Greg Sargent reports on how Liz Cheney and friends are responding to the news that Imam Faisal Rauf, who is behind the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero, was part of the Bush efforts to burnish the U.S. image in the Muslim world. Apparently, they've got a new attack ad going after Rauf and the Obama administration for sending him out on a similar trip. Greg comments:
Amusingly enough, members of the administration presided over by Liz's father, such as Karen Hughes, included this Imam in administration programs designed to improve relations with Muslim countries.
The Cheney wing of the Bush administration, of course, was always further to the right than other administration insiders on national security matters involving relations with Muslim countries. So in a sense it's not surprising that Liz would break with Bushies over this.
Greg doesn't go far enough here. From Megan Carpentier's post earlier:
Contemporary press accounts indicate that Rauf and Hughes were part of the February 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. He was part of a delegation that met with her in March 2006 and held a joint press conference. A letter to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in November 2007 indicates that contacts with Hughes and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns had continued apace.
Cheney was principal deputy undersecretary for Near East affairs at the State Department in 2006. Her responsibilities probably had little to do with this outreach effort, but if Rauf was such a "radical," with "dubious ties to radical Islamist organizations," such a clear and present danger to national security that it justifies violating his First Amendment rights, why exactly, did Liz Cheney not put a stop to the State Department's endorsement of radical Islamism? Did she lodge any form of protest? Was she even aware of the Bush State Department's enabling of radical Islam? What did Liz Cheney know and when did she know it?
There are only a few possibilities here. Either Cheney complained at the time, and it was ignored, she was so incompetent that she failed to notice the stealth Islamist infiltration of the State Department, or Cheney's accusations of radicalism are politically motivated nonsense.
