As Shoebat.com has reported, the unsubstantiated reports that McCain met with self-proclaimed ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during the Senator’s trip to Syria last year are false. If Senator Rand Paul was relying on this claim to allege McCain “(met) with ISIS”, it was ill-advised.

In fact, as Shoebat.com reported a year ago, who McCain traveled with to Syria last year is far more revealing than who he met when he got there.

Mouaz Moustafa and U.S. Senator John McCain traveled to Syria together.

In an article defending McCain against Paul’s claims, the Daily Beast quotes one of the men who accompanied McCain on that trip to Syria:

Mouaz Moustafa—executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which represents the moderate opposition in Washington—reiterated McCain’s point: “I’m incredibly surprised that a United States sitting senator is spreading a rumor that is completely baseless. It is very ironic that the biggest enemies of ISIS are being called ISIS by people who simply do not know the facts. When it comes from a United States senator, it is quite disturbing.”

As to the claim that Moustafa represents the ‘moderate opposition’ in Washington, here is where we get into ‘distinction without a difference territory’. What the Daily Beast does not reveal are the names of the people on the board of Moustafa’s SETF. They include Dr. Yahya Basha and Bassam Estwani.

Basha

Basha is steeped in connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (keep CAIR and Hamas in mind for later use in this article). He once headed the now defunct American Muslim Council (AMC), which was founded by convicted terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi and referred to Hamas as ‘Freedom fighters’; he is a founding member of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), currently headed by a man the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has identified as Muslim Brotherhood infiltrator of the Obama administration Salam al-Marayati; and he has had ‘high-level involvement’ with CAIR, another Muslim Brotherhood front.

Yahya Basha and Bassam Estwani on Board of SETF.

In fact, two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Basha joined al-Marayati and Muzammil Siddiqi, President of Muslim Brotherhood front group the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in the White House to meet with George W. Bush thanks to the efforts of Grover Norquist, Suhail Khan, and Karl Rove.

Qaradawi (L) and Estwani (seated on floor) at Dar al-Hijrah prior to 1999.

The other SETF Board member that Rand Paul should consider focusing on is Bassam Estwani, former chairman of the notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque visited by no fewer than two 9/11 hijackers and where Anwar al-Awlaki served as an Imam on Estwani’s watch. Shoebat.com has done extensive research on Estwani. You are encouraged to review some of [here, here, here, here, and here]. Estwani’s career is one that involves significant influence in Washington, DC. As Shoebat.com has reported previously, while serving as chairman of Dar al-Hijrah, Estwani welcomed Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi and showed great deference to the Brotherhood leader who, incidentally said the following just a few days ago:

“I have completely different ideas and methods from ISIS. On the other hand, I do not accept the United States action to fight against them because the US follows its own interests, not Islamic values.”

Qaradawi’s problem with ISIS does not involve the group’s evil atrocities or the idea of an Islamic Caliphate. The battle between ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is more territorial than ideological. It is also a matter of revealing things too soon. As Shoebat.com reported last month, ISIS declared war on both Hamas and the Brotherhood. Al-Qaradawi himself denounced the legitimacy of Baghdadi’s Caliphate. By the same token – as illustrated by al-Qaradawi’s quote above – the Brotherhood spiritual leader will side with Baghdadi against the U.S.

As to equating ISIS with FSA, both have the same goals and objectives but technically, they’re paradoxically different and the same, in much the same way that CAIR and Hamas are. Both groups are Sunni and both are extensions of the Muslim Brotherhood but CAIR requires stealth to be effective. Hamas has no such concerns; the mask is off with them.

Besides, how do the likes of McCain explain away the claims that both beheaded American journalists – James Foley and Steven Sotloff – were reportedly handed over to ISIS by FSA friendly groups? How does he explain away the negotiated collaboration between the two groups in Damascus? FSA fighters have coomingled with and joined ISIS. These things make the members of the groups interchangeable.

McCain also likes to hang his hat on visiting with FSA commander Salim Idriss last year. When Idris ultimately fled the FSA, he did so by traveling to Turkey and then on to Qatar, two states that support Hamas.

While Senator Rand Paul may be more right than Senator John McCain when it comes to Syria, saying that McCain posed with ISIS allows for a degree of plausible deniability on McCain’s part more because he’s able to rely on distinctions without differences.

Now, if Paul would like to assert McCain met with ISIS based on McCain’s own Freudian slips, he’d have something. As Shoebat.com has reported, during an interview with Greta last month, McCain said he met with ISIS (fast forward to the 4:00 mark):

More recently, in an interview with Sean Hannity, he did the same thing after getting defensive when Hannity suggested there are problems with Syrian rebels.

Indignantly, McCain said, “Has he (Rand Paul) ever met with ISIS?” (insinuating that McCain had):