Did Mitt Romney really rule out Muslims in his cabinet?
Mark Wilson/Getty Images A lot of blogs have posted on this Christian Science Monitor column, in which Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz writes of an encounter he had with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national ...
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A lot of blogs have posted on this Christian Science Monitor column, in which Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz writes of an encounter he had with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."
A lot of blogs have posted on this Christian Science Monitor column, in which Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz writes of an encounter he had with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that “jihadism” is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, “…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”
Romney has denied making the remark in exactly this way, though he has a history of making sweeping, controversial comments about Muslims.
Others have noted that if Romney’s alleged comments are taken at face value, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni Muslim of Afghan descent, would not have a place in his cabinet. But as Josh Marshall put it, it’s basically a “he said, he said” situation, so we don’t know whose account of the conversation to trust.
But we do know something about Mansour Ijaz. Interestingly, he pops up in a footnote on page 480 of the 9/11 Commission report as a messenger to the Clinton administration from the Sudanese government, which asked him to convey a 1997 offer to cooperate on Osama Bin Laden. But Clinton’s national security council saw Sudan as “all talk and little action,” and didn’t move on the letter. Ijaz maintains the offer was sincere, and that extradition was on the table. But Clinton-era officials such as Richard Clarke, whom Ijaz accuses of lying about his record, have disputed that account, and more or less dismiss Ijaz as a fabricator. In his sworn testimony (pdf) to the 9/11 Commission, Clarke said of Bin Laden, “Sudan at no time detained him, nor was there ever a credible offer by Sudan to arrest and render him.” Moreover, the 9/11 report doesn’t mention “extradition” specifically—just a vague offer of cooperation. Presumably, if there were some there there, the Commission would not have buried Sudan’s offer in a footnote.
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