US Embassy in Tripoli Taken Over By Islamist Militia

 

 One of President Barack Hussein Obama's 'accomplishments' in the Middle East was his illegal intervention in Libya to save jihadis and al-Qaeda affiliated fighters in Benghazi when Khaddaffi and his forces were ready to wipe them out. That led to Khaddaffi's arms falling into the hands of the jihadists, deadly attacks in Algeria and Mali, the beginnings of The Islamic State ( then known as ISIS) and the creation of a failed state in Libya,where various Islamist and jihadi groups fight over power and now have a major strategic base to train, arm and recruit.






















Today, the American Embassy fell into the hands of one of the militias, the Dawn of Libya a coalition of Islamist and Misrata forces took over the building. Journalists who were invited to walk through the captured building noted that most of the equipment there remained untouched.And the jihadis appear to be enjoying the swimming pool:




 The U.S, evacuated the embassy in late July as fighting broke out between the government, various jihadi militias including a a number affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and the forces of one General Khalifa Hifter, a military commander who seeks to step into Khaddifi's shoes  and who has been trying to take over the country since May.

There's no telling how many people have died because of the President's decision to take Khaddafi out, but I guarantee you,  it's at least ten to twenty times the number of people who were killed in the Israel's defensive war in Gaza that the president was so exercised about.

Oh well, back to the golf course!

A Coup In Libya? Looks Like it

 

Since President Obama's  ill advised U.S. war in Libya to overthrow Moamar Khadaffi and protect  al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood Islamists headquartered in Benghazi, the country has effectively been a basket case, not really a state at all.

The weaponry Khaddaffi had stockpiled in his arsenals went to the jihadis and was used in Mali, in Sinai, in Algeria and inSyria. Various terrorist militias have taken over different parts of the country, The parliamentary government based in Tripoli has no control over the rest of the country, and the rule of law is pretty much non-existent.

Literally thousands of Libyans have died because President Obama's Libyan adventure, as as renowned reporter Eli Lake reported, al-Qaeda and various Islamist militias have now made it their home base. Aside from Ansar al-Sharia,the al-Qaeda allied militia that attacked the Benghazi consulate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Algerian jihadis the Al-Mulathameen Brigade, part of the forces of Algerian terrorist Mokhtar BelMokhtar have all established bases and turf in Libya.

The easy availability of weapons and ammo, the easily penetrated borders high unemployment among young man and the absence of a functioning police force or national army have all made Libya into “Scumbag Woodstock”, as Lake quoted a U.S. military contractor calling it, because of the A-list of jihadis whom now call it home.

That may be changing, and the actors involved are the same one as in Egypt, the military.

A Libyan commander, Gen. Khalifa Hifter moved troops under his command suspended parliament Sunday after earlier leading a military assault against lawmakers in Tripoli.

Gen. Mokhtar Farnana, speaking on a Libyan television channel on behalf of Hifter’s troops announced that they had set up a 60-member constituent’s assembly ( whatever that meant) to take over for parliament. Farnana said Libya’s current government would act on as an 'emergency Cabinet'. He also said Sunday’s attack on Libya’s parliament was not a coup, but “fighting by the people’s choice.”

“We announce to the world that the country can’t be a breeding ground or an incubator for terrorism,” said Farnana, who wore a military uniform and sat in front of Libya’s flag.

Gen.Hifter, a one-time rebel commander, led troops backed by truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns, mortars and RPGs to literally attack parliament, which of course promptly vacated the premises.

Hifter is mainly said to be targeting al-Qaeda and Islamist lawmakers whom he blames for Libya's status as a failed state. He's reportedly backed by members of the al-Qaaqaa and Sawaaq militias, the largest in Tripoli.

Needless to say, the current unelected Libyan parliament were not pleased by this turn of events.

“The government condemns the expression of political opinion through the use of armed force,” Libyan Justice Minister Salah al-Marghani said in a statement. “It calls for an immediate end of the use the military arsenal … and calls on all sides to resort to dialogue and reconciliation.”

That'll learn 'em. Meanwhile, Hifter's troops have set up checkpoints at various strategic locations in Tripoli, including the roads to the airport.

Hifter's forces also made an attack on Benghazi, killing at least 70 people.

Libya is a highly tribal country, and the various militias are mostly tribally based. The country is split between Islamist and non-Islamist factions with various militias allied with each.

Interestingly enough,Gen. Hifter is himself an Easterner who hails from Benghazi but was also Khaddaffi's military chief of staff before he turned against him and joined the opposition.

This suggests to me that he might have enough widespread support to put together some kind of centralized government, which is what a lot of Libyans are craving right now anyway. At any rate,what they ended up with thanks to Barack Obama obviously isn't working.

We'll see what happens...stay tuned.

Pelosi Refusing To Appoint Democrats To Benghazi Committee As Investigation Begins

Thus far, Democrat House Leader Nancy Pelosi has refused to appoint any Democrats to the House select committee on Benghazi as the committee, headed by Rep.Trey Gowdy ( R-SC) begins its work.

The always entertaining former Speaker first demanded that the committee be 'evenly split' between Republicans and Democrats, something she would have rejected outright when she was Speaker after she stopped cackling.Actually no select committee in history has ever been set up in that manner.

Then, she rejected the operating rules of the committee, which would allow Chairman Trey Gowdy to unilaterally issue subpoenas without the approval of the Democrats on the committee and the Republican members to interview witnesses separately.These kinds of rules are by no means unheard of, and are fairly standard.

Considering that Rep. Elijah Cummings (D- MD)is now facing ethics charges over his behavior on Chairman Issa's House Oversight Committee and the fact that deliberations and investigative strategy were leaked from committee meetings to the very people and agencies the committee was supposed to be investigating, such rules make sense unless the idea is simply to obstruct and stonewall.

Among most Democrats, the latest talking point has been to deride the need for 'just another investigation' at all. They make much of the fact that there have been seven investigations, so his must be just another partisan witch hunt. What they're not mentioning is that the White House has repeatedly lied about how the talking points blaming the attack on a spontaneous demonstration and a video were deliberately constructed for partisan political purposes, and about releasing all of the documentation to Congressional committees. Nor do they mention that the Benghazi survivors are still prevented from speaking congress by the Obama Administration and that all of the security videos as well as the telephone recordings and transcripts of conversations between the White House, the consulate and the CIA annex are all still classified and hidden away from congress as well.

Even basic questions about what happened, why the US was unprepared for a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11, and why security assets less than two hours away weren't allowed to intervene to save American lives remain unanswered.Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has never been questioned under oath, and we still have sharply different accounts of what President Obama was doing while all this was going on.

These are the things the select committee is designed to find out once and for all, and it's understandable that 7 Democrats voted along with their Republican colleagues to get to the bottom of it. of course, it's equally understandable why the majority of Democrats want this whitewashed and abandoned.

Meanwhile Speaker John Boehner has already named the Republican members of the committee; Aside from Trey Gowdey, there's Rep.Jim Jordan, Rep. Peter Roskam, Rep. Martha Roby, Rep. Susan Brooks, Rep. Mike Pompeo, and Rep. Lynn Westmoreland.

Gowdey and Brooks are experienced former federal prosecutors, Jordan, Roskam, Roby and Pompeo are all successful attorneys who serve, respectively on the Oversight committee, as Deputy Whip and on the House Oversight subcommittee, on the Armed Services Committee, and on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

These are people whom understand law, the rules of evidence and how process works.There's no doubt in my mind that they're going to make every effort to uncover the truth no matter where it leads.

