Toyota Cow Tow

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department -- part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

[...]

“We have procedures in place to help ensure our products are not diverted for unauthorized military use,” said Lewis, the Toyota executive.

  ABC

And what procedures would those be? I guess it's a national security secret.  Does Toyota have undercover agents in ISIS?

Toyota Hilux pickups, an overseas model similar to the Toyota Tacoma, and Toyota Land Cruisers have become fixtures in videos of the ISIS campaign in Iraq, Syria and Libya, with their truck beds loaded with heavy weapons and cabs jammed with terrorists.

[...]

Questions about the ISIS use of Toyota vehicles have circulated for years. In 2014, a report by the radio broadcaster Public Radio International noted that the U.S. State Department delivered 43 Toyota trucks to Syrian rebels. A more recent report in an Australian newspaper said that more than 800 of the trucks had been reported missing in Sydney between 2014 and 2015, and quoted terror experts speculating that they may have been exported to ISIS territory.

For years! Since 2014.

How many Americans are going to go out and sell their Toyota pickup to so they don't get pegged as terrorists? And how much will new sales in the US drop?

“Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who is CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit working to expose the financial support networks of terror groups.

The "ISIS brand."

Buy American, dammit!

“I don’t think Toyota’s trying to intentionally profit from it, but they are on notice now and they should do more,” Wallace said. “They should be able to figure it out... how are these trucks getting there. I think they should disclose that, put a stop to that, and put policies and procedures in places that are real and effective to make sure that we don’t see videos of ISIS using Toyota trucks in the future.”

Because Toyota has its own police force? Toyota can "put a stop to" illegal sales or terrorist trade?  Impressive.

Wlaace, head of something called the Counter Extremism Project, is today's version of Joseph McCarthy, and Toyota is now "on notice."

For the love of Pete. What next? I have to wonder if this would have happened if ISIS videos showed Ford or Chevrolet pickups.

And lest we forget in the anti-Toyota campaign frenzy, much of ISIS and other terrorist groups' actual military weaponry is made by American "defense" companies.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Holy cow.

From The Counter Extremism Project's "About Us" page:

CEP is assembling the world’s most extensive research database on extremist groups and their networks of support, providing an indispensable resource to governments, media, NGOs and the public.

[...]

Modeled in part on advocacy efforts to counter Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, CEP will expose shadowy channels of financial support to extremist groups and bring to bear private and public sector pressure to disrupt them.

From their "Mission Statement":

The Counter Extremism Project will:

• Expose, degrade, and stop the financing and other economic support of global extremist organizations;

• Build a best-in-class clearinghouse and database of extremist groups and their supporters, mapping the social and financial networks, tools and methodologies on which these groups rely.

So Toyota is now mapped as a supporter of ISIS.

Guess who else is works for this "indispensible" provider of terrorist information?