Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
I agree totally. Stevens represents a massive betrayal from the government, his superiors, he trusted and relied upon. I can't look upon his images either without feeling that the man was treated like a nobody, an expendable, by the BHO administration. Imagine the feeling in his gut when they made him fly back into Benghazi. Stevens knew the trouble he was going to face, the danger. Was it his sense of honor and duty that allowed him to go back in, or was it that he believed they would defend his position and ultimately get him out of there if trouble erupted? We may never know.
October 24th, 2012, 16:52
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
You know, Mal, it's even worse than the way you put it... "betrayal of trust". His father is STILL TRUSTING Obama.
(Or was it his mother? One of them anyway).
It's not just the betrayal of trust on Stevens - but the WHOLE BLOODY COUNTRY.
Obama - or State, as good as murdered that man themselves. They took NO action whatsoever to protect the diplomats. If I were working for state as an Ambassador right now, I'd be livid and probably demanding to come home. I don't care who's political arena Steven's was in, it was WRONG of our government to let him and those others die needlessly. Worse of all, the four men who DID die weren't even IN HIS SECURITY detail.
October 24th, 2012, 16:55
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
MMCO, it's a sense of duty - which (contrary to what I just said in the previous post) is what MAKES US ALL STAY ON DUTY in the worst of situations. Its why when in the military we're getting shot at we don't run away. It's why on 9-11 as they were evacuating my own base here in Colorado many of us stayed until we were personally ordered out. It's why the Marines not only take, but HOLD a stupid hill when all odds are against them.
Diplomats are NOT warriors though and should never, ever be put in such a position. They are supposed to be IMMUNE to being attacked even under the worst situations, the point being to KEEP THE LINES of communication open between two opposing sides.
Thus, Steven's as far as I am concerned, along with the others are heroes and should be treated as such by this and all future administrations - and yet, they are being ignored.
October 24th, 2012, 17:59
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
lenn Beck took to his radio show Wednesday morning for a fiery denouncement of the administration’s handling of the crisis in Libya.
“This president is lying to you about Benghazi in such [a] spectacular fashion that I believe people will go to prison. This is impeachable. The president might go to prison for this one,” he said. “What’s happening in Benghazi is so far beyond lying, it is staggering.”
While politicians are known for twisting words into half truths, Beck added that has never seen an administration persist in such a boldfaced lie when American lives are at stake, or seen a media so content to let it slide.
He continued, going over the newly-released documents that prove the administration was alerted to what was really happening in Libya before spinning a story about a YouTube video:
Now we have [the] beginning of the truth on Benghazi. Five days into the Benghazi scandal, when no one was saying anything, I presented a theory…I told you that [Ambassador Stevens] was involved in running guns, and he was running guns to al-Qaeda in Libya, and he was running guns through Turkey into Syria. And whether it was a deal that went bad, I don’t know, but that’s what happened. And the White House knew…And while everyone else was arguing about whether it was a videotape or not, we were furthering the story.
Today we have evidence that is staggering. We now have a memo posted [at] TheBlaze…to the White House two hours after the attacks began. Last night on the TV show I laid it out again…exactly what happened, when. At 1:00, or 12:54 in the afternoon on September 11, the White House was warned that somebody was watching the Benghazi safe house– and so you know, do not let any member of the press get away with calling this an embassy safe house. It is not. It was a CIA safe house. Now why, in the most dangerous place in one of the most dangerous parts of the world, on Sept. 11…why would he be at a CIA safe house? …We now know he was having dinner with the general counsel of Turkey. [Emphasis added]
Beck reminded that it has been widely reported that President Obama has a close relationship with the Turkish prime minister, before continuing:
An hour after that, the Turkish ambassador leaves through the front door and the front gate, unmolested. Now you tell me– why was the Turkish general counsel there? …Why was it so important on Sept. 11 to go to the most dangerous city, into a CIA safe house?
An hour after he leaves, the fight begins. We now know that the White House– somebody, the military, somebody, sent a drone. So there was a live video feed of what was going on. They’re watching it in the State Department, they’re watching it at the Pentagon, they’re watching it at Langley, and they’re watching it in the Situation Room. At 5:00 in the afternoon, Leon Panetta has a meeting with the president of the United States. The first email comes at 4:05. So the Secretary of Defense arrives at the White House to have a meeting with the president 55 minutes after the Situation Room and everybody else gets an email saying, ‘Libya, the safe house is under attack.” [Emphasis added]
Beck proceeded to read several more emails explaining how our personnel in Benghazi were missing and under attack, before he got to one timestamped at 6:07. According to the memo, Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attack and– though he isn’t sure– Beck said it’s possible that Ansar al-Sharia was one of the groups that we gave arms and funding to during the war to overthrow Gaddhafi.
“This is why the White House covered, because our ambassador was killed by [guys] we were running guns to, and we are still running guns today.”
He then read an international report from Russia Today saying U.S. Stinger Missiles are in the hands of Syrian rebels, adding that the New York Times has also reported that we are using the Muslim Brotherhood to arm the rebels in Syria.
Beck concluded the segment:
“This president is on the wrong side. It is so crystal clear…let’s just take it one step at a time. The President of the United States of America, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State have all lied to you. They lied to you and said, ‘this might be a video, we don’t have all the information, the information is still sketchy, it’s confusing,’…We now have the documents that came into the Situation Room saying, ‘There’s an attack, they’re watching.’ Then, we have the documents that we had a live video feed in the Situation Room, so they could see that there was no protest. Then there are the documents– and there’s now 13, with this new one– there’s now 13 different documents saying it’s a terrorist attack, and here’s the group that’s doing it. And they lied to you.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to questions about the newly-released emails by saying there was “all sorts of information” coming in at the time.
The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.”
The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found that “scores” of known radical Islamists met with senior Obama administration officials during hundreds of visits to the White House.
Pickering’s appointment as probe chairman was announced in the Federal Register on October 4. The State Department “Accountability Review Board” headed by Pickering is tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012 deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The problem is that Pickering has ties to the pro-Iran Islamist front group known as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC lost an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Pickering is a member of the advisory board of NIAC. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from May 1997 through the end of 2000, according to a 2009 report titled “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by Clare M. Lopez of the Center for Security Policy. He’s also vice chairman of international consultancy, Hills & Co., and co-chairman of the board of directors of the International Crisis Group (whose executive committee includes George Soros).
“Ambassador Pickering’s positions on Iran include calls for bilateral talks without preconditions and a plan for a multinational uranium enrichment consortium in Iran,” Lopez writes. “Iran has proposed a similar plan to the UN Security Council. Ambassador Pickering advocates a process leading to mutual diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States.”
“U.S. national security policy is being successfully targeted by Jihadist entities hostile to American interests,” she writes. One of these groups, NIAC, is involved in “a de facto partnership” with its better known but more notorious jihadist ally “the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations serving as mouthpieces for the mullahs’ party line.”
This network “includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world.” NIAC and its predecessor group, the American-Iranian Council, have long “functioned openly as apologists for the Iranian regime.”
CAIR is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and was named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation trials.
The panel discussion featured Pickering, Arab American Institute president James J. Zogby, American Association for Muslim Advancement executive director Daisy Khan, and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative.
Khan and Rauf are prime movers behind the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.
Khan is known for her over-the-top attacks on those who question the wisdom of building a Muslim holy site so close to the place where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in an Islamist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Asked in 2010 if America was “Islamophobic,” Khan replied that “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims,” she said.
Of course use of the word “Islamophobia” is a tool of intimidation, calculated to silence the so-called Islamophobe.
If one fears Islamist ideology as an irredentist, imperialist, totalitarian force, one is rational. “Phobia” implies that one who fears or is skeptical of the intentions of Muslims is mentally unbalanced. The term is used the same way American leftists use the word “racist” to shut down debate.
While two George Soros-funded nonprofits, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, are working overtime to try to convince Americans that this make-believe mental illness of Islamophobia is a threat to American democracy and pluralism, the embattled Obama administration has been in damage control mode for weeks as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses. The administration has been sucking up to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a 57-state (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority) group that considers itself the Caliphate reborn.
Americans’ civil rights and political correctness are weapons of infiltration used by our Islamofascist enemies. Just like our Soviet Communist enemies during the Cold War, Islamists are using Americans’ goodness and their sense of fair play, including an aversion to being accused of racial stereotyping, against America.
Hard data do not support claims that Islamophobia exists in the United States.
As Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary last year: “the notion of a rising wave of hatred against Muslims is unsupported by any statistical research.”
“When you consider that Muslims claim to have about the same number of adherents in this country as Jews and that anti-Jewish crimes have always far outnumbered those committed against Muslims, the media hysteria about Islamophobia is exposed as a big lie. But even if there are fewer Muslims here than their groups claim, the conclusion is unchanged.”
And there is credible evidence that Obama, who told the UN last month that “the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” is sympathetic to Islamists’ increasingly vocal demands for Saudi-style anti-blasphemy laws.
So, apparently, is Ambassador Pickering, which makes him unfit to head any probe of what happened last month in Benghazi, Libya.
October 25th, 2012, 05:12
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
First the White House National Security Advisor, John Brennan, said Republicans were briefed on the FBI detainment of the Christmas Day panty-bomber, including that the terrorist had been mirandized. In fact, that was not true.
When did Barack Obama become a White House critic? Chief among those helping Al Qaeda is Barack Obama.
The mirandizing of the panty-bomber delayed vital intelligence collection. Shutting down GTMO and bringing those prisoners to the United States not only brings Al Qaeda loyalists closer in, but also creates more domestic targets.
Giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a civilian trial so he has a soapbox to spew Al Qaeda propaganda before American media gives Al Qaeda a greater media megaphone than Al Jazeera.
Leaking damaging information to demoralize CIA operatives as they go about trying to protect us from the shadows emboldens Al Qaeda.
Broadcasting that the CIA sustains a serious setback due to Al Qaeda’s attack in Afghanistan gives Al Qaeda new recruiting PR.
There is no greater aider and abetter of Al Qaeda than Barack Obama’s White House. Through sheer incompetence and arrogance, they are handing over to Al Qaeda vital intelligence and giving them all the PR they need to effectively recruit new terrorists.
How many Americans will die because of Barack Obama’s handling of national security?
Excerpted from The Washington Times, piece by Frank Gaffney, Reagans’ assistant Secretary of State: President Obama’s once seemingly unstoppable march toward re-election hit what he might call “bumps in the road” in Benghazi, Libya, late on Sept. 11, 2012.
It might be more accurate to describe the effect of the well-planned and -executed, military-style attack on a diplomatic facility there as the political equivalent of a devastating improvised explosive device on the myth of the unassailability of the Obama record as commander in chief.
Thanks to intrepid investigative reporting — notably by Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge at Fox News, Aaron Klein at WND.com and Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org — and information developed by congressional investigators, the mystery is beginning to unravel with regard to what happened that night and the reason for the subsequent, clumsy official cover-up now known as Benghazigate.
The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East.
Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, Stevens was appointed ambassador to the new Libya run by Mr. Belhadj and his friends. Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amount of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.
One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there — on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates — for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria. As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.
Fox News has chronicled how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on Sept. 6 in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms — including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles — apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.
What cries out for further investigation — and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election — is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison.
Investigative journalist Aaron Klein has reported that the “consulate in Benghazi” actually was no such thing. He observes that although administration officials have done nothing to correct that oft-repeated characterization of the facility where the murderous attack on Stevens and his colleagues was launched, they call it a “mission.” What Mr. Klein describes as a “shabby, nondescript building” that lacked any “major public security presence” was, according to an unnamed Middle Eastern security official, “routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.”
We know that Stevens‘ last official act was to hold such a meeting with an unidentified “Turkish diplomat.” Presumably, the conversation involved additional arms shipments to al Qaeda and its allies in Syria. It also may have involved getting more jihadi fighters there. After all, Mr. Klein reported last month that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”
It gets worse. Last week, Center for Security Policy senior fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with the so-called “consulate” whose purpose has yet to be disclosed. As their contents were raided in the course of the attack, we may never know for sure whether they housed — and were known by the local jihadis to house — arms, perhaps administered by the two former Navy SEALs killed along with Stevens.
What we do know is that the New York Times — one of the most slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country — reported in an Oct. 14 article, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”
In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale.The effect has been to equip America’s enemies to wage jihad not only against regimes it once claimed were our friends, but inevitably against us and our allies as well. That would explain his administration’s desperate and now failing bid to mislead the voters through the serial deflections of Benghazigate.
October 25th, 2012, 13:08
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Well... today is the 25th, so by the 29th we ought to be "seeing something big" on Benghazi right?
October 25th, 2012, 14:01
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Depends on how effectively they can continue to stonewall and keep incriminating evidence out of the hands of responsible journalists.
Any Republican Administration would have been impeached long ago, in fact Watergate was child's play compared to just this one scandal.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered additional security for the U.S. mission in Benghazi ahead of the terrorist attack but the orders were never carried out, according to “legal counsel” to Clinton who spoke to best-selling author Ed Klein. Those same sources also say former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.
Appearing on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” on Wednesday night, Klein told host Andrew Wilkow that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been having “big fights” for “two or three weeks” about the issue, according to his two sources on Clinton’s legal counsel. While Bill Clinton wishes his wife would “exonerate” herself by releasing the documents that show she wasn’t at fault for the tragic security failure in Libya, the secretary of state refuses to do so because she doesn’t want to be viewed as a traitor to the Democratic party.
On Glenn Beck’s radio show earlier on Wednesday, Klein said his information comes from two “very good” sources.
Wilkow pointed out the obvious, that the Obamas and the Clintons have a “very behind the scenes, tense relationship” — to put it lightly.
“I said to you last night, and I think I stand corrected, that it seemed like Obama out-Clintoned the Clintons,” Wilkow said. “But Clinton seems to have gone along with all of this because he knew that Hillary would be exonerated in the end.”
He then asked Klein whether he thought Clinton would resign over the Libya scandal and expose the truth.
“No,” the author said immediately. “I can’t imagine that she would resign. It would bring down the entire administration. [Obama] would lose the election and she would be essentially blamed by the left-wing base of the party.”
“She will not be tarred with the blame for bringing down this administration,” Klein added.
Watch the segment via TheBlazeTV below:
In an exclusive interview with TheBlaze, Klein confirmed that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been engaging in “heated discussions” where the former president has urged his wife to “release the documents that would exonerate her.” He reiterated that Clinton has refused to do so because she fears she would look like a “Judas,” or a traitor, in the administration and it might hurt her chances for a presidential nomination in 2016.
If the claims turn out to be true and Clinton did suggest more security be sent to Benghazi, it is appropriate to ask: why didn’t it happen?
Klein said Clinton’s request for beefed up security would have to go through CIA special ops and or the Pentagon.
“But none of that would happen with the National Security advisor to the president of the United States Tom Donnellan going to the president and saying, ‘We want to send reinforcements to Libya because our ambassador is in jeopardy,’” Klein explained.
Ultimately, he indicated the ultimate authority would have been President Obama.
Wilkow and Klein also discussed what role Obama’s closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, played in the Benghazi cover-up.
By Obama’s own admission, Klein said, the president never makes a big decision without first consulting with Jarrett.
“We have to assume that Valerie Jarrett, who is also by the way hooked into the Chicago campaign…that she was part of this cover-up in the White House.”
He continued: “The CIA got cables, the Department of Defense got cables, the NSA got cables during the attack on Benghazi, in addition to the emails that have since been made public. We know that there are cables that we haven’t seen yet, confirming the State Department cables that this was an al-Qaeda linked attack.”
These new revelations, following Tuesday night’s explosive report that 300 to 400 national security officials received emails detailing the Benghazi terrorist attack as it was happening, raise fresh questions about the truth behind the Benghazi attack.
The emails revealed that the Libyan radical Islamic group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack just two hours after it began. White House officials told CBS News that an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Libya, providing Washington with a live feed to the chaos that unfolded.
Monday’s foreign policy debate between President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney was designed to help voters better understand each man’s vision for America’s role abroad.
While I have publicly taken issue with both candidates on aspects of their foreign policies, there is no question that Mr. Romney remains the right choice for Americans on Nov. 6.
However, it is also clear neither candidate adequately addressed the gross intelligence failure in Libya that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. Too many important questions remain unanswered concerning Mr. Obama’s entire mishandling of the recent siege of Benghazi.
I would like to take this opportunity to ask the questions Americans want answered.
The first and most pressing question for Mr. Obama remains: Where the hell were the Marines?
Two of the most potentially vulnerable or dangerous American embassies are in Iraq and Libya. In Iraq, we have roughly 17,000 people guarding our ambassador. Not all of them are Marines, but some several hundred are, and they guard our ambassador behind a 10-foot-high walled fortress. In Iraq, we cannot afford to take any unnecessary risks with our diplomats and go to great lengths to ensure that there are plenty of armed personnel between our representatives and any potential threats.
In Libya, there were no uniformed Marines guarding our ambassador. Originally, there was a 16-person security team led by Col. Andrew Wood, who had requested to stay in Libya.
In July, Stevens sent memos to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requesting an “extension of tour of duty (TDY) personnel.” Stevens was referring to Col. Wood’s 16-man team, which was scheduled to leave in August. Stevens requested on Aug. 2 — just six weeks before his murder — to keep security personnel in Libya “through mid-September,” calling the conditions there “unpredictable, volatile and violent.”
Col. Woods has also said that he repeatedly requested to remain in Libya because he felt both the environment and the ambassador were unsafe. Now, after the tragic fact, no one knows what happened to Stevens‘ original request.
Why was the security team that both Stevens and Col. Woods requested sent home? Who made this decision?
What happened to the plane, Mr. President? There was supposed to be a DC-3 available to help people get out of Libya or to travel around the country as needed. But that plane was taken away on May 4. On May 8, just four days later, the State Department spent $108,000 on a new electrical charging station to “green up” our embassy in Vienna.
You have to ask: Was this “green” initiative more important than the security of our embassy in Libya? We spent about $1 million on electric cars to make a political statement in Vienna, but we somehow couldn’t find the time or resources to have just one Marine guarding our Libyan embassy, much less a much-needed 16-man personnel team. We spent $100,000 on an electric car-charging station to show Vienna how green we are, but did not keep a plane in Libya that could have been instrumental in transporting our own diplomats to safety.
The president now says the buck stops with him. Fair enough. So, President Obama, again: Where the hell were the Marines? Where was the plane? Saying the buck stops with you sounds good, but you have to follow through.
We’ve seen this kind of government incompetence before.
Once the initial shock and horror of Sept. 11, 2001, began to subside, the finger pointing commenced. Everyone agreed that our intelligence had failed — massively — but no one would claim responsibility for this failure. Reports of possible terrorist attacks had been repeatedly ignored, including the FBI turning down search warrants from their Minnesota branch that could have potentially provided us valuable information.
Still, after the worst terrorist attack in American history, no one was held accountable.
In 2001, 3,000 innocent people lost their lives — but not one government bureaucrat lost his job.
The siege of our embassy and the murder of our diplomats in Benghazi should never have happened. But these events did happen, and this administration continues to be reluctant to give us answers and provide accountability.
As a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, I am calling for hearings and a full investigation into what really happened in Benghazi, how our intelligence failed and how, ultimately, we failed to protect our own people.
What happened in Libya was inexcusable. I’m tired of hearing too many government officials make too many excuses. Those responsible must be held accountable and those at fault should be fired.
The president now says, “The buck stops here.” It’s time for him to prove it, and if he won’t, it is time for Congress to do its job and get to the bottom of it.
More than a few pundits have compared Hillary Clinton’s halfhearted claim of responsibility for embassy security – or insecurity, as it happened – to former Attorney General Janet Reno’s seeming stand-up act following the April 19, 1993, Waco disaster.
Few pundits, though, know why Janet Reno kept her job through this flaming fiasco.
Even the conservatives who have been comparing Hillary’s gambit to Reno’s don’t seem to know the back story.
They should.
“I made the decision,” Reno said at a news conference after an ungodly FBI tank assault left 74 dead at the Mount Carmel community in Waco, Texas. “I’m accountable. The buck stops with me.”
During the siege, and immediately afterwards, Bill Clinton proved to be as craven a buck passer as Obama has been post-Benghazi.
“I was aware of it. I think the attorney general made the decision,” Clinton told the media while the compound burned. “I knew it was going to be done, but the decisions were entirely theirs.”
When Clinton saw the laurels being tossed Reno’s way, however, he turned credit monger and fought for his share of the limelight.
Yes, Virginia, there was limelight to be had. What may seem incredible, at least to those who take the media seriously, is that Reno’s approval ratings went up after the debacle.
In a similarly insane media environment, John Kennedy’s numbers surged after he accepted responsibility for the Bay of Pigs, arguably the single worst presidential military blunder in anyone’s memory.
Hillary knows her history. She was in the White House when Waco burned. She grew up with the JFK myth. She understands that in the eyes of a corrupt left-leaning media, a Democrat, especially a female Democrat, need only look responsible to advance her career.
Besides, as the Clintons know full well, a media that have already stuffed Whitewater, Cattlegate, Travelgate, Filegate, Pardongate, bimbo eruptions, Juanita Broaddrick, Ron Brown and Vince Foster down the memory hole won’t even remember where Benghazi was four years from now.
This much seems obvious. But what no one seems to remember is that Reno survived Waco – indeed, Clinton survived Waco – only because one crucial piece of evidence was successfully withheld from the public.
I am talking here about the racial make-up of the Mount Carmel community. As a test, ask a group of your smartest friends to describe what the victims at Waco looked like.
Almost assuredly, your friends will describe them as white, Bible-toting, gun-loving Christians of the peckerwood variety.
What your friends almost assuredly will not know, and will be reluctant to believe, was that more than half of those presumed peckerwoods were racial minorities, 39 out of 74 to be precise.
Six of the dead were Hispanic. Six were of Asian descent. Twenty-seven were black. The victims ranged in age from 6 to 61.
Truth be told, Waco represented the single greatest federally orchestrated one-day slaughter of racial minorities on American soil since Wounded Knee in 1890, and there, at least, the Indians fought back, killing more than 30 American cavalry.
And no, this is not something I read on the Internet. I found a verifiable list of the dead, broken out by age and ethnicity, and counted them.
The FBI had given the Branch Davidians video cameras. The Clinton White House knew who was in the buildings. So, almost assuredly, did the major media, but those video images were successfully suppressed, and the public never knew.
Although usually hyper-sensitive to the concerns of racial minorities, the media turned a strategically blind eye to their very presence at Waco, not to mention their deaths.
As intended, scarcely a black person in America knew the hell visited on his brethren in those early uncertain months of the Clinton era.
That knowledge would surely have strained black affection for the Clintons and maybe even party loyalty. The media were not about to encourage such a schism.
Those under-30 may wonder how the media succeeded in keeping this information from the American people. The reason is simple: In 1993, a nearly monolithic broadcast media controlled close to all visual imagery.
Fox News did not come online until 1996. The Internet was still in its embryonic stages. There was no Google, no YouTube, no Facebook. Even well-informed conservatives were clueless about who died at Waco.
Reno would not have survived that inhuman spectacle if it took place in 2012. There was simply much too much to see. As to Benghazi, we do not yet know what the visual imagery holds. If suppressed well enough, the courageous Ms. Clinton will be primping for 2016 and contemplating ads that conclude “the buck stops here.”
October 25th, 2012, 17:41
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
PALM BEACH, Fla. – New information suggesting the Obama administration was fully aware of the terror attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, within two hours of the breakout of violence is being blasted as a cover-up of major proportions, with the help of national media who are ignoring the revelation.
“This dwarfs Watergate, weapons of mass destruction, whatever,” said radio host Rush Limbaugh Wednesday afternoon.
“This dwarfs Iran-Contra, about which the media spent three solid years trying to take out Ronald Reagan. The latest shoe to drop in the Benghazi disaster is the news that the State Department was e-mailing about the attack on the consulate and the terrorists who they thought were behind it within two hours, and the e-mails went to the Situation Room of the White House. Obama knew.”
For weeks after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Obama and his surrogates proffered that the violence was merely an improptu response to an anti-Muslim video.
But reports today from several agencies including Reuters and CBS News reveal the administration knew precisely what was going on almost immediately, courtesy of emails.
Sharyl Attkisson at CBS says: “At 4:05 p.m. Eastern time, on September 11, an alert from the State Department Operations Center was issued to a number government and intelligence agencies. Included were the White House Situation Room, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI.
“‘US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” — “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM (Chief of Mission/embassy) personnel are in the compound safe haven.’”
And Reuters reports the emails specifically mention the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
Limbaugh said for the administration to keep claiming it was reaction to a video was worse than misleading.
“They lied, folks. I don’t know how else to say it,” he said. “They knew exactly what happened and who was responsible for it and they knew what was happening. They knew it was not a video, they knew it was not a protest that had gotten out of hand … . It was a preplanned terror attack. There was real-time video of it.”
Limbaugh also scorched Obama for not sending in U.S. military to help the Americans at the consulate:
“The president may not have been aware that he had aircraft carriers in the region that planes land on and take off from and they go out and complete missions and they come back and they land. And we got these things they call submarines. They go under the water so the bad guys can’t see ‘em. They’re in the region, too. We got some naval assets in that region that could have been used.
“They could have been authorized to take action to save the lives of Americans.
Remember: Four dead in a seven-hour attack, two of them died in the final hours. This government made not one move, with full knowledge of what was going on, to protect those Americans. We had hundreds of people watching in real time, folks, as 30 Americans were being attacked for seven hours. Nobody rode to their rescue.”
Limbaugh says most of the national media is now ignoring the revelations from the emails.
“What we’re watching here today is the equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein helping Nixon cover up Watergate,” he said. “The mainstream media is Woodward and Bernstein.
Watergate is Benghazi. Except this time, Woodward and Bernstein are helping Nixon cover it up.”
“It’s just maddening,” he continued, “and to have the story basically ignored and covered up today is evidence to me of just how devastating it is. I think the regime is barely holding its campaign together. I think this campaign is leaking. Imagine a dike with all the holes in it, and the holes are the states, and the regime has got people plugging the holes with fingers and doing everything they can to stop the flow. I think they’re very close here to being swept away by a tidal wave. I think everybody involved knows it.”
He suggested several theories as to why the events have transpired as they have, including “gross, unbelievable, incalculable incompetence;” “bald-faced lying;” and a political calculation since Obama has been claiming al-Qaida terrorists have been decimated under his watch.
“There’s another possibility here,” added Limbaugh. “It could be very simple. Obama simply wasn’t engaged when this was going on. He wasn’t around. He didn’t want to be engaged. He didn’t want to be told. He didn’t want to have to do anything. And therefore, they were paralyzed. Nobody knew what to do because he didn’t care.”
October 26th, 2012, 10:26
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Part 1 of the interview with Charles Woods is above. Part 2 is at the bottom of this article.
Thursday on the Glenn Beck Program, Glenn interviewed Charles Woods whose son Tyrone Woods, a former Navy SEAL, was killed during the attacks on the Libyan embassy in Benghazi.
The interview is one of the first he had done since his son’s death. During his talk with Glenn, he revealed the shocking details of his meetings with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to Woods, none of our country’s leaders were empathetic with his situation, nor were they honest about what really happened to his son. And it has only been through his personal faith that he has remained centered and calm through this tragedy.
When he joined the program, Woods explained that he had been a fan of Glenn’s radio show, but hadn’t listened for several months. The other day he happened to tune in and heard Glenn reviewing the available intelligence that the White House had access to in regards to the attack, as well as the evidence that the administration did not do all they could have done to rescue the four Americans killed. Woods decided he needed to speak up. He first called into Glenn’s program but could not get through, and so he tried Lars Larson where he first told his story.
In the interview with Glenn, Woods detailed his encounters with the top members of the Obama administration, including the President himself.
“I’m a retired attorney for six years I was an administrative law judge and in the several thousands cases I heard my job was to tell who was telling the truth and who wasn’t,” Woods explained. “There were four pods at Andrews Air Force Base and when he (Obama) came over to where we were I could tell he was very conflicted person who was not at peace with himself. Shaking hands with him quite frankly was like shaking hands with a dead fish. His face was pointed towards me but he would not look me in the eye. His eyes were over my shoulder and not in a forceful voice said ‘I’m really sorry Mr. Woods.’”
“And I could tell he was not sorry. He had no remorse,” Woods continued.
“The Vice President was also there,” Woods explained. “He said ‘I’m Joe Biden’. He said he had received one of these ‘damn phone calls’ when he had lost a family member. And then about a half hour later he approached me and said – and these are the exact words he said I don’t speak like this – quote and in an extremely loud and boisterous voice he said: ‘Did your sons always have balls the size of cueballs?’”
“I will ask you the question: Is that the voice of someone who is truly sorry?” Woods asked Glenn.
Glenn was most taken aback by the story of what Hillary Clinton told Woods. For over a week, the White House has been trying to push the narrative that President Obama said from the beginning that the attack on the embassy was a terrorist attack, not the a protest that got out of hand . But Clinton’s statements to Woods conflicted with that statement.
Woods explained, “I do appreciate her taking the time from her schedule to meet with the four families. While we were in the pod over there with our family she came over shook my hand and I reached out and hugged her shoulder. Her countenance was not good. And she made the statement to me that first of all she was sorry and then she said ‘We will make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.’ ”
“And when she said that I could tell that she was not telling me the truth. She’s more intelligent than I am, and she had to also know she was not telling me the truth.”
After describing his encounters with the members of the Obama administration, Woods expressed frustration with the lack of transparency on what really happened in Libya.
“I’m totally transparent in my life. I have nothing to hide. Why are they not transparent?” he said.
Originally, Woods and the rest of the families of those killed had decided they would not release a statement regarding the incident. However, after speaking with his wife Woods decided it would be best to put his feelings on paper and vocalize his thoughts.
Woods wrote:
I want to honor my son, Ty Woods, who responded to the cries for help and voluntarily sacrificed his life to protect the lives of other Americans. In the last few days it has become public knowledge that within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew that these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied. Apparently C-130s wer ready to repsond immediately. In less than an hour the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved.
After seven hours of fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision.
This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with integrity and honor. My son was a true American hero. We need more heroes today. My son showed moral courage. This is an opportunity for the person or persons who made the decision to sacrifice my son’s life to stand up.
Woods told Glenn and TheBlaze audience that his sense of peace after the loss of his son was tied to his faith. It had only been through God, faith, and prayer that he had remained calm and centered through this tragedy.
“The only thing I want is to hug my son Ty in Heaven. At this point I know where he’s at, I just need to make sure I am there as well. And that means I have to extend total forgiveness to everyone,” Woods said.
Part 2 of the interview:
October 26th, 2012, 10:59
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Last night, it was revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered more security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi before it was attacked where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were murdered by Al-Qaeda but President Obama denied the request.
The news broke on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” hosted by Andrew Wilkow, by best-selling author, Ed Klein who said the legal counsel to Clinton had informed him of this information.
Klein also said that those same sources said that former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife [Hillary] to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.
Klein explained that everyone knew what was happening in Benghazi from the CIA to the National Security Agency and that there’s intelligence cables that have not been released.
Wilkow asked, “If everybody knew this including the White House, who would have given the order to go in and save the ambassador?”
Klein, “The President…he should have given the order to use the rapid reaction force…”
Wilkow, “Not Petraeus?”
Klein, “Well it has to come from the president.”
Wilkow also asked Klein about Valerie Jarrett who’s the Senior Advisor to Obama and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, and her role in this cover-up.
Klein said, “We don’t know but we can only assume that every action that the president takes, and he said so, he is on the record saying “I don’t take any actions without passing it by Valerie Jarrett”... so we have to assume that Valerie Jarrett whose also by the way, hooked into the Chicago campaign line…she has a direct line to David Axlerod, was a part of this whole cover-up in the White House.”
This latest news comes on the heels when the Paulding County Republican Examiner reported that former CIA officer, Clare Lopez was a guest on the Glenn Beck TV on Monday evening and told Beck, “They let our ambassador and others die. In real time, watching it happen, and they didn't do anything about it.”
October 26th, 2012, 13:16
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
6 weeks and still no answers to deaths of 4 Americans in Benghazi
By K.T. McFarland
Published October 25, 2012
FoxNews.com
Damage at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the United States September 11, 2012. An American staff member of the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound, Libyan security sources said on Wednesday. Armed gunmen attacked the compound on Tuesday evening, clashing with Libyan security forces before the latter withdrew as they came under heavy fire. REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori (LIBYA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)
Remember that picture of the White House Situation room two years ago, with President Obama and his top advisers transfixed by real-time video of the the Navy Seals attacking and killing Usama Bin Laden? We could almost feel the tension along with them – would the SEALs find bin Laden? Would they kill him? Would the SEALs make it out safely? Americans from coast to coast erupted in cheers when the president told us the Navy SEALs had found and killed bin Laden.
Turns out there was another real-time video, on September 11, that was captured by a surveillance drone and fed to classified computer screens of senior officials at State, Defense, the CIA and the White House, maybe even to President Obama himself. This video wasn’t of Navy SEALs attacking a terrorist compound and killing Al Qaeda, it was of Al Qaeda terrorists attacking two US compounds and killing former Navy SEALs.
After the bin Laden killing the highest administration officials told the American people in vivid detail how they tracked and killed the terror mastermind. But the Benghazi video? No heroic Oval Office speech. No self-congratulatory press conferences. No photos of a brave president making a gutsy decision to bring terrorists to justice, come what may.
In the end, maybe the entire Benghazi affair boils down to one thing – don’t do anything to jeopardize the president’s chances for reelection.
-
This time? From the White House? Lies…. Obfuscation… Indecision….Confusion…. Cover-up. And from the mainstream media? Hear no evil….See no evil…..Speak no evil….Silence.
It’s now six weeks and counting and we STILL have no answers to why and how four Americans were killed in Benghazi. We have yet to get a straight story about who killed them. No officials have explained why repeated requests for security were denied before September 11. The secretary of state and the president have said they were responsible, but neither have explained why, once Americans were under attack, they did not send forces to rescue them. Even now, there have been no efforts to punish those who killed them.
We are told to wait, there is an investigation underway that will sort through the emails and clear the fog of war and we will know the truth – after the election. In the end, maybe the entire Benghazi affair boils down to one thing – don’t do anything to jeopardize the president’s chances for reelection. Have we really descended to the point where in nothing matters – not protecting US diplomats abroad, not rescuing them when they’re attacked, not seeking out their killers – as much as getting reelected. Is that the new standard of “leadership” in Washington?
No matter what happens on Election Day, the questions remain -- what did the president know and when did he know it?
Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland is a Fox News National Security Analyst and host of FoxNews.com's "DefCon 3." She is a Distinguished Adviser to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. She wrote Secretary of Defense Weinberger’s November 1984 "Principles of War Speech" which laid out the Weinberger Doctrine. Be sure to watch "K.T." every Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET on FoxNews.com's "DefCon3"-- already one of the Web's most watched national security programs.
October 25, 2012 8:21 pm Benghazi attack suspect killed in Egypt
By Borzou Daragahi in Cairo
A man suspected of involvement in a deadly attack on the US consulate in eastern Libya was killed following a ferocious gun battle in a Cairo suburb, security officials told state and independent media.
The man, described as a Libyan citizen with ties to militant Islamist groups, died after police attempted to raid his apartment on Wednesday morning in the western Cairo suburb of Nasr City, local media reported, showing pictures of the fire-scarred battle scene.
“The gunman who was killed when police raided an apartment in Nasr City . . . is suspected of having connections with the group that carried out the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi,” an Egyptian police official told Agence France-Presse.
US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed when suspected Islamic militants stormed the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi. US officials have vowed to avenge the attack.
High-level officials including Leon Panetta, US defence secretary, have pressed nascent governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to crack down on militants responsible for the attack and a series of others in the region.
The attacks on diplomatic missions have become tangled in the US presidential election, prompting Governor Mitt Romney’s camp to question President Barack Obama’s national security and foreign policy credentials.
It appears that Washington demands to crack down on those responsible have borne fruit. Tunisian authorities recently extradited a Tunisian man on terrorism charges amid allegations that he was linked to the Benghazi attack, his attorney disclosed on Thursday. The man, Ali Hamzi, was reportedly arrested in Turkey and deported to Tunisia on October 11.
Separately, a Tunisian court sentenced Islamic militant cleric Abu Ayoub to a year in prison for his role in a September 14 attack on the US embassy in Tunis which led to four deaths. The US ambassador had demanded those responsible for the attack be brought to justice.
The shoot-out in Cairo was a rare outbreak of armed confrontation in Egypt, where political disputes are often settled with fists, clubs and tear gas. Witnesses described heavy gunfire and explosions as police attempted to arrest the suspected militant following a tip-off, local media reported.
Police told local media they were attacked by the suspect or suspects inside the building after they surrounded it. The confrontation lasted 90 minutes before a fire broke out. Police discovered one heavily charred body, believed to be that of the assailant. Investigators found a cache of explosives, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition and firearms in the apartment, newspapers reported.
October 26th, 2012, 15:07
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Is the man the Obama administration appointed on October 4 as key investigator for the terror attacks in Benghazi an Islamist-sympathizer? According to recently published reports, the new chairman of a State Department’s “Accountability Review Board,” which is heading the federal investigation into the Benghazi terror attacks, has been accused of being an “apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran.”
What’s more, the man in question — former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering — has documented ties with the controversial group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR, of course, is a documented Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and was named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terror-funding trial in U.S. history.
To make matters worse, Pickering is also co-chairman of the board of George Soros’ International Crisis Group who has ties to other Islamic organizations as well, including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been described as pro-Iran “front group.”
NIAC lost what Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag describes as ”an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Pickering, who is a member of NIAC’s advisory board, formerly served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1997 to 2000). He was featured in a report “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by former CIA officer Clare M. Lopez, who was recently featured on the Glenn Beck Program to discuss the motivations behind the terror-attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.
Pickering’s Islamic-connections came to light after a report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism was published, exposing what it called the “scores” of established, radical Islamists who met with senior administration officials over the course of hundreds of White House visits.
“Ambassador Pickering’s positions on Iran include calls for bilateral talks without preconditions and a plan for a multinational uranium enrichment consortium in Iran,” Lopez wrote.
As noted by Vadum, Pickering was, as of Tuesday evening, poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.” Along with Pickering, the discussion featured Arab American Institute president James J. Zogby, American Association for Muslim Advancement executive director Daisy Khan, and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who serves as chairman of the Cordoba Initiative. Vadum characterized Khan and Rauf as “prime movers behind the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.” Further, he notes:
Khan is known for her over-the-top attacks on those who question the wisdom of building a Muslim holy site so close to the place where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in an Islamist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Asked in 2010 if America was “Islamophobic,” Khan replied that “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims,” she said.
Meanwhile Soros-funded organizations including the International Crisis Group are tirelessly working to champion the defeat of America’s alleged xenophobic bent and rampant Islamophobia. Perhaps there are no coincidences.
October 26th, 2012, 15:15
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
The situation quickly got heated on the set of “Fox & Friends” this morning when Geraldo Rivera clashed with the show’s hosts over details surrounding the Benghazi terror attack. At the center of the debate was Rivera’s contention that the government was not watching the attack on the U.S. consulate in real time.
Rivera argued that drones didn’t arrive at the scene until two and a half hours after the attack commenced, and suggested that the attack couldn’t have been viewed in real-time. (The attack, though, was seven hours long, potentially giving plenty of time for the drones to catch the attack).
“This is preposterous — this notion that the Pentagon was monitoring this in real time,” Rivera said, with “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy countering that the State Department was, indeed, monitoring as the situation unfolded.
“People, stop. Stop this right now with this whole notion of live TV, and why didn’t we respond. It is not what happened,” Rivera continued.
The investigative reporter went on to say that the tragic situation is being needlessly politicized, calling for an end to the issue’s alleged exploitation.
“I think we have to stop this politicizing,” he said. “We’re getting away from the real issue. Why wasn’t there security before this happened?”
The television personality argued that there is no definitive evidence for the “reckless allegations” that drones observed violence occurring as it unfolded. He also said that there are other more pertinent issues to explore, including whether, prior to the attack, Congress was willing to give funds to bolster security in Libya.
“We should know that drones weren’t overheard in watching this in real time,” Rivera again proclaimed later on in the discussion.
Watch the clash, below:
While the reporter dismissed the notion that the battle was being viewed live by officials as it progressed, an October 20 report from CBS News claims that a portion of it was, indeed, seen by officials. In fact, according to the network, “hours after the attack began, an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Benghazi, and that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft apparently observed the final hours of the protracted battle.”
Rivera’s contention that the attack wasn’t viewed live, at least when juxtaposed against CBS’s claims, is questionable. That said, both Rivera and CBS seem to corroborate the notion that drones didn’t arrive until hours after the militant attack began. Another report from the outlet published on Thursday provided additional details on the drone operations over Benghazi on September 11:
Two and a half hours after the attack began, an unarmed predator drone was diverted from a surveillance mission over another part of Libya to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
That, plus a second unarmed drone dispatched four hours and 15 minutes later, were the only U.S. military forces sent to the scene of the attack. Commandos were dispatched from Europe to an air field in Sigonella, Sicily, but by the time they got there the attack in Benghazi was over.
While some, like Rivera, view the continued focus on drones and other related issues as merely political, others — particularly Republican lawmakers — believe it is essential that all of the details surrounding the attack are explored.
In terms of the military response, there are many questions still worth asking. In the October 20 report, CBS continued, providing more on the military response:
The State Department, White House and Pentagon declined to say what military options were available. A White House official told CBS News that, at the start of the attack, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies.”
But it was too late to help the Americans in Benghazi. The ambassador and three others were dead.
A White House official told CBS News that a “small group of reinforcements” was sent from Tripoli to Benghazi, but declined to say how many or what time they arrived.
As for Rivera’s view, not everyone agrees. Retired CIA officer Gary Berntsen said that he believes help could have arrived sooner — and he also accused the government of needlessly standing by and watching the atrocities unfold.
“You find a way to make this happen. There isn’t a plan for every single engagement.
Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments,” he said. “They made zero adjustments in this. They stood and they watched and our people died.”
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, though, has defended the military and claimed that taking direct ground action would have been too confusing at the time. Because of the convoluted nature of the situation on the ground, he said that deploying troops there without having real-time information would have been too hazardous.
October 26th, 2012, 16:53
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Explosive new allegations surrounding the Benghazi attack emerged this morning, with FOX News’ Jennifer Griffin reporting that sources have confirmed that three urgent requests for military assistance sent from the CIA annex were all denied; CIA operators were apparently told to “stand down” rather than respond when shots were heard around 9:40 p.m. on September 11. Following the alleged developments, Charles Woods, father of ex-Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods who was killed in the attack, passionately responded to this new information on Glenn Beck’s radio program (see his comments at the end of the article).
Let’s begin by examining the new-found allegations: Glen Doherty and Woods, the two former Navy SEALS who were among the four Americans inevitably murdered, allegedly disobeyed orders from superiors to “stand down” in the wake of the attack. Despite being told by higher-ups not to respond, they purportedly decided to go to the main consulate building to help U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others who were under siege.
While it was previously known that these men arrived on the scene to provide assistance, the alleged “stand down” orders and the repeatedly-denied requests for military assistance are new developments to a story that seems to be continuously unraveling.
When the attack first took form, Doherty and Woods were at a secure CIA annex only one mile away from the chaos unfolding at the compound. After the men heard shots fired, they promptly let the chain of command know about the situation on the ground. However, FOX’s sources claim that they were told to refrain from action. This same mandate was given to the men when they called a second time just one hour later to report that the dangerous situation was still unfolding at the consulate.
After being told twice to refrain from involvement, Woods, Doherty and two others ignored orders and made their way to the main compound, where violence was raging. At this point, the building was on fire and shots were exchanged, however they took action.
Woods, Doherty and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the Consulate which at that point was on fire….The quick reaction force from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the Consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.
At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.
Earlier today, TheBlaze reported about the questions surrounding the lack of a military response to the situation on the ground. Sources appear to claim that there were potential options that could have been pursued, although these avenues were reportedly not taken during the September 11 attack. While the forces available at Sigonella could have been flown into Benghazi in less than two hours, they, too, were also allegedly told to “stand down.”
Around 3 a.m. that evening, a pro-U.S. Libyan militia finally showed up at the CIA annex. And an American Quick Reaction Force that was sent from Tripoli arrived at the Benghazi airport at 2 a.m., but was delayed for 45 minutes over transportation confusion. In both instances, though, the arrivals were hours after the initial attack took place.
FOX News has more regarding how Woods and Doherty were killed hours after the initial attack on the consulate commenced. Rather than perishing at the main compound, the ex-Navy SEALS were back at the CIA annex when the attach took place:
Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the Consulate began — a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex.
Here’s additional information about the deadly attack that took Woods and Doherty’s lives, as reported by CNN back in September:
After arriving back at the annex, the incident was far from over for the security team, which included Woods and Doherty. An attack was launched on the annex — this one more intense than the initial assault on the main building.
Military officials in Benghazi told CNN that rocket-propelled grenades were among the heavy firepower used by the attackers at the annex, with one official saying mortars were also fired.
“It was during that (second attack) that two additional U.S. personnel were killed and two others were wounded,” a senior administration official said last week in providing details of the attack. Those two victims were later confirmed to be Doherty and Woods.
Earlier today, TheBlaze covered debate surrounding drones and whether or not U.S. officials had the ability to watch a portion of the Libyan attack in real time. Considering these latest allegations, this question seems increasingly important.
Some, like reporter Geraldo Rivera, have dismissed the notion that the battle was being viewed live by officials as it progressed. But an October 20 report from CBS News claims that a portion of the attack was potentially seen by officials. In fact, according to the network, “hours after the attack began, an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Benghazi, and that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft apparently observed the final hours of the protracted battle.”
FOX, too, reported today that there were two military surveillance drones that were sent to Benghazi after the attack on the U.S. consulate began. Both of these drones had the capability to send images back to government officials (including the White House situation room), although it’s not immediately clear how, if at all, these images were used.
On Thursday, TheBlaze’s Madeleine Morgenstern covered Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s response to questions surrounding military reaction. He said that forces did not intervene because officials did not have enough “real-time information” about what was happening on the ground.
“The basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta said. “And as a result of not having that kind of information…[we] felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
On Friday morning, radio host Glenn Beck interviewed Charles Woods, father of ex-Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods. He reacted to the explosive, new allegations, deriding the “stand down” orders and calling for “moral strength.” Here is his complete on-air reaction:
“That is cowardice by the people that issued that order. And our country is not a country of cowards. Our country is the greatest nation on Earth. And what we need to do is we need to raise up a generation of American heroes just like Ty who is an American hero. But in order to do that, we need to raise up a generation that has not just physical strength but moral strength. We do not need another generation of liars who lack moral strength.”
Here’s the clip:
These revelations come one day after TheBlaze reported that President Barack Obama first alluded to his belief that the Benghazi assault was pre-planned just hours after the assault unfolded. He made these claims in an obscure CBS News clip that was part of a larger interview (this portion of his September 12 “60 Minutes” appearance was not originally aired) which came to light over the past few days.
In the days following Obama’s interview, the administration’s claims about the Libya attack changed drastically, as officials reported that it was the result of an anti-Islam film called “Innocence of Muslims.” Considering Obama’s original views on the matter, the timeline of the administration’s rhetoric has come under scrutiny.