lobbying and terrorists

* further to my posts on sibel edmonds and trying to unravel the maze of 'lobbying' creeps and 'quasi-legit' organisations and the associated weapons and drug smuggling and drug-smuggling...

This article by Christopher Deliso mentions the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya - ACPC's members include Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, Richard Pipes, Frank Gaffney, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Caspar Weinberger, Norman Podhoretz, Eliot Cohen and R James Woolsey and just about every other neocreep you could possibly think of. The chairman at the ACPC is Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Remember, Sibel seems to point to Brent Scowcroft - the chairman of American Turkish Council.)

Why would all these neocons give a shit about some freedom-hating Muslims on the other side of the planet? (And did the ACPC organise the interview with Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev? Did they organise for the ABC to broadcast it?)

With that in mind, remember Jesse's recent piece that i pointed to the other day where he notes that:
a) "Starting in 1998, Norquist put his considerable political skills in the service of such Islamists as Abdurahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian... Today, both Alamoudi and al-Arian are in jail on terrorism-related charges. "
b) "Shortly after 9/11, Abramoff signed up as a lobbyist for... a Saudi businessman named Saleh Abdullah Kamel... who was listed as being one of the seven "main individual sponsors of terrorism" in this report by French researcher Jean-Charles Brisard submitted to the UN Security Council in December 2002."
c) "David H. Safavian initially failed to disclose lobbying work he had done for several controversial foreign clients when he went before a Senate panel last year to be confirmed...
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held up Safavian's nomination for more than a year, in part because of lawmakers' concerns about lobbying work for two men later accused of links to suspected terrorist organizations"

To which Laura Rozen mused:

"One does wonder, reading all these news reports over the past few months, what in the hell kind of operation Abramoff was really running. Greed, sure, extreme greed, sure sure sure, but the kind of enormous infiltration/influence-racket operation he was running -- was it about more than the intersection of greed and the far-right conservative agenda? More than money and power? Or is that it? Abramoff's past ties to apartheid-era South African intelligence, Grover Norquists' own adventures in Africa, the ties to terrorist suspects, one wonders just what this whole operation was really about (beyond drowning government in a bathtub)."

Indeed, one does wonders.

A penny for sibel's thoughts?

(for some of my recent, related sibel pieces, see here and here and here and here)

update: Jesselee's trifecta is actually a quadrella - lets not forget this from the AP on Sep27, 2001:"SunCruz Casinos has turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers."