More whistle blowers set to blow lid off Benghazi questions?

Via The Right Scoop

PJ MEDIA – The former diplomats inform PJM the new revelations concentrate in two areas — what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi and the pressure put on General Carter Ham, then in command of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and therefore responsible for Libya, not to act to protect jeopardized U.S. personnel.

Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.

Hillary Clinton still wanted to proceed because, in part, as one of the diplomats said, she wanted “to overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap.”

This left Stevens in the position of having to clean up the scandalous enterprise when it became clear that the “insurgents” actually were al-Qaeda – indeed, in the view of one of the diplomats, the same group that attacked the consulate and ended up killing Stevens.

…

He added that he and his colleagues think the leaking of General David Petraeus’ affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell was timed to silence the former CIA chief on these matters.

Regarding General Ham, military contacts of the diplomats tell them that AFRICOM had Special Ops “assets in place that could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate immediately (not in six hours).”

Ham was told by the White House not to send the aid to the trapped men, but Ham decided to disobey and did so anyway, whereupon the White House “called his deputy and had the deputy threaten to relieve Ham of his command.”

The White House motivation in all this is as yet unclear, but it is known the Ham retired quietly in April 2013 as head of AFRICOM.

Stay tuned America, let us hope the truth comes out

Benghazi update. More whistle blowers looking to tell their stories

Potentially devastating

Jay Carney: Romney at fault for Benghazi story

It takes a special kind of ass hat to lie like that. Carney is a shoe in for an MSNBS gig after his days as Obama ‘s Chief of Propaganda

 

The Left reveals it’s Benghazi defense strategy

A strongly worded letter? No Instead, they are just going to close their eyes tighter and chant “How dare you”

Robert Stacy McCain @rsmccain

Associated Press: Let’s Quote Democrats Dismissing the Testimony Before We Quote the Witness http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/05/08/house-republicans-seek-answers-benghazi-hearing/8CCL4XE24tnHJNqBXCa4YJ/story.html … | @vjmfilms

8:06 PM – 8 May 2013

“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with. It’s hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.”
– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sept. 14, 2012, while standing over the caskets of the four Americans killed at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya

Jeff Goldstein cites the important testimony that “a State Department official emailed the Libyan government on September 12 that the consulate attack was in fact a terrorist operation — specifically identifying Ansar al-Sharia in the email.” But why bother with facts? What difference, at this point, does it make?

Quite obviously, it makes a very important difference to Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) in their tireless efforts to convince Americans that Obama’s foreign policy is working, and especially to persuade us that the fine public servants at the top levels of the State Department did nothing wrong in the Benghazi affair.

When you point out the obvious facts — that the “Arab Spring” was a bad idea, that everybody in the administration lied through their teeth about Benghazi, and that the major media are enthusiastic volunteers in a partisan P.R. effort to assist in the cover-up — liberals go into fake indignation mode: How dare you?

The pathetic nature of the Democratic Party is astounding, but, they are what they are. Morality? Patriotism? Justice? Putting country first and finding out the truth? How dare we expect such upright principles from the Democrats!

 

Report: Special Forces Team ordered not to help in Benghazi

Via The Daily Caller

As the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya raged on for more than seven hours, a team of U.S. special forces in Tripoli was blocked from flying in to attempt a rescue, according to a top American diplomat who was in the region.

In previously secret testimony given by Gregory Hicks — the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — to congressional investigators last month, Hicks revealed two possible courses of action that could have saved American lives that night: allowing U.S. special forces to enter Benghazi and flying a fast-moving U.S. military aircraft over the scene of the attacks.

“So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the [Special Operations Command South Africa] commander, his team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the airport to get on the C-130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, you can’t go now, you don’t have authority to go now,” Hicks told congressional investigators, “and so they missed the flight,” which would have gotten the team inserted prior to the second attack on the CIA annex.

If this is true, then I do not recognize my country anymore

 

Timeline exposes Benghazi lies

Via the Weekly Standard

As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events unfolding in Libya, they concluded even before the assaults had ended that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.  

The White House provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees for a limited time and with the stipulation that the documents were available for review only and would not be turned over to the committees. The White House and committee leadership agreed to that arrangement as part of a deal that would keep Republican senators from blocking the confirmation of John Brennan, the president’s choice to run the CIA. If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public. The Weekly Standard sought comment  from officials at the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but received none by press time. Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure.

The Other McCain has more

So, it was CIA vs. C.Y.A. at the State Department which, quite frankly, has been infiltrated by Edward Said-influenced Arab specialists to such an extent that it was practically a Muslim Brotherhood outpost even before the Obama administration took over.

Seriously, you can ask Bush administration people about this: Middle Eastern scholarship within academia is so dominated by anti-Western views that, insofar as anyone has the credentials to qualify as a specialist in the field — i.e., to get hired into and promoted within the bureaucracy — they’re certain to have been saturated in ideas about “Western imperialism” and the legitimacy of Arab/Islamic grievances. And while this has also been a problem at the CIA and the Pentagon, the State Department is absolutely chock-full of such people in staff positions, so that even with hawkish neocons in the political appointee roles during the Bush years, the pro-Arab/pro-Muslim culture at Foggy Bottom never really changed.

I feel the need to point this out now because some of my well-meaning conservative friends, who (quite correctly) complain about the dubious influences within the Obama administration, often neglect to discuss the larger problem, which pre-dates Obama. However, there is good reason to think it is more of a problem now:

In 1998 Obama attended a speech by [Edward] Said, in which the scholar called for a nonviolent campaign “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.” In a well-publicized photo, Obama and Said can be seen talking over dinner at this pro-Arab event.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in the early 1980s Obama had been one of Said’s students in an undergraduate English class at Columbia University.

None of this is necessarily related to the Benghazi cover-up — I don’t mean to feed anyone’s conspiratorial paranoia — but it does highlight the nature of the larger problem, what Jeanne Kirkpatrick rightly called the “Blame America First” mentality.

Thanks Barack… Mass Arrest And Torture Of Christians In Libya

Mass Arrest And Torture Of Christians In Libya – Front Page

Last week’s news of four Christian missionaries in Libya placed under arrest, possibly facing the death penalty for “proselytizing,” is apparently the tip of the iceberg. Yesterday, Arabic media reported that over 100 Christian Copts from Egypt, who have been living and working in Libya, were recently arrested in Ben Ghazi – also on the accusation, or pretext, of being “Christian missionaries.”

One video, apparently made by the Libyan militia interrogators – most of whom look like Islamic Salafis, with long beards and clipped mustaches – appeared on the Internet yesterday. It shows a room full of detained Copts. They sit hunched over on the floor – with all their hair shaven off, looking like dejected, or doomed, concentration camp prisoners. According to one source, many of these Copts have been tortured. Some have had the famous Coptic cross often tattooed on the wrists of Copts burned off with acid.

Next, the camera-man zooms in on the material which got them in this predicament: atop a table, several Bibles, prayer books, and pictures of Jesus, Mary and other saints appear spread out. The Libyan interrogators being video-taped complain about how these Christians could dare bring such material into Libya, and that they, their abductors, are sure that the Copts were going to such Christian materials to proselytize Libya, to sporadic ejaculations of “Allah Akbar!” from across the room.

What is going on in Libya? Do these reports – first of four foreign missionaries, including one American, now of more than 100 Christians from neighboring Egypt – indicate that Christian missionaries recently decided to flood Libya in droves? Or are these ongoing reports an indication that post-Gaddafi Libya is simply intolerant of any Christian presence?

Concerning the four foreign missionaries whom the Western media picked up on earlier, it is difficult to say who they are and what they were doing, since they basically have been swallowed up by the Ben Ghazi prisons; their names and identities have not even been revealed. As for the 100 Egyptian Copts, it is hard to believe they were proselytizing. Christians in Egypt do not dare proselytize to their fellow Muslim citizens, who speak the same dialect and share the same Egyptian culture. It is a dangerous thing to do. Is it reasonable, then, to believe that some 100 dispossessed Copts decided to proselytize to Muslims in Libya – where it is common knowledge that the Obama-supported jihadis reign?

