Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi

[American Patriot]

Two people have been arrested in connection with this attack. Both have forged passports. Don't know more yet.

[MinutemanCO]

I see the liquidation of several Libyan Muslim extremists happening in the near future. Gathering intel my ass.

[Avvakum]

What a sorry excuse for a 'Commander in Chief' we have in the United States of America. If this had been a White Conservative President instead of a Negro Leftist, there'd be calls for his impeachment already among the Democrats.

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Benghazi attack puts Hillary Clinton's diplomatic legacy at risk

Anne Gearan, The Washington Post
Wednesday, 10 October 2012



The fatal attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya last month has become a test of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's leadership and a threat to her much-admired legacy as America's top diplomat just a few months before she plans to step down.

Clinton was among the first Obama administration officials to publicly condemn the attack and mourn the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But as the State Department has weathered Republican-led criticism that it misread warning signs before the Sept. 11 attack, Clinton has been far less visible.

Clinton will not appear at a Wednesday oversight hearing; House Republicans have said they will question the State Department's security preparations and the administration's account of the attack in the Libyan city of Benghazi. The State Department will instead send a trusted career diplomat along with three security officials.

Ahead of the hearing, State Department officials provided new details about the attack while asserting that there had been no way to predict or prevent the sustained assault.

"The lethality and the number of armed people is unprecedented. There had been no attack like that anywhere in Libya - Tripoli, Benghazi or elsewhere - in the time we had been there," said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss events still being investigated. "It would be very, very hard to find a precedent for an attack like that in recent diplomatic history."

But the new details also appeared to confirm that there was no protest or other benign gathering outside the compound gates, as initially described by some in the administration.

A month before the presidential election, with Republican nominee Mitt Romney surging in the polls, members of the GOP increasingly see the Libya attack as a political vulnerability for President Barack Obama.

Republicans accuse Obama and top administration officials of overlooking warning signs before the attack and trying to deflect questions about terrorism afterward.

"There was a clear disconnect between what security officials on the ground felt they needed and what officials in Washington would approve," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Tuesday.

"Reports that senior State Department officials told security personnel in Libya to not even make certain security requests are especially troubling."

Clinton briefed members of Congress privately days after the attack and has called individual members frequently. She spoke to Issa on Monday, another senior State Department official said.

"They did not ask, and there was no serious discussion at this point that she would testify," the official said.

Clinton has made no public mention of the attack or investigation since Oct. 3. She has no public speaking events on her schedule this week. A trusted Clinton confidant who is the chief protector of her image is reviewing all media inquiries related to the attack.

"It did happen on her watch, so is the secretary responsible? The secretary is always responsible," said P.J. Crowley, a former assistant secretary of state for public affairs under Clinton and now a professor at George Washington University.

"You've gotta look at this in the full picture. It's a tragedy that happened on her watch, but I don't think it will diminish what is a very significant record," Crowley said.

Frequently touted as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, Clinton plans to step down this year after a tenure that has made her among the most-traveled and most respected American diplomats. Her approval ratings in national polls hover around 70 percent, making her more popular than Obama.

But the deaths in Benghazi have opened Clinton up to the charge that her department should have done more to safeguard diplomats from militants in an increasingly violent country.

Briefing reporters on Tuesday, State Department officials said that Stevens' trip had been routine before the attack and that on the night of the attack he escorted his last guest out the front gate about 8:30 p.m. The ambassador stood on the quiet street to say goodbye, then retired to his room.

At 9:40 p.m., there was an explosion and gunfire at the gates, and a wave of armed men flowed into the compound. The armed crowd quickly assaulted all four buildings on the compound with mortars, small arms and possibly with rocket-propelled grenades, the official said.

With the building on fire and rapidly filling with smoke, a security agent tried to lead Stevens and information officer Sean Smith out a bedroom window, but when the agent tumbled out, the two others did not follow, the official said. Repeated attempts by the agent to find Stevens and Smith failed.

Neither Romney nor congressional Republicans have directly faulted Clinton over security in Libya and do not appear eager to saddle her with the blame.

Instead, much of the Republican criticism has been directed at Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who initially said that the attacks were apparently the result of anti-American protests that spun out of control.

