Frank Gaffney

Yesterday we noted that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's investigation into the wild allegations made by right-wing activists who have rallied in defense of 17 year-old Christian convert Rifqa Bary reported that their claims were false and that Bary would face no danger if she were returned to her parents in Ohio.

The summary has been posted on-line [PDF] and the St. Petersburg Times' Michael Kruse provides this report on its findings:

In her interview in the FDLE's investigation, Bary said her father threatened her by holding her laptop over her head, saying he was going to kill her. Her father denied threatening her. He said he grabbed the laptop and lifted it to throw it, but reconsidered because it was expensive.

Bary also said her father once hit her in the face for interrupting a conversation, and on another occasion hit her for not wanting to wear the Islamic head scarf called the hijab, but that he hadn't hit her since middle school. Her father denied ever having hit her. Her mother and her brother said they had never seen him hit her. A spokesman at the school district where the girl goes to school told the FDLE investigators that no abuse or suspected abuse was ever reported.

Bary told investigators that she had told a teacher at her school about her fears and that the teacher offered her home as a haven. The teacher told investigators that she made the offer because Bary had told her she was uncomfortable with some of the parties her older brother was having when their parents weren't home.

Bary told investigators that she hitchhiked to the Greyhound station. One of her friends, Brian M. Williams, told FDLE that he picked her up from another friend's house and took her to the bus.

Bary told investigators she used money she had saved from her part-time job at a Chinese restaurant to buy her bus ticket. But someone in Orlando bought the ticket, according to the report, using "a fictitious name."

Bary told investigators that her parents didn't know that she was a cheerleader. Her father told the FDLE investigators that he knew about her cheerleading, approved of it, and sometimes took her to practice. In the Bary home in Ohio, the report noted, pictures of the girl in her cheerleading uniform were "prominently displayed in the family living room."

It appears as if just about every claim made by right-wing activists in this case has turned out to be unsubstantiated according the FDLE investigation, which concluded that there is no evidence of any abuse and no indication that she's in danger if she is returned to her Muslim parents in Ohio.

So, of course, that means that the FDLE report itself is now a danger to Bary and places the United States on the road to Islamic totalitarianism, as Frank Gaffney explains:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is supposed to be in the business of saving lives. Yet, a just-released report by FDLE investigators may prove to be a death sentence.

...

Unfortunately, the Florida investigators failed to perform their assignment. They found “no conclusive reports of threats” against Rifqa Bary. At best, their report is incomplete. At worst, it is misleading, possibly fatally so.

...

Should such a restoration take place in this case, it will be further evidence that America is succumbing to the stealth jihad that is inexorably insinuating that seditious Islamic program into our society, in Florida and elsewhere across this country. In that event, the result of failing to fight the Islamists in this case may prove to be not just a death sentence for Rifqa Bary. It could turn out as well to be an important milestone in the submission of all Americans to the program that explicitly seeks to replace our Constitution and the liberties it enshrines with the brutal and repressive program known as Shariah.

So, in short: the FDLE report concluded that Bary was in no danger and that pretty much everything her right-wing supporters had been claiming was false, which, according to those right-wing supporters, only proves that the FDLE and others are engaged in a conspiracy to kill Bary and "replace our Constitution and the liberties it enshrines with the brutal and repressive program known as Shariah."

Yesterday, Frank Gaffney penned an op-ed for the Washington Times in which he claimed that "Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president" and alleged that "the man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich. "

I didn't write about it because it was amply covered by lots of other bloggers and, frankly, I couldn't really figure out what Ganney's point was supposed to be.

Alan Colmes invited Gaffney onto his program yesterday to defend his claims ... and I have to say, I still don't have any idea what Gaffney is talking about. 

Gaffney insists that Obama has embraced "an agenda that is most closely associated with radical elements of Islam" and that this move will be "as consequential for this country as what Hitler did in triggering World War II." He goes on to claim that Obama is aligning himself with radical Islam and its anti-American agenda and that nobody knows if Obama really is a Muslim, because after he "he's talking like one, and perhaps believing like one ... When [Obama] apparently relegates Jesus Christ to the category of dead prohpets using the code that Muslims use, that's worrying because it suggests that he isn't the Christian he claims to be."

Give it a listen ... maybe you'll have better luck understanding Gaffney's fears and allegations than I did.