Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya crisis: Benghazi

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Obama’s Favorite Foreign Leader



By Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary Magazine
January 23, 2012

The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl is a normally sober observer of foreign affairs so it’s a bit disappointing to see him writing today in defense of Turkey’s Islamic government. Diehl’s starting point was to debunk Rick Perry’s comment in last week’s debate in South Carolina in which the Texas governor claimed Turkey was run by “Islamic terrorists” and questioned its continuing presence in NATO. Of course, he’s right that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is not quite the equivalent of Hamas or Hezbollah, but as Michael Rubin noted last week, it has became a major sponsor and enabler of terrorism. While Diehl makes the point that Turkey has been somewhat helpful to the U.S. on Libya and Syria, on the issues of Middle East peace and the threat from the Iranian nukes, it has been a disaster.

Which is why I think the most distressing aspect of Diehl’s defense of Turkey as a reliable American ally is the fact that he says its leader has become one of the few foreign leaders with whom Barack Obama has a strong relationship. Obama has, according to the Post, spent more time speaking on the phone with Erdogan than any other ally. Indeed, in a cover story interview with Time Magazine, Obama told a fawning Fareed Zakaria that Erdoğan was someone with whom he had become friends and forged “bonds of trust.” It speaks volumes about the deplorable state of American foreign policy that Erdogan is someone with whom Obama is most comfortable.

Diehl’s main point is that Islamists are the “new normal” in the Arab and Islamic worlds. That may be true, but his optimism that groups like the Islamic parties that now control Egypt’s new parliament will turn out to be more like Turkey than Hamas or Iran seems not only naive but also underestimates the extent to which Erdogan has opposed American interests and values.

Under the tutelage of Obama’s buddy, Turkish democracy is in a free fall with journalists and opponents of the ruling party being jailed. Abroad, Turkey has not only abandoned its long standing alliance with fellow American friend Israel but has become the leading supporter of the Hamas terrorist group on the international stage. Just as bad is Erdoğan’s refusal to support the West on isolating Iran, providing Tehran with a reliable outlet for trade just at the time when the Europeans are out ahead of the U.S. on toughening sanctions.

Any president who considered the alliance with Israel or the need to stop Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons as among our nation’s top foreign policy priorities would regard Erdoğan as being, at best, a thorn in America’s side and, at worst, a genuine threat to our interests as well as our democratic values. But not Barack Obama.

Obama has been open about his contempt and dislike for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli is a prickly customer, and it may be that Erdoğan is easier to like on a personal basis. But anyone wondering why relations with the Jewish state have become so tenuous in the last three years need only understand this is a White House where an Islamic quasi-authoritarian who backs Hamas is the president’s pal and the prime minister of Israel is his bête noire.

Turkey may not be (as Rick Perry stated), run by a terrorist, but it is a nation that has been transformed under Erdoğan from a faithful ally to a source of genuine concern on both the home and foreign fronts. If that is Barack Obama’s idea of a true friend, then what does that say about his vision of America or the world?

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Twisted Appeasement: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Assumes America Is Not The Enemy Of Islamists, But Islamists Say Otherwise

10/22/2012



By BARRY RUBIN, Jerusalem Post – “One of President Barack Obama’s main themes is to convince Middle East Islamists that America is not their enemy. But the reason this strategy never works is that the radicals know better. The United States is their enemy.

No amount of sympathy, empathy, economic aid, apology or appeasement will change this fact. Nor did such efforts succeed in making either Obama or the United States popular in such circles and the tens of millions of people influenced by them. The only thing surprising about all of this is that so few ‘experts’ and politicians seem to comprehend it.

There are a number of reasons why this is true, though many people mistakenly think they must find just one factor that explains this reality. The causes of this enmity include:

• American policies. True, the United States has supported Israel and also many Arab regimes over the years – including countries like Morocco, Tunisia, post- Gaddafi Libya, Egypt, pre-Hezbollah Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, post-Saddam Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. The Islamists are equally unhappy with the US support for the Palestinian Authority.