Still, Issa sent a stern letter to Clinton last week, asking why additional security had been denied to diplomats at the lightly defended mission in Benghazi where Stevens died. The letter questioned the administration's early public claim that the attack was part of a spontaneous public protest over an anti-Muslim Internet video.

The State Department has said that a review panel, led by retired diplomat Thomas Pickering, is working to answer such questions.

"Our posture is to be as cooperative as we possibly can," Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said Tuesday.

Her comments came as the Republican-led oversight committee released the State Department's compilation of more than 200 security-related threats in Libya since June 2011.

The documents show that less than two months before the attack in Benghazi, the State Department assessed that the risk of violence to diplomats and other Americans in Libya was high and that the weak U.S.-backed government in Tripoli could do little about it.

The department, the documents show, approved a 30 percent "danger pay" bonus for Americans working in Libya during the summer.

The department's former top security officer has told the House committee that he had recommended keeping U.S. military and additional State Department security forces on hand through October. "The [Libyan government] was overwhelmed and could not guarantee our protection," former regional security officer Eric A. Nordstrom wrote Oct. 1. "Sadly, that point was reaffirmed Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi."

Nordstrom is scheduled to testify at Wednesday's oversight hearing.

Although Clinton will not appear, the State Department requested that Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy be a witness. Little known outside Washington, Kennedy is a low-key bureaucratic firefighter who was already managing the back and forth with Congress over the attacks.

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Krauthammer On Libya Cover Up: Hillary Clinton Told Video Story While Body Of Ambassador Was Next To Her



CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's beyond a disconnect, it is utterly damning. There are two scandals going on. The first is the coverup. We now know, and they knew earlier there was no mob, there was no demonstration, there was no incentive about the video. It was all a completely false story. This was simply an attack of our men who infiltrated and killed our people.

So everything that Susan Rice said was a confection, it was an invention. And as you showed, it was repeated again and again. You had Hillary Clinton speaking of the video as the body of the ambassador was lying next to her. Then you had Susan Rice spinning the tails. You had the president of the United States addressing the [U.N.] General Assembly more than two weeks later talking about the video, the insult to Islam, et cetera. You have this entire story going all along. They're trying to sell the video, they're trying to sell extremism and they're trying to sell all of this at a time when they know it isn't true. So that's number one. That's a scandal and I think it has to do with the fact that they were spiking the football over the death of bin Laden and al-Qaeda a week earlier in Charlotte and this is a contradiction of it.

The second scandal is the lack of security at the site before. So what happened before? And I think that what happened was the administration, it wasn't a lack of money that they withdrew all the support and they didn't put up the required barbed wire and the fences and all of that. It was under the theory which starts with Obama at the beginning; we don't want to be intruders in the area, we don't want to be oppositional, we don't want to have a fortress in America, we don't want to look imperialist. We want to blend in with the people and help them build. That's a noble aspiration and that was the motive for having very light security, but it was a catastrophically wrong decision to do it in Benghazi in a no man's land in Dodge City and it cost us the lives of the Ambassador and three other Americans. bret

[vector7]

Someone 'CUT' US security before Benghazi consulate attack


'While the sound of gunfire in and around Tripoli subsided... the situation remained unstable'

Security in Libya was reduced before last month's attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, even as violence worsened, a US panel has heard.
A former US Army official in Libya, Lt Col Andrew Wood, said that security in the country had been "weak".

The rancorous congressional committee hearing centred on whether the state department had sought enough diplomatic security staff for the mission.
The BBC's Mark Mardell says Wednesday's session was highly political.

A month before the US election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been making the Benghazi attack the centrepiece of his case against President Barack Obama's foreign policy.
'Rare and extraordinary' Lt Col Wood told Wednesday's hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that when he arrived in Libya in February there had been three US diplomatic special security teams in the country, but by August they had been withdrawn.

He also said that the security situation in Libya had worsened before the 11 September attack, in which four Americans died, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

He said he had visited Benghazi twice and was there in June when the British ambassador's convoy was attacked, one of a dozen incidents before the assault on the consulate.

"The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there," Lt Col Wood told the congressional hearing.

"Fighting between militias was still common when I departed. Some militias appeared to be disintegrating into organisations resembling freelance criminal operations.

