Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Surprize, Surprize!!!! China Has Plans of the Latest US Weapons Systems [Trevor Loudon]

Guest post by Trevor Loudon

This is no joke folks. This puts millions of lives at risk. Maybe even US national survival. From Russia Today:

The designs for more than two dozen major weapons systems used by the United States military have fallen into the hands of the Chinese, US Department of Defense officials say.

Blueprints for the Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry, including the Black Hawk helicopter and the brand new Littoral Combat Ship used by the Navy, have all been compromised, the Defense Science Board claims in a new confidential report.

The Washington Post acknowledged late Monday that they have seen a copy of the report and confirmed that the Chinese now have the know-how to emulate some of the Pentagon’s most sophisticated programs.

“This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China,” a senior military official not authorized to speak on the record told Post reporters. “They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development.”

“It’s nuts,” the source said of the report.

Monday, May 27, 2013

England in Denial

Guest post by Douglas Murray


How many ignored warnings does it take? That is one question that should hang over Britain after the horror of the daytime murder of a British soldier on the streets of south London. On Wednesday afternoon, Drummer Lee Rigby was killed in Woolwich by two men wielding large knives and shouting "Allahu akbar"—God is great.

slamists have been saying for years they would do this. They have planned to do it. And now they have done it.

The attack itself is not surprising. What is surprising is that British society remains so utterly unwilling not just to deal with this threat, but even to admit its existence. Politicians have called the Woolwich killing "unforgivable" and "barbarous." But expressions of anger should not really be enough.

Attempts to attack military targets in Britain go back to before the millennium and even before, it is important to note, the war on terror. In 1998 Amer Mirza, a member of the now-banned extremist group al Muhajiroun, attempted to petrol-bomb British army barracks. In 2007, a cell of Muslim men was found guilty of plotting to kidnap and behead a British soldier in Birmingham. The plan had been to take the soldier to a lock-up garage and cut off his head "like a pig." They wanted to film this act on camera and send it around the world to cause maximum terror.

In 2009, al Muhajiroun protested at a homecoming parade in Luton for British troops returning from Afghanistan. Carrying banners saying "go to hell," "butchers" and "terrorists," the group was protected by British police officers from an increasingly irate crowd of locals. The resulting outrage toward the police gave rise to the deeply troubling English Defence League, a street protest movement that often turns violent.

Now comes the attack in Woolwich, which the perpetrators—as with the earlier cell—wished to be observed and even filmed. Reports suggest that they invited people to capture their actions on video. The perpetrators gave interviews, machetes in hand, to bystanders with cameras. This horrific scene is something that will stick in the memory.

But it should also have been foreseen. Instead we entered the stage of denial. For there is already, in the reaction to events, more than a hint of what I have previously termed "Toulouse syndrome." The term is named after the attacks last year carried out by a jihadist called Mohammed Merah, who killed three French soldiers in a rampage that concluded with the murders of four French Jews at a school in Toulouse.

In the early stages of the attacks, when little was known, there was significant speculation that the culprit was a far-right extremist. At that stage everybody knew what they were going to say. But once the culprit turned out to be an Islamist, the gaze nearly fell away completely. "Nothing to see here, please move on" was the order of the day.

"Toulouse syndrome" also touched Boston last month. After the bombing at the marathon, media and politicians waited, hoping—some even said as much—that the attackers would be tea-party types. Then everybody would know what to say. But when it turned out to be Islamists?

So it is with the Woolwich killing, which British officials have lined up to denounce. Yes it is sickening. Of course it is barbaric. But what of it? Even all these years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, our societies remain unfit for purpose in facing up to—and facing down—Islamic extremism.

Too many still seek refuge in ignorance and denial that was so memorably displayed by U.S. officials after the Fort Hood shooting in 2009. A man who was a member of the American armed forces, Maj. Nidal Hasan, gunned down his colleagues while shouting "Allahu akbar." On that occasion the American government, like the French government before it and the British government this week, decided to focus on everything about the attack other than what really mattered: the motive. Fort Hood was put down to a case of workplace violence.

There will be many angles to the events in London that must be addressed in the coming days, and we can hope many will receive the appropriate level of public attention. Among them will be one particularly unpleasant irony.

Most of the extremists who have repeatedly expressed their hatred of British soldiers are themselves supported by the British state. A prominent hate-preacher—Anjem Choudary, a leader of the disbanded al Muhajiroun—was even caught on video earlier this year extolling Britain's "jihad-seekers' allowance." As he explained to his followers, "The normal situation, really, is to take money from the kafir"—a slur for non-Muslims. "Allahu akbar. We take the money."

After the video showed up online, a BBC reporter asked Mr. Choudary to clarify how much he's taking—the press has long reported a sum of £25,000 ($37,770) per year. "It's irrelevant," Mr. Choudary replied.

This would not be the first time a country has paid both sides in a conflict. But if the reported figure is anywhere near accurate, it would surely be the first time in human history that a society has paid its opponents better than it pays its own. A British soldier can expect to start in the army on a salary of around £16,000 ($24,172).

The events in south London must cause a re-evaluation by British society of the insanity we have been permitting. The question is not how sad we feel. The only question should be what we do about it.