Pelosi and the House Democrats have a choice to make. They can stay removed, continue to snipe from the outside and hope that the committee doesn't uncover anything awkward. They can have a change of heasrt and try to appoint the most knowledgeable and able people they can to work on getting to the bottom of this, as Boehner appears to have done. Or, they can participate, but appoint partisan hacks to the committee in an effort to sabotage things and keep what happened that night in Benghazi a question mark.

I'm guessing they pick number three.

It's On - House Forms Select Committee On Benghazi, Trey Gowdy To Chair

Now this looks to be a positive development.

The Benghazi coverup is going to be investigated by a House select committee, with full powers of subpoena and the ability to hire its own special prosecutor.

This will essentially bypass Eric Holder and the corrupt Obama Department of Justice:

The move comes after the revelation of an email from a top Obama national security official, Ben Rhodes, instructing Susan Rice to focus on an anti-Muslim internet video to explain the attacks.

“The new emails this week were the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says the aide. “The Speaker was furious to learn that the administration withheld relevant documents from a congressional subpoena. He’s sick and tired of this evasion and obstruction from the administration, and wants a solution to finally force accountability, get to the truth, and provide justice.”

Now, since this is Boehner, I expected him to put some toothless establishment RINO in charge who would go through the motions. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that none other than Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a staunch conservative and Tea Party favorite is going to head the committee. Gowdy spent six years as a very successful Federal prosecutor, so he has the knowledge, the smarts and the aggressive temperament to make this the Obama Administration's worst nightmare. And he's also close to Chairman Darrel Issa of the House Oversight Committee, which Gowdy used to serve on.

And speaking of which, Issa just subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before Congress about the department's response to information requests about the attack. Note that Issa didn't just issue an invitation,which is less formal.

"The State Department's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack has shown a disturbing disregard for the Department's legal obligations to Congress," Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Kerry.

He added: "Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game. Because your Department is failing to meet its legal obligations, I am issuing a new subpoena to compel you to appear before the Committee to answer questions about your agency's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack."

I'm cautiously optimistic.

"Benghazi? What Difference Does it Make?"

Not as much as it would have made in September of 2012...which was apparently the whole point.

Thanks to a long and successful battle by Judicial Watch in federal court, a whole raft of new e-mails between the White House and the State Department concerning the deliberate lies and coverup over the fiasco in Benghazi have surfaced that definitively prove that the White House deliberately lied about the nature of the attack, and colluded with the State department to construct a false narrative and deceive the American people to protect President Obama's re-election.

Emails  sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials like David Plouffe and Jay Carney were sent out just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice hit 5 separate Sunday news shows to promulgate the lie about 'the video'.

Interesting fellow, Ben Rhodes. Officially, he's the current deputy national security adviser for strategic communication for President Barack Obama. Now, he has no real national security qualifications for the gig, although his degree, an MFA in creative writing from NYU probably helps a bit in crafting the sort of fanciful fiction we hear out of the president.

Oh, and just by chance, his brother is - wait for it - David Rhodes. The president of CBS News, the same network where award winning reporter Sharyl Attkisson has said since her resignation that she was actively discouraged from investigating stories like Benghazi and Fast and Furious in any depth and was thought of as a 'troublemaker' for doing so.

Speaking of Sharyl Atkisson, she's gone independent for now and she has a fine piece of reporting here that highlights what was in the recently released e-mails, and why the White House wanted them hidden so badly:

In the email, Ben Rhodes lists as a “goal” the White House desire “To ​underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

The email is entitled, “RE: PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET” and refers to White House involvement in preparing then-U.S.Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice for her upcoming appearance on Sunday television ​ network political talk shows.

The Rhodes email states that another “goal” is “To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

A court compelled the release of the documents, which were heavily-redacted, to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has sued the government over its failed Freedom of Information responses. I have also requested Benghazi-related documents under Freedom of Information law, but the government has only produced a few pages to date.

Today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the Rhodes email the “smoking gun” showing the “political manipulation by the White House” after the attacks.

​“The political shop at the White House took over early on,” Graham told me. “They understood it was a terrorist attack, that they had a political problem, and were going to handle it politically. They weren’t going to entertain anything other than what they wanted the public to hear.”

USA Today quotes a spokesman for the White House National Security Council reacting to the Rhodes’ email by stating that it contains general talking points on unrest spreading throughout the region in response to an offensive video, and also made clear that "our primary goals" included the safety of U.S. personnel in the field and bringing those responsible for the attacks to justice.

Since the deadly attacks on the U.S. missions in Benghazi, there have been persistent allegations that the Obama administration developed a false political narrative to downplay or hide the fact that terrorists had struck. The President had campaigned by stating that al Qaeda was “on the run,” and Republicans have argued that news of a terrorist attack eight weeks before the election could have decimated his re-election campaign. Four Americans were killed in the assaults, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

White House officials copied on the Rhodes “goal” email include Press Secretary Jay Carney, then-Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Earnest has failed to respond to more than a year’s worth of my emails and phone calls in my effort to obtain official White House photographs taken the night of the Benghazi attacks. The White House photo office had told me that Earnest’s personal approval was needed for the photos to be released. 

 

Attkisson doesn't mention it here, but regular readers of this site know that State Department spokesmouth Victoria Nuland was involved in the coverup process as well, 'managing' how the phony narrative was presented publicly in order to protect her superiors - like Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

So was then-CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, who heavily edited the fact sheet and the original talking points.

Attkisson also found out how the White House tried to hide this document:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told me today that the government apparently tried to keep the Rhodes email out of Congress and the public’s hands by classifying it after-the-fact.

“They retroactively changed the classification,” Chaffetz says. “That was an unclassified document and they changed it to classified.”

In the past month, the government has supplied 3,200 new Benghazi-related documents under Congressional subpoena. In some instances, Congressional members and their staff are only permitted to see the documents during certain time periods in a review room, and cannot remove them or make copies.

Chaffetz says that the State Department redacted more material on the copies provided to Congress than on those that it was forced to provide to Judicial Watch.

One of the most heavily-redacted email exchanges is entitled, “FOX News: US officials knew Libya attack was terrorism within 24 hours, sources confirm.” The Fox News article was circulated among dozens of officials including Rhodes and then-Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough but the content of their email discussion is hidden.

She has more at the link, showing how the White House had a reasonable degree of advance warning and that they knew almost immediately that the attack on Benghazi had nothing to do with any video.



So, where do we go from here?

Anyone who's been following the Benghazi story knows by now just from their behavior that the White House deliberately set out to deceive the American people to protect President Obama's re-election chances, after all that 'al-Qaeda is on the run' bluster. This simply formalizes it. Normally, just as with IRS-gate, an ethical attorney general abiding by his oath of office would have appointed a special prosecutor long ago, but that's not what we're dealing with here.

Congress, of course could use this as a springboard to vote funds and authorization for their own prosecutor, followed by formal impeachment charges that wouldn't get President Obama out of office but would publicize this stuff to the American people and force Democrats to take a position they'd be stuck with.

 But it's a reasonable assumption that Speaker John Boehner doesn't want to go there because he lacks the stones to deal with the political fallout from the actions that would probably be needed if an investigation revealed that the president was indeed or other high ranking regime figures were as involved in these things as they appear to be.

Even more damaging would be what would come out if we get into the question of exactly what Ambassador Stevens was doing in an unprotected consulate in Benghazi, an al-Qaeda hotbed even the International Red Cross had moved its people out of because it was too dangerous.

