2010 Elections, Afghanistan, Congress, Iraq, IVAW, Kokesh, Lujan, Mullins, New Mexico, Ron Paul, Support our troops, Tea Party

Adam Kokesh ‘runs’ for Congress; is an antiwar activist seeking to return Ben Lujan to the House?

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Ben Lujan (D) — Tom Mullins (R) — Adam Kokesh (?)

Incumbent U.S. Congressman Ben Lujan (D-NM, 3) was once considered ‘safe’ to win reelection to Congress. Yet Lujan voted for bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed here for federal trial, the health care bill, Cap and Trade, and the TARP bailout. In the only recent poll, a Democrat pollster now finds Lujan’s lead over main Republican rival Tom Mullins has narrowed to within the margin of error, 40 to 36.

Adam Kokesh running as a Republican in the primary against Mullins and his trailing Lujan only 40 to 32 are both far harder to explain.

Is Kokesh a grass roots fiscal conservative or an antiwar activist masquerading as a conservative-libertarian to deceive the people of New Mexico? Before voters there decide, perhaps they should review his multiple arrests — including for smuggling home a firearm — in addition to his anti-war protests while in uniform, anti-military recruitment actions, and travel to an allied nation to encourage U.S. soldiers stationed there to go AWOL.

According to the Washington Examiner, Kokesh was busted after his tour in Iraq;

He was supposed to go to Iraq a second time, but was demoted from sergeant to corporal and not allowed to return after it was learned that he brought a pistol back after his first tour in 2004. [Hat tip to This Ain’t Hell.]

On September 1, 2007, Kokesh called for help from Veterans For Peace with an upcoming antiwar “die-in” in Washington, D.C. Kokesh was arrested there on September 6, 2007 for defacing public property (here is the video). On September 15, while 10,000 of so A.N.S.W.E.R.-led students “died” on the Capitol’s west lawn, Kokesh was again arrested when he, Code Pink, and perhaps thirty more crossed the police line.

In mid-May 2007, Kokesh traveled to Germany where he and another Inactive Reservist brought an unauthorized civilian onto a U.S. military base. He then entered a crowded dining facility. Kokesh himself recounted the “IVAW German Expeditionary Team … base action” and his reading aloud a letter from “the people of Ansbach” to soldiers there, many of whom who would soon deploy to Iraq:

If any of you should decide to leave the Army while in Germany and throw down your arms, the people of Ansbach will support you and do our best to provide you with aid, comfort, and sanctuary. We wish to build a new relationship between the people of Germany and the people of America on the basis of peace, reconciliation, and understanding. [Unfortunately, someone at IVAW no longer wants New Mexico to see the video they once so proudly posted on YouTube. Kokesh’s Iraq Veterans Against the War post is reprinted here, his original post is here [Note June 2, 2011: The orginal narrative by Adam Kokesh has been changed to unrelated commentary] and I have the screen shots just in case they decide to hide it as well.]

Two weeks later, Kokesh was back in D.C. acting nothing like a new-age founding father:

[T]he Marines have launched investigations of three inactive reservists for wearing their uniforms during antiwar protests and allegedly making statements characterized as “disrespectful” or “disloyal.” Two of them were part of the guerrilla theater squad of 13 Iraq Veterans Against the War who roamed Capitol Hill and downtown Washington in March, clad in camouflage and carrying imaginary weapons, to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war. A Washington Post story about that protest is part of the evidence gathered by Marine lawyers. … Upon learning he was being investigated for wearing his uniform during the mock patrol, Kokesh wrote an e-mail to the investigating officer, Maj. John Whyte. The combat veteran discussed his service and his critique of the war, and asked this officer assigned to look into his “possible violation” of wearing his uniform: “We’re at war. Are you doing all you can?” He concluded with an obscene recommendation about what Whyte should go do. This earned him the count for a “disrespectful statement.” [Kokesh was discharged ‘under general conditions‘.]

Over the Columbus Day weekend 2007, Kokesh and six other students tacked up racist anti-Islamic posters around the campus of George Washington University with “Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness” across the bottom. GWU was “dismayed” at the “satire” to mock the sponsors of Conservative Awareness Week 2007.

