DNI Office walks back the idiocy

Rule of thumb in politics and diplomacy: when you have to walk back “clarify” previous statements, you’ve already blown your case:

The director of the Office of National Intelligence James Clapper today told a House Intelligence Committee hearing that the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood – which seeks Egypt to become an Islamic state ruled by sharia law – is “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”

 The Muslim Brotherhood is quite obviously not a secular organization.

Jamie Smith, director of the office of public affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence later said in a statement to ABC News: “To clarify Director Clapper’s point – in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak’s rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation – he is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization.” 

Just a reminder of who the Muslim Brotherhood is:

This is the Muslim Brotherhood whose motto brays that the Koran is its law and jihad is its way. The MB whose Palestinian branch, the terrorist organization Hamas, was created for the specific purpose of destroying Israel — the goal its charter says is a religious obligation. It is the organization dedicated to the establishment of Islamicized societies and, ultimately, a global caliphate.

It is an organization whose leadership says al-Qaeda’s emir, Osama bin Laden, is an honorable jihad warrior who was “close to Allah on high” in “resisting the occupation.” The same leader who insists that “the history of freedom is written not in ink [i.e., constitutions] but in blood [i.e., jihad].”

Awesome.

[Hat Tip: Memeorandum]

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