What actually happened in Benghazi is bad enough even without the coverup and I revealed the true story here about a year ago. If that ever came out, we 'd be talking about  criminal indictments.

 

Where The Citizens Commission Gets It Wrong On Benghazi, And What Really Happened

There are a number of high profile articles out there in the last few days concerning the findings of a self-selected Citizens Commission on Benghazi.

The speculation here - that the Obama Administration 'changed sides in the War on Terror' by 'allowing a half billion dollar shipment of arms to be sent to al-Qaeda', that Ambassador Stevens was supposed to be the victim of a staged 'kidnapping' and swapped for 'the Blind Sheikh' Omar Abdel-Rahman, who hatched the 1993 WTC bombing plot and the use of questionable sources like NewsMax and WorldNetDaily should tell you that this report was concocted more for sensationalism, online fund raising and internet traffic rather than accuracy.

Here's an example of one tall tale. Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told a press conference that the Obama administration failed to stop a huge arms shipment from the United Arab Emirates from reaching what she called 'al-Qaeda-linked militants'.

"Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,' Lopez claimed. 'They were permitted to come in. ... [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed.."

Except Khaddaffi had plenty of arms already during the period she's talking about, and if he had any arms shipped in at that point there was no blockade until he had virtually won the civil war and was advancing on Benghazi, where he had the Islamists and al-Qaeda fighters cornered. That's the point when President Obama had us intervene, and putting the no fly zone into effect took additional time.And that's just one part of this 'report' than can easily be picked apart.

Let's also not forget that Benghazi happened after Khaddaffi had be defeated and lynched by a mob..so an 'arms shipment' would have been unnecessary and futile from Khaddaffi's viewpoint, to say the least!

And the 'kidnapping'? The jihadis  planned the whole thing well in advance, and used heavy weapons like mortars and RPG's from Khaddaffi's looted stash to attack the consulate. Tell me..who uses ranged anti-personnel weapons like mortars in a kidnapping?

What actually happened in Benghazi is bad enough without making things up, and I revealed the true story here about a year ago. Obviously it needs retelling, so that the guilty parties aren't able to squirm out from under because of some self-seeking media buffoonery.

The key to finding out the truth about Benghazi is to try and figure out what Ambassador Stevens was doing sitting in a compound with no security in a town run by the al-Qaeda allied Ansar-al-Sharia, when even the International Red Cross had pulled its people out because it was too dangerous.What was he doing there?

The first thing we have to look at is why a U.S. Ambassador was there in Benghazi in the first place. He was there as an envoy to Ansar al Sharia and the other jihadist groups that ruled Benghazi, and his assignment, according to what I've been able to find out, was to make a deal over the heavy weapons they had pilfered from Khaddaffi's armories thanks to President Obama's ill advised intervention in favor of the rebels. Stevens, who was intimately familiar with Libya, was there to purchase as many of these arms as he could outright to ship them to Ansar al-Sharia's al-Qaeda comrades in arms in Syria. The idea was to help take out Basher Assad's regime covertly without the necessity of committing US forces, and as a secondary goal to dispose of as many of the arms as possible, buy off the Benghazi rebels if possible and cover up what a huge mistake the Obama Administration had made by getting involved in Libya. There was absolutely no other reason for Ambassador Stevens to be in such a dangerous location virtually unprotected, except as an envoy to the jihadist forces controlling Benghazi.

An envoy in the Arab world has a very carefully defined position. He relies on the age old rules of Arab hospitality, comes unarmed to his enemy and throws himself on their protection. And if the negotiations fail, especially if a state of war exists, his life can be forfeit. That's why not only was Stevens denied more security, but most of what he had was taken away, even when it became plain to him (if not to the Obama Administration) that the deal had failed and he and the rest of the Americans were in mortal danger.

Needless to say, the approach to Ansar al-Sharia and the other Muslim Brotherhood groups involved had to be off the radar. For it to come out publicly during an election that the Obama Administration was dealing with one al-Qaeda affiliate as a middleman to ship arms to another al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood group in Syria was not something that would have gone down well with either the American electorate or with the Russians, with whom the president was working on a diplomatic solution - at least officially.

The Saudis and the Qataris are the ones bankrolling the jihadi Sunni rebels in Syria, so it was their money that was involved.

The murder of Stevens and the subsequent mutilation of his body (something that was carefully hidden and unreported by the U.S. press, but was widely reported overseas) was the classic Arab negative response to the deal the Obama Administration was trying to achieve. It was an unmistakeable message. When Ansar al-Sharia was finished with him, it was they who took the body to a hospital under their control. And those Libyan arms wound up being used in places like Mali, Algeria and Sinai, as well as helping Ansar al-Shariah and their friends keep control of Benghazi.

Stevens likely wasn't rescued for two reasons. First,because the president was AWOL and no one else wanted to take responsibility for giving the order to send our forces in. It was Mrs. Clinton's '3 AM phone call' ad on steroids. And second because the way things went down, it would almost certainly have raised a number of awkward questions in the middle of an election campaign that had President Obama's supposed foreign policy expertise as a major talking point.

In the end, Ambassador Stevens was far more useful as a dead martyr and photo-op than as a live ambassador subject to inconvenient congressional questioning.The talking points, of course, had to be constructed in such a way to lead as far away from the real story as possible, a story we now know they were fully aware of. The Obama Administration was primarily concerned with protecting the president politically in the middle of his re-election campaign, and felt that by sequestering the survivors under pain of prosecution, classifying all the documents, videos and phone logs as top secret and relying on a compliant media to spread the narrative the Administration came up with they could make it work.

The repercussions of Benghazi were hideous. Libya remains a failed state in chaos to this day thanks to President Obama. And as I said at the time, one of my notorious Lil' Birdies who is definitely in a position to know told me, among other things, that the attempt to buy arms and send them to jihadis in Syria was seen as a major double cross by the Israelis, who knew those arms could just as easily be used against them. Those stinger missiles wouldn't only have been useful in taking out Basher al-Assad's Russian-built helicopters but commercial airliners, including those landing in Israel. You can just imagine how the Israelis felt about a plot to have weapons like this shipped to their northern border without their knowledge. Not to mention the Iranians, who use commercial airliners to ship fighters and weaponry to Syria to bolster Basher Assad's forces.

And the Russians? They were also livid about what they saw as President Obama's duplicity while he was supposedly working with Putin on a diplomatic solution to Syria. That's pretty much the point where Putin stopped trying to deal with President Obama in any serious way.

You can refer back to the link to read about the mechanics of the coverup an dother details. But this is the real story of what happened in Benghazi that night. No mystery arms shipment, no fake kidnapping...just a Middle East version of Fast and Furious, thought out by a clueless amateur of a president and his team..who then had to lie and connive to keep the truth from the American peiople to protect Barack Obama's re-election.

That's what happened, and that's how it was.

-Selah - 

Senate Intel Committee: Benghazi Was Preventable,Al Qaeda Was Involved, And The White House Knew It

The bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee finally issued its long-delayed report on the Benghazi attack, and based on what it said, it's pretty understandable why some of the Democrats on the committee strung things out as long as they could and fought over the wording. But some things simply give off too foul a stench for any perfume to make a difference.

The committee’s minority Republicans criticized the White House for obstructing the report, which the committee had wanted to complete much earlier, and openly accused Patrick Kennedy, U.S. undersecretary of State for Management of shielding the Obama administration from Congressional oversight.

Of course, Kennedy was also concentrating on covering his own behind. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) who normally votes with the Democrats an dis the very epitome of bi-partisanship angrily made a point of saying that Kennedy “failed to ensure that a facility he personally approved in December 2011 had the necessary security to match the heightened threat environment.”

