# Sept 2012: U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two others killed in attack of consulate



## jollyjacktar

This is not going to go down well.  Mobs are unhappy about a alleged movie that is insulting to Islam.



> U.S. ambassador in Libya reported killed in consulate attack
> Chris Stevens, 3 others killed over Prophet Muhammad film, reports say
> CBC News Posted: Sep 12, 2012 6:27 AM ET
> 
> The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans have been killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, according to reports.
> 
> There are conflicting reports of the circumstances surrounding the death of Chris Stevens and the others Tuesday night.
> 
> Al-Jazeera is reporting Stevens died of smoke inhalation after a mob attacked the consulate and set it on fire. Reuters, citing an unnamed Libyan official, said the four Americans died after militants fired rockets at their car in Benghazi.
> 
> Filmmaker in hiding
> The attack was prompted by Muslim outrage over a film by a Californian that depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres.
> 
> "I do condemn the cowardly act of attacking the US consulate and the killing of Mr. Stevens and the other diplomats," Libya's deputy prime minister, Mustafa Bushagar, said via Twitter.
> 
> "Amb. Stevens was a friend of Libya and we are shocked at the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi," Bushagar said. "I condemn these barbaric acts in the strongest possible terms. This is an attack on America, Libya and free people everywhere."
> 
> Sam Bacile, who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, wrote, produced and directed the two-hour film, Innocence of Muslims, The Associated Press reported Bacile went into hiding on Tuesday.
> 
> In an interview with AP, Bacile called Islam a cancer and said he intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.
> 
> A 14-minute film trailer was posted on YouTube in an original English version, and another was dubbed into Egyptian Arabic.
> 
> U.S. condemns violence
> Anger over the film also touched off protests in Egypt, where protesters climbed over the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, pulled down the American flag and replaced it with an Islamic banner.
> 
> The U.S. has condemned the violence over the film.
> 
> "Some have sought to justify this vicious behaviour as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement released by the State Department.
> 
> "The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."
> 
> If confirmed, Stevens, 52, would become the fifth U.S. ambassador ever killed while on duty, and the first since Adolph Dubs was killed in Afghanistan in 1979.
> 
> A career diplomat, Stevens took over as U.S. ambassador to Libya in May. He had previously done two diplomatic postings in Libya, including a stint in Benghazi during the revolt that brought down Moammar Gadhafi.
> 
> With files from The Associated Press



Mod edit of thread title clarify original Benghazi attack, not a newer/more recent attack


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## Remius

And people wonder why we pulled our staff from Iran  :

I know it's not the same country but extremists there could end up doing the exact same thing.


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## a_majoor

The fact that this and the attack on the Cairo embassy happened on 9/11 was no coincidence either.

Sadly, the US political and chattering class seems clueless to what is happening, the NYT conveiniently buried the story on page A4 (doesn't seem to support the "Smart Diplomacy" or "Arab Spring" narratives), and Instapundit has an evolving page on the responses by various people to this (the Embassy in Cairo sent a string of tweets which seemed to have inflamed the situation, then deleted them, for example).

All in all a sad day for the families of those killed, and a disaster for US diplomacy in the region.


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## Haletown

Drudge is ahead of the NYT.

http://www.drudgereport.com/

IowaHawk is cutting in his tweets.

https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog


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## OldSolduer

Gratitude at it's finest.


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## tomahawk6

50 Marines are being sent to Libya hopefully to evacuate anyone still there. We need to get everyone out of Egypt as well. At some point in the future maybe some payback.


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## GAP

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> 50 Marines are being sent to Libya hopefully to evacuate anyone still there. We need to get everyone out of Egypt as well. At some point in the future maybe some payback.



The US supports the Egyptian military to the tune of something like 2 billion.....this is gonna hurt Egypt.


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## The Bread Guy

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Gratitude at it's finest.


 :goodpost:


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## Canadian.Trucker

At this point it's hard to say what will happen.

I'd like to think the deplorable actions of a few individuals won't damn an entire country, but time will tell.

Either way, my thoughts are with the families of those that were killed.


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## GAP

I notice that even though there's freedom of speech, this twit who started it all, was the same one who was going to burn the Koran awhile back. 

There's a limit to freedom of speech, especially when it edges on hate speech.....but nobody is taking him to task....


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## a_majoor

Since he is not committing fraud, liable, encouraging riotous behaviour, communicating secrets to the enemy or encouraging sedation against his home country, he has not crossed any lines.

The answer to poorly thought out speech is _more_ speech, outlining better counter arguments or pointing out errors in the initial argument, not using force and coercion to silence the speaker.

The parties in the wrong are the ones in Egypt and Lybia


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## cupper

NBC News this evening was reporting that the protest in Cairo was most likely just that, but the attack in Benghazi was more likely a coordinated attack by extremists.

They point to the fact that RPG's and heavy MG's were used, the attack occurred in at least two waves, and the fact that the Ambassador would normally be located in Tripoli , and was only visiting the Consulate.

According to an analyst interviewed on NPR, there had been several smaller attacks over the past few weeks, and it was thought that extremist groups were looking for targets of opportunity.


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## brihard

GAP said:
			
		

> I notice that even though there's freedom of speech, this twit who started it all, was the same one who was going to burn the Koran awhile back.
> 
> There's a limit to freedom of speech, especially when it edges on hate speech.....but nobody is taking him to task....



Terry Jones was tangentially involved in this, but did not make and was not substantially responsible for publishing the video.

He's a fool, a lackwit, and probably a coward- but he is not criminally liable for anything that is happened. It doesn't change that I'd be happy if he got hit by a bus, but he has, heretofore, been within his rights. He just sucks at the 'responsibility' thing.


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## cupper

Brihard said:
			
		

> Terry Jones was tangentially involved in this, but did not make and was not substantially responsible for publishing the video.
> 
> He's a fool, a lackwit, and probably a coward- but he is not criminally liable for anything that is happened. It doesn't change that I'd be happy if he got hit by a bus, but he has, heretofore, been within his rights. He just sucks at the 'responsibility' thing.



He appears to be backing away from showing the movie at planned events at his church, after reporters pointed out that the movie itself contains several scenes that could be considered pornographic.

Denigrate a religious group apparently is OK, but porn is not. :facepalm:


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## Jarnhamar

Know who's responsible for all this?  Not someone who decided to make a film- the people who woke up and decided to go out and murder people.

The reaction pretty much proves the movie's (in so far as it could be called that) intent.

I don't like what you're saying so I'm going to murder strangers because of it. Yea...these psychopaths will come up with any justification they want to kill.

In the end it's the NDA 129 of religious excuses. God wills it.


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## Civvymedic

680 News (Toronto) is reporting the US Navy is moving 2 warships into place off the coast of Libya.


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## brihard

Interesting twist on this one. Pro-American rallies in Libya.


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## tomahawk6

The security team put up quite a fight. Their actions saved alot of people.

http://tinyurl.com/9y9vmyg


Gunfire, a burning building, "heavy, dark smoke" that separated Chris Stevens, the late U.S. ambassador to Libya, from a security officer: American officials painted a harrowing picture late Wednesday of the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that left the widely respected diplomat and three others dead. The officials, speaking to reporters on a conference call arranged by the State Department, shared what they readily acknowledged were incomplete details subject to change as a clearer picture emerges from the bloody raid.

The early details sketch out a chaotic situation in which apparently outgunned U.S. and Libyan security personnel fought for hours to retake the diplomatic compound in the eastern Libyan city from unknown gunmen and lost the ambassador. The account was provided to reporters on the condition that the officials giving it not be identified.

At about 10 p.m. local time in Benghazi, the compound housing the American diplomatic mission came under fire "from unidentified Libyan extremists," one of the officials said. Just 15 minutes later, the attackers had breached the perimeter and trained their fire on the main building, setting it ablaze.

Inside were Stevens, a regional security officer and Sean Smith, an information management officer with the State Department who was also killed. (Overall, the compound had about 25 to 30 people in it.)

"They became separated from each other due to the heavy, dark smoke while they were trying to evacuate the burning building," one official said. The security officer and others returned into the burning building to find the ambassador and Smith. "This was really quite a heroic effort."


"At that time, they found Sean. He was already dead, and they pulled him from the building," the official said. "They were unable, however, to locate Chris before they were driven from the building due to the heavy fire and smoke and the continuing small arms fire."

At 10:45 p.m., security personnel tried to retake the main building but were repelled. At 11:20 p.m., U.S. and Libyan security forces were able to retake the main building, evacuating personnel they found there to an annex. That annex came under fire at midnight, an onslaught that lasted two hours and claimed the lives of two more Americans and wounded another two. By 2:30 a.m., Libyan forces helped the Americans to take control.

"At some point in all of this—and frankly, we do not know when—we believe that Ambassador Stevens got out of the building and was taken to a hospital in Benghazi. We do not have any information what his condition was at that time. His body was later returned to U.S. personnel at the Benghazi airport," an official said. "I think it was already dawn in Libya."

"There are reports out there that I cannot confirm that he was brought to the hospital by Libyans who found him," the official said. "Obviously, he had to get there somehow. No Americans were responsible for that."

"We were not able to see him until his body was returned to us at the airport," an official said when asked to confirm whether Stevens died from smoke inhalation. "You can imagine that we will not be able to say anything about the cause of death until we've had a chance to perform an autopsy."

American authorities brought in a chartered aircraft from Tripoli to Benghazi to evacuate all of the Americans to Tripoli. From there, they were evacuated to Germany.

The officials repeatedly ducked questions about Stevens' security arrangements. And they offered no details about the protests that reportedly came before the attack.

But they disputed the notion that he was under-protected.

"There was no information and there were no threat streams to indicate that we were insufficiently postured," one official said.


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## a_majoor

More on the coordination of the attacks, and the possibility that this is part of a larger pattern (again). Reaf the article, not just the headline:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/conservatives-rally-on-embassy-attacks/2012/09/12/c8344bec-fcfe-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_blog.html



> *Conservatives rally on embassy attacks*
> By Jennifer Rubin
> 
> Conservative foreign policy hawks, outraged at the media’s circle-the-wagons reaction to the attacks on two embassies, are speaking out in defense of Mitt Romney.
> 
> Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells Right Turn:”The perception of American weakness that provided the foundation for these attacks is largely because of Obama administration mistakes and lack of resolve. A repetition of 1979 in Tehran is nor fetched, especially given the weakness of Obama’s statement this morning.” He dismisses the media storyline as pure boosterism: “The press criticism of Romney’s statement is so clearly at the administration’s behest that they are giving lapdogs a bad name.”
> 
> Likewise, Danielle Pletka, of the American Enterprise Institute, zeroes in on the discrepancy between President Obama and his secretary of State says the media should focus on whether “Hillary Clinton was right or her boss?” Pletka observes that Clinton at least repudiated the connection to the anti-Mohammed film, but “her boss, not so much. This is the problem for the President. For Barack Obama, there’s always a reason for people to hate us. For Hillary, it’s clear there is no justifiable reason.”
> 
> A Romney supporter, along the same lines, told me, “Hillary answered the 3 a.m. phone call.” When it was Obama’s time to speak she appeared to “chaperone” him as he read a prepared statement, likely one she prepared.
> 
> Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are irked by the White House response. Sen. Jim DeMint, for example, put out a statement:
> 
> The death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, American Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith and two other Americans is an outrage. Governor Romney is absolutely right, there is no justification for these deadly attacks and we should never apologize for American freedom. Islamic radicals will use any pretext to justify their hatred of America and our freedom.
> 
> It was disheartening to hear the administration condemn Americans engaging in free speech that hurt the feelings of Muslims, while real atrocities have been repeatedly committed by Islamic radicals against women, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East.
> 
> American freedoms are not to blame for the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or the apparently coordinated attacks on yesterday’s anniversary. Islamic extremists are to blame and we must work with officials in Libya and Egypt to ensure those who attacked our embassies are brought to justice.
> 
> These attacks raise serious questions about whether we were properly prepared and about the effectiveness of our policies and foreign aid in these nations. We need to get the facts on these attacks, the ongoing threats to America in these countries, and rethink our policies in Libya and Egypt going forward.”
> 
> And Gary Schmitt of AEI observed in an email to me that “the administration made much to do about its success in Libya, both removing Qaddafi and not getting our shoes muddy by having a presence in post-tyrant Libya. Well, leading from behind does have consequences…including instability, lost opportunities.”
> 
> You can expect more conservatives to join, not only because they see this as a flagrant case of media shilling for the president, but because they genuinely believe this is the inevitable consequence of the president’s foreign policy approach and lack of attention to national security. They will continue to press on a number of points.
> 
> Foreign policy gurus with whom I have spoken today were attuned to reports that this was a coordinated, planned assault on two embassies. CNN reported: “ The incident does not appear to be a random mob scene, but rather an opportunity that militants seized, sources say. The attackers used a rocket-propelled grenade, a weapon not traditionally carried by protesters, but commonly used by terrorists.The attack is believed to have come in two waves. The first wave got inside of the compound, and a second wave penetrated a secure room inside the building. This fact raises questions about how the attackers knew the location of the rooms inside, sources say.”
> 
> If this is the case, what intelligence chatter was picked up? What precautions were taken? What was in president’s briefing and did he attend those briefings? Why are we relying on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to protect Americans?
> 
> The reaction of the Obama administration, for those who lived through it, is eerily reminiscent of the Clinton administration when a series of bombings (the 1993 World Trade Center, the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the U.S.S. Cole) were treated as discrete events without a significant U.S. response. This, the 9-11 Commission and others concluded, was a dangerous misstep and set the ground work for the 9-11 attacks. The repetition of this ominous pattern on the 11th anniversary of 9-11 shouldn’t be overlooked. It is the quickness to excuse Islamic violence and the lack of a forceful response that is deeply troubling to critics of the administration. We may be in the middle of a campaign, but the national security concerns are real and valid.
> 
> By Jennifer Rubin  |  02:29 PM ET, 09/12/2012


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## Nemo888

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> This is not going to go down well.  Mobs are unhappy about a alleged movie that is insulting to Islam.



It's not an alleged movie, just an incredibly bad one. It was deliberately made to be offensive and inaccurate. It's so poorly done that I feel sorry for the guy who supposedly spent millions making it. It does not even rise to the level of critique. It's ignorant trash not worth anyone's attention.

There will be no reform without rapprochement AND critique. Time to stand up for the right to criticize.


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## Edward Campbell

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> It's not an alleged movie, just an _*incredibly bad*_ one. It was deliberately made to be _*offensive and inaccurate*_. It's so _*poorly done*_ that I feel sorry for the guy who supposedly spent millions making it. It does not even rise to the level of critique. It's_* ignorant trash*_ not worth anyone's attention.
> 
> There will be no reform without rapprochement AND critique. Time to stand up for the right to criticize.




I agree with all aspects of your critique, but that does not alter, not even a tiny bit, why it is still *protected* as "fair comment" and needs to be defended as such.

"Hate speech" - no matter how it is spewed and no matter at whom it is directed - is a silly concept. This film does, indeed, aim to denigrate Islam but that is not an incitement to violence (which is one of the very, very few grounds on which we ought to restrict "free speech") at least it is no more an incitement to violence than is the anti-Israeli propaganda which is commonplace, usally as 'educational' material, in many parts of the world but which does not provoke murderous riots in Tel Aviv.

I'm with OZ on this ~ the film is just a convenient excuse for somewhat less that smart people to express their unreasoned, inchoate rage at a world which does not give them what they want. The film, unbelievably bad though it may be, is nothing about which anyone needs to apologize.

This is a North African/Arab/Persian/West Asian cultural problem, not a problem of "hate speech." The solution to that problem is a religious *reformation* followed by an *enlightenment*, both of which, based on our experience, will take generations and much, much bloodshed.


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## Haletown

For anyone trying to place all this strum & drang into a longer historic, regional and contemporary perspective, this article is a good place to start.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-islam-s-ancient-sectarian-divide-fuels-conflict-in-the-middle-east-a-854106-2.html

The Middle East is a still a quagmire of competing interests and vendettas going back many, may centuries.

It isn't going to change any time soon.


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## observor 69

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The fact that this and the attack on the Cairo embassy happened on 9/11 was no coincidence either.
> 
> Sadly, the US political and chattering class seems clueless to what is happening, the NYT conveiniently buried the story on page A4 (doesn't seem to support the "Smart Diplomacy" or "Arab Spring" narratives), and Instapundit has an evolving page on the responses by various people to this (the Embassy in Cairo sent a string of tweets which seemed to have inflamed the situation, then deleted them, for example).
> 
> All in all a sad day for the families of those killed, and a disaster for US diplomacy in the region.



http://www.nytimes.com/images/2012/09/13/nytfrontpage/scan.jpg


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## muskrat89

> Know who's responsible for all this?  Not someone who decided to make a film- the people who woke up and decided to go out and murder people.



The people who think this was somehow "caused" by a movie are out to lunch. Much the same way that a battered woman "causes" her beatings. "She should know better than to agitate her husband. She knows what a temper he has. She brought this on. She shouldn't have antagonized him"

Can you imagine saying something like that, even jokingly - in any Canadian or American workplace? I would be fired - *that day*.


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## Journeyman

muskrat89 said:
			
		

> I would be fired - *that day*.


You're not talking about those Senatorial districts where " 'legitimate rape' rarely results in pregnancy" though, right?


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## muskrat89

An idiot politician stepping on his yoohoo while in front of a microphone is a bit different than a perspective that is repeated so often and by so many that it is practically a mantra - don't you think?


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## Journeyman

Certainly. I just get a feeling that some "common sense" beliefs may be less common in certain areas....or amongst certain people.


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## Fishbone Jones

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Certainly. I just get a feeling that some "common sense" beliefs may be less common in certain areas....or amongst certain people.



The Recruiting Forum on Milnet?


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## Journeyman

:nod:  That's certainly one....region.     ;D


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## PanaEng

Thucydides said:
			
		

> More on the coordination of the attacks, and the possibility that this is part of a larger pattern (again). Reaf the article, not just the headline:
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/conservatives-rally-on-embassy-attacks/2012/09/12/c8344bec-fcfe-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_blog.html


Bunch of revisionist history hogwash.
(in ref your highlighted part)
The intelligence agencies that were piecing this together at the time were the same ones that  "failed to connect the dots" prior to 9/11
However, was the cruise missile attack in Khartoum and  Afghanistan a spur of the moment thing from Clinton?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile_strikes_on_Afghanistan_and_Sudan_%28August_1998%29

Just because  Obama is not foaming at mouth a la Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levine doesn't mean they are he is indifferent .


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## Colin Parkinson

Any President should say coldly and delibrately; "We will find those responsible and they will pay dearly for what they did and those who protect them will pay as well. We will not stop hunting you and we will hunt you for the rest of your life."


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## GAP

Today's cartoon in the Globe & Mail.....


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## cupper

Very interesting analysis on how and why the protests started. And it appears that Obama's so-called gaffe regarding Egypt not being an ally may not be a gaffe after all.

*Egypt Fans the Flames
Why Morsi Exploited the Muhammad Film -- and Why that Was a Bad Move
*

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138118/jytte-klausen/egypt-fans-the-flames?page=show



> The storming of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday echoed events following the 2005 Danish publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that led to widespread protest in 2006 and assaults on Danish embassies around the world. Today, Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, and his government are playing the same role that his predecessor Hosni Mubarak did then: provoking protest to consolidate power.
> 
> The chaos on Tuesday in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was set in motion the Sunday before when Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, spoke out against a film that he condemned as "offensive to all Muslims." He claimed that it was produced by "some extremist Copts" living in the United States. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-led government followed Gomaa's lead and demanded a public apology and criminal prosecution of the filmmakers. On Tuesday, as events unfolded in Benghazi, 3,000 demonstrators besieged the U.S. embassy in Cairo. An armed mob attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and killed Stevens and three other U.S. officials. It remains unclear who exactly planned the Libya strike, but reports point to Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters of the Islamic Law), a group connected to al Qaeda.
> 
> The film in question, it turns out, is little more than an amateur production made up of sophomoric sacrilegious sketches of the Prophet Muhammad taken from the Internet. It remains unclear who produced the dubious film, but it appears not to have been Egyptian Copts living in the United States. A trailer for the production was posted on YouTube in July, but apparently came to the attention of Egyptian authorities only after a murky Twitter campaign promoted it, with backing from a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, Terry Jones, who got everyone's attention in 2010 for his plans to burn copies of the Koran in a bonfire.
> 
> This feels very much like a sequel to 2006, when 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had been published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 sparked a public uproar. Those cartoons, too, had gone relatively unnoticed when they were first published. But when mysterious text messages and posts in Internet chat rooms alerted Muslims to the insult they had suffered and the Egyptian government started publicizing the Danes' sacrilege, people started to pay attention. And even then, the streets remained calm until Gomaa condemned the cartoons and encouraged denunciations during Friday prayers across the Middle East. Over three weeks, mobs burned Danish embassies and consulates to the ground. Two years later, al Qaeda bombed the Danish embassy in Islamabad, leaving eight people dead.
> 
> In 2008, I traveled to Cairo to investigate why the Egyptian government had decided to spearhead an international campaign against the Danish cartoons. Some of those with whom I talked pointed their fingers in the air and said, vaguely, "This came from the top." Others were willing to be more specific. They explained that Hosni Mubarak, who was president at the time, must have been involved.
> 
> To my great puzzlement, Egyptian diplomats, starting with Amr Moussa, who was then the secretary-general of the Arab League, refused to speak to me about the Danes. Instead, Moussa and his colleagues in the Foreign Ministry began every sentence with "But the Americans must understand," after which they would go on to explain why U.S. pressure to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to compete in free elections would lead to chaos. Presumably, they meant to imply that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the rioting.
> 
> In fact, those who suspected Mubarak were right. The objective of his regime's campaign against the Danish cartoons was twofold. First, the cartoons were a convenient way to illustrate the ills of an unfettered media. Buoyed by the cartoon riots, the Mubarak regime was able to push a new media charter through the Arab League in 2008. It restricted satellite television in general and al Jazeera in particular.
> 
> Second, the violent and apparently religious protest that followed the publication of the cartoons was a way to demonstrate to the Americans that the Muslim Brotherhood was dangerous. As Moussa told me, the Egyptian government wanted to teach the West a lesson. "We have to be treated equally," he complained, objecting to European and U.S. efforts to compel Egypt to sign a new charter for granting civil society groups freedom to operate outside of Mubarak's control.
> 
> The United States seemed to learn the lesson Mubarak intended. In 2008, the leader undid some reforms that had been introduced in 2005 in response to the "freedom agenda," U.S. President George W. Bush's ill-fated attempt to change the Middle East through elections. The move was met with only muted criticism from the United States.
> 
> For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood was eager to make sure that I understood that it was not responsible for the protests. Essam el-Erian, then a member of the Brotherhood's Guidance Bureau known to belong to its moderate wing, had just been released from prison when I met with him in his downtown Cairo office. He looked pale and was wearing ill-fitting glasses and teeth. He did not know much about the history of the cartoons but impressed upon me that, although the Brotherhood was offended by Islamophobic portrayals of the Prophet, it also understood that different countries have different traditions. He regarded protests against cartoons as a distraction from the real task of reform. He was suspicious that Mubarak was using the Danish cartoons to suppress the Brotherhood. Today, el-Erian is a Morsi adviser and the acting chairman of the new Muslim Brotherhood party, the Freedom and Justice Party, which controls Egypt's parliament.
> 
> My meeting with Khaled Hamza, who was then the editor of the Brotherhood's recently launched English-language Web site, was even more interesting. We met after secretly coordinating an appointment at the Starbucks in a suburban Egyptian mall. Throughout the meeting, Hamza prodded me to explain this "freedom of speech" thing that was so important to those defending the Danish newspaper. That started a discussion of how to establish the legal meaning of blasphemy in multi-religious open societies.
> 
> The day after our meeting, the security services came for Hamza. He remained in prison for eight months. Joining a chorus of liberals in Europe and the United States who had decided that working with the Muslim Brotherhood was the only way forward, in February 2008 Marc Lynch wrote on his blog: "Khaled, aside from being a wonderful person, has been a leading voice for moderation and engagement." Eventually, of course, Hamza was freed and the Muslim Brotherhood got what it had long advocated: real elections and the freedom to practice Islam as the conservatives desired. The Brothers did not spearhead the revolution but were its beneficiaries. In June, Brotherhood officials moved into Mubarak's old offices.
> 
> But in the past week, ironically, the Brotherhood has continued to follow the old Mubarak playbook. Hours after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the Muslim Brotherhood posted that it "strongly condemn(s) the deadly attack ... and the tragic loss of life. We urge restraint as people peacefully protest and express their anger." Even while condemning the attacks, however, the Brotherhood called for mass protests at mosques across Egypt on Friday, virtually guaranteeing that the unrest will spread.
> 
> The Muslim Brotherhood's sponsorship of the film protests might be an ill-advised attempt at the diversionary politics Mubarak was a master of, but the costs are high. If Egypt's ultra-Salafists take a harder line on the film or manage to co-opt the protests, Morsi could easily lose ground to them. It is a gamble. The ultra-conservative salafist Nour Party, the second-largest in the new parliament, has stepped up their campaign to turn Egypt's religious authorities into a new Supreme Court and derailed the work of the constituent assembly writing a new constitution.
> 
> In Egypt, the film is now being portrayed as the work of Jews and extremist Christians, but no one really knows. It hardly matters. Not everything on the Internet is what it appears to be. The Internet grants people the freedom to say silly things, including things that are insulting to Muslims, and can be exploited for political gain. But that goes both ways. It was not so long ago, after all, that YouTube postings of Mubarak's thugs shooting young demonstrators in the back helped to bring down a regime that Morsi and the Brotherhood had fought for decades to end. If only to set himself apart from the old regime, Morsi should take responsibility for rousing misplaced public anger and turning a non-event on the Internet into a real-world catastrophe.
> 
> Morsi should take responsibility for rousing misplaced public anger and turning a non-event on the Internet into a real-world catastrophe.


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## daftandbarmy

Libya rescue squad ran into fierce, accurate ambush

By Hadeel Al Shalchi

BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops despatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.

Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and a fourth American died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force which escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed.

Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue - there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected - also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.

Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.

"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries." 

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFL5E8KCMYB20120912


----------



## pthebeau

muskrat89 said:
			
		

> The people who think this was somehow "caused" by a movie are out to lunch. Much the same way that a battered woman "causes" her beatings. "She should know better than to agitate her husband. She knows what a temper he has. She brought this on. She shouldn't have antagonized him"
> 
> Can you imagine saying something like that, even jokingly - in any Canadian or American workplace? I would be fired - *that day*.



Yep you're absolutely right.  I'm currently reading through the Qur'an to try to understand what on earth could incite such violent reactions to nothing but an unoriginal troll.

That being said.  If the battered woman knows something will trigger her husband to harm her, she would be wise to do her best to avoid it.  Just like we advise women not to walk alone at night in the streets or in the middle of a public park.  They certainly do not cause the problem by any means, however, faced with reality, their decision will be an unfortunate factor in what may happen to them, especially if it was a decision made knowing the risks.

*We are very well aware of the violence we can create in the Middle East by offending their beliefs. *  The producer stated they "knew what they were getting into" when producing this film.  The publisher warned him that he would become the new "something Van Gogh" (can't remember exactly, it was an article in theblazer), which basically means that he will be the target of many islamists who will want to kill him.  Fact is, he and his team knew his movie would cause violence, but guess what, he did not pay with HIS life.  Instead, 4 americans lost their lives.  To me, that is an irresponsible use of freedom of speech.

Reality is reality.  You don't go to a bar and start flirting with a big guy's girlfriend.  Most people who see you knocked out on the sidewalk would blame you for instigating what is easy to predict.  I see no difference here.  It was easy to predict a violent outcome, and unnecessary to make such an ignorant production.


----------



## Teeps74

We, in the western world, are very very good at recognizing and exploiting our freedoms. This is a good thing. A very good thing by and large...

We fail utterly at teaching responsibility. 

Are you really doing something for the greater good, when you KNOW that your "free speech" is going to cause violence? 

Frankly, publish anything, any picture, any movie you want. But, if there is a corner of the planet you know that there will be violence as a response to your published work, THAT corner is the first place you should go with your work to show it. Cowardly people, hiding behind the veil of free speech to incite violence and hatred from thousands of kilometres away, makes me just a little ill (but at the same time, those idiots keep giving a reason to keep us all employed).


----------



## cupper

Let's not forget that both in Canada and the US the right of free speech is not absolute.

And as such, the person responsible for this crap could well be held liable for the shit storm he created, particularly if the intent was to stir up unrest in the first place.


----------



## daftandbarmy

There’s a disquieting report in Thursday morning’s NightWatch blog that claims the Marines 700 miles away in Cairo were barred from carrying live ammunition as the U.S. Embassy in Egypt came under attack:


Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/09/13/whats-worse-no-marines-or-possibly-unarmed-marines/#ixzz26Tkb4xfW


----------



## Edward Campbell

cupper said:
			
		

> Let's not forget that both in Canada and the US the right of free speech is not absolute.
> 
> And as such, the person responsible for this crap could well be held liable for the shit storm he created, particularly if the intent was to stir up unrest in the first place.




I have heard/read somewhere that the _producer/director_ (whatever) said that he made the film as *political* expression - a polemic, of sorts. If that's true then, it seems to me, that we must protect it, the "speech," _per se_, and him, the "speaker," no matter how we might feel about what he or his film says.


----------



## jollyjacktar

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have heard/read somewhere that the _producer/director_ (whatever) said that he made the film as *political* expression - a polemic, of sorts. If that's true then, it seems to me, that we must protect it, the "speech," _per se_, and him, the "speaker," no matter how we might feel about what he or his film says.


I disagree, anyone who intentionally acts in a manner which they expect to inflame masses of uneducated peasants to actions as this past week has lost my vote for sympathy or my willing to put my ass on the line for.  Especially when it costs the lives of my fellow countrymen and other innocents.

That would be my take on this asswit were he Canadian.


----------



## DAA

GAP said:
			
		

> The US supports the Egyptian military to the tune of something like 2 billion.....this is gonna hurt Egypt.



Yes the US does, as a result of the "Camp David" accords....

Personally, I think the News reports about the attack on the US Embassy in Cairo are "muchly" overstated!  Not to mention that the UK Embassy is located right next door and the Canadian Embassy another block away.  Egyptian State Security has had the entire area locked down since 2004.

This is a matter of cultural differences.  You have to remember, that the "poor" of the muslim countries, DO NOT have access to the media resources that we do in the West and only know and react to, based on what comes from within their respective communities.


----------



## George Wallace

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> I disagree, anyone who intentionally acts in a manner which they expect to inflame masses of uneducated peasants to actions as this past week has lost my vote for sympathy or my willing to put my *** on the line for.  Especially when it costs the lives of my fellow countrymen and other innocents.
> 
> That would be my take on this asswit were he Canadian.



Interesting comment.


----------



## jollyjacktar

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Interesting comment.


Each to his own.   Let's say it was a Bear this asswit was provoking with intent to piss it off greatly.  Let's say the Bear, only by virture of being a dumb animal, gets pissed and either attacks the idiot or some innocent bystander.  Would you still have sympathy for his plight and actions and would you be willing to put your butt on the line for him?  I wouldn't.  I'll stand by my lack of sympathy for these asswits, on both sides of the equation.  I would, however, be willing to put my ass on the line for the innocent bystander.


----------



## GAP

Producer Of Anti-Islam Film Was Fed Snitch
L.A. man began cooperating with prosecutors after 2009 fraud bust
Article Link

SEPTEMBER 14--In remarks stressing that the U.S. government had “absolutely nothing to do with” the anti-Islam film that has touched off violence in the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday sought to quash Arab concerns that the “disgusting and reprehensible” movie was somehow produced or condoned by American officials.

However, Clinton’s attempt to distance the U.S. from “Innocence of Muslims”--and, by extension, its felonious producer--may be complicated by the revelation that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula became a government informant after his 2009 arrest for bank fraud, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Though many key documents from the U.S. District Court case remain sealed, a June 2010 sentencing transcript provides an account of Nakoula’s cooperation with federal investigators in Los Angeles (and how his prison sentence was reduced as a result).

Nakoula, 55, was arrested in June 2009 for his role in a check-kiting ring that stole nearly $800,000 from six financial institutions by using stolen Social Security numbers and identities.  Nakoula was named in a six-count felony indictment accusing him and unnamed “co-schemers” of perpetrating the bank fraud.

Denied bail, Nakoula, a married father of three, was locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in L.A. when he began cooperating with Justice Department lawyers and federal agents. During a series of debriefing sessions, Nakoula provided investigators with a detailed account of the fraud operation and fingered the man who allegedly headed the operation, according to comments made by his lawyer at sentencing.

Nakoula identified the ring’s leader as Eiad Salameh, a notorious fraudster who has been tracked for more than a decade by state and federal investigators. In his debriefings, Nakoula said he was recruited as a “runner” by Salameh, who pocketed the majority of money generated by the bank swindles, according to James Henderson, Nakoula’s attorney.
More on link


----------



## OldSolduer

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have heard/read somewhere that the _producer/director_ (whatever) said that he made the film as *political* expression - a polemic, of sorts. If that's true then, it seems to me, that we must protect it, the "speech," _per se_, and him, the "speaker," no matter how we might feel about what he or his film says.



I quite agree Edward.

Why is it that we should not criticize Islam nor the Prophet? Why is it acceptable to criticize Jesus Christ and Christianity, but not Islam?


----------



## a_majoor

The right to free speech is not absolute in the cases of:

Libel and slander
Misrepresentation (to commit fraud)
Sedation
Incitement to commit violence
Treason


The film, bad as it may be, fall under none of these categories, and bad movies are not a reason to commit murder or mayhem. The film was only a useful excuse, and the fact that the attacks happened on 9/11 suggests that if the film had _never_ been made there would still have been an attack, with some other excuse presented as the reason.


----------



## Brad Sallows

>We are very well aware of the violence we can create in the Middle East by offending their beliefs.

Tough sh!t.  Fu<k them.  I have no interest in playing their game of not-one-step-backward one-upmanship in which they demand religious supremacy and a respect they do not reciprocate toward others.  The ones rioting are misogynistic and chauvinistic medievalists. They need to catch up with the rest of the world and learn tolerance*.

*Tolerance means putting up with sh!t you don't like, not embracing and celebrating it.


----------



## GAP

Yeah, that about sums it up.....


----------



## George Wallace

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Why is it that we should not criticize Islam nor the Prophet? Why is it acceptable to criticize Jesus Christ and Christianity, but not Islam?



Good question.


----------



## tomahawk6

As we have seen through the years it doesnt take much to get an arab mob to appear - all it takes is a cartoon. The current version of Islam is stuck in the middle ages and never went through a reformation. They live in the 21st century with an 11th century mindset.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> I disagree, anyone who intentionally acts in a manner which they expect to inflame masses of uneducated peasants to actions as this past week has lost my vote for sympathy or my willing to put my ass on the line for.  Especially when it costs the lives of my fellow countrymen and other innocents.
> 
> That would be my take on this asswit were he Canadian.



That could be applied to any political cartoonist in Canada, the US or the western world.

The only saving grace and difference is that we are more tolerant and civilized. Nor are we fervently and radically religious.

Otherwise, there but for the grace of God go we.

If ignorant savages and terrorists get inflammed over a cartoon to the point of killing people, they abdicate the right to live without looking over their shoulder, expecting to be killed themselves.


----------



## Old Sweat

Andrew Coyne attempts to inject a bit of reason into the argument over the attacks by stating at the end of this piece that the "Arab street" [my words] hates America simply because it is rich, powerful and successful and they are not. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Full Comment 
Andrew Coyne: The real lesson from embassy attacks — U.S. will always have enemies
Sep 14, 2012 7:42 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 14, 2012 11:27 PM ET

Violent protests outside American embassies, first in Egypt and Libya and now across the Muslim world, have provided a rare moment of agreement for partisans of the right and left: the right, for whom everything is President Obama’s fault, and the left, for whom everything is America’s fault.

