US spending $16,000 for Ground Zero imam's Mideast tour

[keep_it_real]

WASHINGTON – 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.

The department said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will get a daily $200 honorarium for the 15-day tour to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which is intended to promote religious tolerance.

Airfare is included, as well as the standard federal government per diem for expenses and lodging in each of the cities he will visit, spokesman P.J. Crowley said. Those per diem rates range from nearly $400 to nearly $500, according to official documents.

Rauf starts his tour Thursday in Bahrain and ends it in the United Arab Emirates Sept. 2. At each stop he is expected to discuss Muslim life in America and promote religious tolerance.

Crowley said Rauf had traveled twice to the Middle East in 2007 during the Bush administration and once earlier this year.

more here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100818/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_ground_zero_mosque_imam

[lunatica]

1. I see nothing wrong with this and I hope he succeeds

This country needs all the help it can get making friends in the Middle East.

[keep_it_real]

3. I agree with you

[tomm2thumbs]

2. cheapest good thing they've done yet - and not enough

sounds equivalent to the day-fee of a blackwater paper pusher

[Warren Stupidity]

4. OH NOES QUEUE OUTRAGE

How dare we send muslim american leaders to the middle east to promote religious tolerance! That is not what america stands for! If Our Holy Founding Fathers wanted a nation built on religious tolerance they would have enshrined a sacred amendment, like the right to keep and arm bears, in the Holy Bill of Rights!

[NYC Liberal]

5. Remember, we paid Karen freaking Hughes to do this too:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4865360

Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, is touring the Middle East and meeting with civic and political leaders. Her mission is an effort to improve the image of the United States in the region.

:rofl: