The Obama intifada?

Middle East and Terrorism

by Melanie Phillips

Are we seeing the beginning (heaven forbid) of the Obama intifada?

The escalating Arab rioting today in Jerusalem and the West Bank is undoubtedly being stoked up by the fact that the Obama administration has turned so viciously against Israel. Doubtless as a result the Arabs now smell victory within their grasp and may now unleash another wave of violence against Israelis.

Every single one of their recent 'grievances' is not just fabricated but stands history and justice on their heads. The ostensible cause of today's rioting, the re-opening yesterday of the ancient Hurva synagogue in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, is a typical example of this fanatical moral and historical inversion. The Hurva has been under reconstruction for years. The Palestinian campaign of incitement over it carries the message that Jews cannot build places of worship in their own city. And before anyone says any of Jerusalem is 'occupied Palestinian territory', it is not and never was 'Palestinian'. In every single attempt to resolve the Middle East impasse, Jerusalem was always regarded as a special case on its own; and from the mid 19th century onwards it has had uninterruptedly a Jewish majority.

The Hurva synagogue has been rebuilt, moreover, because it was twice destroyed by Muslims. Its history, as recounted by Leo Rennert, is testimony both to the uninterrupted presence of Jews in Jerusalem and to the uninterrupted attempts by Muslims to remove that presence:

The Hurva was the the Jewish landmark in Jerusalem in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a magnet for early Zionists, religious and non-religious. Theodore Herzl was a visitor, and so were many other Jewish notables from far and wide. The first synagogue on the site was built in 1701. Jews had obtained a loan for its construction from Muslims. But Jerusalem's Jewish community, mired in poverty, couldn't repay the debt, so Muslim creditors destroyed the synagogue.

But Jewish residents, with some outside help, rebuilt the Hurva and turned it into a magnificent landmark...that is, until 1948, when less than two weeks after Israel declared independence, Jordanian forces moved into the Old City and destroyed the Hurva -- with only the great arch left as a reminder of its former glory. And so it remained for six decades. From 1948 until 1967, Jews were barred by Jordan from even approaching the Hurva ruins, just as they were barred from praying at the Western Wall. After Israel captured the Old City in 1967, the Hurva Arch stood for many years as a stark reminder of a sad chapter in Jewish history.

Then a meticulous rebuilding and renovation effort was begun several years ago. It culminated on March 15, 2010 in the official reopening of the Hurva as an exact replica of the 19th-century synagogue, including the surviving Arch, which is now a permanent part of the new Hurva. Henceforth, it won't just be a dramatic reminder of the past; it will resume its age-old function as a place of worship.

And once again it is the target of Muslim attempts to exterminate the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Yet Obama, who accuses Israel of frustrating the 'peace process' by building in east Jerusalem by agreement with his own administration, is silent over this inflammatory and disgusting Palestinian attack on a Jewish place of worship. It would seem that for Obama 'peace' means the surrender of Israel to Arab violence.

As former New York mayor Ed Koch has said, the pressure the US is now bringing to bear upon Israel is unforgiveable. It is an astonishing demonstration of cynicism and malicious intent. Noah Pollak says that Obama is trying to get rid of Netanyahu by pushing him into a corner. But much worse still, Obama's deliberate decision to escalate what was at most a tactless but minor diplomatic blunder by Israel makes America an accessory to the violence that is now taking place and may get worse. Even this Ha'aretz writer thinks so:

But perhaps what is most important is this: Palestinians see the Obama administration's decision to attack Israel as an invitation to adopt a more confrontational line. A previous settlement slowdown led Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to exploit the opportunity and make any new negotiations conditional on a total freeze in construction, including in east Jerusalem.

Now signals from Washington have led his political faction, Fatah, to start picking its own fight. A few days ago Prime Minister Salam Fayad called on Palestinians to rally to the Temple Mount to 'defend Al-Aqsa' after Israel announced the dedication of a synagogue 'next door to the Al-Aqsa mosque'. Even the most secular of Palestinian politicians, PLO executive committee chairman Yasser Abed Rabo, joined in the condemnations and warned of an escalation.

The need to defend Al-Aqsa is more than a little exaggerated. The synagogue in question is not on the doorstep of the mosque. It is in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City on a site it has occupied for more than 300 years. But the PA has smelled blood. It understands that the international community will not concern itself with secondary details, such as the fact that the synagogue in question has would no doubt remain in Israeli territory under even the most generous future peace agreement. So why not start a riot and blame the Israelis, especially when the U.S. government is doing the same.

Precisely. Middle America, those millions of mainly Christian souls who are Israel's staunchest supporters in the world, should be made aware of what their President is doing – turning the United States into a betrayer of democracy, human rights and the Jewish people to become no less than an accessory to terror.

Melanie Phillips

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

What to watch for at the summit (WHITE HOUSE - Healthcare - TODAY!)

Politico.com

It could be one of the biggest PR flops since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault.

Or it could be a genuinely clarifying moment in the Obama presidency, six hours that could decide the outcome of the push for health care reform and, even failing that, be decisive in framing the politics of the 2010 midterms.

Thursday’s made-for-TV health reform summit is shaping up to be more like a presidential debate (without the podiums) than a backroom negotiation in which horses are traded and deals get done.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t be illuminating, with Democrats and Republicans debating their differences in living color, not just on health care but on the role of government in American life. Here is what to watch for Thursday:

1) Will either side give any ground?

They certainly weren’t doing so in the pre-game warm-ups.

The president might not come away from the meeting with a bipartisan compromise, but some Democrats think he can use the summit to slingshot a health reform bill to passage, by convincing voters — and squeamish Democrats back on Capitol Hill — that his vision trumps the alternatives.

To some, this means President Barack Obama should ditch his even tone and take the debate right to Republicans.

“The president and many people around the country want bipartisanship here. But all I can say is, ‘Good luck with that’ because it doesn’t seem like we should treat bipartisanship as an end but [as] a means,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). “What we have to realize is that we’re in this alone.”

Conservatives in recent days seemed to try to one-up each other in painting the summit as an Obama PR stunt and a waste of time — all the better to build a heavy discount into whatever transpires there, especially if Obama finds a way to put them on the spot.

“Didn’t we already do one of these?” asked Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona. “To see the president’s proposal, he really hasn’t adopted any of the Republicans’ ideas.”

2) Will it be a repeat of Baltimore?

Obama earned nearly universal praise for his performance at the House Republicans’ annual retreat in Baltimore last month, when he abandoned precedent and let the TV cameras capture his 1½-hour exchange with GOP lawmakers.

This time, the president won’t have the advantages of a lectern, a raised stage or a single camera trained on him the entire time, but he has proved more adept on the fly than all but a few politicians in recent memory. So Democrats are exceedingly confident that their man will own the room. But is there a chance they’re too confident?

Republicans have been coordinating very closely with one another to score a few modest points on Thursday, and they have a very manageable game plan

They’ll spend plenty of time bashing the Democrats’ bills. And they will do everything in their power to highlight divisions on the other side of the aisle. They will also try to steer the debate to a series of controversial deals the White House brokered with individual industries, like the pact with prescription-drug makers.

But the biggest challenge will be convincing voters’ that their ideas have some merit, especially since many date back more than two decades. The big question is whether they can convince voters that slightly lowering premiums for people who have insurance is more important than covering more than 30 million people who don’t have it.

House Democrats were tight-lipped about their planning for the event. Individual lawmakers will be tasked with leading the debate during different aspects of the conversation, such as cost containment and expanding coverage.

“Our members will be well-prepared, and you’ll see a focus on using real stories,” a leadership aide said. “We view this as a serious opportunity to hear the other side and see if we can work out differences on things we agree on. We are going to be factual in our responses. No spin.”

3) Who could steal the show?

There will be plenty of good talkers in the room, but the most intriguing invitee is probably one of the last people included in the event: Sen. Ron Wyden.