The committee's report said that Benghazi was entirely preventable, and that the State Department failed to increase security at the Benghazi consulate in spite numerous warnings. As I've mentioned on these pages before,even the Brits and the International Red Cross had pulled their people out because Benghazi, thanks to President Obama's timely intervention had become a major headquarters for al-Qaeda and other Islamists. Anyone who knows anything about Ansar al Shariah and its connections to al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) understood that a long time ago.

The report states, unequivocally: “Individuals affiliated with terrorist groups, including AQIM, Ansar al-Sharia, AQAP, and the Mohammad Jamal Network, participated in the September 11, 2012, attacks.”



The very fact that mortars and other heavy weapons were used points to long time planning. A mortar isn't like a Kalishnikov. It takes training, and it takes time to scope out ranges and angles of fire.

Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss summarized the report, saying,

“In spite of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi and ample strategic warnings, the United States Government simply did not do enough to prevent these attacks and ensure the safety of those serving in Benghazi.”

Another thing that came out is that the entire 'protest over a video' narrative pushed by the president, Mrs. Clinton, Jay Carney, Susan Rice and goodness knows how many others was an outright lie...and just like ObamaCare, they lied knowingly, although the report doesn't put it in such blunt terms.

What we were told - conveniently after the 2012 elections- is that the original fairy tales about the video and a spontaneous protest occurred because the situation 'was developing.'

It wasn't.

In fact, the FBI interviewed the Benghazi survivors over a three-day period right after the attack, when they were still being prevented from speaking to anyone. None of them reported a protest or a demonstration.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) said that “The FBI confirmed to me that when they interviewed the survivors on the 15th the 16th and the 17th [of September], not one person ever mentioned anything other than a terrorist attack. No one mentioned a protest outside the consulate.”

“So, how could the Obama administration come up with a protest story if everybody on the ground during the attack said it was a terrorist attack and there was no protest?” he asks.

As for what the Obama team know and when the knew it, newly declassified transcripts show that General Carter Ham, then the head of AFRICOM, spoke directly to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and JCS head General Martin Dempsey and told them directly that Benghazi was a terrorist attack that night. When he testified before Congress he said, “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack”.

Panetta was quite emphatic that he briefed the president directly early in the evening Washington time,before the President went to bed to rest for his fundraiser in Chicago the next day. And certainly Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others knew exactly what was going on within a very short time. We also know that the CIA Head of Station in Libya reported within 24 hours that the attack on Benghazi was carried out by al-Qaeda and associated groups, that it was a planned operation, and that it had nothing to do with any protest or unrest over a video. Yet for 9 days, the president and his team kept the fiction going that this was a spontaneous protest over an obscure video.

Greg Hicks, a career diplomat and Ambassador Chris Steven's Deputy testified before Congress that he called Hillary Clinton at 8PM EST the same night of the assault to tell her that the consulate was under attack by al-Qaeda terrorists and that Ambassador Stevens was now missing.He called again at 9PM EST after he received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Ansar al-Sharia had brought Stevens' mutilated body into a hospital and that the ambassador was dead. Hicks immediately called DC, but Secretary Clinton wasn't available..just not taking calls. And not only didn't she call Hicks back that evening, but she didn't even bother getting in touch with him the following day.

So they knew, they all knew. But they huddled together like witches around a cauldron to create talking points to protect themselves and a clueless amateur of a president in an election campaign who was more interested in an upcoming fundraiser than in doing the job he was supposedly elected to do.

They even lied to the families of the 4 men that died, face to face, literally over their coffins.

Richard Nixon was forced to resign for doing far less.And no one died because of the third rate breaking and entering known as Watergate, or Nixon's hapless effort to shield his subordinates after the fact.

The New York Times Sinks Beneath Contempt InTrying To Rewrite Benghazi

(H/t Biff Spackle via Doug Ross)

You can always rely on Pravda-on-the-Hudson..to lie, to hide things away for its Leftist agenda, and in general to soil any notion of what we normally think of as journalism.

A case in point is a recent New York Times 'blockbuster' on Benghazi, which pretty much denies that al-
Qaeda was involved, (which would certainly be news to al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia, who carried out the attack) and that it was primarily a spontaneous riot caused mostly by that obscure video no one had seen and hardly anyone in the Muslim world or the West had heard about until it was seized on by the Obama Administration to protect the president and former Secretary Hillary Clinton.

It doesn't matter to them that virtually every bit of this fable of theirs was absolutely destroyed in the congressional investigation, or that people on the scene have denounced this as fantasy. Or that one of the attackers called and reported the success of the assault to Moktar Belmoktar, a senior commander of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).

Or that  an independent review of more than 4,000 social media postings from Benghazi found no reference to the video until the day after the attack.

What this is about, of course is Hillary Clinton's assessment of what effect Benghazi is going to have on her planned 2016 run. So some talking points are necessary to cover her pants suit clad behind, as her acolytes repeat the mantra 'according to the New York Times...'

I wouldn't even mention this ridiculous attempt to rewrite history except for the latest claim in response to criticism of this nonsense by Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick, 'Oh we had a reporter embedded with the attackers who talked to them.'

  David D. Kirkpatrick @ddknyt

@RichardGrenell we had a reporter on the scene talking to the attackers during the attack- still invaluable

5:45 PM - 30 Dec 2013

140 Retweets 26 favorite

Sure you did. And he kept his mouth shut for 15 months.

The funny part is that this issue was just starting to die down a bit.  The NYT just threw some gasoline on the flames.

These people are not only unworthy of a public megaphone, they're unworthy of living in a free society.

60 Minutes On Benghazi: "Yes, They Were Left To Die and You Were Lied To"

60 minutes pulls off a surprising and devastating act of random journalism, courtesy of ace reporter Lara Logan. CBS says they spent almost a year investigating what happened that night in Libya, and it proves beyond a doubt the Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, President Obama, Jay Carney and the rest of the White House crew knowingly lied about Benghazi to the American people.

Not only that, but the report shows the White House and the State Department were fully aware that an attack was being planned (they even knew that one of the former Guantanamo inmates we kicked loose for no good reason was instrumental in planning the attacks). They did absolutely nothing before the attack and nothing afterwards, even though the assault went on for over nine hours. Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty held off the numerically superior jihadis for hours virtually alone before dying on a rooftop while waiting for back-up that never came.

In the case of the president and Secretary Clinton, they actually stood by the caskets perpetuating that lie to the families of the men who were murdered by al-Qaeda thanks to their negligence, so as not to jeopardize President Obama's re-election.





One thing the report doesn't get into is exactly what our Ambassador was doing stationed in an indefensible compound in the middle of al-Qaeda territory with zero security when even the Red Cross had pulled its people out. For those of you with an interest, I believe you'll find the answer here.


I'm curious as to whether our media's going to ask President Obama and Hillary Clinton why they deliberately lied to the American people and blamed an obscure video for Benghazi while standing  in front of those flag draped coffins of the men they left to die.

The ghosts of the four men who died in Benghazi that night are restless, and they continue to demand justice.We owe them that.

The Latest From The Religion Of Peace In Nigeria: 161 Christians Dead

The latest atrocity from the Islamist Nigerian group Boko Haram was an attack on Benisheik, a predominantly Christian town in Borno State yesterday.

