Newsletter

Congressional Bi-Partisan Panel Demands Prevention of Forced Dispersing of Camp Ashraf in Iraq, Delisting of MEK

2011

Overview

Noting that \"The people of the MEK and their outstanding leaders demonstrated that the people of the MEK could be trusted to be allies in the war on terror,\" Mr. [Andrew Card] said, \"As chief of staff to a President of the United States and I watched as America's word was given. It's important that we keep that word. The word that was given was that we would protect the people of Camp Ashraf. We promised that they would not only be protected by the United States, that we would work with the United Nations to make sure that they were designated a protected people.\" \"It's very important to see the situation of the delisting and the situation at [Ashraf] as intimately linked,\" Professor [Steven Schneebaum] said, adding, \"Prime Minister [Maliki] was indicating explicitly that he finds support for the people of Ashraf in the designation here in Washington of [MEK] as a foreign terrorist organization. And I suspect that that is precisely the same justification that sustains Ambassador [Lawrence Butler] who was quoted extensively in Saturday's New York Times as having repeated virtually every cliche, virtually every lie, virtually every old story about the [MEK] that any of us have ever heard,\" he said. The panel's moderator, Senator [Robert Torricelli], said, \"I don't know anything that speaks more to the problem of legitimate discourse in American public policy than the repeating of these hollow charges and empty lies about the MEK. If you have something to say about why the MEK should not be delisted, if there is a case for not protecting the people of Camp Ashraf where they are located, if there's a case to be made against the MEK on some basis in the interest of the United States, let's hear it.\"

• Publisher: U.S. Newswire
• Subject: Card, Andrew / Sano, John