Wyden has an ambitious idea of radically revamping the current system of employer-based health care to expand coverage to almost everyone and give people more choice to pick their insurance. Columnists quickly embraced the idea, but his fellow Democrats didn’t. If he’s not muzzled, the Oregon Democrat has the most power to shift the debate at this late stage in a way the president and other Democrats might not be able to control.

Otherwise, in-your-face behavior has proved the easiest path to cable news stardom, and party leaders on both sides of the aisle are trying to avoid a repeat of the Joe Wilson debacle. So Obama himself, as the moderator in chief, has the power to make a star out of any one of the attendees.

At the Baltimore event, Obama focused much of his attention on Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). That was a blessing and a curse. By raising Ryan’s national profile, the president also invited enormous public scrutiny of the conservative’s ambitious plan to shore up the federal deficit.

Because Ryan had put his ideas in writing, he will probably get plenty of attention at Blair House on Thursday, but it will be interesting to see whether fellow Republicans rise to his defense when the barbs come out on the other side of the aisle.

4) Will it at least change the tone of the debate?

Probably not, if the early posturing is any indication

Democrats have tried to put a good face on the event — Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday, “I’m excited about it. I think it’s going to be a good meeting.”

Republicans haven’t been so kind.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor circulated a memo Tuesday night hectoring his counterpart, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), for suggesting more Democrats would back the president’s proposal than voted for the initial House bill.

And Minority Leader John Boehner has been bugging the White House for weeks to include governors in the discussion. After they rejected his request to invite a governor, Boehner asked for another invitee: What about Rep. Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who authored controversial restrictions on abortion that still pose a high hurdle for the party in power?

Even the bipartisan has become partisan this week; on Thursday, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill, 406-19, that would repeal a half-century-old antitrust exemption for health insurance companies, but during the preceding debate, Weiner was reprimanded for accusing Republicans of being a “wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.”

5) Will anyone watch outside Washington?

Who, beyond the most Beltway-obsessed political observers, has the stomach to watch lawmakers bicker about health care for six hours?

The highlights will make it to cable and network news, and Washington’s assembled press corps will give willing readers more than enough coverage of the event. But the chances are pretty good that this session will simply melt into the nonstop coverage that most Americans grew sick of during the 2008 presidential election.

“Most people in the country are tired of the bickering, and both parties need to recognize that,” said Rep. Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat who voted against the first House bill.

Asked if he expects anyone back home to watch, Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said, “Not really. The Olympics are still on. Even curling looks more enticing than this.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33478.html#ixzz0gYA8SLx8

White House defends Obama envoy to OIC: "This is an individual that has written extensively on why some have used religious devices like the Qur'an to

Jihad Watch.org/

It's all right that he defended a jihad terror leader and then tried to cover up that fact, because he wrote about how the Qur'an doesn't justify terrorism. Got that?

If anyone can direct me to Hussain's writings about the Qur'an, please write me at director [at] jihadwatch.org.

"W.H. affirms confidence in Islam envoy," by Josh Gerstein at Politico, February 22:

The White House is expressing its confidence in a White House counsel's office attorney President Barack Obama recently named as U.S. envoy to the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, despite his concession last week that he made ill-considered statements in 2004 about Bush-era terrorism prosecutions.

"Were you misled? Do you maintain confidence in this man the president wants to be his delegate to the Islamic Conference?" Fox News's Wendell Goler asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at the daily briefing Monday afternoon.

"We continue to have confidence," Gibbs said. "This is an individual that has written extensively on why some have used religious devices like the Qur'an to justify this [terrorism] and why that is absolutely wrong. And has garnered support from both the left and the right so we obviously have confidence."

Hussain initially said he had no recollection of comments he was reported to have made in 2004 portraying the Bush Administration's treatment of alleged Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian and the handling other terrorism cases as "politically-motivated persecutions."

However, after POLITICO obtained an audio recording of the event, Hussain acknowledged that he made the comments and that he had earlier approached a magazine about removing them, which it did....