The jihadis attacked the Maiduguri-Damaturu road leading into the town,dragging people out of their vehicles and killing them, and the bodies are still being found:

Environmental officers yesterday recovered 87 more corpses of travelers killed by suspected Boko Haram gunmen during an attack on Maiduguri-Damaturu road near Benisheik town in Borno State on Tuesday.

This was in addition to 55 bodies earlier picked up on Wednesday, officials of the Borno State Environmental Protection Agency (BOSEPA) told journalists during a visit by Governor Kashim Shettima to the scene of the violence.

Heavily armed insurgents laid siege on Benisheik, Kaga Local Government Area on Tuesday evening, killing people and setting buildings ablaze.

They also blocked the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway, three kilometers away from the town, sorting out and slaughtering dozens of travelers.

Apart from the 142 travelers, also killed in the attack were 2 soldiers, 3 policemen and 14 villagers,bringing the total death toll to 161.

The siege and the assaults on the main road are simple ethnic cleansing in action. Boko Haram wants to create an Islamist state in mostly Muslim North Nigeria, and allowing Christians to live in the area they want for their mini-caliphate doesn't fit the agenda. The jihadis reportedly quizzed their victims before killing them, letting Muslims go and killing only the kuffars, non-believers.

There were Nigerian soldiers who attempted to protect the town from the jihadis, but they were outgunned and soon ran out of ammo:

A soldier who spoke to correspondents in confidence said the insurgents had superior power.

"The terrorists were using anti-aircraft guns while we were using AK47 rifles and some RPGs. They came in droves, driving about 20 pick-up trucks accompanied with two light-armored tankers, all wearing military colors. We had to retreat to our base to reinforce after running out of ammunition," he said.

"However, they followed us down and surrounded our base and began to shell our building. We couldn't stand the heat of their superior fire power. We had to retreat into the village after they killed two of our soldiers and three policemen."

The soldier said after the siege, the insurgents took away an armoured tank and four pick-up vehicles painted in military colours from the base.

Sounds like Boko Haram mayhave gotten their hands on some Libyan arms from Khaddaffi's arsenals, courtesy of President Obama.

With the soldiers in retreat, the townspeople were left to the jihadis and the town was sacked.

State Governor Kashim Shettima, apparently a Muslim urged the residents to stay in Benisheik and not flee the town.

"What happened is barbaric and un-Islamic," he said. He's also promised emergency food supplies and announced the release of N50 million for the rebuilding of over 100 houses and shops burnt in the town.

That isn't convincing the remaining residents, many of whom are evacuating. Apparently they don't agree with Governor Shettima that this is 'un-Islamic'. They expect more of the same.

Al-Qaeda Attacks? But Obama Said They Were On The Run!!

 

"Osama bin-Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is on the run." - Barack Obama's stump speech, 2012.

Last Friday, a story surfaced about a great deal of al-Qaeda chatter about a specific threat  of a  'coming attack.'

Note that word, 'specific'. In this context, it means you have real knowledge of what, where, and who.

In response, the Obama Administration closed 21  US embassies throughout the Muslim world. Originally, this was supposed to be for one day, but it's been extended for a full week.

According to my sources, there was some evidence of  an actual order from the head of al-Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri to none other than Nasir al Wuhayshi, head of AQAP ( al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) to carry out an attack...with no other specifics released.

For the past two years the American people been told that al-Qaeda had been defeated. Those of you whom read this site and are members of Joshua's Army know different, of course and that if anything, this president and his clueless national security team have strengthened al-Qaeda and its various affiliates, but al-Qaeda's demise has been the proud boast of this president for some time. So if this is true. why risk embarrassment for the administration and the president by making something like this public now, and possibly burning a valuable intel source?

All you need to do is look at what else is happening right now.

As more and more revelations come out about the extent of the NSA's warrant-less spying, surveillance and data mining , the more questions are being asked and the more resistance to this is stiffening.And the Benghazi scandal has resurfaced, with a scoop by none other than CNN committing actual journalism by reporting that there were dozens of CIA operatives on the ground the night, and that they have not only been made to sign hardline non-disclosure agreements but have been prevented from testifying in front of Congress and that some have even been given new identities and hiden around the country to keep the American people from finding out what some of us knew all along - that this was an attempted  gunrunning operation that went wrong, collecting  Libyan arms from the local al-Qaeda affiliates that were  pilfered out of Khaddaffi's armories thanks to our president's clueless intervention there to ship to the Syrian rebels.

And its now been leaked that CNN is distancing itself from its own scoop after being threatened with loss of access to the White House.

Does this suggest anything to you? Like the Obama regime's time honored tactic of  'look, a squirrel' to take the spotlight off something even more potentially embarrassing and politically hazardous?

Either way, this is absolutely disgraceful. If there actually was intel about a specific attack, the White House had absolutely no business making it public and possibly burning an intel source.That's basic strategy. There was no need whatsoever to do so just to distract the American public from the swamp of political scandals this president and his administration are mired in.

If there wasn't one and this is a fabrication or merely some  chatter with no specifics, it's even worse. When nothing happens, it promotes a false sense of security that could lead to a lot more American  blood being spilled when a real warning is issued, either publicly or clandestinely to our embassies and assets.

Obama Blames WH Counsel For Benghazi And IRS-Gate

 

It looks like we now know why Ezra Klein and a number of other Lefty media types made a special trip to the White House yesterday.

They were briefed that this 'leak' was coming and to spread this narrative around like manure.

The new fall-person (to keep things politically correct)for both Benghazi and IRS-Gate is none other than the president's own lawyer, White House Counsel to the President  Kathryn Ruemmler.

The reliably Left wing site BuzzFeed 'leaked' statements by 'White House Advisers' blaming her for both scandals...one scapegoat for both debacles, you might say:

BuzzFeed has learned that key members of President Obama’s national security team, including deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, pushed to release a comprehensive timeline of events documenting the attack that would also synthesize the views of the various government agencies into one report. The CIA also wanted the White House to put out such a timeline, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Those plans were quashed, however, when the White House Counsel’s office, which is led by Kathryn Ruemmler, advised the officials to not release any information to the public out of fear it could be used against them in any subsequent investigations and other legal complications. {...}

“It was aggravating,” one administration official said. “It comes back to Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler. I hate to say it, as it sounds like piling on, but it’s on her doorstep too.”

Ruemmler has also come under fire this week for not making the president and others aware of the IRS investigation.

You see, it was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who was responsible for everything. President Obama really, really would have come clean about IRS-Gate before the election, even woulda apologized to the Tea Party, Evangelicals and Pro-Israel groups on national TV.But his nasty, evil lawyer stopped him.

Same with Benghazi.It was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who forced those brave souls in the White House to edit those talking points twelve times. She made everyone go on the Sunday news shows and push the lie about how this was all due to a video.It was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who forced Hillary Clinton to lie her head off in front of Congress to protect Mrs. Clinton's reputation. Hillary, truthful soul that she is fought it tooth and nail, but Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler overruled her and made her say those things.She made all of them say those things..the president, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, Jay Carney.She threatened to whip them if they didn't.

 

Give them another week and they'll probably be saying that it was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who ordered Ambassador Stevens to Benghazi in the first place, took away his security and ordered the Special forces twice to stand down and not rescue the Americans there after the attack. Hillary and President Obama wanted to save them, but she just wouldn't let them.

I know that some single women voted for this president because they thought he was cool, and because they bought the bogus 'Republican War On Women' schtick.

Ask yourselves this. Do you think Mitt Romney, for all his faults would act this cravenly towards a female subordinate and make her a scapegoat for his own mistakes? George W. Bush, whom I have very little good to say about at least had that level of manly behavior, and goodness knows Condi Rice screwed up enough that he could have shoveled the blame for a lot of things he caught hell for on her.