Mr. Murray is associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

MISTRESS OF DISASTER JAMIE GORELICK: Trust Me, I'm an Expert and Eric Holder's Attack on the AP is Perfectly Fine

Don't know about you, but whenever I need advice I always turn to a woman integral to not one -- but two -- separate trillion-dollar calamities for the United States of America. I refer, of course, to the Democrat hack Jamie "The Mistress of Disaster" Gorelick who helped blind the intelligence and law enforcement communities prior to the 9/11 attacks and then, despite no background in finance, got a cushy position with Fannie Mae where she helped trigger the subprime mortgage meltdown.

Yes, Gorelick's just the one I'd turn to for counsel. Certainly the unhinged editors at The New York Times believe she's credible, which is why she appeared in print there defending the lawless behavior of Eric Holder's DOJ in the matter of its shotgun attack on the Associated Press.

Following the disclosure that the Justice Department obtained telephone records of Associated Press journalists, the AP and other news organizations have criticized the action as unwarranted interference with the ability of journalists to report on government operations.

As former Justice Department officials, we are worried that the criticism of the decision to subpoena telephone toll records of AP journalists in an important leak investigation sends the wrong message to officials who are responsible for our national security.

...the prosecutors were right to investigate this leak vigorously... But after eight months of intensive effort, it appears that they still could not identify the leaker.

It was only then — after pursuing “all reasonable alternative investigative steps,” as required by the department’s regulations — that investigators proposed obtaining logs of calls made and received for about 20 phone lines that the leaker might have used in conversations with AP journalists. They limited the request to the two months when the leak most likely occurred, and did not propose more intrusive steps.

...They were right to pursue the investigation with “alternative investigative steps” for eight months first. Ultimately, they were right to take it to the next stage when they still needed more to make a case against the leaker. If the Justice Department had not done so, it would have defaulted on its obligation to protect the American people.

As is always the case with the ludicrous Gorelick, she gets her analysis completely backwards. Both Democrats and Republicans have slammed Holder for his "unconstitutional" behavior:

...the DOJ failed to notify the AP of the subpoena issued for phone records before obtaining those documents... “The Code of Federal Regulations states that a news media organization [is] supposed to be notified of the subpoena, and they apparently were not notified of the subpoena. Therefore, that’s a big question that needs to be resolved because it looks like an effort by the government to sidestep a requirement,” [House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob] Goodlatte said.

He pointed out that former Attorney General Michael Mukasey believes the subpoena of “20 reporters over a two-month period of time … was too broad.”

“There is no judge — it’s a subpoena, not a warrant — that’s why it’s a big deal,” Goodlatte said before promising that his committee is “going to pursue this for sure.” ... In an interesting twist, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has ripped the Obama administration for the DOJ probe... “I have trouble defending what the Justice Department did. I don’t know who did it or why it was done, but it’s inexcusable. It’s an issue I feel very strongly about.”

And notice that Dame Disaster carefully ignored the other ongoing DOJ scandals that have made a mockery of the department under Perjurer General Eric Holder: the James Rosen wiretap debacle, Fast and Furious, the New Black Panther insanity, and many more. And, worse still, the very notion that Holder is investigating himself for some of these crimes.

That Gorelick would defend the indefensible is utterly bizarre, but not unexpected coming from the Countess of Catastrophe.


Saturday, May 25, 2013

EUROPE BURNING: I blame the Militant Quakers

In Sweden, the city of Stockholm has been torched every night for nearly a week. The authorities have responded not by cracking down on the Militant Quakers behind the riots, but by ticketing vehicles destroyed by the barbarians.

STOCKHOLM (FRIA TIDER). Owners of cars destroyed in the riots fined for parking illegally while police adopt non-intervention policy.

Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police station in RÃ¥gsved, a suburb four kilometers south of Stockholm, was attacked and set on fire...

But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.

In Merry Olde Englande, authorities have responded to this:


With the arrests of Twitter users for anti-Islamic tweets and proposed censorship like this:


Hey, geniuses: blocking the Internet, China-style, ain't gonna solve your radical cleric problem.

Exhibit A: Anjem Choudary, the infamous U.K. Islamofascist hate-cleric, opined on one of the Woolwich savages: "What he said, not many Muslims disagree with."

Best of all, the British citizenry is subsidizing kooks like Choudary. The "cleric" receives £25,000 a year in public assistance benefits — £8,000 more than the take-home pay of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan -- and lives in a £320,000 house in Leytonstone, East London.

Earlier today, a French soldier walking on the streets of Paris was stabbed in the neck by "bearded man of North-African origin."

Europe is doomed.


Hat tip: American Digest.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

And the Band Played On [Jim Quinn]

Guest post by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform.


A confluence of events last week has me reminiscing about the days gone by and apprehensive about the future. I’ve spent a substantial portion of my adulthood rushing to baseball fields, hockey rinks, gymnasiums, and school auditoriums after a long day at work. I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed every moment. Watching eight year olds trying to throw a strike for two hours can become excruciatingly mind-numbing. But, the years of baseball, hockey, basketball, and band taught my boys life lessons about teamwork, sportsmanship, winning, losing, hard work, and having fun. There were championship teams, awful teams and of course trophies for finishing in 7th place. As my boys have gotten older and no longer participate in organized sports, the time commitment has dropped considerably. Last week was one of those few occasions where I had to rush home from work, wolf down a slice of pizza and head out to a school function. It was the annual 8th grade Spring concert.