Posted by Robert on February 22, 2010 1:58 PM

The new scandal? (Bribery - White House)

AmericanThinker.com

By Thomas Lifson

Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator breaks a potentially important story, making the case that there is ample ground for a formal investigation of potential law-breaking by the Obama Administration.

The discovery that the White House has now been reported on two separate occasions in two different states to be deliberately committing a potential violation of federal law -- in order to preserve the Democrats' Senate majority -- could prove explosive in this highly political year. The 60-seat majority slipped to 59 seats with the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, and the election of Republican Senator Scott Brown. Many political analysts are suggesting Democrats could lose enough seats to lose their majority altogether.

This is the stuff of congressional investigations and cable news alerts, as an array of questions will inevitably start being asked of the Obama White House.

The specific crime alleged is bribery:

"Whoever solicits or receives ... any....thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." -- 18 USC Sec. 211 -- Bribery, Graft and Conflicts of Interest: Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office

Specifically:

For the second time in five months, the Obama White House is being accused -- by Democrats -- of offering high ranking government jobs in return for political favors. What no one is reporting is that this is a violation of federal law that can lead to prison time, a fine or both, according to Title 18, Chapter 11, Section 211 of the United States Code.

The jobs in question? Secretary of the Navy and a position within the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The favor requested in return? Withdrawal from Senate challenges to two sitting United States Senators, both Democrats supported by President Obama. The Senators are Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado.

As Lord notes, this has the potential to impact the 2010 elections, if it becomes known, and pressure builds for a formal investigation. But of course, the mainstream media will avert its eyes, and dismiss this as normal politics.

Hat tip: Lucianne.com

President Obama's strategy: Replace change with reform

Plan caps weeks of deliberations over how to reposition
Obama and Dems for the midterms. | AP Photo

By MIKE ALLEN | 2/22/10 6:47 AM EST

Politco.com

President Barack Obama, after weeks of private talks, is putting the finishing touches on a new election-year strategy that replaces sweeping "change" with incremental reform, according to senior White House officials.

“Reform is the new change,” a senior aide told POLITICO.

The revamped 2010 plan focuses extensively on new reform efforts, starting with a “competitiveness” push, a call for tighter campaign finance laws and renewed attention to Obama’s open-government agenda.

The strategy involves heavy use of presidential statements and Obama's White House platform to position him as an agent of popular change, with less reliance on a complicated legislative agenda. It represents a downsizing from the heady days just a year ago when he hoped to rack up legislative achievements of a scope not seen since the Great Society triumphs of President Lyndon Johnson.

It acknowledges implicitly something Obama aides make explicit in background conversations - the president is unlikely to pass the most expansive parts of his agenda this year and is too tied in public perceptions to a messy legislative process and unpopular congressional leaders.

Presidential aides say they recognize that there’s not enough time before the 2010 elections to transform the toxic political environment that has given Republicans a real, albeit remote, chance of winning control of the House or Senate. Instead, the White House is going to try to mitigate the damage by reminding voters, especially independents, of the reasons they voted so eagerly for Obama in 2008.

The strategy, detailed here for the first time, is the culmination of weeks of internal deliberations over how to reposition Obama and congressional Democrats for the midterm congressional elections in November.

A close adviser said that Obama plans to increase his travel in the country, including mini-campaigns built around “a series of small but highly visible policy debates that clearly put the Democrats on the side of middle-class families, with lobbies for special interests on the other side.” Two likely targets: student-loan servicing organizations and banks.

A top administration official said that “the biggest piece of reform” will be supporting congressional efforts to limit the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that opened campaigns to huge independent spending by corporations and unions. “Americans really turned against this opinion, the official said. “And so the biggest reform is to ensure that our politics and our campaigns are not controlled by special interests. Getting legislation that deals with the Supreme Court decision on the floor and debated — and hopefully passed — is very important.”

Senior Capitol Hill aides tell POLITICO that both the House and the Senate plan to take up such measures in coming weeks. Lawmakers and the White House were emboldened by a Washington Post-ABC News poll finding 80 percent or respondents opposed to the court decision. A top Senate Democratic official said Democrats are planning to take up legislation in response to the Citizens United ruling by Easter in order to have something on the books before the 2010 elections

The administration official said that another key theme in coming days, in addition to reform, will be “how to make America competitive, because our competitors are not playing for second place.”