Even the Coptic Church in Egypt made statements to this effect. According to Coptic Bishop Pachomios, “This is a very serious incident, in which Egyptian citizens were arrested on the mere suspicion [of proselytizing] and tortured while in detention.” The bishop confirmed that these imprisoned Egyptian Christians were working in Libya, adding that “it doesn’t make sense that as many as 100 Egyptian Copts had decided to engage in proselytizing activities in another country.” Other Coptic activists in Egypt also cast doubt on the proselytism charge. Naguib Gabriel, head of the Cairo-based Egyptian Union for Human Rights, “expressed his dismay over the reports. He, too, voiced doubt that the Egyptians in question had been proselytizing in Libya,” while correctly pointing out that, “Even if this were proven to be the case, they should not have been detained because of it.”

Moreover, a recent Christian Post article points out the inconsistencies in official statements from Libya, including how the number of Christian material being found on these alleged missionaries keeps inflating. For instance, one Christian arrested under the accusation of having 30,000 Bibles in his possession, was later described by police as having 45,000 Bibles.

It is becoming clear that these arrests are increasingly less about actual Christian evangelism to Muslims, and more about Muslim hostility to Christians. The Western media, when it reported about the four foreign missionaries, pointed out that the anti-proselytism law comes from the Gaddafi era. Yet, under Gaddafi, one did not hear of such back-to-back arrests of alleged missionaries – just as one did not hear of attacks on Christian churches in Libya, such as the one that took place only two months ago, leaving two Christians dead.

Here, then, is yet another indicator of the true significance of the “Arab Spring” and the Obama administration’s wholesale support of it -hate and hostility for Christians.

Click HERE For Rest Of Story

Team Obama summed up!

By Doug Powers, who clues us in on the origin of those talking points that matter more to Susan Rice than four dead Americans.

For months the White House has been pinning the “it was the video” talking points on regarding the Benghazi attack on Susan Rice and/or the intelligence community, but not surprisingly the trail is leading to the top.

Yesterday, Jay Carney said that on the night of the attack, President Obama spoke with Hillary Clinton at about 10 p.m.

At approximately 10:30 p.m. the Hillary Clinton/the State Department releasedthis statement:

I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.

This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.

In light of the events of today, the United States government is working with partner countries around the world to protect our personnel, our missions, and American citizens worldwide.

And by “some” Hillary’s probably referring first and foremost to Obama.

By the way, Susan Rice recently said that focusing on who originally suggested the “blame the video” talking points is a bigger tragedy than the attack that killed four Americans.

Powers sums up Team Obama perfectly

These people aren’t qualified to be in charge of a convenience store and yet they’re running the country.

Yep!

 

Hillary to testify on Benghazi

Zip of Weasel Zippers fame assumes, correctly I would think, that she does not want the issue hanging over the soon coming Hillary 2016 campaign. So, she will get the lying and denying over with now

Via Daily Mail:

Hillary Clinton will testify in front of Congress about the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya – despite receiving a concussion and being hospitalized for a blood clot, it was revealed on Thursday.

The Secretary of State cancelled appearances before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee after she fainted and hit her head on December 9.

She sent two aides to testify in her place.

Some conservatives initially claimed she was using the health issue to dodge testifying on the contentious issue.

The Washington Post reports that Clinton ‘remains committed’ to appearing in front of the Congressional committees, though no date has been set.

Of course, perhaps this is just a tactic to stall, hoping the issue goes away. 

 

Rewarding incompetence has consequences

America chose, or at least enough Americans chose to reward President Obama with four more years last month. Many people, including me, were stunned considering the awful job on the economy the president had done. Fewer of us really pounded the foreign policy blunders and  missteps of this president. I tried to do as much as I could on the foreign policy side. After the first debate when Romney pounded the president, I was sure, just sure he would feast on the president’s handling of Benghazi in the next debate, he did not, nor did he in the third debate. In fact, the geniuses at Team Romney let Benghazi slide off the national stage rather than focusing on it even though every time some new information about Benghazi came out, Obama looked more dishonest and inept.

Well, whether that hurt Romney we may never really know, but, I do recall thinking to myself that the GOP had erred by not talking more. Now, it is too late to unseat Obama, and the media has tried to bury the story, as they were doing before the election. But, the news out of Libya just stinks more and more. And now, this morning, we get a glimpse of how Obama may have unwittingly armed the very terrorists that attacked in Benghazi. Stacy McCain notes that Obama has consequences, and not all of those consequences are economic.