My youngest son was one of a hundred kids in the 8th grade choir. I think it was mandatory, since none of my kids like to sing. As my wife and I found a seat in the back of the auditorium where we could make a quick escape at the conclusion of the show, neither of us were enthused with the prospect of spending the next ninety minutes listening to off-key music and lame songs. I’ve been jaded by sitting through these ordeals since pre-school. But a funny thing happened during my 30th band concert. I began to feel sentimental about the past and sorrowful about the future for these Millennials.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

DAMNING: The Complete Benghazi Timeline Spreadsheet [Updated]

The complete Benghazi timeline, now augmented with information from eyewitness testimony before Congress, various leaks from the warring Obama/Clinton camps, Stephen Hayes, Sharyl Attkisson, and the House Oversight Committee [PDF], leads me to four inescapable conclusions.


It is now clear to me that:

a) Hillary Clinton lied to Congress.
b) Barack Obama went to sleep knowing that a U.S. Ambassador and other Americans were under terrorist attack.
c) Barack Obama awoke refreshed the next day to begin fundraising.
d) The entire Executive Branch lied repeatedly to the American people to save Obama's chances for reelection.

Could someone drag John Boehner out of whatever bar he's in, wake him up, and get him to name a Select Committee on Benghazi?



Related: OBAMA AIDE: It's Now "Offensive" to Ask What President Did for Eight Hours as Four Americans Fought and Died in #Benghazi


Nancy Pelosi's Greatest Hits

Guest post by Allan Erickson of Clash Daily


Actual quotations or paraphrases from former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA):

• Unemployment benefits are the best form of economic development.

• The IRS admission it illegally targeted conservative groups is the fault of the Supreme Court.

• ObamaCare is responsible for bringing down the deficit.

• We have to pass the bill (ObamaCare) to see what’s in it.

• The Tea Party is astroturf.

• Every week we don’t pass a Stimulus package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs.

• I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.

• We don’t have a spending problem.

• The CIA misleads us all the time.

• I didn’t know about torture. Bush tricked us. OK, I did know but I didn’t think it mattered because it worked, but now I’m definitely against it, although I didn’t know it was going on.

• Enforcing immigration laws is un-American.

Editor's postscript: And to think, Pelosi is what passes for an intellectual in the modern Democrat Party.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Guns.

OBAMA AIDE: It's Now "Offensive" to Ask What President Did for Eight Hours as Four Americans Fought and Died in #Benghazi

The White House appears to be in full cover-up mode over the President's missing eight hours as the Benghazi attack unfolded.

The latest evidence: Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer appeared on Fox News Sunday and made the astounding claim that asking questions about the President's actions during the terror attack "is offensive."

WALLACE: ...the ambassador goes missing, the first ambassador in more than 30 years is killed. Four americans, including the Ambassador, are killed. Dozens of Americans are in jeopardy. The president at 4:00 in the afternoon says to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to deploy forces. No forces are deployed. Where is he while all this is going on?

PFEIFFER: This has been tested to by --

WALLACE: Well, no. no one knows where he is, who was involved, the --

PFEIFFER: The suggestion of your question that somehow the president --

WALLACE: I just want to know the answer.

PFEIFFER: The assertions from Republicans that the President didn't take action is offensive. There's no evidence to support it.

WALLACE: I'm simply asking a question. Where was he? What did he do? How did he respond in who told him you can't deploy forces and what was he doing as president?

PFEIFFER: The president was basically uninterested in getting involved, because acknowledging any terror attack with a military response could have jeopardized his reelection. Remember, he'd just spent the entire convention claiming Al Qaeda is dead and GM is alive! He went to sleep, Chris, so he could get some rest for his trip to the Vegas fundraiser.

I made up that last snippet from Pfeiffer. Suffice it to say that's precisely what happened, though.

It wasn't offensive to question the President's actions when G. W. Bush served. Remember the incredible questions the media raised after the 9/11 attacks regarding Bush's seven minutes reading The Pet Goat to an elementary school class? How the media portrayed Bush as cowardly and clueless for taking seven whole minutes to respond?

Never mind that the Secret Service needed that infinitesimally small delay to prepare Air Force One to scramble as well as to scout evacuation routes to the airport.

When questioning the president's actions during a terror attack is portrayed by the White House as "offensive", you can be sure his actions (or, rather, his inaction) were egregious. And the act of suppressing questions from the press is itself offensive and indicative of a fascist mindset.


Saturday, May 18, 2013

THE TRAP: What did Hillary and Obama discuss at 10pm on the night of the Benghazi attacks?

Thanks to the least transparent administration in history, Americans still don't know what the President did during the night of the terror attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other heroes.

What did he order? What did he do? Did he take any steps to save the diplomats who were systematically slaughtered over the course of a 6-hour terrorist attack?

