Seriously, yet again the State Department refuses to designate The Taliban as a terrorist group (h/t Phineas at Sister Toldjah’s spot, which was cross-posted from Public Secrets)
A new State Department report designating terrorist organizations notably excludes one group: the Taliban. The U.S. has been fighting a war in Afghanistan for almost a decade aimed at “defeating the Taliban,†Taliban members repeatedly have threatened and killed American citizens and lawmakers have increased pressure on State to add the Taliban to the list.
Earlier this summer, a group of congressional Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton urging her to begin the process of categorizing the Taliban as a terrorist group. In June, Sens. Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey proposed legislation that would immediately add the Taliban to the terrorist list.
Yet the State Department’s report (due on April 30 but released last week), did not include the Taliban with groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas and the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA). To qualify, an organization must meet only three criteria: It must be foreign, it must engage in terrorist activity and its activity must threaten the security of the U.S. or its citizens.
I almost wrote “un-f’ing-believable”, but, with the crowd in the Executive Branch State Department, it really isn’t. They failed to put the Taliban on the list last year, too. And the year before that. And before that. And so on. You can’t really blame Hillary and Obama too much on this, since the 2008 list fails to include The Taliban.
Of course, this could be just typical State Department liberal weenieness, since, via The Jawa Report, we find out
…….The Taliban were declared specially designated terrorist entity by President Bush under executive order 13224, see here via Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control.
The Executive order recognizes the designation of the Taliban as terrorists by the UN resolution 1267 and directs the Dept of Treasury and State to treat them as such.
The failure to list the Taliban, both Pakistani and Afghani sects, was noticed in May, and the State Dept. wankers still didn’t update the report.