The protests, both agree, are not merely expressions of whatever was on the minds of those who showed up on the day, but a broad indictment of American policy in the Middle East, notably in its support (temporizing as it sometimes was) for the so-called Arab Spring. While American indulgence of western-friendly dictators like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was once a bone of contention between the two sides, today there is an odd new entente in favour of letting sleeping Muslims lie.


This is what you get, the right says, for forsaking our allies: not western-style democrats, but implacably hostile Islamists, whether of the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda strain. Obama’s conciliatory gestures early in his term, they claim, communicated weakness; his passivity in the face of provocation confirmed it.

This is what you get, the left says, for meddling in other countries’ affairs. (Sample Guardian headline: “The west has once again started a fire it cannot extinguish.”) Unless it’s for not meddling soon enough. Or is it for meddling in the wrong way? No matter. Remember, whatever happens, it’s always America’s fault.

It strikes me as rather early days to be making such pronouncements, though you may recall it took scant minutes for commentators to discover the “root causes” of September 11 (whose anniversary the embassy attacks seem intended to celebrate). By an amazing coincidence, the terrorists’ grievances in every case turned out to be identical with those of whichever pundit was flapping his gums. To critics of American foreign policy, it was on account of American foreign policy. To those concerned with Third World poverty, it was about Third World poverty. And so on down the line: every time. It was uncanny.

Still, it was evident to all, even then, that 9/11 was a historic event, whose consequences would be felt for decades: whatever its meaning, its significance was indisputable. The same is not remotely true here. That a few hundred, or even a few thousand, hotheads gather to chant “Death to America,” on whatever pretext, does not mean their countrymen are all of the same mind; that nascent authorities, in societies lately emerged from dictatorship or civil war, have been unable to prevent the mobs from storming the embassies does not, by itself, demonstrate the failure of the experiment in Arab liberty.

Libya may not be the most stable place nowadays, but would its prospects be brighter if Gaddafi were still in power? Or Egypt’s, under Mubarak? As with post-Saddam Iraq or Afghanistan after the Taliban, we should not let their present difficulties blind us to how much better off these countries are now than under the previous regimes, and can hope to be in future.

What the last few days does show, as if we needed reminding, is that a lot of people in the Muslim world still hate America. Even if the proximate cause were, as reported, a crude anti-Muslim video that happened to have been produced in the United States, the crowds’ fury plainly has as much to do with where the film was made as what was in it. The protests have become, if they were not originally, arenas for the venting of rage at the U.S. in general — and at its president in particular. “Obama, Obama, we are all Osamas,” rioters in Tunis chanted. In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, they burned him in effigy.

If this seems a remarkable turn of events, it shouldn’t. The notion that the election of a president with Muslim roots, or the adoption of a more conciliatory tone in American foreign policy, would mollify America’s detractors in the Third World, was always a fantasy. If it is unlikely the protests were caused by Obama’s “weakness” — Mitt Romney’s campaign went so far as to claim they would not have taken place if he were president — then neither, it seems, has his presence in the White House done anything to prevent them. Perhaps there is less anti-Americanism abroad as a result of his presidency, but it certainly hasn’t been extinguished. Which is fine. Because there isn’t anything to be done about it, and no point in trying.

It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of America must have some rational cause, any more than other prejudices. It does not. It is a constant, unlikely to change no matter what propitiatory gestures the U.S. might offer. It has nothing to do with what foreign policy it pursues, or whether the president’s middle name is Hussein. It exists because America exists, and if America did not exist it would attach itself to something else.

Hatred of America is a form of self-hatred, the fruit of frustration and despair in the Muslim world at their relative decline. And not only in the Muslim world. Anti-Americanism will always be with us so long as people need a bogeyman on which to hang the evils of the world. It speaks to all that is small and envious and insecure in us, and unfortunately that, too, is a constant.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I agree with Andrew Coyne, it is as I said, earlier, an expression of some Muslims' "unreasoned, inchoate rage at a world which does not give them what they want." And Coyne suggests, correctly, that we can find that same rage, albeit expressed differently, amongst all those, including, for example, Canadian left wing intellectuals, who need some simple way to explain away their (relative) failure. One hundred to 150 years ago Britain was the target of that rage: envious Americans (mostly Irish Americans) - citizens of a "second place" country, were "twisting the lion's tail," including by abortive invasions of Canada.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The right to free speech is not absolute in the cases of:
> 
> Libel and slander
> Misrepresentation (to commit fraud)
> Sedation
> Incitement to commit violence
> Treason
> 
> 
> The film, bad as it may be, fall under none of these categories, and bad movies are not a reason to commit murder or mayhem. The film was only a useful excuse, and the fact that the attacks happened on 9/11 suggests that if the film had _never_ been made there would still have been an attack, with some other excuse presented as the reason.




 :goodpost:   300 Milpoints sent your way

You are exactly right! As I said, earlier: "This film does, indeed, aim to denigrate Islam but that is not an incitement to violence (which is one of the very, very few grounds on which we ought to restrict "free speech") ... the film is just a convenient excuse for somewhat less that smart people to express their unreasoned, inchoate rage at a world which does not give them what they want. The film, unbelievably bad though it may be, is nothing about which anyone needs to apologize."

Focus on the *real* "root causes" which are to be found in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asias, not in America or Europe, and amongst the peoples of North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, not amongst Australians and Canadians, and which can be solved only when those peoples sort themselves out in their own bloody ways.


----------



## OldSolduer

The film maker is cooperating with the FBI, and the video footage of him being escorted by police makes him look more like a child molester than a film maker.


----------



## a_majoor

And it keeps spreading: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/map-muslim-protests-around-world/56865/

The Google map shows "protests" from the UK to Bangladesh, and as far south as Nigeria and Siri Lanka.


----------



## winnipegoo7

recceguy said:
			
		

> Otherwise, there but for the grace of God go we.









http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06/16/photos-riots-fire-destruction-after-vancouvers-loss/


----------



## GAP

There may be no anti-Islamic movie at all
Article Link
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / September 12, 2012 

Some interesting and convincing points are made.

As I finished this post, I came across an interview with an actress who appears in some of the footage given to Gawker. It goes a long way to clearing up some of the mystery, though not entirely. 

Cindy Lee Garcia tells the website that she was hired last summer for a small part in a movie she was told would be called "Desert Warriors," about life in Egypt 2,000 years ago (Islam is about 1,400 years old).

She told Gawker "It wasn't based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything and that, according to Gawker, "In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn't even called Muhammed; he was "Master George," Garcia said. The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed. Garcia said that there was a man who identified as "Bacile" on set, but that he was Egyptian and frequently spoke Arabic.

The online 14-minute clip of a purportedly anti-Islamic movie that sparked protests at the US embassy in Cairo and and the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is now looking like it could have been ginned up by someone sitting a basement with cheap dubbing software.

Full credit goes to Sarah Abdurrahman at On the Media and Rosie Grey at Buzzfed who appear to be the first to highlight (there may be others, but they're the ones who caught my eye) the fact that almost every instance of language referring to Islam or Muhammad in the film has been dubbed in. That is, mouths are mouthing but the words you're hearing don't match.

There have already been a bunch of lies associated with the alleged film. A man named "Sam Bacile" was identified as being the writer and producer. He claimed to be an Israeli citizen. The Israelis say they have no record of him. He claimed to have spent $5 million on the movie. The clip online doesn't look like even $100,000 was spent. There is no record of a "Sam Bacile" living in California, and his strange insistence on the fact that he was Jewish and that he had exclusively Jewish funders for his film in an interview with the Associated Press now looks like something of a red flag.

The one verifiable person involved in this strange tale so far is Steve Klein, an evangelical Christian and anti-Islamic activist with ties to militia groups and a Coptic Christian satellite TV station based in California. Klein told Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic earlier today that he was a consultant on the film, that "Sam Bacile," was a pseudonym, that the person behind the name probably isn't Jewish, and he didn't know the real name of the man. He doesn't know the name of someone he worked on a movie with? Yet another strange, credulity-stretching claim. 

Now comes the part with the compelling case of no movie at all.

Abdurrahman writes:

    If you watch closely, you can see that when the actors are reading parts of the script that do not contain Islam-specific language, the audio from the sound stage is used (the audio that was recorded as the actors were simultaneously being filmed). But anytime the actors are referring to something specific to the religion (the Prophet Muhammed, the Quran, etc.) the audio recorded during filming is replaced with a poorly executed post-production dub. And if you look EVEN closer, you can see that the actors’ mouths are saying something other than what the dub is saying.

    For example, at 2:53, the voiceover says “His name is Muhammed. And we can call him The Father Unknown.” In this case, the whole line is dubbed, and it appears the actor is actually saying, “His name is George (?). And we can call him The Father Unknown.” I assume the filmmakers thought they were being slick, thinking that dubbing the whole line instead of just the name would make it more seamless and less noticeable to the viewer. But once you start to look for these dubs, it’s hard to see anything else.

And Grey writes:

    As the video above — cut from the YouTube video tied to a global controversy — shows, nearly all of the names in the movie's "trailer" — is a compilation of the most clumsily overdubbed moments from what is in reality an incoherent, haphazardly-edited set of scenes. Among the overdubbed words is "Mohammed," suggesting that the footage was taken from a film about something else entirely. The footage also suggests multiple video sources — there are obvious and jarring discrepancies among actors and locations... whoever made (it) may well have made use of little more than the standard editing software Final Cut Pro — far from a cast and crew of over 100 and millions of dollars.

Both make very, very convincing points (read their full posts) and if you watch the footage carefully, it's hard to escape their conclusions. In one scene a man is apparently teaching his daughter about the evils of Islam and writes on a blackboard that "Man + X = BT" as he explains to her that "Man + X = Islamic terrorist." Then he writes the equation in reverse, again intoning "Islamic terrorist" as he writes "BT."

If suspicions are right, the low-quality footage has been re-purposed from somewhere, and you'd expect someone to come forward and explain soon (since a lot of actors are involved).

What's really going on here? I have no idea. 
end


----------



## Brad Sallows

Responsible behaviour is a thin veneer.  Increasingly I believe the underlying problem is people without enough to do; employed people, people with children (or other dependants), people with animals and property to look after, for the most part do not take up excuses to riot.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

winnipegoo7 said:
			
		

> http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06/16/photos-riots-fire-destruction-after-vancouvers-loss/



The difference being, that these people aren't cutting the heads off others, because they don't agree with them.


----------



## Edward Campbell

recceguy said:
			
		

> The difference being, that these people aren't cutting the heads off others, because they don't agree with them.




Fair enough, but they do appear to fall within Brad's description ~ people with too much time on their hands because they have too few responsibilities.


----------



## Haletown

The narrative so far seems to be inconsistent with the facts.

"CHAOS AT THE STATE DEPT?
I spoke with a well-placed journalist last night whose sources describe the situation at the State Department in one word: “Chaos.”  The working assumption is that several American embassies may have been penetrated, or are vulnerable to attack, because so many of them rely on local residents for staff needs at the embassy, and as such may be in a position to breach security if they have been recruited by Al Qaida.  Moreover, the full story of the attack on the Benghazi consulate is much worse than we have been told (except by the Independent newspaper report John and I linked to here on Thursday).

The consulate in Benghazi was an interim facility, with only a standard door lock for security, and worse, Ambassador Stevens was traveling with only a light security detail, rather than in the heavily armed convoys our diplomats in the region usually employ.  The attack on the Benghazi was no mere target of opportunity spurred by reaction to the “Innocence of Muslims” film; the film is just a pretext.  The killing of Amb. Stevens was a premeditated hit, planned and carried out as retaliation for the recent drone strike that killed the number two Al Qaida operative in Afghanistan recently.  The vulnerability of Stevens at the Benghazi compound was scouted out carefully.  All the other embassy protest activity is just covering theater.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/chaos-at-the-state-dept.php


----------



## Old Sweat

And Mark Steyn joins in the criticism of the administration and the majority of media outlets with this blog from the National Review site which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act. 

Lying in State

By Mark Steyn

September 15, 2012 9:12 A.M.

Rich, re the silence of the State Department, I understand that America has decayed from a land of laws to a land of legalisms but the position that no one at State can say a word about Benghazi because there’s now an FBI investigation, and so it’s a sub judice police matter, and Sergeant Friday has flown out with an extra long roll of yellow “DO NOT CROSS” tape and strung it round the smoking ruins of the U.S. consulate and the “safe house” is stark staring nuts.

This is a security fiasco and a strategic debacle for the foreign policy of the United States, not a liquor store hold-up. What is wrong even with the bland, compliant, desiccated, over-credentialed, pansified, groupthink poodles of the press corps that they don’t hoot and jeer at Victoria Nuland? I know why she’s doing it; I know why Hillary Clinton is desperately trying to suggest that some movie trailer on YouTube is the reason that a mob in Benghazi knows the location of the U.S. ambassador’s safe house. But why would anybody else even pretend to take this stuff seriously? Elderly Soviet propagandists must be wondering why they wasted their time jamming radio transmitters and smashing printing presses when they could just have sent everyone to Columbia Journalism School.

More on the insane, post-modern unreality of the dying superpower in my weekend column.   

Edit: Here is the link to his weekend column: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/320283/disgrace-benghazi-mark-steyn


----------



## tomahawk6

Hillary's chickens have come home to roost - or are they Obama's ?


----------



## cupper

It seems that the internet companies are now the defacto arbiters of free speech.

*Google’s restricting of anti-Muslim video shows role of Web firms as free-speech arbiters*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/googles-restricting-of-anti-muslim-video-shows-role-of-web-firms-as-free-speech-arbiters/2012/09/14/ec0f8ce0-fe9b-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_story.html?hpid=z1



> Google lists eight reasons on its “YouTube Community Guidelines” page for why it might take down a video. Inciting riots is not among them. But after the White House warned Tuesday that a crude anti-Muslim movie trailer had sparked lethal violence in the Middle East, Google acted.
> 
> Days later, controversy over the 14-minute clip from “The Innocence of Muslims” was still roiling the Islamic world, with access blocked in Egypt, Libya, India, Indonesia and Afghanistan — keeping it from easy viewing in countries where more than a quarter of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live.
> 
> 
> 
> Legal experts and civil libertarians, meanwhile, said the controversy highlighted how Internet companies, most based in the United States, have become global arbiters of free speech, weighing complex issues that traditionally are the province of courts, judges, and occasionally, international treaty.
> 
> “Notice that Google has more power over this than either the Egyptian or the U.S. government,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor. “Most free speech today has nothing to do with governments and everything to do with companies.”
> 
> In temporarily blocking the video in some countries, legal experts say, Google implicitly invoked the concept of “clear and present danger.” That’s a key exception to the broad First Amendment protections in the United States, where free speech is more jealously guarded than almost anywhere in the world.
> 
> The Internet has been a boon to free speech, bringing access to information that governments have long tried to suppress. Recall last spring’s freewheeling Internet chatter over Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident, as he evaded capture in a country known for its tight control of news sources.
> 
> Google has positioned itself as an ally of such freedoms, as newspapers, book publishers and television stations long have. But because of the immediacy and global reach of Internet companies, they face particular challenges in addressing a range of legal restrictions, cultural sensitivities and, occasionally, national security concerns.
> 
> “Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter now play this adjudicatory role on free speech,” said Andrew McLaughlin, a former top policy official at Google who later worked the Obama White House as deputy chief technology officer.
> 
> Nazi propaganda, for example, can be found on Google.com but not Google.de, the site tailored for use in Germany, where such speech is illegal. In the United States, images of animal cruelty can be found through Google’s search algorithm — which is a key tool for legitimate researchers — but are blocked on YouTube, which the company owns but strives for a more PG sensibility, blocking pornography, gratuitous violence and hate speech.
> 
> Despite Google’s history as a steward of appropriate content, the White House outreach on the movie clip was remarkable, longtime observers of the company say.
> 
> Upset foreign governments occasionally block YouTube entirely within their borders to stop a video from being watched, as Afghanistan has done. Sometimes governments formally ask Google to block a YouTube video, which India and Indonesia have both done with the controversial movie clip. (Google said it complies with legal, written requests by governments to block videos from being viewed in their countries.)
> 
> But for the White House to ask Google to review a video that was causing trouble in a foreign land was an unusual step — and perhaps unprecedented. McLaughlin, the former Google and White House official, could think of no similar request in the past.
> 
> Both government and Google officials said the company made its own decision after the White House raised the issue of the video on Tuesday, the day that U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
> 
> “We reached out to YouTube to call the video to their attention and asked them to review whether it violates their terms of use,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said on Friday.
> 
> Google said it decided to block the video in Egypt and Libya because of the “very sensitive situations there” and not because the White House requested it.
> 
> A company official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal thinking at Google, said, “Dealing with controversial content is one of the biggest challenges we face as a company.”
> 
> The decision has drawn an uneasy reaction, with some civil libertarians blasting Google for essentially censoring access for some potential viewers. For critics, the decision recalled Google’s former compliance with Chinese government restrictions on a wide range of content — before the company moved its offices and servers to Hong Kong in 2010, beyond the reach of Chinese censorship laws.
> 
> The motives of both Google and the White House drew suspicion this week, with some saying that U.S. officials might have sought to send a political message — distancing the United States from the anti-Muslim video — by revealing their efforts to have it blocked. The officials had no legal authority to demand action, legal experts say.
> 
> “It’s a little bit of censorship and a little bit of diplomacy in a difficult situation,” said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties for the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.
> 
> Yet the controversy has highlighted how much of the world’s information is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of powerful companies. Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain said these “corporate gatekeepers” are essential to keeping free speech robust.
> 
> He praised efforts to establish guidelines for when content is removed or blocked from some viewers. Yet he said many hard decisions will come when actual cases arise.
> 
> “Anyone who says this is a no-brainer, I’m dubious about,” Zittrain said. “Because it’s not a no-brainer, and it’s not going to go away.”


----------



## tomahawk6

If you notice the administration is spinning the cause of these attacks are a video,when in fact the attacks were well planned and across the region. Notice the lack of attacks in Turkey,Jordan,Saudi Arabai ,Morrocco ,Iraq and Algeria.


----------



## armyvern

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> If you notice the administration is spinning the cause of these attacks are a video,when in fact the attacks were well planned and across the region. Notice the lack of attacks in Turkey,Jordan,Saudi Arabai ,Morrocco ,Iraq and Algeria.



I don't think it's so much as the administration spinning it this way as it is the radical Muslims using that video as their excuse for their co-ordinated effort.

As for the earlier comment by a previous poster regarding poor Muslim countries and their lack of ability to high tech ... eerily, when I was in Syria circa 2001, even those who were poor and living in their mud houses had satellite dishes on their "roofs" and cellphones clutched in their hands. Many of us made comments regarding their priorities as it was a time when a lot of us 1st worlders didn't even have them - especially when deployed. They may be uneducated, but they quite often have electronic access that you wouldn't associate with, let's say, third world countries in Africa.


----------



## cupper

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The right to free speech is not absolute in the cases of:
> 
> Libel and slander
> Misrepresentation (to commit fraud)
> Sedation Sedition [ftfy, unless you really meant speech so boring it puts people to sleep  ;D]
> Incitement to commit violence
> Treason
> 
> 
> The film, bad as it may be, fall under none of these categories, and bad movies are not a reason to commit murder or mayhem. The film was only a useful excuse, and the fact that the attacks happened on 9/11 suggests that if the film had _never_ been made there would still have been an attack, with some other excuse presented as the reason.



I don't want to get into a debate over whether this piece of crap fails the various tests for limits of free speech, but it would not be hard to fathom a situation where some radical group (and these ass hats are all supposedly connected to various radical Coptic Christian, or Anti-Islamic groups) putting out something like this to foment unrest and drag foreign government (read The U.S.) into taking some sort of action, or at least bringing Western attention  into focus for their cause.

But having said all of that, the situation in Benghazi that lead to the deaths of the 4 Americans was a different and unrelated incident from all of the other protests that are taking place in the rest of the Arab / Muslim world. It appears that the attackers may have used the protests in Benghazi as cover or diversion.


----------



## Old Sweat

Cupper

I could not agree more with the gist of your analysis. What I find disturbing when all else is said and done is that the majority of the media are ignoring the second point you make. It is hard to believe that they are not aware of the facts of the matter, and disturbing that they are giving the administration a free ride. It will be interesting to see what sort of approach the Sunday morning TV talk shows take.


----------



## cupper

Found this on David Frum's Daily Beast site. The author asks a very thought provoking question. I'd be very interested in the answer as well.

*Why the Absolutist Rage, Islamists?*

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/14/why-so-mad-islamist-radicals.html



> Koplow (at this point, I'm assuming you know Michael Koplow is the author of the wonderful Ottomans and Zionists blog) wonders why radical Islamists feel compelled to assail the actions of outsiders, as opposed to merely policing the ummah.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Something that I am eager to have explained to me by someone whose understanding of Islamic theology is deeper than mine (and I am not being sarcastic; I am genuinely interested): why is there an assumption on the part of the rioters and protestors that Muslim religious principles should be universal?
> 
> An article in the Egypt Independent on the reasons behind the protests in Egypt quoted a protestor explaining his anger by saying, “It is forbidden to depict the Prophet, especially when they say the exact opposite of the truth about him.”
> 
> I get that the prohibition exists in Islam, but I don’t get why that means that non-Muslims across the entire world have to adhere to it. Judaism forbids eating milk and meat together, but Jews are not going around burning McDonalds franchises because they serve cheeseburgers, nor are Mormons ransacking Starbucks stores because they sell caffeine.
> 
> For that matter, Islam forbids eating pork and drinking alcohol but Muslims are not demanding that all of Earth’s 6 billion residents refrain from having a beer with their barbecued ribs. Why is the expectation that everyone adhere to Islam’s prohibitions on depicting the prophet, and why does it only apply in this case but not to other activities prohibited by Islam? Again, I am not being snide but am actually looking for an answer.
Click to expand...


----------



## ModlrMike

It may not be Obama's fault, but it is his problem. How the administration manages this crisis could well determine November's outcome.


----------



## cupper

Interesting pushback by John McCain against Hannity and Fox News line of BS.

*McCain to Hannity: Fox 'wrong about Libya'*

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/09/mccain-to-hannity-you-and-fox-news-were-wrong-about-135607.html?hp=l5



> Sen. John McCain on Thursday night clashed with Sean Hannity, telling the Fox News host that he and others on the network “were wrong about Libya.”
> 
> McCain's remarks came after Hannity claimed he had accurately predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood would take control of Egypt, and pressed the Arizona Republican on why the Obama administration was not able to foresee this week's attacks on U.S. diplomats in North Africa.
> 
> “How is it that Sean Hannity and a few others of us out here predicted with pinpoint accuracy that the Muslim Brotherhood would be in charge in Egypt? Their first task when they took over the Parliament was to declare Israel, our closest ally, an enemy. First, their number one enemy,” Hannity said. “How is it that the administration with all their intelligence and all the money we spend to help them and the CIA — how is it that they didn’t see this coming? And they kept telling the American people, this is democracy. Democracy. I don’t view the Muslim Brotherhood as democracy. They want Sharia law implemented now in Egypt.”
> 
> McCain pushed back, telling Hannity that “that’s not clear that that’s true” and that he and Fox News were wrong with their take on the elections in Libya.
> 
> “But also it was you and people on Fox that said in Libya, ‘we didn’t know who they were and let’s not help these people.’ They had an election and they elected moderates. They rejected Islamists,” McCain said. “And yes, there are Al Qaeda factors and there are extremists in Libya today, but the Libyan people are friends of ours, and they support us, and they support democracy. So you were wrong about Libya.”
> 
> “I don’t think I was wrong about Libya at all,” Hannity replied.
> 
> McCain jumped in, telling Hannity, “Yes I do, I know you were.”
> 
> “No, I was not,” the Fox News host said.
> 
> “I know you were. They had a free and fair election, and a democratic non-Islamic government was elected. So you were wrong,” McCain said.
> 
> Hannity then said he was surprised McCain wasn’t siding with him.
> 
> “They didn’t think the Muslim Brotherhood would take over? This is a known terror organization. We say we’re fighting a war on terror, we’re apologizing, our government, to Egypt after they raid our embassy and rip our flag down?” Hannity said. “Frankly, Senator, I would think you are with me on this.”
> 
> The interview wrapped after McCain replied, “I am not taking the side of the administration. I am saying that the largest nation in the Arab world is something we have to carefully calibrate our actions with.”


----------



## Edward Campbell

People who dabble in microeconomics are fond of talking about the _rational actor_ - someone who makes _rational choices_. The people who riot in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia are not, in the way we use the word, _rational_. (I'm not talking about the ones who mount well planned, carefully executed, deadly attacks à la Benghazi.) Their rage is, as I have said over and over, inchoate, unformed, fueled by religious fervor and, therefore, almost by definition _irrational_. I read over and over again that these young men - they almost all seem to be young men, don't they? - march from the mosque directly to the riot target, urged on my the most recent sermon. I have also read, many times, that these young men are mostly graduates of or still students in Saudi funded, fundamentalist _madrasahs_ where they learn, for years, one and only one subject: how to read and interpret the _Quran_; they are, mostly, as I understand what I have read, innumerate, ignorant of any science (hard or social) and essentially illiterate, except for the _Quran_. It is hard for anyone to make a _rational_ choice on a religious topic; I suggest it is impossible if one is educated brainwashed in a Saudi _madrasah_.

So there is no _rational_ explanation for Muslim rage because there is no _rational_ foundation for it. Ignorant young men, fired up by equally ignorant religious leaders vent their anger and frustration on whatever "great satan" is at hand. Think Savonarola, in Florence, 500+ years ago ~ the bonfire of the vanities, and all that.


----------



## tomahawk6

This memo was scrubbed from the OSAC web site.


----------



## tomahawk6

Chaos at DOS.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/the-libyan-scandal-deepens.php

The Libyan Scandal Deepens

The Independent is reporting that the State Department had intelligence that American diplomatic facilities in the Middle East were being targeted, but did nothing to enhance security:

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

It is difficult to get a clear understanding of what happened in Benghazi. Chris Stevens had been traveling in other countries and only recently returned to Libya. There has been no explanation of why he was in Benghazi (as opposed to the capital, Tripoli) or how many other Americans were also there. Apparently the terrorists first attacked the consulate, which was virtually undefended:

According to security sources the consulate had been given a “health check” in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: “The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs.”

So where were the Marines? Stevens and others went to a supposed “safe house,” but the location of the house apparently had been betrayed to the terrorists. The explanation of how Stevens died from smoke inhalation is curious at best:

Mr Stevens, it is believed, was left in the building by the rest of the staff after they failed to find him in dense smoke caused by a blaze which had engulfed the building.

So they fled the building without the Ambassador? And where were the terrorists at that point? They had attacked the building with RPGs, as I understand it, and the building evidently was on fire. Did the terrorists just evaporate and allow the other staff members to leave? 

Supposedly, a group of friendly Libyans found Ambassador Stevens lying unconscious in the burned-out safe house and took him to a hospital. This apparently is when the photos we have seen were taken. The crowd doesn’t look particularly friendly to me. But where were the terrorists while that was going on?

Some hours later, apparently, a large group of Americans was rescued from the “safe house.” How can that be? The safe house was on fire. Did they arrive after an earlier group had departed from the safe house, and the friendly Libyans had removed Ambassador Stevens’s body? Apparently, but that makes no sense. In any event, a force was sent from Tripoli to rescue them:

An eight-strong American rescue team was sent from Tripoli and taken by troops under Captain Fathi al- Obeidi, of the February 17 Brigade, to the secret safe house to extract around 40 US staff. The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. “I don’t know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries,” said Captain Obeidi. “It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa.”

So now apparently the terrorists are back, this time with mortars! This isn’t a mob, it’s a military force. Despite the mortar attack, the eight Americans were able to resuce the 40 US staff from the supposedly burned-out safe house. It was somewhere in this time period when they learned what had happened to Stevens, apparently some hours earlier:

Libyan reinforcements eventually arrived, and the attack ended. News had arrived of Mr Stevens, and his body was picked up from the hospital and taken back to Tripoli with the other dead and the survivors.

This narrative does not make a lot of sense; the time sequence is confused, to say the least, and the story of what happened to Stevens doesn’t appear to add up. A Congressional investigation should be undertaken to find out what happened and why adequate security precautions were not taken. A Congressional committee will also want to inquire into how secret documents fell into the terrorists’ hands, compromising American intelligence assets in Libya:

The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.

Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

There is a great deal more to be learned about what happened in Libya, and why. The Obama administration will carry out its usual cover-up, so it is up to Congress to try to dig out the real story.


----------



## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Hillary's chickens have come home to roost - or are they Obama's ?



Hope you aren't referring to this:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/egyptians-who-jeered-clinton-cite-american-conservatives-to-argue-u-s-secretly-supports-islamists/



> As my colleague Kareem Fahim reported on Sunday, some political opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt claim that the United States even plotted to install the Islamist party’s presidential candidate in office. “Although wildly counterintuitive,” my colleagues David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh observed on Saturday, “that conspiracy theory has tapped into the deep popular distrust here of the United States.”
> 
> The strength of that belief was on full display on Saturday in Cairo, as hundreds rallied outside Mrs. Clinton’s hotel, waving placards that read: “Stop U.S. funding of the Muslim Brotherhood,”* “Clinton is the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood”* and “To Hillary: Hamas will never rule Egypt,” suggesting an even-wider conspiracy, including the Islamists in neighboring Gaza.



 ;D


----------



## tomahawk6

Nope. Obama helped fund the Arab Spring.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-usa-budget-foreign-idUSTRE81C1C920120213

and Startfor:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110523-obama-and-arab-spring



> If Obama is right that there is a democratic movement in the Muslim world large enough to seize power and create U.S.-friendly regimes, then he has made a wise choice. If he is wrong and the Arab Spring was simply unrest leading nowhere, then he risks the coalition he has by alienating regimes in places like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia without gaining either democracy or friends.


----------



## cupper

Ah yes. Those American Values that Mitt Romney was quick to say he would never apologize for: :sarcasm:

*Vandals attack mosques in Falls Church, Harrisonburg, Va.; communities express sympathy*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vandals-attack-mosques-in-falls-church-harrisonburg-va-communities-express-sympathy/2012/09/15/4b67fabc-ff4e-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html?hpid=z4



> Two mosques in Virginia were vandalized Friday and Saturday, arousing sympathy from their neighbors and speculation that the hostile actions were spurred by the current violent furor in the Middle East over a vulgar anti-Muslim video made in the United States.
> 
> On Friday, worshippers at the Islamic Center of the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg arrived at their weekly prayer service to find graffiti sprayed on the building. It used obscene and racial slurs against “Irakis,” and declared, “This is America,” adding another obscenity.
> 
> “Nothing like this has ever happened to us before, even after 9/11,” said Ehsan Ahmed, a member of the mosque’s board of directors and an economics professor at nearby James Madison University. “We have always been welcomed here, and we participate in many community activities. We can’t say what their motive was, but the timing is very coincidental.”
> 
> On Saturday morning, members of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church emerged from an early prayer service to find that someone had smashed out the front and back windows of about 30 cars parked on streets surrounding the site. There were no written slogans left in this case, but mosque officials said the message was clear.
> 
> “I am standing by the remains of what used to be my nice Volvo,” said Imam Johari Abdul Malik, the outreach director at Dar al-Hijrah. “This was definitely not done by our neighbors, because they have known us a long time and they don’t behave like this. It was done by someone who assumed that everyone who parks around here is a Muslim.”
> 
> Local police responded quickly to both incidents but have not identified any suspects, mosque officials said. Muslim civil rights activists said they were also receiving reports from police that the vandalism could be the work of teenagers.
> 
> The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights group, has called for an FBI investigation into both attacks. The group also announced Saturday that it has issued an appeal in Arabic to Muslims abroad, denouncing the violence and calling for calm.
> 
> Non-Muslim leaders in both Falls Church and Harrisonburg condemned the vandalism and said they had many positive dealings with the mosques. They said they could think of no reason for the sudden attacks, except for the strong emotions and religious animosity stirred by the American video and the responding violence in the Middle East.
> 
> “Oh, dear. I was worried something like this would happen,” Kathleen Kline Moore, pastor of the First Christian Church of Falls Church, one block away from Dar al-Hijrah, said when she learned of the car smashings. “These people are our friends, and we always let them park in our church lot on Fridays. We support them and we absolutely deplore what has happened to them.”
> 
> Dar al-Hijrah has faced controversy in the past because of links between its former leaders and some radical Islamic groups, but it has since been praised for building good relations with the surrounding community. The Shenandoah mosque, built in 1998, has many professional members and participates in many local charities.
> 
> Abdul Malik said that earlier in the week, he and other mosque officials had strongly denounced the rioting and violence in the Middle East that led to the death of J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American diplomatic workers on Tuesday. He said he had organized a news conference and a prayer vigil outside the White House on Wednesday. “We were seen locally denouncing the barbaric killing,” he said.
> 
> In Harrisonburg, some local officials immediately rallied around the vandalized mosque, posting statements of support on a Web site called “We Are All Harrisonburg” and inviting residents to a meeting of solidarity at the mosque on Sunday. They said more than 500 people had already signed up to attend.
> 
> “In some ways, this incident has given people an opportunity to reach out and get to know their neighbors, to build something positive from it,” said Kai Degner, a member of the Harrisonburg City Council and a real estate agent. “Our city is growing and changing and becoming more diverse, with 57 languages in our schools. Change can require adjustment, but we have had no horror stories here.”
> 
> Mohammed Aslam Afridi, president of the Harrisonburg mosque, is a U.S. government veterinarian who was born in Pakistan but has lived in the city for 38 years and always felt at home.
> 
> “I think what happened was an isolated incident,” he said. “Around the world, this anti-Islamic video has stirred people up, and so has the attack on the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. People are angry and upset. But we are all children of Adam. This is my Harrisonburg, my Virginia and my country.”
> 
> Kudos for the local communities that rallied their support for their victimized community members.


----------



## Sadukar09

One of the people killed played the game I moderate for.

Small world it seems...

RIP.


----------



## tomahawk6

Premonition

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/14/State-Department-Rules-of-Engagement-Kept-Marines-Out-of-Tripoli-as-Well-as-Benghazi-in-Libya


----------



## Fishbone Jones

cupper said:
			
		

> Ah yes. Those American Values that Mitt Romney was quick to say he would never apologize for: :sarcasm:



Sarcasm or not, please leave this kind of crap in the Election 2012 thread so as not to turn this one, or any other, into the same sort of shitfest.

Milnet.ca Staff


----------



## cupper

recceguy said:
			
		

> Sarcasm or not, please leave this kind of crap in the Election 2012 thread so as not to turn this one, or any other, into the same sort of shitfest.
> 
> Milnet.ca Staff



My apologies.