In short, US support for any non-radical regime makes radicals angry and will always do so.

So what if the United States is nice to radical or Islamist regimes? Will that help? No. The radicals still keep their goals – which include throwing US influence out of the region and overthrowing its allies – no matter what Washington tries to do to please them. In the context of their ideology, they interpret US concessions as signs of weakness which thus invite them to become even more militant and aggressive.

In Libya and Iraq, the governments have been pretty much directly installed by America. Thus, anyone who wants to overthrow those governments has a strong vested interest in hating and attacking Americans. The assassination of the ambassador to Libya wasn’t an accident or the result of a video but the inevitable and logical outcome of the political situation there.

As for Israel, giving that country less help would not change the radical view. Only if the United States had the same policy as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood might it be forgiven. Merely putting more space between the United States and Israel, to paraphrase Obama’s stated intention, won’t do it. Even brokering a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which isn’t going to happen of course, won’t help.

On the contrary, the radicals – especially Hamas, its Egyptian backers and Iran – would go into a frenzy of denunciation and attempt to destroy the arrangements, the failure of which would then be blamed on America. In the Middle East, peacemakers aren’t blessed, they’re assassinated.” Read more.



Top 5 Revolutions Backed by George Soros

February 14, 2011, 5:51 am By Guest Author 14 Comments
by Lisa Graas, columnist at NewsRealBlog and blogger at LisaGrass.com



Multi-billionaire George Soros has been using his vast wealth at least since 1984 to “build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens”, in his words. He has been “credited” or, more accurately, blamed for providing funding for several revolutions in which his preferred people took power. If you are a leftist, of course you might consider this to be a good thing as the groups Soros funds to do his dirty work are invariably leftist, including an enormous chunk of the radical Left here in America. Here are the top 5 revolutions, some ongoing, which have received substantial backing from George Soros.

1. The ‘Bulldozer Revolution’ in Serbia



On October 5, 2000, in the “Bulldozer Revolution“, a movement funded partly by George Soros swept Slobodan Milosevic from power. The LATimes reported on Soros’ role, noting the problems it would cause if he were to get too much credit for his activities. By providing lots of money to already existing but struggling groups that Soros believed to be “pro-democracy”, including the student group Otpor, Soros was able to topple that country’s government.

It’s an accomplishment that Hungarian-born financier George Soros doesn’t flaunt. Bragging about it, after all, could just make his global democracy-building mission more difficult.

But the multibillionaire philanthropist quietly played a key role in the dramatic overthrow last year of President Slobodan Milosevic. His Soros Foundations Network helped finance several pro-democracy groups, including the student organization Otpor, which spearheaded grass-roots resistance to the authoritarian Yugoslav leader.

In a 2003 news conference, Soros owned up to his involvement, not only to the revolt in Yugoslavia but other countries, as well.

“It is necessary to mobilize civil society in order to assure free and fair elections because there are many forces that are determined to falsify or to prevent the elections being free and fair,” Mr. Soros said. “This is what we did in Slovakia at the time of [Vladimir] Meciar, in Croatia at the time of [Franjo] Tudjman and in Yugoslavia at the time of Milosevic.”

In 2004, Richard Poe, in Velvet Revolution, USA, outlined the seven-step strategy used by Soros to topple Milosevic. This strategy, Poe writes, is the same “blueprint” used repeatedly by Soros in other countries: Form a Shadow Government, Control the Airwaves, Bleed the State Dry, Sow Unrest, Provoke an Election Crisis, Take the Streets, and above all, Outlast your Opponent.

2. Georgia’s “Rose Revolution”



After Yugoslavia, Soros set his sights on Georgia. Though he originally backed President Eduard Shevardnadze, when Shevardnadze met with Soros’ disapproval, Soros sought to replace him forthwith in the same manner that he had replaced Milosevic. He prepared for his goal to topple Shevardnadze by sending a young activist to Serbia to be trained by those who had successfully overthrown Milosevic.