Yes, and I’m sure it must have seemed like a great idea during the “Arab Spring” to arm Islamic extremists in Libya:

In spite of the threat of American weapons ending up in the hands of terrorist groups, President Barack Obama secretly approved an arms transfer to Libyan rebels through Qatar at the height of the rebellion against Moamar Khadhafi, a knowledgeable source noted on Friday.
However, American counterterrorists are discovering that some of those U.S. weapons ended up in the hands of radical Islamists including associates of al-Qaeda, according to a law enforcement source who trained police in the Middle East.
Some Americans who are retired from the military, as well as intelligence and law enforcement agencies, believe there should be an investigation into possible connections between the weapons provided by the Qataris back then and the attack that killed an American ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

More at Gateway Pundit: “Benghazi Terrorists Were Armed By Obama”

Leaders of nations can, and do make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can lead to unforeseen consequences. But arming radicals is especially dangerous and ill advised. I suppose what really stands out here is that during the “Arab Spring” the president has chosen to take the sides of the WRONG people, and not taken sides with the right people. Iranians rose up, and Obama was silent. In Egypt, Obama took sides with the Muslim Brotherhood. How is that working out for democracy? In Libya, Obama chose to get involved, and to arm extremists without weighing the consequences of who he was arming. We know how that worked out.

Yep, consequences do arise when we reward incompetence, if you do not believe me just look at Egypt, or Libya, or Iran, or the entire Middle East.

 

 

And you wonder why I call Harrry reid Senator Weasel Dick?

There are many reasons, frankly, his weasel-like face, his allergic reactions to the truth, his shoving Obamacare down our throats, his willingness to put politoics over the country’s best interest, his over all despicability, and now, yet another reason, his attempt to help Obama cover up Benghazi as Stacy McCain notes

Now that we know for a fact that President Obama deliberately deceived Americans about the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi – remember, the president promised to “get to the bottom of it” – now the Senate Majority Leader does his part to suppress the ugly truth:

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t make it clear enough to Republicans that he opposes a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks, he said it again Friday: No way.
In letters to key Republican senators, Reid put his foot down – again – on the idea of a special panel to dig into the Sept. 11 assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three diplomatic aides in Libya. A select committee would need a floor vote to be created, and Reid said he wouldn’t permit it.
“I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” Reid wrote in the three-page letter, released Friday evening.

And, of course, by “baseless partisan attacks,” what Harry Reid actually means is, the truth. 

Your name wouldn’t be “Dick” would it?

Yes, Reid is allergic to truth, as I noted at the beginning, and, again, he shows he cares more, far more, about power than about America. He is, the worst kind of politician, and he is a disgrace!

WOW! Now that the election is over ABC suddenly remembers that Libya might just matter

I guess they figured that they covered for Obama until he got the win Tuesday so…..

Now that the 2012 presidential election is over and Barack Obama has been safely reelected, the journalists at ABC’s Good Morning America woke up to the fact that the President has “refused” to provide details the terrorist attack in Libya and that the administration “didn’t want to talk about it.” [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Fill-in host Elizabeth Vargas blithely announced, “In the meantime, the Libya issue has been overhanging this election. Allegations of a, quote, massive cover-up, by Senator John McCain about this administration’s, really, refusal to really put to rest this issue before voting day.” Martha Raddatz, who moderated the vice presidential debate, agreed, saying, “They didn’t want to talk about it. Everybody tried to pin them down on that. They did not want to talk about it.” “Everybody” tried to pin them down on Libya? 

Yeah, they tried so hard to pin him down like Michael Moore tried to stop eating sides of beef. The fact is the media ignored this story, because they knew it would hurt Obama’s chances at re-election.

 

Before you go vote on Tuesday, remember Benghazi

Via Weasel Zippers, more evidence that Obama let Americans out to dry die in Benghazi

Via Fox News:

Sources who have debriefed the team that was at the CIA annex the night of the attack in Benghazi say that the CIA operators from the Global Response Staff, or GRS, were equipped with Mark 48 machine guns and had two types of laser capability. Each weapon had both a “passive” as well as a “visible” laser that could be used against the Libyan attackers.

