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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Fury on September 20, 2012, 07:19:01 PM
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Eyewitnesses claim there was no protest before the attack on the consulate. "Protesters" were armed with heavy weapons. Obama regime now calls it "terrorism".
Wonder which side is lying. ::)
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Eyewitnesses claim there was no protest before the attack on the consulate. "Protesters" were armed with heavy weapons. Obama regime now calls it "terrorism".
Wonder which side is lying. ::)
doesnt matter
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on the anniversary of 911, a 3 front attack on the embassy? Clearly not 'spontaneous'.
But obama and the DNC much more enjoy romney treading water about quotes and spray-tan.
The ONLY thing they care about is winning the election. Everything else just gets pushed to the site now. We're under 7 weeks until election.
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on the anniversary of 911, a 3 front attack on the embassy? Clearly not 'spontaneous'.
But obama and the DNC much more enjoy romney treading water about quotes and spray-tan.
The ONLY thing they care about is winning the election. Everything else just gets pushed to the site now. We're under 7 weeks until election.
Your approach to Romney's lies and the lies of the Obama regime are fucking comical.
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White House narrative on Libya all but collapsed
posted at 9:21 am on September 21, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
On Sunday, the White House narrative on the assassination of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi was that they died in a protest that “spun out of control,” as UN Ambassador Susan Rice insisted on multiple talk shows. That narrative hasn’t even lasted out the week. By Wednesday, officials in the US government began acknowledging that the so-called “riot” at the consulate in Libya had elements of planning and heavy weapons; by yesterday, Barack Obama himself refused to answer questions about the nature of the attack. There may not have even been a protest at the consulate before the attack.
Today, The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake looks at the collapse of the Obama narrative on the attack, and the questions it raises about the administration’s handling of consular security in an area known to be rife with Islamist militias and terrorists:
Now there is mounting evidence that the White House’s initial portrayal of the attacks as a mere outgrowth of protest was incorrect—or, at the very least, incomplete. The administration’s story itself has recently begun to shift, with Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, telling Congress on Wednesday that the attackers may have had links to Al Qaeda and Carney characterizing the incident as a “terrorist attack.” (Hillary Clinton announced on Thursday that she was putting together a panel to look into the incident.)
But other indications that the White House’s early narrative was faulty are also beginning to emerge. One current U.S. intelligence officer working on the investigation into the incident told The Daily Beast that the attackers had staked out and monitored the U.S. consulate in Benghazi before the attack, a move that suggests pre-planning.
What’s more, two U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the intelligence community is currently analyzing an intercept between a Libyan politician whose sympathies are with al Qaeda and the Libyan militia known as the February 17 Brigade—which had been charged with providing local security to the consulate. In the intercept, the Libyan politician apparently asks an officer in the brigade to have his men stand down for a pending attack—another piece of evidence implying the violence was planned in advance.
This leads to all sorts of questions about the White House’s actions, before and after the assassination. First, Benghazi is located in the eastern part of Libya, an area where al-Qaeda and other Islamist militias have operated years before the fall of Moammar Qaddafi. The fall of the previous regime has made operation even easier for these groups, and they didn’t have too much difficulty before; many of the AQ recruits in Iraq between 2003 and the surge came from this area of Libya. On the anniversary of 9/11, one would have expected the US to have anticipated an attack attempt and provided extra security for its diplomatic missions in Muslim nations, but especially Benghazi.
This might explain the rush to blame the entire mess on a weeks-old YouTube video. Thanks to that rush to judgment, the White House was able to initially deflect criticism of its security failure to the filmmakers — and claim that its Middle East policy wasn’t to blame for the assassination and the other riots. That narrative has collapsed, too, writes Charles Krauthammer:
It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisiato Lebanon, American schools, businesses anddiplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.
The administration, staggered and confused,blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and may not even exist.
What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to American influence? …
Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf states beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.
Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And a sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.
Don’t expect Obama to take ownership of this narrative collapse. In fact, the administration has already offered up its patsy on the altars of five Sunday talk shows last week:
Some wondered why the White House sent a UN Ambassador — who had no direct connection to anything related to the story — out to sell the “protest spun out of control” message. Answer: Susan Rice is a lot more expendable than Hillary Clinton, who as Secretary of State should have been the one explaining the week’s events, not the UN Ambassador. Obama sent Rice out to be made a fool — and one has to wonder whether Rice volunteered for that assignment, or Hillary refused it.
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Permanent Spin
Stephen F. Hayes
October 1, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 03
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.”
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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Copyright 2012 Weekly Standard LLC.
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Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/permanent-spin_652887.html
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Permanent Spin
Stephen F. Hayes
October 1, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 03
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.”
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe now to The Weekly Standard!
Get more from The Weekly Standard: Follow WeeklyStandard.com on RSS and sign-up for our free Newsletter.
Copyright 2012 Weekly Standard LLC.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/permanent-spin_652887.html
This is the most incompetent regime in a long time. :-\
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/26/u-s-officials-knew-libya-attacks-were-work-of-al-qaeda-affiliates.html
Busted
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House Armed Services chair: Obama admin hiding truth on Libya until after election;
Hotair ^ | 12:01 pm on September 26, 2012 | Ed Morrissey
Posted on Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:14:58 PM by
The outrage over the Benghazi attack and the Obama administration’s response has percolated for two weeks on Capitol Hill, but it’s breaking out into the open today. Last week, the White House briefing for Congress frustrated Senator Bob Corker so badly that he told reporters, “That is the most useless, worthless briefing I have attended in a long time.” Today, House Armed Services chair Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon told Fox News that the Obama administration seems to be deliberately hiding the “truth” about the Benghazi attack, and that the only reason he sees for the subterfuge is the date in November that’s fast approaching:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/world/africa/clinton-cites-clear-link-between-al-qaeda-and-attack-in-libya.html?_r=0
Hillary now forced into the truth.
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The Libya Debacle
The more we learn, the more Benghazi looks like a gross security failure..
In his United Nations speech on Tuesday, President Obama talked about the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and declared that "there should be no doubt that we will be relentless in tracking down the killers and bringing them to justice." What he didn't say is how relentless he'll be in tracking down the security lapses and intelligence failures that contributed to the murders. Let's say there's some doubt about that.
None of the initial explanations offered by the White House and State Department since the assault on the Benghazi consulate has held up. First the Administration blamed protests provoked by an amateurish anti-Islam clip posted on YouTube. Cue Susan Rice, the U.N. Ambassador and leading candidate for Secretary of State in a second Obama term: "What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction . . . as a consequence of the video, that people gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent."
The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 12, 2012.
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Administration officials also maintained that the diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt, the site of the first attacks this September 11, were properly defended and that the U.S. had no reason to prepare for any attack. "The office of the director of National Intelligence has said we have no actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in Benghazi was planned or imminent," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week, calling the security measures in place there "robust."
Cell phone video footage and witness testimony from Benghazi soon undercut the Administration trope of an angry march "hijacked" by a few bad people. As it turned out, the assault was well-coordinated, with fighters armed with guns, RPGs and diesel canisters, which were used to set the buildings on fire. Ambassador Chris Stevens died of smoke inhalation. Briefing Congress, the Administration changed its story and said the attacks were pre-planned and linked to al Qaeda.
You'd think this admission would focus attention on why the compound was so vulnerable to begin with. But the Administration wants to avoid this conversation. The removal of all staff from Benghazi, including a large component of intelligence officers, would also seem to hinder their ability to investigate the attacks and bring the killers to justice.
Journalists have stayed on the case, however, and their reporting is filling in the Administration's holes. On Friday, our WSJ colleagues showed that starting in spring, U.S. intelligence had been worried about radical militias in eastern Libya. These armed groups helped topple Moammar Ghadhafi last year but weren't demobilized as a new government has slowly found its legs. As we've noted since last winter, the waning of American and European interest in Libya could have dangerous consequences.
Deteriorating security was no secret. On April 10, for example, an explosive device was thrown at a convoy carrying U.N. envoy Ian Martin. On June 6, an improvised explosive device exploded outside the U.S. consulate. In late August, State warned American citizens who were planning to travel to Libya about the threat of assassinations and car bombings.
Despite all this, U.S. diplomatic missions had minimal security. Officials told the Journal that the Administration put too much faith in weak Libyan police and military forces. The night of the Benghazi attack, four lightly armed Libyans and five American security offices were on duty. The complex lacked smoke-protection masks and fire extinguishers. Neither the consulate in Benghazi nor the embassy in Tripoli were guarded by U.S. Marines, whose deployment to Libya wasn't a priority.
