MEK to Be Delisted as Terrorists in Reward for Engaging in Terrorism
The Foreign Terrorism Organization list really doesn’t mean much if the way to get off it is by killing Iranian scientists at the behest of the US and Israel.
The Obama administration is moving to remove an Iranian opposition group from the State Department’s terrorism list, say officials briefed on the talks, in an action that could further poison Washington’s relations with Tehran at a time of renewed diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
The exile organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MeK, was originally named as a terrorist entity 15 years ago for its alleged role in assassinating U.S. citizens in the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and for allying with Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein against Tehran.
The MeK has engaged in an aggressive legal and lobbying campaign in Washington over the past two years to win its removal from the State Department’s list. The terrorism designation, which has been in place since 1997, freezes the MeK’s assets inside the U.S. and prevents the exile group from fundraising.
Oddly, the entire article makes no mention of allegations that MEK trained at a US Special Forces camp in the NV desert and/or killed a bunch of Iranian civilians with magnet bombs.
Though its last paragraph amounts to as much.
“If there’s a coalition against the mullahs, then we should fund that coalition, and the MeK should be a part of it,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.). He cautioned that for now, he wasn’t advocating directly funding MeK. “The MeK has the resources to resist and fight the mullah dictatorship. They don’t need our money, they just need us to get out of the way and take the shackles off.”
Jim? I believe this is your department.
Though maybe it’s not all the dead scientists that made the difference here. Maybe it’s the art project that significantly resembles the INC’s finger painting projects leading up to the Iraq War. America. Big fans of primitive art.
We demand our terrorists to be able to both kill civilian scientists and draw crude pictures, you know.
Update: In potentially related news,
Iran has hanged a man it said was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad whom it convicted of killing one of its nuclear scientists in 2010, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
Figures that Rohrabacher would be in favor of it. He probably dreams about being in MEK and fighting eeevull Eye-Ranians.
My department? I think I’ll just let this piss off Donna and then I’ll hit on the piece Josh Rogin writes when Donna (oops, Dana) goes crying to him.
Reading this I was reminded of John LeCarre’s last book(Our Kind of Traitor). These are our(U.S.Gov.)kind of terrorists.
Smells like election-year politics as Bibi gets a pony.
Shorter Hillary: “Have a nice ride on your new pony Bibi!”
OT – And speaking of the US escalation of the war in Yemen, via CNN:
Do you suppose that after his latest pow-wow with the Yemeni President this past Sunday about the US’s willingness to escalate the war in Yemen that John Brennan has a sad?
No, I didn’t think so.
How, exactly, does anyone lobby for the MeK given that such activity would count as support for terrorism?
Just askin’.
well, it was either this are arrest a bunch of prominent americans for material support of terrorism.
these days, its not “make the punishment fit the crime”;
it’s “make the laws fit the the perpetrators”.
we simply cannot have a situation in our nation in which powerful, well-connected politicians go around flaunting the law.
@MadDog: And via the AP, a report that reinforces my comment about the US’s escalating involvement in the war in Yemen:
MACY or Military Assistance Command Yemen. You read it here first.
@MadDog: From the same AP piece:
@JTM: How? Because Congress lets them and is supportive. Our Government is a Terror organization, support and fund it, and use it against the US citizenry. Propaganda via news organizations is number one on their list and the other is the Debt Monster that is going to eat us alive if we don’t give everything good about the country to the Banks and Military Industrial Complex that serves corporations and not citizens.
Years ago I added PNAC nut job David Wurmser to my email alerts. I’ve noticed over the last few years (Obama admin) items have been dead silent on or by him. Would love to know his sources of income while the neo-cons are out of office. Anyway, he popped up today on this post issue.
http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-is-using-american-black-ops-choppers-to-ferry-iranian-spies-into-iraq-2012-5
“Take the shackles off”, as if the MEK were being released from prison and torture, instead of being freed to torture and imprison. The plot reads like a bad film about Ninja assassins-for-hire.