House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md
Democrat met opposition leader in Egypt
CAIRO, Egypt
A top U.S. Democratic congressman met a leading member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed opposition group, during a recent visit to the country, the Islamic fundamentalist group and U.S. officials said Saturday.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliament leader, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, twice on Thursday — once at the parliament building and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, said Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan.
U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry would only confirm that Hoyer, who represents Maryland, met with el-Katatni at U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone’s home at a reception with other politicians and parliament members.
Though officially banned since 1954, the Brotherhood is tolerated by the government and has become Egypt’s largest opposition group and President Hosni Mubarak’s most powerful rival.
Its members, who run as independents, make up the largest opposition bloc in parliament, holding about one-fifth of its 454 seats.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has refused in the past to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood.
But Berry said U.S. government policy does not bar meetings with Brotherhood members of parliament and Hoyer’s talks with el-Katatni were not a change in U.S. policy toward the group.
“It’s our diplomatic practice around the world to meet with parliamentarians, be they members of political parties or independents,” Berry said. “We haven’t changed our policy with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization.”
The State Department had no comment Saturday on Hoyer’s meetings with the group.
Berry stressed that Hoyer met with el-Katatni in his capacity as an independent member of Egyptian parliament. He would not say what the two discussed.
Hassan said the two lawmakers discussed developments in the Middle East, the “Brotherhood’s vision” and opposition movements in Egypt. He said the two met privately at the ambassador’s home and with other members of Hoyer’s bipartisan delegation and Egyptian lawmakers at the parliament building.
Hoyer’s meeting came just a day after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi drew sharp criticism from the Bush administration for meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.
Pelosi and other Democrats argue the administration needs to engage Syria to resolve some of the most intractable problems in the Middle East, such as Iraq and the Israeli-Arab conflict. But the Bush administration rejects that approach, accusing Syria of exacerbating the troubles in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.
Jon Alterman, a Mideast specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Bush administration officials may have avoided meeting Muslim Brotherhood members because that could strain relations with the secular Egyptian government, one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East.
“The difficulty when it gets to Egypt is that the Brotherhood is not a legal group within Egypt and the U.S. government is wary of violating laws in countries in which it operates,” he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Wild Thing’s comment………..
Wow, the media sure hid this story. This goes right along with the other story about the Democrats inviting members of the Muslim Brotherhood to Congress. Good grief! These Democrats are nuts and VERY dangerous!
We have our troops fighting against the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where our troops have tracked them down around the world. And what do the Democrats do? The go and meet with the enemy. I swear I have had it! If I was a guy I would love to punch out the lights of every Dem I meet from now on.
You can CLICK this link to read a short write up on The Muslim Brotherhood. There are tons of links online that tell all about the horrible Muslim Brotherhood, their helping the Nazi’s, and how dangerous they are.
FYI about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood:
http://www.terrorismawareness.com and click on ‘Islamic-Meine-Kampf’ and ‘Jihad’. Thank-You Professor David Horowitz for getting the TRUTH out and for these two powerful features. Happy Friday 13th WT!
Here we go again–time to dust off the pen and start pulling them on the carpet with the Logan act.
All of them.
They are interfering with the President.
It’s illegal to do this even in England–interfering with the proper succession of a Monarch.
Interesting how Democrats are wanting to meet with known terrorist supporters throughout the world. I think they believe that if they talk nice with them, they’ll leave us alone.
Converting to world to Islam is the goal of radical Islam. To achieve this goal, they will murder all who stand in their way. Democrats and RINO’s are compromisers who will sacrifice our religious freedom to help radical Islam achieve its goals in order to have “peace”. Their battle cry during the Cold War was “Better Red Than Dead”. Their new battle cry will be “Better Muslim Than Jihad”.
Are all these Democrats and RINOs former Woodstockers? Do they think kumbaya music and pot make the World peaceful? This is the enemy they want to bow to. These moslems have stated adamently that Westerners need to be destroyed or enslaved. As WT noted, they assasinated Sadat because he dared to think of Israel and the West as legitimate entities.
If it was one or two rogue Dems I could say “nut cases”. But these are groups of Dems, and Rinos. Some of them are in the most powerful postions of the Congress and overly influence legislative action. Some of them also attempt to override the system of checks and balances with the other two branches of government.
I can almost visualize now, with the socialist tendencies of elected government and the blatant violating of the Constitution, a Second American Revolution or an American Civil War for Survival. Recently I would have considered those thoughts to be of the Bunker Buddy crowd or conspiracy theorists. But I have seen the path of America change so drastically since Ronald Reagan left the Presidency, I wonder if we are even the same Republic. It reminds me of VP Gore’s goofy analogy of, “What is up, is down and what is down, is up!’
I posted an article by Joan Swirsky from The Family Security Foundation, Inc. called The Pathology of Liberalism.
You might have seen it already but if not here’s the link:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=697390
It explains so much.
yankeemom – that is a good read. It explains a lot about “the children” we are stuck with now. So scary that they are almost completely in charge.
I think it’s time to order another one of these.
http://www.aimsurplus.com/acatalog/NEW_AK_WASR_RIFLE_w__Bayonet_Lug___Muzzle_Break.html
Darth thank you for the link and instructions.
Lynn, I sure wish he would do that, get that pen out please!
Bob, it shocks me how they are doing this. And they are just laughing at the Dems behind their backs, what fools, total fools the Dems and Rhino’s are.
Tom, great comment, thank you so much.
Yankeemom, wow thank you so much!!
Bob, I saved the link, I would love one of those so much.