H/T to the brilliant David Reaboi, a colleague at the Center for Security Policy, who uncovered this fact in the midst of all the smoke surrounding the government shutdown.
To anyone who is paying close attention, the ongoing government “shutdown,” is less about fiscal issues and more about priorities. Some operations and personnel are considered “essential” and some are considered “non-essential.”
It is perhaps very instructive that to the Obama Treasury Department, the office that enforces sanctions against the world’s most active terrorist-sponsoring nation, is made up overwhelmingly of personnel considered to be “non-essential.”
The Treasury Department has furloughed approximately 90 percent of the employees in its Office of Terrorist Financing and Intelligence (TFI), which is responsible for the monitoring of illicit activities and enforcement of sanctions related to several countries, including Iran, Syria, and North Korea…
Here is what a Treasury Department spokesperson had to report about the situation:
“As a result, OFAC is unable to sustain its core functions of: issuing new sanctions designations against those enabling the governments of Iran and Syria as well as terrorist organizations, WMD proliferators, narcotics cartels, and transnational organized crime groups; investigating and penalizing sanctions violations; issuing licenses to authorize humanitarian and other important activities that might otherwise be barred by sanctions; and issuing new sanctions prohibitions and guidance,” the spokesman said. “This massively reduced staffing not only impairs OFAC’s ability to execute its mission, it also undermines TFI’s broader efforts to combat money laundering and illicit finance, protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system, and disrupt the financial underpinnings of our adversaries.”
Clearly the Obama administration has decided that cutting off the financial network that supports global jihad is a non-essential activity. Remember, this is the same administration that made the decision to assign “essential” personnel the task of erecting barricades (“barrycades) in a futile attempt to keep World War II veterans out of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. And we might also add that the government shutdown didn’t delay the launch of Obamacare either.
So, clearly there are some functions and personnel who are considered “essential” and some that are not.
Right now, to Obama, those that are not essential are those who track and prevent jihadists from getting financial support. That pretty much tells us all we need to know about this administration’s commitment to defending America and fighting terrorism.
