◼ Hashtag MIA: Boko Haram Urgency Fades as Questions Raised About What Admin Knew When - Bridget Johnson/PJM
As quickly as Boko Haram caught Washington by hashtag storm, the Nigerian terrorists — and their schoolgirl captives — have seemingly vanished from the radar of priorities, even as the al-Qaeda-linked group’s jihadi brothers-in-arms run roughshod across Iraq.
One senator this week, though, charged that the administration never wanted the frightening growth of the North African terrorist organization to receive much attention in the first place....
There are some chilling foreign policy parallels between the continuing terrorist attacks in Nigeria and the terrorist takeover now grabbing the headlines in Iraq. The activities of both groups underscore that al-Qaeda is not on the run but metastasizing, and the atrocities of both have been met with calls for political solutions rather than a declaration of war on Islamic jihadists.
,,,Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) this week questioned why the State Department, under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “misled” Congress on the threat posed by Boko Haram.
He cited 2011 evidence on Boko Haram presented to the State Department by the National Counterterrorism Center, followed by a delay in the group’s terror designation until fall 2013.
“Recent evidence suggests Secretary Hillary Clinton and the State Department not only knew of the extent, but also deliberately attempted to obfuscate the issue in order to avoid having to make the designation of Boko Haram as a FTO, including downplaying the State Department’s own Country Reports on Terrorism (CRT),” Vitter wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday.
“Inaccuracies within official documents make it clear that the State Department misled Congress and the American people...."