The presence of laser capability on the roof of the CIA annex confirms what Fox News sources that night in Benghazi originally said, which is that they had laser capability and for 5 hours and 15 minutes were wondering where the usual overhead air support was, especially since, according to this source, they radioed from the annex beginning as early as midnight asking for it.

The presence of lasers raises more questions about why air support was not sent to Benghazi even protectively once it became clear that the fighting had followed the CIA rescue team back to the annex.

U.S. military officials say they “thought the fighting was over” after the team left the consulate and that there was a lull in the fighting.

Fox News has learned the guns were fitted with PEQ-15 lasers. The “passive” laser is not visible to the naked eye but can help team members identify hostile forces when the shooter is wearing NODS, or Night Observation Device attached to their helmet. The visible laser system places a red dot on the attacker and warns the attacker not to shoot, encouraging them to flee the scene.

 

I think the Las Vegas Journal Review might be endorsing Mitt Romney

This editorial minces not one word! Good for them!

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in a well-planned military assault on their diplomatic mission in Benghazi seven weeks ago, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So why are details surfacing, piecemeal, only now?

The Obama administration sat by doing nothing for seven hours that night, ignoring calls to dispatch help from our bases in Italy, less than two hours away. It has spent the past seven weeks stretching the story out, engaging in misdirection and deception involving supposed indigenous outrage over an obscure anti-Muslim video, confident that with the aid of a docile press corps this infamous climax to four years of misguided foreign policy can be swept under the rug, at least until after Tuesday’s election.

Think that is a scathing review? It gets better

Not only did the White House do nothing, there are now reports that a counterterrorism team ready to launch a rescue mission was ordered to stand down.

The official explanation for the inadequate security? This administration didn’t want to “offend the sensibilities” of the new radical Islamic regime which American and British arms had so recently helped install in Libya.

The official explanation for why Obama administration officials watched the attack unfold for seven hours, refusing repeated requests to send the air support and relief forces that sat less than two hours away in Italy? Silence.

And just wait for the finish!

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy – though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” He added, “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama’s future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” – $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he’s in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he’s powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond “spin.” They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation’s economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” would be disastrous.

Candidate Obama said if he couldn’t fix the economy in four years, his would be a one-term presidency.

Mitt Romney is moral, capable and responsible man. Just this once, it’s time to hold Barack Obama to his word. Maybe we can all do something about that, come Tuesday.

Yep, that about sums it up.

 

CBS News: Key task force not convened during Benghazi consulate attack

Even more damning news that paints this president as incompetent, and perhaps even worse, the main stream media might finally be waking up

CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG).

“The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies,” a high-ranking government official told CBS News. “They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.”

Information shared with CBS News from top counterterrorism sources in the government and military reveal keen frustration over the U.S. response on Sept. 11, the night ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans were killed in a coordinated attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.

 The circumstances of the attack, including the intelligence and security situation there, will be the subject of a Senate Intelligence Committee closed hearing on Nov. 15, with additional hearings to follow.

 Counterterrorism sources and internal emails reviewed by CBS News express frustration that key responders were ready to deploy, but were not called upon to help in the attack.

Go read the rest, the story told paints this administration as buffoons who either had no inclination to send help, or, had no clue what to do. Nothing could speak any louder as to why this president is not capable of his job as Commander-in-Chief.

H/T to The Other McCain, who has some more including an angry statement from Fred Thompson

He never raised his voice, but he was clearly angry and, when it was over, it was obvious that Fred had definitely made news:

Former Sen. Fred Thompson today said he was “totally disgusted” by the Obama administration’s handling of the Libya terrorist attack, saying that U.S. officials failed to act “while our people were being systematically slaughtered” at the Benghazi consulate.
Speaking at an event sponsored by the free-market group Americans for Prosperity, the former Republican senator from Tennessee invoked his experience nearly 40 years ago as a Watergate investigator, saying that Congress must “get to the bottom of” the administration’s failures in the Sept. 11 incident that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead in Libya.
“This is probably the biggest cover-up in American history – and you’re talking to an expert in cover-ups,” Thompson said. . . .

