Training terrorists with American dollars

Within the space of just days, the term “humanitarian NGOs” is taking on a troubling new meaning. Only yesterday Canada Free Press (CFP) reported an ABC Australia story that the International Red Cross has begun training Palestinian militants in Gaza under cover of its worldwide effort to teach the rules of international law in areas of armed conflict. Today it’s A Fox News report that reveals USAID has been “inadvertently” funneling American tax dollars to terror related groups.

---

How do you inadvertently funnel American tax dollars to terrorists? “A federal agency that disburses billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and pro-democracy programs every year, has inadvertently funneled American taxpayer funds to individuals and entities with “terrorist affiliations” and lacks the safeguards to prevent such incidents from recurring, an international audit has revealed.” (Fox News, Nov. 19, 2007). “In a report entitled “Audit of the Adequacy of USAID’s Anti-terrorism Vetting Procedures” dated November 6 and obtained by Fox News, U.S. Agency for International Development Officer General Donald A. Gambatesa concluded USAID’s policies, procedures and controls are not adequate to reasonably ensuring against providing assistance to terrorists.” Incredibly, there are no procedures in place to vet potential or current USAID partners. “The audit was triggered this spring, after gun battles at Islamic University in Gaza pitted Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas against their rival, Hamas, which controls the university and has been designated a terrorist group by the United States. After the shooting stopped, Fatah displayed large caches of weapons recovered from inside the university, and the Washington Times reported the school had received more than $140,000 in USAID funding. Graphic details were provided by Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill, who sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State Foreign Operations. “In the basement of Gaza Islamic University, a U.S.-funded institution, Palestinian police found several Iranian agents and an Iranian general teaching the students in the U.S.-funded chemistry lab how to make suicide bombs.” This is not just a one-time bureaucratic USAID foul-up. Last year USAID learned it had granted $180,000 to a Bosnian group, whose president was since 1997, included on a “watch list” barring his entry into the United States. The terrorist largesse goes all the way to Osama bin Laden. A man sentenced to four years in prison for lying about his dealings with a disciple of bin Laden was part of a group that received one cool million from USAID. “These kind of problems appear to be systemic,” said Kirk, a former staff official of the World Bank. “And we’ve created a culture that I would worry is a kind of a welfare terrorism, where the United States is backing both sides in this conflict, largely through incompetence and inattention to detail.” There’s a flow of American dollars going to train terrorists with no way to stench the flow? Small wonder why the Red Cross recently began to train Palestinian militants.