“That’s the banner,” the official said. “Whether it’s education, whether it’s jobs, whether it’s research and development, whether it’s nuclear power: It’s all about America’s competitiveness.”

The emphasis on competitiveness addresses voter feelings that government is out of control, and underscores that Obama is a capitalist, using the private sector to boost jobs. “The White House recognizes a growing anxiety about America’s ability to compete with China and India over the long run if we don’t address problems in education, innovation, energy -- all areas where Republican obstruction is preventing progress,” a White House official said.

Aides say Obama will stress that theme at all three of his major public events this week: On Monday, he speaks to the nation’s governors at the White House. On Wednesday, he travels to the St. Regis Hotel address the CEOs who make up Business Roundtable. And on Thursday, he holds his bipartisan health-care summit at Blair House.

Finally, in an effort to reclaim the “change” mantle even though he now runs the government, Obama plans to emphasize his “transparency” agenda -- such measures as releasing White House visitor logs; posting specific projects funded by the stimulus bill; and signing an Open Government Directive requiring federal agencies to achieve milestones in transparency, participation, and collaboration. “It gives the American people a very important sense that they have influence and control, and access to information,” the administration official said.

Steve Hildebrand, deputy manager of Obama’s presidential campaign and now a political consultant specializing in grassroots strategy, has been reminding the White House that the politics of reform are more attractive than ever following the high court’s Citizens United decision, which found that independent corporate spending in elections constituted free speech and therefore could not be banned by the government.

Hildebrand has been bolstering his case with research from a joint project by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to former President George W. Bush. “Voters, particularly independents,” the pollsters concluded, “strongly embrace the Fair Elections Now Act, a system that allows candidates who eschew contributions over 100 dollars to receive public matching funds for money they raise from individuals in their own state. Voters support the Fair Elections Now Act by a two-to-one margin.”

Hildebrand, who is working as a consultant to Public Campaign Action Fund and Common Cause to help pass serious campaign finance reform, contends that in a close race this fall, the candidate identified as the reformer will win “hands down.”

“A reformer can be a Republican or a Democrat -- it’s not going to matter,” Hildebrand said. “Reform is going to trump partisanship, in my opinion. If somebody tries to campaign on change this fall, it’ll fall short unless that change is around some real serious reform.”

.

Islam envoy retreats on terror talk

Politico.com
February 20, 2010

President Barack Obama’s new Islamic envoy, Rashad Hussain, changed course Friday — admitting that he made sharply critical statements about a U.S. terror prosecution against a Muslim professor after initially saying he had no recollection of making such comments.

“I made statements on that panel that I now recognize were ill-conceived or not well-formulated,” Hussain said, referring to a 2004 conference at which he discussed the case.

Hussain’s reversal came after POLITICO obtained a recording of his presentation to a Muslim students’ conference in Chicago during which he can be heard portraying the government’s cases towards professor Sami Al-Arian, as well as other Muslim terrorism suspects, as “politically motivated persecutions.” Al-Arian later pled guilty to aiding terrorists.

The comments touched off criticism from conservative commentators, who questioned whether someone who held those views should represent the United States in the Muslim world.

Initially, Hussain, 31, said through a White House spokesman that he didn’t recall making the statements. Hussain also suggested that another speaker on the panel, Al-Arian’s daughter Laila, made the comments about her father.

But after POLITICO provided the quotations and others from the recording to the White House on Friday, Hussain said in a statement: “As a law student six years ago, I spoke on the topic of civil liberties on a panel during which I responded to comments made about the Al-Arian case by Laila Al-Arian who was visibly saddened by charges against her father. I made clear at the time that I was not commenting on the allegations themselves. The judicial process has now concluded, and I have full faith in its outcome.”

The White House declined to say Friday whether the statements or the controversy affected Obama’s confidence in Hussain.

