The CAIR Connection

Cross-posted at Mystery Achievement.

Somebody tell me again how the Dubai Ports World deal can be good for us when CAIR is an enthusiastic backer. From yesterday's FrontPage, excerpts from "CAIR's Dubai Sugar Daddy":

As a Muslim-rights pressure group, CAIR's own knee-jerk response in defending the UAE is not surprising -- after all, it's populated by Muslims. But the group has more at stake in this case. In fact, it has a direct financial interest in defending the UAE -- a financial relationship that has never been reported in the mainstream media and never publicly disclosed by CAIR, even as it claims to receive no foreign support.

Truth be told, CAIR has an otherwise glaring conflict of interest in speaking out about the White House-approved deal to give UAE-owned Dubai Ports World control of six of our ports effective March 2. And it's something that producers at FOX, CNN and NBC should know before they ever book another CAIR flack. Here's what CAIR is hiding:

The U.S.-based executives of Dubai Ports World report to the emir of Dubai, who owns controlling interest in the Dubai-based company. His name is Gen. Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum.

Memorize that name, folks. And keep reading.

It just so happens that Sheik Maktoum also owns the deed to CAIR's headquarters located practically in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. As I first reported in my book, "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," CAIR's deed is recorded in the name of his foundation, the Al-Maktoum Foundation. It put up more than $978,000 for the property and holds the rights to sell it, manage it and collect rents from other tenants in the multistory red-brick building on the CAIR property, located at 453 New Jersey Avenue, S.E., in Washington. (You can view the relevant pages of the documents on the book's companion website, sperryfiles.com.)

CAIR's landlord, Sheik Maktoum, doubles as UAE defense minister. Before 9/11, he provided UAE military C-130 cargo planes to supply al-Qaida hunting camps in Afghanistan with all the amenities they needed when he and other high-level UAE officials and princes took hunting trips there. On one trip in 1999, roughly half the UAE royal family was the guest of Osama bin laden at his camp near Kandahar. They flew in on an official UAE aircraft, according to a recently declassified CIA memo dated Feb. 19, 1999, and titled, "Recent High Level UAE Visits to Afghanistan." The memo also determined that Dubai officials had lied to U.S. officials about visiting the camps. And they were believed to have even tipped off bin Laden about a coming strike on his camps. Mind you, this was just months after bin Laden blew up the two U.S. embassies in Africa (a plot which was financed in part through Dubai banks), so they knew they were in bad company. Just like CAIR knows it's in bad company.
[...]
Sheik Maktoum's reaction to the mass murder of 3,000 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania was shockingly unsympathetic (as was CAIR's). In fact, he reserved his sympathies for Palestinians. Two weeks after 9/11, Sheik Maktoum warned Washington not to attack "innocent" Muslims in Afghanistan and to instead focus on "Israeli terrorists" in its war on terrorism. He argued that they are the only real terrorists.

"The Arab and Muslim communities have paid dearly for terrorism, especially the state terrorism practiced by the government of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and extremist groups in Israel," he bellowed. "Regrettably, the powers in the international community [read: America, "the Great Satan"] have done nothing but watch the Israeli terrorists, a matter which has angered Arabs and Muslims [including most assuredly Sheik Maktoum]." He added, "Confrontation of terrorism must cover Israeli terrorism."

Sheik Maktoum defines Palestinian suicide bombings as "legitimate acts of resistance," and not terrorism (which makes you wonder how he defines 9/11), and he has held Dubai telethons to support the families of suicide bombers. Also, the sheik has been accused of winking at al-Qaida money-laundering in his city-state, and helping an ailing bin Laden receive care at a Dubai hospital when he was on the lam.

This is CAIR's main sugar daddy (it also get funds from Saudi benefactors), and the Arab ruler with whom the White House has entrusted our vital port security.

I'm sorry to keep asking why this DPW deal is a good idea. But every time I read stuff like this, I come down with a bad case of amnesia.