Sensible Liberal. http://thismodernworld.com/2009/1689

I believe that the inspiration for The Sensible Liberal may have been the home page of the Progressive Policy Institute (an offshoot of the DLC), which used to read "Progressive Policy Institute, Home of Pragmatic Progressives." Now it refers to "radically progressive." Anything to obfuscate the reality that PPI, like the DLC and Third Way, is Pub Lite--and not always so "Lite'" either.

Over the course of the late 1980s, the DLC continued its attack on the orthodoxy of the populism that had residual power in the party. The DLC’s Chairman, Virginia Senator Chuck Robb, said it clearly in an influential speech during this period. “The New Deal consensus which dominated American politics for 50 years has run its course.” Economic growth, not redistribution or getting in the way of corporate power, was now on the menu. The DLC attacked all facets of policymaking, setting up a think tank called the Progressive Policy Institute (because From was tired of being called conservative) and hosting forums on poverty, welfare and crime with liberals like New York Governor Mario Cuomo. PPI and the DLC pushed globalization, the shareholder revolution, and reforms in entitlements like Social Security and Medicare (initially pressing to link their growth to productivity growth).

https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/its-al-froms-democratic-party-we-just... (emphasis added)