Please take some time to read through this breaking story from Sy Hersh:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.... A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
This is hard to summarize here but the most shocking development is that in order to undermine Iran and Syria, Bush has begun secretly financing the Muslim Brotherhood using back channels to avoid Congressional oversight. "This goes back to Iran-Contra" as one former official puts it. Hersh states that this is why Negroponte resigned so suddenly. Who is the Muslim Brotherhood? Well, you might recognize a few of their radical leaders: Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ayman Al-Zawahri
I think this quote just about sums it up:
In July 2005, Arab columnist and former Kuwaiti official Dr. Ahmad Al-Rabi, wrote that the "beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology."
Just like we helped the Muslim Brotherhood send Zawahiri to Afghanistan to fight the USSR in the 1980s, where he met Bin Laden, now we are helping them once again to counter Iran. We're making the exact same mistake! In six short years the War on Terror has been morphed into the War on Tehran and those who attacked us on 9/11 are now our secret allies? Not just the political wing of the Brotherhood, but the violent extremist fringe which shares the same goals and priorities as Al Qaeda.
How many times did Bush say "America changed forever" on 9/11 and he would "never forget" the memory of those who died? Yet, now he is pursuing the exact same policies that led to 3,000 dead on September 11th.
Here is another excerpt from the article:
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, "We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition."
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, "The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement." He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White House. "I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the Egyptians"—whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades—"won’t like it if the United States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win."
Some more background on the Muslim Brotherhood:
Today, a very complex financial network connects the operations of over seventy branches of the Muslim Brothers worldwide. During the Muslim Brothers' seventy-plus years of existence, there have been cycles of growth, followed by divisions into factions, including clandestine financial networks, and violent jihad groups, such as al-Jihad and al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya in Egypt, HAMAS in Palestine and mujahideen groups in Afghanistan.
Al-Jihad is Zawahiri's group and Gama'at al-Islamiyya is Abdel-Rahmen's. All branches of the Muslim Brotherhood are radical Sunnis of the Salafist sect who follow the teachings of Sayyid Qutb who believed that Arabs have been humiliated by the West because they are not pure in their faith. He teaches that the only way to defeat America and Israel is to return to a literal interpretation of the Koran and strict adherence to Islamic law.
Here are some more details from Wikipedia:
The Muslim Brotherhood advocates the creation of Islamic government, believing that God has set out a perfect way of life and social organization in the Quran. It expresses its interpretation of Islam through a strict religious approach to social issues such as the role of women, but also believes that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedoms as defined by the Islamic state. It strongly opposes colonialism, and was an important actor in the struggle against Western military and economic domination in Egypt and other Muslim nations during the early 20th century. Their goal as stated by founder Hassan al-Banna was the "doctrine of reclaiming Islam’s manifest destiny; an empire, founded in the seventh century, that stretched from Spain to Indonesia."
The Brotherhood is one of the most influential movements in the Islamic world, and especially so in the Arab world. It was founded in Egypt and Egypt is considered the center of the movement; it is generally weaker in the Maghreb, or North Africa, than in the Arab Levant. Brotherhood branches form the main opposition to the governments in several countries in the Arab world, such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and are politically active to some extent in nearly every Muslim country. There are also diaspora branches in several Western nations, composed by immigrants previously active in the Brotherhood in their home countries.
The movement is immensely influential in many Muslim countries, and where legally possible, it often operates important networks of Islamic charities, guaranteeing it a support base among Muslim poor. However, most of the countries where the Brotherhood is active are ruled by undemocratic regimes. As a consequence, the movement is banned in several Arab nations, and the lack of a democratic system prevents it from gaining power through elections. Inconsistent with popular belief in the West, the Muslim Brotherhood normally does not pursue its goals through acts of terror. However, the Brotherhood has advocated martyrdom to fight Zionism. For example, the Brotherhood views resistance by Hamas as a legitimate struggle against Israel, despite the fact that Hamas targets both the Israeli military and civilians. However, officially the Brotherhood does not condone attacks against civilians and only advocates those against military personnel.
Although some of the militant groups that broke off from the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood support 9/11, the Muslim Brotherhood has officially condemned the attacks. In the US, the European Union, and other places, the Brotherhood is often regarded by experts as the source of all modern jihadi terrorism, despite the fact that officially the Muslim Brotherhood renounces violence and terrorism. In July 2005, Arab columnist and former Kuwaiti official Dr. Ahmad Al-Rabi, wrote that the "beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology."