DANA AND DORNAN

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) is being challenged in the Republican primary next Tuesday (March 2) by former Congressman Robert “B-1 Bob” Dornan, who barely lost his inland Orange County seat to Loretta Sanchez in 1996 due to stuffed Hispanic ballots.

Dornan had never forgiven Dana for sweet-talking him into running in that redrawn 46th Congressional District back in 1992 while Dana stayed in a cozy coastal safe-for-Republicans 47th seat next door. Hispanics flooded into Dornan’s new district, Sanchez got a community organization called Hermanidad Mexicanos Nacional to create thousands of phony voter registrations, she claimed victory by 984 votes, Dornan claimed voter fraud, the spineless Republicans in the House were too terrified of getting Hispanics mad at them to investigate, and Dornan has been living in Bitterness City ever since. He was totally trounced when he ran against Sanchez in 2000.

Dornan blames Dana for all his travails and electoral humiliations. So, at age 70, he decided to go after Dana and in typical B1-Bob fashion — with loud-mouthed smears.

He cannily focused on Dana’s one true vulnerability — an outlandish anti-Israel voting record. Being emotionally unstable, he couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to claim Dana was a supporter of the Taliban and Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, using this picture as evidence:

There are a number of websites now carrying this picture, with captions like “Rohrabacher in Afghanistan with his Taliban friends.” Dana is on the right. Next to him, the fellow with the white beard, is an Afghan commander named Moly Shakur. And the fellow on the left is� me. The picture was taken in 1988, when the Afghans were fighting the Soviets and years before the Taliban existed.

Recently, David Horowitz’s FrontPage magazine ran an interview with Dornan who once again used this picture to libel Dana. Here is my response. On March 2, B1-Bob is going to get electorally carpet-bombed. It is time to put his calumny of Dana Rohrabacher to rest.

The interview with Bob Dornan can be found at:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12033

February 22, 2004

Jamie Glasov
Editor
FrontPage Magazine

Dear Mr. Glasov,

As a great admirer of FrontPage and all its efforts to promote freedom from Islamic terrorism, I’d like to comment on your interview with Bob Dornan entitled “Off-Base Congressman” and dated February 4, 2004. The title far more appropriately applies to Bob Dornan rather than Dana Rohrabacher.

I have known Dana as a close friend since 1966, when he and I, along with Arnie Steinberg, Shawn Steel, Steve Frank and others, were in Youth For Reagan during Mr. Reagan’s original California for Governor campaign. More to the point, I am the one who took Dana inside Afghanistan in 1988. I am in the picture Dornan so sneeringly refers to (Dana “in Afghanistan, holding an AK 47, wearing the patan hat, and in combat fatigues”). I am the one on the left, Dana on the right, with an Afghan commander Moly Shakur, between us. We are both wearing regular Afghan clothes, not “combat fatigues.”

Dornam makes a lot of accusations but let me focus on those he makes regarding this specific trip, because I was there. I had been going inside Afghanistan with various groups of Mujahaddin since 1983, as I had with other groups of anti-Soviet freedom fighters in Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, and Cambodia developing the strategy that the press would call the “Reagan Doctrine.” Dana arranged for me to give briefings on anti-Soviet insurgencies to the White House every time I would return back to the US.

In the summer of 1988, Dana asked me if I could take him with me on my next trip “inside.” So I made the arrangements with a commander friend, Rahmatullah Safi. We left about a week after Dana’s initial election to Congress in November 1988. Out of Peshawar we went up into the Khyber Pass to Ladi Khotal, then took a side track out of the pass and down to the Kabul River, crossing over it in a small rowboat into Afghanistan.

Also with Dana and me were Bob Brown, publisher of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, and Charlie Schnabel, a staffer with Congressman Charles Wilson (the subject of the book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” and my Best Man at my wedding in 1986).

The four of us carried on to Jalalabad, about three days’ walk. At one point, Safi told us not to talk for a while and pointed to some white tents in the distance. If we ran into anyone for the next few hours we were not to talk as it might get back to the “Arabs” in those tents who “hated Americans” and mentioned the name “Bin Laden.” The name meant nothing to us, but we kept our mouths shut just the same until we passed through the area.

We reached a Muj encampment on the outskirts of Jalalabad hunkered down in a ravine. Up on a nearby ridge, the Muj had set up artillery, and just as we got there they set off a barrage aimed at a Soviet base a few clicks away. The response was not long in coming. With all the shrapnel flying around we booked it back to the ravine where we spent the night.

Unfortunately, the trail leading out of the ravine managed to be targeted by Soviet artillery as we were taking it the next day. We literally ran for our lives. We spent the next few days in various Afghan villages talking to the villagers about the Soviet occupation of their country,

For Dornan to denigrate Dana for having the courage to put his life on the line to see for himself people fighting for their freedom from the Soviets is the mark of a desperate and resentful man. To claim that Dana became an anti-Communist to assuage a guilt for not serving in the military like his father is silly. Dana was that way back in 1966 and fresh out of high school. Our toast back then, our toast for almost 40 years now, was “FTC.” It stood for Foil The Commies – well, something like that.

Dornan is on far better grounds in criticizing Dana’s perverse support for Palestinians against Israel. This drives all of Dana’s friends apoplectic, but some of us, such as Shawn Steel and myself won’t give up until he sees the light. We’ve had many arguments over it, sometimes shouting matches. Yet Dornan conflates Dana’s anti-Israel stance into an accusation he is pro-radical Islam, which is absurd.

Dana despises the Saudis for their support of Wahhabi radicalism and the Deobandi madressahs in Pakistan. He wants OBL’s head on a pike, along with every other Al Qaeda terrorist, as much as you or I.

The bottom line is that Dornan is a very poor foil to use against Dana. The depth of disgust towards Dornan is very deep in Republican circles. Shortly after Dornan announced he was challenging Dana, both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney called Dana to ask how they could help. Schwarzenegger hosted a fund-raiser for him with the turnout and money raised double the expectations. This is not because they all love Dana so much, but because they loathe Dornan so much.

Bob Dornan is a washed-up political has-been whose bitterness has driven him even more crazy than he has always been. He has now spreading rumors that Dana is faking the pregnancy of his wife, Rhonda to gain voter sympathy. Rhonda is carrying triplets due in April.

Going after Dana for his stand and votes against Israel is fair game. I have no explanation for it. I have never heard him express an anti-Semitic statement. He proudly told me after his trip to Israel last year that when Darryl Issa mentioned the “right of return” for Palestinians at a meeting with Israeli officials, Dana condemned it, saying this so-called right amounted to the destruction of Israel and thus had to be dismissed. Yet he resolutely engages in the doctrine of moral equivalence between Palestinian terrorism and Israeli defenses against it. It drives me around the bend.

So you are welcome to take Dana to task on this issue. It is counter-productive, however, to use a pathologically embittered Bob Dornan as a means to do so.

Jack Wheeler
To The Point
www.tothepointnews.com