In an Aug. 19 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard issues a one-sided attack on Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf,who wants to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York. Sheppard quotes Rauf’s statements on a post-9/11 edition of “60 Minutes” as evidence that Rauf is not “the moderate cleric so many in the media have been claiming he is,” but he doesn’t tell the full story.
Rauf’s statement that “the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” is a view also held by the 9/11 Commission and Glenn Beck, thus making it somewhat less than radical. As for Rauf’s statement that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA,” Sheppard failed to highlight that “60 Minutes'” Ed Bradley backed up that assertion immediately after Rauf made the statement. From the “60 Minutes” link that Sheppard himself provides:
BRADLEY: Bin Laden and his supporters were in fact recruited and paid nearly $4 billion by the CIA and the government of Saudi Arabia in the 1980s to fight against the mujahadeen rebels against thte former Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan. After the Soviets pulled out, the Saudis, our best friends in the Arab world, our staunchest ally during the Gulf War, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the newly formed Taliban regime until 1999, when the Saudi government feared that bin Laden and the Taliban were out of control.
It seems that Rauf is doing a better job of telling the truth than Sheppard is.