[...] [F]unds from his Open Society Institute sent a 31-year-old Tbilisi activist named Giga Bokeria to Serbia to meet with members of the Otpor (Resistance) movement and learn how they used street demonstrations to topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Then, in the summer, Mr. Soros’s foundation paid for a return trip to Georgia by Otpor activists, who ran three-day courses teaching more than 1,000 students how to stage a peaceful revolution.

In December, 2003 , the Melbourne Herald-Sun offered a basic overview of George Soros‘ Open Society Institute‘s [OSI] impact in Georgia’s Rose Revolution (Radio Islam):

[...] [Soros] backed Georgia’s former justice minister, Mikhail Saakashvili, and spent some $4 million on a protest movement against the president. His organisations brought in experts in “non-violent revolution” from Serbia, gave $700,000 to an activist group that bussed in protesters, and financed an anti-government TV station and newspaper.

It worked. Last month, protesters smashed into Georgia’s parliament, yelling — probably correctly — that Shevardnadze had stolen the elections a month ago and must quit. Shevardnadze fled, and Saakashvili looks set for leadership.

Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili told the French journal Hérodote that Soros’ Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were not only responsible for toppling Shevardnadze, but had subsequently became an integral part of the resulting governmental power structure:

[...] [O]ne cannot end one’s analysis with the revolution and one clearly sees that, afterwards, the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.

Indeed, the record clearly shows Soros’ influence in Georgian policy, and Soros was in no way shy about it. In 2004, Soros, Saakashvili, and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) administrator Mark Malloch Brown,publicly announced their push for ”governance reforms in Georgia that would reflect the Soros version of an “open society“. By 2005, an anti-Soros group arose, somewhat reminiscent of America’s Tea Party Movement, to protest the “Western” influence that had, in their view, attached their government to Soros’ puppet strings.

The “Anti-Soros Movement” also plans to oust Saakashvili’s government but in a constitutional manner. The anti-Soros group claims that Saakashvili’s government places instructions from Soros above the Georgian Constitution.

In October, 2010, critics accused Saakashvili of trying to “rig the political system in his favor.” Indeed, the new constitution of Georgia was structured in such a way as to allow Saakashvili to retain power.

It should be noted that the 2004 announcement was by no means the first joint effort of Soros and Mark Malloch Brown. In 1993, Brown served on the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia. In 2002, Soros and Brown worked together to gain UN funding for people in countries with “bad governments”. In 2005, Brown rented property from Soros in New York worth $120,000 a year, though his annual salary from the UN was not much more than that:

$125,000. Finally, in 2007 Brown was appointed Vice Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the OSI. This is a cozy relationship indeed.

3. George Soros Puts A Radical in the White House



A “shining city on a hill”, the United States of America has proven to be far less vulnerable to George Soros‘ tactics than other countries have been, but though Soros has been unable to “fundamentally transform” America, in the words of his candidate Barack Obama, it is clear that he played a game-changing role in the election of this radical leftist who carried with him to the White House a long list of Islamist and politically radical influences.

These influences have made themselves evident throughout the Obama presidency on a wide variety of issues, including an unConstitutional provision in the healthcare law which could, if upheld through leftist judicial activism, be the key to opening the door to truly socialistic wealth redistribution in America.

In December of 2006, Obama, who by then was contemplating a run for the presidency, met in New York with billionaire financier George Soros, who previously had hosted a fundraiser for Obama during the latter’s 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate.[...]

[...] On January 16, 2007, Obama announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee. Within hours after the announcement, Soros sent the senator a contribution of $2,100, the maximum amount allowable under campaign finance laws. Later that week, the New York Daily News reported that Soros would back Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton, whom he had supported in the past.

At the time Obama announced the formation of his exploratory committee, he had logged a mere 143 days of experience in the U.S. Senate (i.e., the number of days the Senate had been in session since his swearing in on January 4, 2005).

