As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, one of the key people who alerted police to the failed Times Square car bomb was Senagalese Muslim immigrant Aliou Niasse, who works as a street vendor there.

Yesterday, Democracy Now’s Anjali Kamat went to Times Square and interviewed Niasse about his experience alerting the police to the car bomb and his thoughts on Muslims who commit terrorism in the name of their faith. Niasse told Kamat that “Islam is not terrorist” and that if he sees any Muslim who tries to committ terrorism, he “is going to catch him before he runs away.” He also lamented the case of one “bad” Muslim being used to paint all Muslims with a broad brush:

KAMAT: You’re from Senegal?

NIASSE: Yeah I’m from Senegal, yeah.

KAMAT: You’re Muslim?

NIASSE: Yeah I’m Muslim.

NARRATION BY KAMAT: I asked Aliou Niasse what his reaction was when he found out the suspect in the attempted bombing was a Muslim-American born in Pakistan.

NIASSE: That’s not religion. Because the Islam religion is not terrorist. Because if I know this guy is Muslim, he do that, if I know that, I’m going to catch him before he run away.

KAMAT: How do you think Muslims are generally perceived in New York, by police, by law enforcement, when it comes to investigation of terrorism cases?

NIASSE: If one person is bad, they gonna say everybody, for his religion. That is, I think, wrong.

Watch it:

Two other street vendors also helped alert police to the presence of the car bomb. Handbag seller Duane Jackson and t-shirt vendor Lance Orton, both Vietnam veterans, smelled smoke from the burning car and ran to alert police officers. Niasse says he was the first to see the car, as it pulled up right in front of his photo stand. Given the fact that he doesn’t speak english well, he told a nearby vendor who then alerted the police.

Kamat notes that the two other street vendors who assisted police in foiling the bombing and catching the suspect have recieved national media attention and phone calls thanking them from President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Kamat ends her report by saying, “Aliou’s not waiting for a call from the President, but as one of the first people to notice and speak out about the smoke rising from the [car bomb], he does want some recognition that a Muslim immigrant from Senegal might also be counted among the eyes and ears of New York City.”

Last week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said that President Barack Obama “thinks Americans are stupid” for trying to “convince” voters that Republicans are trying to obstruct financial reform. It turns out that DeMint is the one who is insulting the intelligence of the American people by suggesting that Republicans aren’t pulling every stop to try to derail a bill that has received widespread public support.

Today, DeMint announced that he will attach an amendment to the financial reform bill requiring the completion of 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border within one year. DeMint justified introducing an amendment that has nothing to do with financial regulation by stating that “It’s time we completed the fence and secured our borders to protect American citizens.”

This isn’t the first time DeMint has brought up the border fence to drive a wedge into a bill that he doesn’t like. Last summer, DeMint joined a group of Republican senators who swamped the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) $42.9 billion appropriations bill with a series of immigration enforcement-only amendments. DeMint’s latest amendment is virtually identical to the one he proposed in July. Despite the fact that it was approved, DeMint’s DHS amendment was stripped from the final bill last summer after seven border state congressmen asked the House leadership to do so.

Research has found that the border fence is more successful at keeping undocumented immigrants in the U.S. than in persuading them to not come in the first place. U.S. government investigators have additionally indicated that it will cost taxpayers $6.5 billion over the next 20 years to maintain the fencing already in place and the Congressional Research Service estimated in 2007 that building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border would add up to $49 billion over the expected 25-year life span of the fence.

The reason the border fence hasn’t been completed is because DHS officials believe those billions of dollars would be better spent on more effective security measures. Instead, DHS has doubled both the number of personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces and border patrol agents; tripled the number of ICE intelligence analysts working along the U.S.-Mexico border; quadrupled deployments of border liaison officers; begun screening all southbound rail shipments for illegal weapons, drugs and cash, and employed additional canine teams. As a result, DHS has succeeded in seizing thousands of firearms, millions of kilograms of drugs, and millions of dollars in illicit cash. Though the drop in illegal immigration since Obama took office is largely attributable to the economic recession, the role DHS has played is hardly insignificant.

Democrats have put forth a framework for comprehensive immigration reform which stipulates a series of tough benchmarks that “must be met before action can be taken to adjust the status of people already in the United States illegally.” However, rather than working with Democrats to secure the border and reform the nation’s immigration laws, Republicans like DeMint conveniently prefer to deal with border security via financial regulatory reform.

