Doug Ross @ Journal

The Friends of Terror Scrapbook

The State Department just declassified documents relating to the murders of U.S. diplomats in the Sudan in 1973. As many have suspected, the U.S. was aware (HTML conversion courtesy of BizzyBlog; original PDF is available from the State Department) that Yasir Arafat directly orchestrated the killings:

The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the [PLO], and the head of Fatah... ...Fatah representatives based in Khartoum partcipated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy. ...The terrorists extended their deadlines three times, but when they became convinced that ther demands would not be met and after they reportedly had received orders from Fatah headquarters in Beirut, they killed the two United States officials and the Belgian Charge...

Put simply, the U.S. was aware that Arafat had supervised and arranged the vicious kidnapping and murder of its diplomats.


This is, of course, the same Arafat that was a frequent visitor to the Clinton White House. Arafat, despite continual coddling, remained a terrorist to the end of his days.


The State Department's declassified document, of which Bill Clinton was certainly aware, is typical of his administration's attitude of appeasement and cowardice in the face of terrorists, dictators, and thugs.


You may remember Hillary Clinton warmly greeting Arafat's wife.


But that pales in comparison with other Clinton-era coddle-fests.


North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, responsible for as many as three million deaths through mistreatment and starvation (source: Human Rights Watch) used a simple negotiation with the Clinton administration to gain access to nuclear weapons. Madeline Albright admitted on Meet the Press that North Korea was, "cheating" on the Clinton administration's deal; and ended up with nukes.


Clinton's response (or non-response) to a series of terrorist attacks is also rather well known.


Jimmy Carter, already responsible for a disastrous set of foreign-policy decisions while serving as President, has befriended Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Chavez, of course, has come under increasing scrutiny in South America for creating a huge stockpile of weapons.

...Billions of dollars, dog eared for government programs, have simply disappeared, most likely siphoned-off by corrupt officials... The Centralized Social Fund (Fondo Unico Social), are defunct and run by military officers who have little to no oversight... It has become clear that leaders of Venezuela's military, as long as they remain loyal to Chavez, receive no oversight from Caracas. Venezuela cannot offer any reasonable assurances that AK rifles purchased from Russia or manufactured in Venezuela will not leak into the hands of the FARC or other extra-legal groups in the region...

Carter has also befriended Cuba's despotic leader, Fidel Castro. Cuba's government, such as it is, is described by Human Rights Watch as:

...a highly effective machinery of repression. The denial of basic civil and political rights is written into Cuban law. In the name of legality, armed security forces... silence dissent with heavy prison terms, threats of prosecution, harassment, or exile. Cuba uses these tools to restrict severely the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression, association, and assembly. The conditions in Cuba's prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. In recent years, Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform and placating visiting dignitaries with occasional releases of political prisoners...

Among the visiting dignitaries are useful dupes like Carter.

* * *
Are you detecting a theme here related to Democrats and terrorist-supporting, despotic thugs? Some sort of recurring pattern involving appeasement that simply strengthens these nightmarish regimes? Well, the Democrats aren't done yet.


Here's Hezbollah-supporter and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad meeting with Senator Bill Nelson. Yes, that's the same Hezbollah responsible for murdering 241 U.S. Marines.


Here's Assad meeting with John Kerry and Christopher Dodd. This series of meetings with the dictator was described by the White House as "not helpful" and "not appropriate."


Now the Iraq Survey Group advocates additional discussion with despots and terror-supporting thugs. The obvious flaws in this approach have been suitably dismissed in many other, more sober and thoughtful venues.

It nets out simply, perhaps in terms even "progressives" can understand. What have we gotten from coddling dictators and terrorists? Mass-murder, mass-suffering, destruction, and chaos.

Now we can add, thanks to consistent Democratic patterns of appeasement, nuclear weapons and -- quite possibly -- ballistic missile technologies to the mix.

Have the Democrats learned anything from this disastrous sequence of events? Apparently not, if Dodd, Kerry, and Nelson are any indication.



Hat tip: Larwyn

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