GOP Congressman: Obama’s ‘Political Correctness’ On Islam Led To Boston Bombings

By Hayes Brown/Think Progress

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested on Friday that the FBI was unable to ask deceased Boston marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev about Islam during its 2011 interview with him due to President Obama’s “political correctness,” thus allowing the bombing to take place.

Gohmert said on the House floor that the Obama administration has prevented intelligence officials from discussing Islam. “It was in that 9/11 commission report, before this administration took over and implemented political correctness,” he said, arguing the FBI’s training manuals were “systematically purged” in 2011 to conform to Obama’s worldview.

Obama’s whitewashing of Islam, Gohmert hinted, allowed the Tsarnaev brothers to slip through the fingers of the FBI and set off bombs in Boston:

GOHMERT: But what kind of interview must that have been of the guy who was going to blow off arms and legs and kill a child and who had dreams of killing so many more. What kind of interview must that have been when you can’t use the word jihad, you can’t talk about his Muslim faith? Did they even bring up Tamerlan’s Muslim faith in that interview? [...] Is it any wonder that the FBI came away from their interviews and said, ‘We don’t find any problems?’ Well, I guess not. [...] What kind of interviews must those have been when you can’t use the terms that let you get to the bottom of what may be a plot to kill people down the road? There’s no problem in the Justice Department, there is a problem with leadership that will not let them do their job. And it needs to change.

The facts don’t line up with Gohmert’s claims, however. In 2011 it was revealed that FBI’s counterterrorism training courses were full of misleading views about Islam, including thatmainstream Muslims are “violent” and “radical.” In response to the revelation, the FBI purged its training documents of all that mischaracterized all Muslims as being especially prone to terrorism.

When it comes to questioning Tsarnaev, the FSB — Russia’s domestic intelligence service —reached out to the United States in 2011 regarding its fears that he — an ethnic Chechen — was a security threat. In response, the FBI launched a three-month investigation into Tsarnaev, including interviews with him, his family, and his communications and internet usage. Following that review, the FBI determined there wasn’t enough evidence to continue to monitor Tsarnaev’s activities. When the FBI reported that to Russia in Oct. 2011, requesting further information about why the FSB believed Tsarnaev was a threat, Russia reportedly never responded.

Gohmert has proved no stranger to promoting wild theories related to Islam during his time in Congress. At various times, the Texan has stated that wide gun-ownership is needed to protect against Sharia law, that Obama intervened in Libya to allow al Qaeda to spread, and that the president is seeking to take credit for starting a new Ottoman Empire. Interfaith groups have called upon Gohmert in the past to drop his Islamophobia, seemingly to no effect.

Fox's Erickson: "Multiculturalism" Key Factor Leading To Boston Bombings

CHELSEA RUDMAN/Media Matters

Fox News contributor Erick Erickson wrote a FoxNews.com piece on the Boston bombings that attacked Islam as a religion that "cannot ... peacefully coexist with other religions" and suggested "multiculturalism" helped lead to the bombings.

In his piece, Erickson wrote, "In the past decade we have seen that not all Muslims are terrorists, but just about every terrorist has been a Muslim." He also claimed that "contrary to the political correct," "[c]ompared to all other religions in the Twentieth and Twenty-first century, only Islam seems to generate people willing to kill for their religion."

Erickson suggested that societal emphasis on "multiculturalism" led the Boston bombing suspects to turn to radical Islam because immigrants aren't expected to "assimilate into American society." In a tweet linking to his piece, Erickson said:

 

Erickson has a long history of inflammatory remarks: he has endorsed white-men-only scholarships, defended Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments, and has said "violence" is "extremely common ... within much of Islam."

From Erickson's FoxNews.com piece:

Let us be very clear here. In the past decade we have seen that not all Muslims are terrorists, but just about every terrorist has been a Muslim.

As more young Muslim men come of age in a post-modern America, the problem of home grown terrorism is going to be far worse than the terrorism we've previously seen.

[...]

Every person wants a sense of belonging. But post-modern America offers no sense of belonging into a greater culture. Each culture is relative. 

[...]

Then there are young Muslim men adrift in liberal, post-modern America. Their religion is not, contrary to the political correct, a religion of peace, but of submission. Many of the Muslims who are most absorbed into their religion intend to fill the cultural vacuum left by the post-modern liberals of the West with Islam. We will all submit one way or the other. Compared to all other religions in the Twentieth and Twenty-first century, only Islam seems to generate people willing to kill for their religion.

If you do not believe me, announce on Twitter you intend to burn the Koran and see what happens. Remember, we are talking about a religion that, if the Obama White House is to be believed, went into international riots over a poorly produced You Tube video and an idiot pastor in Florida.

We have allowed, due to our liberal values and constitutional priorities on free exercise of religion, the one religion on earth that cannot, in its natural state, peacefully coexist with other religions, to migrate across the map.

Fox guest Michelle Malkin links Grover Norquist to Boston Marathon bombing

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

During an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday night, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin alleged that influential anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist was indirectly linked to the Boston Marathon bombing.

“I think of course political correctness has always been the handmaiden of terrorism, on top of that political pandering, and unfortunately neither party has its hands completely free of this,” she told Sean Hannity while discussing the bombing suspects.

“If you go on my website right now, michellemalkin.com, I talk more about the first president of the mosque that the bombers attended, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who has ties to the GOP — and in particular Grover Norquist — that a lot of people in the establishment had never, never condemned,” Malkin added. “If this had been a liberal who was tied to it, everybody on the right would be screaming about it. So both parties, both establishments are guilty of not speaking up enough and not doing enough to stop these people.”