One little-mentioned aspect of the evening is a 10pm phone call to Hillary Clinton from Barack Obama.

...Benghazi is not a scandal because of Ambassador Susan Rice, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, and “talking points.” The scandal is about Rice and Nuland’s principals, and about what the talking points were intended to accomplish. Benghazi is about derelictions of duty by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton before and during the massacre of our ambassador and three other American officials, as well as Obama and Clinton’s fraud on the public afterward.

...Fraud flows from the top down, not the mid-level up. Mid-level officials in the White House and the State Department do not call the shots — they carry out orders. They also were not running for reelection in 2012 or positioning themselves for a campaign in 2016. The people doing that were, respectively, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.

Obama and Clinton had been the architects of American foreign policy. As Election Day 2012 loomed, each of them had a powerful motive to promote the impressions (a) that al-Qaeda had been decimated; (b) that the administration’s deft handling of the Arab Spring — by empowering Islamists — had been a boon for democracy, regional stability, and American national security; and (c) that our real security problem was “Islamophobia” and the “violent extremism” it allegedly causes — which was why Obama and Clinton had worked for years with Islamists, both overseas and at home, to promote international resolutions that would make it illegal to incite hostility to Islam, the First Amendment be damned.

All of that being the case, I am puzzled why so little attention has been paid to the Obama-Clinton phone call at 10 p.m. on the night of September 11.

...There is good reason to believe that while Americans were still fighting for their lives in Benghazi, while no military efforts were being made to rescue them, and while those desperately trying to rescue them were being told to stand down, the president was busy shaping the “blame the video” narrative to which his administration clung in the aftermath.

We have heard almost nothing about what Obama was doing that night. Back in February, though, CNS News did manage to pry one grudging disclosure out of White House mendacity mogul Jay Carney: “At about 10 p.m., the president called Secretary Clinton to get an update on the situation.”

Obviously, it is not a detail Carney was anxious to share. Indeed, it contradicted an earlier White House account that claimed the president had not spoken with Clinton or other top administration officials that night.

...Carney’s hand was forced by then-secretary Clinton. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, she recounted first learning at about 4 p.m. on September 11 that the State Department facility in Benghazi was under attack. That was very shortly after the siege started. Over the hours that followed, Clinton stated, “we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally.” It was in the course of this “constant ongoing discussion and sets of meetings” that Clinton then recalled: “I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective.”

The 10pm phone call is a trap waiting to be sprung. It could be the lynchpin that holds together the last vestiges of the most inept and corrupt administration in modern American history.

Congress must demand Clinton testify under oath and send an interrogatory to the President.

The critical questions for both parties:

    a) What were the topics of the 10pm discussion?
    b) Were either a "protest" or an Internet video raised as a cause of the Benghazi attack?
    c) Who raised using a "protest" based upon an "Internet video" as a cover story for that attack?
    d) Who gave the order to use the video/protest pretense?
    e) Who gave the "stand down" order to prevent the rescue of Americans under attack?

Putting both Clinton and Obama under oath will raise an interesting dilemma for both. Which ever party answers first could be contradicted on any of these matters. If Clinton answers under oath to protect herself, Obama could easily throw her under the bus. Conversely, if Obama replies to an interrogatory first, Clinton could contradict any of his answers.

Benghazi is ultimately a conflict between the Clinton Democrats and the Chicago Machine. A wedge can be driven between these two destructive forces with some well thought-out subpoenas. Exploiting that wedge could light the fuse on the time-bomb and detonate the Obama administration once and for all.


Related: DAMNING: The Complete Benghazi Timeline Spreadsheet - Updated With the Latest Testimony and Leaks

Thursday, May 16, 2013

"Reject these voices that warn of... me"

Dan from New York:

Via The People's Cube:

Obama Tells Graduates to Reject Voices Warning of Government Tyranny

By Katie Pavlich

Last week, President Obama gave a commencement address to The Ohio State University. In his remarks, he urged graduates to reject voices warning about government tyranny.

"Unfortunately you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all of our problems. Some of these same voices do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted."

As a reminder of current Obama administration scandals:

-The IRS systematically abusing conservative groups

-The DOJ monitoring dozens or hundreds of reporters

-Kathleen Sebelius extorting money from companies she regulates

-Lies and cover-ups concerning the terror attack in Benghazi

That's right kids, you can totally trust Big Brother. Now move out into the world and ignore that "tyranny" thing.

Yes, kids: move out into the world and ignore that "tyranny" thing, from your parents' basement.



Related: President Barack Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Benghazi, Version 12.0

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Libya: At least a dozen rewrites of the Benghazi talking points were made, with all references to al-Qaida and prior attacks removed at the direction of the secretary of state's office.

The astonishing thing about the administration's Benghazi cover-up is that it actually thought it could get away with it. But each lie has been successfully peeled away, from the protest that never happened, to the irrelevant filmmaker who was blamed, to the intelligence community whose talking points were used as a cover for incompetence and malfeasance.

Now White House and State Department emails obtained by ABC News, some first published by the Weekly Standard, show that the intelligence community, led by the CIA, told the truth about terrorist involvement in the Benghazi attacks and prior warnings in its original talking points draft. It was the White House and the State Department that lied and had them altered.

"Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC's best assessments of what they thought had happened," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters last Nov. 28. "The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility' because 'consulate' was inaccurate."

What the talking points reflected, after a dozen heavy edits dictated by the State Department, was a sanitized version designed to protect President Obama's re-election chances and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's prospective candidacy in 2016. They were deliberately altered to eliminate references to terrorism so the whole thing could be blamed on an inflammatory video and no one in the administration could be held responsible.

As ABC's Jonathan Karl reported, edits included requests from the State Department that references to the al Qaida-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well as references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

The original CIA talking points contained this paragraph: "The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qaida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including a June attack against the British ambassador's convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals had previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks."

In an email to White House officials and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information, saying it "could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?" The paragraph was entirely deleted.

Why would a State Department interested in protecting its secretary and its president want to tell the truth?
The original CIA draft said "we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaida participated in the attack." It specifically named the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia. Nuland objected, and it was taken out.

In an email dated Sept. 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows — Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department's concerns needed to be addressed.

At a meeting Saturday morning, Sept. 15, at the White House, they were. The CIA drafted a final version of the talking points by deleting all references to al-Qaida and to the security warnings in Benghazi before the attack. In that email, Rhodes used the excuse that "we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation." Ironically, it was Rice's recitation of the censored talking points that impeded the FBI investigation and reduced cooperation by insulting the Libyan president. As Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks said during his recent testimony to Congress, Rice contradicted the Libyan president's Sept. 16 claims that the attack was premeditated.

"President Magariaf was insulted in front of his own people, in front of the world. His credibility was reduced," Hicks said. "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," Libyan President Mohamed Yousef El-Magariaf told CBS News' "Face The Nation" on Sept. 16 after Rice appeared saying exactly the opposite.

So as we've noted, we have Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, trying to intimidate Gregory Hicks from telling the truth that they knew it was a terrorist attack from the "get-go," that there was no "protest" or mention of one from anyone on the ground and that the infamous YouTube video was "a non-event" in Libya.

And we have Clinton spokesman Victoria Nuland censoring CIA talking points that note terrorist involvement in the attacks and mention prior attacks in an environment full of terrorist training camps.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens was aware of the threat and had warned Benghazi could not be defended after what security they had was withdrawn.

In Stevens' name, and the names of Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, the American people deserve to know the truth. Those responsible for this fiasco and its cover-up must be held accountable.


OH, MAMA: Even MSNBC Reporting Anxiety and Panic in Democrat Ranks Over Benghazi Cover-up Revelations

I suppose being the lowest-rated cable "news" network in history is extra motivation for covering the real news.

It's safe to say that behind the scenes Democrats are in full-blown panic mode.


NBC's Lisa Myers, in a panel discussion on MSNBC, revealed: "There is something called Benghazi going on, and I think the Democrats now are starting to worry about it. It's started. I got calls from a number of Democrats yesterday trying to undermine Greg Hicks’s testimony, saying he wasn’t demoted. So I think they feel that some damage was done by those three witnesses on Wednesday."

Myers was interviewed before the blockbuster revelation by ABC News that the State Department and/or the White House lied about the Benghazi assassinations.

I surmise the reason that the White House was behind the release of the email revision history: Obama wants no taint to his legacy (such as it is) and if Hillary Clinton needs to suck it up, so be it.


Ted Cruz has 12 Questions for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton #Benghazi

The masterful Ted Cruz has some questions for the Obama administration:

• Why was the State Department unwilling to provide the requested level of security to Benghazi?

• Were there really no military assets available to provide relief during the seven hours of the attacks? If so, why not? During the attacks, were any military assets ordered to stand down?

• If the Secretary of Defense thought there was “no question” this was a coordinated terrorist attack, why did Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary Clinton, and President Obama all tell the American people that the cause was a “spontaneous demonstration” about an Internet video?

• Why did the State Department and/or the White House edit the intelligence talking points to delete the references to “Islamic extremists” and “al Qa’ida”?

• Why did the FBI release pictures of militants taken the day of the attack only eight months after the fact? Why not immediately, as proved so effective in the Boston bombing?

• Why have none of the survivors testified to Congress?

• Why is the administration apparently unaware of the whistle-blowers who have been attempting to tell their stories? Is it true that these career civil servants have been threatened with retaliation?

• Did President Obama sleep the night of September 11, 2012? Did Secretary Clinton?

• When was President Obama told about the murder of our ambassador? About the murder of all four Americans? What did he do in response?

• What role, if any, did the State Department’s own counterterrorism office play during the attacks and in their immediate aftermath?

• Why was Secretary Clinton not interviewed for the ARB report?

• And why, if all relevant questions were answered in the ARB report, has the State Department’s own inspector-general office opened a probe into the methods of that very report?

Oh, and let's add another one: what games were on ESPN the night of 9/11/2012? Just wondering.


ACTION: Call John Boehner Now: We Demand a Select Committee on Benghazi.