Rummaging through the Benghazi compound, a CNN reporter found a seven-page notebook belonging to Ambassador Stevens. According to the network, the diary said he was concerned about the "never-ending" security threats in Benghazi and wrote that he was on an al Qaeda hit list. In deference to the family's wishes, CNN didn't quote directly from the diary and didn't divulge any private information in it.
His worries are newsworthy, however, and can inform America's response. But Mrs. Clinton's long-time and closest media adviser chose to attack CNN. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines called the network's conduct "disgusting." He then deployed words not fit for a family newspaper in an exchange with a reporter for the Web site BuzzFeed. Mr. Reines may wish to protect his boss's legacy for her 2016 Presidential run, but that won't be enhanced by the appearance of a cover-up.
Imagine the uproar if, barely a month before Election Day, the Bush Administration had responded to a terrorist strike—on Sept. 11 no less—in this fashion. Obfuscating about what happened. Refusing to acknowledge that clear security warnings were apparently ignored. Then trying to shoot the messengers who bring these inconvenient truths to light in order to talk about anything but a stunning and deadly attack on U.S. sovereign territory.
Four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi in a terrorist attack that evidence suggests should have been anticipated and might have been stopped. Rather than accept responsibility, the Administration has tried to stonewall and blame others. Congress should call hearings to hold someone accountable for this debacle.
A version of this article appeared September 27, 2012, on page A18 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Libya Debacle.
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Your approach to Romney's lies and the lies of the Obama regime are fucking comical.
The Republicans is the most lying on the political stage so actually you are the comedian here.
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=441982.0
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Obama Administration Knew Libya Attack Was Terrorism Within 24 Hours
Fox News ^ | Sept. 27, 2012 | Fox News
Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2012 2:09:29 PM
Sources tell Fox News that U.S. intelligence almost immediately knew the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was the work of terrorists.
That weekend, however, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, stated that the attack was spontaneous, and resulting from Muslims’ outrage over an anti-Islam film.
Only in the last week has the Obama administration begun to publicly declare that the attack was terrorism.
Bret Baier reports that the Obama administration actually labeled the attack as terrorism immediately in order to unlock certain federal resources to speed up the response. Intelligence officials immediately suspected involvement by elements of al Qaeda’s North African wing.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnewsinsider.com ...
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Of course they knew it was a organized assault
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Some Administration Officials Were Concerned About Initial White House Push Blaming Benghazi Attack on Mob, Video*
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/some-administration-officials-were-concerned-about-initial-white-house-push-blaming-benghazi-attack-on-mob-video
Even before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta contradicted the initial story about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, today, Obama administration officials told ABC News they were concerned after the White House began pushing the line that the attack was spontaneous and not the work of terrorists.
Events were too uncertain, and suspicions had been aroused, officials said.
Panetta today said that the attack that killed four Americans on the anniversary of 9/11 was not only carried out by terrorists — it was pre-meditated.
“As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place,” Panetta told reporters, “it became clear that there were terrorists who had planned that attack.”
The White House first suggested the attack was spontaneous — the result of an anti-Muslim video that incited mobs throughout the region.
“Let’s be clear, these protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on September 14.
When ABC News pressed Carney on whether that included the Benghazi attack, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American men were killed, Carney said, “we certainly don’t know. We don’t know otherwise. We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.”
On THIS WEEK on September 16, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said, “our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.”
White House officials acknowledge that assessments have changed over time as intelligence has been confirmed, but they insist that no information was given in bad faith and there was no attempt to downplay the attack.
But sources told ABC News that intelligence officials on the ground immediately suspected the attack was not tied to the movie at all. The attackers knew Ambassador Stevens had been trying to flee — to a so-called safe house half a mile away. That building was hit with insurgent mortars — suggesting the terrorists knew what they were doing.
As of Thursday afternoon, officials from the Obama administration were not even 100 percent certain that the protest of the anti-Muslim film in Benghazi occurred outside the U.S. diplomatic post.
In a closed-door briefing with top officials, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the mortar attack on the safe house as suggesting that the terrorist attack was one of opportunity, not pre-meditation, since the mortars were not used to attack the consulate earlier in the day.
Campaigning in Virginia Beach today, President Obama seemed eager to paint the terrorist threat as waning. “Al Qaeda’s on the path to defeat,” he said. “Bin Laden is dead.”
But the Daily Beast’s Eli Lake on Wednesday reported that intelligence officials said “the early information was enough to show that the attack was planned and the work of al Qaeda affiliates operating in Eastern Libya.” “There was very good information on this in the first 24 hours,” one of the officials told Lake. “These guys have a return address. There are camps of people and a wide variety of things we could do.”
It’s certainly possible that intelligence officials wouldn’t want the terrorists to know that the U.S. knew about them, but that does beg the question as to why White House officials seemed to strongly suggest the attack was merely the work of an unruly mob.
President Obama has repeatedly said the investigation is on to find the killers and bring them to justice. But as first reported by CNN, ABC news has learned that the FBI — which has been dispatched to Libya to take the lead in the investigation — has not even reached Benghazi yet.
This is largely due to safety concerns. Indeed, as of Thursday, senior State Department officials said that the diplomatic presence in Libya – which was already down to emergency-level staffing – would be further reduced.
A spokeswoman for Ambassador Rice, Erin Pelton, issued a statement to ABC News regarding her appearances on THIS WEEK and other Sunday shows on September 16, saying Ambassador Rice’s comments in those interviews “were prefaced at every turn with a clear statement that an FBI investigation was underway that would provide the definitive accounting of the events that took place in Benghazi. At every turn Ambassador Rice provided — and said she was providing — the best information and the best assessment that the Administration had at the time, based on what was provided to Ambassador Rice and other senior U.S. officials by the U.S. intelligence community.”
*This post has been updated
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Bombshell: Obama Administration Deleted State Dept. Memo From Internet After Discovering Al-Qaeda
gateway pundit ^ | 9/27/12 | Jim Hoft
Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2012 10:08:49 PM by Nachum
Yesterday there were reports that the Obama Administration found out that 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 Overseas Security Advisory Council, who posted the memo, is part of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security under the U.S. Department of State.
Here is a screengrab of the memo at the OSAC website:
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
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Obama's Libya Lies Collapse: Senate Democrats Demand Answers
breitbart.com ^ | 9/27/12 | John Nolte
Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:25:23 PM by Justaham
The wheels appear to be coming off a two week attempt by the Obama Administration to cover up its fatal security failures at our consulate in Libya and to cover up the very fact that this was a successful pre-planned terrorist attack that cost four American lives, including that of our Libyan Ambassador, Christopher Stevens.
Not only has the scandal picked up steam in the mainstream press (Jake Tapper's ABC News report tonight is a must-watch), but high-ranking members of the President's own party are now demanding answers. This includes the man most often cited as a likely Secretary of State should Obama win a second term, Senator John Kerry:
Senate Democrats joined Republicans Thursday in questioning the Obama administration's handling of the fatal Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and why the administration refused for days to acknowledge that it was a terrorist attack linked to al Qaeda.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., circulated a bipartisan letter addressed to Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, asking for an "accounting of the attacks against U.S. missions in Egypt, Libya and Yemen," according to a copy obtained by The Washington Examiner.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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33, honestly man...
at this point, pointing out what obama is doing wrong won't work. 45 days til election, obama is at 77.7% on Intrade.
Romney needs to stop talking about what the other guy is doing wrong - I think we can all agree no matter how right he is that its not working.
He needs to START focusing on EXACTLY what he will do to fix it. You can't tell me what the romney plan is, cause he hasn't told us any specifics yet. Will he ever?
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33, honestly man...
at this point, pointing out what obama is doing wrong won't work. 45 days til election, obama is at 77.7% on Intrade.
Romney needs to stop talking about what the other guy is doing wrong - I think we can all agree no matter how right he is that its not working.
He needs to START focusing on EXACTLY what he will do to fix it. You can't tell me what the romney plan is, cause he hasn't told us any specifics yet. Will he ever?
Exactly 240. Yes Obama sucks but no one knows what Mitt is going to do. I know a lot of you guys say it doesn't matter who runs against Obama that it could be Manson, Hitler, etc..but it matters to me. Is this guy gonna get us involved deeper over seas? What is his plan for the middle class? If we can get a definitive answer on issues it may make a difference for Romney.