NewsRealBlog has offered continual coverage of George Soros’ machinations in bringing Obama to power — including the driving of a wedge between Catholics — and in influencing policy. There are ongoing attempts to push the Soros blueprint, but thanks in large part to the Tea Party Movement, that agenda has been slowed, and sometimes thwarted. The “Anti-Soros” movement in America has thankfully been more effective than its counterpart in Georgia.

4. George Soros: A ‘Founding Father’ of an Islamist Turkey?



In June, 2006, while in Turkey pressing for Turkish membership in the EU, George Soros was questioned about his role in regime changes. It was already painfully clear to many that Soros had established himself as, in the words of Neil Clar of the NorthStar Compass, the “uncrowned king” of Eastern Europe. Soros rejected the claim, but his influence in Turkey is manifest. OSI has been actively studying politics and religion in Turkey since at least the 1990s and setting forth policy recommendations on these issues. More troubling, perhaps, is that OSI is seeking a new constitution for Turkey based on OSI values.

Can Paker, the head of OSI’s Assistance Foundation in Turkey, is also head of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), an organization lobbying for Turkey’s newly elected Parliament to adopt a brand new constitution. TESEV has commissioned a report on the “essential principles” to be included in that constitution.

Creating a framework of consensus is of critical importance to increase participation and legitimacy while preparing the new constitution, Ergun Özbudun, a prominent academic on constitutional law and a member of the commission set up by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, or TESEV, said at a press conference Thursday in Istanbul.

The commission formed this month will prepare a report on the essential principles of a constitution, which will also include issues like identity, freedom of conscience, separation of powers, civil-military relations, local governance and decentralization, TESEV Director Can Paker told the media.

Much of this may sound well and good to those of us who may take basic human rights for granted, but there is a danger involved even beyond the danger of allowing some Western investor to determine what’s in your Constitution. TESEV seeks a Constitution based on pluralism.

Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) President Can Paker has called on the country’s politicians and civil society organizations to adopt a new, democratic constitution based on participatory and pluralistic politics.

“Pluralism”, generally speaking, is the rejection of the idea that something can be (1) held as absolutely true and (2) legitimately adhered to, or valued.

An example of something that is accepted as “absolutely true” in America’s Constitution is that human rights are “unalienable”. The less a Constitution includes absolutes in regard to human dignity, property rights, due process, etc., the more the door is opened for communities, regions, or a whole country to adopt systems opposed to these values through pure democratic voting. One example of this would be Sharia Law.

Why mention Sharia? The Turkish newspaper Sabah has reported that OSI has shown itself to be “pro-AKP“. The AKP is the Islamist party in Turkey.

To many observers, the [2007] election marked another milestone in the development of Turkey’s brand of political Islam. The AKP is an offshoot of a more rigorously Islamist party, but Erdogan and other senior party figures have made little effort to bring personal piety into the public sphere.

That has done little to quell secularists’ wariness. Many are convinced that the AKP harbors a hidden Islamist agenda, one now more likely to make inroads into public policy.

“We see the danger of Sharia and fundamentalism,” said Hatice Ozbay, a volunteer for the main secular group, the Republican People’s Party, known in Turkish as the CHP. “We will keep on fighting that.”

Will George Soros succeed in his push for a constitution in Turkey that is heavy on democracy but low on absolutes that protect life, freedom of worship, property rights, etc., despite the risk of ushering in the spread of Sharia Law? This is still an open question, but he is certainly trying.

5. Soros Funds Unrest in Egypt



In May, 2007, OSI consultant Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, was arrested by Iranian officials along with a colleague Haleh Esfandiari, for allegedly trying to undermine Iran’s government according to the Soros blueprint. Tajbakhsh said at the time:

“The Soros centre’s job in eastern Europe is nearly finished. Its main focus now is the Islamic world, Arab countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.”