"Targeted attacks against westerners were on the increase."

He said that in June there had been a direct threat made against the ambassador on Facebook, mentioning that he liked to jog regularly.

State department officials defended themselves during the hearing from accusations that they had been unprepared.

"We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11," said Charlene Lamb, the deputy secretary of state for diplomatic security.

She noted there had been five diplomatic security agents in Benghazi at the time of the attack, as well as extra security staff.

However, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Wednesday that in hindsight there was "no question that the security was not enough to prevent that tragedy from happening".

Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, told the hearing that the Benghazi incident had been "an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men".

His statement echoed a state department briefing on Tuesday that the government had never concluded the sacking of the Benghazi mission was motivated by a US-made video ridiculing Muslims.

In the days after the attack Mr Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, described it as a "spontaneous" one that arose out of a protest against the film.

Mr Kennedy suggested that Obama administration officials had been working off the best intelligence they had at the time.

Reuters news agency reported last week that hours after the attack the White House had received a dozen reports suggesting al-Qaeda-linked militants were responsible.

'No plan' The top US security chief in Libya until July, Eric Nordstrom, also appeared before the committee.


Republican panel members grilled state department officials over rationales for security levels

Mr Nordstrom testified that he had been criticised for seeking more security.

"There was no plan and it was hoped it would get better," he said.

He told the committee that conversations he had with people in Washington had led him to believe that it was "abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident".

During the hearing, Democrats accused committee chair Darrell Issa and his Republican-controlled panel of refusing to make witnesses available, withholding documents and effectively excluding Democrats from a fact-finding trip to Libya.

Republicans accused state department officials of not being fully co-operative with their probe.

Democratic staff noted that House Republicans had voted for an embassy security funding package that was $459m (£286m) less than what the Obama administration had requested.


Someone Has Finally Thrown Obama Under The Bus And Her Name Is Hillary Clinton

October 10, 2012 | Filed under 2012 Presidential Race,Barack Obama,Hillary Clinton,War On Terror | Posted by Doug Johnson


What other conclusions can one draw from this from the AP?

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Tuesday it never concluded that the consulate attack in Libya stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam, raising further questions about why the Obama administration used that explanation for more than a week after assailants killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

The revelation came as new documents suggested internal disagreement over appropriate levels of security before the attack, which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S.
Briefing reporters ahead of a hotly anticipated congressional hearing Wednesday, State Department officials provided their most detailed rundown of how a peaceful day in Benghazi devolved into a sustained attack that involved multiple groups of men armed with weapons such as machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars over an expanse of more than a mile.

But asked about the administration’s initial — and since retracted — explanation linking the violence to protests over an anti-Muslim video circulating on the Internet, one official said, “That was not our conclusion.” He called it a question for “others” to answer, without specifying. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, and provided no evidence that might suggest a case of spontaneous violence or angry protests that went too far.

Just as a reminder the Obama administration couldn’t get its story squared with the facts for well over a week. The Heritage Foundation put out this helpful video essay of the administration’s cover up on the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.

[Malsua]

Now if we can just get 47% of the population on the dole to throw Obama under the bus.

[American Patriot]

lol

I listened to much of the hearings out of the corner of my ear yesterday. That Col. Woods guy... I think he wants blood. He's a very quiet, humble man but he was very clear on why he was there. He sounded very sincere to me.

Some of the others, especially that one woman in the pictures above in blue were dodging answers. The woman in blue is an "Excuse Maker". She's one of those people who aren't so rare in the government who are typical "Yes Men". She will say yes yes yes boss, yes! to make her boss happy. In short she will lie her ass off to make herself and her boss look good.

(That was the impression I got immediately, then she opened her mouth and proved it). I HATE people like that. Tell the fucking truth and tell it like it is. Don't white wash shit. I HATE that. If I were CEO of something and someone did that, I'd fire them on the SPOT.

[American Patriot]

Posted at 08:45 AM ET, 10/11/2012 Is Benghazi Obama’s Waterloo?