I bet you can't even imagine Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio doing it..in fact, there are probably a lot of Democrats you can't imagine doing it either.

Not only is it moral cowardice, but this kind of behavior shows a deeply engrained contempt for all of us. This president and his team think we're all stupid, that we would buy that his lawyer had this kind of power over him and the rest of the White House.

Think about it.

And while you're at it, check out Twitchy on this..among other things, there are some tweets that are too good to miss.

Midnight In Benghazi - What Really Happened

The recent Benghazi hearings before the House Oversight Committee were extremely valuable in that America (or at least that part of America that was paying attention) heard three courageous whistle blowers testify as to the events on the ground as they happened. Even if it merely confirmed what a lot of us knew beforehand,it had value that these unimpeachable witnesses confirmed it. And also let the nation know the kind of pressure they were subjected to by the State Department and the Obama Administration to keep their mouths shut.

It's been said that the problem with Benghazi is that the whole affair is now so convoluted that the average person has trouble following all the threads. There's some truth in that, and the lack of dinosaur media coverage that would have been wall to wall if this were a Republican administration involved has aided and abetted that confusion. The one most honorable exception has been Sharyl Attkisson at CBS, and her honesty and conviction is likely to cost Ms.Attkisson her job, because she's been a little too good at it.

Perhaps what's really needed is a short summary that tells exactly what happened in Benghazi, to make it easier to follow.

What happened is that an American ambassador, Chris Stevens was stationed in the Benghazi consulate for some unknown reason, even though the British and the International Red Cross had already pulled their people out because it was too dangerous. The consulate was left without adequate security, even though Ambassador Stevens begged for it. On September 11th, 2012, that consulate was attacked by al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood forces armed with heavy weapons from Libyan government arsenals that the attackers obtained thanks to American aid in overthrowing Libyan dictator Moamar Khaddaffi. Four Americans died in the attacks, which were spread over nine hours. Even though there were ample security resources on the ground who could possibly have saved those four dead Americans, someone gave them the order to stand down. Instead, carefully edited talking points were concocted by the Obama Administration and an entire narrative was fed to the nation via a cooperative media that the attacks were a spontaneous protest over an obscure YouTube video, and that nothing could have been done to save the ambassador and the others whom were murdered.

The Obama Administration deliberately lied about what happened and has been trying to cover that up ever since.

That's essentially the basic summary of what happened. Or for those of you whom need a slogan to chant , here's an even simpler one:

"Obama Slept and Hillary Lied
About how four Americans died"

The media is still very much involved in trying to bury this. Here's the amazing testimony of Greg Hicks, a career diplomat and Ambassador Chris Steven's Deputy. This is probably the biggest national scandal since Watergate, yet wasn't carried on any major news outlet in full except FOX:



Among other things, Greg Hicks revealed that he called Hillary Clinton at 8PM EST that night to tell her that the consulate was under attack by al-Qaeda terrorists and that Ambassador Stevens was now missing.He called again at 9PM after he received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Ansar al-Sharia had brought Stevens' mutilated body into a hospital and that the ambassador was dead. was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. Secretary Clinton wasn't available..just not taking calls. And not only didn't she call Hicks back that evening, but she didn't bother getting in touch with him the following day. And President Obama? He dropped out very early in the proceedings, after he was briefed 5 PM EST by Leon Panetta. He had a campaign fundraiser to attend and decided to go to bed early.

It's important to remember the time frame here. The attack was spread over nine hours, and no one in Washington knew how long it was going to last. We're not talking about a game of basketball here, where the clock runs for a certain period and the action stops.The Obama Administration made a conscious decision not to get involved, so the nonsense peddled  about  'not having security assets who could get there in time' is a despicable lie.

As Hicks testified and others have confirmed, Lieutenant Colonel Gibson had a special forces team in Tripoli that twice suited up to go to Benghazi to rescue the Americans under siege and twice got stand down orders. Meanwhile, back in Benghazi, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty held off the numerically superior jihadis for hours virtually alone before dying on a rooftop while waiting for back-up that never came.

Again, this is not some DC-based functionary. This is Ambassadors Stevens' deputy, his second in command, the man who took over the Libya station after Ambassador Stevens was murdered before he was demoted for not keeping his mouth suitably shut. And he says his jaw literally dropped when he heard Hillary and Susan Rice blaming this on a video.

No one should be under the assumption that this ends with Secretary Clinton either. One of President Obama's first acts as president was to remove the post of UN Ambassador from the authority of the Secretary of State and to make it a full cabinet post under his direct orders that reported to him.So if Ambassador Susan Rice was making the rounds of the Sunday shows lying about how the attack on our embassy was caused by an obscure video, she was not doing it without President Obama's full knowledge and consent.And someone gave the orders to our military not to go in. That ordinarily would be a presidential prerogative - unless President Obama was AWOL again.

One of the most despicable scenes in American history was played out at the funerals of the murdered men, where the president and Mrs. Clinton acted as though 'Chris' was their best friend. This was the same woman who lied repeatedly about 'Chris's' death, who denied she'd received cables from him desperately asking for more security and even had the heartlessness to lie to the the Woods family about how Tyrone Woods died, telling them at the funeral that “we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.'

Okay, that's the what, at least so far. Some aspects of 'who' are still in the process of being discovered. So let's get to the far more important question, 'why'.

I fully admit that here we get into some elements that are difficult to source on record. And I  also wanted to dig a little bit further and get some additional information, which is why I've been content not to write about this in depth yet. But at this point, given what I've learned, what follows holds together quite well.

The 'why'  is the key to understanding what really happened.

The first thing we have to look at is why a U.S. Ambassador was there in Benghazi in the first place. He was there as an envoy to Ansar al Sharia and the other jihadist groups that ruled Benghazi, and his assignment, according to what I've been able to find out, was to make a deal over the heavy weapons they had pilfered from Khaddaffi's armories thanks to President Obama's ill advised intervention in favor of the rebels. Stevens, who was intimately familiar with Libya, was there to purchase as many of these arms as he could outright to ship them to Ansar al-Sharia's al-Qaeda comrades in arms in Syria without the president having to inform congress. The idea was to help take out Basher Assad's regime covertly without the necessity of committing US forces, and as a secondary goal to dispose of as many of the arms as possible, buy off the Benghazi rebels if possible  and cover up what a huge mistake the Obama Administration had made by getting involved in Libya. There was absolutely no other reason for Ambassador Stevens to be in such a dangerous location virtually unprotected, except as an envoy to the jihadist forces controlling Benghazi.

An envoy in the Arab world has a very carefully defined position. He relies on the age old rules of Arab hospitality, comes unarmed to his enemy and throws himself on their protection. And if the negotiations fail, especially if a state of war exists, his life can be forfeit. That's why not only was Stevens denied more security, but most of what he had was taken away, even when it became plain to him (if not to the Obama Administration) that the deal had failed and he and the rest of the Americans were in mortal danger.

Needless to say, the approach to Ansar al-Sharia and the other Muslim Brotherhood groups involved had to be off the radar. For it to come out publicly during an election that the Obama Administration was dealing with one al-Qaeda affiliate as a middleman to ship arms to another al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood group in Syria was not something that would have gone down well with either the American electorate or with the Russians, with whom the president was working on a diplomatic solution - at least officially.

The Saudis and the Qataris are the ones bankrolling the jihadi Sunni rebels in Syria, so it was their money that was involved.