One of the worst mistakes this nation ever made was electing Obama in 2008, a nation voting on emotion failed to consider substance. Exit question. Do you think that a President Thompson might have handled Benghazi a tad differently? McCain, writing at the American Spectator has more of Thompson’s remarks

“There are three scandals here – before, during and after,” Thompson told about 40 people gathered for the AFP event at the Mariners Hall in the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester. Citing the numerous incidents and warnings leading up to the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Thompson mockingly asked, “What was your first hint that there might be trouble in Libya?”

Thompson commented on reports that administration officials refused to approve U.S. air strikes to defend the embattled Benghazi compound because of concerns about civilian casualties.

“You’re outside our embassy while it’s being attacked? Fair game, buddy,” said Thompson

*VIDEO* Benghazi-gate: Obama’s Lying Cronies

.

Obama is a damned bad liar

 

You know, some folks can lie to your face and fool you with ease, others, not so much

So, the story was, that there was a protest, over a movie, that a few people brought RPG’s and other heavy weapons to. Then the “truth” evolved and we learned what anyone with a brain knew from the beginning, that this had nothing to do with a movie, but instead was a planned terrorist attack. An attack that likely succeeded because security at the embassy was way too light, and because repeated calls for more security were denied. Now, we learn that there was no protest at all. That seems to be just a CYA story concocted by the mental midgets that make up Team Obama.

Every day, the more we know about this attack, the worse it looks for Obama. Makes you wonder if the presidential debate on foreign policy might actually go worse for the President.

 

Obama Administration Withdrew 16 Member Special Forces Security Team From Libya One Month Before Attack

 

Gateway Pundit has the bombshell

The Obama State Department withdrew a 16 member special forces team from Benghazi one month before the deadly attacks on 9-11. Lt. Col. Andy Wood was the leader of the 16 member special forces team whose job it was to protect US personnel in Libya. His team’s mission ended in August a month before the deadly Al-Qaeda attack on 9-11. A six member mobile security team was also withdrawn around the same time. This was despite the fact that there were over a dozen attacks in the country this year. Lt. Col. Wood was subpoenaed to appear at a House committee hearing this coming week. Wood told CBS News it was unbelievable to him that the State Department withdrew security when they did because of the 13 security incidents before 9-11.

Here is the video

Incompetence on a level I cannot begin to fathom.

 

Multiple requests for additional security in Benghazi denied? UPDATED! Military Intervention Rejected?

 

Via Big Government

Asked about claims that requests for additional security in Benghazi were denied, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to comment, citing an ongoing investigation by the FBI. Nearly three weeks after the attack, FBI agents sent to Libya to investigate have yet to set foot in Benghazi.

In another additional detail not contained in his letter, Issa says there were a total of 13 threats and/or attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi prior to the September 11 attack.

[End update]

The security lapses in Benghazi that led to the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans trace back to security decisions made in Washington. That’s the message of a letter Rep. Darrell Issa sent to Secretary Clinton Tuesday. The letter indicates that the US mission in Libya made repeated request for increased security prior to the September 11th attack but that these requests were denied. Issa’s House Oversight committee is planning a hearing on Wednesday, October 10, to investigate the failure.

It just looks worse and worse each time new information is discovered. Now the Wall Street Journal reports this disturbing news

According to the Wall Street Journal, as the attack on the U.S. consulate was raging, Obama took a “wait and see” approach.

Ninety minutes after news of the attack reached Washington, Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, JCS Chair General Martin Dempsey, and a national security adviser convened for an oval office meeting in which they ultimately rejected the course of U.S. military intervention. Instead, they decided to reach out to the Libyan government to ask if they would send reinforcements.

When the U.S. personnel at the consulate left the main building for what was supposed to be a safe house, questions regarding the deployment of forces seemed moot. 

But the battle was still raging, and Ambassador Stevens’ life was close to its end.

Again, we show weakness and it costs us dearly.

 

Obama Administration deleted Memo from Internet After Finding Out Al Qaeda was Behind Libya Attack

Via Jim Hoft

Yesterday there were reports that the Obama Administration found out the Al-Qaeda was behind the Benghazi consulate attacks within 24 hours of the assault that killed four Americans.

