Andy McCarthy writes today at The Corner about a project he and I and others have been working on for many months. Conceived of by Frank Gaffney in the tradition of the Cold war-era "Team B" report that presented a muscular alternative to detente-era policies of Soviet "engagement," our Team B II project aimed at presenting a similar alternative to policies of Muslim "engagement"by grappling with the implications of Islamic ideology as codifed in Islamic law -- sharia.

The report -- "Shariah: The Threat to America" -- launched yesterday with a press conference in the Capitol.

The report, as Andy notes,  is the product of  a group effort by:

a team of national security experts led by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, Generals Jerry Boykin and Ed Soyster, Claremont’s Brian Kennedy, and serveral other notables. The idea was to try to replicate the “Team B” of a generation ago, which questioned U.S. policy regarding the Soviet Union (particularly detente). It’s far from a perfect analogy — for one thing, we were not invited by the government to render a second opinion and consequently were not given access to classified information. But that’s not much of a hurdle. As I’ve argued in The Grand Jihad and Willful Blindness, the information Americans need to know is ready to hand — the problem is that people in the ruling class choose not to deal with it. 

I call that the See-No-Islam mentality, which first took hold in a big way during the Bush administration.

The report is now available at the CSP website, here. It’s about 180 pages long, but it starts with an executive summary, prefaced by an introduction I wrote with Director Woolsey and Gen. Soyster. (We turned the intro into an essay, published Wednesday by the Washington Times – as noted in the NRO web briefing). The ”Team B – II” report is also being published in segments at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace site. Frank just did his radio show (“Secure Freedom Radio”) on the report, featuring interviews with Gen. Boykin, me, and a couple of other members of the team, my friends Diana West and Steve Coughlin.

At a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon, we presented the report to three members of the House who have been stalwarts on the challenge posed by Islamist ideology, Trent Franks (R., AZ), Pete Hoekstra (R., MI) and Michele Bachmann (R., MN). You can find coverage at Fox, CBN, and by Connie Hair at Human Events.

Patrick Poole, also a contributor to the Team B II report, notes at Big Peace today that among the chief critics who appeared to greet our report

were representatives from the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association (CMSA). This group, which has been briefing both Democrat and Republican congressional leadership in recent months that there is nothing inherently violent in Islamic law, has a very poor history of embracing Islamic radicals and even Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Patrick goes on explain, noting, for example, the Muslim congressional staffers' affinity for jihad-imam Anwar al-Awlaki, inviting him to lead the group in prayer even after he "already had been tied to two of the 9/11 hijackers (as reported in the 9/11 Commission Report."

Anwar al-Awlaki, of course, is at the "spiritual" center of many jihadist operations, including the fatwa for the murder of Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris that has sent her into hiding.