 The murder of Stevens and the subsequent mutilation of his body (something that  was carefully hidden and unreported by the U.S. press, but was widely reported overseas) was the classic Arab negative response to the deal the Obama Administration was trying to achieve. It was an unmistakeable message. When Ansar al-Sharia was finished with him, it was they who took the body to a hospital under their control. And those Libyan arms wound up being used in places like Mali, Algeria and Sinai, as well as helping Ansar al-Shariah and their friends keep control of Benghazi.

Stevens likely wasn't rescued for two reasons. First,because the president was AWOL and no one else wanted to take responsibility for giving the order to send our forces in. It was Mrs. Clinton's '3 AM phone call' ad on steroids. And second because the way things went down,  it would almost certainly have raised a number of awkward questions in the middle of an election campaign that had President Obama's supposed foreign policy expertise as a major talking point.

In the end, Ambassador Stevens was far more useful as a dead martyr and photo-op than as a live ambassador subject to inconvenient congressional questioning.The talking points, of course, had to be constructed in such a way to lead as far away from the real story as possible, a story we now know they were fully aware of. The Obama Administration  was primarily concerned with protecting the president politically in the middle of his re-election campaign, and felt that by sequestering the survivors under pain of prosecution, classifying all the documents, videos and phone logs as top secret and relying on a compliant media to spread the narrative the Administration came up with they could make it work.

Even if we give the people in Washington responsible a pass  and say they simply weren't sure what to do, just fumbled badly and then worked to cover it up for political purposes, (which is what I personally think happened) it is a disgraceful and dishonorable performance that ought to at the very least lead to the firing or impeachment of every one involved, if not worse.

If nothing else, the ongoing strategic fallout is intense.

As one of my notorious Lil' Birdies who is definitely in a position to know told me, among other things the attempt by the Obama Administration to buy Libyan arms and ship them to jihadis in Syria  was seen as  a major double cross of Israel. The weapons included shoulder fired missiles not only capable of taking out Basher al-Assad's Russian-built helicopters but commercial airliners, including those landing in Israel. When the Israelis found out about a plot to have weapons like this shipped to their northern border without their knowledge, they were absolutely livid. So were the Iranians, who use commercial airliners to ship fighters and weaponry to Syria to bolster Basher Assad's forces.

The Israelis and the Iranians know the true story, and both have their own reasons for keeping quiet about it. The Iranians would rather not take the risk of embarrassing Obama and forcing him into taking real action against their illegal nuclear program, and the Israelis have apparently made a decision to use this as leverage for a quid pro quo in other areas while helping both their own interests and that of the Obama administration by doing some of the heavy lifting in Syria so the president needn't be tripped up by his usual chest pounding rhetoric about 'red lines' and chemical weapons.

The Russians, for their part,  were outraged at what they considered Obama's duplicity and have doubled down on their support for Assad, even moving substantial naval assets into the Eastern Mediterranean to prevent any attempts at establishing a no fly zone or otherwise intervening. More and more it appears that Syria will eventually end up fracturing along ethnic lines after a prolonged struggle, as I predicted some time ago.

In the end,  I think  it's doubtful the whole story on Benghazi is going to go public for a long time, if ever. While Mrs. Clinton and others may end up suffering some damage, not even Rep. Darrel Issa  or the Senate Republicans are going to want to take this to the ultimate end and reveal this as the major fiasco of U.S. foreign policy that it is. Nor, for various reasons are they going to want to cripple  a sitting U.S. president, particularly this one, for reasons that I'm sure are obvious.

In the end, this has turned out to be another sleazy, ill thought out gun running scandal... Fast and Furious, the Middle East edition, with less deaths involved but much greater strategic consequences.

Hillary's Benghazi 'Scapegoat' Speaks Out

 

The only State department official to lose his job in the wake of the Benghazi scandal was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs Raymond Maxwell, a mid-level official who had no role in security decisions or in any of the decisions surrounding the Benghazi debacle. After the internal State department review, he was placed on administrative leave and told to clean out his desk and leave the building, without anyone telling him the charges against him.

A career diplomat who served from August 2011 until his removal last December including tours in Iraq and Syria,Maxwell gave an exclusive interview today to the Daily Beast's Josh Rogin,speaking out for the first time about how he was scapegoated:

“The overall goal is to restore my honor,” said Maxwell, who has now filed grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department’s human resources bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three officials placed on leave were in the diplomatic security bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job.

“I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” he said.

Maxwell was removed from his job on Dec. 18, the day after the ARB report was released, and subsequently placed on administrative leave, which is meant to give the State Department time to investigate whether Maxwell should be fired or return to work. Five months later, that investigation seems stalled and Maxwell sits at home, where he continues to be paid but is not allowed to return to his job.

Since administrative leave is essentially limbo, Maxwell can't appeal, since he wasn't officially fired. He sits home and collects his paycheck, but he's not allowed to go to his job. He claims that no one at the State Department has ever even told him what he's accused of doing or not doing.

“For any FSO being at work is the essence of everything and being deprived of that and being cast out was devastating,” he said.

The State Department also had an official visit him at home and order him to sign a letter acknowledging his administrative leave and forfeiting his right to enter the State Department. He refused and responded in writing that the way the letter was phrased, it read like an admission of wrongdoing. Also of interest is the way Maxwell was 'chosen':

The decision to place Maxwell on administrative leave was made by Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, according to three State Department officials with direct knowledge of the events. On the day after the unclassified version of the ARB’s report was released in December, Mills called Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell leave his job immediately.

"Cheryl Mills directed me to remove you immediately from the [deputy assistant secretary] position," Jones told Maxwell, according to Maxwell.

The decision to remove Maxwell and not Jones seems to conflict with the finding of the ARB that responsibility for the security failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi should fall on more senior officials.

“We fixed [the responsibility] at the assistant secretary level, which is in our view the appropriate place to look, where the decision-making in fact takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the road," Pickering said when releasing the ARB report.

The report found “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department,” namely the Diplomatic Security (DS) and Near East bureaus. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns testified in December that requests for more security in Libya, denied by the State Department, did reach the assistant secretaries and “it may be that some of my colleagues on the 7th floor saw them as well."

But Jones was not disciplined in any way following the release of the report, nor was the principal deputy assistant secretary of State at NEA, Liz Dibble, who is slated to receive a plush post as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London this summer. In the DS bureau, the assistant secretary, principal deputy, and deputy assistant all lost their jobs. In the NEA bureau, only Maxwell was asked to leave.

Jones and Dibble were responsible for security in Libya, Maxwell and three State Department officials said.

Rogin claims one State Department source told him that 'Clinton’s people' made a deal with the leadership of the NEA bureau that Maxwell would be given another job at State when the Benghazi scandal blew over...but that Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, simply reneged on the deal:

“The deal that NEA made with Cheryl Mills and the 7th floor was to keep Ray within NEA and just give him another portfolio. For whatever reason, it didn’t go down like that and that was a complete shock to Beth [Jones], because that was the deal that Beth made with Cheryl,” the official said. “Behind Beth’s back, Maxwell ended up being put on administrative leave.”

Rogin further reveals via another anonymous State Department source that Maxwell was being disciplined for 'not reading his intel memos'. Of course, if that's the criteria, President Obama ought to be on administrative leave too..permanently.

Maxwell responded that he'd never been allowed to read any charges against him, and not allowed to see the Review Board Report the report the charges reportedly appeared in since it's classified, so pretty much anything could have been written or added to the report to fit the need of finding a convenient patsy.