----------



## George Wallace

A little, perhaps different, perspective:

http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/14/a-night-with-the-fanatics



> A night with the fanatics
> 
> By Michael Coren,QMI Agency
> First posted: Friday, September 14, 2012 07:56 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 14, 2012 08:17 PM EDT
> 
> 
> On Tuesday evening, I covered a 9/11 vigil in Toronto, and a counter-protest across the street organized by Islamic and leftist groups calling for the return of Omar Khadr.
> 
> We didn’t know that as this was taking place, Muslim fascists in Libya and Egypt were murdering people who had in some way offended them.
> 
> One of the dead was the U.S. ambassador to Libya, representing a nation that had given so much to free the Libyan people from tyranny.
> 
> The ostensible reason for the slaughter was outrage over a fringe movie depicting the prophet Mohammed in a negative light.
> 
> So what? We are supposed to be free to speak our minds. The issue here is not the movie but the Islamic reaction to the movie.
> 
> Remember, the same week this tiny film was made public, the internationally celebrated Venice Film Festival gave an award to a movie showing a naked woman masturbating with a crucifix.
> 
> The Christian response was an e-mail.
> 
> I doubt any of this would have moved the crazies protesting Tuesday.
> 
> They described their demonstration as a hate-free zone, but told me and the other Sun News team to “f--- off” as soon as we arrived.
> 
> Not one of the many protesters could tell me the name of the medic who was killed by Omar Khadr, and some of them said it didn’t matter.
> 
> They were also indifferent to the stories I told them of Christians, gays, women and moderate Muslims being slaughtered by militant Islamists.
> 
> What was noticeable was how many non-Muslim, white student types were there, including one with a megaphone with OCAP — Ontario Coalition Against Poverty — written on it, as an ownership marker.
> 
> In that most of the crowd seemed to have the latest iPhones and iPads, I’m not sure where the poverty was.
> 
> As always, these extremist groups wheel out their token Jew or two, like the old South African apartheid regime always had a black traitor who would praise the system.
> 
> One of the Jewish ladies at this event explained how all of Israel was occupied territory.
> 
> The crowd screamed “fascist” and “hoodlum” at the peaceful crowd of mainly Jewish, Hindu and Chinese people across the road, and then ostentatiously sat down when the Canadian national anthem was played.
> 
> Suddenly Omar’s sister Zaynab Khadr was spotted and internal e-mails revealed she would be kindly providing refreshments — no joke.
> 
> The lovely Zaynab once said of Americans killed on 9/11, “They deserve it.
> 
> “They’ve been doing it for such a long time, why shouldn’t they feel it once in a while?”
> 
> We asked her politely for a comment, and the zoo erupted.
> 
> We were pushed and threatened, and a group of people surrounded us screaming “racist, racist” and tried to prevent us from moving.
> 
> One of them grabbed my arm and microphone, but his grip was as tenuous as his grasp of logic.
> 
> So, a night with the fanatics. Thank God they do not have the guns and bombs possessed by their friends in the Middle East.
> 
> But be aware, they live among us, and their hatred and anger knows few bounds.




http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/15/robson-muslims-arent-rioting-because-of-movie


> Muslims aren’t rioting because of movie
> 
> By John Robson,Parliamentary Bureau
> First posted: Saturday, September 15, 2012 08:50 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, September 15, 2012 09:10 PM EDT
> 
> Getting drawn into discussions of this supposed movie about Islam is a fool’s game. Who made it? Why? Is it the worst film ever? Does it even exist? None of that matters.
> 
> Journalists are obsessing over a movie no one seems to have seen by a filmmaker no one seems to have seen either. But what matters is murderous attacks by people who fly into a lethal fury if contradicted. They chant death to America and death to Bush and death to Carter and death to Jews and death to Obama and death to infidels and death to heretics and death to whatever and concoct excuses on a regular basis, from real cartoons to invented ones to the blood libel, that supposedly explain but certainly do not give rise to their obsession with killing other people and frequently themselves as well.
> 
> On Thursday, president Barack Obama told supporters in Colorado “I know that it’s difficult sometimes seeing these disturbing images on television because our world is filled with serious challenges.” Is that really how you describe the deliberate murder of an ambassador and attacks on embassies throughout the region? Your world is filled with violent idiots and you don’t even know it?
> 
> Apparently not.
> 
> Response to film
> 
> On Friday his White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said “This is a fairly volatile situation, and it is in response not to United States policy, obviously not to the administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video, a film, that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting — that in no way justifies any violent reaction to it.”
> 
> Likewise on Thursday Secretary of State Clinton called the film “disgusting and reprehensible.” She did cite America’s “long tradition of free expression which is enshrined in our Constitution and our law” and said “there should be no debate about the simple proposition that violence in response to speech is not acceptable.” But if that’s the case, why criticize the movie?
> 
> She should have said it is not the business of the United States government whether films are good or bad, aesthetically or morally, and anyone who doesn’t like it is free to walk out of the theatre. Open societies are rambunctious places with something to offend everyone every day and if many people in the Middle East go berserk over hurt feelings it’s their problem, not ours. Instead U.S. federal authorities are now investigating the alleged filmmaker and the White House has apparently asked YouTube to take the trailer down.
> 
> If we were going to get into the subject of who insults whom, imagine the offense we could take at the ravings of preachers in mosques from Gaza to Mecca, the diet of hate in Middle Eastern media or the Koranic verses in the Dome of the Rock mosque pointedly denying Christianity. But as the Bible says, answer not a fool according to his folly.
> 
> There may be no movie, only a trailer. It may be a provocation by Christians or perhaps Islamists. I don’t know and I don’t care. Even if it was a Hollywood blockbuster with sparkling production values that reflected mainstream Western views on Islam, we still should not be drawn into debating it while mobs rampage because doing so implies that views distasteful to Muslim radicals should be squashed so they won’t have to kill us.
> 
> In a free society anyone can criticize a film for bad acting, clumsy editing or perverted morals. But to assail this movie now is to accept the premise that its quality is somehow relevant to the violence and it’s not.
> 
> What happened in Benghazi, Cairo and Yemen is not part of an exercise in art criticism. It’s about jihad and that is what we should be discussing.
> 
> john.robson@sunmedia.ca
> 
> Twitter: @thejohnrobson




http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/14/islamist-jihad-against-west-rages


> Islamist jihad against West rages
> 
> By Salim Mansur,QMI Agency
> First posted: Friday, September 14, 2012 07:53 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 14, 2012 08:12 PM EDT
> 
> As Americans stopped to mark the 11th anniversary of 9/11, and ponder how much the world has changed during these years, an ocean away more terrorist attacks were mounted on American interests in the Middle East.
> 
> The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya resulting in the murder of Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, with three members of his staff and several Libyans, was an act of war by men indoctrinated with the same ideology of those who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
> 
> Osama bin Laden is dead and so is Ayatollah Khomeini, but the war they declared against the “satanic” West continues. The West, on the other hand, has opted to be an ostrich.
> 
> The result is more than a decade after hijacked jetliners plowed into tall buildings in New York, Islamists are ascendant across the Middle East and hoisting their Shariah-based totalitarian ideology. The U.S. under the Obama administration stands instead as having reverted back to the pre-9/11 mentality. The American election is barely seven weeks away and the Islamist jihad against the “Crusaders,” in the language of al-Qaida’s founder, will very likely get obscured in the fog of political debates and recriminations in the U.S.
> 
> But there is no mistaking that an apologetic West, as represented by President Obama, emboldened the Islamists, resulting in the manner in which the so-called Arab Spring unfolded.
> 
> The abandonment of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt accompanied by the embrace of Muslim Brotherhood is turning out to be a repeat of Iran in 1979 when Khomeini swept into power.
> 
> It is extraordinary that an apologetic America, as President Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo symbolized, and Europe with its appeasement mind-
> 
> set cannot get their act together in compelling a third world rogue state, Iran, to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons capability or face dire military consequences.
> 
> This failure to disarm Iran while embracing Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — the political grandfather of all the various Islamist offsprings in the greater Middle East and beyond — makes the present situation eerily similar to the 1930s.
> 
> What needs to be done, and should have been done by the previous Bush administration, is to take a page from George Kennan — the architect of President Truman’s policy against the Soviet Union — and update his strategy of containment for the Arab-Muslim world.
> 
> The Arab-Muslim world deserves to be isolated and contained, as was the former Soviet Union. An Iron Curtain, in Winston Churchill’s memorable words, should descend separating the West and its allies from the Arab-Muslim world until the latter has exhausted itself of its own demons.
> 
> The situation America, and by its default the West, finds itself in relation to the Arab-Muslim world is to a large extent, ironically, the result of its own guilt-ridden attitude and political correctness. This state of mind, or multiculturalism, gravely inhibits a realistic assessment of 9/11 and what has followed.
> 
> The explanation on offer that this new wave of Muslim rage was ignited by a crudely amateurish docu-drama about Islam’s prophet, and the individual responsible must be severely punished, is pathetic in describing a guilt-ridden West seeking to placate the Arab-Muslim world.
> 
> Islamists are at war, and the West needs to respond accordingly.


----------



## Journeyman

George Wallace said:
			
		

> A night with the fanatics
> By Michael Coren,QMI Agency
> 
> *One of them grabbed my arm and microphone, but his grip was as tenuous as his grasp of logic.*


  :rofl:   awesome


----------



## GAP

Stop appeasing jihadists
By Monte Solberg	,QMI Agency Sunday, September 16, 2012
Article Link

I know it’s still popular in some circles to say different cultures have different values, but all cultures are equal. I also know why people say this and it’s not because it’s obviously true, quite the contrary. They say it to avoid conflict.

It might even make sense in a sad way to dismiss the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans as a “cultural difference” if we knew it would appease our enemies. “No, I’m sorry dear, daddy won’t ever come home again because a different but equal culture killed him. But in their equally valid culture he had it coming so put on your burka and be quiet.”

Yes, asserting that some cultures are superior to others can lead to conflict, but appeasing is not the way out. The jihadists don’t care if we suck up to them. If you’re not one of them, they’ll dispose of you the moment you quit being useful to them.

In the case of the murders in Libya, the murderers would argue they were following orders. Given that the orders were issued in the year 632, you would think there might be some question as to whether they are still relevant.

After all, most of the world has moved on from then. There’s been a little reflection and critical thinking over the last millennium and things have changed.

In the West it took a while, but we finally figured out that it is self-evident we should all have equal rights. That’s why we oppose stoning women to death, even if they do show off an ankle.

The problem here isn’t freedom of expression in the West. In fact, the only alternative to violence is to debate ideas, which requires free expression and an open mind.

Unfortunately, jihadist minds closed 1,400 years ago and show no signs of reopening. They are still partying like it’s 999.

There are several lessons here.

First, if the Arab Spring ever actually existed, it has now yielded to jihadist winter. Let’s also not equate casting a ballot with real democracy. Permitting the vote without a commitment to universal human rights only legitimizes the tyranny of the majority. It’s democracy but it’s not liberal democracy.

Second, too many people in the West think the correct response to Muslim violence is to tiptoe around extreme Islam. Yes, some people have set out to inflame the Muslim street, but better a few free-speech provocateurs than a nation of sheep, afraid to call baloney on a way of thinking that is based on hate, repression and violence.

Third, let’s recognize that Israel is the only country the West can count on in the Middle East, precisely because it shares our values. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?

The U.S. embassy’s initial grovelling response to the violence in Cairo actually blamed American free expression for causing the violence. It was a futile and embarrassing attempt to appease the jihadists, an attitude I fear runs up the chain of command.

Forget the apologies. What U.S. foreign policy needs is tough talk and more Marines.
end


----------



## Old Sweat

While there is an apparent disagreement between the Libyan and American governments over the cause of the attack, it seems to me that the latter is peddling very softly and has not ruled out a terrorist plot. The evidence possibility that this was more than a random protest gone wrong does seem overwhelming and makes me wonder if this attitude may not get them in more trouble farther down the road. The story from the Global Security Org site is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Libya, U.S. Give Conflicting Accounts Of Benghazi Attack

September 16, 2012
 by RFE/RL

The United States and Libya have offered conflicting accounts about the attack in Benghazi, Libya, last week in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

On Septembe 16, Libya's parliament chief Muhammad al-Magariaf announced the arrest of 50 suspects in the case, saying the assault was pre-planned by extremists, mostly foreigners, backed by a few local Al-Qaeda "affiliates and sympathizers."

"It was planned, definitely. It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival," Magariaf said.

When asked where the foreign extremists came from, Magariaf responded that "they entered Libya from different directions" -- with "some of them definitely coming from Mali and Algeria," which are both to the west of Libya.

"The way these perpetrators acted and moved and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration -- this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned and predetermined," he said.

But Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told U.S. television interview programs on September 16 that the attack did not appear to be premeditated to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

Rice said evidence gathered so far suggests "some individual clusters of extremists" hijacked a protest that began "spontaneously in Benghazi" as a reaction to a protest organized by the Muslim Brotherhood a few hours earlier at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

The Cairo protest reportedly was sparked by a low-budget video -- produced privately in the United States and posted on YouTube -- that ridicules Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

Rice told the CBS interview program "Face the Nation" that Washington wants to see the results of an FBI investigation before drawing any definitive conclusions about events in Benghazi. But she gave an assessment based on what she called "the best information" to date.

"Soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution, and that it spun from there into something much, much more violent," she said.

Rice said it has yet to be determined whether the extremists who fired rocket-propelled grenades at the U.S. Consulate building in Benghazi had ties to Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.


----------



## Edward Campbell

GAP said:
			
		

> Stop appeasing jihadists
> By Monte Solberg	,QMI Agency Sunday, September 16, 2012
> Article Link
> 
> I know it’s still popular in some circles to say different cultures have different values, but all cultures are equal. I also know why people say this and it’s not because it’s obviously true, quite the contrary. They say it to avoid conflict.
> 
> It might even make sense in a sad way to dismiss the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans as a “cultural difference” if we knew it would appease our enemies. “No, I’m sorry dear, daddy won’t ever come home again because a different but equal culture killed him. But in their equally valid culture he had it coming so put on your burka and be quiet.”
> 
> Yes, asserting that some cultures are superior to others can lead to conflict, but appeasing is not the way out. The jihadists don’t care if we suck up to them. If you’re not one of them, they’ll dispose of you the moment you quit being useful to them.
> 
> In the case of the murders in Libya, the murderers would argue they were following orders. Given that the orders were issued in the year 632, you would think there might be some question as to whether they are still relevant.
> 
> After all, most of the world has moved on from then. There’s been a little reflection and critical thinking over the last millennium and things have changed.
> 
> In the West it took a while, but we finally figured out that it is self-evident we should all have equal rights. That’s why we oppose stoning women to death, even if they do show off an ankle.
> 
> The problem here isn’t freedom of expression in the West. In fact, the only alternative to violence is to debate ideas, which requires free expression and an open mind.
> 
> Unfortunately, jihadist minds closed 1,400 years ago and show no signs of reopening. They are still partying like it’s 999.
> 
> There are several lessons here.
> 
> First, if the Arab Spring ever actually existed, it has now yielded to jihadist winter. Let’s also not equate casting a ballot with real democracy. Permitting the vote without a commitment to universal human rights only legitimizes the tyranny of the majority. It’s democracy but it’s not liberal democracy.
> 
> Second, too many people in the West think the correct response to Muslim violence is to tiptoe around extreme Islam. Yes, some people have set out to inflame the Muslim street, but better a few free-speech provocateurs than a nation of sheep, afraid to call baloney on a way of thinking that is based on hate, repression and violence.
> 
> Third, let’s recognize that Israel is the only country the West can count on in the Middle East, precisely because it shares our values. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?
> 
> The U.S. embassy’s initial grovelling response to the violence in Cairo actually blamed American free expression for causing the violence. It was a futile and embarrassing attempt to appease the jihadists, an attitude I fear runs up the chain of command.
> 
> Forget the apologies. What U.S. foreign policy needs is tough talk and more Marines.
> end




Solberg is 100% right in his opening sentence ~ he recognizes that the *root cause* of Muslim rage is cultural, not _strategic_. His three "lessons" are, also, pretty much correct but I part ways with him on what I suspect is the unwritten part of his *conclusion*: 

  + Forget the apologies   ✔ Agreed
  + What U.S. foreign policy needs is ~ 
      ~ tough talk and        ? But it seems to me that "tough talk" is about all there is to US foreign policy
      ~ more Marines        ✘ What is needed is a more focused, better _managed_ US military that provides _muscle_ to a coherent strategy.

So what is a 'coherent strategy?' 

1. Identify and publicize your *vital interests*: those issues for which you will fight without further discussion. (For Canada there are probably, only a couple: self defence, defence of one of a small handful of traditional allies, etc. For the USA the list might be larger, including, for example, "freedom of the seas." For China, for example, it is Taiwan - we all know that China *will fight* to ensure Taiwan eventually rejoins China but it is highly unlikely to fight over some little islands.)

2. Identify your allies, friends, trade partners and all other and try to avoid making enemies. To some degree I think Obama has been right in this policy direction; one of his (stumbling) goals has been to stop talking about enemies and suggest (hope?) that they will, magically, _morph_, into competitors.

3. Recognize that Solberg is right and some countries/peoples are too different to be friends or even *trusted* trade partners in anything like the medium term (25+ years). One can, generally, our 20th century experiences with Germany notwithstanding, understand and cooperate with countries/peoples who are "like" us. The German are more "like" us than are the Russians, even when the Germans were our bitterest, deadly enemies and the Russians were our staunch, brave allies, we "knew" the Germans far more than we ever "knew" the "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," and we _might_ have never really understood its *vital interests*, either. Even today Asian China is more "like" us than is European Russia, because: Asia is more culturally sophisticated than Russia, Asia's *vital interests* are more clear than are Russia's, and we, in the 21st century, have so many Asians as "us" that we now have better insights into it. For America and the American led West North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia are so "different" in so many ways that we constantly misjudge them. It is better to ignore and even isolate them than it is to _engage_ in ways (almost any way) that almost always go sour.

4. Consequently: stand, firmly, bravely, with your friends, defend and promote your own *vital interests* and let the world unfold as it will, even when innocent civilians suffer.


Edit: typo


----------



## tomahawk6

If you are looking for coherence you wont find it. Susan Rice didnt want to admit that the attack in Libya was premeditated. A bunch of guys with RPG's just showed up at a "protest". Really ?


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> IIf you are looking for coherence you wont find it. Susan Rice didnt want to admit that the attack in Libya was premeditated. A bunch of guys with RPG's just showed up at a "protest". Really ?




I agree, T6, but the lack of coherence is neither all President Obama's fault nor even new. I would argue that the last time US foreign policy was wholly coherent awas when Truman was President and Acheson was Secretary of State; it was still fairly, but, especially with regard to the Middle East, less coherent under Reagan/Shultz. Neither Albright nor Clinton have any strategic _vision_ at all. State just flounders like a beached whale.


----------



## Maxadia

I agree with that.  It appears that they are simply reacting, without any foresight.

On the other hand, it's always easy to play armchair diplomatics when we don't have access to what information they have been fed beforehand, and what sources it may have come from.


----------



## Infanteer

Meh, I lived in a city that set itself ablaze when its hockey team lost in the finals, so I'm not as fussed about the protests of the masses.


----------



## pthebeau

Infanteer said:
			
		

> Meh, I lived in a city that set itself ablaze when its hockey team lost in the finals, so I'm not as fussed about the protests of the masses.



LOL...this will haunt Canadians for years to come.

Popular factors in rioting:
- Religion
- Monarchies
- Governments
- The 1%
- Hockey????? (maybe its just included in "Canadian Religion")


----------



## Edward Campbell

An interesting read ~ interesting to me, anyway, because it says what I've been saying for years now ~ reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/world/middleeast/muslims-rage-over-film-fueled-by-culture-divide.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www


> Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Raging at Film
> 
> By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
> 
> Published: September 16, 2012
> 
> CAIRO — Stepping from the cloud of tear gas in front of the American Embassy here, Khaled Ali repeated the urgent question that he said justified last week’s violent protests at United States outposts around the Muslim world.
> 
> “We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker said, holding up a handwritten sign in English that read “Shut Up America.” “Obama is the president, so he should have to apologize!”
> 
> When the protests against an American-made online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad exploded in about 20 countries, the source of the rage was more than just religious sensitivity, political demagogy or resentment of Washington, protesters and their sympathizers here said. It was also a demand that many of them described with the word “freedom,” although in a context very different from the term’s use in the individualistic West: the right of a community, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, to be free from grave insult to its identity and values.
> 
> That demand, in turn, was swept up in the colliding crosscurrents of regional politics. From one side came the gale of anger at America’s decade-old war against terrorism, which in the eyes of many Muslims in the region often looks like a war against them. And from the other, the new winds blowing through the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, which to many here means most of all a right to demand respect for the popular will.
> 
> “We want these countries to understand that they need to take into consideration the people, and not just the governments,” said Ismail Mohamed, 42, a religious scholar who once was an imam in Germany. “We don’t think that depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression. We think it is an offense against our rights,” he said, adding, “The West has to understand the ideology of the people.”
> 
> Even during the protests, some stone throwers stressed that the clash was not Muslim against Christian. Instead, they suggested that the traditionalism of people of both faiths in the region conflicted with Western individualism and secularism.
> 
> Youssef Sidhom, the editor of the Coptic Christian newspaper Watani, said he objected only to the violence of the protests.
> 
> Mr. Sidhom approvingly recalled the uproar among Egyptian Christians that greeted the 2006 film “The Da Vinci Code,” which was seen as an affront to aspects of traditional Christianity and the persona of Jesus. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and other Arab countries banned both the film and the book on which it was based. And in Egypt, where insulting any of the three Abrahamic religions is a crime, the police even arrested the head of a local film company for importing 2,000 copies of the DVD, according to news reports.
> 
> “This reaction is expected,” Mr. Sidhom said of last week’s protests, “and if it had stayed peaceful I would have said I supported it and understood.”
> 
> In a context where insults to religion are crimes and the state has tightly controlled almost all media, many in Egypt, like other Arab countries, sometimes find it hard to understand that the American government feels limited by its free speech rules from silencing even the most noxious religious bigot.
> 
> In his statement after protesters breached the walls of the United States Embassy last Tuesday, the spiritual leader of the Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, declared that “the West” had imposed laws against “those who deny or express dissident views on the Holocaust or question the number of Jews killed by Hitler, a topic which is purely historical, not a sacred doctrine.”
> 
> In fact, denying the Holocaust is also protected as free speech in the United States, although it is prohibited in Germany and a few other European countries. But the belief that it is illegal in the United States is widespread in Egypt, and the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie, called for the “criminalizing of assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions.”
> 
> “Otherwise, such acts will continue to cause devout Muslims across the world to suspect and even loathe the West, especially the U.S.A., for allowing their citizens to violate the sanctity of what they hold dear and holy,” he said. “Certainly, such attacks against sanctities do not fall under the freedom of opinion or thought.”
> 
> Several protesters said during the heat of last week’s battles here that they were astonished that the United States had not punished the filmmakers. “Everyone across all these countries has the same anger, they are rising up for the same reason and with the same demands, and still no action is taken against the people who made that film,” said Zakaria Magdy, 23, a printer.
> 
> In the West, many may express astonishment that the murder of Muslims in hate crimes does not provoke the same level of global outrage as the video did. But even a day after the clashes in Cairo had subsided, many Egyptians argued that a slur against their faith was a greater offense than any attack on a living person.
> 
> “When you hurt someone, you are just hurting one person,” said Ahmed Shobaky, 42, a jeweler. “But when you insult a faith like that, you are insulting a whole nation that feels the pain.”
> 
> Mr. Mohamed, the religious scholar, justified it this way: “Our prophet is more dear to us than our family and our nation.”
> 
> Others said that the outpouring of outrage against the video had built up over a long period of perceived denigrations of Muslims and their faith by the United States or its military, which are detailed extensively in the Arab news media: the invasion of Iraq on a discredited pretext; the images of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison; the burning or desecrations of the Koran by troops in Afghanistan and a pastor in Florida; detentions without trial at Guantánamo Bay; the denials of visas to prominent Muslim intellectuals; the deaths of Muslim civilians as collateral damage in drone strikes; even political campaigns against the specter of Islamic law inside the United States.
> 
> “This is not the first time that Muslim beliefs are being insulted or Muslims humiliated,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo.
> 
> While he stressed that no one should ever condone violence against diplomats or embassies because of even the most offensive film, Mr. Shahin said it was easy to see why the protesters focused on the United States government’s outposts. “There is a war going on here,” he said. “This was a straw, if you will, that broke the camel’s back.
> 
> “The message here is we don’t care about your beliefs — that because of our freedom of expression we can demean them and degrade them any time, and we do not care about your feelings.”
> 
> There are also purely local dynamics that can fan the flames. In Tunis, an American school was set on fire by protesters angry over the video — but then looted of computers and musical instruments by people in the neighborhood.
> 
> Here in Cairo, ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis initially helped drum up outrage against the video and rally their supporters to protest outside the embassy. But by the time darkness fell and a handful of young men climbed the embassy wall, the Salafis were nowhere to be found, and they stayed away the rest of the week.
> 
> Egyptian officials said that some non-Salafis involved in the embassy attacks confessed to receiving payments, although no payer had been identified. But after the first afternoon, the next three days of protests were dominated by a relatively small number of teenagers and young men — including die-hard soccer fans known as ultras. They appeared to have been motivated mainly by the opportunity to attack the police, whom they revile.
> 
> Some commentators said they regretted that the violence here and around the region had overshadowed the underlying argument against the offensive video. “Our performance came out like that of a failed lawyer in a no-lose case,” Wael Kandil, an editor of the newspaper Sharouq, wrote in a column on Sunday. “We served our opponents something that made them drop the main issue and take us to the margins — this is what we accomplished with our bad performance.”
> 
> Mohamed Sabry, 29, a sculptor and art teacher at a downtown cafe, said he saw a darker picture. “To see the Islamic world in this condition of underdevelopment,” he said, “this is a bigger insult to the prophet.”
> 
> _Mai Ayyad contributed reporting._




Sam Huntington's _Clash of Civilizations_ theory, proposed in a lecture in 1992 and in a _Foreign Affairs_ article a year later, is much reviled by those who, erroneously in my opinion, believe in cultural equivalency, but it is a good theory ~ like it or nor ~ because it explains what we see around us.

The fact that so very many Muslims, including those living in e.g. Sydney, Australia, appear to believe that Islam, as a religion, has a _right_ to be *protected* from perceived insult tells us that so many Muslims have a very, very shallow grasp of the Western World, in which many of them live.

Why?

Because many, far too many Muslims appear to believe that all one needs for education and for political understanding is a thorough knowledge of the _Quran_. That belief, more than anything else, explains why we have the Taliban. _Talib_ means student and the original _Taliban_, with their backward, medieval social and political ideas were graduates of Saudi funded madrasahs who turned into violent revolutionaries in pursuit of what they believe (not just "appear to believe") is their god's will.

They, everyone is free to believe what they wish; what they are *not free* to do is to try to impose their beliefs on me. (Nor, of course, are fundamentalist Christians who e.g. oppose abortion or gay marriage, entitled to try to impose their beliefs on me.) We, in the West, pay police forces and armies to protect our freedom of conscience against all comers ~ including 1.5 billion Muslims.


----------



## Old Sweat

This column from the Full Comment section of today's National Post website exposes the reality of the US position in the Middle East/North Africa as opposed to what both presidential candidates (and probably a very large number of their colleagues) would like it to be. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Political honesty would help offset limits on U.S. power

Kelly McParland | Sep 17, 2012 11:28 AM ET

The etiquette of U.S. presidential candidacy requires that both candidates react to the latest violence in the Middle East by pretending there’s more they could do about it.

Mitt Romney contends that, if he’d been president, it never would have happened. How would he have avoided it? Stronger leadership.  You can fill in for yourself what that’s supposed to mean.

Barack Obama pretends he can somehow bring those guilty of the murders in Libya to justice. True, he has the power to send more drones over the desert to target suspected enemies, but the president has been prosecuting the drone war with considerable enthusiasm through much of his first term, and it did nothing to prevent the violence in Benghazi.

The reality is that having the biggest arsenal in the world, the biggest military budget and the most advanced weaponry doesn’t buy the U.S. protection from a crazed mob in some distant country. It doesn’t even purchase Washington the ability to channel events in Libya, even though it helped rid the country of Muammar Gaddafi. All it brings is the right to watch from afar, exert what limited pressure it has, and hope for the best.

Mr. Obama probably knows the limits of U.S. power better than Mr. Romney,  because he’s had to deal with it for the past four years. He understands that countries are eager for U.S. financial aid, and keen on military assistance as long as suits their needs, but aren’t about to take orders from Washington just because they accepted its money and weapons. At the moment Mr. Obama can’t even get the prime minister of Israel to quit criticizing him on U.S. television, even though the U.S. commitment to Israel is about as clear cut as you can get. He’s a hardly going to have the inside track with a mob that’s lost its head because of some amateurish film by some twit in California.

If Mr. Romney has a similar understanding he’s disguised it well. His record on the international front is shaky at best. His trip to Israel, the UK and Poland was marked by gaffes. His prescription for dealing with Syria and Iran is to either drops bombs, or threaten to drop bombs, and send weapons to insurgents. What happens after that is unclear. George W. Bush didn’t worry much about what would happen once Iraq and Afghanistan had been militarily defeated– he figured it would just work itself out — and the results haven’t been pretty. But Mr. Romney seems to be of the same school.

Americans would be better off if their leaders quit feeding them the notion that they have some secret ability to dictate results, and only need the wit to use it. Mr. Romney’s first reaction to the attack in Libya was to accuse the administration of apologizing for American values, charging that the administration’s “first response” had been to “sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

It turned out to be ill-c0nsidered and badly timed. A president can’t just shoot off his mouth at the first report of an incident, regardless of whether all the facts are in, and a candidate shouldn’t either if he wants to be taken seriously. But the thinking behind the statement is standard in the U.S., where politicians continue to feed the fantasy that if Washington was just nimble enough, or more aggressive in utilizing its power, it could control this sort of thing and make the world a more peaceful and respectful place. When Obama was running to succeed George Bush he insisted a more sophisticated and respectful approach, especially with regard to the Muslim world, could produce relations more in keeping with American needs and values. That hasn’t worked out so well, as events have made clear. Now Romney echoes the Republican contention that Obama must be a weak and vacillating leader because Iran hasn’t stop chasing nuclear weapons and Syria hasn’t stop killing innocent Syrians. A “strong” president would quickly put Iran in its place by rattling U.S. sabres and reminding the mullahs what they’d be in for if they were foolish enough to attack Israel, he argues.

The U.S. military is powerful enough to defeat most opponents in short order. It took less than three weeks after the launch of the war on Iraq to overwhelm Iraqi forces. Kabul fell within a month of the launch of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. It’s what comes after the initial victory that gets out of hand; eight years after Iraq and 10 after Afghanistan, neither is secure, peaceful or particularly friendly. The U.S. helped oust Gaddafi without a single lost American life; but that chaos that followed ended with the four U.S. deaths in Benghazi.

The notion that a smarter foreign policy would preclude such tragedies may be comforting but doesn’t withstand close inspection. What was the magic formula for handling the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak? Stand by a corrupt autocrat because he’d help keep the country in line for 30 years, even while he was busy mowing down protesters seeking a more democratic government? Side with the protesters despite the instability they represented? Similarly, Obama was criticized for failing to get enthusiastic about the Libyan mission, precisely because the fall of Muammar Gaddafi – as desirable as that was – portended exactly the kind of uncertainty and battle for power now taking place. The enthusiasm in some camps for a greater U.S. role in Syria – Sen. John McCain insists the U.S. should be doing much more to help the rebels – means wedding itself to the same unpredictable forces that are now roiling Egypt and Libya.

The fact is that in many parts of the world, there’s very little the U.S. or anyone else can do to control events. Only inside the U.S. do they still seem to believe otherwise. Lesser powers are able to play a more nimble diplomatic game because they don’t fool themselves into holding outsized expectations. Other western countries confide in voters that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place, and outsiders can only hope to offer advice and assistance, and protect their own. Only an American leader could author a treatise with a title like “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” — as Romney did, and offer the statement: ”I am one of those who believes America is destined to remain, as it has been since the birth of the republic, the brightest hope of the world.”

If he believes that, he’s not equipped to deal with the reality, which is very different. If he doesn’t, he and other leaders should be more honest in discussing with Americans the world that faces them, and what they might be able to do about it within the limits that exist.


----------



## Brad Sallows

>His trip to Israel, the UK and Poland was marked by gaffes.

The magic words, which tend to eliminate any possibility that the speaker/author is worth heeding.  You'd think he did nothing but beak off non-stop to the locals about the inadequacy of everything around him.


----------



## a_majoor

More results of "Smart diplomacy":

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/500000-hezbollah-fanatics-chant-death-to-america-at-anti-us-protest-obama-says-protests-not-directed-at-america/



> *In Lebanon 500,000 Hezbollah Fanatics Chant “Death to America” at Anti-US Protest (Video)*
> Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, September 17, 2012, 8:37 PM
> 
> 
> Tens of thousands of Hezbollah fanatics marched in Beirut today.
> They chanted “Death to America!”
> 
> 
> 500,000 Hezbollah supporters attended an anti-US protest today in Beirut.
> The Guardian reported:
> 
> Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement, has called for new demonstrations to express outrage at a film that denigrates Islam and the prophet Muhammad, as unrest triggered by it continues from Tunisia to Indonesia.
> 
> “Prophet of God, we offer ourselves, our blood and our kin for the sake of your dignity and honour,” Nasrallah told supporters chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” at a rally in the southern Shia suburbs of Beirut. “The US should understand that if it broadcasts the film in full it will face very dangerous repercussions around the world.”
> 
> The White House says the violent Middle East protests are not directed at the US.



And the Administration's story unravels even more:

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/17/u-s-intel-cable-warned-cairo-embassy-but-not-benghazi-consulate-of-possible-violence-on-september-10-update-susan-rice-caught-lying/



> *U.S. intel cable warned Cairo embassy — but not Benghazi consulate — of possible violence on September 10; Update: Susan Rice caught lying?*
> POSTED AT 9:47 PM ON SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
> 
> Just a little something to break up the monotony of “ROMNEY SAID WHAT?” concern-troll coverage that you’ll be submerged in tomorrow.
> 
> I take it this cable is what the Independent had in mind in its blockbuster last week about a 48-hour warning for U.S. intelligence.
> 
> The cable, dispatched from Washington on September 10, the day before protests erupted, advised the embassy the broadcasts [of the Mohammed movie] could provoke violence. It did not direct specific measures to upgrade security, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
> 
> However, under standard diplomatic procedures, Egyptian government officials and security forces were notified of U.S. concerns, since host governments are responsible for ensuring the security of foreign diplomatic missions on their soil, the sources said.
> 
> Copies of the cable were not sent to other U.S. outposts in the region, including the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where violence took the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The ties between the Benghazi violence and the crude anti-Muslim film are still unclear.
> 
> The reason they didn’t send the cable to other American missions across the region was, supposedly, because clips from the movie were broadcast on a cleric’s show in Egypt and therefore the possibility of violence was somehow “specific to Egypt.” I sure hope that’s a government lie, because if they seriously believed after the international demagoguery of the Danish Mohammed cartoons that this would be contained to a single country — on the anniversary of 9/11 — we’re in deeper trouble than I thought.
> 
> But maybe the State Department had reason to know about a threat to the Benghazi consulate beforehand after all:
> 
> Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.
> 
> Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security…
> 
> “The situation is frightening, it scares us,” Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials. He did not say how they responded.
> 
> Mabrouk said it was not the first time he has warned foreigners about the worsening security situation in the face of the growing presence of armed jihadist groups in the Benghazi area.
> 
> It’s no surprise that security would be dodgy in Benghazi. NBC has a nifty piece today revisiting the area’s recent past as an incubator for international jihadis, from rank-and-file mujahedeen in Iraq to numbers two, three, and four in the Al Qaeda food chain. If there’s any consulate in the world where you’d want a little extra security, it’s Benghazi, especially with the new Libyan government pitifully weak right now. Instead, Chris Stevens had next to nothing. Why? Exit question: Was the protest of the Mohammed movie outside the consulate a diversion for the attack on the building? Or was there actually … no protest at all? Because if it’s the latter, that puts a big hole in Susan Rice’s claim yesterday that Benghazi was all about local demonstrations over a movie that got out of hand.
> 
> Update: A commendable bit of reporting here from NBC Nightly News. Yesterday Rice cited the two American contractors killed in the Benghazi attack as proof that Stevens and his staff did have some security. But NBC says she was wrong: The contractors weren’t part of the consulate’s regulate security detail. Apparently Stevens had nothing except a security supervisor and a local militia. Why?



It seems increasingly clear that radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood have moved into the power vacuum left by the overthrow of previous regimes in the "Arab Spring", and equally obvious that no one in the US State Department seems to have seriously considered that this might happen in the chaotic aftermath of regime change. The radicals are seizing an opportunity to humiliate the United States on the international stage and looking for the reaction. This also plays well to their domestic audience and demoralizes any domestic opposition; local democrats see that the US is unable or unwilling to stand for them while any support base in the region evaporates, heading for the "strong horse".


----------



## Rifleman62

I would like to see the transcripts of any of the cell phone calls the Ambassador or the other three made that day. You can be sure calls were made.


----------



## Haletown

Well this might just pour gas on their fire. . . .  A French satirical magazine plans to publish Mohamed pictures tomorrow.




http://abcnews.go.com/news/t/blogEntry?id=17265007


----------



## Jarnhamar

Kinda seems like people are getting fed of with tip toeing around these psychos.


----------



## OldSolduer

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> Kinda seems like people are getting fed of with tip toeing around these psychos.



I was fed up with terrorists in the 70s, never mind in 2012.

Badder- Meinhof, Red Brigades, Carlos The Jackal.....IRA etc


----------



## cupper

On a lighter note, it seems like Newsweeks "Muslim Rage" has now become a Twitter meme where some damned funny tweets came up.

*'Muslim Rage' Explodes On Twitter, But In A Funny Way (Yes, Really)*

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/17/161315765/muslim-rage-explodes-on-twitter-but-in-a-funny-way-yes-really



> Reaction to the Innocence of Muslims film and the violence it sparked has ranged from confusion and anger to the fear of possible reprisals against religious groups. And now, on Twitter, at least, humor has managed to coalesce around an unlikely hashtag: #muslimrage.
> 
> Inspired by the all-caps headline "MUSLIM RAGE" on this week's cover of Newsweek, irreverent tweeters who happen to be Muslim are giving a glimpse of what really ticks them off — or at least, what makes them irate enough to make a joke.
> 
> Here are a few examples:
> 
> "I'm having such a good hair day. No one even knows. #MuslimRage" — Hend (retweeted 2900 times).
> 
> Lost your kid Jihad at the airport. Can't yell for him. #MuslimRage — Leila (retweeted 1000 times).
> 
> "When you realize that if you have a 5 o'clock shadow it can be deemed a security threat." — Taufiq Rahim.
> 
> "#muslimrage when you order halal chicken and find out the chef cooked it in alcohol!" — Hassan Sultan.
> 
> "You go to a football watch party and all these is to eat is pepperoni pizza and beer battered chicken wings #MuslimRage" — Waliya.
> 
> "i dont feel any rage....does that mean i am not muslim?#someonegetmeadrink #MuslimRage " — Ramah Kudaimi.
> 
> The hashtag was meant to host a rather more serious discussion sparked by a Newsweek feature written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, describing "how she survived Muslim rage—and how we can end it."



I've included a link to the Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=%23MuslimRage&src=hash


My personal favorite is "Lost your kid Jihad at the airport. Can't yell for him."  ;D


----------



## Jarnhamar

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/385258/20120917/pakostan-innocence-muslims-youtube-ban-ashraf.htm



> However, YouTube said it has blocked access to the film in Libya, Egypt, India and Indonesia.



So why can't youtube
1. Block the assholes that dub swearing into dora and toopy & bino movies and;
2. Do something about the jerks who upload "official music videos" that turn out to be their shitty covers of them singing the song?

Icanhazmuslimragenow?


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Yesterday's National Post had an article that it was Libyans who found Ambassador Stevens, after the attack, and that he was still alive when they took him to the hospital. Re-produced under the Fair Dealing Provisions of the Copyright Act.



> Libyans found U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens breathing after attack, tried to save him
> 
> Associated Press | Sep 17, 2012 2:50 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 17, 2012 7:03 PM ET
> More from Associated Press
> 
> CAIRO — Ambassador Chris Stevens was still breathing when Libyans stumbled across him inside a room in the American Consulate in Benghazi, cheering, “Alive, alive” and “God is great” when they discovered he was still breathing and then trying to rescue him after last week’s deadly attack in the eastern Libyan city, witnesses told The Associated Press on Monday.
> 
> Fahd al-Bakoush, a freelance videographer, was among the Libyan civilians roaming freely through the consulate after gunmen and protesters rampaged through it last Tuesday night. Al-Bakoush said he heard someone call out that he had tripped over a dead body.
> 
> A group of people gathered as several men pulled the seemingly lifeless form from the room. They saw he was alive and a foreigner, though no one knew who he was, al-Bakoush said.
> 
> He was breathing and his eyelids flickered, he said. “He was alive,” he said. “No doubt. His face was blackened and he was like a paralyzed person.”
> 
> Video taken by al-Bakoush and posted on YouTube shows Stevens being carried out of a dark room through a window with a raised shutter by a crowd of men. “Bring him out, man,” someone shouts. “Out of the way, out of the way!”
> 
> “Alive, Alive!” come other shouts, then a cheer of “God is great.”
> 
> The next scene shows Stevens lying on a tile floor, with one man touching his neck to check his pulse.
> 
> The video has been authenticated since Stevens’ face is clearly visible and he is wearing the same white t-shirt seen in authenticated photos of him being carried away on another man’s shoulders, presumably moments later. Two colleagues of al-Bakoush who also witnessed the scene confirmed that he took the footage.
> 
> The accounts of all three witnesses mesh with that of the doctor who treated Stevens that night. Last week, the doctor told The Associated Press that Stevens was nearly lifeless when he was brought by Libyans, with no other Americans around, to the Benghazi hospital where he worked. He said Stevens had severe asphyxia from the smoke and that he tried to resuscitate him with no success. Only later did security officials confirm it was Stevens. He was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.
> 
> A freelance photographer who was with al-Bakoush at the scene, Abdel-Qader Fadl, said Stevens was unconscious and “maybe moved his head, but only once.”
> 
> Ahmed Shams, a 22-year-old arts student who works with the two, said the group cried out “God is great” in celebration after discovering he wasn’t dead. “We were happy to see him alive. The youth tried to rescue him. But there was no security, no ambulances, nothing to help,” he said.
> 
> The men carried Stevens to a private car to drive him to the hospital since there was no ambulance, all three witnesses said.



 Article Link (with photos)


----------



## Rifleman62

This report was on FOX News *the night it happened* along with several photos of the Ambassador. One of the photos showed him being removed (unconscious ??) from a vehicle, and another in a hospital. FOX News medical contributor said it looked possibly like the Ambassador died of smoke inhalation.

No one saw the report, cause they don't pay the extra to subscribe to FOX, but endlessly criticize the network.


----------



## a_majoor

Accidental truth telling at the NYT. This is the paper that initially reported the attack on page A4, just to keep things in context:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=44580



> *A Gaffe At The Gray Lady*
> By Rand Simberg on September 19, 2012 at 6:00 am
> Posted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary
> 
> In the Kinsleyan sense of accidentally telling the truth, that is. The paper is running a story today that essentially admits that Nakoula was arrested as a scapegoat:
> 
> The film was produced in the United States, though its origins are still shrouded. American federal authorities identified the man behind the film as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55. Though the film does not appear to violate any American laws, the authorities took Mr. Nakoula in for questioning on Saturday over possible federal parole violations connected to an unrelated criminal conviction. That action has done little to tamp down the unrest.
> Emphasis mine. Was it supposed to have that effect? If so, it makes it all the worse, because it is a concession to the violent rioters, and simply encourages them, and sends the message that violence will get them what they want. As Professor Jacobson says, empowering people who set fires to define the limits of free speech is how free speech dies.
> 
> In other accidental truth telling, the paper also admits that Occupy Wall Street was a pointless fizzle.
> [Update a few minutes later]
> 
> Related thoughts from Lileks (you’ll have to scroll a bit):
> 
> 
> Can’t quite imagine Buddhists rioting over it. Can’t quite imagine Hindus giving a rancid fig for Bill Maher’s opinion. Can’t imagine Copts or Zoroastrians or devotees of Odin pounding the table and shouting THIS SHALL NOT STAND and marching off with a gun to set things right. For that matter, can’t imagine Christians in the South, Africa, or China deciding that the rest of the day shall be devoted to yelling about the existence of a movie written and performed by a comedian who’s just got religion’s number, totally, like no one else ever.
> 
> So it’s almost as if -
> 
> No, that’s silly.
> 
> Okay, I’ll say it. It’s almost as if the author of the piece is carving out a First Amendment exception based on the possible reaction of a particular set of people in a particular place in the world.
> 
> Oh, it’s just a little exception. Sure, “you can’t cry fire in a crowded theater” becomes “you can’t mail someone in another country a picture of a match.” But that’s a hard and fast line. You can see quite clearly where the emanation ends, and the penumbra begins.
> 
> Don’t give them an inch.


----------



## jollyjacktar




----------



## Rifleman62

Thucydides: 





> Accidental truth telling at the NYT. This is the paper that initially reported the attack on page A4, just to keep things in context:



And nothing, absolutely nothing in today's NYT re the WH finally admitting it was a deliberate terrorist attack.

Do a word search for "Libya". Nothing.

For the Obama administration and the Democrat's there is a "War on Women", but using the phrase "War on Terrorism" is banned i.e. Fort Hood was workplace violence.


----------



## a_majoor

After the collapse of the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East, it will take decades for future administrations to rebuild relationships. If the turmoil in the Middle East disrupts oil supplies, the economic shock will be global but the real victims will be American allies like Europe, India and Japan which import most Middle Eastern oil (North America can exploit its domestic reserves, shale oil and oil sands):

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/21/charles-krauthammer-obamas-cairo-doctrine-lies-in-ruins-of-benghazi/



> *Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s Cairo Doctrine lies in ruins of Benghazi*
> 
> Charles Krauthammer | Sep 21, 2012 8:59 AM ET
> More from Charles Krauthammer
> 
> In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.
> 
> On June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.
> 
> But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.
> 
> First, he would cleanse by confession. Then he would heal. Why, given the unique sensitivities of his background — “my sister is half-Indonesian,” he proudly told an interviewer in 2007, amplifying on his exquisite appreciation of Islam — his very election would revolutionize relations.
> 
> And his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar al-Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.
> 
> These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.
> 
> It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.
> 
> The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and may not even exist. What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to American influence?
> 
> Religious provocations are endless. (Ask Salman Rushdie.) Resentment about the five-century decline of the Islamic world is a constant. What’s new — the crucial variable — is the unmistakable sound of a superpower in retreat. Ever since Henry Kissinger flipped Egypt from the Soviet to the American camp in the early 1970s, the U.S. had dominated the region. No longer.
> 
> “It’s time,” declared Obama to wild applause of his convention, “to do some nation-building right here at home.” He’d already announced a strategic pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific. Made possible because “the tide of war is receding.”
> 
> Nonsense. From the massacres in Nigeria to the charnel house that is Syria, violence has, if anything, increased. What is receding is Obama’s America.
> 
> It’s as axiomatic in statecraft as in physics: Nature abhors a vacuum. Islamists rush in to fill the space and declare their ascendancy. America’s friends are bereft, confused, paralyzed.
> 
> Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf States beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain … Israel.
> 
> Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And a sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.
> 
> What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”
> 
> A foreign policy in epic collapse. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin just expelled USAID from Russia. Another thank you from another recipient of another grand Obama “reset.”
> 
> letters@charleskrauthammer.com.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Think of Presidents Bush and Obama are something akin to King John and Queen Mary Tudor. The latter two rid England of its French pretensions ~ John lost the Angevin Empire and Mary, finally, lost Calais. At the time I'm sure most Englishmen, including English statesmen of the first order, were horrified at the losses but, in the fullness of time, we can appreciate that John and Mary did England a service: they forced it to focus on its own bit of the British Isles and subsequent monarchs, despite keeping a _fleur-de-lys_ emblem on the royal coat of arms until 1800, could focus on making England _English_ and taming the Scots. Maybe Bush (both 41 and 43) and Obama have done America a similar favour. Maybe America needs to refocus away from the Middle East, *including away from Israel*, and look closer to home - to solving problems in Mexico and pacifying the Canadians, too.


----------



## jollyjacktar

Too bad it did not stick with England.  There's a nightmare nowadays with how un-English it is swiftly becoming thanks to the likes of Blair and Brown.  Although, I think if you're correct E.R. it will do them and others a big favor if they start to take care of business at home instead of elsewheres.  Maybe we need to follow suit to a greatere degree.


----------



## Edward Campbell

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> Too bad it did not stick with England.  There's a nightmare nowadays with how un-English it is swiftly becoming thanks to the likes of Blair and Brown.  Although, I think if you're correct E.R. it will do them and others a big favor if they start to take care of business at home instead of elsewheres.  Maybe we need to follow suit to a greatere degree.




Here, courtesy _Wikipedia_, is a breakdown of the population of the UK:

_From the United Kingdom Census 2001:_

*Ethnic group	Population	 % of total**
White British	50,366,497	85.67%
White (other)	 3,096,169	 5.27%
Indian	            1,053,411	 1.8%
Pakistani	           977,285	1.6%
White Irish	        691,232	1.2%
Mixed race	        677,117	1.2%
Black Caribbean   565,876	1.0%
Black African	      485,277	0.8%
Bangladeshi	      283,063	0.5%
Other Asian	       247,644	0.4% (non Chinese)
Chinese	            247,403	0.4%
Other	                230,615	0.4%
Black (others)	     97,585	0.2%
* Percentage of total UK population

We tend to think of Singapore, for example, as a _Chinese_ city, but:

Chinese:  74.1% 
Malays:    13.4%
Indians:     9.2%
Others:      3.3%

In Canada South Asians (Indians and Pakistanis) and Chinese account for 4% of the population each and Blacks, Philippinos, Latin Americans, Arabs and Koreans account for 6%+ so we are more racially _diverse_ that are the British.


----------



## jollyjacktar

Those numbers are from almost 12 years ago.  I should have, however, said that my comments are from the many (former) Britons whom I've had dealings with over the past decade.  

My wife has been making fairly regular visits back to the London area over this period.  Each time she see's a marked change in whom one  sees whilst out and about.  She said that it's come to the point where you can go for hours at a time with out really running into (native born) Britons.  There are Legions of Eastern Europeans and South Asians in evidence by appearances of whom and what you see.  I have heard similar comments from numerous recent immigrants from the UK that I work with on my side line.  My wife has also commented that the England my Parents and Grandparents etc knew, no longer exists.

As my wife says, "if one man calls you an ***, you can ignore him.  If more than one does, it may be time to buy a saddle."  I'm hearing more or less the same thing from multiple directions, bearing that in mind, something is going on.  And if it was all beer and skittles, there should not be the rise of such mobs as the EDL as there would be no appetite for them.  IIRC, there are certain areas in the country which are for all intents and purposes damn near as close to Sharia as you could get without living in one of the "Stan" lands.


----------



## a_majoor

The Administration's story collapses as well. several internal links on the post to stories in the WSJ, AP and Eli Lake:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/obamas-embassy-cover-story-dissolves/2012/09/21/ab61bb1c-03fc-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_blog.html



> *Obama’s embassy cover story dissolves*
> By Jennifer Rubin
> 
> It is a measure of how skewed the reporting is and how intellectually inconsistent is most of the “analysis” from the mainstream media that while Mitt Romney’s comment on the embassy attacks held the attention of the press for days (when in fact he had correctly surmised that the administration was trying to make excuses for the embassy attack by expressing regret over an anti-Muslim video), there has been comparatively little concern with a much more critical story: Did the Obama team intentionally lie to voters (or just shoot first and aim later) for a week about what it knew, and did the deaths of four Americans result, in part, from defective security and preparation at the Benghazi consulate? Well, thankfully some reporters are beginning to perk up, although the “opinion makers” are trying their best to bury their heads in the sand, wary, no doubt, about attacking the president and effectively admitting they had failed to grasp the real story.
> 
> There is ample evidence that the administration screwed up. The Wall Street Journal has a must-read in-depth report that explains what the administration has refused to tell us:
> 
> The deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya on Sept. 11 was preceded by a succession of security lapses and misjudgments, compounded by fog-of-battle decisions, that raise questions about whether the scope of the tragedy could have been contained.
> 
> U.S. officials issued alerts and ordered security precautions in neighboring Egypt ahead of protests and violence on Sept. 11, but largely overlooked the possibility of trouble at other diplomatic postings in the region.
> 
> The State Department chose to maintain only limited security in Benghazi, Libya, despite months of sporadic attacks there on U.S. and other Western missions
> 
> That is a scandal of the first order, which in any unbiased media environment would be the biggest story of the year and reason to demand a full explanation from the White House. Did Obama and his advisers incorrectly assess the ongoing threat of jihadists, lack sufficient intelligence on the ground in Libya (after chest-thumping about our leading-from-behind strategy in the war) and fail to grasp that blaming a video is only feeding into the mentality of the jihadists (i.e., the West is to blame for violence)?
> 
> Now, let’s see how the administration, either by mendacity or incompetence, put out a false story of the attacks, which is now shredding day by day.
> 
> For a week the White House press secretary, the ambassador to the United Nations and the president told us this was about an anti-Muslim video, was spontaneous and did not reflect on the United States or its policies. Then yesterday, as news reports and lawmakers were decrying this as patently false (and the day after a national security official called the assault a “terrorist” attack), the White House changed its tune. Jay Carney for the first time used “terrorist” in connection with the attack. And the president for the first time conceded that the video was a pretext. The Associated Press reports:
> 
> President Barack Obama said Thursday that extremists used an anti-Islam video as an excuse to assault U.S. interests overseas, including an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
> 
> The president’s comments came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton faced questions from members of the House and Senate about the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi in a series of closed-door classified briefings on Capitol Hill. . . .
> 
> “What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests,” the president said at a candidate forum on the Spanish-language network Univision.
> 
> Asked if that meant al-Qaida, Obama said, “We don’t know yet.”
> 
> In short, only under pressure from outside reports and lawmakers, who openly disputed the administration’s cover story and blew up over a useless briefing, did the administration try an about-face.
> 
> There is no way to reconcile the first Obama story (spontaneous, all about the movie) and the new version (terrorism, the movie was a pretext). By definition, terrorists don’t act spontaneously, nor do they get offended by movies. They are “offended” by the West and are at war with us.
> 
> National security reporter Eli Lake is one of the few to connect the dots and point the finger back to the White House. He writes:
> 
> Ten days after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House’s official story about the incident appears to be falling apart.
> 
> In the days following the killing of the U.S. ambassador and two ex-Navy SEALs, President Obama and top State Department officials portrayed the attack as a spontaneous reaction to an Internet video depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammad as a lascivious brute. The protests, White House spokesman Jay Carney said last week, were “in response to a video—a film—that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.”
> 
> It remains an open question whether the administration was intentionally misleading the public so as to avoid the appearance of an administration failure, or was simply making things up without pinning down the facts (what the Democrats accused Romney of doing). Lake quotes a retired CIA official as saying: “I think this is a case of an administration saying what they wished to be true before waiting for all the facts to come in.” That’s the most generous take on what happened.
> 
> But now that we know the administration was wrong, why no demands for an apology, let alone an explanation? Why do the pundits turn a blind eye after raking Romney over the coals for calling out the administration’s first sniveling responses to the attack?
> 
> The State Department spokeswoman was doing her best yesterday to be nondefinitive:
> 
> QUESTION: Before we leave this part of the world, can I just ask you about reporting out there? That’s – a former Guantanamo detainee – detainees – is believed to have been behind the attack in Benghazi.
> 
> MS. NULAND: I saw that report. Frankly, I don’t have anything for you on it one way or the other. The intelligence community, I expect, will speak to it.
> 
> That might be the most honest thing said since the murders occurred, namely that the Obama administration doesn’t know very much.
> 
> There is, as always, a media scandal here, a deliberate effort, conservatives believe, to construct narratives that favor the president. But that is small potatoes compared with the mounting evidence of a scandal in the Obama administration. If the administration was negligent in planning, convinced of its own spin (the war on terror is over!) and politicized national security to aid the president's reelection campaign, that is all a big deal. In any event, it should make for an interesting foreign policy presidential debate.


----------



## jollyjacktar

And the #Muslimrage, continues.  At least 19 idiots die in riots in Pakistan over this lunacy.    : Time to resurrect this gem from the past.


----------



## a_majoor

Some good news, Libyan civilians overrun a Salafist militia compound apparently in protest against the attack on the US consulate. There should be unequivocal support for friends like these, sadly, there seems to be no indication of that being the case. The Green Revolution in Iran was also shown the back of this administration's hand, and eventually withered. We can only hope these people can make it on their own:

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/libyan-civilians-overrun-islamist-militia-headquarters



> *Libyan Civilians Overrun Islamist Militia Headquarters*
> 
> 21 September 2012
> Libya sure is different from Egypt.
> 
> This is the best news I’ve seen from the Arab world in some time:
> 
> Hundreds of Libyan protesters have stormed the Benghazi headquarters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia in a backlash against last week's attack on the US consulate.
> 
> Witnesses say militiamen opened fire as the crowd overran the base, but it is not clear if there are casualties.
> 
> Buildings and a car were set alight and fighters evicted following a day of anti-militia protests in the city.
> 
> US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others died in the 11 September attack.
> 
> Earlier, some 30,000 protesters had marched through the eastern Libyan city calling for an end to the armed groups that have sprung up in the country since last year's ousting of Col Gaddafi.
> 
> Several thousand supporters of Ansar al-Sharia lined up outside its headquarters, in front of the crowd, waving black and white banners, AP news agency reported.
> 
> They fired into the air to try to disperse the protesters, but fled with their weapons after the base was surrounded by waves of people shouting "no to militias", the report added.


----------



## tomahawk6

Ambassador Stevens was popular and was seen as a supporter of the revolution. His murder has enraged the people of Benghazi.


----------



## Rifleman62

I guess everyone has heard that pers from CNN found Ambassador Stevens' personal journal *at the scene, four days *after his murder.

In the journal, Ambassador Stevens  expresses concern for his safety, the increasing strength of Al Qaeda in Libya, and that he thought he had been targeted for assassination by Al Qaeda.

Of course the State Dept is furious that CNN broadcasted this.

Like I wrote earlier: I would love to read the cellphone transcripts of any of the four slain that day.


----------



## a_majoor

And the State department's minion gives an unbelievable answer to a reporter asking abut the diary and other issues related to the Benghazi fiasco:

http://althouse.blogspot.ca/2012/09/lets-not-get-too-distracted-by-state.html



> *Let's not get too distracted by the State Department spokeman's saying "frig Off" and "Have a good life"...*
> 
> ... to that BuzzFeed reporter, Michael Hastings. There's so much more of immensely great importance in their email exchange about what that spokesman — Phillippe Reines — had been trying to get us to think about CNN's use of the Chris Stevens journal, found at the site of the murder in Benghazi, after our diplomatic personnel fled the scene.
> 
> Hastings emailed an excellent set of questions:
> Why didn't the State Department search the consulate and find AMB Steven's diary first? What other potential valuable intelligence was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds? Was any classified or top secret material also left? Do you still feel that there was adequate security at the compound, considering it was not only overrun but sensitive personal effects and possibly other intelligence remained out for anyone passing through to pick up? Your statement on CNN sounded pretty defensive--do you think it's the media's responsibility to help secure State Department assets overseas after they've been attacked?
> 
> And Reines couldn't or wouldn't answer these questions. He continued those pretty defensive efforts to shift the focus to CNN. When Hastings pressed him, Reines resorted to "frig Off" and "Have a good life." Those nasty comebacks shouldn't be the story. They should direct us to the set of questions. Those are great questions, and the State Department will not answer them. Without answers, they feel like questions that answer themselves.


----------



## Rifleman62

Actually, he asked the questions in person and was told to frig Off to his face. He later emailed as you posted and got the response as indicated including FO.


----------



## a_majoor

Some more good news; the Lybian Army takes to the field against the militias:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19708084



> *Libyan army removes heads of Benghazi militias*
> Libyan security forces in Tripoli, 23 September 2012 Libya's security forces have been on the move, ordering rogue groups to leave state and military premises
> Continue reading the main story
> Libya Crisis
> 
> Libya's army has removed the heads of two of Benghazi's main militia groups, as it tries to reassert control over armed groups or disband them.
> 
> The February 17 Brigade's Fawzi Bukatif and Rafallah al-Sahati's Ismail al-Salabi were replaced by colonels.
> 
> Last week saw demonstrations against armed groups in Benghazi following this month's killing of the US ambassador.
> 
> Islamist militants have denied being behind the attack, but the killing sparked widespread fury in Benghazi.
> 
> Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others Americans died during an attack on the city's US consulate on 11 September, which coincided with protests over an anti-Islam video produced in the US.
> 
> 'Stop using violence'
> 
> The Islamist Ansar al-Sharia group was driven out of its headquarters in Benghazi over the weekend in unrest which left at least 11 people dead.
> 
> Meanwhile two militant groups based in the Islamist stronghold of Derna - a port city to the east of Benghazi - disbanded on Sunday.
> 
> Libya's interim leaders have taken advantage of the wave of popular sentiment in order to bring the unauthorised groups under control, analysts say.
> 
> The government has relied on some brigades to help provide security in post-Gaddafi Libya, analysts say, and many will be watching to see how the authorities undertake the mammoth task of gaining full military control over the country.
> 
> "[We want to] dissolve all militias and military camps which are not under the control of the state," Mohammed Magarief - the parliamentary speaker who acts as head of state until elections next year - said on Sunday.
> 
> "We call on everyone to stop using violence and carrying weapons in the streets and squares and public places."


----------



## Edward Campbell

Rather than start new thread, I offer tis article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ads-posted-in-new-york-subways-test-limits-of-free-speech/article4568396/


> Ads posted in New York subways test limits of free speech
> 
> PAUL KORING
> WASHINGTON — The Globe and Mail
> 
> Published Tuesday, Sep. 25 2012
> 
> Pro-Israeli posters that verge on calling Muslims uncivilized savages now adorn New York’s busy Times Square and Grand Central subway stations, in another incendiary test of the limits of free speech following Muslim protests around the world over a U.S.-made film depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a womanizing child abuser.
> 
> *“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,”* say the large, boldly lettered wall posters sponsored by a group calling itself the American Freedom Defense Initiative. They add: *“Support Israel/Defeat Jihad.”*
> 
> AFDI describes itself as a human-rights organization but has been dubbed a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks radical organizations.
> 
> New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority reluctantly complied with a court order to post the advertisements on Monday, after losing a year-long legal battle. The ads are now on the walls in 10 of the city’s nearly 500 subway stations.
> 
> “Our hands are tied,” said Aaron Donovan, an MTA spokesman. The ads had initially been rejected under the MTA’s prohibition on messages that “demean people on the basis of their race, sex, religion, national origin or other group classification,” but the court ruled those restrictions violated the First Amendment free-speech guarantees in the U.S. Constitution.
> 
> Pamela Geller, a prominent pro-Israeli activist who said she is the executive director of AFDI, stridently defended the message and gave an expansive definition of her use of the word “savage.”
> 
> “The endless demonization of the Jewish people in the Palestinian and Arab media is savage,” she said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. “The refusal to recognize the state of Israel as a Jewish state is savage. The list is endless.”
> 
> Reactions varied among passers-by. “Where is the protection of religion in America?” asked Javerea Khan, 22, a Pakistani-born Muslim. “The word ‘savage’ really bothers the Muslim community,” she said. Mel Moore, a 29-year-old sports agent, told Reuters: “It’s not right, but it’s freedom of speech.”
> 
> In her spirited defence of the posters’ message on her blog, AtlasShrugs2000, Ms. Geller said the furor surrounding the ads exposed the violent tendencies of anti-Israeli groups.
> 
> She said at least one of her posters had already been defaced, less than a day after it was put up. “Hundreds and hundreds of anti-Israel posters ran all over the country,” she wrote, without explaining further what posters she meant. “Not one was defaced. One anti-jihad poster goes up, and it’s defaced within an hour, while its creator faces defamation, smears and libel.”
> 
> The MTA, meanwhile, said it has asked the AFDI for extra supplies of the posters so it can replace those defaced or torn off.
> 
> Ms. Geller insisted the ads didn’t attack all Muslims, only those extremists who advocate violence. For Muslims, though, the Arabic word “jihad” means the act of struggling or striving on behalf of God; it’s a holy duty, one that can mean simply striving for self-improvement, that believers cannot reject or ignore. The use of jihad to mean holy or just war – akin to crusade for Christians – is widely regarded as only one element of struggle.
> 
> Ms. Geller previously gained notoriety for her campaign against the building of the so-called Ground Zero mosque close to the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. She is “the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
> 
> Ms. Geller said the ads cost $6,000 and will remain for one month, and that she plans a similar ad campaign in the Washington, D.C. subway.




There is no doubt that this is _provocative_, perhaps it is even designed to enrage the Arab street and, concomitantly, endanger Americans living, working and fighting in Muslim lands. But: it is also "fair comment" and, therefore, "free speech" which must be defended.

I wonder hos Ms. Geller feels about this sort of thing?







 and this

I sincerely hope she believes that they, too, are "free speech" worthy of protection.


----------



## a_majoor

Massive fail on the part of the Administration and State Department; the knowledge that these attacks were the work of terrorists and even the knowledge of who did it was available within 24 hr but the incredible charade of blaming a little known YouTube video as the motivator and pulling in the film maker for questioning (rather than sending death's dark angel to visit the perpetrator) continues apace. Any other administration would be raked over the coals repeatedly for such a failure...





> *U.S. Officials Knew Libya Attacks Were Work of Al Qaeda Affiliates*
> by Eli Lake Sep 26, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
> Sources say intelligence agencies knew within a day that al Qaeda affiliates were behind the attacks in Benghazi, Libya—they even knew where one of the attackers lived. Eli Lake reports.
> 
> Within 24 hours of the 9-11 anniversary attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, U.S. intelligence agencies had strong indications al Qaeda–affiliated operatives were behind the attack, and had even pinpointed the location of one of those attackers. Three separate U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said the early information was enough to show that the attack was planned and the work of al Qaeda affiliates operating in Eastern Libya.
> 
> 'Tariq Ramadan discusses the uprisings in the Middle East.'
> 
> Nonetheless, it took until late last week for the White House and the administration to formally acknowledge that the Benghazi assault was a terrorist attack. On Sunday, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs explained the evolving narrative as a function of new information coming in quickly on the attacks. "We learned more information every single day about what happened,” Gibbs said on Fox News. “Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this faster than we do.”
> 
> The intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast did so anonymously because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. They said U.S. intelligence agencies developed leads on four of the participants of the attacks within 24 hours of the fire fight that took place mainly at an annex near the Benghazi consulate. For one of those individuals, the U.S. agencies were able to find his location after his use of social media. “We had two kinds of intelligence on one guy,” this official said. “We believe we had enough to target him.”
> 
> Another U.S. intelligence official said, “There was very good information on this in the first 24 hours. These guys have a return address. There are camps of people and a wide variety of things we could do.”
> 
> A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment for the story. But another U.S. intelligence official said, “I can’t get into specific numbers but soon after the attack we had a pretty good bead on some individuals involved in the attack.”
> 
> It’s unclear whether any of these suspected attackers have been targeted or arrested, and intelligence experts caution that these are still early days in a complex investigation.
> 
> The question of what the White House knew, and when they knew it, will be of keen interest to members of Congress in the election year. Last Thursday, the Obama administration formally briefed House and Senate members on the attack. Those briefings however failed to satisfy many members, particularly Republicans. “That is the most useless, worthless briefing I have attended in a long time,” Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, was quoted as saying.
> 
> “There was very good information on this in the first 24 hours. These guys have a return address.”
> 
> The Daily Beast reported last week that the U.S. intelligence community was studying an intercept between a Libyan politician and a member of the so-called February 17 militia, Libyans charged with providing security for the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. More intelligence has come in that shows members of Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda–affiliated group operating in and around Benghazi, were attempting to coerce, threaten, cajole, and bribe members of the militia protecting the consulate.


----------



## Rifleman62

Sixteen days after the attack, it has been reported that the administration were aware within 24 hours that it was a terrorist attack. The identities of some of the individuals were known and their location was tracked. Yet even yesterday, the president of the United States, at the UN, was still perpetuating the video sham.

The two SEALS were killed a half mile from the building where the ambassador was killed. The SEALS were in the building that contained intelligence assets. They died protecting whatever that building contained, which was apparently their mission. I think everybody assumed that the SEALS were providing close personal protection for the ambassador. Not their mission.

The administration says the attack is under investigation by the FBI. The FBI is not on the ground yet as it is too dangerous for their personnel. If it is too dangerous for the FBI now, how dangerous was it for the ambassador sixteen days ago? Who was on his close personal protection team? He was killed with one other identified as an information officer.

As previously posted the ambassador was worried about his safety and the strength of al Qaeda. Why didn't he have more action?

Administration announced today that they were pulling out all embassy staff from Libya. Further cover-up?


----------



## tomahawk6

Not too dangerous for CNN though.


----------



## Jarnhamar

Unfortunately it's hard to believe anything the us government publishes about stuff like this.


----------



## Edward Campbell

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> Unfortunately it's hard to believe anything the us government publishes about stuff like this.




Too true ... about this and anything else in Washington, from either side of the aisle.

I'm not a great believer in the trustworthiness of mainstream media but the _Financial Times_ is better, more thoughtful, less biased, than most of its mainstream or _blogosphere_ counterparts and I often nod my head in agreement. I did again on reading this editorial which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d0e708de-0716-11e2-92ef-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27woSDLdI


> Mujahedin mistake
> 
> September 25, 2012
> 
> The US government’s decision to take Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the exiled Iranian organisation, off its list of terrorist groups is a vivid example of the influence of money and lobbying in Washington. At worst it highlights the analytical fog that clouds many US policy heavyweights’ view of Iran.
> 
> MEK may once have played a serious role in Iranian politics. It helped to topple the shah’s regime in 1979, but soon fell out with the new theocratic regime, which brutally repressed it for attacks on the new government and an attempt on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s life. It collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from where it engineered assassinations inside Iran.
> 
> Today, however, the organisation hovers between being a nuisance and an irrelevance. Many of its members long frustrated US and Iraqi government efforts to relocate them from their decades-old camp. Tehran accuses it of killing Iranian nuclear scientists on Washington’s bidding. But the most significant fact about MEK is its degeneration into a personality cult around leader Maryam Rajavi.
> 
> The astonishing support garnered by this fringe group would be tragicomic were it not so unsettling. The Republican chairs of the House of Representatives’ committees on foreign affairs and on intelligence have called for MEK to be taken off the terrorism list. So have Hugh Shelton, Bill Clinton’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Michael Mukasey and Tom Ridge, attorney-general and homeland security secretary for George W. Bush; Jim Jones, the first national security adviser to Barack Obama; and former heads of the FBI and the CIA.
> 
> Fast-track delisting is surely worth the price (even Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were not taken off the list until 2008). MEK has found the best friends money can buy: most of those who speak out in its favour have taken speaking fees or campaign contributions from MEK-friendly groups.
> 
> Some of MEK’s supporters, such as Gen Shelton, seem genuinely to believe that the MEK, with its unquestioned terrorist past, is the key to political change in Tehran. That is not just an insult to the true Iranian opposition that took to the streets in 2009; it also complicates any trust-building over Iran’s nuclear plans. With the idea of violently overturning the regime in Tehran openly discussed in Washington, flashbacks to Mr Bush’s enamourment with Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq are hard to avoid. Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, owes everyone an explanation.
> 
> Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012. You may share using our article tools.




America, _official_, institutional America, as represented by the politicians, media _personalities_, lobbyists, denizens of think tanks, academic and other hangers-on in DC, is corrupt. That applies to Democrats, Republicans (of both the RINO and Tea Party variety) and Independents alike.