Alamoudi, former president of the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2004 after confessing to his involvement in a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Prior to his arrest, he was an influential financier of political and charitable organizations.

On her website, Malkin claimed that Norquist had worked with Alamoudi to create the Islamic Free Market Institute. She also alleged that Norquist helped Alamoudi obtain access to the White House.

Malkin is not the first to have attacked Norquist for his alleged ties to “Islamic radicals.” Conservative activists Frank Gaffney and David Horowitz were the first to accuse the founder of Americans for Tax Reform of helping “Islamists” infiltrate the U.S. government. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Gaffney as “the anti-Muslim movement’s most paranoid propagandist.”

Watch video, courtesy of Fox News, below:

Boston And The Right-Wing Media's Collapse

 ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters For America:

Prefacing his comments by insisting he knows "how foreign affairs work," Glenn Beck on April 18 announced that his website, The Blaze, was breaking news about the Boston Marathon bombing: A Saudi national student on a student visa and was "absolutely involved" in the Patriot's Day blast was being deported by the U.S. government for security reasons.

Beck went further, claiming the student, or "dirt bag," as the host described him, was "possibly the ringleader" in the bombing that killed three people and injured more than one hundred, and the government was deliberately covering it up.

Beck urged listeners to spread the breaking news via Twitter and Facebook because, he warned, the mainstream media would ignore the revelation. But the right-wing media would pick up the slack. Fox News' Sean Hannity helped launch the storyon April 17 and continued to fan it yesterday,claiming the student had previously "been involved with a terrorist or terror activity," while a swarm of right-wing sites pushed the paranoid tale.  

By making his wild allegations, Beck was asking listeners to ignore the fact that law enforcement officials had previously, and repeatedly, denied earlier right-wing media claims that the Saudi student had been taken into "custody," or was in any way responsible for the blast.  

Indeed, officials at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security bothsoundly denied the story, explaining that there were two different Saudi nationals: one recovering in a Boston hospital who had witnessed and been injured in the explosions but was not a suspect, and another in ICE custody who was unrelated to the bombing investigation. Beck responded by calling for President Obama to be impeached for what he considered the sprawling government cover-up that now surrounded the student, Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda.

So yeah, it was that kind of week for the right-wing media. It was a debacle.

In the same week that Pulitzer prizes were announced honoring the finest in American journalism, many in the far-right media worked to set news standards in mindless, awful behavior in the wake of the Boston attack.

Faced with covering the most important American terror news story in a decade, too many players opted to just make stuff up. Prompting witch hunts, they cast innocents as would-be killers and then couldn't be bothered with apologies.

It was a memorable week in which the conservative media's highest profile newspaper, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, seemed committed to getting as many stories wrong about the Boston attack as possible.

The hapless Post somehow managed to completely botch the simplest Journalism 101 fact of how many people were killed in the Patriot's Day attack. But hey, according to beleaguered Post editor Col Allan thePost tried its best and that's all that really matters. (It would've taken a "crystal ball" to get the story right, Allan now complains.) So no, there doesn't appear to be much introspection unfolding inside Murdoch's daily; a big-city tabloid that managed to get wrong, for days, a breaking crime story.

Yes, CNN this week was forced to concede mistakes when it  reported sources had informed the news channel that arrests had been made in the case. But CNN quickly, and publicly, corrected the errors. Those unfortunate miscues happen when reporters let a be-first mindset trump the more important be-right standard. What we saw from portions of the far-right press this week however, was completely different; they almost couldn't have gotten more stories if they had tried.

Of course Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham used the terror attacks to push her partisan agenda about immigration reform. (This, before she knew anything about the suspects.) Of course chronic Obama critics like Fox News host Oliver North attacked the president for traveling to Boston to attend a prayer service for the terror victims; to try to help comfort the rattled city. And of course Fox News couldn't wait more than five minutes after that prayer service concluded before inviting Stephen Hayes on to criticize Obama for how he'd handled the issue of gun legislation.

That's what anti-Obama programming looks like and Fox News saw little reason to alter that chronically caustic approach this week.

What was truly stunning though, as highlighted by irresponsible rants about the Saudi student, was the aggressive push by key conservative media players to simply concoct stories about the breaking news event.

Back to Beck:

I believe this is possibly the ringleader, this guy is absolutely involved, and we are flying this dirt bag out of the country because he has connections and we are covering up.

Keep in mind, this was after unethical right-wing bloggers had already harassed the Saudi bombing victim online, publishing his name, home address, and what they claimed were Facebook pictures of the 20-year-old Saudi national student. The same student police had cleared of any implication in the blast. (His only crime this week appeared to be his Saudi origin.)

And who led the early crusade against the bomb victim? Murdoch's New York Post, which erroneously reported he was a "suspect" who had been taken "into custody."

The same Post, of course, which then made headlines by irresponsibly splashing on its front page a photo of two local men at the marathon finish line, one a high school runner, and putting them under the headline "Bag Men," strongly suggesting they were involved with the terror attack. They were not. But that didn't stop ethically-challenged blogger Jim Hoft from referring to them six times in one report as "suspects" in the deadly blast. 

"Grossly irresponsible" and "egregious" were some of the descriptions media pro's used to explain the Post'sshocking performance this week. As one journalism professor told Media Matters, "It does appear that the Post, there is something crazy going on there."

Trust me, it's not just the Post.