So, having read about Mitt Romney's bigoted remarks about the possibility of appointing a Muslim to his cabinet, I was led to the original op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor penned by a Mansour Ijaz.
"Gee," I thought, "that name sounds familiar. Could it be the same Mansour Ijaz that claimed to have negotiated the arrest of bin Laden only to be rebuffed by the Clinton administration--otherwise known as Wingnut Conspiracy Theory #43?
...As a private American citizen, I negotiated Sudan's offer of counterterrorism assistance to the Clinton administration in 1997 when the US government had no relations with that country's leaders. I felt there was still an opportunity at that time to unravel the metastasizing terror network being organized by Osama bin Laden and his followers...
Yep, same one. What a small world.
Unlike his Walter Mitty-like fantasy about being a freelance diplomat in the 90s, I don't doubt Ijaz's account of Romney saying what he said; having two witnesses certainly helps.
It's just a shame that Romney's bigotry has allowed Ijaz to crawl out from under his rock to soil the pages of a respectable newspaper again.