----------



## a_majoor

More on the Lybian attack. It's not like they didn't foresee this, just that no one in Washington was listening:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/house-u.s.-embassy-in-libya-asked-for-extra-security-request-denied/article/2509580#.UGsQx67sYtW



> *House: U.S. Embassy in Libya asked for extra security, request denied*
> 
> October 2, 2012 | 10:30 am
> 47Comments
> 
> Joel Gehrke
> Commentary Writer
> The Washington Examiner
> @Joelmentum Joel on FB
> 
> House investigators warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to expect a hearing into their finding that that American staff at the U.S. Embassy in Libya had their request for additional security denied by Washington officials.
> 
> “Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, wrote Clinton today. They dismissed out-of-hand the suggestion that the attack ever could have been regarded as a spontaneous protest gone awry.
> 
> “In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi,” Issa and Chaffetz added (my emphasis). “The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”
> 
> The committee noted 13 “security threats” in Benghazi, including an attempt to assassinate the British ambassador to Libya.


----------



## Jarnhamar

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/02/bc-bacon-vandalism-mosque.html



> The RCMP is investigating the possibility of a hate crime after several piles of bacon were found outside a mosque in Port Coquitlam, B.C.
> 
> Police say it's the second such act of vandalism and mischief at the Islamic Society of British Columbia mosque and Islamic Centre in the last 18 months.



Riots to follow.




Has any more word of what US Navy Seals were safe guarding came out? I almost wonder if that was the main objective and perhaps the embassy attack a convenient distraction.


----------



## OldSolduer

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/02/bc-bacon-vandalism-mosque.html
> 
> Riots to follow.



No kidding.


----------



## Brad Sallows

>Riots to follow.

Most certainly.  Given the imminent bacon shortage, rage is an entirely appropriate reaction.


----------



## TN2IC

Who the hell wastes good bacon! That should be a charge itself!


----------



## tomahawk6

The same peopel that steal barrels of maple syrup.


----------



## Rifleman62

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/10/05/fbi-investigators-in-and-out-of-libya-in-24-hours.html?ESRC=topstories.RSS

*FBI Investigators In and Out of Libya in 12 Hours*

Oct 05, 2012

Associated Press - by Eileen Sullivan and Lolita C. Baldor


WASHINGTON -- A team of FBI agents arrived in Benghazi, Libya, to investigate the assault against the U.S. Consulate and left after about 12 hours on the ground as the hunt for those possibly connected to the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans narrowed to one or two people in an extremist group, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Agents arrived in Benghazi before dawn on Thursday and departed after sunset, after 21 days of waiting for access to the crime scene to investigate the Sept. 11 attack.

The agents and several dozen U.S. special operations forces were there for about 12 hours, said a senior Defense Department official who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation. The FBI agents went to "all the relevant locations" in the city, FBI spokeswoman Kathy Wright said. The FBI would not say what, if anything, they found.

More at link.


----------



## Jarnhamar

I bet they picked up a lot of good evidence and intel 21 days after it happened.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

This whole fiasco reminds me of a movie


----------



## Rifleman62

You mean this Samuel L. Jackson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hDTT1yRNsFE#!

He would cover up for his hero.


----------



## a_majoor

And it turns out the story we were fed was never true to begin with; there was no "demonstration":

ABC: No Protest Outside Libya Consulate Before Attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJf6Q_jPrJk&feature=youtu.be

Too bad it took a month to tell the audience what really happened (and before anyone claims ignorance, there were clear indications and reports to the State Department prior to this taking place. Of course this is the same Legacy media which chose to report the attack and death of the ambassador on page A4 of the NYT...)


----------



## cupper

Thucydides said:
			
		

> And it turns out the story we were fed was never true to begin with; there was no "demonstration":
> 
> ABC: No Protest Outside Libya Consulate Before Attack
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJf6Q_jPrJk&feature=youtu.be
> 
> Too bad it took a month to tell the audience what really happened (and before anyone claims ignorance, there were clear indications and reports to the State Department prior to this taking place. Of course this is the same Legacy media which chose to report the attack and death of the ambassador on page A4 of the NYT...)



That's not exactly breaking news. I remember reading an article shortly after (a day or two) which contained comments from local Libyan security personnel who said that there was no protest at the time of the attacks. It may have been taken or reported as "not in the immediate area" or whatever.


----------



## Rifleman62

I agree with cupper re not exactly breaking news!!!

The story broke and was reported extensively on FOX News before and since AMB Rice went on all the Sunday shows to say it was a movie.

As no one pays the extra freight to watch FOX News, they are misinformed, BS ed to and unaware.


----------



## cupper

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> I agree with cupper re not exactly breaking news!!!



Hell just froze over!


----------



## Rifleman62

I laughed out loud tonight when ABC's Dianne Sawyer, gravely and breathlessly announce the three week old news. I guess the US Obama media party can't hide the obvious anymore.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Too true ... about this and anything else in Washington, from either side of the aisle.
> 
> I'm not a great believer in the trustworthiness of mainstream media but the _Financial Times_ is better, more thoughtful, less biased, than most of its mainstream or _blogosphere_ counterparts and I often nod my head in agreement. I did again on reading this editorial which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_:
> 
> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d0e708de-0716-11e2-92ef-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27woSDLdI
> 
> 
> 
> America, _official_, institutional America, as represented by the politicians, media _personalities_, lobbyists, denizens of think tanks, academic and other hangers-on in DC, is corrupt. That applies to Democrats, Republicans (of both the RINO and Tea Party variety) and Independents alike.



I actually think taking MEK off the list is good, it's a swipe at Iran, gives them a chance to survive with a hostile Iraqi government and it's withering away on it's own. it might be useful to use some elements of it against Iran as a concerted effort to help the minorities in Iran will force the Persians to look inward.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Colin P said:
			
		

> I actually think taking MEK off the list is good, it's a swipe at Iran, gives them a chance to survive with a hostile Iraqi government and it's withering away on it's own. it might be useful to use some elements of it against Iran as a concerted effort to help the minorities in Iran will force the Persians to look inward.




But that's not why US legislators took MEK off the list ... they did it for money. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is often worse than just doing the wrong thing.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

I see an accusation of money changing hands but is there proof? I have no doubt they lobbied for the change and that's pretty much what you have to do to get anything onto the Congressional plate. Otherwise they would stay on it even after the last member dies.


----------



## cupper

Interesting side bar, if you want to keep secrets, DON'T TELL CONGRESS.

*Letting us in on a secret*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-letting-us-in-on-a-secret/2012/10/10/ba3136ca-132b-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html?hpid=z6



> By Dana Milbank, Published: October 10
> 
> When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.
> 
> The purpose of Wednesday’s hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to examine security lapses that led to the killing in Benghazi last month of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. But in doing so, the lawmakers reminded us why “congressional intelligence” is an oxymoron.
> 
> Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.
> 
> Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was the first to unmask the spooks. “Point of order! Point of order!” he called out as a State Department security official, seated in front of an aerial photo of the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, described the chaotic night of the attack. “We’re getting into classified issues that deal with sources and methods that would be totally inappropriate in an open forum such as this.”
> 
> A State Department official assured him that the material was “entirely unclassified” and that the photo was from a commercial satellite. “I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz continued. He went on to say that “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”
> 
> Now that Chaffetz had alerted potential bad guys that something valuable was in the photo, the chairman, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), attempted to lock the barn door through which the horse had just bolted. “I would direct that that chart be taken down,” he said, although it already had been on C-SPAN. “In this hearing room, we’re not going to point out details of what may still in fact be a facility of the United States government or more facilities.”
> 
> May still be a facility? The plot thickened — and Chaffetz gave more hints. “I believe that the markings on that map were terribly inappropriate,” he said, adding that “the activities there could cost lives.”
> 
> In their questioning and in the public testimony they invited, the lawmakers managed to disclose, without ever mentioning Langley directly, that there was a seven-member “rapid response force” in the compound the State Department was calling an annex. One of the State Department security officials was forced to acknowledge that “not necessarily all of the security people” at the Benghazi compounds “fell under my direct operational control.”
> 
> And whose control might they have fallen under? Well, presumably it’s the “other government agency” or “other government entity” the lawmakers and witnesses referred to; Issa informed the public that this agency was not the FBI.
> 
> “Other government agency,” or “OGA,” is a common euphemism in Washington for the CIA. This “other government agency,” the lawmakers’ questioning further revealed, was in possession of a video of the attack but wasn’t releasing it because it was undergoing “an investigative process.”
> 
> Or maybe they were referring to the Department of Agriculture.
> 
> That the Benghazi compound had included a large CIA presence had been reported but not confirmed. The New York Times, for example, had reported that among those evacuated were “about a dozen CIA operatives and contractors.” The paper, like The Washington Post, withheld locations and details of the facilities at the administration’s request.
> 
> But on Wednesday, the withholding was on hold.
> 
> The Republican lawmakers, in their outbursts, alternated between scolding the State Department officials for hiding behind classified material and blaming them for disclosing information that should have been classified. But the lawmakers created the situation by ordering a public hearing on a matter that belonged behind closed doors.
> 
> Republicans were aiming to embarrass the Obama administration over State Department security lapses. But they inadvertently caused a different picture to emerge than the one that has been publicly known: that the victims may have been let down not by the State Department but by the CIA. If the CIA was playing such a major role in these events, which was the unmistakable impression left by Wednesday’s hearing, having a televised probe of the matter was absurd.
> 
> The chairman, attempting to close his can of worms, finally suggested that “the entire committee have a classified briefing as to any and all other assets that were not drawn upon but could have been drawn upon” in Benghazi.
> 
> Good idea. Too bad he didn’t think of that before putting the CIA on C-SPAN.
> 
> danamilbank@washpost.com


----------



## tomahawk6

Lying to Congress is a crime. Lying to a judge is a crime. Lying to yourself ....


----------



## Canadian.Trucker

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Lying to yourself ....


is a national past time?


----------



## Jarnhamar

I'm confused. Does all this mean there wasn't even a riot at the consulate over the release of that stupid movie?

Was the riot story just a cover up?  Or was there still a riot which masked the attack?


----------



## Old Sweat

According to what has been reported more recently based on information from the consulate, there was no demonstration. The consulate reported the streets were clear at about 2020, and all was quiet until armed men were observed entering the compound roughly an hour later.


----------



## cupper

An interview I heard on NPR last week discussed the situation, and one analyst discussed the possibility that the attack was planned in a quick reaction situation. Specifically, when news broke of the protests at the Embassy in Cairo, AQ organizers in Benghazi moved quickly to take advantage of any crowds protesting as cover for an attack. Since no protests were developing, the group decided to proceed anyway, with the hope that the start of the assault would be mistaken and they could gain some advantage.

The analyst did make the caveat that this was only speculation, but it fit with the profile of the current view of how AQ has now become a network of loosely affiliated groups whose individual causes may be unrelated, but share resources and intelligence to further their own agendas.


----------



## Old Sweat

It is possible, but given the intelligence that an attack was being planned along with the previous actvity, the theory has to be wildly speculative, if not developed by Parris Hilton. Still . . .


----------



## cupper

It's going to take months before an accurate picture comes out of what actually happened. And even then it may not be complete.


----------



## Journeyman

cupper said:
			
		

> An interview I heard on NPR last week discussed the situation, and one analyst  discussed the possibility .....


Any more detail on "the analyst"?  It's a pretty amorphous term.....much like some mainstream, hard-copy bloggers calling themselves "journalists."

"Analyst" presupposes analysis.....which requires information -- preferably factual (although not always available) -- upon which to base one's analysis.


----------



## Rifleman62

It is like "estimates" being considered facts in the media.


----------



## Haletown

Biden threw the Intel Community under the bus in the VP debate . . . and now the back begins.

""During the vice presidential debate, we were disappointed to see Vice President Biden blame the intelligence community for the inconsistent and shifting response of the Obama administration to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Given what has emerged publicly about the intelligence available before, during, and after the September 11 attack, it is clear that any failure was not on the part of the intelligence community, but on the part of White House decision-makers who should have listened to, and acted on, available intelligence. Blaming those who put their lives on the line is not the kind of leadership this country needs."


http://washingtonexaminer.com/ex-cia-chief-white-house-not-intel-community-to-blame-for-benghazi/article/2510568#.UHmN55G9KSM


So the White House now is saying it was the State Department that screwed the pooch . . .  that's Hillary's State Department, so more push back, but this time serious push back.  Willy isn't happy about anything rocking the Hillary 2016 Boat.

"With tensions between President Obama and the Clintons at a new high, former President Bill Clinton is moving fast to develop a contingency plan for how his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, should react if Obama attempts to tie the Benghazi fiasco around her neck, according to author Ed Klein.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, Klein said sources close to the Clintons tell him that Bill Clinton has assembled an informal legal team to discuss how the Secretary of State should deal with the issue of being blamed for not preventing the Benghazi terrorist attack last month.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters during a press conference Friday that responsibility for the consulate in Libya fell on the State Department, not the White House."



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/12/author-ed-klein-as-benghazi-blame-nears-hillary-clintons-grow-furious/#ixzz29CAXuqn4



Somone invented that cover up story . . .   the White House has blamed a video, the Intel Community and the State Departmnet/Hillary . . . . recall that Watergate was all about the cover up.  

The MSM is doing their very best to back page this story but it will not die.

Could it explode in Obama's face with three weeks left in the election and could it be the fuse that leads to voters to take off the rose coloured glasses on the last four years?

We will see.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

A minor comment. Shouldn't the title of this threat be, "U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two  three others killed in attack of consulate" since four people were killed;  U.S. Ambassador Libya Christopher Stevens and State Department computer specialist Sean Smith died in the consulate from smoke inhalation. Two others, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Wood, both former Navy SEALs , were killed at the embassy annex, which was a few blocks away. 

Another observation, I still haven't heard any explanation as to how the Ambassador (and Mr. Smith) ending up being separated from the rest of the consulate staff during the attack. It almost looks like they got abandoned during the attack.


----------



## Old Sweat

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> A minor comment. Shouldn't the title of this threat be, "U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two  three others killed in attack of consulate" since four people were killed;  U.S. Ambassador Libya Christopher Stevens and State Department computer specialist Sean Smith died in the consulate from smoke inhalation. Two others, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Wood, both former Navy SEALs , were killed at the embassy annex, which was a few blocks away.
> 
> Another observation, I still haven't heard any explanation as to how the Ambassador (and Mr. Smith) ending up being separated from the rest of the consulate staff during the attack. It almost looks like they got abandoned during the attack.


A narrative I read had the Ambassador and Mr Smith hidden in a secure room that was designed to be impregnable and the rest of the party made a very visible attempt to escape. The plan failed.


----------



## Old Sweat

Rex Murphy's take on the situation from the National Post is reproduced under the Fair  Dealings provision of the Copyright Act. 

Rex Murphy: Did Obama cover-up the Benghazi attack?
Rex Murphy | Oct 13, 2012 12:01 AM ET

Big Bird may flap his useless wings for another few days, and pundits may argue about who won Thursday’s vice-presidential debate. But in the world of U.S. politics, Benghazi is the story.

Or, at any rate, it should be.

It’s been a month since what were then described as “riots” in Benghazi escalated — so the story went — into a full-scale armed attack, and resulted in the murder of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three others.

At the time, almost all the talk and outrage was about a wretched video, the odd and amateur Innocence of Muslims, made by some crackpot in California. For days, the air was thick with remorse and apology over the Islamophobic film. The death of an ambassador, the storming of the consulate, the actual attack itself, got drowned in the fever of denunciation about a 14-minute film.

Innocence of Muslims, in the view of everyone from Barack Obama, to Hillary Clinton, to Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN, was one of the most contemptible and vile sets of moving images ever to convey images and sound.

And yet, here in the West, mocking the fervour of religious “believers” (Christians, especially) is almost an official sport in entertainment and artistic circles — from Saturday Night Live to shows that are actually funny. And so the outrage and unction of Hillary and Obama on this file simply didn’t ring true.

More telling than their zeal in denouncing Innocence of Muslims was their suggestion that it was this video, and the “spontaneous” protest the video generated — not anti-Americanism, nor some other hatred — that was the precipitating agent. They hung a huge tragic event on a slender thread.

But a month later, very few are talking about the video anymore. A series of revelations about such matters as inadequate security at the compound, denied requests for greater security and a much more detailed account of actual events that night, raise serious questions that the Obama administration has yet fully to acknowledge, let alone answer.

First and foremost, the world now knows that there was no riot and no protest in Benghazi. Everything was calm till the moment of a prepared, large-scale and brutal terrorist attack. Most likely, it was a revenge “hit” for the killing of an al-Qaeda commander, and was planned to send a message on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

So where did we get the narrative that this was an outgrowth of a protest over a video? And why did the Obama camp hang on so long to a wrong account of what actually happened? Why did they deliberately seek to inflate and exaggerate the importance of the video?

One reason is obvious. An administration bragging that bin Laden is dead, and that his surviving al-Qaeda lieutenants are quivering in fear, doesn’t want a successful attack on one of its diplomatic compounds to be attributed to the very terrorist group it claims to have tamed — not two months before an election, certainly.

The furious spin of the first few days, and in particular the absolutely empty claims put forward so vigorously, and without qualification, by Ambassador Rice, might constitute more than an error. They may prove to be deliberate efforts to smother what really happened in a cloud of misinformation.

There is an air of subterfuge on this story. And as is well known since the days of Richard Nixon: It’s not the crime — it’s the cover-up.

The most valued personal quality in a presidential candidate is the ability to inspire and hold trust on matters large and small. As the administration’s Benghazi storyline unravels, as parts of it prove to be demonstrably false, the Obama campaign may be set for a larger panic than that stirred by the President’s curiously apathetic performance in last week’s debate against Mitt Romney.

The incidents at Benghazi, and the stories told about them, have the potential to seriously turn this presidential contest.


----------



## observor 69

The New York Times

October 12, 2012


After Benghazi Attack, Private Security Hovers as an Issue

By JAMES RISEN


WASHINGTON — Lost amid the election-year wrangling over the militants’ attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya, is a complex back story involving growing regional resentment against heavily armed American private security contractors, increased demands on State Department resources and mounting frustration among diplomats over ever-tighter protections that they say make it more difficult to do their jobs. 

The Benghazi attacks, in which the United States ambassador and three other Americans were killed, come at the end of a 10-year period in which the State Department — sending its employees into a lengthening list of war zones and volatile regions — has regularly ratcheted up security for its diplomats. The aggressive measures used by private contractors eventually led to shootings in Afghanistan and Iraq that provoked protests, including an episode involving guards from an American security company, Blackwater, that left at least 17 Iraqis dead in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. 

The ghosts of that shooting clearly hung over Benghazi. Earlier this year, the new Libyan government had expressly barred Blackwater-style armed contractors from flooding into the country. “The Libyans were not keen to have boots on the ground,” one senior State Department official said. 

That forced the State Department to rely largely on its own diplomatic security arm, which officials have said lacks the resources to provide adequate protection in war zones. 

On Capitol Hill this week, Democrats and Republicans sparred at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing over what happened in Benghazi, whether security at the mission was adequate, and what — if anything — could have been done to prevent the tragedy. 

But amid calls for more protection for diplomats overseas, some current and former State Department officials cautioned about the risks of going too far. “The answer cannot be to operate from a bunker,” Eric A. Nordstrom, who until earlier this year served as the chief security officer at the United States Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, told the committee. 

Barbara K. Bodine, who served as ambassador to Yemen when the destroyer Cole was bombed in 2000, said: “What we need is a policy of risk management, but what we have now is a policy of risk avoidance. Nobody wants to take responsibility in case something happens, so nobody is willing to have a debate over what is reasonable security and what is excessive.” 

For the State Department, the security situation in Libya came down in part to the question of whether it was a war zone or just another African outpost. 

Even though the country was still volatile in the wake of the bloody rebellion that ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the State Department did not include Libya on a list of dangerous postings that are high priority for extra security resources. 

Only the American Embassies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are exempted from awarding security contracts to the lowest bidder. Dangerous posts are allowed to consider “best value” contracting instead, according to a State Department inspector general’s report in February.   

The large private security firms that have protected American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan sought State Department contracts in Libya, and at least one made a personal pitch to the ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the militants’ attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, according to a senior official at one firm. 

But given the Libyan edict banning the contractors, the Obama administration was eager to reduce the American footprint there. After initially soliciting bids from major security companies for work in Libya, State Department officials never followed through. 

“We went in to make a pitch, and nothing happened,” said the security firm official. He said the State Department could have found a way around the Libyans’ objections if it had wanted to. 

Instead, the department relied on a small British company to provide several unarmed Libyan guards for security at the mission in Benghazi. For the personal protection of the diplomats, the department largely depended on its Diplomatic Security Service. 

The wrangling over protection is part of a larger debate that has been under way for years within the State Department over how to balance security with the need of American diplomats to move freely. 

Many diplomats rankle at the constraints imposed on them by security officials, who demand that they travel around foreign capitals in heavily armored convoys that local civilians find insulting and that make it nearly impossible for the envoys to meet discreetly with foreign officials. Many American diplomats have also grown deeply frustrated by the constraints imposed on them by working in the new, highly secure embassies that have been constructed around the world over the past decade. 

After the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa by Al Qaeda, the State Department began a multibillion-dollar program to replace many embassies with hardened and highly secure facilities. American construction companies with experience in building prisons and military barracks won many of the contracts to build cookie-cutter buildings that look more like fortresses than diplomatic outposts. Between 2001 and 2010, 52 embassies were built, and many others are now under construction or being designed. 

Often located in remote suburban areas far from crowded streets, the buildings are designed to withstand truck bombs, but they also require local security forces and heavily armed guards to resist the type of attack that the militants staged in Benghazi. 

But many diplomats say the fortified embassies make it difficult for them to do their jobs, forcing them to find ways around them. Ronald E. Neumann, who served as the ambassador in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, and who worked in Baghdad before that, said that many foreign officials refuse to come into American Embassies because they are insulted by the intrusive security measures, and they do not want American officials coming to their homes with huge convoys. 

“So you meet people in hotels,” said Mr. Neumann, now the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington. The security “has forced you to get more creative.” 

That can mean taking more risks. “A lot of people are simply violating the security regulations to do their jobs,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington. “They have to find ways to get out, and sometimes they end-run the security officer, or sometimes the security officer will turn a blind eye.” 

In fact, just as the Benghazi attack occurred, the State Department’s building department was beginning to address some of the frustrations by proposing more open and accessible designs for embassies. Under the new policy, embassies will still have to meet the same security standards, but the State Department will require that a higher priority be given to the visual appearance of buildings and will try to situate them in more central locations so that they are not so isolated. It is unclear whether the Benghazi crisis will force the State Department to abandon the new design policy. 

“The problem is that embassies no longer function as public buildings,” said Jane Loefller, the author of “The Architecture of Diplomacy,” a history of the design and construction of American embassies. “They used to be public, but no longer.” 

For the State Department, finding the right balance between security and diplomacy has become increasingly difficult in a political environment. Perhaps no one understands that as well as Patrick F. Kennedy. 

Five years ago, Mr. Kennedy, then the under secretary of state for management in the Bush administration, was caught up in a high-profile Congressional investigation of the episode in Nisour Square. Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee criticized the department for lax management of overly aggressive security contractors. 

This week, Mr. Kennedy, who has the same job in the Obama administration, faced Republicans on the same House committee, who criticized the State Department for lax management and failing to provide more aggressive security in Benghazi. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/world/africa/private-security-hovers-as-issue-after-embassy-attack-in-benghazi-libya.html?_r=1&hp


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> A minor comment. Shouldn't the title of this threat be, "U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two  three others killed in attack of consulate" since four people were killed;  U.S. Ambassador Libya Christopher Stevens and State Department computer specialist Sean Smith died in the consulate from smoke inhalation. Two others, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Wood, both former Navy SEALs , were killed at the embassy annex, which was a few blocks away.
> 
> Another observation, I still haven't heard any explanation as to how the Ambassador (and Mr. Smith) ending up being separated from the rest of the consulate staff during the attack. It almost looks like they got abandoned during the attack.





			
				Old Sweat said:
			
		

> A narrative I read had the Ambassador and Mr Smith hidden in a secure room that was designed to be impregnable and the rest of the party made a very visible attempt to escape. The plan failed.



A panic room in other words. I guess the security people never envisioned that the bad guys might just burn the whole place down. 

Having said that, as previous articles state, there's only so much you can do before your security measures become counter-productive.


----------



## cupper

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Any more detail on "the analyst"?  It's a pretty amorphous term.....much like some mainstream, hard-copy bloggers calling themselves "journalists."
> 
> "Analyst" presupposes analysis.....which requires information -- preferably factual (although not always available) -- upon which to base one's analysis.



You'll forgive me for using the term analyst, the story I was referring to was from the previous Friday, so I couldn't remember the particulars of the person being interviewed.

The "analyst" is in fact Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

Here is the full interview.

*Benghazi Attack Raises New Questions About Al-Qaida*

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/05/162379015/benghazi-attack-raises-new-questions-about-al-qaida


> October 5, 2012
> 
> For the past decade, al-Qaida has been a top-down organization.
> 
> Letters seized at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan showed that he was a hands-on manager, approving everything from operations to leadership changes in affiliate groups.
> 
> But there's early intelligence that al-Qaida may have had a small role in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on Sept. 11.
> 
> If al-Qaida involvement is confirmed, it may signal that al-Qaida has changed.
> 
> The broader investigation is still playing out. The FBI finally visited the consulate this week and was already working with Libyan authorities to find those responsible.
> 
> Also, two men believed to be connected to the attack were detained at the airport in Istanbul. U.S. officials say they have an interest in interviewing the two men, but wouldn't say whether they were significant actors in the attack.
> 
> Based on what's known so far, Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, thinks the Benghazi attack could signal something significant.
> 
> "What we saw in Benghazi was something that was much more atomized, much more disparate and much more opportunistic," he says. "I think it raises potential challenges for how we go about counterterrorism in the next decade of this new al-Qaida."
> 
> This new al-Qaida, one without bin Laden, has been battered as an organization. But the group may have found a new role: inspiring local militias.
> 
> *Intercepted Phone Calls*
> 
> U.S. intelligence officials intercepted a number of telephone calls between members of a local Libyan group — Ansar al-Sharia — and al-Qaida's affiliate in North Africa.
> 
> *One call in particular is under scrutiny. It came on the afternoon of Sept. 11, shortly after protesters in Egypt had stormed the American Embassy in Cairo; this was about six hours before the attack on the consulate in Benghazi began.
> 
> Officials believe al-Qaida told members of the Libyan militia that they should take a cue from the Cairo protests and launch immediately any attack they had been planning for the future.*
> 
> "You have now almost multiple layers of al-Qaida," Hoffman says. "You see even the [al-Qaida] affiliates actually interfacing with locals on the ground and taking advantage of their capabilities to deploy them on very short notice."
> 
> Africa appears to be ground zero for al-Qaida to test this new tactic.
> 
> *New Islamist Groups In Africa*
> 
> Over the past 18 months, Islamists who subscribe to some of al-Qaida's ideas have appeared in Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and now Libya.
> 
> "What we see in Libya right now is a set of individuals who've migrated from North Africa to conflict zones like Iraq and Syria are migrating back," says Christopher Swift, a fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law who used to track terrorist financial networks at the Treasury Department.
> 
> "Some of those individuals have drunk the Kool-Aid. They believe in the al-Qaida ideology, but they may not share the same short-term political objectives, and they may be operationally distinct," Swift says.
> 
> In other words, they often agree with al-Qaida, but they have their own agenda.
> 
> And what intelligence officials are sorting out after Benghazi is whether a militia like Ansar al-Sharia — the group suspected in the attack — is effectively a local arm of al-Qaida, or something more distinct.
> 
> Swift thinks what happened in Libya could be the future of al-Qaida.
> 
> "I think you're also going to see a relocalization process within al-Qaida. What does that mean? It means the future of global jihad is going to be built through local insurgencies," he says.
> 
> That it will make it much harder to prevent attacks, because every local extremist group could provide foot soldiers for al-Qaida.


----------



## Journeyman

Thank you. Knowing the source assists in weighing credibility; Bruce Hoffman certainly is a credible analyst.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Thank you. Knowing the source assists in weighing credibility; Bruce Hoffman certainly is a credible analyst.



I would second that.


----------



## Haletown

Transcript of State Department telecon briefing reporters on October 9th.


The State Department has released a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters via conference call on October 9 (Tuesday). I am not certain about this, but I believe the transcript was only made public today. You should read it in its entirety; it is the most detailed description I have seen of the events in Benghazi on September 11.

While this is by no means clear, it appears that the State Department may have released the transcript as part of the escalating conflict between Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. In their desperation to avoid responsibility for the Benghazi debacle, Obama and Biden have pointed fingers in two directions: at the intelligence community for reporting incorrectly that the incident was a protest over a YouTube video clip, and at the State Department for not providing adequate security for the Ambassador.

Here are some excerpts from the narrative:

A few minutes later – we’re talking about 9 o’clock at night – the Ambassador retires to his room, the others are still at Building C, and the one agent in the [Tactical Operations Center]. At 9:40 p.m., the agent in the TOC and the agents in Building C hear loud noises coming from the front gate. They also hear gunfire and an explosion. The agent in the TOC looks at his cameras – these are cameras that have pictures of the perimeter – and the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people – a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound. One special agent immediately goes to get the Ambassador in his bedroom and gets Sean, and the three of them enter the safe haven inside the building. …

They turn around immediately and head back – or the two of them, from Building B, turn around immediately with their kit and head back to Villa C, where the Ambassador and his colleagues are. They encounter a large group of armed men between them and Building C. I should say that the agent in Building C with the Ambassador has radioed that they are all in the safe haven and are fine. The agents that encounter the armed group make a tactical decision to turn around and go back to their Building B and barricade themselves in there. So we have people in three locations right now.

And I neglected to mention – I should have mentioned from the top that the attackers, when they came through the gate, immediately torched the barracks. It is aflame, the barracks that was occupied by the 17th February Brigade armed host country security team. I should also have mentioned that at the very first moment when the agent in the TOC seized [sic -- apparently should read "sees"] the people flowing through the gate, he immediately hits an alarm, and so there is a loud alarm. He gets on the public address system as well, yelling, “Attack, attack.” Having said that, the agents – the other agents had heard the noise and were already reacting.

Okay. So we have agents in Building C – or an agent in Building C with the Ambassador and Sean, we have two agents in Building B, and we have two agents in the TOC. All – Building C is – attackers penetrate in Building C. They walk around inside the building into a living area, not the safe haven area. The building is dark. They look through the grill, they see nothing. They try the grill, the locks on the grill; they can’t get through. The agent is, in fact, watching them from the darkness. He has his long gun trained on them and he is ready to shoot if they come any further. They do not go any further.

They have jerry cans. They have jerry cans full of diesel fuel that they’ve picked up at the entrance when they torched the barracks. They have sprinkled the diesel fuel around. They light the furniture in the living room – this big, puffy, Middle Eastern furniture. They light it all on fire, and they have also lit part of the exterior of the building on fire. At the same time, there are other attackers that have penetrated Building B. The two agents in Building B are barricaded in an inner room there. The attackers circulate in Building B but do not get to the agents and eventually leave.

A third group of attackers tried to break into the TOC. They pound away at the door, they throw themselves at the door, they kick the door, they really treat it pretty rough; they are unable to get in, and they withdraw. Back in Building C, where the Ambassador is, the building is rapidly filling with smoke. The attackers have exited. The smoke is extremely thick. It’s diesel smoke, and also, obviously, smoke from – fumes from the furniture that’s burning. And the building inside is getting more and more black. The Ambassador and the two others make a decision that it’s getting – it’s starting to get tough to breathe in there, and so they move to another part of the safe haven, a bathroom that has a window. They open the window. The window is, of course, grilled. They open the window trying to get some air in. That doesn’t help. The building is still very thick in smoke. …

Okay. We’ve got the agent. He’s opening the – he is suffering severely from smoke inhalation at this point. He can barely breathe. He can barely see. He’s got the grill open and he flops out of the window onto a little patio that’s been enclosed by sandbags. He determines that he’s under fire, but he also looks back and sees he doesn’t have his two companions. He goes back in to get them. He can’t find them. He goes in and out several times before smoke overcomes him completely, and he has to stagger up a small ladder to the roof of the building and collapse. He collapses. …

The agent in the TOC, who is in full gear, opens the door, throws a smoke grenade, which lands between the two buildings, to obscure what he is doing, and he moves to Building B, enters Building B. He un-barricades the two agents that are in there, and the three of them emerge and head for Building C. There are, however, plenty of bad guys and plenty of firing still on the compound, and they decide that the safest way for them to move is to go into an armored vehicle, which is parked right there. They get into the armored vehicle and they drive to Building C.

They drive to the part of the building where the agent had emerged. He’s on the roof. They make contact with the agent. Two of them set up as best a perimeter as they can, and the third one, third agent, goes into the building. This goes on for many minutes. Goes into the building, into the choking smoke. When that agent can’t proceed, another agent goes in, and so on. And they take turns going into the building on their hands and knees, feeling their way through the building to try to find their two colleagues. They find Sean. They pull him out of the building. He is deceased. They are unable to find the Ambassador. …

At this point, the quick reaction security team and the Libyans, especially the Libyan forces, are saying, “We cannot stay here. It’s time to leave. We’ve got to leave. We can’t hold the perimeter.” So at that point, they make the decision to evacuate the compound and to head for the annex. The annex is about two kilometers away. My agents pile into an armored vehicle with the body of Sean, and they exit the main gate. …

[T]hey take fire almost as soon as they emerge from the compound. They go a couple of – they go in one direction toward the annex. They don’t like what they’re seeing ahead of them. There are crowds. There are groups of men. They turn around and go the other direction. They don’t like what they’re seeing in that direction either. They make another u-turn. They’re going at a steady pace. There is traffic in the roads around there. This is in Benghazi, after all. Now, they’re going at a steady pace and they’re trying not to attract too much attention, so they’re going maybe 15 miles an hour down the street.

They come up to a knot of men in an adjacent compound, and one of the men signals them to turn into that compound. They agents [sic] at that point smell a rat, and they step on it. They have taken some fire already. At this point, they take very heavy fire as they go by this group of men. They take direct fire from AK-47s from about two feet away. The men also throw hand grenades or gelignite bombs under – at the vehicle and under it. At this point, the armored vehicle is extremely heavily impacted, but it’s still holding. There are two flat tires, but they’re still rolling. …

As the night goes on, a team of reinforcements from Embassy Tripoli arrives by chartered aircraft at Benghazi airport and makes its way to the compound – to the annex, I should say. And I should have mentioned that the quick reaction – the quick reaction security team that was at the compound has also, in addition to my five agents, has also returned to the annex safely. The reinforcements from Tripoli are at the compound – at the annex. They take up their positions. And somewhere around 5:45 in the morning – sorry, somewhere around 4 o’clock in the morning – I have my timeline wrong – somewhere around 4 o’clock in the morning the annex takes mortar fire. It is precise and some of the mortar fire lands on the roof of the annex. It immediately killed two security personnel that are there, severely wounds one of the agents that’s come from the compound.

At that point, a decision is made at the annex that they are going to have to evacuate the whole enterprise. And the next hours are spent, one, securing the annex, and then two, moving in a significant and large convoy of vehicles everybody to the airport, where they are evacuated on two flights.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, was jetting off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser.

It was obvious to the reporters on the call that this narrative blows Obama’s evasions sky high:

First question is from the line of Anne Gearan with the Washington Post. Please go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi. You said a moment ago that there was nothing unusual outside, on the street, or outside the gates of the main compound. When did the agents inside – what – excuse me, what did the agents inside think was happening when the first group of men gathered there and they first heard those explosions? Did they think it was a protest, or did they think it was something else?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: The agent in the TOC heard the noise, heard the firing. Firing is not unusual in Benghazi at 9:40 at night, but he immediately reacted and looked at his cameras and saw people coming in, hit the alarm. And the rest is as I described it. Does that help?