Hussain also answered another question surrounding his comments — why they were removed from the website of a magazine on Middle East issues that in 2004 published a brief account of the panel, attributing the statement about “politically motivated persecutions” to Hussain.

It was Hussain himself, he said Friday, who contacted the publication to complain about the story.

“When I saw the article that attributed comments to me without context, leaving a misimpression, I contacted the publication to raise concerns about it. Eventually, of their own accord, they modified the article,” Hussain said of the article in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs.

During the panel discussion on civil rights at a Muslim Students Association conference in Chicago, Hussain asserted that Al-Arian’s prosecution involved significant abuses.

“The case that Laila just reminded us of is truly a sad commentary on our legal system. It is a travesty of justice, not just from the perspective of the allegations that are made against Dr. Al-Arian. Without passing any comment on those specific allegations or the statements [that] have been made against him, the process that has been used has been atrocious,” Hussain said, according to the recording.

In his presentation, Hussain, then a student at Yale Law School, was careful to insist that he was not offering a view on Al-Arian’s innocence or guilt on charges that he served as a top leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the U.S. But, Hussain said, the treatment of Al-Arian fit a “common pattern ... of politically-motivated prosecutions where you have huge Justice Department press conferences announcing that a certain person is a grave threat to American security.”

In the recording, Hussain’s indictment of the government’s legal practices toward Muslims goes further than Al-Arian’s case, leveling a detailed critique of more than a half-dozen prominent anti-terrorism cases and several key provisions of the Patriot Act.

Hussain refers to some provisions of the Patriot Act as “horrible” and called “dangerous” an aspect of that law that allows intelligence-related surveillance to be used in criminal cases. Most lawmakers, including many Democrats critical of the Patriot Act, have said the provision has proved valuable, because it removed a wall that made it difficult for those pursuing investigations of international terror or spying operations to share information with criminal investigators. Hussain did express support for other aspects of the law, including a provision permitting so-called roving wiretaps

An Indian-American Muslim raised in Texas, Hussain is a deputy associate White House counsel who was also closely involved in shaping the major address the president delivered in Cairo last June, explaining Obama’s views to the Muslim world. In announcing Hussain’s appointment last week as the U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the president called Hussain “an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff.” Hussain traveled to Saudi Arabia and Qatar earlier this week with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Hussain’s allies have defended him against claims that he is soft on terror by pointing to a think tank study he co-wrote arguing that U.S. policy should emphasize that terrorism is antithetical to the teachings of Islam.

At the time Hussain spoke in 2004, the government's treatment of Sami Al-Arian was a cause celebre among Arab-American and Muslim activists, as well as many civil libertarians generally. Al-Arian was accused of raising funds for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but his trial in 2005 ended with some acquittals and a hung jury on other counts. The former University of South Florida computer science professor later pleaded guilty to one count of aiding a terrorist group and was sentenced to 57 months in prison.

Adding to the controversy about Hussain’s comments on “political motivated persecutions” is that they were deleted from a report on the conference that first appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a magazine on the region with articles from the Arab and Muslim perspectives.

In the current version of the story on the Washington Report’s website, there is no reference to Hussain’s comments, or even that he appeared at the 2004 conference. But earlier, cached versions of the same story do include the comments — initially adding to the mystery of why they were taken out and at whose request. The discrepancy was first noted in a story last Sunday in the Web-based Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.

A Washington Report editor initially said the author of its article requested the change because Laila Al-Arian’s comments had been misattributed to Hussain. However, in an e-mail to POLITICO, the author, Shereen Kandil, stood by her reporting and denied she ever made such a request.

In addition, both Laila Al-Arian and Kandil, who now works in the Obama administration at the Environmental Protection Agency, said they were never consulted before the passages referring to Hussain were deleted. The deletion took place sometime between October 2007 and this year, according to the Internet Archive, though the version available in Nexis was never modified.

The changes made some three years or more after his speech have led to speculation that Hussain was sanitizing his record to smooth his path to a White House legal post. However, the strident criticism he offered of the Justice Department’s handling of various alleged terrorism cases raises the possibility that his remarks could have posed a problem when he was applying for work at Justice in 2008. He joined the agency in the last year of the Bush administration as a trial attorney handling civil cases against the government, a Justice spokeswoman said.

