Did Giuliani And Co. Provide ‘Material Support’ To Terrorist Group?

[cal04]

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/12/23/did-giuliani-and-co-provide-material-support-to-terrorist-group/

The Washington Post reports that four prominent Republicans — former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Bush administration homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey — spoke before “a forum of cheering Iranian exiles” in Paris to demand that President Obama “take the controversial Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations and incorporate it into efforts to overturn the mullah-led government in Tehran”:
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205180.html)

“Appeasement of dictators leads to war, destruction and the loss of human lives,” Giuliani declared. “For your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just really a disgrace.”

The four GOP figures appeared at a rally organized by the French Committee for a Democratic Iran, a pressure group formed to support MEK.

Leaving aside the spectacle of prominent conservatives going abroad to criticize the administration’s foreign policy, there’s actually a real question here of whether Giuliani, Townsend, Ridge, and Mukasey have violated U.S. law in regard to “material support” for terrorism.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project that “the First Amendment does not protect humanitarian groups or others who advise foreign terrorist organizations, even if the support is aimed at legal activities or peaceful settlement of dispute”:

In a case that weighed free speech against national security, the court voted 6 to 3 to uphold a federal law banning “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations. That ban holds, the court said, even when the offerings are not money or weapons but things such as “expert advice or assistance” or “training” intended to instruct in international law or appeals to the United Nations.

Read more at the Wonk Room.

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/12/23/did-giuliani-and-co-provide-material-support-to-terrorist-group/

[Angry Dragon]

1. Off to gitmo with them

let the courts sort it out in a couple of years
lock them up and maybe use enhanced interrogation just to make sure

[Bragi]

2. How'd these war criminals get to Paris?

All the people listed are co-conspirators in Bush's illegal wars and his denial of human rights in the U.S and abroad. I am disappointed if they traveled to Paris and were not served with war crimes charges.

Beyond that, I have to say that I am unenthusiastic about using a really bad law to charge political enemies with abetting terrorism.

I don't support the use of this law against the people that have been unjustly charged in Minneapolis, so I don't support it being used against anyone else either.

See http://socialistworker.org/2010/12/14/feds-expand-their-assault

Note: I link to the above site not because I support its politics, but because -- big surprise! -- it's difficult to find mainstream media article about the abuse of citizens under the Anti-Terrorism laws.

[UTUSN]

3. K&R #6 n/t

[cal04]

4. Giuliani, Tom Ridge Go To Paris To Support Iranian Marxist Terrorist Group

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/giuliani_tom_ridge_speak_out_to_support_iranian_ma.php

This Wednesday, a group of prominent Bush-era Republicans, including former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former White House adviser Frances Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, flew to Paris to speak in support of an Iranian exile group there -- one that's been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.

"The United States should not just be on your side," Giuliani told the group, the Washington Post reported. "It should be enthusiastically on your side. You want the same things we want."

The group, known as Mujaheddin-e Khalq or MEK, is a militant group that's been violently fighting the Iranian government since the 1960s. It has ties to the regime of Saddam Hussein, which trained and outfitted the MEK and for whom the MEK fought in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. According to the State Department, which declared the group a terrorist organization in 1997, the group's philosophy is a combination of "Marxism, Islam, and feminism."

Giuliani and the others told the cheering crowd that the Obama administration should take a stronger hand against Iranian leaders. Townsend scoffed at the use of negotiations and sanctions, without suggesting a tactic that she believes could work.

[gratuitous]

5. NO!

Only pacifists and anti-war groups support terrorists. Mayor 9/11 and his cronies can't be supporters of terrorism, because they belong to the correct tribe.