This claim’s timeline, at least, is certainly correct. Having become the uncrowned king of Eastern Europe, and working hard for a government in Turkey that has the Soros stamp of approval, Soros’ focus clearly turned from Eastern Europe to the Islamic world.

In April of last year, a Soros-funded organization in Egypt launched a weekly newspaper called Wasla.

The weekly Wasla – or “The Link” – is being touted as a first for the Arab world, with plans for articles by bloggers as a way of giving them a wider readership.

It is published by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and financially supported by the Open Society Institute created by Soros, said ANHRI director Gamal Eid.

The Daily News Egypt reported that “ElBaradei Fever” was an important topic at Wasla. Elbaradei, Muslim Brotherhood-backed, is believed to have attempted to destroy (along with Soros) George Bush’s hopes for re-election in 2004.

The first issue of Wasla includes entries published on tahyyes.blogspot.com, and demaghmak.blogspot.com on the “ElBaradei fever .

Elbaradei and Soros both serve on the board of directors of the International Crisis Group, an organization that also has connections within the Democratic Party including President Obama.

On January 18, Wasla headlined the story “Tunisia is the answer”.

The issue interconnects all uprises in the Arab world with Tunisian revolution which overthrew Ben Ali.

On February 5, Jihad Watch offered an overview of the dangers faced here.

Reports on the role of Islamic movements in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have placed considerable faith in the “secular” elements of those societies to resist Sharia’s regressive influence on human rights. But one cannot passively invoke as protection the institutions that Sharia will attack and destroy once its proponents are strong enough to go on the offensive, especially not when recalling how flimsy the veneer of a modern, secular society turned out to be in Iraq.

Indeed, secularism in and of itself hasn’t a chance in resisting Sharia.

Where is the Bright Side in This?



America has a strong Constitution which, though not perfect, has enshrined absolutes that are in accord with true human dignity and that have been resilient even in the face of George Soros‘ attempts to “fundamentally transform” our country. Soros will never become the uncrowned king of America as he has done in Eastern Europe. Pluralism may work for a time in that part of the world, perhaps even with Soros pulling the strings, but Soros errs considerably if he believes pluralism will hold in the face of Islam. His agenda will be squashed like a gnat in the Islamic world.

In the long history of the world, time and time again we have witnessed that core Judeo-Christian values which have inherent emphasis on freedom of conscience while protecting the weakest among us and the liberties that make a strong citizenry — though struggles have been many across the centuries — hold strong in the face of Islam. Israel and America both continue in these values. Secularism which focuses on pluralism and pure democracy, however, will crumple like a daisy.

Despite the troubling events occurring around the world, much of which is due to one seriously misguided individual, we are all truly blessed to be able to hold onto the fact that Israel still stands as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, and America still remains a “shining city on a hill” — heralding the blessings of liberty to a broken, hurting, and sometimes very angry world.

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Joe Klein: Benghazi Consulate Controversy 'The October Mirage - It Really Isn't An Issue'

By Noel Sheppard | October 21, 2012 | 18:20

The Obama-loving media were out in force Sunday downplaying the significance of the White House's ever-changing position on the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi last month.

After New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper called the death of four Americans "peripheral to what's going on right now" on Meet the Press, Time magazine's Joe Klein told Face the Nation viewers this matter "has been like the October mirage - it really isn't an issue" (video follows with transcript and commentary):



JOE KLEIN, TIME MAGAZINE: Tomorrow night is fascinating because, in truth, these guys don't disagree all that much on all this stuff. They essentially have the same positions on foreign policy. This business about the, you know, the Libya consulate has been like the October mirage - it really isn't an issue.



And so, once again, tomorrow, Obama is going to have a very strong position because his foreign policy has been largely successful in terms of substance, but in terms of style, he still has to climb -- re-climb the mountain and make a convincing case to the American people that they will be more comfortable with him in their living rooms the next four years.

Honestly, have you ever in your life seen so many so-called journalists dismiss the importance of American officials being killed by terrorists?

