‘Terror expert’ Walid Shoebat’s fraudulent claims exposed by CNN
Update July, 16: Jimmah has posted an excellent page on Shoebat as well, More tasty morsels of crazy from ‘Terrorism Expert’ Walid Shoebat
Well, I’ll be darned. There’s actually some honest-to-goodness investigative journalism happening over at CNN.
I wonder how the wingnuts will try to spin this? Maybe Anderson Cooper & Drew Griffin are crypto-Jihadists with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? I mean they are journalists, and everyone knows that the entire MSM (except for Fox News, of course) if filled with a bunch of leftist shills for the Islamic supremacists, right? //scarcasm
On a more serious note, Shoebat isn’t the only “terrorism expert” with a questionable background. This is a huge and potentially lethal problem. The threat of terrorism is a very real one—there are people out there who want to kill us, not just Americans or Westerners or non-Muslims, but anyone who disagrees with them.
Allowing unvetted “experts” to advise our federal, state, county, and municipal officials, law enforcement officers, and first responders puts us all at increased risk when we cannot be sure that these people actually have the expertise they claim. We deserve better. Our lives quite literally depend on it, and we should be demanding in no uncertain terms that the people who claim to be qualified to advise those charged with keeping us safe are properly qualified.
C’mon, America—pull yourself up by those legendary bootstaps, put on your grown-up undies, and start taking more concrete, logical steps towards making your world safer. No more sitting in the corner quaking in fear and hoping that the cheap bravado of posturing politicians, or the feverish rantings & ravings of pundits, bloggers, and TV & radio personalities will ward off another attack. It won’t.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to sit down this weekend and send letters to my elected officials letting them know that I expect them to begin demanding some sort of vetting or licensing of these “experts” be made mandatory. As things stand now, it seems that applying for the position of local dog catcher might result in a more extensive background check than that of “terrorism expert”. We need REAL experts, not snake oil salesmen out to make a quick & easy buck.
This makes me so mad I could just spit!
Part 1
Part 2
A little more…
Rapid City, South Dakota (CNN) — Walid Shoebat had a blunt message for the roughly 300 South Dakota police officers and sheriff’s deputies who gathered to hear him warn about the dangers of Islamic radicalism.
Terrorism and Islam are inseparable, he tells them. All U.S. mosques should be under scrutiny.
“All Islamic organizations in America should be the No. 1 enemy. All of them,” he says.
It’s a message Shoebat is selling based on his own background as a Palestinian-American convert to conservative Christianity. Born in the West Bank, the son of an American mother, he says he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist in his youth who helped firebomb an Israeli bank in Bethlehem and spent time in an Israeli jail.
That billing helps him land speaking engagements like a May event in Rapid City — a forum put on by the state Office of Homeland Security, which paid Shoebat $5,000 for the appearance. He’s a darling on the church and university lecture circuit, with his speeches, books and video sales bringing in $500,000-plus in 2009, according to tax records.
“Being an ex-terrorist myself is to understand the mindset of a terrorist,” Shoebat told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
But CNN reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian territories found no evidence that would support that biography. Neither Shoebat nor his business partner provided any proof of Shoebat’s involvement in terrorism, despite repeated requests.
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