Thursday, May 09, 2013

SCANDAL VS. SCANDAL: A Media Retrospective #Benghazi

Compare and contrast:

The Pet Goat vs. Going to Sleep During an Attack

Remember The Pet Goat? That was the book that President George W. Bush read for seven (7) minutes to an elementary school class after he received word of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Bush was pilloried mercilessly for his "inaction", even though the Secret Service is reported to have requested the delay to enhance the president's security for the trip to the airport.

How does that compare to Benghazi? Eight months after the slaughter of Americans, we still don't know what the president did after a 5pm ET meeting with SECDEF Panetta. No one knows, but many have surmised he watched sports and then went to sleep to prepare for a fundraiser the next day.

Cindy Sheehan vs. Pat Smith
The mother of a fallen soldier during the Iraq War, Cindy Sheehan became a poster child for the Democrat-media complex. No less a vintage media star than Maureen Dowd stated unequivocally that "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute".

As for the mother of murdered diplomatic official Sean Smith, Dowd is less vocal. Silent, even. Pat Smith has struggled to make her voice heard because, though apolitical, her message is one of pain, grief and anger. "They want to shut me up," she's stated, referring to the Obama administration that has treated her with utter disdain.

Valerie Plame vs. Benghazi
Remember what all of the hullabaloo about Valerie Plame was about?

Neither do I.

The former intelligence officer didn't get shipped to one of the most dangerous locations on earth, she didn't have all of her security stripped from her over her vociferous pleas, she wasn't the victim of an all-out terrorist attack on her office, she wasn't killed during a firefight, her body wasn't dragged through the streets of Benghazi, and her death wasn't the subject of administration lies and a massive cover-up.

No, that was Ambassador Chris Stevens along with the heroes who tried to save his life.

* * * * * * * * *

And a cadre of propagandists in the mold of Julius Streicher claim that Benghazi isn't a scandal. Michael Hersh is one such pathetic hack. Writing in the left wing National Journal, Hersh claims that there was no cover-up at all.

Hersh intentionally omitted referencing yesterday's most damning testimony. After the attack, Clinton consigliere Cheryl Mills demanded that Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission/chargé d’affairs in Libya, avoid answering any questions from the visiting Congressional delegation.

Hicks was asked whether he’d ever been told before not to meet with a congressional delegation; his response: “Never.”

And just who is Cheryl Mills?

Cheryl Mills is no run-of-the-mill State Department apparatchik, even among the top tier. She’s been one of the Clintons’ right-hand men for decades. She worked in Bill’s White House legal office, then as counsel to Hillary’s presidential campaign, then became chief of staff at State when Hillary was appointed secretary. If she’s the right-hand man, what other conclusion is there than that Hillary’s the one who wanted Hicks to keep his mouth shut when meeting with Chaffetz?

And precisely what did President Obama do after he received word of the attacks? No one knows and an incurious media has never bothered to ask that question.

When a local reporter unexpectedly broached the subject with the president, Obama stumbled through an ill-conceived and incoherent answer.

We know, in fact, that the president did nothing. Except watch sports on TV and then go to sleep.

And we also know, despite his sputtering exhortations to the contrary, that "there was never any intention to rescue our people in Libya."

Consider what met the threshold for a scandal then versus now: can there be any doubt that the media, as this country once knew it, is dead?


The Fateful Two Hours: Hillary Clinton's Political Undoing #Benghazi

8pm, 9/11/12 - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is informed that the consulate in Benghazi had been overrun by a group of AQ-linked terrorists.

Ambassador Chris Stevens’s deputy Gregory Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, testified that he spoke to Hillary Clinton at 2 AM [8pm ET] on the night of the attack and there was no mention of any demonstration or You Tube video. “We saw no demonstrations relating to the video, there was only an attack,” he testified. When asked about military personnel being told to stand down, he replied “They were furious.” Hicks also said he had been told by the State Department not to speak to congressional investigators. He has basically been demoted and now works a desk job.

This is the second indication that the attack in Benghazi is an organized terrorist assault: an earlier email sent by an unnamed State Department official relayed a communication from Tripoli and had the subject heading "Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU)".

10pm, 9/11/12 - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton releases a statement blaming an Internet video for the death of Ambassador Stevens and three others.

...in the 10:00 p.m. hour Washington, D.C. time on Sept. 11, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a written “Statement on the Attack in Benghazi" that said: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious belief of others.”

....that statement was put out before former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died in Benghazi. Who specifically told Hillary Clinton that there were some people blaming this on inflammatory response to--inflammatory material on the internet? Where did she get that idea at 10 p.m. on September 11th?

In those fateful two hours, Hillary Clinton invented a way to evade responsibility for the state of security in Benghazi. She had repeatedly denied Ambassador Stevens' requests for security and, worse, stripped virtually all security from him after dispatching him to one of the most dangerous cities on earth.

She needed an out, an alibi. And some obscure videographer -- who is still rotting in prison -- was the perfect scapegoat.

9/12/12 - one of Hillary's senior State Department officials emails associates her conversation with a Libyan diplomat concerning the real reason for the attack.

...an email dated Sept. 12, 2012 to senior State Department officers, from Elizabeth Jones, the acting Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs [described] a conversation she had with then-Libyan ambassador Ali Aujali, Jones wrote in the previously undisclosed email that 'I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.'