Makes you wonder why they all aren't forced to wear "Obama-Biden" buttons so viewers would better understand the propagandist nature of the reports they're watching and reading.

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Obama Gave Himself Away Last Night

Lee DeCovnick

Lit with the bright flash of summer lightening, three words showed America why B.H. Obama is so spectacularly unsuited to hold the office of the Presidency. It was late in the third debate and Romney and Obama were sparing about drones. Mitt had just made the point that the Middle East was still a muddle. Obama replied, talking of partnerships throughout the region. And then, tired and frustrated, Obama let the mask slip, and the true visage of our despotic narcissist was revealed.

From the NY Times transcript:

President Obama: So across the board, we are engaging them in building capacity in these countries and we have stood on the side of democracy. One thing I think Americans should be proud of - when Tunisians began to protest, this nation, me, my administration stood with them earlier than just about any other country.

"This nation, me."

"This nation, me" perfectly captures why Americas fought and died in a Revolutionary War against King George III.
This nation, me shows why Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.."
This nation, me echo's history most despotic players. Louis XIV famously said, L'état, c'est moi, the state, it is I. Let's review some of those who have succumbed to the allure of absolute power and then conflated it with a state sponsored cult of personality; Stalin, Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mao Tse-Tung and Mussolini. Did I miss anyone?

Mr. President, here's what we say in America:

...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Not ever "This nation, me"!

Our national election is only two weeks from today.

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State Department emails from day of Libya attack show Al Qaeda-tied group on radar

By Chad Pergram
Published October 23, 2012
FoxNews.com

A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows some of the initial assessments of last month's deadly consulate attack in Libya, including one email within hours of the attack that noted the group Ansar al Sharia had claimed responsibility.

The emails provide some of the most detailed information to surface about what officials knew in the initial hours after the attack. And it again raises questions about why U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, apparently based on intelligence assessments, would claim five days after the attack that it was a 'spontaneous' reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film.

Ansar al Sharia has been declared by the State Department to be an Al Qaeda-affiliated group.

A member of the group suspected of participating in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi has been arrested and is being held in Tunisia.

The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.

Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.

The timestamps on the emails are all Eastern Time and often include the subheading SBU…which is shorthand for “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The first email indicates that U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and other personnel were “in the compound safe haven.” Officials later discovered that Stevens and three other Americans had died in the attack.

The first email was sent at 4:05 p.m. ET with the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack (SBU).”

“The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack," the email reads.

"Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17^th of February militia is providing security support.
"The operations Center will provide updates as available.”

The second email came at 4:54 p.m. ET, with a subject line “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi (SBU)" “Embassy Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared. A response team is on site attempting to locate COM personnel.”

The third email came at 6:07 p.m. ET and was sent to a different email list but still includes the White House Situation Room address and a subject line of “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU).”

“Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli," the email reads.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Emails: White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the United States September 11, 2012. REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a "terrorist" attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of "extremists," they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.

MISSIVES FROM LIBYA

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department's Operations Centre to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."

The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was "under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well."

The message continued: "Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support."

A second email, headed "Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi" and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that "the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared." It said a "response team" was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."

The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command Centre, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials "carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time."

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

"Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely," the official said.

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White House knew al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for deadly Libya attack just TWO HOURS later, emails reveal

• Three emails were sent from Benghazi to White House, State Department, Pentagon, FBI and other offices
• First message went out 20-30 minutes into attack on the embassy
• Missive informed officials in Washington that the Libyan group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for attack

By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 21:58 EST, 23 October 2012 | UPDATED: 22:14 EST, 23 October 2012

• Comments (0)

Officials at the White House and State Department were alerted two hours after attackers stormed the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the assault, emails show.

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief missives also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.


Deadly: Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, died in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi

The three emails in questions were sent on the afternoon of September 11 by the State Department's Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI.

The first email, timed at 4.05pm Washington time - or 10.05pm Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line ‘U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack’ and the notation ‘SBU,’ meaning ‘Sensitive But Unclassified.’

More...