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To me - I think Romney still has a chance to win - but ONLY if he can somehow offer america a BETTER product than what obama is doing. You can't just say that mcdonald sucks. you have to tell us why your burger king is much much better. He hasn't done that, I dont know if he will. THAT is what we want.
Obama/DNC is EXCELLENT at the political game. ANyone who denies that is lying to themselves. Just as they're up to 77.7% on Intrade and you have repubs truning on mitt, they pull out ANOTHER bombshell video - right before the debate - and you just KNOW they've been holding this for 2 or even 4 years.
Mitt explained that Bain's goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.
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i think in 50 years, they're STILL going to be studying this election.
Obama just stood by and let a 9/11 attack happen on our soil at that embassy... and the focus of the left, and the right, is everything else except that attack, the economy, etc.
I dont know if obama is that good, or romney is just that inept.
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To me - I think Romney still has a chance to win - but ONLY if he can somehow offer america a BETTER product than what obama is doing. You can't just say that mcdonald sucks. you have to tell us why your burger king is much much better. He hasn't done that, I dont know if he will. THAT is what we want.
Obama/DNC is EXCELLENT at the political game. ANyone who denies that is lying to themselves. Just as they're up to 77.7% on Intrade and you have repubs truning on mitt, they pull out ANOTHER bombshell video - right before the debate - and you just KNOW they've been holding this for 2 or even 4 years.
Mitt explained that Bain's goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.
I hope "harvest" was just a poor choice of words and what he actually meant was benefit from the companies Bain financed.
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I hope "harvest" was just a poor choice of words and what he actually meant was benefit from the companies Bain financed.
he believed in the wording strongly enough to put this speech on the DVD-rom that he gave to investors.
to gain, win, acquire, or use (a prize, product, or result of any past act, process, plan, etc.).
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/harvesting?s=t
I'm more intrigued at the tactics used by both campaigns, than on these meaningless things themselves.
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i think in 50 years, they're STILL going to be studying this election.
Obama just stood by and let a 9/11 attack happen on our soil at that embassy... and the focus of the left, and the right, is everything else except that attack, the economy, etc.
I dont know if obama is that good, or romney is just that inept.
The technology is making people more informed so the Republicans cant win by lies alone and its hurting them because thats all they got
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September 27, 2012 6:06 PM
Looking for answers on Libya
BY GABRIEL MALOR
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_rumble/2012/09/looking-for-answers-on-libya
It has been 15 days since the attack in Libya. And where are we? President Obama, who first confidently (but incorrectly) declared that the attack grew spontaneously out of a protest over a YouTube video, has finally admitted that it was an act of terrorism directed against Americans on the anniversary of 9/11. There was no protest before the attack, we now know.
We now know this because of journalists in Libya. We know this because of Libya's own officials. But we know hardly anything from our own government about what happened in Libya because most of what we were told by the White House was a lie.
The President boldly vowed that the perpetrators -- he declined to call them terrorists at the time -- would be brought to justice. To that end, he called in the FBI. More than a week later, the FBI flew a team to Tripoli, but that is as far as they got. They have not traveled to Benghazi. They have not examined the scene. They have not collected evidence. They have not interviewed the people the Libyans have arrested. It has been fifteen days since the attack.
Why is this not a scandal yet?
I'll be honest with you. It is scandalous that a U.S. ambassador was killed abroad. It is even more scandalous that this ambassador was provided almost no security at one of the most dangerous assignments on the planet for the flimsiest of excuses. The President should be answering for those scandals. But the fact that his administration then misled the American people? That the law enforcement Obama has tapped to lead the investigation hasn't even managed to complete the most obvious of tasks? That is beyond scandal. That is a disgrace.
I understand that President Obama is very busy right now working on his reelection campaign, but for the sake of bring justice to the people who attacked Americans in Benghazi, is it too much to ask that he flex some of that much-vaunted foreign policy prowess to get us some answers? He is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, after all. Surely, the Libyans will cooperate if he asks.
(Photo: EPA)
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Libya Is Becoming A Bigger And Bigger Problem For Obama
Brett LoGiurato|42 minutes ago|1,051|18
AP
President Barack Obama is starting to see some backlash from friends and foes in Washington and from voters over his handling of the situation in Libya, where U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens was killed there on Sept. 11.
Obama is now facing criticism from fellow Democratic lawmakers questioning why the administration refused to originally characterize the attacks as an act of terror.
The Washington Examiner reported that Democratic Sen. John Kerry wrote a bipartisan letter to Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, which called for an "accounting of the attacks against U.S. missions in Egypt, Libya and Yemen."
From The Examiner:
The lawmakers are also demanding to know whether the administration had any advance warnings of the Libyan attack and, if so, whether it had shared that information with U.S. personnel on the ground.
The letter marks the first time congressional Democrats have so directly expressed their dissatisfaction with the administration's response to inquiries about the attacks, which resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others and raised questions about U.S. security throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Meanwhile, voter sentiment on Obama's handling of Libya has shifted negatively over the past week-plus, as a plurality of respondents in a new Fox News poll now disapprove of Obama's handling of the situation.
In the poll, 39 percent of likely voters said they approved of the president's handling of the situation, compared with 43 percent that now disapprove.
The shift on Libya is the most notable element of the Fox News poll, in which everything else is steady. By comparison, a Sept. 17 Pew Research poll found that a majority (45-36) approved of Obama's handling of the Libya situation.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-libya-war-poll-chris-stevens-muslim-qadhafi-2012-9#ixzz27lxEdDrz
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Murdered ex-SEAL’s mother frustrated by pace of Benghazi investigation
Posted By Josh RoginFriday, September 28, 2012 - 3:47 PM Share
The mother of Tyrone Woods, one of the two former Navy SEALs killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the Benghazi consulate, is speaking out about the slow pace of the investigation into the death of her son and three other Americans.
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"Don't want to ever politicize the loss of my son in Libya, but it has been 16 days and the FBI has yet to get to Benghazi to begin their investigation," Woods's mother Cheryl Croft Bennett wrote on her Facebook page Thursday. "Apparently they have made it to Tripoli but haven't been allowed to enter Benghazi. Meanwhile, the diplomatic outpost where Tyrone and [former SEAL] Glen [Doherty] died, was not and is not secured. Absolutely unacceptable."
Bennett was apparently referring to reports by CNN and other outlets noting that the FBI team sent to investigate the Benghazi assault has yet to arrive in the city, and the consulate remains unguarded.
Bennett has been using her Facebook page to disseminate information about the Benghazi attack and talk about her son Tyrone, who was killed in the second wave of the firefight at an "annex" that some reports have called a "safe house" about half a mile from the main consulate building.
The mission personnel fled to the annex when the main consulate building was set on fire, but the attackers either followed them there or already knew the location. They attacked the annex early in the morning as a security team tried to evacuate the personnel.
State Department official Sean Smith died in the fire during the initial attack, according to officials briefing reporters the next day, and Amb. Chris Stevens was lost in the fire and was later returned to U.S. personnel dead. Woods and Doherty were killed in the firefight at the annex, according to official reports.
In an earlier Facebook post on Sept. 22, Bennett wrote that the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to her that Woods died on Sept. 12, not Sept. 11, which matches the official account because the annex fight occurred after midnight. Bennett was originally told that Woods had died on Sept. 11 and she was not notified of her son's death until Sept. 13, she wrote.
"As you can probably understand, it is important to me and to Ty's family to know when he left us," Bennett wrote.
In a Sept. 17 Facebook post, Bennett wrote extensively about the Sept. 14 "transfer of remains" ceremony she attended when the bodies of Woods and the three other American victims were handed over to their families in a hanger at Andrews Air Force Base.
"The entire afternoon was overpowering and unreal. Little did I know that I would find myself in a reception room being comforted, hugged, and, yes, even kissed by the President of the United States. Along with the President, there was Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and General and Mrs. Colin Powell. They were all wonderful. They held my hand, offered condolences, gave warm hugs, and were extremely compassionate and genuinely sad for my loss, as I fought back tears and tried to project an image of strength to honor my SEAL son," Bennett wrote.