This represents the third known State Department communication confirming that an Al Qaeda-linked group had successfully attacked a consulate and assassinated a U.S. Ambassador, the first killed in the line of duty in 30 years.

1/23/13 - Yet testifying before a Senate Committee on the Benghazi debacle, Clinton asserted she'd never received any reports that contradicted the talking points that Susan Rice used on the Sunday morning talk shows:

I certainly did not know of any reports that contradicted the IC talking points at the time that Ambassador Rice went on the TV shows.

LIAR - this woman is a disgrace and a perjurer. She lied under oath to Congress. She should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for her contemptible testimony.


Wednesday, May 08, 2013

RED ALERT -- ACTION REQUIRED: #Benghazi Hearings and the Need for a Select Committee–Now [Hugh Hewitt]

Guest post by Hugh Hewitt

Call 202-225-3121 and ask for the Speaker’s office. Tweet him @SpeakerBoehner and @EricCantor as well. Be polite and firm: Set up a Select Committee now to follow up on today's shocking testimony.

Set aside the disgraceful actions of the broadcast MSM today in not covering the riveting testimony of Greg Hicks, and set aside even the shocking conduct of the Administration on the night of 9/11/12 and during the days, weeks and months following.

The MSM is almost exclusive hard left and almost completely committed to the defense of President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton. With a few, honorable exceptions they will ask no hard questions and conduct no follow-up, and of course the senior levels of the Administration are beyond shame and no “Deep Throat” is likely to emerge from their ranks.

But Speaker Boehner and the GOP control the House and they can almost instantly set-up a Select Committee to follow up on the shocking testimony today. The transcripts of my interviews with Stephen Hayes and Eli Lake will be posted here later, but it is enough to say that there were many extraordinary revelations made today and a great number of serious questions rasied which need to be asked and answered, quickly.



At a minimum the House needs to subpoena the NSA and the Department of State for the recording of the 2:00 AM phone call between Mr. Hicks and Hillary and her senior staff, a recording both I and Eli Lake suspect exists as a matter of routine NSA practice, if it has not already been erased. Subpoenas must also go out to Hillary, everyone on the conference call at 2:00 AM, and of course to Cheryl Mills, the enforcer of the cover-up. Lt. Colonel Gibson must be deposed, and his commander and then that man’s commander etc. until we get to the bottom of the stand down order. The denial of air assets from Aviano is another area of great interest. Investigators need to travel to Libya and speak with the senior officials there as to their response to being embarrassed by the Admiistration.

It must all happen quickly and without fear or favor. Not to establish a Select Committee draws the Speaker and the GOP majority into the very cover-up they are supposed to be investigating.

Call 202-225-3121 and ask for the Speaker’s office. Tweet him @SpeakerBoehner and @EricCantor as well. On my show alone we have heard calls for a Select Committee from Senators Ayotte and McCain and from Congressmen DeSantis, Gowdy and Jordan, all three of whom did extraordinarily fine work today, as did Chairman Issa and Congressman Chaffetz and many others. It is clear the Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee is far ahead of the other four committees “investigating” this scandal, but all must be brought under one roof with one staff and one set of questions and evidence.

Think about this: At 2:00 AM Hillary Clinton spoke with the man in charge in Libya who informed her the consulate had been attacked, the Ambassador was missing, and that his people had to evacuate. An hour later news of the ambassador’s death reached that man, Greg Hicks, and he informed the State Department.

Hillary never called him back that night or the next day.

Think as well about the fact that some of the most extraordinarily moving testimony ever given in the halls of Congress –given by Mr. Hicks about the entire evening but especially about the security forces who climbed the roof of the Annex in Benghazi to recover the dead and the wounded– and that it is not being played on most American media tonight.

Astonishing and disgusting.

There is nothing the Speaker and his colleagues in the House can do about the media or the Administration. But they can do the obvious and right thing, by establishing a Select Committee and thereby build upon the sense of urgency developed today, and they should do it now.


Call 202-225-3121 and ask for the Speaker’s office. Tweet him @SpeakerBoehner and @EricCantor as well. Be polite and firm: Set up a Select Committee now to follow up on today's shocking testimony.


Reprinted without with (thanks, Dr. Hewitt!) the permission of Hugh Hewitt. So I hope he doesn't sue me. But he's absolutely right. We need action now.

For American Foreign Policy, No Good Options [Stratfor]

Guest post by Robert D. Kaplan, Chief Geopolitical Analyst, Stratfor Research


One feels sympathy for U.S. President Barack Obama. Whatever he does in Syria, he is doomed. Had he intervened a year ago, as many pundits demanded, he might presently be in the midst of a quagmire with even more pundits angry at him, and with his approval ratings far lower than they are. If he intervenes now, the results might be even worse. Journalists often demand action for action's sake, seemingly unaware that many international problems have no solution, given the limits of U.S. power. The United States can topple regimes; it cannot even modestly remake societies unless, perhaps, it commits itself to the level of time and expense it did in post-war Germany and Japan.