By Jennifer Rubin

Does the Libya consulate scandal matter in the presidential election? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but if it didn’t, then left-wing bloggers wouldn’t be trying to ignore it and come up with more “shiny objects” with which to attempt to distract voters.
On one level it is self-evident that a story involving the deaths of four Americans at the hands of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists and the revelation that the dead men were denied additional security is a big deal. Add in a false narrative coming directly from the mouth of the White House spokesman and a healthy game of finger -pointing between the State Department and others as to who is responsible for misleading the American people and you have a huge story.
The compelling testimony of the former regional security officer in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, recounting his ordeal is not going to be brushed aside lightly. As ABC News reported:

The former regional security officer in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, recalled talking to a regional director and asking for twelve security agents.

“His response to that was, ‘You are asking for the sun, moon and the stars.’ And my response to him – his name was Jim – ‘Jim, you know what makes most frustrating about this assignment? It is not the hardships, it is not the gunfire, it is not the threats. It is dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me. And I added (sic) it by saying, ‘For me the Taliban is on the inside of the building.’”

In this case the damage to President Obama is especially acute because of four specific factors unique to this election. Any one of them would be sufficient to create an obstacle to his reelection; all four of them make it that much harder for him to win.
First, Obama is behind and must recapture the momentum. (You can tell because the Obama team is spinning internal polls, a sure sign of being behind and needing to stem panic). Days spent batting back a bad storyline are wasted for him. He needs to stop playing defense ( on his rotten debate, on his dopey Big Bird obsession, on Libya) and figure out how to beat the other guy. So long as a big, juicy scandal is sucking up the oxygen that’s hard to do.
Second, Obama has hidden from the press on the story, giving the appearance he has something to conceal. Moreover, that puts VP Joe Biden in the position of being the first person on the ticket to field questions. How’d you like to put your political future and the most critical response to a growing scandal in Biden’s hands? You see the point.
Third, Obama in his post-debate humiliation has staked everything on making Mitt Romney out to be a liar. It hasn’t worked because Obama’s accusations ( on the “$5 trillion tax cut,” especially) don’t hold up and his own claims ( his phony $4 trillion debt plan) are tallying up the Pinocchios. But now does he really want to get into a battle about transparency, credibility, and candor? Romney would be thrilled to have the conversation about misleading the American people.
Four, the Libya debacle severely hampers his touting his one actual foreign policy achievement, the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Because the administration so overplayed its accomplishment, painting it as the effective demise of Al Qaeda, even that is now a sore point. Did his boasting get in the way of honest analysis about the growing threat of Al Qaeda? Did they not take security pleas from its Libyan-based diplomats seriously because Al Qaeda was supposed to be kaput? Again, Romney is now more than willing to talk about why killing the Al Qaeda chieftain didn’t actually bury Al Qaeda. He’s glad, I’m sure, to get the chance to talk about what needs to be done to keep Americans safe (maybe not slash defense, for example). And if that weren’t enough, maybe Obama’s “leading from behind” put us in the position, as Lt. Col. Andrew Wood said in the hearing yesterday, in which Al Qaeda is much better established in Libya than we are.
At this stage in the race Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) can now afford to be somewhat more circumspect, demanding answers rather than making accusations. Why shouldn’t the president give a major address explaining what happened and why his White House ( and he, as late as Sept. 25 in his United Nations address) continued to fabricate a tale in which a protest over an anti-Muslim film resulted in the deaths of the four Americans? Why does the State Department say it didn’t tie the attacks to the film? Should someone be fired for this panoply of, at the very least, gross incompetence?
Let Biden or Obama explain what happened; it is after all ( as it was in Fast and Furious where other innocents were killed) a mess of their administration’s own making.

[American Patriot]

KT McFarland is on TV right now saying Hillary SHOULD go under oath on this. hahahaha

[American Patriot]

Peter King just called the administration liars...

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The Real Libya Attack Timeline: The Story the Obama Admin Doesn't Want You to Hear

[American Patriot]

White House moves to insulate Biden, Obama on Libya security question

Published October 12, 2012
FoxNews.com

The White House scrambled Friday to explain Vice President Biden's confusing statement that "we weren't told" of requests for more diplomatic security in Libya, claiming he was referring only to "himself" and President Obama.



Biden, during Thursday's debate, had made the controversial statement in response to criticism from Paul Ryan about the protection of diplomatic posts in Libya in the run-up to the Sept. 11 terror attack.