So what was their first action?
Did they secure the compound? – No, that took over a week to get FBI agents to the consulate
Did they acknowledge it was an Al-Qaeda attack? No, Obama this week blamed the terror attack on a YouTube protest.

Here’s what they did – They scrubbed a damning State Department memo from the internet–
On Wednesday September 12, 2012 blogger Speak With Authority discovered that five days before 9-11, the US State Department sent out a memo announcing no credible security threats against the United States on the anniversary of 9-11.

The height of incompetence. What types of buffoons are these people? The bigger question is will CNN, CBS, ABC, etc jump on this as they should, and as they would were a Republican in the White House? Do not hold your breath. Here is a screen cap of the memo that Team Obama threw down the Memory Hole

This goes along with reports that Libyan security warned the US three days BEFORE the attacks

Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.

Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.

He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn’t good for international business.

“The situation is frightening, it scares us,” Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials. He did not say how they responded.

So, do the math here. Team Obama knew the anniversary of 9-11 was nearing, they had warnings from people in Libya, and they did what? Added security? No! Brought in Marines? No! They did not one damn thing to protect our embassy or, more importantly the Americans stationed there! And when the attack happened, they blamed an internet video, a video posted two months before, refused to call it what it obviously was, a well planned terror attack. Even now that they have been forced to admit it was a premeditated attack, they still are blaming the video, as Obama did when he spoke to the UN the other day! Even worse is this report Egyptian intelligence warned of impending attacks on September 4th!

Egypt’s General Intelligence Service warned that a jihadi group is planning to launch terrorist attacks against the US and Israeli embassies in Cairo, according to a report Tuesday by Egypt Independent, citing a secret letter obtained by Al-Masry Al-Youm.

According to the report, the attack is being planned by Global Jihad, the group suspected of killing 16 Egyptian border guards in Sinai on August 5.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reportedly obtained a copy of the September 4 letter, sent to all Egyptian security sectors, warning that Sinai- and Gaza-based Global Jihad cells were planning attacks on the two embassies.

There are not words to describe how poorly Team Obama has apparently handled this. The only decisive action seems to be scrubbing a damning document from the internet. Imagine if Obama cared as much about national security as he does about campaigning for reelection?

CNN offers up even more bad news, apparently FBI agents are still not on the ground in Libya

The White House’s Scandalous Lies About Libya (Stephen Hayes)

Permanent Spin – Stephen Hayes

For nine days, the Obama administration made a case that virtually everyone understood was untrue: that the killing of our ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, was a random, spontaneous act of individuals upset about an online video – an unpredictable attack on a well-protected compound that had nothing do to with the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.

These claims were wrong. Every one of them. But the White House pushed them hard.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on five Sunday talk shows on September 16. A “hateful video” triggered a “spontaneous protest… outside of our consulate in Benghazi” that “spun from there into something much, much more violent,” she said on Face the Nation. “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”

……..
……………U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice

On This Week, Rice said the consulate was well secured. “The security personnel that the State Department thought were required were in place,” she said, adding: “We had substantial presence with our personnel and the consulate in Benghazi. Tragically two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security. That was their function, and indeed there were many other colleagues who were doing the same with them.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney not only denied that the attacks had anything to do with the anniversary of 9/11 but scolded reporters who, citing the administration’s own pre-9/11 boasts about its security preparations for the anniversary, made the connection. “I think that you’re conveniently conflating two things,” Carney snapped, “which is the anniversary of 9/11 and the incidents that took place, which are under investigation.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Intelligence officials understood immediately that the attacks took place on 9/11 for a reason. The ambassador, in a country that faces a growing al Qaeda threat, had virtually no security. The two contractors killed in the attacks were not part of the ambassador’s security detail, and there were not, in fact, “many other colleagues” working security with them.