• Revealed: Second U.S. building attacked in Libya terror raid was CIA base . . . as it emerges American drones were circling above but were 'too slow' to act
• Obama faces more pressure over Libya response after it is revealed the consulate attack was 'opportunistic'

The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was ‘under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.’

The message continued: ‘Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.’


First missive: The first email was sent by the diplomatic mission in Benghazi 20-30 minutes after the attack on the complex began


False hope: A second email stated that the attack on the mission had stopped and the compound had been cleared


Attackers named: A third message stated that a group called Ansar al-Sharia ha claimed responsibility on the attack on Facebook and Twitter

At 4.54pm Washington time, a second email was fired off, headed ‘Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi’ said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that ‘the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.’ It said a ‘response team’ was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6.07pm, carried the subject line: ‘Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.’



Official version: President Obama said during an interview on '60 Minutes' that he didn't believe mob violence alone was responsible for the deadly assault on the embassy

The message reported: ‘Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.’

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a ‘terrorist’ attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of ‘extremists,’ they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.




Killed: Ambassador Christopher Stevens (left) died following smoke inhalation, while agent Sean Smith (right) died in a desperate battle




Heroic: Former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty (left) and Tyrone Woods (right) were killed in a mortar attack on a building which has now been revealed to be a CIA base

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.


Inferno: Armed attackers dumped cans of diesel fuel and set ablaze the consulate's exterior


Siege: The compound came under heavy mortar and gunfire during the attack, which lasted several hours

Fourteen hours after the attack, President Obama sat down with Steve Kroft of ‘60 Minutes’ for an interview and said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence, CBS reported.
‘You're right that this is not a situation that was -- exactly the same as what happened in Egypt and my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start,’ Obama said.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials 'carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.'


Inferno: Armed attackers dumped cans of diesel fuel and set ablaze the consulate's exterior


Siege: The compound came under heavy mortar and gunfire during the attack, which lasted several hours

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

‘Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,’ the official said.

[vector7]

Egyptians: We Want Nuclear Bombs and to Break Treaty with Israel

Most Egyptians want their country and Iran to have nuclear bombs. They also favor ties with the Islamic Republic, according to a poll.
AAFont Size
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu First Publish: 10/21/2012, 9:51 AM


Nuclear cloud
Israel news photo: US Navy

Most Egyptians want their country and Iran to have nuclear weapons, and they also favor renewing ties with Tehran and breaking off relations with Israel, according to a poll by The Israel Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group.

Eighty-seven percent of the respondents want Egypt to have its own nuclear bomb, and Iran is more than happy to lend Cairo a hand. "We are ready to help Egypt to build nuclear reactors and satellites," Iran’s deputy defense minister said when Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi visited Iran last month.

Sixty-two percent of those polled agreed that “Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are friends of Egypt.”

The results of the poll belie an impression Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has been trying to spread. He visited Iran several weeks ago but denied he is considering renewing ties with Iran, after more than three decades of a freeze following the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the Islamic Revolution.

Cairo's new ambassador to Israel told President Shimon Peres last week that Egypt will retain the peace treaty, but Morsi's advisers have spoken more assertively against the peace treaty, echoing Morsi's own anti-Israeli statements during his campaign for president.

The Israel Project poll, widely headlined in Iran’s state-controlled media, revealed that 65 percent of Egyptians back renewed diplomatic ties with Iran and that 61 percent support Iran’s nuclear development. Three years ago, a similar poll showed that only 41 percent of Egyptians backed Iran’s nuclear project.

The only sour note towards Iran was the view of 68 percent of the respondents who expressed an unfavorable view of Shi’ite Muslims.

Israel Project CEO Josh Block told The Foreign Policy “Cable” that a nuclear Iran would set off a regional race for nuclear weapons.

"Very scary to people opposed to proliferation of nuclear weapons, let alone to unstable countries in the world's most turbulent part of the world, is the 87 percent who want Egypt to build nuclear weapons," he said. "Morsi’s dangerous embrace of Iran is leading a surprising shift in favor of support for Tehran,” which Egyptians formerly saw as a threat.