Band of Mothers founder and Blue Star mom Bev Perlson has witnessed Kokesh’s anti-recruiting and antiwar efforts:

I remember Kokesh when he brought a whole busload of members of World Can’t Wait, ANSWER, SDS, to disrupt the recruiting station at 14th & I Street in Washington, DC. They ran around in circles out in front of the recruiting station that day yelling silly slogans against our Soldiers and the War. Their antics caused about 7 members of the Metro Police to have to stand guard out in front of the station for hours. How’s that for how he disrupts the recruiters, the city and wastes our tax dollars. I remember Kokesh when he tried to stage a re-enactment of the Winter Soldier testimony of the traitor John Kerry days! We disrupted both of these events and the Winter Soldier nonsense was a debacle. Adam Kokesh is a phony who reinvents himself yearly.

Ron Paul can’t let a denouncement of Kokesh by a Tea Party group go unanswered:

Adam Kokesh under fire on Glenn Beck’s 9/12 site (updated)

Liberty candidates are under fire on all fronts. Even from groups that claim to be for liberty and the Constitution. On the main page of the 9/12 Project’s website, and again in its New Mexico forum are topics named “A Traitor in Sheep’s clothing trying to deceive the Voters” … This is a hit piece on Adam Kokesh and needs to be slapped down. The thread on the New Mexico is worse than the one on the front page, but they both need to be countered. Update: For those that want to see what the attack is before going to the site, here it is.

We are writing to you to express our grave concerns about Adam Kokesh, who is aspiring to become the Republican nominee for US Congress from New Mexico’s 3rd district. Mr. Kokesh has an extensive, and well-documented history of affiliations with radical leftist groups. In concert with these groups he has engaged in numerous anti-America and anti-military demonstrations and protests. Moreover, Mr. Kokesh does not appear to have any personal qualifications that would recommend him for serious consideration as a candidate for the Republican Party. He has a significant history suggestive of poor character and judgment, and he has notable incidents of direct activism against Republican office holders. [READ THE REST yet note The Daily Paul re-posted it from 9/12’s site forum. The original is here.]

Retired U.S. Army senior NCO and combat infantry veteran Jonn Lilyea writes, “I’m not sure that Kokesh doesn’t think he’s a Republican. The Paulians are convinced that they can change the party and I think that’s what his real goal is.” Makes perfect sense to me. Yet even if Kokesh loses the June 1 primary, he can register as an independent candidate, be on the ballot in November, and attempt to bleed support away from Tom Mullins so Ben Lujan returns to Congress.

I don’t know Mullins from Adam yet perhaps voters in New Mexico’s 3rd District will soon sort out the saints from the sinners in that race.

Update, March 10, 2010: Michelle Malkin linked over from her post today, ‘Adam Kokesh: An anti-war smear merchant in “Republican” clothing.’

6 imams, 9/11, Barack Obama, Flying Imams, John Brennan

Terror and homeland security adviser Brennan meets the Flying Imam

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The ‘Flying Imams‘ did not act very average on November 20, 2006. Their behaviors too closely fit the profile of those who had slaughtered thirty-three crew members and hundreds of passengers aboard four flights, including eight children. Commercial airline pilots are paid to not ignore safety warning signals and captains can no longer just open their cockpit doors and go investigate. Three years ago, two weeks after concern over the behaviors of six Muslim imams forced U.S. Airway Flight 300 to return to the gate, 9/11 family member Debra Burlingame wrote of the terror on that tarmac in the Wall Street Journal. In part, she wrote:

“Allahu Akbar” was just the opening act. After boarding, they did not take their assigned seats but dispersed to seats in the first row of first class, in the midcabin exit rows and in the rear — the exact configuration of the 9/11 execution teams. The head of the group, seated closest to the cockpit, and two others asked for a seatbelt extension, kept on board for obese people. A heavy metal buckle at the end of a long strap, it can easily be used as a lethal weapon. The three men rolled them up and placed them on the floor under their seats. And lest this entire incident be written off as simple cultural ignorance, a frightened Arabic-speaking passenger pulled aside a crew member and translated the imams’ suspicious conversations, which included angry denunciations of Americans, furious grumblings about U.S. foreign policy, Osama Bin Laden and “killing Saddam.”