"Each of them commended Tyrone for his courage, his bravery, and his ultimate sacrifice for his country. While squeezing Secretary Clinton's hand and choking back tears, I told her that what worried me was that my son died possibly thinking that he had failed in the mission he was to carry out, that of protecting Ambassador Stevens and the people in the compound"
"Looking me firmly in the eye, she told me that my son did not fail. She called him a hero and that if not for him, the 30 people inside the consulate would not have made it out. He was doing his job, fighting
Not to make lite of this, but Agent terrys' family is probably a longer aheasd in that line waiting for answers from this communist thug and maggot in the WH , shit be upon him.
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Top intelligence official backtracks on Libya story, says initial assessment premature
FoxNews.com ^ | September 28, 2012 | Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne contributed
Posted on Friday, September 28, 2012 5:37:53 PM by
The office of the United States' top intelligence official appeared to take the blame Friday for the Obama administration's changing narrative on the U.S. Consulate attack in Libya, saying administration officials who initially claimed the attack was spontaneous did so based on intelligence officials' guidance.
The statement by Shawn Turner, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was put out late Friday -- at the close of a tumultuous week for the Obama administration over the Libya attack.
The White House has had to steadily backpedal over initial claims that the attack was inspired by protests in Cairo over an anti-Islam film and was not pre-planned. Top officials started last week calling the attack "terrorism."
Turner's statement marked a complete reversal from the initial claims.
"As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," Turner said. "It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with or sympathetic to Al Qaeda."
Turner, though, sought to explain that officials who discussed the attack as spontaneous did so based on intelligence community assessments.
"In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo," he said. "We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving."
However, sources have told...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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Democrats: Investigate Benghazi Attack After the Election
breitbart ^ | 9/28/12 | William Bigelow
Posted on September 28, 2012 7:37:09 PM EDT by Nachum
Don’t be fooled by the supposedly bipartisan effort to investigate the Obama administration’s actions after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. Democrats are no more serious about challenging their leader in the White House than they have ever been.
Trying to pass off his actions as part of a bipartisan effort at investigation, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) started circulating a letter that his aides said would be asking for more information.
Republicans claimed that there were now calls from both parties for an examination of Obama and his administration’s actions; Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said:
It's my understanding today that all members of the Foreign Relations Committee — both Democrats and Republicans — are asking the administration for answers. So this is now something that certainly could never be colored as partisan.
John McCain had harsh words for Obama and his minions, calling Obama’s contention that the anti-Islamic video was to blame for the attack “unbelievable” and “disgraceful.”
When asked why Obama and his pals would act in such a way, McCain blasted:
Some allege that maybe it’s because they’re trying to convey to the American people that al Qaeda is no longer a threat, and that when Osama bin Laden left that was the case, but the reality is that al Qaeda is well and thriving in some places.
But here’s the salient point, and how the Democrats are duping the public into thinking that they truly want an investigation: Kerry and his pals’ letter to Thomas Nides, deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, is asking for more information and a full briefing after the Senate returns in November.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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Benghazi Worse than Watergate
PJ Media ^ | September 29, 2012 | Roger L. Simon
Posted on Saturday, September 29, 2012 2:02:01 PM by jazusamo
For over forty years now, the Watergate scandal — the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and the subsequent cover-up by the Nixon administration — has been the sine qua non of American political malfeasance. It has been followed by myriad other “gates” affecting both parties but has never been superseded.
Until now.
Benghazi or Benghazigate, as some call it, is worse. Far worse. Incomparably worse.
Watergate caught numerous public officials lying, including the president of the United States, but Benghazigate has all that and more.
It involves the terrorist murder (not an electorally irrelevant burglary) of government officials, their reckless endangerment, the undermining of the Bill of Rights and free speech by our own administration in response to Islamist threats, and, ultimately, the complicity of that same administration, consciously or unconsciously, in the downfall of Western civilization.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media function as their more-than-willing accomplices in this downfall, in essence as Obama’s court eunuchs.
Sound excessive?
Hear me out.
But first a word from Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, who evidently feels the same way:
First of all, we’ve had 9 days of lies.…If a president of either party…had had a terrorist incident and gotten on an airplane [after remarks] and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified…it should have been, should have been, the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment. But nothing was said at all. Nothing will be said. [...] It is [unacceptable] to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know. [The MSM] has made themselves the enemy of the American people. It is a threat to the very future of the country; we’ve crossed a new and frightening line on the slippery slope, and it needs to be talked about. (h/t: The Anchoress)
Not to mention Democratic pundit Kirsten Powers :
There are so many unanswered questions, not just about Libya, but also about Cairo. Who is it that Rice thinks “widely disseminated” this “movie?” Surely she can’t believe that the Egyptian Coptic Christian who made the video had the capacity or even desire to put it in the hands of the people who did the inciting. Also, has the administration noticed that the mob in Cairo, so spontaneously upset about the video, just happened to be carrying an Islamist flag to hoist over our embassy? On 9/11. What a massive coincidence…. They say curiosity killed the cat. In this case, lack of curiosity on the part of the American media very well may kill more Americans. (h/t: Hot Air )
And so on. There’s more at both of these links. Watergate is child’s play by comparison.
What really is going on here? Terrorism and rioting broke out all over the Muslim world on 9/11. What caused it? We thought Osama bin Laden was supposed to be dead. But apparently the assassination of bin Laden meant little. Actually, only an idiot would think otherwise.
(“Obama, Obama, we are all Osama!” Evidently.)
Obviously, an ideology is at play — a gigantic, uncompromising ideology — that our government refuses to confront or even recognize. And our media, with a few exceptions, barely looks at it either. Nevertheless, a direct line exists from the denial of Islamic influence in the Ft. Hood massacre (even though Major Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar” in the process of killing or maiming forty-two of his fellow soldiers) and what occurred in Benghazi, Cairo, and elsewhere.
Our government, more than ever under Obama, has never named our enemy, making it all the more likely that enemy will engulf us. Indeed, as has been described here at PJ Media, government directives exist to avoid imputation of Islamic or even Islamist terror motivation by the State Department, Defense Department, or the FBI.
You could say that is appeasement. Unfortunately, I am beginning to think it is more than that. It is, on the part of some, intentional.
We can trace that back, among other places, to Obama’s famous Cairo speech. That speech was naïve, yes, but even more it was subversive in its intentions. Obama wanted to make outreach to and common cause with an Islamic culture that is misogynistic, homophobic, and in favor of the ascendancy of religious Sharia law over state law across a globe ruled by an Islamic caliphate — in other words, against the very fabric of everything on which this country was founded, not to mention Western civilization, the Enlightenment, etc.
Think of that, my fellow Americans. That is what Barack Obama did on our behalf — and the media lapped up unquestioningly.
Liberals, most of all, you would think would abhor this. But they don’t. They have been brainwashed out of their ideology — that is, assuming they ever had one.
And that, of course, is the work our media. They say Islam is a “shame culture,” but we have become one too. Our media is too ashamed to admit they made a mistake about Barack Obama, so ashamed they are willing to look the other way at every occasion.
So what do we do if, as Pat Caddell says, channeling Ibsen, the MSM is the new “enemy of the people”? How do we respond? Well, we yell and scream as loud as we can, for one thing. That’s what I’m attempting to do now.
In his 1978 book The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival, Sir John Glubb describes the life cycle of empires in seven stages. Part 7 is “The age of decline and collapse.” I don’t want to think we’ve reached that point. I’m going all in — at least for a few more weeks — to try and disrupt the message.
So say it loud and say it proud: Benghazi worse than Watergate! (Maybe our countrymen will hear us.)
More: [VIDEO] The Obama Administration’s Benghazi Cover-Up
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The Innocence of the Obama White House and State Department
Flopping Aces ^ | 09-28-12 | Wordsmith
Posted on Saturday, September 29, 2012 2:12:59 PM
What did they know and when did they know it?
ABC News yesterday:
Panetta today said that the attack that killed four Americans on the anniversary of 9/11 was not only carried out by terrorists — it was pre-meditated.
“As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place,” Panetta told reporters, “it became clear that there were terrorists who had planned that attack.”
Duh:
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.
~~~
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.
ABC News:
The White House first suggested the attack was spontaneous — the result of an anti-Muslim video that incited mobs throughout the region.
“Let’s be clear, these protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on September 14.
When ABC News pressed Carney on whether that included the Benghazi attack, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American men were killed, Carney said, “we certainly don’t know. We don’t know otherwise. We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.”
On THIS WEEK on September 16, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said, “our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.”
White House officials acknowledge that assessments have changed over time as intelligence has been confirmed, but they insist that no information was given in bad faith and there was no attempt to downplay the attack.