The respondents also clearly opposed Cairo’s retaining diplomatic ties with Israel, with 74 percent wanting a break, nearly three times as many as in a 2009 poll, when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was in office.

Seventy-seven percent agreed that "The peace treaty with Israel is no longer useful and should be dissolved."

More than two-thirds of the respondents also said that President Barack Obama favors Israel more than Arabs, and 60 percent thought that the Obama administration has been "a negative thing" for the Arab world.

[American Patriot]

This is sickening.

They knew is MINUTES.

[vector7]

They sure did and the WH knew within 2 hours of the attack...


HE KNEW




White House officials were advised of militant gangs two hours after Benghazi attack

Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.


US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault Photo: REUTERS


6:40AM BST 24 Oct 2012


The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how US diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a "terrorist" attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathisers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of "extremists," they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on Sept. 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

US intelligence officials have emphasised since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.
Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department's Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of Sept. 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05pm. Washington time – or 10:05pm. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the US diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line "US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."

The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was "under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well."

The message continued: "Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support."

A second email, headed "Update 1: US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi" and timed 4:54pm Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that "the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared." It said a "response team" was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07pm Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."

The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."



Read More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...zi-attack.html

[Malsua]

Every time I see Chris Steven's smiling face I get nauseas. Not because it's him but because of the massive betrayal of trust. I just look at the poor man, smiling and doing his job with vigor only to be betrayed by his employer. It's sickening.

[MinutemanCO]

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.

[American Patriot]

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.

[American Patriot]

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.

[vector7]

‘People Will Go to Prison’: Beck Breaks Down Obama’s ‘Lying’ on Libya in Fiery Segment

• Posted on October 24, 2012 at 12:33pm by Erica Ritz

(Photo: TheBlaze TV)

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]

(Photo via CBS)

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.

Watch the entire clip, via TheBlaze TV, below:

[vector7]

Obama’s Benghazi Investigator: An Iran Sympathizer

October 24, 2012 By Matthew Vadum Comments (14)



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.

[vector7]

Companion Posts:

• Russia: Syria rebels have US-made weapons
• Obama abandons Iraq without any Security Agreement and gives away a strategic location of interest with national security implications

Flashback:
It is Barack Obama Serving Al Qaeda’s Goals

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | February 9th, 2010 at 11:41 AM |

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.

Now John Brennan says critics of the White House are serving ‘the goals of Al Qaeda.’

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?


Fast and Furious with Al Qaeda at a whole new level:
Disturbing, Developing: Obama Caught Arming Al Qaeda, Reason For Libya Cover-Up

Oct 24, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard



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.

[American Patriot]

Well... today is the 25th, so by the 29th we ought to be "seeing something big" on Benghazi right?

[vector7]

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.

Ed Klein: Bill Clinton ‘Urging’ Hillary to Release Benghazi Documents That Would ‘Exonerate’ Her, Destroy Obama’s Re-Election Hopes

• Posted on October 25, 2012 at 12:44am by Jason Howerton
• Comments (232)

(TheBlazeTV)

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.

To read the full emails, click here.

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RAND PAUL: Where were the Marines?

Buck stops with Obama in Benghazi security breach

By Sen. Rand Paul
Wednesday, October 24, 2012



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.

Sen. Rand Paul is a Kentucky Republican.


Hillary's Janet Reno imitation

Exclusive: Jack Cashill explains why AG's 'buck stops here' gambit worked in '93

Published: 10/17/2012 at 7:42 PM by Jack CashillEmail | Archive Jack Cashill is an Emmy-award winning independent writer and producer with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue. His latest book is the blockbuster "Deconstructing Obama."More ↓



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.”

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Benghazi cover-up: 'This dwarfs Watergate'

'The regime is barely holding its campaign together'

Published: 17 hours ago by Joe KovacsEmail | Archive



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.”