September 30, 2012

On the Road to Benghazi

By Clarice Feldman

In retrospect, the Democratic Convention highlighted a liar, Elizabeth Warren. She was hired by Harvard law school because she lied about her ethnicity to gain affirmative action benefits, exaggerated her scholarship which was shoddy, practiced law for years in Massachusetts out of her law school office without being a member of that state's bar -- and possibly at the time a member of no bar at all. She gummed on before the crowd about working for the middle class hiding from the audience that she had made hundreds of thousands of dollars representing big corporations in disputes against steel workers and asbestos victims among others. This week, Professor William Jacobson exposed all of that.

But she was hardly the only world class mythomaniac from Harvard law school on the podium at that Convention, the theme of which was Obama the bold slayer of Bin Laden and destroyer of Al Qaeda, the experienced and aggressive counter terrorist expert. After all, his domestic policies, are so bad they were hardly anything about which to spike the ball so the brain trust picked international anti-terrorist hero theme.

If you've been too busy to keep track of the lies about the origin and perpetrators of the tragedy in Libya, Iowahawk has once again condensed this to its essence:

"Fast & Furious, Benghazi edition?"

Let's review the sad history of an Obama foreign policy initiative which resulted in the murder of our Ambassador, and three other Americans in an action which suggests that (reminiscent of Fast & Furious) the Administration let loose countless dangerous weapons , cannot trace them and has unloosed even more destruction -- including against the U.S. -- in this highly unstable region.

March 2012

According to Mark Hosenball of Reuters, sometime in that month, Obama decided to aid the rebels in ousting Gaddafi, a man who was at the time seemingly much subdued after we invaded Iraq and no longer creating the trouble in the region he'd been infamous for.

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. This is a necessary legal step before such action can take place but does not mean that it will.

As is common practice for this and all administrations, I am not going to comment on intelligence matters," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement. "I will reiterate what the president said yesterday -- no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya."

Congress was not consulted. Congress did not authorize this. The entire decision and responsibility is Obama's.

While it may have appeared that we were only providing air support to the rebels, Obama announced at the time he had not ruled out supplying the rebels with arms, and from the nature of the attack on our consulate and a nearby "farm" in Benghazi we can assume that we, in fact, provided them. I can think of no other reason why we had so many former Seals and outside contractors in these locations except that we were trying unsuccessfully to retrieve these arms before they fell in the hands of Al Qaeda. And this development was as Hosenball reported something of great concern to people with a great deal more experience and historic knowledge than Obama:

Members of Congress have expressed anxiety about U.S. government activities in Libya. Some have recalled that weapons provided by the U.S. and Saudis to mujahedeen fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s later ended up in the hands of anti-American militants.

There are fears that the same thing could happen in Libya unless the U.S. is sure who it is dealing with. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, said on Wednesday he opposed supplying arms to the Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi "at this time."

"We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them," Rogers said in a statement.

A Little song, A Little dance, A little Seltzer Down Your Pants

It was reasonably obvious from the outset -- especially considering the words of the Libyan government and the reports on the ground -- that the attacks on the consulate and at a nearby " farm" were not spontaneous outbursts occasioned by fury at a video which was critical of Muhammad, "Innocence of Muslims." At the Daily Beast, Eli Lake reported it was known within 24 hours of the incident that al Qaeda affiliates were behind the well-supplied and orchestrated attacks, but the Administration persisted for a week using various spokespersons, especially Susan Rice, Jay Carney and Secretary of State Clinton, to lie and suggest that was the cause of the murder of the Ambassador and three others.

Charles Krauthammer is the go to guy on why such an obviously juvenile effort to deflect blame onto a stupid video (probably few people have seen) was made:

This was clearly deception on part of the administration in sending Susan Rice to say this was a spontaneous demonstration, when as you reported, it was known inside the administration within a day that it was not. It was a terror attack. So why did they deceive? It's obvious. Because the attack took place five days after the Democrats had spent a week in Charlotte touting, spiking the football on Osama. And essentially, since it's the only foreign policy achievement of the four years they repeated it over and over again, the great triumph over al-Qaeda. Well, within a week, al-Qaeda sacks a U.S. embassy, kills an ambassador and the administration did not want to admit it so it spent a week deceiving Americans to think it's about demonstration, it's about a film, thinking, I think correctly that if it strung it out long enough the media would let it slide and now that it becomes it's obvious and true, nobody will care, I guarantee you. This is not a headline in the mainstream media.

