Day: June 24, 2008

House Resolution 362 is a prelude to war with Iran and one of the tricks the neocons will use to get the US into a conflagration and extend their influence on into the Obama administration. Thinking they have the situation well under control in Iraq, the warring parties are now looking for other places to foment chaos. There has been since the revolution in 1979 a desire on the part of many in American political circles to get back at Iran and seizing on the issue of Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program, neocons have turned up the heat.

Resolution 362 demands that President Bush “initiate an international effort” to impose a land, sea, and air blockade on Iran to prevent it from importing gasoline and to inspect all cargo entering or leaving Iran and many see this as an act of provocation if not total declared war. An organization known as STOP AIPAC is spear heading the opposition to this resolution, which just might have legs if headlines like these keep popping up.

IAEA Chief: Iran Could Make Nuke In 6 Months

Fellow blogger xymphora still thinks there is no chance for an attack against Iran, but I wouldn’t bet the house on that. Desperation leads people to do strange things and this Resolution, along with the media’s help might lead the US into a repeat of its actions in 2002-2003.

Following up on an earlier post where I talked about people who are held in Guantanamo Bay and are tortured are far more likely to become terrorists when they are released than when they were first imprisoned.  It seems that is not true!

According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data and reports, not a single released Guantánamo detainee has ever attacked any Americans.

Hope this sets the record straight.

There reportedly is a saying from the Prophet of Islam which says something to the effect that ‘a Muslim is smart enough to have learned from his life experiences not to be abused, or attacked from the same hole (vantage point) twice!’  That hasn’t sunken in to a lot of Muslims yet.  I mentioned in an earlier blog here how Obama wants to distance himself from  the “smear” of being Muslim as if that is a terrible thing to be.  His detractors have given him a host of things to distance himself from, starting with being black, being Muslim, being white, they have assigned him an identity and he responds by taking the opposite course.  If he’s “Muslim” he claims to be Christian; if he’s “black” he identifies with being white and of course the opposite is true, EXCEPT when it comes to Islam.

As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.

Ellison believed that Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Obama asked Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Ellison’s Washington office to explain.

“I will never forget the quote,” Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”

When Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.

While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored.

It is patently clear to me that Obama, or his handlers, want nothing to do with the Muslim American community.  He is beholden to an interest group or is courting  interest groups, from newspaper editors, fundamentalists of all religions to political interest groups such as AIPAC that has for the moment declared itself at war with Islam.  It would behoove the Muslim American community to remember Sami al-Arian and his courting of the Bush administration, which ended disastrously for him.