The Flying Imam speaking to John Brennan this past Saturday did not act the same way as he did aboard Flight 300:

Michelle Malkin calls out Brennan for his pandering. He did not know Shahin from Adam but he should have known better:

Instead of countering the narrative, exposing Shahin’s true intentions, and vigorously defending America’s homeland security apparatus, Brennan dutifully genuflected to the gods of political correctness. President Obama, he told the militant 9/11 inside-jobber and jihad white-washer, is “determined to put America on a strong course.”

No, not a “strong course” that includes national security profiling of Islamic radicals pretending they care about our country’s best interests. By “strong course,” Brennan assured Shahin, he meant a course towards assuaging the civil rights groups who have objected to every security program at airports, borders, train stations, and visa offices for the past nine years.

Brennan told Shahin that the post-9/11 response of the Bush administration was a “reaction some people might say was over the top in some areas” (insert indignant grievance-monger nodding and mmm-hmm-ing here) and that “in an overabundance of caution [we] implemented a number of security measures and activities that upon reflection now we look back after the heat of the battle has died down a bit we say they were excessive, okay.”

Omar Shahin wants to know what the government can do for those he claimed to speak for, every Muslim in America. He has also stated that 1,200 Muslims died in the 9/11 attacks so perhaps he misspoke. Actions speak louder than words and the Islamic Center he headed on September 11, 2001 has a history:

When it comes to the November 1999 incident, any mention of CAIR’s involvement or defense of the Saudi students has been scrubbed from the organization’s website. It’s no wonder, as the 9/11 Commission Report (page 521, footnote 60) explains that the FBI now considers the incident as a “dry run” for the 9/11 hijackings. And the two men involved? As the 9/11 Commission Report explains, Hamdan al-Shalawi was in Afghanistan in November 2000 training at an Al-Qaeda camp to launch “Khobar Tower”-type attacks against the US in Saudi Arabia, and Mohammad Al-Qadhaieen was arrested in June 2003 as a material witness in the 9/11 attacks. Both men were friends of Al-Qaeda recruiter, Zakaria Mustapha Soubra, who drove them to the airport that day in Qadhaieen’s car. Another friend of Shalawi is Ghassan al-Sharbi, another Al-Qaeda operative that would later be captured in Pakistan with high-level Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida.

There is a connection between these two incidents, as the leader of the six “Flying Imams” this past November is none other than Omar Shahin, the former imam of the Islamic Center of Tucson, where the two Saudi students from the November 1999 incident attended. Counterterrorism expert Rita Katz told the Washington Post in September 2002 that the mosque served as “basically the first cell of Al-Qaeda in the United States; that is where it all started”. (Len Sherman’s Arizona Monthly November 2004 article, “Al Qaeda among Us”, provides greater detail about the connections between the Saudi pair involved in the November 1999 event and the Al-Qaeda cell that operated in Tucson and Phoenix.)

More:

The connections between Al Qaeda and the ICT include Wael Hamza Jalaidan, a former ICT president, believed to be an Al Qaeda founder, and Hani Hanjour, who attended the mosque while a student at the University of Arizona and who later flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on 9/11. Wadih El-Hage, a personal assistant to terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, was active with the ICT in the late 1980’s where he is alleged to have established an Al Qaeda support network, according to the FBI. In 2001, El Hage was convicted by a federal judge in New York of planning the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Islamic Center in Tucson has connections to al Qaeda. A former ICT member is doing life for the 1998 al Qaeda’s attacks upon our embassies. Former ICT member Hani Hanjour saw 5 children 11-years old and younger aboard the plane he was on, hijacked it, and flew it into the Pentagon.

Prejudice may be reality to the person perceiving it yet the 2,976 murdered by Muslims on 9/11 were really real.

If Imam Omar Shahin did not wish to be perceived to be a terrorist, he should not have acted on November 20, 2006 similarly to 19 Muslims who mass-murdered. Mr. Shahin ought to stop acting now like a living martyr, claiming to have been mistreated when he brought it upon himself by his own actions, and suing the very people he scared the hell out of.

John Brennan is obviously not good at assessing “victim” situations and then giving broad advice to strangers.

I’d offer that perhaps he ought to concentrate on advising President Obama on counter-terrorism and rapidly moving programs, like the High-Value Interrogation Group, to a decision point and signature. But then, I would only be advising him to do what he already knows.