I hardly think discussion of this whole “affair” could be called a political dirty trick. The dems are going to bring up this same stuff and even possibly more. If Gill were to win the nomination we would be handing a seat right to the dems. This has NOTHING to do with the fact Gill is a Muslim, but who he has chosen to associate himself with. Any Republican who has taken money from SAFA is incredibly irresponsible in my opinion.

If it turned out a terrorist went to my church, I would hope that wouldn’t disqualify me since I belonged to an “organization” that “harbored” terrorists.

Guilt by association is a cheap political trick, one used by lazy people who are usually bigoted but want to seem reasonable.

Left, right & center we are after all (I hope) Americans together who want to preserve the best of our country, and through our debate chart a responsible course for the future.

http://www.goodbyejim.com/1168365846/index_html

If you Republicans want to nominate the Jim Moran and Abdurahman Alamoudi ally Faisal Gill for office, be my guest. I guarantee you that a holy host of bloggers will raise holy hell about it, just as we did when some wanted to nominate Jim Moran’s ally Harris Miller.

And it won’t be just us libs doing it. So go ahead. Make our day. Nominate former American Muslim Council employee Faisal Gill, who reported to the imprisoned terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi.

Do so, and let the fireworks begin. I will leave no stone unturned to highlight the first, second, third and fourth degree associations between Gill and both Jim Moran and Abdurahman Alamoudi. Perhaps I will be successful in gaining a wider audience. Perhaps not. Try me.

Give the man chance. Gossip is an age old problem. We have to pick a candidate who has a clean record and knows how to refute gossip.

As for the electablity issue, right now there appears to be just too much political baggage right now to make this even a competitive race. The dems will certainly use this stuff even if Mr. Gill has been exonerated.

I applaud efforts to root out the corrupt and any vestige of Islamic terrorism. Sunshine does wonders.

Still, I don’t see the link. Correlation does not imply causality.

The DHS statement on Gill was pretty ironclad:

“DHS is confident that our security clearance process is effective. Mr. Gill was thoroughly vetted at several levels. Mr. Gill did not withhold information on government forms required to initiate government security clearance processing and has been cooperative throughout the process.”

That ends it. An innocent man was charged, an innocent man was exonerated, at least according to the DHS.

Now if there’s a connection between Gill and the Safa Group, I’d like to see that (seeing as this is the second link in this story), but where is it?

Interesting stuff and great research, but it’s missing that one itty bitty piece that makes this grave matter.

Regards,

Greg, you have an interesting blog, and you put a lot of work into it. The result is that people read it. That gives you the responsibility to maintain high standards. Please be careful that you do.

A lot of credible people, including US Senators, have raised questions about Faisal Gill that haven’t gotten answers. If he wants to run for office those questions need answers and until they’re provided conservatives should stay away.

She is a “sensationalist”, which is easy enough to do, as Greg demonstrates in this post. You can string a bunch of seemingly related stuff together and make it look like something that it’s not, kind of like you watch football and think it a blizzard and then realise it’s just the way the camera’s zoom blends all the flakes together.

If you want to believe that the same Bush administration that is taking serious flak for shutting down Muslim “charities” that were tied to terrorism also interfered with an investigation to hide the “terrorist ties” of a low-level political appointee, it’s pretty easy to throw a bunch of stuff out and pretend you’ve connected the dots.

Sometimes bad people really do their deeds in secret, and people just don’t know.

But we can always blame people for not knowing, and sound “reasonable” I guess. Although then you have to wonder why we haven’t already arrested all the bad guys, since it’s so easy for people to know they are bad people just by knowing them.

My point, to be more obvious, is that even if you presume that all the claims of “terrorist ties” are true regarding the players, that doesn’t make everybody who was friendly with those players “terrorist sympathisers”.

I guess if Faisal is associated with terrorists, then I must be associated with terrrorists by my passing aquantance with Faisal. And Greg, you are a member of the same organization as Faisal, better watch out or you may have the FBI questioning you, obviously the PWC Republican committee is a terrorist organization.

Back to reality — on it’s face, it is absurd to believe that Faisal Gill has any relationship with terrorists, or is a terrorist sympathiser, or that a democrat candidate could get anywhere with baseless charges based on such flimsy evidence. It is inconceivable that the fine people you mention as supporting Faisel are all ignoring his “terrorist ties” out of some bizarre form of “loyalty”.

You think Denny Daugherty is supporting terrorists, or supporting someone who supports terrorists? You think the government is keeping in its employ, and with a clearance, a person with terrorist ties? You think Michelle Malkin’s 2004 report still holds ANY WEIGHT?

At least (I think) you have put just enough weasel words into your post, and referenced enough other people’s opinions rather than your own, to avoid being more directly charged with libel, but you may not be far from it — and accusing someone of being a terrorist sympathiser is certainly a pretty inflammatory charge.

What is it about the positions on issues, or what his goals and principles are, that you think make him unfit for office?

Great follow-up — I’ve updated the post and I’m asking my readers to go read it. Looks like you’ve been on the trail for a while as well…

“DHS is confident that our security clearance process is effective. Mr. Gill was thoroughly vetted at several levels. Mr. Gill did not withhold information on government forms required to initiate government security clearance processing and has been cooperative throughout the process.”

We have some conflicting stories. While I will concede that politicians make special rules for themselves, this story had some high level interest, but relatively little press coverage. There was smoke, but not enough to interest the big boys very long. Mostly, some blogs took off with this story. I have to wonder why.

It will be interesting to see where you go with this.

The Safa Group were neither conservatives nor liberals, but were attempting to buy influence from both Jim Moran and social conservatives such as Dick Black. I have posted at GoodbyeJim.com (http://www.goodbyejim.com/1168314983/index_html) a listing of Moran’s fundraising among and efforts on behalf of the Safa Group. Moran has yet to return the last of the contributions he received from Safa Group officials, a $1000 contribution from Fakhri al-Barzinji on 10/15/04.

Local Republicans might wish to ask themselves why the allegedly Republican Gill was active on behalf of a group that was funding Jim Moran.

I believe Gill made a materially false statement on a security clearance request, and that is strongly documented. That’s a felony. If anyone in different circumstances did that, they’d be in a heap of trouble. But when these questions are raised about a political appointee with big-time connections, he seemingly gets kit-glove treatment and is reinstated into his position.

“Sorry, it just slipped my mind that I worked for a convicted terrorist”? I’ve been through that process, and I darned sure was asked a lot of probing questions and documented the heck out of my life because it was made clear to me that a lie or an intentional omission would be a big problem. It doesn’t wash.

I’ll follow this up with another post soon since some folks just can’t seem to get it. I figured that the Alamoudi thing had already been talked to death already, but I guess I’m going to have to go through it myself.