While the audio shows that Hussain did utter the phrase “politically motivated persecutions” in the midst of his discussion about Sami Al-Arian, another comment Kandil attributed to Hussain, describing Al-Arian as being “used politically to squash dissent,” is not audible in the recording POLITICO obtained, which cuts off before any question-and-answer period.

Hussain’s remarks about Al-Arian appear to have been extemporaneous, but he seemed to have prepared in advance his denunciation of the Bush administration’s handling of other terrorism-related detentions and prosecutions

Hussain cited:

— The court martial of Capt. James Yee, a Guantanamo chaplain initially suspected of treason and later charged with adultery. All charges were eventually dropped.

— The case of Jose Padilla, who was held without charge for more than three years as an enemy combatant on suspicions of trying to detonate a radiation-laced “dirty bomb” in the U.S. In 2006, more than a year after Hussain spoke, Padilla was charged in a terrorist plot unrelated to the dirty bomb allegations. He was convicted by a jury in 2007 and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

— The imprisonment of Yaser Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan, held as an enemy combatant and released to Saudi Arabia weeks after Hussain spoke.

— The prosecution of an imam and a pizzeria owner in Albany, N.Y., for conspiring with an informant in a fictitious plot to use a missile launcher to attack a Pakistani diplomat. The men were convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, though their lawyers claimed the pair were entrapped.

— The prosecution of a Somali man, Nuradin Abdi, in 2004 for plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio. He pled guilty in 2007 to conspiring to support terrorism and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

— The imprisonment of an Oregon lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was jailed for more than two weeks in 2004 as a material witness on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings that year. He was never charged with a crime, received an apology from the FBI, which said it misidentified his fingerprints, and brought a lawsuit that led to a reported $2 million settlement from the government in 2006.

— The prosecution of four men as alleged members of a Detroit-based Al Qaeda “sleeper cell” plotting an attack. Two of the men were convicted on terror charges in 2003 but the convictions were thrown out at the government’s request after evidence emerged of prosecutorial misconduct and an unreliable informant. The prosecutor was charged criminally with concealing exculpatory evidence but later acquitted.

Hussain went on to tell the audience at the event, held roughly two months before the 2004 election, that electing Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as president could stem the tide of such cases.

“The attorney general and the president have the complete discretion to bring these cases. If they decide that these cases shouldn’t be brought, these cases will not be brought,” Hussain said.

“When people ask me what is the difference between George Bush and John Kerry, John Kerry may not be the most popular candidate amongst Muslims but there’s a fairly strong possibility that the politically motivated prosecutions that are brought forth by the Justice Department” would cease, Hussain said.

While some evidence of Al-Arian's connections to Palestinian Islamic Jihad has been public since 1995, the strongest proof of Al-Arian's ties to PIJ emerged from surveillance that first became public during the trial that took place in 2005, after Hussain spoke.

At the end of that six-month trial, Al-Arian’s backers celebrated after jurors acquitted him on eight counts and could not reach a unanimous verdict on nine others. As the government geared up for a possible retrial, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to a single count of providing support to a terrorist group. The judge in the case branded Al-Arian as a "liar" and a "master manipulator" who had tricked many in his Florida community.

Al-Arian later undertook a hunger strike over demands that he testify before a grand jury in Virginia. He was eventually indicted again in a federal court there for his refusal to testify. He is now in home detention awaiting trial on contempt-of-court charges.

In his speech, Hussain revealed another link that may have left him sympathetic to Al-Arian. Hussain indicated he was acquainted with Al-Arian’s son Abdullah while both were college students in North Carolina.

Hussain told the audience that he was on hand when Abdullah Al-Arian was abruptly removed by the Secret Service from a White House meeting in June 2001, prompting a walkout by Muslim leaders. President George W. Bush later apologized for the incident, which a spokesman called “wrong and inappropriate.”