This exchange is priceless:

OPERATOR: The next question is from the line of Brad Klapper with AP. Please, go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi, yes. You described several incidents you had with groups of men, armed men. What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: That is a question that you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion. I’m not saying that we had a conclusion, but we outlined what happened. The Ambassador walked guests out around 8:30 or so, there was no one on the street at approximately 9:40, then there was the noise and then we saw on the cameras the – a large number of armed men assaulting the compound.

So Hillary Clinton and the State Department unequivocally reject the account that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have given. It is hard to imagine what “intelligence” reports Obama could have received that blamed the YouTube video. He is lying, evidently.


----------



## tomahawk6

Gen Petraeus should have been out front defending his agency.


----------



## a_majoor

The blowback is now spreading to the White House and the internal workings of the Administration:

http://althouse.blogspot.ca/2012/10/did-biden-blame-hillary-for-benghazi.html?showComment=1350140645615



> *Did Biden blame Hillary for Benghazi?*
> 
> Mickey Kaus thinks so.
> 
> Will Hillary now retaliate and protect herself by leaking word that the White House did too know? Will her husband continue to tour the country trying to pull Obama’s bacon out of the fire (as he did at the convention) even as Obama points a finger at his wife? Will they all cut some sort of deal in which Hillary agrees to take the fall and Bill soldiers on … in exchange for, what? Have they already cut a deal?  Is the White House going to try to hang its hat on the idea that Obama and Biden didn’t know, but maybe their staffs knew? Will that really fly? Aren’t they responsible for their staffs? Will the staffs fight back?
> 
> That's a lot of internal intrigue to keep under control until the election. What an October surprise!
> 
> They October-surprised themselves.


----------



## Haletown

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Gen Petraeus should have been out front defending his agency.



Agreed . . .  Seems very strange he has been AWOL on this story.

Something is amiss. 

But throwing The Hildabeast under the bus would make two very serious enemies, her and Billy.

Can't see Axlerod going down that path.

Make lots of popcorn.  This is going to be a great movie.


----------



## a_majoor

Haletown said:
			
		

> Agreed . . .  Seems very strange he has been AWOL on this story.
> 
> Something is amiss.
> 
> But throwing The Hildabeast under the bus would make two very serious enemies, her and Billy.
> 
> Can't see Axlerod going down that path.
> 
> Make lots of popcorn.  This is going to be a great movie.



The political calculus is pretty complex. Right now if Hillary gets thrown under the bus, it damages any attempt to run in 2016. If Bill does not pull out all the stops, Obama may not be reelected. If Hillary is thrown under the bus, what incentive does Bill have to help the Administration? If Obama is reelected, then he can throw Hillary under the bus with impunity. If Governor Romney is elected, then 2016 may not be achievable for Hillary.

If anyone in the staff is thrown under the bus, they might start leaking nasty, toxic stuff that brings down the administration.

This is like the scene in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" where everyone is facing off in the graveyard....

Edit to add:

The NY Post expands on this thought:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fresh_scapegoats_OFHirGdL4nGBSZKlETgvjK



> *Fresh scapegoats*
> White House Libya blame game
> 
> By MICHAEL A. WALSH
> Last Updated: 11:25 PM, October 14, 2012
> Posted: 10:39 PM, October 14, 2012
> 
> Michael A. Walsh
> How is the Obama White House going to fit the entire State Department and the intelligence community under the bus?
> 
> Last month’s Benghazi fiasco saw four Americans — including our ambassador to Libya — murdered by elements of al Qaeda in a military-style assault timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
> 
> The weeks afterward saw the administration blaming a video that, even the White House now admits, had nothing to do with it. And the months before the attack saw Washington adamantly reducing security in Benghazi — despite pleas for reinforcements from the folks on the ground.
> 
> Blaming the State Department and the intelligence community: Joe Biden used both scapegoats to dodge Paul Ryan’s charges in last week’s debate.
> Yet President Obama’s top spokesman — and Vice President Joe Biden, in last week’s debate — have been busy pointing fingers of blame at State and the IC.
> 
> It won’t work. Neither Foggy Bottom nor the intel community’s legion of spooks, analysts and secret-keepers is likely to go quietly.
> 
> Indeed, State has already started the pushback. It has pointedly released the transcript of an Oct. 9 media briefing in which Brad Klapper of the Associated Press asks what “led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?”
> 
> Someone described only as “Senior State Department Official Two” answers, “That is a question you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion.”
> 
> Of course, Biden and Obama spokesmen like Jay Carney have been claiming that “the intelligence” the White House received at first had blamed the attack on the video.
> 
> This part of the blame game will fail because it just doesn’t make any sense. The American IC is not infallible, but what part of it — the CIA? The National Security Agency? State’s own Bureau of Intelligence and Research? — would have leaped to such a ridiculous conclusion?
> 
> Mere hours after the attack, the nation’s spooks knew this was terrorism, not amateur movie criticism. There had been ample warning — including an assault on the British ambassador as well as earlier attacks on our consulate — that something was coming.
> 
> And yet the White House — which as recently as Oct. 8 was still insisting that a resurgent al Qaeda is “on its heels” — has chosen to stick to another exonerative fairy story: that it was unaware that Ambassador Chris Stevens had begged for more security at the beleaguered Benghazi compound.
> 
> The reasons for this denial may be best known to campaign guru David Axelrod. After all, the administration’s only indisputable foreign-policy triumph — the killing of Osama bin Laden — would be in serious jeopardy were Obama and Biden to publicly admit that the Libyan attacks were in part retaliation for bin Laden’s death and the ongoing US drone strikes in Yemen and elsewhere.
> 
> But it’s simply untrue that the government was unaware of the deteriorating security conditions in Benghazi. In last week’s congressional hearing, security officials testified that Washington repeatedly turned a deaf ear to their urgent requests for beefed-up forces at the Benghazi compound and CIA “safe house.”
> 
> Indeed, two separate security teams had recently been withdrawn from Libya after their temporary assignments had expired. And last week’s testimony made it plain that this was according to policy — a policy set by just what higher-ups, we still don’t know.
> 
> There’s more bad news to come. It now appears that the CIA “safe house” in Benghazi — which was tasked with tracking down the lethal weapons looted from the collapsed Khadafy regime — was also stripped of valuable information in the Sept. 11 attack.
> 
> That intelligence likely included the names of Libyans and others who’d been cooperating with the Americans, as well as possible double agents within Ansar al-Sharia (the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula branch behind the Benghazi attack) and al Qaeda itself. This may explain why, on Thursday, masked gunmen shot and killed a local security officer in Yemen who’d been working with the US Embassy.
> 
> So the Benghazi attacks may well prove to be an intelligence disaster of the highest order, seriously compromising scarce US assets in the region.
> 
> Yet the White House response seems to be utterly political — a concerted effort to shift blame, even if it means risking a break with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and payback from husband Bill. (Not to mention the chance of embarrassing blowback from the spooks who keep the secrets).
> 
> Maybe Team Obama can manage to dodge all the way to Nov. 6 — but they’re going to need a bigger bus.


----------



## tomahawk6

An inexperienced UK security company proved to be a complete disaster.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9607958/British-firm-secured-Benghazi-consulate-contract-with-little-experience.html

By Damien McElroy, Richard Spencer and Raf Sanchez

8:24PM BST 14 Oct 2012

 Sources have told the Daily Telegraph that just five unarmed locally hired Libyans were placed on duty at the compound on eight-hour shifts under a deal that fell outside the State Department's global security contracting system. 

 Blue Mountain, the Camarthen firm that won a $387,000 (£241,000) one year contract from the US State Department to protect the compound in May, sent just one British employee, recruited from the celebrity bodyguard circuit, to oversee the work. 

 The compound was overrun by a mob of Islamic extremists on the morning of September 12 in an apparent planned attack that resulted in the death by asphyxiation of the ambassador, Chris Stevens. 

 Blue Mountain, which is run by a former member of the SAS, received paper work to operate in Libya last year following the collapse of Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime. It worked on short term contacts to guard an expatriate housing compound and a five-star hotel in Tripoli before landing the prestigious US deal. 

 Other firms in the security industry expressed surprise that Blue Mountain had won a large, high profile contract from the US government. One industry executive said the level of service Blue Mountain provided did not appear adequate to the risks presented by a lawless city.

"We have visited the consulate in Benghazi a number of times and have an excellent relationship with the Americans. Our assessment was the unarmed Libyan guards were extremely poor calibre," said one security source. "The Libyan Ministry of Interior are generally not happy with Blue Mountain and had them on their close observation/target list." 

 The New York Times last week reported that major security firms with a track record of guarding US premises elsewhere had made approaches to undertake work in Libya but were rebuffed. 

 "We went in to make a pitch, and nothing happened," a security firm official told the newspaper. 

 A five man security team from the US diplomatic protection service and three members of a local revolutionary brigade were also on duty on the night of the attacks. 

 But Blue Mountain's local woes appears to have hampered a coordinated response by the compound's defenders when the late assault kicked off. 

 Darryl Davies, the manager of the Benghazi contract for Blue Mountain, flew out of the city hours before the attack was launched. The Daily Telegraph has learned that relations between the firm and its Libyan partner had broken down, leading to the withdrawal of Mr Davies. 

 Abdulaziz Majbiri, a Blue Mountain guard at the compound, told the Daily Telegraph that they were effectively abandoned and incapable of defending themselves on the night of the attack. 

 "We were in uniform, unarmed except for taser guns and handcuffs, and had been told in the case of attack to muster by the swimming pool," he said. "I was separated from the others and couldn't get anywhere near the swimming pool before I was shot." 

 US congressional investigators have told the Daily Telegraph that consular staff had reported Blue Mountain guards to the Libyan police on one occasion last year. The diplomats believed that two disgruntled Blue Mountain employees were behind a minor pipe bomb attack on the facility. 

 However after questioning no action was taken by the police or company over the incident. 

 Nigel Thomas, the Blue Mountain director, refused to answer any questions about the companies activities in Libya, citing official US inquiries into the incident. He said: "The US State Department investigation is still ongoing at this time. Blue Mountain have no comment to make and all questions should be directed to the US mission."


----------



## GAP

> The political calculus is pretty complex. Right now if Hillary gets thrown under the bus, it damages any attempt to run in 2016. If Bill does not pull out all the stops, Obama may not be reelected. If Hillary is thrown under the bus, what incentive does Bill have to help the Administration? If Obama is reelected, then he can throw Hillary under the bus with impunity. If Governor Romney is elected, then 2016 may not be achievable for Hillary.
> 
> If anyone in the staff is thrown under the bus, they might start leaking nasty, toxic stuff that brings down the administration.
> 
> This is like the scene in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" where everyone is facing off in the graveyard....



Hillary just took one for the team.....this could get ugly in the backrooms for the Dems....

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/15/clinton-takes-responsibility-for-consulate-security-blames-confusion-on-fog-war/


----------



## Journeyman

GAP said:
			
		

> Hillary just took one for the team.....


How about this perspective:  

How many voters are looking to see any candidate linked with the term 'responsibility'...as in "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took responsibility Monday night for any security failures...."?

And by "blaming the 'fog of war' for the Obama administration's shifting explanations for the attack," she's being an Obama team player _and_ not alienating State Dept security, CIA, even international security firms -- playing nice with anyone from whom she may be seeking for future support.

Good political move I'd say, rather than being chucked under the bus.



I just wouldn't want to be the guy wearing '_the_ blue dress' for her pay-back to Bill if she's the Prez     :-\


----------



## Fishbone Jones

This sounds to me, to be suddenly convenient. 

In my opinion this is the Obama team's attempt to put the issue to bed, plausibly in their mind, all wrapped in a nice bow before the next Presidential debate.

They need a pat answer for Romney when he starts poking at Obama's house of cards. Now he can just look at Romney and say "State Dept and Clinton admitted being at fault, not my problem". :


----------



## OldSolduer

I reckon none of those folks ever studied the Principles of Leadership.

Ultimately, is the President of the USA not responsible for the safety of his Ambassadors?


----------



## Haletown

Hillary took responsibility for the security failures.

No mention of who invented the cover story, who coordinated all the Obama administration team who went on TV to blame some obscure YouTube clip.  No names of who in the White House coordinated the story. No mention of Obama flying off to campaign events 12 hours after a US Ambassador is murdered in full knowledge it was likely a terrorist attack and there was no spontaneous mob.  

It is never the crime, it is always the cover up.


Still lots of 'splaining to do.


----------



## vonGarvin

Haletown said:
			
		

> Still lots of 'splaining to do.



I agree.  On the one hand, Mr. Obama takes great credit in taking down Osama bin Laden.  On the other, he (through his team) are downplaying the failure in Benghazi.  Mr. Romney would be wise to remind Mr. Obama that great leaders shirk the laurels, but accept the blame, not the other way around.


----------



## GAP

Hillary Falls On Her Sword Over Benghazi
 by Ben Shapiro 15 Oct 2012
Article Link

Late this afternoon, Elise Labott of CNN reported that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told her that she “takes responsibility” for security problems at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, resulting in the murder of our ambassador and three other Americans. Clinton, who is hiding out in Peru while this blows over, took to the microphone to throw herself on the sword. She said “the buck stopped with her” when it came to the embassy, according to Labott. Labott further reported that Clinton stated, “she didn’t want to play any kind of blame game or political gotcha. She understands that the election is coming up and everyone wants to politicize this … She wants to wait for an investigation.” According to Labott, however, Clinton also blamed Congress, as well as other members of government.

Hillary is clearly playing the good soldier on the eve of the crucial second presidential debate between her boss, President Obama, and challenger Mitt Romney. After Vice President Joe Biden threw Clinton under the bus during the vice presidential debate, stating that neither he nor President Obama knew anything about the security situation in Benghazi, Hillary stepped out to the front to take the hit.

There’s a dual purpose for this sudden mea culpa. The first is obvious: Obama wants to end all speculation about his role in the Libyan disaster, and Hillary believes that she can take the hit and keep on trucking due to her personal popularity. The second is more subtle: Obama is losing the female vote now – Romney’s running just a point behind Obama among female likely voters according to Gallup – and he figures he can kill two birds with one stone if he can get Republicans to attack Hillary Clinton, the most popular female politician in the country, over Libya.

If Secretary of State Clinton was responsible for the security situation in Benghazi – as, indeed, we argued she was on the day after the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens – here’s the question, however: was she acting outside the scope of her duties when she failed to provide the ambassador the security he requested? Or was she following the orders of a President who has always attempted to avoid making waves in the Middle East, and saw a strong security presence as a show of force?

The answer seems obvious: Clinton was acting in accordance with President Obama’s general foreign policy. She did not provide Stevens with proper security because she was not supposed to under general Obama foreign policy guidelines. That’s why the Obama administration has spent over a month trying to claim that the obvious terrorist attack in Libya was sparked by a protest; then they blamed intelligence; then they blamed the State Department. The Obama administration never came clean because the State Department was acting under color of authority.

That, at least, must be the supposition pending a full investigation. This scandal will not end merely because the Obama administration has convinced Hillary to take a bullet for President Obama, and in doing so, shore up his female support. President Obama is the person who put Secretary of State Clinton in the unenviable position of enacting a pusillanimous foreign policy. If he didn’t, he should fire her forthwith. If he did, no phony sackcloth and ashes from the Secretary of State will solve the underlying problem: a cowardly Commander in Chief who leads from behind and leaves our people in harm’s way, then throws others under the bus for his failures of leadership.

UPDATE: CNN has now released snippets of video from Clinton. In the video, she says she takes responsibility -- then promptly announces that security arrangements were made by "security professionals." In other words, she took responsibility, then blamed subordinates. Watch for the media to ignore that walkback on responsibility so that they can attempt to quash this scandal.
end


----------



## OldSolduer

It's too bad that the majority of  the MSM will give Obama a free ride on this one.


----------



## Journeyman

No, what I think is too bad is that it will matter very little either way. 

I suspect that the voting public falls into two predominant blocs -- those whose minds are made up and will only 'hear' info that supports their beliefs, and the large, disinterested mass for whom this is mindless, irrelevant chatter.  :not-again:


----------



## vonGarvin

Personally, I think you're both right.  And I think it's a shame as well.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Fast & Furious was a harbinger. This administration takes no responsibility for anything untoward and only blames or covers up.

American deaths seem to make have no effect whatsoever to them.

Exceptionally fast to take credit from others to bolster a positive image though, when opportunity presents itself.

They're making Nixon look like a boy scout.

There are no leaders there. Only takers and egotistical freeloaders.


----------



## cupper

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Ultimately, is the President of the USA not responsible for the safety of his Ambassadors?



Only in the sense that he is also responsible for the safety of all Americans.

You cannot expect the President to deal with the minutia of day to day operational decisions like how may security personnel are required for each and every embassy. Hell, even Hillary wouldn't be expected to make such day to day decisions (she's not Donald Rumsfeld).

However, he is responsible to set national policy on how the US presents itself through out the world. He will base that on the recommendations from various sources. And you are only as good as your sources, and how well you are able to assess and utilize them.

As for security of the Diplomatic staff and facilities, that falls to the State Department, which has a specialized security section responsible for assessing risk, recommending and implementing security at the various embassies and consulates. Their funding, like all government funding goes through Congress, so they are left to the whims of political agendas.


----------



## Haletown

Wonder if Obama regrets skipping all those Daily Security Briefings.  Even Jimmy Carter never missed one.

Might have kept him out of this doo-doo


----------



## OldSolduer

cupper said:
			
		

> Only in the sense that he is also responsible for the safety of all Americans.
> 
> You cannot expect the President to deal with the minutia of day to day operational decisions like how may security personnel are required for each and every embassy. Hell, even Hillary wouldn't be expected to make such day to day decisions (she's not Donald Rumsfeld).
> 
> However, he is responsible to set national policy on how the US presents itself through out the world. He will base that on the recommendations from various sources. And you are only as good as your sources, and how well you are able to assess and utilize them.
> 
> As for security of the Diplomatic staff and facilities, that falls to the State Department, which has a specialized security section responsible for assessing risk, recommending and implementing security at the various embassies and consulates. Their funding, like all government funding goes through Congress, so they are left to the whims of political agendas.



I understand that. BUT.....he should have said "the buck stops here".


----------



## cupper

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> I understand that. BUT.....he should have said "the buck stops here".



But we both know that the buck may stop there, but the blame still flows downhill.

I learned early on in my engineering career that shit sewage flows both ways, it just needs more pressure to get it to flow uphill.


----------



## Haletown

The White House is going to need more swords to fall on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znVqyfxfbRQ&feature=player_embedded

The Monday debate on Foreign Policy is going to be 'interesting".


----------



## Rifleman62

As a result of the debate, the new message from the President/WH/all Democrats is that the President did indeed call the attack an act of terrorism on 12 Sep, in the Rose Garden. 

Benghazi, what song do they play?


----------



## ModlrMike

Here's an interesting analysis by the CBC's Neil MacDonald:

*Neil Macdonald: Mitt Romney was right about the Benghazi attack*
By Neil Macdonald, CBC News
Posted: Oct 19, 2012 6:12 AM ET

Mitt Romney's Republican boosters are frustrated and infuriated, not just with their usual suspects in the mainstream media, but with their own presidential candidate.

And they have a right to be.

They believe Romney let President Barack Obama, the self-congratulating killer of Osama bin Laden, off the hook for its inexplicable handling of the murder by armed extremists of the American ambassador to Libya and three other government employees on Sept 11.

Serious questions have been building for weeks about that night.

It now seems clear that the Obama administration misled the American public by playing up the storyline that the incident in Benghazi was part of some spontaneous protest against the U.S., linked to the controversial video that was rocking the Muslim world at the time.

More at LINK


Coupled with:


*
CIA found militant links a day after Libya attack*
The Associated Press
Posted: Oct 19, 2012 8:05 AM ET 

The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press.

More at LINK


It might be interesting to see where this goes.


----------



## tomahawk6

The administration vs Congress.The truth will come out now or after Romney gets sworn in.

http://freebeacon.com/incommunicado/


BY: Bill Gertz
October 19, 2012 7:15 pm

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is demanding answers from four senior United States military officers about whether there was advance warning of terrorist threats and the need for greater security prior to last month’s terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

However, an aide to the chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R., Calif.), said the office of secretary of defense Leon Panetta blocked the senior officers from providing the answers last night.

“The chairman is disappointed that the administration won’t respond to this basic request for information,” the aide said.

“It is nearly unprecedented that the office of the secretary of defense would prohibit a member of the uniformed military from answering direct questions posed by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.”

Pentagon spokesman George Little told the Free Beacon: “We received the letters last night and are working expeditiously to provide a response.”

The chairman’s letters are dated Thursday. They were sent to Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military activities in Africa; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command; Vice Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, director for operations at the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

McKeon asked the officers to provide answers to questions about security threats by the close of business Friday.

The questions reveal that there may be information within the military revealing warnings about terrorist threats and the need to increase security that were ignored by the State Department or other civilians within the Obama administration.

McKeon asked each of the four officers in separate letters whether prior to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi anyone under their command had notified the State Department or other agencies about growing dangers in Libya.

“Given the steadily deteriorating threat environment in Libya prior to Sept. 11, 2012, did you or anyone in your command advise, formally or informally, that the Department of State or any other agency take action to increase security for U.S. personnel in Libya?” McKeon asked.

He also wants to know if there were any requests to increase security in Libya for U.S. personnel.

Also, the letters to the four officers asked whether any military officers under their command had recommended “deployment of additional U.S. military forces to Libya due to the threat environment.”

Other questions focused on determining if the officers were aware that officers under their command recommended increasing security in Libya prior to the deadly attack on the consulate that killed Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

“To your knowledge, has the Department of State or any other federal agency requested additional U.S. military forces to augment security for U.S. personnel in Libya?” McKeon asked.

Since the attack took place five weeks ago, McKeon said he wanted answers by the close of business Friday.

The committee aide said the chairman also had asked for a briefing on events leading up to the attack, and so far the Pentagon has failed to provide the briefing.

McKeon, according to the aide, does not believe any failures related to the deadly terrorist attack can be traced to the U.S. military, which has a limited presence in the region, including special operations engaged in counterterrorism operations.

“He believes it is important whether or not the State Department and the administration were using all the information available at the time” on the terrorist threat and the dangers to U.S. diplomats and intelligence personnel.

McKeon sent the letter as a supplement to an earlier letter to President Obama sent by McKeon and seven other House Committee chairmen, which sought details on the intelligence leading up the attack, security for personnel, and the role played by former Guantanamo detainees in the attack.

The House leaders said in that Sept. 25 letter that administration statements attributing the attack to protests spawned by an anti-Muslim film disturbed them. They emphasized that the consulate murders were “a terrorist attack.”

“Decades after al Qaeda attacked our embassies in East Africa, which catalyzed a series of events that led to the attacks of 9/11, it appears they executed a highly coordinated and well-planned attack against us again,” the Sept. 25 letter states.

“Clearly the threat from al Qaeda and affiliated groups has metastasized; yet we do not appear to be learning from the past.”

The House leaders said it appears the administration has reverted to a past policy of treating terrorism as a criminal matter “rather than also prioritizing the gathering of intelligence to prevent future attacks.”


----------



## Jed

Funny how when ever this issue comes up when talking to committed Democrats they tend to segway in to a why were we lied to by Bush et al with respect to WMD in Iraq.


----------



## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The administration vs Congress.The truth will come out now or after Romney gets sworn in.



I wouldn't hold my breath. Even if Romney wins, the news cycle will no longer be dominated by have any interest this story, and they will have moved on to the fiscal cliff.


----------



## tomahawk6

Congressional investigations always get news coverage. Holder will be right in the crosshairs as well.


----------



## Jarnhamar

I think the US gov't should play the blame game after they search out and bury all those involved in the attack on their consulate.


----------



## Rifleman62

http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

National Post - 20 Oct 2012 - David Frum
   
*We need to talk about what happened in Benghazi*

Barack Obama got super lucky in the second presidential debate last week. Mitt Romney made a rare mistake, and the president took brutal advantage. Clever advantage too, for the governor’s mistake enabled the president to sidestep what otherwise would have been a discussion that is deadly dangerous to him.

Romney’s mistake, of course, was to assert that the president waited 14 days to use the phrase “act of terror” to describe the Sept. 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, an attack that killed four Americans including the ambassador to Libya.

You can see why Romney made his mistake, but a mistake it was. On Sept. 12, the president had said this: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. “

People familiar with the language of presidents will understand what Obama was doing here. Notice he did not say: “This act of terror.” Instead, he offered a statement of principle about acts of terror in general, avoiding mention of whether the particular incident in Benghazi happened to belong to that category.

The president’s words gave him deniability in two directions: He protected himself against Republican charges just like the charge Romney leveled at him, while simultaneously refraining from any definitive characterization of the attack as terrorism.

The language was ambiguous — and intentionally ambiguous. (A statement like this would have been reviewed by at least a dozen senior White House staff, including both political and counter-terrorism advisers, and then circulated to relevant officials at State, CIA, Defense and maybe the Department of Justice, too.

Still, Romney led with his chin, and the president walloped him. By delivering the wallop, Obama also prevented the follow-on challenge before it could even be framed, and that challenge was this:

Why was the administration so eager to represent the Benghazi attack as a response to a YouTube video? Pulitzer-worthy reporting by my Daily Beast colleague Eli Lake has established that U.S. intelligence quickly ascertained that the Benghazi attack had been planned in advance; that it was organized by an al-Qaeda affiliate group operating inside Libya; that the attackers had surveilled the targeted consulate before the assault; that they maintained communications security in a way consistent with a trained force; and that they directed their firepower skillfully not only against the consulate, but also against a nearby CIA annex.

Yet despite this knowledge, and with very rare exceptions, the administration for almost two weeks mischaracterized the incident. Again: why? Here’s why. L ibya was fully Obama’s war. He made the decision to intervene to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, and he decided on the nature of the intervention. Afterward, he took credit for the result: a dictator deposed, elections organized, without any longterm American presence in the country. Compared to Afghanistan or Iraq, Libya looked at first like a cheap and easy success.

But events have shaken the Obama narrative about Libya. Despite the elections, there is no effective government in Libya. The eastern half of the country is controlled by armed militia groups imbued with al-Qaeda ideology — to the point where *( The New York Times reported Friday) the presumed ringleader of the attack on the Benghazi consulate could hold a press conference on an open-air patio without fear of apprehension or retaliation.* (But the FBI can't find him)

Suddenly, Libya does not look like such a big success. Gaddafi was nasty, but he had long ago ceased to be a nuisance for the United States. If overthrowing him created an al-Qaeda romper room a short boat ride from NATO ally Italy — that would be a very bad and embarrassing result.

The sophisticated criticism of President Obama’s Libya policy is this:

Obama intervened in Libya despite his awareness that the anti-Gaddafi rebels had pro-al-Qaeda leanings. He intervened to support those rebels because he hoped to prove to Islamists everywhere in the Middle East and North Africa that they had more to gain from co-operating with the United States than from fighting the United States. This is the famous “opening to political Islam” that has been so intensely discussed in Washington.

And the opening continues. It continues in the form of the covert aid now reportedly flowing to the Syrian rebels, and in the soft line being taken with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president even after Egyptian police failed to protect the U.S. embassy in Cairo against attack (which also was on 9/11). If the opening failed in Libya, it’s likely to fail even worse in Syria, where the rebel groups are even more saturated with Salafist Islam than the Libyan rebels.

Romney was trying to articulate these ideas on Tuesday night. He slipped and suffered for it. But his slip should not be allowed to shut down this discussion. President Obama’s big risky Mideast gambit is failing badly. Four Americans died because of that failure — and many other US interests have been put at risk. Americans need to hear that truth before they vote in November.


----------



## Haletown

Other than Fox and some blogs, this latest info on what happened in Benghazi that night is getting little coverage.

http://gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com/breaking-news/emails-show-the-obama-administration-knew-ansar-al-sharia-was-behind-the-attack-in-benghazi/

They (multiple US HQ's, Comms Centres, the White House etc) new what was going on, they watched parts of it live and they had live voice and email comms with Benghazi throughout.  The White House is doing an excellent stonewalling of this story, trying to run out the clock until after the election.

The ass covering is going on. Those emails are being released by folks who are trying to prevent being forced to fall on a sword for people in charge. 

If any parts of this commentary are true, there is a very big hole being dug.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-l_v7q5oPA&feature=player_embedded

Iran Contra + Watergate + Fast & Furious


----------



## Rifleman62

International Situation & World News / Re: U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two others killed in attack of consulate

« on: September 18, 2012, 17:33:38 »

Rifleman62:





> I would like to see the transcripts of any of the cell phone calls the Ambassador or the other three made that day. You can be sure calls were made.



Well we are seeing them now, written copies of emails/cables, the addressees, at least if you are watching FOX News. Even the cable the AMB wrote the day he was killed warning of the situation. Item number 5 on ABC with Dianne S last night, BUT no detail, 10 second blurb.

The media is stupid. The WH, Carney and the POTUS have been lying right to their faces and using them as willing pawns.


----------



## Rifleman62

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1924759413001/father-of-security-agent-killed-in-libya-speaks-out/

*Father of security agent killed in Libya speaks out*

Watch/listen for 11 minutes of the father of one of the former SEALS speaks out today.


----------



## cupper

Politics can be a dirty game, but I'm thinking that this required both a  :Tin-Foil-Hat: and matching underwear. 

(We need a tinfoil underwear smiley)

*Was Susan Rice set up on Libya?*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-insiders/post/was-susan-rice-set-up-on-libya/2012/10/25/02930c78-1ecf-11e2-8817-41b9a7aaabc7_blog.html



> U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice has been pretty low-key over the past three years. With Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal appeal, strong personality and extensive relationships in Washington, there hasn’t been much opportunity for Rice to make her mark. Her opportunities to appear on Sunday news shows have been pretty rare.
> 
> Everyone has known for at least a year that Clinton intends to leave her job. And, if President Obama wins reelection, there would be a fierce contest within his administration to be nominated to take her place.
> 
> D.C. insiders will recall that Rice was a core adviser to Obama during the cantankerous 2008 Democratic primary campaign. Eleanor Clift noted in a January Daily Beast profile on Rice that “lingering tensions” from the campaign still exist between Rice and Clinton.
> 
> Rice was sent out in the days after the Benghazi, Libya, attacks to explain the administration’s view of the crisis. Clearly almost everything she said was untrue. The subsequent revelations and the evolving stories are wildly different than what she earnestly offered on a full set of Sunday shows in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. Republicans believe Americans have been misled by Obama’s forces, starting with Ms. Rice's now-infamous Sunday-morning appearances. Did she volunteer for the Sunday show assignment, or was she “encouraged” to take the poison?
> 
> Were the attacks in Benghazi followed by an attempt to kill Rice’s political career? Or did her ambition compel her to advance a faulty narrative of events in keeping with the administration's apologist foreign policy?
> 
> Either way, it is safe to say that her participation in launching the misdirection that is the administration's Benghazi explanation will prevent Susan Rice from receiving Senate confirmation for any new job — much less that of Secretary of State. We may never know if her grasp for the spotlight was part of an audition gone bad or if she was sent out by her enemies to take the flak they knew was coming.
> 
> By Ed Rogers


----------



## ModlrMike

So, hearings on Nov 15. Convenient since the vote is on Nov 6.


----------



## Haletown

FOX is reporting that:

1. A Spec Ops team was alerted and on standby 480km away in Sigonella Italy but they never launched, not even to fly off the coast of Libya to be close just in case.

2. The two ex SEALs made at least three direct requests for military support throughout the four hour firefight at the CIA Annex facility a mile from the Consulate site. 

3.  There was continuous UAV coverage of the fighting at the CIA Annex, with the first UAV on site being supplemented with a second drone.

4. The two SEALS were killed on the roof of the Annex building by mortar fire  while they had eyes-on and laser target designator sighting of the mortar firing at them.

5.  Numerous people in multiple HQ's including the White House Situation Room watched the fire fight for five + hours and were able to watch the activity of the two SEALs on the roof top including the mortar strikes that killed them.

Still being mostly ignored by CNN/CBS/NBC/ABC.

But the story will not go away.


----------



## Jed

Haletown said:
			
		

> FOX is reporting that:
> 
> 1. A Spec Ops team was alerted and on standby 480km away in Sigonella Italy but they never launched, not even to fly off the coast of Libya to be close just in case.
> 2. The two ex SEALs made at least three direct requests for military support throughout the four hour firefight at the CIA Annex facility a mile from the Consulate site.
> 
> 3.  There was continuous UAV coverage of the fighting at the CIA Annex, with the first UAV on site being supplemented with a second drone.
> 
> 4. The two SEALS were killed on the roof of the Annex building by mortar fire  while they had eyes-on and laser target designator sighting of the mortar firing at them.
> 
> 5.  Numerous people in multiple HQ's including the White House Situation Room watched the fire fight for five + hours and were able to watch the activity of the two SEALs on the roof top including the mortar strikes that killed them.
> 
> Still being mostly ignored by CNN/CBS/NBC/ABC.
> 
> But the story will not go away.



For the current administration, it is such a great asset to have the MSM in your corner when going into an election. 

I note that President Obama is the first President to vote in the advance polls and this factoid was widely reported. Maybe the administration wants everyone to vote as soon as possible before this 'furball' coughs up.


----------



## Rifleman62

Three times they asked for help.

*EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say*

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/#ixzz2AQCIlcc1


*Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. Consulate and subsequent attack several hours later was denied by officials in the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11. *

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were part of a small team who were at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When they heard the shots fired, they radioed to inform their higher-ups to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. An hour later, they called again to headquarters and were again told to "stand down." 

Woods, Doherty and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the Consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The quick reaction force from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the Consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight. 

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators. 

Watch "Special Report Investigates: Death and Deceit in Benghazi" on Fox News at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, 3 p.m. on Sunday and 10 p.m. on Sunday. 

A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they too were told to stand down. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Specter gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support. 

According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from. 

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help. 

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," Panetta said Thursday. "But the basic principle here ... is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on." 

Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the Consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers. 

Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the Consulate began -- a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex. 

A motorcade of dozens of Libyan vehicles, some mounted with 50 caliber machine guns, belonging to the February 17th Brigades, a Libyan militia which is friendly to the U.S., finally showed up at the CIA annex at approximately 3 a.m. An American Quick Reaction Force sent from Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport at 2 a.m. (four hours after the initial attack on the Consulate) and was delayed for 45 minutes at the airport because they could not at first get transportation, allegedly due to confusion among Libyan militias who were supposed to escort them to the annex, according to Benghazi sources. 

The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi's fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces. 

Fox News has also learned that Stevens was in Benghazi that day to be present at the opening of an English-language school being started by the Libyan farmer who helped save an American pilot who had been shot down by pro-Qaddafi forces during the initial war to overthrow the regime. That farmer saved the life of the American pilot and the Ambassador wanted to be present to launch the Libyan rescuer's new school.


----------



## a_majoor

Looks ike Hillary is getting up off her sword. I wonder if anyone realy thought the Clintons were going to go down with the ship or allow the Administration to throw them under the bus. The blame game will become very heated indeed:

http://nation.foxnews.com/hillary-clinton/2012/10/26/report-hillary-asked-more-security-benghazi-obama-said-no



> *Report: Hillary Asked For More Security in Benghazi, Obama Said No*
> 
> Clinton asked for more security in Benghazi, Obama said no
> 
> BY CHRISTOPHER COLLINS
> 
> Last night, it was revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered more security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi before it was attacked where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were murdered by Al-Qaeda but President Obama denied the request.
> 
> The news broke on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” hosted by Andrew Wilkow, by best-selling author, Ed Klein who said the legal counsel to Clinton had informed him of this information.
> 
> Klein also said that those same sources said that former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife [Hillary] to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.
> 
> Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/hillary-clinton/2012/10/26/report-hillary-asked-more-security-benghazi-obama-said-no#ixzz2AQPlnywP


----------



## Journeyman

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Klein also said that those same sources said that former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife [Hillary] to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.