Indeed, Obama has onerous calculations: If I intervene, which group do I arm? Am I assured the weapons won't fall into the wrong hands? Am I assured the group or groups I choose to help really are acceptable to the West, and even if they are, will they matter in Damascus in the long run? And, by the way, what if toppling Syrian leader Bashar al Assad through the establishment of a no-fly zone leads to even more chaos, and therefore results in an even worse human rights situation? Do I really want to own that mess? And even were I to come out of it successfully, do I want to devote my entire second term to Syria? Because that's what getting more deeply involved militarily there might entail.

In the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, intervention did not provoke other powers in the region such as Russia, because Russia in the first decade after the Cold War was a weak and chaotic state unable to project its usual historical influence in the Balkans. But intervention in Syria could get the United States into a proxy war with a strengthened Russia and with Iran.

15 Stunning Tweets From Today's #Benghazi Whistleblower Testimony

I am speechless not only at the depravity of this administration but also its enablers in both the Democrat Party and the Julius Streicher media. I never thought I'd live to see the day. Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?
















Tragic, shocking and utterly emblematic of the sickness of the left.


Related: DAMNING: The Complete Benghazi Timeline in Spreadsheet Format

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

LEADERSHIP: Obama blames Bush for his inaction in Syria

And isn't buck-passing the mark of a true leader?

Last year Barack Obama repeatedly warned that chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime against its own people would be a “game changer” [and crossing a "red line"]. But despite evidence that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, thus far Obama has not acted.

Today Obama blamed Bush for his inaction.
We have evidence that there has been the use of chemical weapons inside Syria. But, I don’t make decisions based on ‘perceived.’ And, I can’t organize coalitions around ‘perceived.’ We tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well.

It’s Bush’s fault.

I, for one, blame the Militant Quakers.


Hat tips: BadBlue News and MStreeter (cartoon).

BOOM BOOM HUME: With Benghazi revelations, Hillary's political aspirations are kaput

I paraphrase, of course, but Brit Hume's message is clear. The longtime Beltway insider believes there is no possible way for Hillary Clinton to evade responsibility for her leadership failures and bungled cover-up.

Earlier today, on America Live, Hume had the following to say:

There’s really no way for her to escape responsibility for this if this testimony does what we all expect now that it will do. Of course, over the years in Washington I’ve seen many a hype hearing fail to live up to expectations. But if it does live up, there’s no way I think she can escape this. I think she recognized from the start that this was trouble. I don’t think it was an accident that Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, who was kind of an unusual choice, was the person who went out on the Sunday shows to recite those talking points. I think then-Secretary Clinton knew that the talking points were shaky.


She may have participated in making them shaky. But she did not want any of that mud on her shoes that might be caused. And Susan Rice, of course, has paid a price for being the one who recited them. But we also know, as you suggest, Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman was involved in the crafting of those talking points. She reports directly or indirectly to Hillary Clinton, and she was telling the other people that were crafting the points that ‘my building,’ that means Hillary Clinton’s State Department, had a problem with this or that or the other thing and they were changed at her behest. Secretary Clinton cannot escape responsibility for that.

Let’s assume that she claims that she didn’t have any responsibility for that.” “What does that say about her stewardship of her department at a moment when a terrible thing has happened to an ambassador whom we’re to believe and she’s given every indication she had great faith in and cared a lot about? The murdered ambassador there was her subordinate. The staff there at the embassy were her subordinates. So if she took a walk during this, that doesn’t exactly recommend her for the person that will receive the middle of the night phone calls, does it?

I mean, I don’t think there’s any way for her to escape this even if she succeeds in arguing that she didn’t have her fingerprints on it. If she didn’t, she should have. And when she heard the talking points recited, she had to know they were wrong. If she didn’t, that’s dereliction. And if she didn’t know they were wrong, she should have said something. So she’s — I just don’t think there’s any way out, really. Look, she’ll get a vast amount of forgiveness. She’s an icon of the Democratic Party. A lot of people in the media will want to excuse her if they can, but the facts will prove too heavy.

We’ll have to see how bad it gets, but it’s certainly a weapon in the hands of her potential opponents, both within her party and in a general election if she gets that far. And the other thing, Megyn, is this also contributes to another question, which is — was she really a very successful and special secretary of state? I think the case for that is pretty weak. There was no great Clinton doctrine in foreign policy. Are there any treaties that she forwarded and help negotiate that made a big difference? Is the situation in the Middle East, which has always been a tinderbox that every American secretary of state must deal with — is that markedly improved by virtue of her stewardship of the State Department? I think the answer to all of those questions is probably no. So is this really a great credential for her as the last job she held going into a presidential campaign?

Of course not. Hillary Clinton has been an utter disaster as Secretary of State. Syria is awash in mass murder, chemical weapons, and Iranian missiles. Egypt is under the control of the Nazi-esque Muslim Brotherhood. Libya is a cauldron of terrorist activity. And Iran has -- or is about to -- acquire nuclear weapons. At the same time, North Korea and the People's Republic of China are seemingly at a tipping point.

But she's the greatest Secretary of State ever!


Hat tips: Michael Ramirez Cartoons and Protein Wisdom.