The “sad” story of three HAMAS affiliated “scholars” finally came to an end Wednesday. In case you missed it (probably because it was buried by the MSM); three Fulbright Scholars from a university in Gaza were denied entry visas into the US after originally receiving them. If that sounds like a “Kerryism” from 2004 (I voted for the war funding before I voted against it), it is — only worse.

There are many unfortunate wrinkles in this story, from the US pandering to these supposedly ‘victimized’ residents of Gaza by carrying high-tech fingerprinting equipment to an Israeli checkpoint — just to facilitate visa interviews (that is an amazing personalized service that I am sure many US taxpayers would love to receive when they are preparing to travel abroad); to Secretary of State Rice making an absolute fool out of herself by “personally taking up the case” and publicly fronting out Israel in the process.

The jewel in this crown, however, is the fact that even after the Shin Bet warned of these “scholars” and their “potential” baggage (i.e. links to HAMAS), Rice pushed forward — only to eventually make the US once again eat crow on the international scene! From Haartez.com:

The United States has revoked the visas of three Palestinian Fulbright scholars whose cases were taken up personally by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after Israel refused to let them leave Gaza for interviews, U.S. officials said Monday.

Visas for the three, along with a fourth Palestinian student from Gaza who had hoped to come to the U.S. under a different program, were approved after Rice intervened in June but were rescinded last week when new information about them was received, the officials said.

“There were four Palestinians who were issued visas about whom we then received additional information,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said.

“We decided that we needed to take a closer and harder look at them in light of the additional information we received,” said Gallegos.

He also said the visas were canceled under a prudential revocation clause in immigration rules that allows them to be rescinded based on information gleaned about the holders after they were issued.

“It does not preclude the applicants from reapplying for visas in the future,” he said.

Gallegos declined to comment on the nature of the new information about the four Palestinians, one of whom had actually arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington before he was told his visa had been revoked and was forced to return to Jordan.

Readers will be relieved to know that in the aftermath of this debacle, Sec. Rice has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the entire Fulbright Scholarship Program.

Maybe when the State Department dives into those files they will find more people that have come to the United States under the guise of “furthering their education” that are actually here to subvert our country and way of life (possibly via some sort of, umm, ahh . . . Grand Jihad?).

Maybe when they task some investigators, they will see that the (mostly unnamed in the MSM) Gaza University that these folks came from was the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), which has been alleged here (amongst others) at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism, to be a bastion of HAMAS activity.

In fact, in the story on the Christian Science Monitor website, Mr. Abed and Mr. Abu Shaban give an excellent first hand account of what many terrorism experts in the US have known for a while,

“Mr. Abed and Abu Shaban suspect that their denial is related to having studied at Islamic University, where many of the professors and administrators are affiliated with Hamas.”

Thanks for giving it to us straight boys. We do appreciate your openness . . . on that one.