Moderator Martha Raddatz pressed him: "And they wanted more security there."


But Biden responded: "Well, we weren't told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again."


The comment drew swift rebukes from Republicans who pointed out that State Department officials just one day earlier had acknowledged they knew about, and turned down, requests for more security. Ryan, minutes later in the debate, corrected the vice president, saying "there were requests for extra security; those requests were not honored."


But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Biden "wasn't talking about the administration writ large," just the White House.


"He was speaking directly for himself and for the president. He meant the White House," Carney said. He claimed it was "very clear" in context, while continuing to accuse Republicans of twisting the tragedy into a "political attack."


In doing so, Carney not only came to the defense of Biden, but used his clarification to effectively insulate the White House from questions about the decision-making process. While refusing to say whether Obama and Biden were ever briefed on the security requests in Benghazi, Carney made clear that decisions on personnel were handled below them, at the State Department level.


"These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department," he said.


"What I'm saying is that matters of security personnel are appropriately discussed and decided upon at the State Department."


Biden, though, was not explicit Thursday in saying he was only talking about his and Obama's personal knowledge of the security requests.


Mitt Romney, at a campaign rally Friday afternoon in Virginia, still asserted that Biden had "directly contradicted" State Department testimony.


"He's doubling down on denial, and we need to understand exactly what happened," Romney said.


In addition to raising eyebrows over that comment, the vice president went a step further Thursday and threw the intelligence community under the bus -- putting the blame squarely on their shoulders for the faulty narrative, pushed for more than a week by the administration, that the attack was a protest spun out of control.


"That was exactly what we were told by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that. As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment," Biden said.


State Department officials who testified Wednesday suggested as well that when U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice claimed the Sunday after the attack that protests over an anti-Islam film were to blame, she was merely basing her comments on the intelligence at the time.


However, lawmakers by that point had been publicly challenging the notion that the protests were a factor. And sources have since confirmed that some in the intelligence community were pointing to terrorism within 24 hours of the attack.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...#ixzz296gvcb3r

[American Patriot]

Romney accuses Biden of contradicting State Department on Libya










RICHMOND, Virginia | Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:02pm EDT




(Reuters) - Mitt Romney accused Vice President Joe Biden on Friday of contradicting the testimony of U.S. State Department officials on Libya, in an escalation of the Republican presidential challenger's attacks over the deaths of four Americans there.


Hoping to puncture President Barack Obama's credibility on foreign policy ahead of the November 6 election, Romney jumped on comments that Biden made on Thursday night during a debate with Romney's vice presidential running mate, Paul Ryan.


When asked about whether the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya had asked for more security ahead of the attack, Biden said: "Well, we weren't told they wanted more security again. We did not know they wanted more security again."


Two State Department officials gave sworn testimony on Wednesday at a congressional hearing in Washington saying they had repeatedly requested beefed-up security for the compound before U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the assault at the site on September 11.


"The vice president directly contradicted the sworn testimony of State Department officials," Romney told a campaign rally in Richmond. "He's doubling down on denial."


"When the vice president of the United States directly contradicts the testimony, the sworn testimony of State Department officials, American citizens have a right to find out what's going on," he said.

[American Patriot]

And Hillary is still trying to cover for the White House even though everyone KNOWS the Clintons HATE the Obamas and the Obamas HATE the Clintons.


Home> Politics>OTUS News
Clinton: 'To This Day We Do Not Have A Complete Picture'


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By DANA HUGHES (@dana_hughes) and Z.BYRON WOLF
October 12, 2012



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the early response from the Obama administration regarding the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that claimed the lives of four Americans, including Amb. Chris Stevens.
But she would not weigh in on the growing controversy about when exactly members of the Obama administration knew the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate was carried out by terrorists or whether senior administration members knew that State Department security officials were concerned about the situation at the embassy in the months leading up to the attack.
Fact Check: Biden on Benghazi
Clinton took questions from reporters following a bilateral meeting with the Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata, and was asked about Vice President Joe Biden's assertion during Thursday night's debate that the administration was unaware of requests for increased security at the consulate.
Biden's comment would seem to be contradicted by testimony a day earlier on Capitol Hill from a State Department security official that he had repeatedly requested more security.
Read More About the Attacks on the Consulate in Benghazi