Yet that seems to be exactly what took place. If they didn't have enough information to comment, then they should have simply said so. Instead, they misled the public into the "blame-video" belief that the Benghazi attack was not an act of terrorism on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, but a spontaneous, angry reaction to the YouTube video, "The Innocence of Muslims", by the Perpetually Outraged. Those who planned the attack which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, and Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, are said to have taken opportunistic advantage of the video flare-up; but this isn't really known. What does appear to be the case, however, is the Obama Administration seizing political opportunism to blame the consulate attack on the video protest and divert attention.
(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
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Libya Is Becoming A Bigger And Bigger Problem For Obama
he doesn't want to deal with ANYTHING major - libya, meeting leaders, etc - until after election.
Repubs haven't had anything really huge to pounce on him for, and he's not about to hand them a game-changing event with 40 days until the election.
I'm betting he gives positive speeches, tries to avoid being too snarky in debates, and scoots into the win, then does a lot of unpopular shit right over the holidays when nobody is watching the news.
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he doesn't want to deal with ANYTHING major - libya, meeting leaders, etc - until after election.
Repubs haven't had anything really huge to pounce on him for, and he's not about to hand them a game-changing event with 40 days until the election.
I'm betting he gives positive speeches, tries to avoid being too snarky in debates, and scoots into the win, then does a lot of unpopular shit right over the holidays when nobody is watching the news.
Oh God forbid the POTUS deal with anything major, that would just be crazy ::)
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Oh God forbid the POTUS deal with anything major, that would just be crazy ::)
romney, rush, fox news are BEGGING for him to step in shit somewhere. They had him on libya, but they cannot bring that up without the response being mitt's ill-timed remarks sent at midnight before he had the facts (blaming the white house for a tweet sent out by embassy to quell danger in their area).
Romney could have waited until morning toget facts, but went ahead to be in headlines.
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romney, rush, fox news are BEGGING for him to step in shit somewhere. They had him on libya, but they cannot bring that up without the response being mitt's ill-timed remarks sent at midnight before he had the facts (blaming the white house for a tweet sent out by embassy to quell danger in their area).
Romney could have waited until morning toget facts, but went ahead to be in headlines.
STFU. Romney was 100 percent correct.
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romney, rush, fox news are BEGGING for him to step in shit somewhere. They had him on libya, but they cannot bring that up without the response being mitt's ill-timed remarks sent at midnight before he had the facts (blaming the white house for a tweet sent out by embassy to quell danger in their area).
Romney could have waited until morning toget facts, but went ahead to be in headlines.
So an "ill timed remark" is more important the total incompetence in this administration? Yeah that makes alot of fucking sense. What Romney said is not important ( through correct) he doesn't have any power to make policy. Obama shit the bed on this and needs to called out for it.
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So an "ill timed remark" is more important the total incompetence in this administration? Yeah that makes alot of fucking sense. What Romney said is not important ( through correct) he doesn't have any power to make policy
240 will take whatever the Obama talking point of the day is and make that his view.
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240 will take whatever the Obama talking point of the day is and make that his view.
You do exactly the same you ape
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You do exactly the same you ape
True I don't believe a damn thing from that evil Marxist pig.
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Our Fearless Misleader
Weekly Standard ^ | October 8, 2012 edition | Stephen F. Hayes
Posted on October 1, 2012 2:44:25 AM EDT by Cincinatus' Wife
After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the important new details:
* Top Pentagon officials declared the assault a terrorist attack on “Day One.” Doing so enabled them to expedite any response to the attack (Yahoo! News).
* U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials understood right away that the attacks were planned for the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 (THE WEEKLY STANDARD).
* Within 24 hours of the attack, “U.S. intelligence agencies had strong indications al Qaeda-affiliated operatives were behind the attack and had even pinpointed the location of one of those attackers” (Daily Beast).
* In telephone intercepts of phone calls involving members of Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked group in Libya, members “bragged about their successful attack against the American consulate and the U.S. ambassador” (Daily Beast).
* U.S. counterterrorism officials had repeatedly warned about the growth of al Qaeda affiliate groups in Libya and noted in particular their relationship to al Qaeda’s central leadership in Pakistan (THE WEEKLY STANDARD).
The nature of intelligence collection after an operation like the one in Benghazi means that the narrative of the attack—in both classified and open sources—will change. As intelligence professionals gain access to more data, the picture they can paint becomes fuller and more detailed. And the early narrative of an attack can evolve.
For the most part, that’s not what happened with the Obama administration’s claims about Benghazi. While top administration officials often pointed out that more complete information would be available after an investigation, this did not prevent them from offering a detailed account of what had happened in Libya. And, as we’ve noted in these pages, that account was wrong in virtually every one of its particulars.
The attack was, in fact, planned. It did involve al Qaeda-linked terrorists. It was not a copycat of the protests in Cairo, Egypt. Indeed, there was no protest outside the consulate in Benghazi at all. The U.S. compound was not well secured. The two ex-Navy SEALs killed in the attack were not there to protect the ambassador, and they were not, obviously, joined by several colleagues also providing security. The date of the attack was not coincidental. And the anti-Islam YouTube video at the center of the administration’s public relations effort had nothing to do with the assault that took the lives of four Americans.
This, more than anything, is the problem with the administration’s response. It wasn’t that they failed to provide enough information to the public, but that they provided incorrect information and did so long after it was clear to many in the intelligence community that the political narrative was false.
There are two possible explanations. Either the information widely available to intelligence professionals was not shared with those speaking on behalf of the president. Or those Obama administration officials had the accurate information and chose not to provide it.
If intelligence professionals had immediately concluded that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the YouTube video, why did top administration figures point to it as the trigger?
If the Pentagon knew on “Day One” that the attacks were planned, why was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice still denying this four days later?
If counterterrorism officials had determined that the killings were the result of a terrorist attack, why did State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refuse to acknowledge that during her briefing on September 17?
If intelligence officials knew on September 11 that the attack took place that day for a reason, why did White House press secretary Jay Carney still pretend otherwise eight days later?
Some of the misleading information provided to the public could not possibly have been a result of incomplete or evolving intelligence. The information about security for the ambassador and the compound, for instance, would have been readily available to administration officials from the beginning. And yet when Susan Rice appeared on five political talk shows on September 16, she erroneously claimed that the two ex-Navy SEALs killed in the attack were, along with several colleagues, providing security. They were not. Why did she say this?
These questions, and many others, deserve answers. And soon.
I'm sure team O-thug will try to spin this.
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Oh God forbid the POTUS deal with anything major, that would just be crazy ::)
I thought you wanted government to stay away from... well everything?
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I thought you wanted government to stay away from... well everything?
That is his fucking job moron!
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49235425/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/#__utma=14933801.889455841.1348571866.1349055125.1349087974.19&__utmb=14933801.1.10.1349087974&__utmc=14933801&__utmx=-&__utmz=14933801.1348930405.13.4.utmcsr=news.google.com|utmccn=(re
Total fail
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That is his fucking job moron!
Yes and you scream for him to fix everything every day.
Isnt that what you hate and claim Liberals do?
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I thought you wanted government to stay away from... well everything?
Foreign policy just happens to be a constitutional duty of the POTUS, but hey he doesn't give a shit about the constitution. Yeah lets run out and vote for a guy who isn't doing his job ::)
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Who Should Be Held Accountable for the Benghazi Cover-Up?
FrontPage Magazine ^ | October 1, 2012 | Joseph Klein
Posted on Monday, October 01, 2012 8:35:29 AM by
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Peter King called last week for the resignation of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. King said that Rice should resign for misleading the American public during a succession of Sunday television news show interviews about what led to the Sept. 11th murders of Ambassador John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans during an assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. She said that it was a spontaneous mob outburst that got out of control in reaction to the anti-Muslim video, rather than the premeditated Islamic jihadist attack that it actually was.
“I believe that this was such a failure of foreign policy messag[ing] and leadership, such a misstatement of facts as was known at the time … for her to go on all of those shows and in effect be our spokesman for the world and be misinforming the American people and our allies and countries around the world, to me, somebody has to pay the price for this,” King told CNN.
King is wrong to scapegoat Rice. She was simply taking her cue from President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who shamelessly blamed the video for the violence in order to divert attention away from their abysmal failure to secure the consulate against a predictable Islamist jihadist assault on Americans on the anniversary of 9/11.
