While a bit more Spartan than Michelle Obama’s recent trip to Spain, the idea that you and I are paying for “outreach” via the creator of the Shariah Index Project is deeply troubling. The taxpayer dollars really do start adding up considering Governor David Paterson is considering gifting state property to relocate the Ground Zero Mosque.
The AP reports “US spending $16,000 for imam’s Mideast tour“:
American taxpayers will pay the imam behind plans for a mosque near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks $3,000 in fees for a three-nation outreach trip to the Middle East that will cost roughly $16,000, the State Department said Wednesday.
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Crowley said this will be Rauf’s fourth U.S.-government sponsored trip under a program run by the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. Earlier, the State Department had said it was his third trip.
Crowley said Rauf had traveled twice to the Middle East in 2007 during the Bush administration and once earlier this year.
On his upcoming trip, Rauf will be in Manama, Bahrain, from Thursday until Monday; Doha, Qatar, from Aug. 24 to Aug. 27 and in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates from Aug. 28 to Sept. 2.
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