Responding to a Fars News Agency report that Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has called Iran “Iraq’s Real Friend,” Michael Rubin writes “Whenever any Iraqi politician — Chalabi, Talabani, Maliki, Barzani, Muqtada al-Sadr or anyone else — hugs Iran, there’s a tendency in Washington to say ‘Aha! They were pro-Iranian all along.’ This is dead wrong. They’re all politicians and can waffle with the best of them”:

The real issue is that these politicians are barometers of power. Iraqi politicians are survivors, and they will align themselves with and accommodate power while fleeing weakness. No one will sacrifice himself to be pro-American if America is weak.

The question U.S. officials should ask themselves is: After expending so much blood and treasure, is it really noble to abandon influence, or should we recalibrate policy to surge influence? The hostility of the Obama administration to power and influence is sadly a tragedy upon which historians will comment.

First, I think it’s more accurate to say that politicians waffle, politicians are barometers of power, and politicians are survivors who will align themselves with and accommodate power while fleeing weakness. There’s nothing uniquely Iraqi about this, and I wish writers would avoid engaging in this sort of casual Orientalism.

Second, the idea that the Obama administration, through its neglect, is squandering Bush’s “success” and abandoning Iraq to Iranian influence is a current favorite of the neocons, who are desperate to distract people from the fact that their brilliant idea of invading Iraq and removing Iran’s greatest enemy gave a huge boost to Iranian influence in Iraq and elsewhere. The truth, of course, is that a significant number of Iraqi leaders have relationships with the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary Guards Corps going back to the early 1980′s.

While Iran’s relationships with various Iraqi players have waxed and waned over the past few years, the idea that Iraq’s politicians are only now reaching out to Iran is not worth treating remotely seriously. Indeed, my colleague Brian Katulis and I were warning about Iranian influence in Iraq back when the neocons were busy high-fiving each other over Iranian-supported Nuri al-Maliki’s Iranian-infiltrated army’s Iranian-negotiated victory over Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iranian-supplied militia.

Regarding Rubin’s suggestion that the Obama administration is “hostile to power and influence,” I actually think Michael is too smart to really believe this. But I guess he feels that when he’s writing in The Corner it’s necessary to pitch things at a certain level.

As for the real tragedy of the U.S.’s intervention in Iraq, my colleagues Peter Juul, Brian Katulis and I have just issued The Iraq War Ledger, a memo tabulating the costs and consequences of the war for U.S. national security. The numbers are grim.

The Cable’s Josh Rogin reports that “the National Security Council’s Dennis Ross is the latest U.S. official to link the Obama administration’s drive to secure peace between Israelis and Arabs to the overall goal of bringing greater stability to the region and combating the threat from Iran”:

“In this region, pursuing peace is instrumental to shaping a new regional context,” Ross said in remarks Monday evening. “Pursuing peace is not a substitute for dealing with the other challenges… It is also not a panacea. But especially as it relates to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, if one could do that, it would deny state and non-state actors a tool they use to exploit anger and grievances.”

This is pretty significant, as Ross has previously been a serious skeptic of the linkage argument. In the second chapter of his book “Myths, Illusions, and Peace” — entitled “Linkage: The Mother of All Myths” — he and co-author David Makovsky wrote:

Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away. This is the argument of “linkage.”

As I wrote shortly after the book was published, there is no one who has ever claimed that “if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away.” What has been claimed, and what is acknowledged by a pretty overwhelming consensus of Middle East scholars and analysts, (and, since then, General David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates) is that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a source of anger and tension across the region, a radicalizing driver of violence, and a valuable propaganda tool for extremists.

It’s quite true that hostility toward Israel in the Middle East will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state. Nor will anti-Americanism disappear even if the U.S. is seen as having played a major role in producing such an outcome. There are problems in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians. Securing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, however, make addressing those problems easier, by sealing up one well of resentment from which authoritarian rulers and violent extremists have for decades drawn freely and profitably. This is the actual argument of “linkage,” and it’s quite important that such a key player on the Obama team as Dennis Ross now acknowledges it.

The venue for Ross’s comments — the annual conference of the Anti-Defamation League — is also worth noting. ADL national director Abe Foxman has strongly criticized linkage as a “dangerous and counterproductive” concept, issuing a March statement criticizing Gen. Petraeus for acknowledging it, saying that Petraeus had “simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. and coalition forces in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived U.S. favoritism for Israel.” It will be interesting to see how Foxman and the rest of the linkage deniers respond to the concept’s adoption by such a stalwart Israel-supporter as Ross.