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Biden, Ryan Tangle Over Medicare Watch Video


Clinton said there is still an internal investigation, and an FBI investigation going on, and that she is cooperating with both.
"There is much we still don't know, and I am the first to say that," she said.
"There is nobody in the administration motivated by anything other than trying to understand what happened," said Clinton. "We are doing all we can to prevent it from ever happening again anywhere."
But Clinton said the circumstances surrounding the attack are still, more than a month later, not completely clear.
"To this day we do not have a complete picture, we do not have all the answers," she said. "No one in this administration has ever claimed otherwise. Every one of us have made clear that we are providing the best information we have at that time. And that information continues to be updated. It also continues to be put into context and more deeply understood."
Early on, and for more than a week after the attack, members of the administration suggested the attacks were the result of a protest gone awry even though it has become clear that the attack was a coordinated terror attack and there never was a protest.
While President Obama referred to "acts of terror" in a speech the day after the attack in the Rose Garden at the White House, officials did not label it terrorism until nine days later.
Administration officials such as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, in an appearance on This Week, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney suggested in the following days that according to the intelligence community there had been a protest.
Today Clinton defended Rice.
"Ambassador Rice had the same information from the intelligence community that every other senior official did," said Clinton. "We can only tell you what we know based on our most current understanding of the attack and what led up to it."
Republicans have seized on the attack and the subsequent administration response as a failure.
Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP candidate for vice president, countered Biden at the debate and said the Benghazi attack is evidence of the Obama foreign policy's "unraveling."
Others, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, in an interview Wednesday with ABC News, have more bluntly suggested a cover-up.
"It leaves you with the suspicion that since the president was in the campaign going around reminding everybody that bin Laden was gone and we were out of Iraq and we would soon be out of Afghanistan and implying that the war on terror was over that the campaign just felt it was inconvenient that we had a terrorist attack," McConnell said.

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White House Throws Hillary Under the 2012 Bus

AP File


White House throws Hillary under the 2012 bus

Posted By Neil Munro, The Daily Caller
The White House is throwing Hillary Clinton under the 2012 election bus.

Top officials have already claimed the nation’s intelligence agencies did not alert the White House to the growing danger facing the State Department’s facility in Benghazi, Libya, which was destroyed Sept. 11 by a jihadi attack on the 11th anniversary of the atrocities in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The claim was repeated Oct. 11 by Vice President Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate in Danville, Ky. “We weren’t told they wanted more security,” he announced.

Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for communications, extended the claim Oct. 11 by telling told Foreign Policy magazine that neither Biden nor President Barack Obama knew of the growing danger.

“Biden speaks only for himself and the president and neither of them knew about the requests at the time,” Rhodes said, according to Foreign policy.

“These kinds of issues are handling in the State Department by security officials,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said during Friday’s press briefing.

Security matters “are decided at the State Department,” he said, amid tough questioning from Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry.

The White House’s statements leaves Hillary Clinton on the hook, because she runs the Department of State.

The widening breach between Clinton and the team of Obama and Biden comes as the president is being outpolled by Gov. Mitt Romney.

Both Biden and Clinton would likely be front-runners to compete for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, should they decide to run.

Clinton has cooperated with a congressional inquiry by allowing senior State Department officials to attend a Wednesday hearing gaveled by Rep. Darrell Issa, the GOP chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/benghazi-g...#ixzz297xRMGgr

[American Patriot]

My thoughts are the same, Hillary is being railroaded to prevent HER from becoming President against Biden.

Only problem is, I don't think that is going to work. Biden, like others associated with the Clintons in the past will probably wind up "Vince Fostered" at some point.

[American Patriot]

and I dunno who wrote that article but it had a half dozen incorrect words in there.

