Castor defends USF actions

[Freddie Stubbs]

BY BETH REINHARD

[e-mail]


A group with ties to U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch is laying the groundwork for ads attacking Senate rival and former University of South Florida President Betty Castor for not firing a professor accused of aiding terrorists.

The American Democracy Project plans to submit a public information request today for any university records relating to Sami al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor charged with raising money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He and other ex-employees were named in a federal indictment last year that said they used the university to help carry out suicide bombings in Israel.

''We're investigating whether Castor, as president of the university, did anything to challenge what appeared to be going on on her campus other than to say that it was up to law enforcement,'' said Bernie Friedman, the group's treasurer. ``That's not indicative of true leadership.''

Castor spokesman Matt Burgess said she did not receive evidence from the FBI that would have justified dismissing al-Arian.

more: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/8916255.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

[Bombtrack]

1. It's very difficult to know whether she is guilty of negligence on this

issue, however you can garentee it will hurt her somewhat in the general election. She's not utterly unprepared to win like Deutsch, and considering he's probably behind this attack I'm more moved to give her my benefit of the doubt, but it just shows what a skunk Deutsch(and Gore) are for not caring about the good of the overall democratic parties chances at preserving Graham's senate seat for Deutsch's own chance at winning a primary.

It really does remind of what Dean did. Him and Deutsch both ran their campaigns according to the Siggretti playbook. Going negative from the begginning, without paying attention to things like facts, and never letting up.

[x_y_no]

2. The only thing that concerns me ...

... about this situation is the claim that she said Islamic Jihad is "an important cultural group."

That characterization distorbs me - Islamic Jihad is a terrorist organization pure and simple. I'd like to hear her explain what she meant, or see if there is some context which changes the meaning of this.

As for not having fired Sami al-Arian, I don't blame her for that at all. Substantive evidence against him simply didn't exist, and tenure can't simply be ignored.

[samurai_jack]

3. it wasn't her

Castor never said that Islamic Jihad was an important cultural group. It was a professor at the university who said that. The Deutsch 527 is looking into how she "responded" to the comment.

[x_y_no]

4. Ah, OK

I misread that.

Thanks for the clarification.

So the worst they have to say against her is that, in their opinion, she failed to denounce what some faculty member said loudly enough to suit them?

I'd say that charge raises more questions about the character of the people making it than it does about her character.

[DavidFL]

5. This is b.s....

If I were still a Democrat, Deutsch would have lost my vote in the primary because of this nonsense alone, although I'm not too hot on any of the other senate candidates. The so-called "goods" the DoJ has on Sami al-Arian mostly came from Steve Emerson while he was working as a "reporter" for the rightwing Tampa Trib, and I use the term "reporter" loosely because he's nothing but a liar and neocon propagandist. The Trib has since let him go, but occasionally his articles appear on the Dominionist WorldNet Daily and he sometimes shows up on Neocon Back Channel News as a "terrorism expert." Emerson got most of his "information" on al-Arian from neocon, PNAC signatory and "Christian Zionist" Daniel Pipes. Tampa's own John Sugg exposed Emerson as a hack and his reports on al-Arian as being completely fabricated. Christ, even the St. Pete Times had a series of articles setting the Trib's lies about al-Arian straight, but only stopped doing this after the media's self-imposed censorship after Sept. 11th. In fact, Emerson tried suing Sugg for defamation, but withdrew his case because Sugg had documentation to back up every statement he made about Emerson.

Moreover, I bet most of the "secret evidence" the DoJ claims to have, which didn't come from Emerson, probably doesn't exist given Ashcroft's and the DoJ's tendency to just make sh** up and arrest someone with an Arabic-sounding last name when Jihad Johnny gets himself in hot water for some new atrocity. By the way, Paul Krugman has been doing an excellent job the past two weeks connecting the dots on Ashcroft. Anyway, Deutsch is a slimeball for trying to exploit this to his advantage when the record on al-Arian's prosecution and Ashcroft's true agenda is very clear, and should he win the primary and want my support in the general election, he should be setting the record straight instead of propagating neocon disinformation.