Redstate

in related news state has adopted Outback Steakhouse's motto

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

We’ve long expressed the opinion that in the Long War the US State Department is an uncertain ally if not an outright opponent. Its insistence as running the department as a source of sinecures for its employees has resulted in key, and even not key, positions on Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan being unfilled and embassies in critical Third World nations being filled by drive-by diplomats or by inexperienced staffers.

State has long believed it was in the business of making US foreign policy, as some sort of priesthood, rather than carrying out the foreign policy of the US based on the will of the voters as articulated through elected officials. This hubris apparently extends to breaking laws they don’t agree with.

Read on.

Last week Joel Mowbray reported that despite federal law to the contrary, the US Agency for International Development was providing substantial funds two universities in the Palestinian territories which had strong and demonstrable links to terrorist organizations.

Mowbray provides an update by way of Powerline. The head of USAID received a substantial wirebrushing at the hands of Tom Lantos:

Had you entered into a dialogue with Congress, we would have told you, for example, that providing U.S. assistance to a terrorist-controlled university in Gaza was out of the question and, in fact, violates U.S. law. According to news reports, USAID transferred large sums of U.S. taxpayers’ money to Al-Quds University, which just last month held a weeklong celebration honoring the Hamas leader credited with inventing suicide belts in the mid-1990’s....

It is probably a safe bet that the USAID director is still fuming about demagogues and alarmists who just don’t see the big picture.