Ri-iiight.   :not-again:


----------



## observor 69

Hey we are talking Fox News and "TheBlazeTV " here. You can't get more credible sources then those two.
 Very heavy :sarcasm:


----------



## Haletown

Round 1 *** covering begins.  Petraeus has his eye on the 2016 Democratic nomination.

Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ” 


So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need? 


http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/petraeus-throws-obama-under-bus_657896.html

Story is still being buried by the MSM, but sooner or later . . .


----------



## Haletown

Maybe this is the later moment.  A father speaks out.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/10/father-of-slain-benghazi-seal-they-murdered-my-son-video/


----------



## tomahawk6

Alot of info is coming out now. A caller to Rush Limbaugh' show laid out for his audience how information is transmitted to the decision makers in Washington. Evidently C-130AU gunship was available as well as armed Predators and Obama called it off !!

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/10/26/are_some_in_the_chain_of_command_still_haunted_by_carter_s_failed_rescue_in_1979


----------



## Rifleman62

> So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need?


 David Axelrod  (he's not "in government". He is the government.)


----------



## tomahawk6

Axelrod was an advisor and now he runs the campaign. If Obama wants to stop efforts to support the embassy he simply calls Panetta.


----------



## Rifleman62

I realize that. I was being a smart ass. Axlerod is not a nice humanoids. Do you really think the current President is not being told what to do every day? 

Its like they arm him with today's talking points and launch him.

Would love to see how much was spent by this President on travel. Billions, and billions.


----------



## tomahawk6

The President wants fore more years. ;D


----------



## vonGarvin

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The President wants fore more years. ;D



I see what you did there


----------



## observor 69

HUFF Post Media


 How a Real News Story Became the 'Obama Watched Them Die' Meme 

Posted: 10/26/2012 8:43 am


I have now several times encountered dramatic images of the attack in Benghazi accompanied by oversize text that tastefully accuses American officials of watching idly while Americans were murdered in an opportunistic terror assault during the 9/11 anniversary and Innocence of Muslims demonstrations. 

The idea is absurd on its face to even the most casual observer. Firsthand accounts of the harrowing events of that night are completely at-odds with the claim. Ambassador Stevens either died or his body was left behind because nobody could see through the smoke. Reinforcements from Tripoli were on the scene. The CIA was, we have come to strongly suspect, just about a mile away. Libyan police died on the scene, alongside American personnel. The accusation just doesn't jibe with what we know.

But because Internet memes apparently now pass for fact checks at Forbes, I suppose somebody must respond. That's where this piece comes in, I suppose. So, let's talk about how a CBS report about a rescue effort amid a fury of confusion became an Internet meme about no attempted rescue while everyone watched on the big screen.

On Oct. 24, CBS news ran a story about the Benghazi attack. Ironically enough, its focus was a special response team that was dispatched from Europe -- but never made it -- to the CIA building where embassy personnel, Libyan police and backup from Tripoli had taken up shelter. We have come to believe that it was a CIA building not from that story but because Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah,) told the whole world as much live on C-SPAN while his Republican colleagues coolly tried to carry on exploiting the tragedy for political gain without revealing that inconvenient -- and quite classified -- truth. And we know that other backup had arrived because, unlike people who create these graphics, you and I read the news and have decided to acquaint ourselves with the horrific chain of events before firing up Photoshop. 

The story concluded with the following:

 Meanwhile, CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan reports that the FBI and State Department have reviewed video from security cameras that captured the attack on the consulate.

The audio feed of the attack was being monitored in real time in Washington by diplomatic security official Charlene Lamb. CBS News has learned that video of the assault was recovered 20 days later from the more than 10 security cameras at the compound.

The government security camera footage of the attack was in the possession of local Libyans until the week of Oct. 1. The video will be among the evidence that the State Department's review board will analyze to determine who carried out the assault.


Forbes' Larry Bell rather quickly managed to twist that into:

 Just one hour after the seven-hour-long terrorist attacks upon the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began, our commander-in-chief, vice president, secretary of defense and their national security team gathered together in the Oval Office listening to phone calls from American defenders desperately under siege and watching real-time video of developments from a drone circling over the site. Yet they sent no military aid that might have intervened in time to save lives.


More at  LINK


----------



## vonGarvin

"I see your Fox  News and raise yiu a Huffington Post".....


----------



## Haletown

and I call on the MSM journalists . . .

Sandy may slow it down, but this story is not going away.


----------



## Brad Sallows

This will probably come down to a simple explanation: the decision makers had all, or mostly all, seen "Rules of Engagement"; the thought of sending armed people in aircraft to an embassy under siege triggered overactive imaginations, resulting in a catastrophic defecation of spinal columns and collective stampede to avoid risk.


----------



## tomahawk6

An AC-130 or two would have been perfect for taking out the 150 jihadists that had attacked the consulate/annex. A QRF of sorts made it to the consulate to save the other staff members.Marines or SEALs could have been dispatched from the 6th Fleet.


----------



## a_majoor

I think we arer all aware of the various mutually contradictory sotires coming out of the Administration and various intelligence and military organs as to what happened and when. Here (for people keeping score) are the points that will be answered one way or another. I'm pretty sure the CYA crew(s) are terrified that someone will pre emptively leak damning information/transcripts/videos in order to protect themselves; destroying the credibility and possibly the careers of everyone else around them:

http://weeklystandard.com/articles/mysteries-benghazi_660184.html?nopager=1



> *Mysteries of Benghazi*
> Nov 12, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 09 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES
> 
> November 6 is not only Election Day, it's also the eight-week anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
> 
> Regardless of which candidate wins, the American people deserve answers to the many unanswered questions about the attack—and the events that preceded and followed it. The Benghazi debacle is a drama in three parts: the lack of security before the attacks, the flaccid response during the attacks, and the misleading narrative after the attacks. There are unanswered questions about each part. Here are some of the most important.
> 
> Part One
> 
> Before the attack, a wide array of U.S. officials provided stark warnings about inadequate security in Benghazi. They include Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer for the State Department in Libya; Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a site security commander in Libya from February to August 2012; the unknown author of letters dated the day of the attack and found on the consulate floor; and, of course, the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself. Why didn’t they receive the assistance they requested?
> 
> During the vice presidential debate, Joe Biden claimed: “We weren’t told they wanted more security there.” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor later clarified that Biden was speaking “for himself and the president.” In fact, an August 16 State Department cable summarizing an emergency meeting at the U.S. mission in Benghazi was circulated to White House and NSC officials just three weeks before the attack. It reported that the regional security officer “expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support and the overall size of the compound.” Does the administration maintain that no one at the White House or NSC was aware of these urgent requests?
> 
> More by Stephen F. Hayes
> 
> Papers Blast Obama Over Benghazi
> The Omertà Administration
> Romney Plays It Safe, Misses Opportunities
> W.H. Tries to Write Al Qaeda Out of Libya Story
> Twenty Questions
> 
> Several officials with responsibility for security in -Benghazi spoke of a “normalization” directive that included a conscious effort to reduce the security posture at the consulate. Who proposed “normalization” and who issued the directive to reduce security?
> 
> Part Two
> 
> Citing sources on the ground in Benghazi, Fox News reported that Tyrone Woods was “painting” mortar sites with a laser from his rooftop position shortly before he was killed. A subsequent CIA timeline provided to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius contradicts this, saying that “the rooftop defenders never ‘laser the mortars,’ as has been reported.” Can the CIA make this claim with certainty? If Woods was painting the mortar sites as eyewitnesses claim, presumably at considerable personal risk, why was he doing so? Did he have reason to believe that reinforcements were coming?
> 
> President Obama says that he gave “three very clear directives.” They were: “Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice.” To whom was the first of those directives transmitted and when?
> 
> A CIA statement claims that no one in the CIA chain of command denied requests for help. A statement from NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor claims no one at the White House denied requests for assistance. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that the military did not have “real-time information” to act on. Did military officials not communicate with top State Department officials such as Charlene Lamb, who testified under oath that she and others were following the attack in real time from their post at the State -Department? Was President Obama aware of requests for assistance from the men under attack in Benghazi? Panetta also said: “You don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.” Does this statement imply that there were requests for help from the field that senior defense officials judged it imprudent to act on? In any case, isn’t going into harm’s way without complete information precisely the job of our most highly trained military personnel? Does the president agree with Panetta? Doesn’t announcing that the U.S. military needs perfect intelligence before engaging an enemy encourage similar attacks in the future?
> 
> Part Three
> 
> State Department officials in Washington followed the attacks as they happened and knew instantly, in the words of Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, that the assault in Benghazi was “an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men.” A CIA timeline provided to reporters late last week notes that at 1:15 a.m. on the night of the attack, less than five hours after it began, CIA -officials attempting to rescue Ambassador Stevens reported that terrorists from Ansar al Sharia had surrounded the hospital in Benghazi. On September 12, the day after the attack, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled Washington to report that the assault had been a terrorist attack. By September 13, the FBI was interviewing CIA officials who were on the ground in -Benghazi, several of whom described a sophisticated terrorist attack on the compound.
> 
> Yet when CIA director David Petraeus briefed members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on September 14, he suggested that the attack was triggered by a YouTube video. Two days later, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice made the same claim about the video on political talk shows. Two days after that, President Obama blamed the video in an interview with David Letterman. And a week after that, the president cited the video six times in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly. Why all the misleading information from senior administration officials?
> 
> While President Obama and other administration officials misleadingly tied the attack in Benghazi to an anti-Islam film, they have been reluctant to discuss al Qaeda’s very real ties to the assault. We know that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a terrorist organization that has sworn loyalty to al Qaeda’s senior leadership, was involved. So was Ansar al Sharia, which has al Qaeda ties. CNN has reported that members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, another terrorist organization that has sworn loyalty to Ayman al Zawahiri, are suspected of taking part in the attack. And then there is a terrorist named Mohammed Jamal, an Egyptian with longstanding ties to Zawahiri, whose fighters, according to multiple reports, assaulted the compound. Instead of a “spontaneous” attack that grew out of a protest, the assault on the U.S. consulate was carried out by a consortium of al Qaeda allies. To date, the administration has not identified the terrorists responsible for killing four Americans. When will the administration present the American people with an accurate description of the terrorists responsible, including their al Qaeda ties?
> 
> Whether Barack Obama remains president or not, he owes the American people a full accounting of the Benghazi fiasco.


----------



## a_majoor

And the Legacy Media _finally_ begins to cover the story (when it is far too late to materially change the election, giving you some idea of where the priorities really lie). Like Fast and Furious, the economy and many other things, the media has sacrificed their credibility by ignoring or downplaying anything which might have hurt the Administration. Payback has been in the form of ever decreasing readership and viewers, resulting in decreasing revenues and the extinction of brands like Newsweek and the sharp decline of news outlets like CNN.

It will be a long time (if ever) before the Legacy Media regains its position in society:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/media-discover-benghazi-notice-obama-stonewalling/2012/11/01/7cdf9d1e-2480-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html



> *Media discover Benghazi, notice Obama stonewalling*
> By Jennifer Rubin
> 
> Well, it finally happened. The mainstream media have figured out that Benghazi is a big story and potentially a serious national security scandal. After weeks of silence, a plethora of mainstream media news stories have popped.
> 
> As he has from the get-go, Eli Lake makes news, writing: “On the night of the 9/11 anniversary assault at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the Americans defending the compound and a nearby CIA annex were severely outmanned. Nonetheless, the State Department never requested military backup that evening, two senior U.S. officials familiar with the details of military planning tell The Daily Beast.” Lake observes that although assets likely would not have arrived in time to save Ambassador Chris Stevens, “military backup may have made a difference at around five the following morning, when a second wave of attackers assaulted the CIA annex where embassy personnel had taken refuge. It was during this second wave of attacks that two ex-SEALs working for the CIA’s security teams — Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods — were killed in a mortar strike.”
> 
> However, Lake is no longer the only reporter hammering away at the case.
> 
> CBS News reports: “CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG). ‘The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies,’ a high-ranking government official told CBS News. ‘They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.’ ”
> 
> As conservative critics have pointed out for weeks, the White House cover story didn’t match the information held by intelligence agencies:
> 
> In the days after the assault, counterterrorism officials expressed dismay over what they interpreted as the Obama Administration’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the attack was terrorism; and their opinion that resources which could have helped were excluded.
> 
> Counterterrorism officials from two agencies said they concluded almost immediately that the attack was by terrorists and was not spontaneous. “I came to this conclusion as soon as I heard the mortar rounds were impacting on top of the building our people were occupying,” says one. “The position of the mortar must be plotted on a map, the target would have to be plotted, computations would be calculated that would result in the proper mortar tube elevation and the correct number of powder bags to be attached to the rounds.”
> 
> ABC’s Jake Tapper says that the White House is stalling, refusing to come forward with a clear explanation of the president’s role:
> 
> In the place of a detailed description from the Obama administration about what happened more than six weeks ago comes the drip-drip-drip of stories about the failures of the Obama administration to provide those Americans on the ground in Libya with all the security assets they needed.
> 
> ABC News broke some stories on this, ranging from a security team being denied continued use of an airplane its commander wanted to keep in country to better do his job; to the security team leaving Libya before Ambassador Stevens wanted it to.
> 
> Fox News Channel’s Catherine Herridge last night reported on a newly discovered cable indicating that in August, less than a month before the attack, the diplomatic post in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” concerned about local Al Qaeda training camps. Said the cable: “RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound.”
> 
> The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reveals the heavy presence of the CIA in Benghazi, painting a picture of confusion and lack of coordination between CIA and the State Department. It raised the question of why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rather than CIA chief David Petraeus, stepped forward to take the blame for the Benghazi fiasco.
> 
> The Post’s David Ignatius is out with a similar account and timeline, arguing, “While there were multiple errors that led to the final tragedy, there’s no evidence that the White House or CIA leadership deliberately delayed or impeded rescue efforts.”
> 
> All of this raises the question: What was the president doing and was he even involved throughout the crisis? The president still hasn’t explained why he clung to the anti-Muslim video as the trigger for the attacks long after the intelligence community had determined it was an organized jihadist attack. (Given the heavy presence of CIA operatives at the scene, it makes it even more obvious that senior officials knew the attack was a coordinated assault, not a spontaneous reaction to the film.) President Obama still has not explained how it could have escaped notice that Libya had become a haven for terrorists. In fact, the president has behaved throughout as a candidate trying to avoid blame instead of a commander-in-chief and chief executive who is transparent in his actions and accountable to the American people.
> 
> Obama would no doubt like us to think of him strutting around disaster areas in New Jersey and New York, brow furrowed and telling people to answer their phones. But the job there is for the governors and local authorities. His job is not Sandy cleanup but national security. It is not a job he has fulfilled sufficiently, so no wonder he’d rather don his leather jacket (presidential seal-embossed, naturally) and hang out with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Briefings! Reports! On-site investigations!
> 
> Meanwhile, who was answering the phone at the White House on 9/11/2012? Who was briefing Obama , and how did he get the facts wrong for so long? Why did he go to Las Vegas after Benghazi but cancel campaigning after Sandy (hint: proximity to Election Day)?
> 
> We’ll have to wait for a special investigator, a bipartisan commission, a Senate investigation or a new president, I suspect, to get to the bottom of it. Obama will never cough up the facts voluntarily.


----------



## tomahawk6

Blue Mountain Security was a complete fiasco. They didnt setup the saferoom properly. Hired unarmed guards and did not coordinate with other allies that had assets in Benghazi.The Brits are wondering why they werent called in as they had sizeable assets in Benghazi.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/03/exclusive-security-officials-on-ground-in-libya-challenge-cia-account/



> Despite a carefully narrated version of events rolled out late this week by the CIA claiming agents jumped into action as soon as they were notified of calls for help in Benghazi, security officials on the ground say calls for help went out considerably earlier -- and signs of an attack were mounting even before that.
> 
> The accounts, from foreign and American security officials in and around Benghazi at the time of the attack, indicate there was in fact a significant lag between when the threat started to show itself and help started to arrive.
> 
> According to the CIA, the first calls for assistance came at 9:40 p.m. local time from a senior State Department official at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, to the CIA annex about a mile away.
> 
> But according to multiple people on the ground that night, the Blue Mountain Security manager, who was in charge of the local force hired to guard the consulate perimeter, made calls on both two-way radios and cell phones to colleagues in Benghazi warning of problems at least an hour earlier. Those calls allegedly went to local security contractors who say that the CIA annex was also notified much earlier than 9:40 p.m. U.S. military intelligence also told Fox News that armed militia was gathering up to three hours before the attack began.
> 
> One source said the Blue Mountain Security chief seemed "distraught" and said "the situation here is very serious, we have a problem." He also said that even without these phone and radio calls, it was clear to everyone in the security community on the ground in Benghazi much earlier than 9:40 p.m. that fighters were gathering in preparation for an attack.
> 
> Many of these security contractors and intelligence sources on the ground in Benghazi met twice a week for informal meetings at the consulate with Blue Mountain and consulate staff, and at times other international officials. They were all very familiar with security at the consulate -- and said the staff seemed "complacent" and "didn't seem to follow the normal American way of securing a facility."
> 
> Both American and British sources say multiple roadblocks set up by fighters believed to be with Ansar al-Sharia were in place in Benghazi several hours before the 9:40 p.m. timeline and that communications also alluded to "heavily armed troops showing up with artillery." Fox News was told by both American and British contacts who were in Benghazi that night that the CIA timeline rolled out this past week is only "loosely based on the truth" and "doesn't quite add up."
> 
> Fox News was also told that the local guard force meant to protect the consulate perimeter "panicked" and didn't know what to do as the attackers took up positions. Sources say other guards simply "walked away".
> 
> One former Special Op now employed by a private company in Benghazi said that even the safe room wasn't properly set up. He said "the safe room is one of the first measures you take" and that he is "not sure how you can set a safe room without fire suppression and ventilation in case of fire." He also said, "Ambassador Stevens would likely be alive today if this simple and normal procedure was put into place."
> 
> As details emerge of serious security issues before the attack on Sept. 11, Fox News is also beginning to hear more frustration from sources both on the ground in Benghazi and in the U.S. Multiple British and American sources insist there were other capabilities in the region and are mystified why none were used. Fox News was told there were not only armed drones that monitor Libyan chemical weapon sites in the area, but also F-18's, AC-130 aircraft and even helicopters that could have been dispatched in a timely fashion.
> 
> However, George Little, a spokesman from the Pentagon, denied their presence in the area.
> 
> "On the night of the attack on American personnel and facilities in Benghazi, there were no armed unmanned aerial vehicles over Libya, and there were no AC-130s anywhere close," he said.
> 
> British intelligence sources said that unarmed drones routinely flew over Benghazi every night in flight patterns and that armed drones which fly over chemical sites, some a short flight from Benghazi, "were always said to be on call." American sources confirmed this and questioned "why was a drone armed only with a camera dispatched?"
> 
> Another source added, "Why would they put a ragtag team together in Tripoli as first responders? This is not even what they do for a living. We had a first responder air base in Italy almost the same distance away." Despite the team arriving from Tripoli that night, sources said sufficient American back-up never came.
> 
> British sources on the ground in Benghazi said they are extremely frustrated by the attack and are still wondering why they weren't called for help. “We have more people on the ground here than the Americans and I just don't know why we didn't get the call?" one said.
> 
> Both American and British sources said, at the very least, the security situation on the ground and the lack of proper response were the result of "complete incompetence." The covert team that came in from Tripoli was held up at the Benghazi airport for more than three hours by Libyan officials. Sources said the team notified officials in Washington that they were being delayed within 30 minutes of their arrival.
> 
> They also point out that these questions "don't even address the military capabilities of our United Nations ally Turkey, who (has) forces available a similarly short flight away." Fox News has learned that Turkey had a number of embassy staff in town the night of the attack and that the Turkish consul general met with Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi the night he and the three other Americans were killed.
> 
> One source asked, "Were the Turks not warned? What forces were available from our ally Turkey? Especially since they had officials there in Benghazi also and had to be concerned … and where was the U.N. in all of this?"


----------



## skyhigh10

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> An AC-130 or two would have been perfect for taking out the 150 jihadists that had attacked the consulate/annex. A QRF of sorts made it to the consulate to save the other staff members.Marines or SEALs could have been dispatched from the 6th Fleet.



You know this for a fact?  

I read in another forum that the ambassador would have been turned to red splatter if an AC-130 fired around the consulate. I am not an expect on AC-130 weapons but from some recently viewed youtube videos in contrast with the Libyan Embassy size, I am not sure and AC-130 would have been much help. Fox news though believes "there were AC-130S in the area and they could have lowered F-16s" .  Not sure what this means either!   :facepalm:   Will be interesting to find out where the hold up was.


----------



## tomahawk6

There would have been plenty of targets in the open including at least one mortar crew.It would have been the weapon of choice for me.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Skyhigh10,......while I applaud your skeptisism about internet information I have an advantage of knowing who, and what, T-6 was and I'll take him at his word. [even if he does get a little carried away with Mr. Obama bashing]


----------



## skyhigh10

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> There would have been plenty of targets in the open including at least one mortar crew.It would have been the weapon of choice for me.




Good enough for me.  Like I said I am not an expert with this machine. The fact that those weapons aboard can be so precise is quite fascinating.


----------



## tomahawk6

This video demonstrates how surgical the gunship can be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OkoWEMCnLQ&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3DAC-130%2Bgunship%2Bvideo%26oq%3DAC-130%2Bgunship%2Bvideo%26gs_l%3Dyoutube.3...4770.12980.0.13366.20.17.0.3.3.0.114.979.16j1.17.0...0.0...1ac.1.SZiAFSuAwjM&has_verified=1


----------



## a_majoor

The administration is continuing the coverup, but using pretty stupid tactics, counting on the studied indifference of the Legacy Media. This incident will probably discredit the administration the way Watergate discredited Richard Nixon, not to mention leaving a massive problem in Libya and the potential to spread throughout North Africa (Think of Mali, and the takover of large parts of that country by Islamic radicals. Now look at the map and see how close to Nigeria Mali is...Now think of the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in Egypt. Too bad we don't have some sort of Smart Diplomacy to deal with that).

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/11/23/Benghazi-Gate-Now-Cover-Up-Of-Cover-Up



> *Benghazi-Gate Enters New Phase: The Cover Up of the Cover Up*
> by John Nolte 23 Nov 2012 199 post a comment
> 
> It now looks as though the White House's excuse for the pre-election Libya cover-up is itself a cover up. Last week we were told by the Administration (and the compliant media) that during her now-infamous round robin of five Sunday news shows, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was only telling us what she was told by the intelligence community. We were also told that references to al-Qaeda were edited out of the talking points in order to avoid tipping off the attackers that we were on to them. According to a number of CBS News' sources, this simply isn't true.
> 
> As recently as yesterday, though, Rice doubled down on this defense: "I relied soley and squarely on the information provided to me by the intelligence community. I made clear that the information was preliminary and that our investigations would give us the definitive answers."
> 
> At first glance, Rice's comments might not appear to move the ball, but they do tell us that the Administration has found its defense and intends to stick to it -- that defense being that Rice was only parroting the false information she was given. But now, thanks to some good reporting from CBS News, we know things weren't that simple.
> 
> Let's back up just a little bit…
> 
> Last week, former CIA Chief Davis Petraeus testified that within a day he knew the assault on our consulate in Benghazi was a premeditated terrorist attack committed by a Libyan militia with ties to al-Qaeda. As a result, Petraeus authorized the release of this information to the public in talking points to be given to the White House and to lawmakers. CBS News reports that references to al-Qaeda were later removed by Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) -- an agency run by James Clapper, an Obama appointee. The FBI also made substantial edits.
> 
> But here's where the plot thickens.
> 
> DNI spokesman Shawn Turner told CBS News, "The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack." He added that this classified information was shared with the White House. CBS News then quite correctly concludes that, as a member of Obama's cabinet, Susan Rice would would've known this. All cabinet members are given classified briefings.
> 
> The bottom line, then, is that during her Sunday show appearances, Rice knew the information she was spreading was false.
> 
> In reference to the edited talking points, another source told CBS News that… [emphasis added]
> 
> "The points were not, as has been insinuated by some, edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack," the official tells CBS News, adding that there were "legitimate intelligence and legal issues to consider, as is almost always the case when explaining classified assessments publicly."
> 
> "Most people understand that saying 'extremists' were involved in a direct assault on the mission isn't shying away from the idea of terrorist involvement," added the official. "Because of the various elements involved in the attack, the term extremist was meant to capture the range of participants."
> 
> This is important because if the talking points were not edited "to minimize the role of extremists," that, then, was a decision Susan Rice made all on her own (with likely prompting from the White House ). The same goes for White House spokesman Jay Carney and the President himself, both of whom would spend nearly two weeks spinning this same false narrative.
> 
> This false White House narrative, which only sharpened over time, was all about a spontaneous protest over a YouTube video that turned into a deadly riot. But if the edited talking points were not meant to "diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack," that was a decision the White House made, and one that conflicts entirely with the excuse that they were simply telling us what they were told by the intelligence community.
> 
> And it wasn't just the fact that the White House chose to focus on the YouTube video. Time and again, for nearly two weeks, Rice and Carney would go the extra mile in this deception by telling the media that there was absolutely no evidence the assault on our consulate was premeditated.
> 
> Finally, the primary defense for the editing of al-Qaeda out of the talking points is this ridiculous notion that we didn't want the group responsible for the attack to know we were after them. That never came close to passing the smell test, and now the intelligence community is pushing back against that nonsense:
> 
> [A]n intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence.
> 
> In other words, the removing of the al-Qaeda references wasn't about tipping anyone off; it was about making sure it was this particular al-Qaeda affiliated militia. There was never any doubt the attack was a premeditated terror attack, but amongst all the extremists in Libya, we just weren't sure which one was responsible.
> 
> So, if what CBS is reporting is true, this is what we know now:
> 
> 1. At the time, Susan Rice knew the information she repeated five times on five Sunday shows wasn't true.
> 
> 2. The edited talking points were never meant to deceive and conceal the fact that what happened in Libya was a terror attack. And yet, that's exactly what Rice and the White House did for nearly two weeks.
> 
> 3. Contrary to what the White House and media told us, the talking points were not edited to keep the group responsible for the attack from knowing we were on to them. Therefore…
> 
> 4. We were lied to for reasons that had nothing to do with national security.
> 
> 5.  The media's going to allow the Obama Administration to get away with this. (Why else would CBS play down its own story the way they did this one?)
> 
> *Everything goes back to the motive for this cover up, which, apparently, was to run out the clock to Election Day with a Narrative meant to hide the fact that on Obama's watch there was a successful terror attack that resulted in the murder of an American ambassador and three other Americans. And let's also not forget that, just a few days before the attack, at his nominating convention, Obama bragged before the whole world that "al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat."*
> 
> The American people understand that deception is sometimes necessary in the name of national security. But no one believes that's the case here.
> 
> This cover up, which the media has happily become a co-conspirator to, was only about winning Obama a second term.
> 
> And now the cover up of the cover up is in full swing.
> 
> Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
> {/quote]


----------



## a_majoor

More interesting things that have been stuffed down the memory hole regarding the Benghazi attack. This is from yesterday's Instapundit (29 Nov 2012):

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/



> IS THE PRESS turning on Susan Rice? “Well, when Right Turn and Mother Jones agree, is there any room for doubt? (Or maybe it’s the sign of the apocalypse?)”
> 
> Related: “Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial.”
> 
> Say, speaking of that, what about all the people who were rescued from the Consulate? What are their names? Why haven’t we heard anything from them?
> 
> UPDATE: Reader Robert Frick emails:
> 
> _Regarding your question about the people rescued during the Benghazi attack on Sept 11, 2012, I would guess the reason the public has not been told who they are is because most if not all are CIA. The work they were doing may be classified and/or they are under a general order not to talk to the press. This is fairly common for people who work for intelligence services. Classified status of course has never stopped press outlets like the NY Times from publishing details of secret projects when it serves a political purpose. Still, I don’t see why an outfit like FOX News or a foreign press couldn’t at the very least publish a general expose that doesn’t reveal names.
> 
> Who the people extracted from Benghazi that night are is just one of the questions I’ve been waiting for the press to ask ever since we learned of this horrific incident. The others are what exactly was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi the day he was murdered, and if the president really gave an order to do everything possible to help the remaining men still under attack, who countermanded him with the Stand Down order? I don’t know what’s more shameful – a likely presidential cover-up or the refusal of the American press to inquire seriously about it._
> 
> If all the people in the Consulate — not the CIA Annex a mile away, but the actual Consulate — were CIA, then that would be quite unusual, and would suggest that there was a lot going on. It would also support the claim that the attack on the consulate was an effort to free jihadis who had been seized and held for interrogation, though by all accounts that was going on over at the Annex. But who knows? There’s certainly not much press interest in reporting on it.


----------



## tomahawk6

Its been revealed that Susan Rice and her hubby a Canadian citizen own over $300,000 in TransCanadian stock,which might be considered a conflict of interest if she were Sec of State.

http://pfds.opensecrets.org/N99999935_2011.pdf


----------



## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Its been revealed that Susan Rice and her hubby a Canadian citizen own over $300,000 in TransCanadian stock,which might be considered a conflict of interest if she were Sec of State.
> 
> http://pfds.opensecrets.org/N99999935_2011.pdf



And your point is?


----------



## tomahawk6

My point is that the administration will use this to withdraw her nomination as Sec of State. Also revealed were her ties to companies that continue to do business with Iran despite the sanctions.The group that has revealed this info is a left wing think tank.


----------



## cupper

So owning shares in the company building the Keystone pipeline would disqualify her from holding the position? If that were true, then the entire congress needs to do a rethink about what constitutes conflict of interest.


----------



## a_majoor

Since the Secretary of State is involved in things like the process of negotiating pipelines and trade agreements, then share holdings in may different companies would set that person up for a conflict of interest.

Jane Jacobs wrote about this many years ago in "Systems of Survival", suggesting that we return to the strict separation of the "protecting" class from the "merchant" class, in a similar fashion to how many ancient societies used social sanctions as a way to separate and prevent (or at least reduce) conflicts of interest. In modern politics the abuse of power is exactly how politicians seem able to retire as millionaires (Checking out things like Shawinigate or the strange tax exemptions of CSL demonstrates that _we_ are certainly not immune).


----------



## cupper

First of all, no on has been nominated yet.

Second, she can divest herself of the stocks prior to the confirmation.

But then again, we also have Mitt Romney on the record stating that Blind Trusts are bogus as well.

People need to stop trying to play gotcha politics. The only person who should be paying a price is the dumb ass in the Administration that thought it would be a good idea to put the UN Ambassador out as the spokesperson.


----------



## Nemo888

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Since the Secretary of State is involved in things like the process of negotiating pipelines and trade agreements, then share holdings in may different companies would set that person up for a conflict of interest.
> 
> Jane Jacobs wrote about this many years ago in "Systems of Survival", suggesting that we return to the strict separation of the "protecting" class from the "merchant" class, in a similar fashion to how many ancient societies used social sanctions as a way to separate and prevent (or at least reduce) conflicts of interest. In modern politics the abuse of power is exactly how politicians seem able to retire as millionaires (Checking out things like Shawinigate or the strange tax exemptions of CSL demonstrates that _we_ are certainly not immune).


This is notable beacuse even though I am diametrically oposed to you on the political spectrum I agree with you completely.


----------



## a_majoor

Using the same people gets the same results. Susan Rice has an ..._interesting_...track record WRT Africa and American interests. Interested parties can also research her role in the Rwanda genocides:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/113012-635391-rice-involved-in-1998-embassy-bombings.htm?p=full



> *For Susan Rice, Benghazi Was Kenya 1998 Deja Vu*
> 
> Posted 11/30/2012 06:51 PM ET
> 
> Parallels: A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain it all — our current U.N. ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998.
> 
> 'What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday after two hours with our U.N. ambassador. "In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security."
> 
> In both cases, Susan Rice was involved more than she would like to admit.
> 
> In the spring of 1998, Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, sent an emotional letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright begging for a more secure embassy in the face of mounting terrorist threats and a warning that she was the target of an assassination plot.
> 
> The State Department had repeatedly denied her request, citing a lack of money. But that kind of response, she wrote Albright, was "endangering the lives of embassy personnel."
> 
> A matter of months later, on Aug. 7, 1998, the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were simultaneously attacked with car bombs. In Kenya, 12 American diplomats and more than 200 Africans were killed.
> 
> As in Benghazi, requests for more security were denied, warnings were issued, prior incidents were ignored and Susan Rice went on TV to explain it all.
> 
> Within 24 hours, Rice, then assistant secretary of state for African affairs, went on PBS as spokesperson for the administration — just as she was regarding Benghazi when she parroted the administration's false narrative on five Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16, 2012, that Benghazi was caused by a flash mob enraged by an Internet video. Then, as now, she worked for a Clinton.
> 
> Also then, as now, she went on TV to claim, falsely, that we "maintain a high degree of security at all of our embassies at all times" and that we "had no telephone warning or call of any sort like that, that might have alerted either embassy just prior to the blast." There were plenty of warnings and our East African diplomats were begging for help as Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Benghazi.
> 
> Eerie similarities between Benghazi and Nairobi are many. A review of the attacks showed the CIA repeatedly told State Department officials in Washington and in the Kenya embassy that there was an active terrorist cell in Kenya connected to Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the attack.
> 
> The CIA and FBI investigated at least three terrorist threats in Nairobi in the year before the bombing. Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of the U.S. Central Command, had visited Nairobi on his own and warned that the Nairobi embassy was an easy and tempting target for terrorists.
> 
> For Susan Rice and her defenders to claim that she had "nothing to with Benghazi," that she was an innocent victim of altered talking points, is completely bogus. Did she also have "nothing to do with" Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania? She should have remembered Nairobi 1998, and perhaps she did. There was no flash mob then or now, only another willful disregard for American security, part of a naive dismissal of a very real terrorist threat.
> 
> Surely, Collins added, "given her position ... she had to be aware of the general threat assessment and the ambassadors' repeated requests for more security ... (h)er actions — and whether or not lessons were learned from the 1998 attacks on our embassies in Africa — are important questions."
> 
> Indeed they are, and we're still waiting for some real answers. One thing is clear — Susan Rice is unqualified to be secretary of state.
> 
> Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/113012-635391-rice-involved-in-1998-embassy-bombings.htm#ixzz2DvnCCrvO


----------



## cupper

Breaking News:

*Benghazi attack review finds systematic State Dept failures but no officials breached duty*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/benghazi-attack-review-finds-systematic-state-dept-failures-but-no-officials-breached-duty/2012/12/18/1b5bbd98-4983-11e2-8af9-9b50cb4605a7_story.html?hpid=z1

WASHINGTON — An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management failures at the State Department led to inadequate security that left the diplomatic mission vulnerable.

Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual American officials ignored or violated their duties and found no cause for any disciplinary action. The board found that contrary to initial reports, there was no protest outside the mission and blamed the incident entirely on terrorists.

The State Department sent a classified version of the report to lawmakers Tuesday and released an unclassified version later Tuesday. The report makes 29 recommendations to improve embassy security. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she accepted them all.


----------



## GAP

Clinton not responsible for Benghazi shortcomings: inquiry
Wed Dec 19, 2012
Article Link

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of an official inquiry into the fatal attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, did not find Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responsible for security lapses even as they outlined widespread failings within her department.

The unclassified version of the report, released late Tuesday by the State Department, concluded that the mission was completely unprepared to deal with a September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi lay farther down the State Department command chain, said Retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who lead the inquiry.