In any event, it would seem odd that a mid level official whom had nothing to do with security of Libya would get slapped while two others that did are still working for State in good standing...perhaps because disciplining them and taking a risk of their opening up their mouths in congress to Rep. Darrel Issa's committee would prove embarrassing.

BREAKING: US Special Forces were STOPPED from going to Benghazi to aid men on the ground

CBS reporter Sharyl Atkinson is all over this.

This is old ground to those of you whom read this site regularly, but it's nice to have it confirmed by someone whom was there on the ground.

According to diplomat Gregory Hicks, murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens deputy who was one of the Benghazi survivors now giving testimony to congress, a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks and save the Americans under attack was ordered not to do so.

Needless to say, this directly contradicts what we were told by President Obama, Secretary Clinton and other administration officials, that nobody was ever told to stand down and that that there were no resources available:

Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound "when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, 'you can't go now, you don't have the authority to go now.' And so they missed the flight ... They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it."

No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.

Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour's flight from Libya.

Hicks recounts how we had F-15's in easy reach of Benghazi, and says point blank that had we sent a couple of fighter aircraft over the attack area, the Libyan attackewrs would likey have left and the mortar attack that killed two Americans the next morning would not have occurred.

Read more excerpts from his testimony here.

We knew before that the Americans whom died in Benghazi could have saved. We knew that before, but having it confirmed by someone who was on the ground here makes it a lot stronger.

So that leads to the heart of the matter, the real unanswered questions:

Why did this happen, and why did this president and his administration go to such lengths to lie and cover it up? Was it really because it could have proven embarrassing in the middle of the president's re-election campaign?

What was Ambassador Stevens doing in a dangerous unsecured location like Benghazi? And why was he meeting with the Turks just before the attack?

Why exactly was it in American interests not to rescue him and his associates when they came under attack?

Why were both of the two buildings being used by the Americans in Benghazi delibeately left unsecured, and why were Ambassador Stevens' repeated requests for more security repeatedly ignored?

Was the US, perhaps represented by the Ambassador Stevens himself involved in negotiating for weapons caches in Libya? If so, why?

Answer those questions and we'll find out what really happened that night - in Benghazi, and in Washington DC.

The ghosts of some brave men and the living whom remain, like Charles Woods deserve some answers.

Breaking! E-Mails reveal Hillary Lied On Benghazi

 

There's a good reason the White House is trying to downplay the upcoming hearings on Benghazi. There's a reason they have spokeshole Jay Carney saying 'Benghazi was a long time ago' . It's obvious why the White House is illegally threatening whistle blowers who want to come forward and testify.

The more that comes out, the worse this smells:

Fresh evidence in the form of newly released e-mails reveals that the State Department had its fingers all over the attempted coverup, with a senior apparatchnik managing the talking points and saying clearly that her superiors were 'unhappy with implications they'd ignored warnings.'

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

That senior apparatchnik, by the way, turns out to be State Department flack Victoria Nuland, who lied to reporters in claiming that Susan Rice's Sunday Talking Points accurately reflected the government's "initial assessment"...even though Victoria Nuland personally had the "initial assessment" changed to suit her "superiors'" political worries!

Election time, you know.

These e-mails were turned over to the House and Senate Intelligence committees as part of a deal in order to allow John Brennan, President Obama's choice for head of our CIA to be confirmed. Part of the agreement was that the committees would be allowed to just review the e-mails, not actually take possession of them..which is quite a giveaway right there:

If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public. [...]

Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure.

The article goes on to give the seamy details on how the State Department and the White House cooked reports and intel to cover their culpability and come up with the 'it was the video' narrative that turned out to be such horse manure. It even shows how the drafts of the Talking Points were edited to reflect 'concerns'

And even more is going to come out during the hearings.





Gee, Mrs. Clinton...if it didn't make a difference, why did you and your pals in DC lie about it?

I'm sure we'd all like to know. Certainly the families of those dead Americans would.

A great piece of reporting by the Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes.

Whistle blower claims U.S. knows who masterminded the Benghazi attack but is not taking action

Apparently he's walking around free in Libya, and FOX claims conformation from a number of sources.

"We basically don't want to upset anybody, and the problem is, if Ambassador Stevens' family knew that we were sitting on information about the people who killed their son, their brother, on and on, then, and we could look them as a government in the face, then we're messing up. We're messing up", the source said.

Fox News spoke exclusively with one special operator who watched the events unfold in real time and has debriefed those who were part of the response. He remains anonymous for his safety and has decided to talk because he says he and others connected with the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi are frustrated with the excuses and lack of a military response since Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

"We have all the capability, all the training, all the capacity, to kill and capture not only terrorists involved, with the specific events of 9/11, and Ambassador Stevens' death, but terrorists that are feeding other regions including Europe that could eventually affect our national security in the short term," the source said. "And we're not talking midterm or long-term, this is the short-term."

Something that ought to be of major interest is the connection between our removal of Khaddaffi and allowing his arsenal to fall into the hands of Islamist and al-Qaeda forces. These heavy weapons were used to attack our consulate in Benghazi, make terrorist attacks in Algeria, invade Mali and make their way to Syria.

FOX's source says that he personally came across shoulder fired missiles in the hands of Libyan forces capable of bringing down a domestic airliner, but was unable to confiscate and destroy them because his orders didn't allow it. I've heard the same thing elsewhere.

I have to unfortunately agree with what FOX's source says here:

"It was frustrating not only for myself, but for the men and the guys that I work with. We always talk amongst each other and discuss it's probably going to take a 747, a 757 to get shot down in Tripoli for somebody to pay attention to that, which is unfortunate."

'Unfortunate'...that's one word for it. Criminal negligence and stupidity might be another way to put it.

Obama Administration Threatening Benghazi Survivors To Keep Them Quiet

This if nothing else ought to tell us that there's a lot about the Benghazi fiasco we're going to find out.

Rep. Darrel Issa of the House Oversight Committee is holding new hearings and specifically advised some of the survivors that they were going to be subpoenaed and to 'lawyer up' in his words.

The Administration's response has been to threaten the Benghazi aurvivors in an attempt to silence them and to deny their attorneys access to material needed to secure their rights as whistle blowers, something illegal under federal law.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on April 26 to complain that the department has not provided a process by which attorneys like Toensing can receive the security clearances necessary for them to review classified documents and other key evidence.

“It is unavoidable that Department employees identifying themselves as witnesses in the Committee’s investigation will apply for a security clearance to allow their personal attorneys to handle sensitive or classified material,” Issa wrote. “The Department’s unwillingness to make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish information to Congress.”

Victoria Toensing is an attorney representing one of the whistleblowers and said publicly that he and others have been threatened by members of the Obama Administration.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”

“It’s frightening and they’re doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said. “Not ‘We’re going to kill you,’ or not ‘We’re going to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they’re taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators].”

Toensing has also complained about not being given access by the State Department to materials needed to adequately represent her client. Since she's a former Justice Department official and a former counsel to the Senate intelligence committee, she already has a top security clearance - but the State Department is still refusing to release the information she needs.

Odd, but in spite of what she's saying and in spite of Issa's letter to Secretary Kerry, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell still claims he's 'unaware' of any attorneys seeking security clearances...or even attorneys like Toensing who already have such clearances seeking access to classified materials.

So somebody's lying. Three guesses who...

But eventually we're going to get some answers, especially since some of the government functionaries in State and the CIA appear ready to testify regardless of how they're pressured.

From what I'm hearing, a number of them are fairly disgusted over what happened in Benghazi and the subsequent coverup, and they're not going to stay silent.