By having Rice appear on several Sunday talk shows with her disingenuous explanation, the Obama administration put her out on a limb to be cut off later if necessary and save the higher-ups from accountability.
Ambassador Rice is part of the State Department headed by Hillary Clinton. Does anyone seriously doubt that Rice’s public statements on an issue as delicate as the violence in Libya and Egypt would not have been vetted first by more senior Obama administration officials, if not by Hillary herself?
Ambassador Stevens also worked for the State Department. In excerpts from his diary released by CNN, Stevens expressed concern for his own safety because he believed he was on al Qaeda’s hit list for assassination. What was Hillary’s State Department’s response to this information when it was made public? Her senior advisor Philippe Reines blasted CNN for doing its journalistic duty.
Asked about the warnings of a possible hit list, Clinton said, ”I have absolutely no information or reason to believe that there’s any basis for that.”
“The office of the director of National Intelligence has said we have no actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in Benghazi was planned or imminent,” Clinton also said, calling the security measures in place there “robust.”
The first head to roll should be Hillary Clinton’s, not her subordinates. Hillary is highly experienced in cover-ups from her days as First Lady during her husband’s administration. She appears to be putting that experience to work today in keeping the public from learning the complete truth as to why the State Department did not do more to protect Ambassador Stevens and other U.S. personnel.
The next to go should be Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, whose spokesperson issued a statement on Clapper’s behalf on September 28th claiming that American intelligence agencies “revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
What new information? The Libyan government said from the outset that the video had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack but rather was a pre-meditated terrorist attack. According to informed sources quoted by Fox News, our intelligence agencies knew within a day that al Qaeda affiliates were behind the attack. Is Clapper’s claim of “new information” a lie to cover up what the Obama administration really knew early on as opposed to its back-and-forth public explanations, or are our intelligence agencies just incredibly incompetent in ignoring the obvious? Either way, it is time for Clapper, who said last year that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “largely secular” organization, to join Clinton out the door.
However, Clinton and Clapper’s resignations are not enough. The buck stops with President Obama, who refuses to answer to the American people for his gross dereliction of duty as the commander-in-chief. During his speech last week to the United Nations General Assembly, he continued to blame the video for the violence, even though administration officials had already begun to distance themselves from that lame excuse. Obama called the video “crude and disgusting” in the speech and an “insult not only to Muslims, but to America.”
The president disgracefully continues making his false claims on the campaign trail that al Qaeda is on the road to defeat. To the contrary, al Qaeda’s contagion has spread from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen to Libya, Syria, Mali, Nigeria and other parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Obama has continued to treat the recent spurt of Muslim violence as, in his words, just another unfortunate “bump in the road on the path to democracy.” He is desperately hanging on to the fiction that Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood ruling Egypt, can be trusted as champions of true democracies simply because they claim to reject al Qaeda’s violent tactics. Acting on this fiction, the administration announced on Friday that it intends to provide an emergency cash infusion of $450 million to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government, which failed to protect the American embassy in Cairo from a violent attack on 9/11. This is in addition to military aid of more than a billion dollars.
True democracies allow freedom of conscience and the right to express it. They respect and protect their citizens’ right of free expression – even expression deemed offensive to one group or another. That’s what President Obama told the UN General Assembly last Tuesday. But in practice, the Obama administration decided to make an example of the alleged producer of the offensive anti-Muslim video and have him arrested on trumped up charges of violating the terms of his probation for a past conviction on bank fraud charges. He is being held without bail. His purported probation violations were said to include using computers and accessing the Internet without supervision.
If every probation violator were put in jail, there wouldn’t be enough prisons in the United States to hold them all. But this particular probation violator, a Coptic Christian man originally from Egypt, was special. He allegedly used a computer and the Internet to do what Obama told the General Assembly must not be allowed to happen: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
By his actions, Obama is edging closer to the position of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who lectured the UN General Assembly in his own speech that “obscenities recently released as part of an organized campaign against Islamic sanctities is unacceptable and requires a firm stand.”
Following through on Morsi’s declaration, an Egyptian Copt was arrested last week in Egypt on suspicion of posting the anti-Islam video online and making another video mocking all religions. Egyptian prosecutors had previously ordered the arrest of eight people who allegedly helped to make and distribute the anti-Islam video including the alleged producer and the U.S. pastor who helped promote it, Terry Jones. At least the Egyptian government was honest about what it was doing. The Obama administration chose to use the pretext of a purported probation violation as cover to arrest the alleged video producer and showcase the arrest to the Muslim world.
What is emerging in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Arabic and Muslim world is not true democracy as Obama would have us believe. It is Islamic fundamentalism wrapped in the cloak of modern democratic terminology.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his remarks to the General Assembly:
The forces of modernity seek a bright future in which the rights of all are protected, in which an ever-expanding digital library is available in the palm of every child, in which every life is sacred.
That is not Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood leadership, where free speech is suppressed and its president has said that women and Christians do not belong in government leadership positions. Yet we are supporting this government with billions of dollars of unconditional aid. That is not Libya, in which our ambassador and three other Americans were slaughtered and a power vacuum is being filled by Islamist jihadists. Yet Obama minimized the violence as a “bump in the road” on the path to democracy. That is not Pakistan, where blasphemy is a capital offense, violence in the wake of the video caused more than twenty deaths, Christians are regularly persecuted, the Taliban killing our forces in Afghanistan is given sanctuary and Osama bin Laden was hidden. Yet Hillary Clinton praised Pakistan as a “good partner.” During her meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari last week on the sidelines of the General Assembly session, she called Zadari “my friend.” This “friend” the very next day urged the General Assembly to criminalize blasphemy internationally.
Egypt, Libya, Pakistan and other Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, are in varying degrees part of what Netanyahu called the “forces of medievalism” that “seek a world in which women and minorities are subjugated, in which knowledge is suppressed, in which not life but death is glorified.”
The American people must demand strength in confronting the global jihad movement and defeating these “forces of medievalism.” Without unequivocal vigilance to protect our nation’s most fundamental principles rather than try to curry favor with the Muslim world, our First Amendment right of free expression will be further eroded until it becomes unrecognizable.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
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Foreign policy just happens to be a constitutional duty of the POTUS, but hey he doesn't give a shit about the constitution. Yeah lets run out and vote for a guy who isn't doing his job ::)
True.
I like how he didnt have time for the U.N but found time to appear on the view. No defending that
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True.
I like how he didnt have time for the U.N but found time to appear on the view. No defending that
And fundraising w Jay Z and Beyonce, and fundraising at the waldorf, and going to Ohio to raise $$$$, and appearing on Letterman, etc etc.
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True.
I like how he didnt have time for the U.N but found time to appear on the view. No defending that
Well that is the point, how can anyone justify voting for a guy who is ducking his duties as POTUS, but finds time to fund raise and appear on TV shows. Staying in power seems to be Obama's only real concern at this time, and that in itself should scare the hell out of Americans
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WND EXCLUSIVE
This scandal could dwarf 'Fast and Furious'
Did White House arm al-Qaida operatives who killed U.S. ambassador?
Published: 21 hours ago
by Aaron KleinEmail | Archive
Aaron Klein is WND's senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio. Follow Aaron on Twitter and Facebook.More ↓
JERUSALEM – While echoes of the “Fast and Furious” scandal still resound in the White House, another administration decision at the heart of Obama’s Mideast policy may prove even more explosive.
Almost entirely missing from the debate surrounding the anti-U.S. attacks in Libya is the administration’s policy of arming jihadists to overthrow Mideast governments. But in the case of Libya, the arming of jihadists may have directly resulted in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the subsequent murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, private security employees and former U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
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After changing its story multiple times, the White House finally conceded the deadly assault on the U.S. consulate was a planned attack linked to al-Qaida, as per information released by national intelligence agencies.
The admission prompted Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., to call for the resignation of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for pushing the narrative that the attacks were part of a spontaneous uprising.
King may instead want to focus his investigative energies on the larger story: How the Obama administration armed Libyan rebels who were known to include al-Qaida and other anti-Western jihadists, and how the White House is currently continuing that same policy in Syria.
During the revolution against Muammar Gadhafi’s regime, the U.S. admitted to directly arming the rebel groups.
At the time, rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi boasted in an interview that a significant number of the Libyan rebels were al-Qaida gunmen, many of whom had fought U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hasidi insisted his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,” but he added that the “members of al-Qaida are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader.”