The nature of the attack itself, a four-hour battle that took place in two waves, indicated some level of planning. “The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” Libyan president Mohammad el-Megarif told National Public Radio. When a reporter asked Senator Carl Levin, one of the most partisan Democrats in the upper chamber, if the attack was planned, Levin said it was. “I think there’s evidence of that. There’s been evidence of that,” he responded, adding: “The attack looked like it was planned and premeditated, sure.” Levin made his comments after a briefing from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, agreed. “This was not just a mob that got out of hand. Mobs don’t come in and attack, guns blazing. I think that there is a growing consensus it was preplanned.” And according to CNN, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy “has said that the attack appeared to be planned because it was so extensive and because of the ‘proliferation’ of small and medium weapons at the scene.” Not only was the attack planned, it appears there was no protest at all. Citing eyewitnesses, CBS News reported late last week: “There was never an anti-American protest outside the consulate.”

So we are left with this: Four Americans were killed in a premeditated terrorist attack on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, and for more than a week the Obama administration misled the country about what happened.

This isn’t just a problem. It’s a scandal.

If this were the first time top Obama officials had tried to sell a bogus narrative after an attack, perhaps they would deserve the benefit of the doubt. It’s not.

On December 28, 2009, three days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate explosives in his underwear aboard an airliner over Detroit, President Obama told the country that the incident was the work of “an isolated extremist.” It wasn’t. Abdulmutallab was trained, directed, and financed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a fact he shared with investigators early in his interrogation.

The same thing happened less than six months later, after Faisal Shahzad attempted to blow up his Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square. Two days following the botched attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano took to the Sunday shows to dismiss reports of a conspiracy and insisted that the attempted bombing was just a “one-off” by a single attacker. It wasn’t. A week later, after much of the information had leaked, Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the United States had “evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack. We know that they helped facilitate it, we know that they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.”

In each instance, top administration officials quickly downplayed or dismissed the seriousness of the events, only to acknowledge, after the shock had worn off and the media had turned to other news, that their initial stories were incorrect. Whether it was because the attempted attacks were unsuccessful or because the media simply lost interest, the administration largely escaped serious criticism for making claims that turned out to be wrong.

They’ve had mixed success this time. On the one hand, as the final elements of the administration’s story began to unravel in the middle of last week, the New York Times did not find those facts fit to print. On Thursday morning, the same day White House spokesman Jay Carney would finally admit that the Benghazi assault was “a terrorist attack,” the Times did not publish a story about Libya. It wasn’t as though it took serious digging to find the contradictions. One day earlier, Fox News had reported that intelligence officials were investigating the possibility that a former Guantánamo detainee had been involved in the attack. A story by Reuters raised questions about administration descriptions of the protests, noting “new information” that “suggests that the protests at the outset were so small and unthreatening as to attract little notice.” The story reported: “While many questions remain, the latest accounts differ from the initial information provided by the Obama administration, which had suggested that protests in front of the consulate over an anti-Islamic film had played a major role in precipitating the subsequent violent attack.” And CBS, as noted, reported that same day that there simply were no protests.

And what about the film? The Obama administration has sought to explain nearly everything that has happened over the past two weeks as a response to the video. President Obama denounced it during his remarks at the memorial for the four Americans killed in Libya. So did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. White House spokesman Jay Carney has mentioned it almost daily. At the end of last week, the United States spent $70,000 to buy ads in Pakistan to distance the U.S. government from its message.

That’s ironic. In its effort to deflect blame for the unrest, the administration has given more attention to this obscure film than it ever would have gotten if they’d simply ignored it. It’s true that radical Islamists used the film to help populate the 9/11 protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. But they also told fellow radicals to join in a protest of the continued detention of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh who was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And some of the others who gathered were “Ultras” – soccer hooligans looking for trouble.

The American embassy in Cairo first drew attention to the film in its statement. And the administration – after initially distancing itself from that statement – has made it the centerpiece of its public relations campaign ever since, as protests spread to more than 20 countries. The result: Every Muslim with access to media is now aware of a bizarre video that had a few thousand views on YouTube on September 10.

That’s exactly what the radicals wanted, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the reporting on Egypt. The focus on the film was an “information operation” by jihadists designed to generate rage against America. If he’s right, it worked.

Barack Obama came to office promising to repair relations with the Islamic world. What he couldn’t accomplish by the mere fact of his presidency, through his name and his familiarity with Islam, he would achieve through “smart diplomacy.”

Instead, over the last four years, and particularly the last two weeks, the defining characteristics of his foreign policy have been mendacity, incompetence, and, yes, stupidity.

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