John Nolte at Breitbart shared that point of view:

The false White House narrative blaming the murders on a protest gone bad over a YouTube video never really passed the smell test. But Obama maintained that illusion straight through to his speech before the United Nations two days ago, even as reports surfaced that our government knew al-Qaeda was behind the attack within 24 hours. Apparently, this has become too much to sweep under the rug for some of the mainstream press and Democrats.

The behavior of Obama and Secretary of State Clinton over the past 14 days is a scandal of the highest order. Lies, cover ups, and neglect for security of American intelligence and personnel that borders on criminal.

I've been skeptical that the same media, that early on conspired in this cover up by intentionally pouring all of its focus and fire on Mitt Romney's criticism of the Cairo Embassy apology, would go near this before the election. But the sins are so great and glaring, it doesn't look as though ignoring it will be possible for another 40 days.

After lying the Administration is now refusing to respond to inquiries based on a phony claim that the matter is "under investigation," an investigation that is nonexistent. (See video2 here.)

And Now a Little Two Step

Even though the make believe scenario has fallen apart, Obama still publicly continues to act as if it were true.

His Attorney general got involved and the film maker was widely photographed being hustled off (for questioning) by the Los Angeles police department and was just jailed on a pretense -- a probation violation. The "offense" seems at best a technical violation and at worst a signal to the Middle Eastern fanatics that while we say we can't do anything to stop them from being offended because the First Amendment forecloses such action, we really can and will punish those who offend them,

The same message was made more explicit in Obama's silly and groveling statement before the UN: "The Future Must Not Belong To Those Who Slander the Prophet of Islam."

The use of the word "Prophet" in this context is bizarre. Do we refer to "Lord Jesus" or "Prophet Moses" in news accounts and secular speech? The suggestion that criticism of Islam is the equivalent of slander (a justiciable offense) and must result in the defeat of the speaker is nonsensical. The entire statement indicates to me the President is appeasing our attackers, bowing to the jihadis as earlier he touched the ground before the Saudi King. The entire claim that we must not give religious offense, moreover, is odd coming from a President who sees nothing wrong with "piss Christ" exhibits in publicly financed museums and whose Secretary of State publicly indicated she thought a play mocking Mormons was terrifically funny.

The pretense that Islam is entitled to some special protection because otherwise the world will suffer has even spread to NYC where after an MSNBC commenter was arrested for spray painting a pro-Israel poster the transit authority decided to remove those posters to avoid giving further offense to people like the defacer!

To recap, this was an armed assault, not a spontaneous demonstration. The weapons used against us were likely in the hands of Al Qaeda because our President on his own put them there, and we are being denied our free speech rights as part of an elaborate ruse to keep the press from reporting the scandal and the voters from learning before the election what really went down.

Other Implications

My friend Matt Holtzmann adds a coda, a description of the current state of play as a result of this series of administration blunders:

Susan Rice, our ambassador to the U.N., decided to have lunch with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday instead of attending Israeli PM Netanyahu's speech. Diplomatically this was the equivalent of flipping the bird. I believe this sends as clear a message as possible of the Administration's intentions in the Middle East.

That Mohammed Morsi released Mostafa Hamza, a leader of The Islamic Group, who was responsible for the Luxor temple bombing in 1997, is indicative of a new phase in the global war on terror.

In that attack, which killed 58 foreign tourists, the terrorists locked the gates of the temple grounds and for over 30 minutes raped, terrorized, and murdered almost everyone within the grounds. From the survivors' descriptions it was an orgy of violence. It was the worst terrorist attack in Egyptian history.

Morsi is also pressing for the release of the Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh," who was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and who is at the center of an extradition battle in the U.K. trying to evade imprisonment in the United States.

With what we have just learned about the Administration's prevarications regarding the nature of the assassination of Ambassador Stevens in Libya, the refusal to maintain some form of common front with our greatest ally in the region should ring alarm bells regarding our commitments and obligations to allies in the region.

Should Iran advance its agenda there is a very high probability that not only Israel, but the Gulf States will also go nuclear.

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