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Not So Fine
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Election '08: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says America "will be fine" under Barack Obama. While respecting a busy diplomat's wish to keep out of presidential politics, she couldn't be more mistaken.
Is the secretary of state auditioning for a post-government career with an all-girl pop group? Telling Politico and Yahoo News that "Oh, the United States will be fine" under a President Obama sounded more like the infatuated lyrics of the Chiffons' 1963 number-one hit "He's So Fine" than the sober reflections of a member of the president's cabinet.
"That handsome boy over there" the Bronx songbirds swooned over, for whom "it's just a matter of time," is a good description of Obama as seen by the Washington political establishment and the national media elite. But as Americans learn more about the Illinois senator, the illusions of inevitability melt away.
The latest alarm bell sounded on Monday when Obama's Arab and Muslim liaison, Mazen Asbahi, was forced to resign, after serving barely nine days, when links to a radical imam became public.
Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, apparently sat on the board in 2000 of the Allied Assets Advisors Fund, an affiliate of the North American Islamic Trust, along with Jamal Said. Said is imam of an extremist Chicago-area mosque who raised money for accused fundraisers of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and was named an unindicted co-conspirator with defendants accused of funneling millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.
According to former CNN reporter Steven Emerson in his 1994 book "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us," two Hamas operatives belonging to Said's Bridgeview Mosque "were arrested in Israel for transferring money from the United States to terrorists on the West Bank. One of these men, Mohammad Jarad, told the Israelis that he was sent on his mission by Jamal Said."
Emerson visited Said's mosque and described vestibule walls "covered with Hamas posters and recruiting literature showing masked gunmen brandishing automatic weapons" and "daggers plunged into Jewish hearts wrapped up in American flags."
In 2004 the Chicago Tribune reported that Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentor, had visited Said's mosque in the mid-1980s to recruit supporters for the Afghan resistance.
The Tribune noted that the charismatic Said collects "as much as $1 million in a year from worshipers." It also reported that "he raised money at one national Islamic conference by asking people to donate in the memory of a Palestinian suicide bomber."
No one knows the dangers that Islamist terror states pose better than Condi Rice. She can't really believe that under Barack Obama — unable to keep someone linked to an accused terrorist financier out of his own campaign — America "will be fine."
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Election '08: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says America "will be fine" under Barack Obama. While respecting a busy diplomat's wish to keep out of presidential politics, she couldn't be more mistaken.
Is the secretary of state auditioning for a post-government career with an all-girl pop group? Telling Politico and Yahoo News that "Oh, the United States will be fine" under a President Obama sounded more like the infatuated lyrics of the Chiffons' 1963 number-one hit "He's So Fine" than the sober reflections of a member of the president's cabinet.
"That handsome boy over there" the Bronx songbirds swooned over, for whom "it's just a matter of time," is a good description of Obama as seen by the Washington political establishment and the national media elite. But as Americans learn more about the Illinois senator, the illusions of inevitability melt away.
The latest alarm bell sounded on Monday when Obama's Arab and Muslim liaison, Mazen Asbahi, was forced to resign, after serving barely nine days, when links to a radical imam became public.
Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, apparently sat on the board in 2000 of the Allied Assets Advisors Fund, an affiliate of the North American Islamic Trust, along with Jamal Said. Said is imam of an extremist Chicago-area mosque who raised money for accused fundraisers of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and was named an unindicted co-conspirator with defendants accused of funneling millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.
According to former CNN reporter Steven Emerson in his 1994 book "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us," two Hamas operatives belonging to Said's Bridgeview Mosque "were arrested in Israel for transferring money from the United States to terrorists on the West Bank. One of these men, Mohammad Jarad, told the Israelis that he was sent on his mission by Jamal Said."
Emerson visited Said's mosque and described vestibule walls "covered with Hamas posters and recruiting literature showing masked gunmen brandishing automatic weapons" and "daggers plunged into Jewish hearts wrapped up in American flags."
In 2004 the Chicago Tribune reported that Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentor, had visited Said's mosque in the mid-1980s to recruit supporters for the Afghan resistance.
The Tribune noted that the charismatic Said collects "as much as $1 million in a year from worshipers." It also reported that "he raised money at one national Islamic conference by asking people to donate in the memory of a Palestinian suicide bomber."
No one knows the dangers that Islamist terror states pose better than Condi Rice. She can't really believe that under Barack Obama — unable to keep someone linked to an accused terrorist financier out of his own campaign — America "will be fine."
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