Even Adm. James Stavridis, NATO supreme commander for Europe, admitted during the Libyan revolution that Libya’s rebel force may include al-Qaida: “We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaida, Hezbollah.”
At the time, former CIA officer Bruce Riedel went even further, telling the Hindustan Times: “There is no question that al-Qaida’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition. It has always been Gadhafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi. What is unclear is how much of the opposition is al-Qaida/Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – 2 percent or 80 percent.”
The arming of the Libyan rebels may have aided in the attacks on our consulate in Libya. One witness to those attacks said some of the gunmen attacking the U.S. installation had identified themselves as members of Ansar al-Shariah, which represents al-Qaida in Yemen and Libya.
The al-Qaida offshoot released a statement denying its members were behind the deadly attack, but a man identified as a leader of the Ansar brigade told Al Jazeera the group indeed took part in the Benghazi attack.
Ambassador Stevens was directly involved in arming the rebels, reported Egyptian security officials speaking to WND. Those officials claimed Stevens played a central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
The officials further claimed Stevens served as a key contact with the Saudis to coordinate the recruitment by Saudi Arabia of Islamic fighters from North Africa and Libya. The jihadists were sent to Syria via Turkey to attack Assad’s forces, said the security officials.
The Egyptian security officials said Stevens also worked with the Saudis to send names of potential jihadi recruits to U.S. security organizations for review. Names found to be directly involved in previous attacks against the U.S., including in Iraq and Afghanistan, were ultimately not recruited by the Saudis to fight in Syria, said the officials.
Regardless of Stevens’ alleged role, the Obama administration now continues to support the Syrian rebels, including the Free Syrian Army, despite widespread reports that al-Qaida is prominent among their ranks.
In addition to a reported $450 million in emergency cash for the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday announced $45 million in additional aid for Syrian the opposition after nearly $100 million was provided to the Syrian rebels this year.
The problem? Last month, WND quoted a senior Syrian source claiming at lease 500 hardcore mujahedeen from Afghanistan, many of whom were spearheading efforts to fight the U.S. there, were killed in clashes with Syrian forces last month.
Also last month, WND reported Jihadiya Salafia in the Gaza Strip, a group that represents al-Qaida in the coastal territory, had declared three days of mourning for its own jihadists who died in Syria in recent weeks.
WND reported in May there was growing collaboration between the Syrian opposition and al-Qaida, as well as evidence the opposition is sending weapons to jihadists in Iraq, according to an Egyptian security official.
The military official said that Egypt has reports of collaboration between the Syrian opposition and three al-Qaida arms, including one the operates in Libya:
Jund al-Sham, which is made up of al-Qaida militants who are Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese;
Jund al-Islam, which in recent years merged with Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group of Sunni Iraqis operating under the al-Qaida banner and operating in Yemen and Libya;
Jund Ansar al-Allah, an al-Qaida group based in Gaza linked to Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria.
U.S. officials have stated the White House is providing nonlethal aid to the Syrian rebels, while widespread reports have claimed the U.S. has been working with Arab countries to ensure the opposition in Syria is well armed.
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Well that is the point, how can anyone justify voting for a guy who is ducking his duties as POTUS, but finds time to fund raise and appear on TV shows. Staying in power seems to be Obama's only real concern at this time, and that in itself should scare the hell out of Americans
You cant. He sucks.
Reality is though that its him or Romney. And i like Obamas results better.
But he still sucks
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And fundraising w Jay Z and Beyonce, and fundraising at the waldorf, and going to Ohio to raise $$$$, and appearing on Letterman, etc etc.
This is where we differ.
You jump on any wagon that supports your cause. If he wants to be president he needs cash he is playing the game.
If he didnt you would call him a loser who couldnt raise the $$ needed.
Hit him on the issues (and there are plenty) instead of falling for the temptation of just spewing BS.
It works on the people who need a team to cheer but it doesnt work on people with above average I.Q.
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Stephens: Benghazi Was Obama's 3 a.m. Call
Libya was a failure of policy and worldview, not intelligence..
Why won't the Libya story go away? Why can't the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff be consigned to the same sad-and-sealed file of Americans killed abroad in dangerous line of duty? How has an episode that seemed at first to have been mishandled by the Romney camp become an emblem of a feckless and deluded foreign policy?
The story-switching and stonewalling haven't helped. But let's start a little earlier.
The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.
What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal's account of the meeting:
"There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya's permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene."
So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?
"Some officials said the U.S. could also have sent aircraft to the scene as a 'show of force' to scare off the attackers," the Journal reported, noting that there's a U.S. air base just 450 miles away in Sicily. "State Department officials dismissed the suggestions as unrealistic. 'They would not have gotten there in two hours, four hours or six hours.'"
The U.S. security detail only left Washington at 8 a.m. on Sept. 12, more than 10 hours after the attacks began. A commercial jet liner can fly from D.C. to Benghazi in about the same time.
All this is noted with the benefit of hindsight, and the administration deserves to be judged accordingly. But it also deserves to be judged in light of what it knew prior to the attack, including an attack on the mission in June and heightened threat warnings throughout the summer.
So how did the administration do on that count? "That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security," an unnamed American official who has served in Libya told the New York Times last week.
The logic here is akin to supposing that because the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center failed to bring down the towers, nobody need have been concerned thereafter. But let's still make allowances for the kind of bureaucratic ineptitude that knows neither administration nor political party.
The more serious question is why the administration alighted on the idea that the attack wasn't a terrorist act at all. Also, what did the White House think it had to gain by adopting the jihadist narrative that a supposedly inflammatory video clip was at the root of the trouble?
Nobody can say. All the administration will acknowledge is that it has "revised [its] initial assessment to reflect new information that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack."
That's from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. It suggests that our intelligence agencies are either much dumber than previously supposed (always a strong possibility) or much more politicized (equally plausible).
No doubt the administration would now like to shift blame to Mr. Clapper. But what happened in Benghazi was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of policy, stemming from a flawed worldview and the political needs of an election season.
Let's review:
The U.S. ignores warnings of a parlous security situation in Benghazi. Nothing happens because nobody is really paying attention, especially in an election year, and because Libya is supposed to be a foreign-policy success. When something does happen, the administration's concerns for the safety of Americans are subordinated to considerations of Libyan "sovereignty" and the need for "permission." After the attack the administration blames a video, perhaps because it would be politically inconvenient to note that al Qaeda is far from defeated, and that we are no more popular under Mr. Obama than we were under George W. Bush. Denouncing the video also appeals to the administration's reflexive habits of blaming America first. Once that story falls apart, it's time to blame the intel munchkins and move on.
It was five in the afternoon when Mr. Obama took his 3 a.m. call. He still flubbed it.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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Editorial: Shifting Libya attack story raises red flags
For the sake of Americans in other foreign outposts, it calls for much closer scrutiny than the administration has been willing to allow.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/10/01/editorial-shifting-libya-attack-story-raises-red-flags-/1607543
9:55PM EST October 1. 2012 - Three weeks after an attack in Libya killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, we now know that it did not spring from a spontaneous protest, spurred by an anti-Muslim video, as the Obama administration originally described it. In fact, every aspect of the early account — peddled most prominently by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice — has unraveled.
OPPOSING VIEW: Our understanding is evolving
Spontaneous? Hardly. The administration acknowledges that Ambassador Chris Stevens died in an organized terrorist attack, likely mounted by an Islamic extremist group and an al-Qaeda affiliate.
Without warning? Not exactly. Violence against Westerners had been escalating for months in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. In June, an improvised explosive device damaged a perimeter wall at the Benghazi compound. On Aug. 27, the State Department issued a travel warning, citing the threat of assassinations and bombings in both Benghazi and Tripoli. According to a journal found and described by CNN, Stevens himself was worried about safety.
Despite all those signals, the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi relied for protection on the young Libyan government and a small band of mostly private contract guards, according to news accounts. Fewer than 10 armed men, both Americans and Libyans, were in the compound when the attack began with gunfire and grenades on the 9/11 anniversary.
This, then, was not one of those failures that is only visible in retrospect. It was a predictable vulnerability that the State Department failed to protect against. And for the sake of Americans in other foreign outposts, that calls for much closer scrutiny than the administration has been willing to allow.
Facing skepticism from members of Congress, including Democrats, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta finally called the assault what it was: terrorism. But the administration has said little else, other than that its initial misinterpretation resulted from faulty intelligence.
