http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/65956Neocons Embrace Islamic Terror GroupBy Danny Postel, Common Sense. Posted October 23, 2007.
Daniel Pipes, one of America's premiere Islamophobes, has a soft spot for one deadly deadly Islamic terrorist organization.During the week of October 22-26, an official announcement effuses, "The nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever - Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses." Ringmastered by David Horowitz, this circus will be performing under the tent of something called the "Terrorism Awareness Project."
The purpose of this ballyhoolooza, we are told, is to confront the "Big Lies" of the Left regarding terrorism and militant Islam. Worthy subjects, to be sure. Indeed I would like to help the sponsors of the "wake-up call" promote awareness of them. Toward this end, let's consider the American Right's "special relationship" with one group of terrorists.
The U.S. State Department officially considers the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) a Foreign Terrorist Organization. While those honors date back to 1994, they've been renewed during the Bush years. Indeed in 2003 Foggy Bottom went further, including the National Council of Resistance of Iran -- an MEK alias -- under the terrorist designation. (The MEK is also known as the People's Mujahedeen.)
To make a long and bizarre story short, the MEK got its start in early 1960s Iran, helped overthrow the Shah in 1979, but quickly turned on the revolutionary government it helped bring to power. Employing an ideological blend of Stalinism and Islamism, the tactics of a paramilitary guerilla faction, and the organizational structure of a cult, the group went into exile, eventually making their home in Iraq in the mid-1980s. Not only did Saddam give the organization cover: he armed, funded, and utilized them for a variety of ends over two decades.
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