"We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where - if you like - the rubber hits the road," Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.

A deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern affairs resigned after the report, a Capitol Hill source said. Media outlets reported other resignations, including Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, one of his deputies and another official.

State Department officials declined to comment.

The report by the Accountability Review Board probing the attack and comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident, would not be held personally culpable.

"The secretary of state has been very clear about taking responsibility here, it was from my perspective not reasonable in terms of her having a specific level of knowledge," said retired Admiral Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the other inquiry leader.  

 Continued...
More on link


----------



## tomahawk6

Pretty incredible result - No Harm No Foul. BS !!!


----------



## PPCLI Guy

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Pretty incredible result - No Harm No Foul. BS !!!



Hmm.  So you are saying that the CJCS should be held personally responsible every time a soldier dies in combat?


----------



## tomahawk6

PPCLI Guy said:
			
		

> Hmm.  So you are saying that the CJCS should be held personally responsible every time a soldier dies in combat?



You know better than that. The decision makers in this case should be held to account. That doesnt mean that Hillary should be fired. But she does deserve the blame as does the President.
The lower level folks are already falling on their swords. At least we could get a mea culpa from them.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> You know better than that. The decision makers in this case should be held to account. That doesnt mean that Hillary should be fired. But she does deserve the blame as does the President.
> The lower level folks are already falling on their swords. At least we could get a mea culpa from them.



From a Clinton?  :rofl:


----------



## tomahawk6

Thats why I like the European/Japanese method of dealing with a scandal. The proper official takes the blame and resigns,not some mid level guys. But thats not the American way unfortunately.


----------



## Brad Sallows

The top people in the administration aren't necessarily directly responsible for undertakings before and during the attack.  The question is how much responsibility they bear for communications and reactions after the incident.  Should high administration officials resign if reports are shaped to secure electoral prospects?  Not necessarily (otherwise we'd be bereft of administrations), but we can dispense forever with notions of their high moral and ethical standing.


----------



## tomahawk6

Attacking a diplomatic facility is an act of war. The real fault IMO is the failure to come to the aid of our people. Assets were available but were not used.


----------



## a_majoor

The Administration should be shamed:


----------



## tomahawk6

That should be a campaign poster if she runs for President.


----------



## vonGarvin

;D


----------



## OldSolduer

It seems that in high political office  the Leadership Principle "Seek and accept responsibility"  does not apply. 

My  :2c:


----------



## a_majoor

Just sad. No wonder the media worked so hard to push this story under the bus before the election...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/panetta-obama-absent-night-benghazi_700405.html?nopager=1



> *Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi*
> Daniel Halper
> February 7, 2013 12:05 PM
> 
> Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified this morning on Capitol Hill that President Barack Obama was absent the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012:
> 
> Panetta said, though he did meet with Obama at a 5 o'clock prescheduled gathering, the president left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under siege, "up to us."
> 
> In fact, Panetta says that the night of 9/11, he did not communicate with a single person at the White House. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
> 
> Obama did not call or communicate in anyway with the defense secretary that night. There were no calls about what was going on in Benghazi. He never called to check-in.
> 
> The 5 o'clock meeting was a pre-scheduled 30-minute session, where, according to Panetta's recollection, they spent about 20 minutes talking a lot about the American embassy that was surrounded in Egypt and the situation that was just unfolding in Benghazi.
> 
> As Bill Kristol wrote in the month after the attack, "Panetta's position is untenable: The Defense Department doesn't get to unilaterally decide whether it's too risky or not to try to rescue CIA operators, or to violate another country's air space. In any case, it’s inconceivable Panetta didn't raise the question of what to do when he met with the national security adviser and the president at 5 p.m. on the evening of September 11 for an hour. And it's beyond inconceivable he didn't then stay in touch with the White House after he returned to the Pentagon."
> 
> Perhaps it was "inconceivable," but it is according to Panetta exactly what happened.
> 
> But Obama did have time to make a political call to the Israeli prime minister. "[W]e do know one thing the president found time to do that evening: He placed a call to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to defuse a controversy about President Obama's refusal to meet with Netanyahu two weeks later at the U.N. General Assembly, and, according to the White House announcement that evening, spent an hour on the phone with him," Kristol wrote.
> 
> "While Americans were under assault in Benghazi, the president found time for a non-urgent, politically useful, hour-long call to Prime Minister Netanyahu. And his senior national security staff had to find time to arrange the call, brief the president for the call, monitor it, and provide an immediate read-out to the media. I suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu, of all people, would have understood the need to postpone or shorten the phone call if he were told that Americans were under attack as the president chatted. But for President Obama, a politically useful telephone call—and the ability to have his aides rush out and tell the media about that phone call—came first."


----------



## a_majoor

More late breakig speculation. IF even a fraction of this is true then we may hve to look t the Arab Spring in a totally different context; not the work of radicals or spontanious demonstrations against dictators, but a more organized campaign (most likely by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been ion the region running parallel governments and plotting for decades). The "honey trap" idea is unproven, but using the "Arab spring" as a cover for what happened or as the cover for a larger series of events does have a certain logic:

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2013/04/14/was-benghazi-a-honey-pot-trap/?singlepage=true



> *Was Benghazi a Honey Pot Trap?*
> 
> April 14th, 2013 - 9:14 am
> 
> I knew there was something missing from the Benghazi story, something fundamental that had thus far escaped my attention. Not that the questions being asked by the hundreds of Special Forces guys aren’t important. I, too, want to know why–if this is accurate–we didn’t have military forces ready to move in. I, too, want to know why the top political figures–the president and the secretaries of state and defense (Obama, Hillary and Panetta)–were so clearly disinclined to take action. That whole phony charade about the “video” bespeaks an effort to get the world to focus on the wrong thing. The blatant, almost compulsive lack of a sense of urgency upsets me no end. OK. But I was still trying to understand what had happened, and I wasn’t making great progress. I needed help. And so, as I often do in such circumstances, I dragged out the ouija board, checked the wiring and the batteries, and switched it on. Amazingly, it worked immediately, and I was once again talking to the lively spirit of James Jesus Angleton, who once upon a time headed up CIA counterintelligence.
> 
> ML: “Wow, it worked first time.”
> 
> JJA: “Lucky me. I was napping.” (Sound of Zippo lighter clicking shut).
> 
> ML: “I’m sorry! What time is it there?”
> 
> JJA: “We don’t have time here, it’s eternal, you know.”
> 
> I tried to think of something witty to say, but it didn’t work.
> 
> JJA: “That whole night and day thing, it doesn’t apply. Darkness and light were separated on earth, after all…”
> 
> ML: “Right. Part of creation.”
> 
> JJA: “Exactly. So what’s on your mind?”
> 
> ML: “Benghazi. It doesn’t parse, somehow.”
> 
> JJA: “What’s the problem? Just begin at the beginning, you’ll get it…”
> 
> ML: “What’s the beginning? When the attack starts? When Ambassador Stevens asks for better security? With one of the intelligence reports or warnings? When?”
> 
> JJA: “That’s all scene-setting. It begins with Stevens going to Benghazi.”
> 
> ML: “Okay, he goes to Benghazi, where he’d been many times before.”
> 
> JJA: “Stop!”
> 
> ML: “Huh?”
> 
> JJA: .”..many times before. Why?”
> 
> ML: “Well there’s a widely repeated theory that he was organizing clandestine arms shipments from Libya to the Syrian opposition forces, but I don’t believe it.”
> 
> JJA: “No, no, go back further. Before they made him ambassador. The whole Libya thing, the overthrow of Qaddafi. The Libyan opposition was based in Benghazi, right? We intervened to save the people in Benghazi, right?”
> 
> ML: “Yeah, so what?”
> 
> JJA: “Stevens was a key intermediary during that period, wasn’t he? He sneaked into Benghazi on a Greek cargo ship and established contact with the anti-Qaddafi forces.”
> 
> ML: “He was a hero to the post-Qadaffi rulers. They loved him in Benghazi.”
> 
> JJA: “Well said!”
> 
> ML: “What did I say?”
> 
> JJA: “You said they loved him.”
> 
> ML: “Did I say the magic word? Is Groucho going to give me a hundred dollars?”
> 
> JJA: “I didn’t realize you were that old” (coughs, chuckles, coughs again). “Yes, the magic word is ‘love’ and according to my sources, it’s the key to the operation.”
> 
> ML: “Okay, I want to hear more about that, obviously, but first tell me about your sources.”
> 
> JJA: “We’ve had quite a number of Special Forces personnel arrive here recently, and they have a theory that sounds plausible to me.”
> 
> ML: “Which is?”
> 
> JJA: “That Stevens was lured to Benghazi by his lover, or one of his lovers, with whom he’d first been involved back in 2011.”
> 
> ML: “Hah! I’ve always wondered about his apparent rush to get to Benghazi. I think he flew to Tripoli from Europe, and then went straight through to Benghazi, didn’t he? I had thought that showed he was working on some urgent project.”
> 
> JJA: “I agree with you about his mission. He, and that whole team at what is often called a CIA facility, were trying to get control of weapons that had been under Qaddafi’s control, and were moving all over the region. They were trying to stop this movement of very dangerous weapons, including MANPADS. We didn’t want terrorists with accurate anti-aircraft missiles, or, for that matter, guns and ammunition. And by the way, that ‘facility’ wasn’t just for the Agency, it included people from Special Forces, NSA, the whole crowd…”
> 
> ML: “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t involved in smuggling weapons to the anti-Assad crowd in Syria.”
> 
> JJA: “Okay, we agree. But go back to the beginning. If a lover convinced Stevens to rush to Benghazi, then it might have been a set-up, what we used to call a honey pot trap.”
> 
> ML: “Wow. If the lover was in cahoots with the killers…”
> 
> JJA: “There you go. If so, they knew when he was coming, and could organize the assault with confidence.”
> 
> ML: “Wow again. I’ve never seen anything like that in print.”
> 
> JJA: “Of course not. The journalists were busily echoing that nonsense about some video, remember?”
> 
> ML: “Do I ever. Hillary even told Stevens’ parents that the USG would make sure the poor slob who made the video would be punished.”
> 
> JJA: “Last time I looked, he was still in prison in California.”
> 
> ML: “Wait a minute. The video story had a certain plausibility, there were riots in other places, like Cairo, right? So the tumult in Benghazi ‘fit’ in that context.”
> 
> JJA: “Indeed. If you organize an assassination you want to deceive your enemies, you don’t want them looking too carefully at your question–why did Stevens go to Benghazi?–and so you provide them with a very different kind of explanation, namely that it was just one of several ‘spontaneous protests’ by the Arab Street.”
> 
> All of a sudden there was a very loud crackling sound coming from the ouija board.
> 
> ML: “Wait another minute.” More static. Very loud. A wisp of smoke from the ouija board. “You’re saying that this thing was bigger than just a hostile operation in Benghazi, you’re saying…”
> 
> JJA: “I’m just giving you things to think about. It’s possible to look at this as if it were a very slick, highly professional operation, beginning to end.”
> 
> I was worried about the connection now..
> 
> “The honey pot trap, the big-time deception…(sounded like lightning or something) professional intelligence service might be capable…”
> 
> And he was gone; the damn ouija board was snafu. So it’s gonna be a while til I get it up and running again.


----------



## tomahawk6

The administration today dumped 100 pages of Benghazi emails today.For your light reading enjoyment. 

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/05/politics/white-house-benghazi-emails/index.html


----------



## a_majoor

Despite the best efforts of the Administration, more details continue to leak out. Since the legacy media fails to press the issue, this information could continue to dribble out, which may have the opposite effect the memory hole treatment is supposed to elicit; the slow "drip" of information will continue to keep Americans and other interested people aware over a prolonged period of time:

http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01/exclusive-dozens-of-cia-operatives-on-the-ground-during-benghazi-attack/



> *Exclusive: Dozens of CIA operatives on the ground during Benghazi attack*
> CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.
> 
> Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya.
> 
> Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.
> 
> CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.
> 
> Read: Analysis: CIA role in Benghazi underreported
> 
> Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.
> 
> The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.
> 
> It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.
> 
> In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, "You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well."
> 
> Another says, "You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation."
> 
> "Agency employees typically are polygraphed every three to four years. Never more than that," said former CIA operative and CNN analyst Robert Baer.
> 
> In other words, the rate of the kind of polygraphs alleged by sources is rare.
> 
> "If somebody is being polygraphed every month, or every two months it's called an issue polygraph, and that means that the polygraph division suspects something, or they're looking for something, or they're on a fishing expedition. But it's absolutely not routine at all to be polygraphed monthly, or bi-monthly," said Baer.
> 
> CIA spokesman Dean Boyd asserted in a statement that the agency has been open with Congress.
> 
> "The CIA has worked closely with its oversight committees to provide them with an extraordinary amount of information related to the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi," the statement said.
> 
> "CIA employees are always free to speak to Congress if they want," the statement continued. "The CIA enabled all officers involved in Benghazi the opportunity to meet with Congress. We are not aware of any CIA employee who has experienced retaliation, including any non-routine security procedures, or who has been prevented from sharing a concern with Congress about the Benghazi incident."
> 
> Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the attack.
> 
> A source now tells CNN that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously.
> 
> While it is still not known how many of them were CIA, a source tells CNN that 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex, believed to be run by the agency.
> 
> The lack of information and pressure to silence CIA operatives is disturbing to U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, whose district includes CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
> 
> "I think it is a form of a cover-up, and I think it's an attempt to push it under the rug, and I think the American people are feeling the same way," said the Republican.
> 
> "We should have the people who were on the scene come in, testify under oath, do it publicly, and lay it out. And there really isn't any national security issue involved with regards to that," he said.
> 
> Wolf has repeatedly gone to the House floor, asking for a select committee to be set-up, a Watergate-style probe involving several intelligence committee investigators assigned to get to the bottom of the failures that took place in Benghazi, and find out just what the State Department and CIA were doing there.
> 
> More than 150 fellow Republican members of Congress have signed his request, and just this week eight Republicans sent a letter to the new head of the FBI, James  Comey, asking that he brief Congress within 30 days.
> 
> Read: White House releases 100 pages of Benghazi e-mails
> 
> In the aftermath of the attack, Wolf said he was contacted by people closely tied with CIA operatives and contractors who wanted to talk.
> 
> Then suddenly, there was silence.
> 
> "Initially they were not afraid to come forward. They wanted the opportunity, and they wanted to be subpoenaed, because if you're subpoenaed, it sort of protects you, you're forced to come before Congress. Now that's all changed," said Wolf.
> 
> Lawmakers also want to about know the weapons in Libya, and what happened to them.
> 
> Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.
> 
> It is clear that two U.S. agencies were operating in Benghazi, one was the State Department, and the other was the CIA.
> 
> The State Department told CNN in an e-mail that it was only helping the new Libyan government destroy weapons deemed "damaged, aged or too unsafe retain," and that it was not involved in any transfer of weapons to other countries.
> 
> But the State Department also clearly told CNN, they "can't speak for any other agencies."
> 
> The CIA would not comment on whether it was involved in the transfer of any weapons.
> 
> Programming note: Was there a political cover up surrounding the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans? Watch a CNN special investigation — The Truth About Benghazi, Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET.


----------



## Rifleman62

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/23/team-involved-in-tracking-benghazi-suspects-pulling-out-sources-say/
*
Team involved in tracking Benghazi suspects pulling out, sources say*

By Adam Housley - Published August 23, 2013 - FoxNews.com


Two weeks after the Obama administration announced charges against suspects in the Benghazi attack, a large portion of the U.S. team that hunted the suspects and trained Libyans to help capture or kill them is leaving Libya permanently. 

Special operators in the region tell Fox News that while Benghazi targets have been identified for months, officials in Washington could "never pull the trigger." In fact, one source insists that much of the information on Benghazi suspects had been passed along to the White House after being vetted by the Department of Defense and the State Department -- and at least one recommendation for direct action on a Benghazi suspect was given to President Obama as recently as Aug. 7.  

Meanwhile, months after video, photo and voice documentation on the Benghazi suspects was first presented to high-level military leaders, the State Department and ultimately the White House, prison breaks in the country have eroded security. U.S. special forces have now been relegated to a "villa," a stopover for the operators before they're shipped out of the country entirely. 

"We put American special operations in harm's way to develop a picture of these suspects and to seek justice and instead of acting, we stalled. We just let it slip and pass us by and now it's going to be much more difficult," one source said, citing 1,200 prisoners escaping two weeks ago. "It's already blowing up. Daily assassinations, bi-weekly prison escapes, we waited way too long." 

The latest development raises questions about when the attackers will be brought to justice in the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans last September. 

The special operators are starting to get frustrated at the lack of action, and Fox News has been told by multiple sources that one special forces leader "literally yelled" at former Libyan Chief of Mission William Roebuck "and told him, 'so you're willing to let these guys get away with murder?'" 

The outburst was "met with crickets," the sources said. 

Asked about what actions have been taken on the suspects, the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment. However, a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation in Libya suggested there is always intelligence to be gained by simply watching and listening to the suspects. 

In addition, Pentagon officials disputed what the operators in question are claiming, saying that group was not specifically tasked with finding the Libyan suspects responsible for the Benghazi attack. These officials said other forces out of Fort Bragg are tasked with that mission, and they are not leaving. Pentagon officials also say the trainers, which were authorized by Congress under part of the defense budget to facilitate training of Libyans for counterterrorism, were not there to track the Benghazi suspects. They insist congressional funding is very clear in its mission: for training locals in counterterrorism. 

However, special operators in the region counter the claims and suggest the Pentagon and State Department are playing with words, saying those being pulled are in fact tasked with both training the Libyans and identifying Benghazi attack suspects. "The training is partly a cover and some of these guys ... provided the information on suspects directly to U.S. military commanders and the U.S. State Department last November and again in January. They are there and trained to find, fix and finish," one said. 

Fox News reported earlier this year that American forces had identified suspects by the end of November 2012, and reported on their whereabouts to Roebuck last January, yet no action was taken. They returned again in January to identify and locate these same suspects after being requested to do so by military leaders. In the months since, the operators in the region have been sitting in de facto standby, despite the Justice Department charges being filed. 

To make matters worse, the U.S. trainers have been sitting in their Libyan "villa" now for a number of days after a Libyan military leader kicked the Americans out of the camp where they had been standing-up a Libyan special forces team for nearly a year, backed by U.S. taxpayer dollars. The maneuver by the Libyan chief of defense has "left our guys high and dry," and this same chief has locked down Tripoli as well, Fox News is told. The sources say U.S. leaders have now let the Libyan government occupy the special forces camp -- and in turn undermine the effort to train a legitimate force capable of countering Al Qaeda, which was the initial assignment before the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi. 

The men tell Fox News their mission was to capture or kill the suspects in question, and they briefed the acting U.S. ambassador in Libya and the senior CIA representative in the country. The men were told both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an under secretary were briefed about their information and their ability to capture or kill those responsible. Still, they did not get approval from the Department of Defense or the White House. 

Some of the individuals report seeing former AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham tell former Libya Chief of Mission Laurence Pope that he could easily submit a plan to kill or capture the suspects, but "politics and fallout kept us from acting. To do an operation we have to have (Chief of Mission) and state approval. We didn't get it. ... They sat on it." 

Multiple sources in Libya tell Fox News that the politics in the lack of response to the Benghazi attacks involves the U.S. State Department position in Libya. "No career diplomat wants to be responsible for giving the green light or supporting an operation that if goes wrong, another Somalia, Blackhawk Down, turns into a political fragmentation grenade that puts any group, party, or element in the public scrutiny spotlight ... especially after the train wreck on September 11th." 

Sources told Fox News, though, that the Obama administration will be under pressure to produce some result from its investigation with the one-year anniversary of the attack looming. 

Meanwhile, some of the same suspects in the Benghazi attack are continuing to help the Muslim Brotherhood in eastern Libya and are directly aligned with the militant group Ansar al-Sharia, which has already begun operations to undermine the fledgling Libyan government. 

The special operators tell Fox News that Libyan militia leader Ahmed Khattalah, among those charged by the DOJ, is a member of a prominent and influential group in the eastern part of Libya and directly tied to Ansar al-Sharia, the group believed to be behind the attack on Benghazi . 

"It won't be long, they're already at war. We are just behind," said one operator after being asked about the intent of the Muslim Brotherhood to overtake the current Libyan government in Tripoli. "So the terrorism will continue to grow and the terrorists responsible for killing an ambassador are right now growing along with it."


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## a_majoor

More revalations on Administration obstruction of investigative reporting. It is a sad comment that only one news outlet seems to have attempted any real investigative journalism on this story (for that matter, how many outlets investigates other stories like "Fast and Furious", the IRS harrassment of TEA Party movement groups and so on?):

http://youngcons.com/wow-greta-drops-a-bomb-about-white-house-trying-very-hard-to-get-fox-not-to-report-on-benghazi/



> *Wow: Greta drops a bomb about White House trying “very hard” to get Fox not to report on Benghazi*
> Posted by: Joshua Riddle  January 17, 2014 62 Comments
> 
> In all seriousness, if you’re a reporter for any other outlet besides Fox, and you are seeing this, you should either feel obligated to prove her wrong by pointing to all your own investigative work on this story, or just hang your head in shame because you’re just a disgrace to your profession.
> 
> On Thursday, Greta Van Susteren wrote at her blog, “After Benghazi on 9/11/2012, the Obama administration tried very hard to discourage Fox News Channel from reporting on it. The effort was obstruction – pure and simple.”
> 
> “They tried to prevent the truth from coming out and the Administration tried just about everything to discourage Fox from investigating and reporting,” she continued. “All the American people wanted, and all I ever wanted, was just the facts – why did 4 Americans die? What happened?”
> “The Obama Administration put out that phony video story — but who could not have been suspicious of the Administration after hearing that?” Van Susteren asked. “Frankly, if they had been candid on day 1, the Benghazi story would have been over in short order. It would not be to the point we are now: with a Senate Bi Partisan Intelligence Committee report with the very painful conclusion that the murders at Benghazi could have been prevented.”
> 
> Van Susteren gave examples of how the Administration tried to prevent Fox from telling Americans the truth:
> 
> In the early days after Benghazi, the State Department omitted only Fox News Channel from its conference call to all the media when it claimed to be answering questions about Benghazi for the media. Our friends in other media outlets were scandalized that Fox was not included and told us all about it. They were suspicious of State Department forgetting us/Fox and courageous to tip us off. The State Department claimed it was accident and not intentional.
> 
> And then shortly thereafter, there was the CIA briefing about Benghazi at the CIA for all the networks – except one: Fox News Channel. The CIA would not let Fox News Channel attend. [...]
> 
> And there were many times in the months and years since September 2012 when Obama Administration officials would make comments to suggest that Fox was just doing the Benghazi reporting for political reasons. The Administration was doing what it could to deter and demean the Fox News Channel investigation. They did not want to give us the facts — so their strategy was to attempt to belittle and demean our reporting.
> After taking a swipe at the New York Times for issuing an analysis that has since been completely debunked by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, Van Susteren wrote of attempts by a friend of hers within the Adminstration to get her to silence Fox’s Jennifer Griffin:
> [M]y friend told me that my colleague Jennifer Griffin, who was aggressively reporting on Benghazi, was wrong and that, as a favor to me, my friend in the Administration was telling me so that I could tell Jennifer so that she did not ruin her career. My friend was telling me to tell Jennifer to stop her reporting. Ruin her career?
> 
> In 20 plus years, I have never received a call to try and shut down a colleague – not that I even could – this was a first.
> Knowing Griffin to be one of the best investigative reporters in the business, Van Susteren demanded her friend offer proof that her colleague was wrong. None was forthcoming:
> 
> I got no proof. Zero. I smelled a rat. Favor to me? Hardly. My friend was trying to use me. I feel bad that a friend did that to me, tried to use me for a dirty reason. I knew then — and it is now confirmed by BIPARTISAN Senate Intelligence Committee — Jennifer was getting her facts right. I think it is really low for the Administration to stoop this low.
> 
> To be sure, the Administration should be ashamed of how it’s behaved since September 11, 2012. But it wouldn’t have been able to behave this way if other news organizations covered this story as aggressively as Fox News did.
> 
> Sadly, Obama and Company knew from the start that their accomplices in the media would parrot anything they said, and go along with their contention that this was a “phony scandal” ginned up by the President’s enemies which of course include Fox News.
> 
> Since a junior senator from Illinois first threw his hat into the presidential ring in February 2007, we’ve watched America’s media totally abdicate journalism for his benefit.
> 
> Benghazi is just another example.
> 
> With three more years left of this presidency, it likely won’t be the last.


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## George Wallace

Judge Jeanine Pirro calls out Hillary Clinton over Benghazi.

http://yournation.org/judge-jeanine-embarassess-hillary-clinton-over-benghazi/




> Fox News host Judge Jeanine blasted Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi incident. She shredded Hillary to pieces, calling her “incompetent” and a “selfish failure”. Jeanine made it clear that she believes Hillary cares more about her own political career than the USA.
> 
> The verbal assault started when Jeanine told America all about the documents released by the Senate that catch Hillary in bald faced lies. The documents indicate that the Benghazi attack could have been stopped and four people would still be alive today.
> 
> Jeanine actually labeled Hillary as a criminal as she allegedly made up a story about a negative video toward Muslims before Obama’s second election in order to take the spotlight off his poor track record. Jeanine caps it off by saying Hillary should be hanged for treason!
> 
> Jeanine accurately points out how Hillary shifted the focus to a separate incident in Tunisia when she was questioned during a hearing. Almost nobody knows anything about this Tunisia incident. That’s exactly why Hillary brought it up. Hillary had been side stepping the blame for four months until this hearing. Her most damning line from the questioning is “what difference does it make?”. That’s a terrible look for Hillary.




More on LINK


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## Rifleman62

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/011414-686352-defense-officials-briefed-obama-on-terrorist-attack.htm?ven=rss

Excerpts:  





> ........transcripts of congressional testimony by military leaders confirm that President Obama knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack before he went to bed to rest for a Las Vegas fundraising trip.
> 
> Fox News reporter James Rosen examined 450 pages of declassified testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in closed-door hearings held last year by Congress. In those hearings, Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time headed Africom, the Defense Department combat command with jurisdiction over Libya, testified that he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its start, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, from the Africom Command Center.
> 
> Ham said he immediately contacted Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to say he was coming down the hall at the Pentagon to meet with him.
> 
> "I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta," Ham testified, adding "they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House."
> 
> Ham responded that "there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack" and that was the "nature of the conversation" Ham had with Panetta and Dempsey moments before their 30-minute meeting with President Obama.
> 
> This confirms Panetta's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was he who told the president "there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi."



This all happened within 30 minutes of the commencement of the attack: Ham, who was in Washington, walking down the hall, Panetta and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs meeting with the President.

Apparently President Obama did not attend this meeting for very long, but nobody knows where he went etc.



During the repat ceremony (televised) at Dover AFB, Hillary blamed the video as the cause. Inappropriate don't you think?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203298/Victims-Benghazi-massacre-return-home-Obama-Clinton-pay-tribute.html

She then spoke personally, *face to face*, to the immediate relatives of the four stating the US will get those responsible.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203298/Victims-Benghazi-massacre-return-home-Obama-Clinton-pay-tribute.html



> 'Their sacrifice will never be forgotten. We will bring to justice those who took them from us,' said  President Barack Obama during his speech in front of the dead men's family. 'Chris Stevens was everything America could want in an ambassador,' he added.



Note Ambassador Chris Stevens was one of Obama's guys, and Obama hung him out to dry.


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## Rifleman62

Ordered three times to wait, and told to "Stand Down". Delay of 30 minutes before they disobeyed orders and responded.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/13-hours-the-inside-account/9781455582273-item.html?ref=shop%3Abooks%3Anew-and-hot-books%3Abooks-main-new-and-hot%3A60%3A

*13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi* by Zuckoff Mitchell

Grand Central Publishing | September 9, 2014 | Hardcover |

The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi.
13 HOURS presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism, to avert tragedy on a much larger scale. This is their personal account, never before told, of what happened during the thirteen hours of that now-infamous attack.

13 HOURS sets the record straight on what happened during a night that has been shrouded in mystery and controversy. Written by New York Times best selling author Mitchell Zuckoff, this riveting book takes readers into the action-packed story of heroes who laid their lives on the line for one another, for their countrymen, and for their country.

13 HOURS is a stunning, eye-opening, and intense book--but most importantly, it is the truth. The story of what happened to these men--and what they accomplished--is unforgettable.


http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/09/03/don%E2%80%99t-miss-%E2%80%98fox-news-reporting-13-hours-benghazi%E2%80%99-friday-10p-et
*
Don’t Miss: ‘Fox News Reporting: 13 Hours at Benghazi’ Friday at 10p ET*

This weekend, Fox News Reporting will bring you a special on the untold story of the Benghazi terror attack.

It has been nearly two years since the fatal attack. Now, hear for the first time from the men who fought that battle.

“Fox News Reporting: 13 Hours at Benghazi” is based off a new book, to be released next week, called “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi” by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team.

The special premieres Friday, Sept. 5 at 10p ET. It re-airs Saturday, Sept. 6 at 1a, 5p and 9p ET, and again on Sunday, Sept. 7 at 12a, 8p and 11p ET.

Watch the clip above at link.


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## Rifleman62

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/09/12/contractors-say-clinton-state-department-silenced-them-on-benghazi-security-lapses.html

*Contractors say Clinton State Department silenced them on Benghazi security lapses* - Catherine Herridge - September 12, 2017 - Fox News


EXCLUSIVE: Security at the State Department's Benghazi compound was so dire that another contractor was brought in to clean up the mess just two weeks before the 2012 terror attack – and was later pressured to keep quiet by a government bureaucrat under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to two men from the American security company.   

Brad Owens and Jerry Torres, of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, say they faced pressure to stay silent and get on the same page with the State Department with regard to the security lapses that led to the deaths of four Americans.

They spoke exclusively with Fox News for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” revealing new information that undermines the State Department's account of the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, where Islamic militants launched a 13-hour assault from Sept. 11-12 that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALS Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty.

Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions provides security for U.S. embassy and consulate personnel around the world in some of the most dangerous locations spanning Africa, the Middle East and South America, according to the firm.  

Jerry Torres remains haunted by the fact specific bureaucrats and policies remain in the State Department after the Benghazi attack despite the change in administrations. "A U.S. ambassador is dead and nobody is held accountable for it. And three guys … all died trying to defend him," said Torres, the company’s CEO and a former Green Beret.

Asked if there was a specific effort by a senior State Department contracting officer to silence them, Torres said, "Absolutely, absolutely."

Owens, a former Army intelligence officer, echoed his colleague, saying those “who made the poor choices that actually, I would say, were more responsible for the Benghazi attacks than anyone else, they're still in the same positions, making security choices for our embassies overseas now." 

In 2012, Owens was the American company’s point man in Libya with extensive experience in the region. After the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in the fall of 2011, Owens stressed to Fox News it was well-known that Islamic radicals including Al Qaeda-tied militias were pouring into the region and security “had deteriorated considerably.” 

Based on documents reviewed by Fox News, Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions bid on the Benghazi compound security contract in the spring of 2012. But the State Department awarded the deal to a U.K.-based operation called The Blue Mountain Group. 

Owens, who had personally visited the Benghazi compound to assess security, was shocked. "Blue Mountain U.K. is a teeny, tiny, little security company registered in Wales that had never had a diplomatic security contract, had never done any high threat contracts anywhere else in the world that we've been able to find, much less in high threat areas for the U.S. government. They had a few guys on the ground," he said.

According to Torres, the Blue Mountain Group came in 4 percent lower than their bid – and they challenged the decision, claiming the American company should have been preferred over the foreign one.

Torres said State Department contracting officer Jan Visintainer responded that the State Department had the “latitude to apply” that preference or not.

And there was more: The Blue Mountain Group hired guards through another company who were not armed.  

Problems soon arose. One month before the attack -- in August 2012, with The Blue Mountain Group still in charge of compound security -- Ambassador Stevens and his team alerted the State Department via diplomatic cable that radical Islamic groups were everywhere and that the temporary mission compound could not withstand a "coordinated attack." The classified cable was first reported by Fox News.

By Aug. 31, 2012, the situation had deteriorated to the point that Owens and Torres said the State Department asked them to intervene – as Owens put it, an "admission of the mistake of choosing the wrong company." 

"They came back to us and said, ‘Can you guys come in and take over security?’ Owens said. “So we were ready.”

But Torres emphasized that time was against them, saying it would have taken two-to-three weeks to get set up.

Twelve days later, the ambassador was killed. Torres learned of the attacks by watching television. He called the circumstances leading up to the tragedy "bad decision-making from top to bottom."

“There was nothing we could've done about it. If we'd had one month warning … who knows what might've happened,” Owens said.

In the chaotic days following that attack, the Obama White House blamed the attacks on an anti-Islam video and demonstration which was not accurate. As a former Green Beret, Torres was stunned: "Coming from a military background, I would expect the administration to tell the truth. So I bought into it for a minute. But I didn't believe it in the back of my mind.” He said they later figured out the video was not the culprit. The attack was a coordinated terrorist assault which included a precision mortar strike on the CIA post in Benghazi.

But as the Obama administration and Clinton’s team struggled to answer questions about the attacks, Visintainer apparently took it one step further -- summoning Jerry Torres from overseas to attend a meeting at her government office in Rosslyn, Va., in early 2013. 

Torres took Fox News back to the Virginia office building where he recalled that day's events.

"[Visintainer] said that I and people from Torres should not speak to the media, should not speak to any officials with respect to the Benghazi program,” he said.

Torres said he was afraid for his company – and hasn’t spoken publicly until now.

"We had about 8,000 employees at the time. You know, we just didn't need that level of damage because these guys, their livelihood relies on the company,” he said. “I trust that our U.S. government is going to follow chain of command, follow procedures, follow protocols and do the right thing."

Another part of that conversation stuck out to Torres. He said Visintainer told him “in her opinion, that guards should not be armed at U.S. embassies. She just made that blanket statement. … And she said that they weren't required in Benghazi. So I was kind of confused about that. And she said that she would like my support in saying that if that came up. And I looked at her. I just didn't respond."

The State Department declined Fox News’ request to make Visintainer available for an interview, or have her answer written email questions. 

The Blue Mountain Group did not immediately respond to questions from Fox News. 

Torres and Owens said repercussions against their company continue to this day – and that of the 20 security force contracts they’ve bid on since that conversation, they’ve lost 18.

Torres and Owens are concerned another attack like the one in Benghazi could happen again because the same State Department employees responsible for the Benghazi contract remain in place and the contracting rules are outdated.

"In 1990, Congress passed a law that required contracts of this nature to go to the lowest bidder that's technically acceptable," Owens explained. "Now, what that has created is a race to the bottom, is what we call it. So basically, every company tries to cut every corner they can for these contracts."

The men say they are hopeful that changes will come with the Trump administration’s promise to "drain the swamp."

"Let's just say there's been a change at management at Department of State," Owens said. "I feel now that, given that the politics has been taken out of the Benghazi situation, now that there's no longer a candidate or anything related to it, a change of administrations, that actually, we have an opportunity here to fix the problems that made it happen."

On the fifth anniversary, Torres said he thinks about the four families who lost a father, a brother or a son in the 2012 attack, and feels sorry "for not bringing this up earlier. For not actually being there, on the ground and taking care of these guys." 


_Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

Pamela K. Browne is Senior Executive Producer at the FOX News Channel (FNC) and is Director of Long-Form Series and Specials. Her journalism has been recognized with several awards. Browne first joined FOX in 1997 to launch the news magazine “Fox Files” and later, “War Stories.”

Cyd Upson is a Senior Producer at FOX News._


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## Rifleman62

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/09/13/clinton-state-department-silenced-them-on-benghazi-security-lapses-contractors-say.html

The video of the story has been posted at link.


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