Terrorist Group to Hold Convention in Washington, DC, Blocks from White House

This is another post in which I feel it necessary to point out at the outset that it isn't a belated April Fools joke. Would you believe that the Mujehidin-i-Khalq, an organization on the State Department's official list of terrorist organizations, which has been involved in attacks on Americans in the past, is being allowed to hold a convention in the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall, just blocks from the White House? Check out their website. At first glance, it seems quite reasonable -- quotes from George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., until you notice the sponsor's name the the bottom -- Maryam Rajavi, leader of the cultlike terrorist organization.

For some insight on their efforts to buy influence in Washington, check out this page, which has a list of MEK-affiliated people who have made campaign contributions and a downloadable spreadsheet of the FEC data on these people. To be sure, it isn't a vast amount of money by Washington standards, but it is interesting to notice who it has targeted the last few years -- people like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Gary Ackerman (D-NY), who are stalwarts of the Israel lobby (which of course would like nothing better than to induce the world's only superpower to whack all of Israel's enemies), and general sleazoids like Bob Toricelli (D-NJ, former, also big AIPAC stalwart) and Jim Traficant (D-OH, former). Bob Filner (D-CA), who hosted the event last week, apparently is whoring himself out on the cheap -- only $2,400 in the 2004 election cycle. A good DC politico like Dick Morris in his 1990s heyday probably spent more than that in a month on escort services -- and for the same low low price, the MEK gets Filner's support to get them cleansed of their sins and off the terrorist list (actually, I'm being facetious, Filner's support from AIPAC donors is much more substantial, and he knows what they want too).

They've apparently invited a large number of members of Congress, and reportedly 80 of them turned up at an event on Capitol Hill to hear a sales pitch on why the MEK should be dropped from the terrorist list. Richard Perle was a featured speaker at their last event in Washington.

Of course, the real reason for all of this is that the MEK is a ready "off the shelf" vehicle for furthering the neocons' ambitions in Iran. They're against terrorism, except when it suits their purposes.