Barack Obama’s Campaign Secretly met with CAIR

 It seems that about one month ago the Obama campaign’s “Muslim Outreach Program” met with Muslim leaders in privacy, a meeting the Obama campaign is now calling a misjudgement. The problem with the meeting isn’t the fact that he is reaching out to Muslims and it wasn’t anything that was said in the speech, but there is a problem with some of the people who attended this meeting. That is where Obama’s misjudgement was.

One meeting attendee was Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society, several of the participants said. The MAS website describes Bray as an imam and “long time civil and human rights activist.” Bray’s critics say he has a history of defending terrorists. They point to a video of Bray at a rally in 2000, for example, in which he can be seen pumping his fist in the air in support of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In a 2004 interview, he called the Israeli assassination of a Hamas spiritual leader an “unlawful, cowardly and dangerous act of state-sponsored terrorism.” Bray did not return a call requesting comment.

Also attending the meeting was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is a Muslim-American civil rights group that has, as its website states, “consistently and persistently condemned terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.” Nonetheless, the group has many critics, especially in law-enforcement circles, and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case.

  Obama’s campaign claims that if they had known that terrorist sympathizers were going to be present they wouldn’t have gone to the meeting. The claim of the Obama campaign that there was no knowledge of who would be present is being challenged by at least one member of Obama’s campaign.

A second meeting participant speaking on condition on anonymity said he was stunned to learn that Awad and Bray had been invited to an event where Obama representatives would be present. The participant said Awad and Bray are considered politically “radioactive.” He said that some in the Obama group knew ahead of time that top CAIR officials would be in attendance–an allegation the Obama campaign disputes.

“Yes, when I knew they were coming it made me uncomfortable,” the attendee said. “There was some hope it wouldn’t get out” into the media, the attendee added. “There was some concern within the Obama camp that some of these people coming may be a political liability.”

 According to this source the campaign knew who would be attending and just hoped that it wouldn’t get out to the public. The Obama campaign refused to let NBC interview the director of Obama’s “Muslin Outreach Program”.

 This shows another case of Obama’s lack of good judgement, he has an ever growing list of shady associations. Most of these misjudgements are in his past, even his recent past, but this misjudgement is critical in my opinion. And it is not in his past. Was it a mistake as the campaign claims or did they know? Do they just consider it a misjudgement just because he was caught?

 I am not saying that Obama is a terrorist and I am not saying that he is a sympathizer but I am questioning his judgment. Besides hope and change and change and hope his only other selling point is his supposed great judgement. If we can’t trust his judgement than he has nothing left.

 Barack Obama has stated that he would sit down with Iran and other dictators with no preconditions so is it too much of a stretch to believe that he would send his campaign to speak to such dubious groups as CAIR? I don’t think so.