Among the most significant unanswered questions: Did U.S intelligence fail to get warnings of a plot? Or were warnings ignored? Why weren't Marines stationed at such a dangerous post? Did Stevens seek more security only to be denied, or did the ambassador fail to act on the concerns expressed in his diary? And, most urgently, does the success of the attack suggest that other foreign outposts could be inadequately fortified?
No doubt the administration wants to be sure that it has the facts straight before risking a second blunder. But the longer it waits, the worse it looks, and the longer other facilities will have to wait for beefed up protection.
A decade ago, the U.S. generally closed missions in dangerous spots, but the Obama administration has continued a push, started by President George W. Bush, to keep missions open in such hot spots as Iraq and Afghanistan to pursue American interests.
Security budgets have grown tenfold, from less than $200 million in 1998 to $2.2 billion in 2008, but it is not always clear what all that money is buying.
Much of the increased security since attacks in 1998 on U.S. embassies in Lebanon, Kenya and Tanzania has been reactive and not strategically planned, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. That needs to change.
Ten years from now, a State Department official told us, the department might look back at Benghazi as the "unprecedented attack that led to the reassessment" of security at missions around the world. You'd think that the 1998 attacks — not to mention the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held at the embassy in Tehran for 444 days — would have been sufficient wake-up calls.
Obviously, they were not, and the reasons why need a full airing.
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U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Bombed Twice in Run-Up to 9/11 Anniversary
Oct 2, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Jihadists twice set off explosives at the consulate prior to the incident that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, and announced threats on Facebook about escalating attacks on Western targets in the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary, according to whistleblowers reaching out to House Republicans.
In the five months leading up to this year’s 9/11 anniversary, there were two bombings on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and increasing threats to and attacks on the Libyan nationals hired to provide security at the U.S. missions in Tripoli and Benghazi.
Details on these alleged incidents stem in part from the testimony of a handful of whistleblowers who approached the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the days and weeks following the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The incidents are disclosed in a letter to be sent Tuesday to Hillary Clinton from Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the oversight committee’s subcommittee that deals with national security.
The State Department did not offer comment on the record last night.
The new information disclosed in the letter obtained by The Daily Beast strongly suggests the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the late Ambassador Chris Stevens were known by U.S. security personnel to be targets for terrorists. Indeed, the terrorists made their threats openly on Facebook.
For example, following a May 22 early-morning attack on a facility that housed the International Committee on the Red Cross, a Facebook page claimed responsibility, and said the attack was a warning and a “message for the Americans disturbing the skies over Derna.” That reference was likely to American surveillance drones over a city that provided fighters to al Qaeda in Iraq in the last decade.
In June a Facebook page associated with militants linked to the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi posted a threat to Stevens based on the route he took for his morning jog. The Facebook page also posted a picture of Stevens. The letter to Clinton notes that “after stopping these morning runs for about a week, the Ambassador resumed them.”
A senior State Department official contacted for this story said the ambassador was “not reckless” with his own security or that of his staff. But this official also acknowledged that the ambassador was “an old-school diplomat” and strongly desired to have as few barriers between himself and the Libyan people.
A picture shows broken furniture outside the U.S. consulate building in Benghazi on September 13, 2012, following an attack on the building late on September 11 in which the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other US nationals were killed. (Gianluigi Guercia, AFP / Getty Images)
The letter also discloses for the first time a bombing at the U.S. consulate that occurred on April 6, 2012. It says that on that day, two former security guards for the consulate in Benghazi threw homemade improvised explosives over the consulate fence. That incident resulted in no casualties. The Wall Street Journal first reported last month that on June 6 militants detonated an explosive at the perimeter gate of the consulate, blowing a hole through the barrier. The letter to Clinton quotes one source who described the crater as “big enough for forty men to go through.”
Obama administration officials have said there was no specific intelligence predicting the 9/11 anniversary assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. A senior State Department official acknowledged that there were five serious attacks on Western targets since the spring in the lead-up to the attack on the 9/11 anniversary. Speaking of the June 6 attack at the consulate’s perimeter gate, this official said, “The IED attack caused no loss of life and no injury. The wall acted as designed. It absorbed it.” This official said that compared with the 9/11 anniversary assault, the earlier attacks in Benghazi were mild. “We faced a coordinated, military-style assault. We’ve never seen that kind of attack before,” this official added.
Until Sept. 19, eight days after the consulate attack, senior administration officials had said it resulted spontaneously from riots at the U.S. embassy in Cairo against an Internet video denigrating the Muslim prophet. Spokesmen for the State Department and the National Security Council did not return emails late Monday evening.
Rep. Chaffetz told The Daily Beast Monday that the allegations detailed in the letter were based on whistleblowers he described as “people who have firsthand knowledge of the incidents themselves.” Chaffetz declined to provide more details about the whistleblowers other than to say they were U.S. government employees and there were fewer than 10 of them.
A senior State Department official contacted for this story said the ambassador was “not reckless” with his own security or that of his staff.
In some cases the incidents against U.S. personnel or Libyans working to protect U.S. personnel were mild. In April a U.S. foreign-service officer stationed in Benghazi was attending a “trade-related event” at the International Medical University when the security forces of the university got into a fistfight and then a gunfight with the security detail for the trade delegation. Eventually the American officer had to be evacuated by the local Libyan militia that provided security for the consulate, known as the February 17 Brigade.
On May 1 at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, the deputy commander of the embassy’s local security force was “carjacked, beaten, and detained by a group of armed youth.” Eventually the man escaped his captors and phoned the embassy. “Libyan security forces fought a gun battle with the assailants in order to recover a number of stolen vehicles and release other detainees,” the letter says.
Security deteriorated significantly in June. On June 10, a man fired a rocket-propelled grenade in broad daylight into a convoy carrying the British ambassador to Libya. Later that month, the Red Cross was attacked again. By the end of June, the British Consulate and the Red Cross closed their facilities in Benghazi. By the start of July, the U.S. Consulate was one of the only Western targets left in the city.
“This was not a safe country on its way to a normalized situation. It was a very volatile situation,” Chaffetz told The Daily Beast.
The House Oversight Committee is expected to hold a hearing on Oct. 10 on the threats leading up to the attack.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Eli Lake is the senior national-security correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast. He previously covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times. Lake has also been a contributing editor at The New Republic since 2008 and covered diplomacy, intelligence, and the military for the late New York Sun. He has lived in Cairo and traveled to war zones in Sudan, Iraq, and Gaza. He is one of the few journalists to report from all three members of President Bush’s axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
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•April 6, 2012 - An IED is thrown over the consulate fence in Benghazi.
•April 11, 2012 - A gun battle 4km from the Benghazi consulate.
•April 25, 2012 - A US Embassy guard in Tripoli is detained at a militia checkpoint.
•April 26, 2012 - A fistfight escalates into a gunfight at a Benghazi Medical University and a US Foreign Service Officer in attendance is evacuated.
•April 27, 2012 - Two South African contractors are kidnapped in Benghazi, questioned and released.
•May 1, 2012 - Deputy Commander of the local guard force in Tripoli is carjacked and beaten.
•May 22, 2012 - RPG rounds are fired at the Red Cross outpost in Benghazi.
•June 2012 - A pro-Gaddafi Facebook page posts photos of Ambassador Stevens making his morning run in the city of Tripoli and made a threat toward the Ambassador.
•June 6, 2012 - An IED is left at the gate of the US consulate in Benghazi.
•June 10, 2012 - RPG is fired at the convoy carrying the British Ambassador in broad daylight as he is nearing the British consulate in Benghazi.
No one is killed but the British later close the consulate.
•Late June, 2012 - Another attack on the Red Cross outpost in Benghazi, this one in daylight. The Red Cross pulls out leaving the US consulate the last western outpost in the city.
•August 6, 2012 - Attempted carjacking of a vehicle with US diplomatic plates in Tripoli.
•Weeks prior to Sept. 11, 2012 - Libyan guards at the Benghazi consulate are "warned by their family members to quit their jobs" because of rumors of a "impending attack."
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You cant. He sucks.
Reality is though that its him or Romney. And i like Obamas results better.
But he still sucks
You know I'm going to ask, what results?
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You know I'm going to ask, what results?
I could but you will call it BS anyway
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/26/u-s-officials-knew-libya-attacks-were-work-of-al-qaeda-affiliates.html
Busted
BUMP