[American Patriot]

U.S. officials unhappy with handling of Benghazi suspects in April attack




By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:58pm EDT

(Reuters) - State Department officials suspected that two Libyan guards hired by its own security contractor were behind an April incident in which a homemade bomb was hurled over the wall of the special mission in Benghazi, according to official emails obtained by Reuters.
But the men, who had been taken into custody the day of the attack, were released after questioning by Libyan officials because of a lack of "hard evidence" that could be used to prosecute them, the State Department emails show.
"Amazing," wrote Eric Nordstrom, then the regional security officer with the U.S. Embassy in Libya, describing the obstacles in prosecuting the suspects.
The April 6 incident involving an improvised explosive device (IED) was a troubling precursor to the September 11 attack on two U.S. government compounds in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
U.S. authorities initially said last month's attack occurred spontaneously after protests in the region against a film that lampooned the Prophet Mohammad, but now say it was a pre-planned attack by local militants with possible connections to al Qaeda.
Nordstrom testified last week at a congressional hearing that a string of security concerns before September led officials on the ground in Libya to repeatedly ask for enhanced security, requests that were denied by officials in Washington.
The April attack illustrated concerns among some U.S. officials in Libya that hiring local residents for embassy guard duties could in itself raise security issues.
The emails identified one of the suspects in that incident as a former employee of Blue Mountain Group who had been fired four days earlier for vandalism, and said the other was still working for the company. Both were unarmed guards who performed routine security tasks, such as screening visitors.
Blue Mountain, based in Carmarthen, Wales, had a State Department contract to handle some routine security duties at the mission in Benghazi. It worked in concert with a local partner to screen and hire guards for the U.S. compound in the eastern Libyan city.
The State Department had no immediate comment on the emails, which were obtained by Reuters from a government source. Blue Mountain declined to comment.
Security at the mission has come under congressional scrutiny and become an issue in the U.S. presidential election campaign, with Republicans suggesting the Obama administration failed to adequately protect the mission.
An April 21 email from Nordstrom described difficulties investigating the IED incident, in which no one was injured.
"From the beginning of the investigation there was a big emphasis on the lack of 'hard evidence', and the difficulty in prosecuting anyone," Nordstrom said in his email.
He described how local officials explained that "they did not find an IED on the suspects that they could use to prosecute."
Another email from Antonio Zamudio, acting regional security officer at the Benghazi mission, names three suspects - the former guard fired for vandalism, an active guard who had been demoted from "guard commander to regular guard" and an active guard who owned the vehicle driven that night by the others and was on duty the night of the attack. That third suspect was interrogated and released, the email said.
The first two suspects were taken into custody by the February 17 Brigade, the local militia which acted as the Libyan government's protection force for the Benghazi mission.
The Brigade "lacked the most basic of investigative training or skills," and there was no attempt to obtain statements from suspects within the first 16 hours of their arrests. They also were not separated and were allowed to speak to one another, the email said.
The crude explosive used in the April attack was most likely a "Jelatena" which is "readily available in Benghazi and is commonly used for fishing" and sometimes for celebrations, the email said.
"Local security officials or the local populace do not view the use of the Jelatena device as something overly serious," Zamudio said in the email.

[American Patriot]

Issa: State Dept. sitting on $2 billion-plus for embassy security

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By JOHN BRESNAHAN | 10/14/12 11:13 AM EDT

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says the State Department is sitting on $2.2 billion that should be spent on upgrading security at U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, but the Obama administration will not spend the funds.
Issa made his comment during an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" to discuss the recent attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, held a highly partisan hearing on the incident last week.

(PHOTOS: 10 slams on Obama and Benghazi)

Issa claims the State Department will not spend the already approved funds because they didn't want to the appearance of needing increased security.
"The fact is, they [the State Department.] are making the decision not to put the security in because they don't want the presence of security," Issa said. "That is not how you do security."
With Republicans turning the Libya into a political issue, Democrats have countered that House GOP leaders actually sought to cut funding for embassy security, which Issa tried to refute.
"You can't always look to [new] money when there's money sitting there," Issa said. "We're going through a 'Mission Accomplished' moment. Eleven years after Sept. 11 [2001], Americans were attacked by terrorists who pre-planned to kill Americans. That happened, and we can't be in denial."

(Also on POLITICO: Partisan fireworks at Libya hearing)
Issa said that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice may be called before his panel for testimony. Rice said shortly after the Benghazi attack that the incident was caused by an anti-Muslim video, not terrorists, a position that even President Barack Obama has now refuted.
Read more about: State Department, Darrell Issa, Libya