Did The Obama Administration Arm To The Teeth The Benghazi Terrorists?
December 8, 2012
The New York Times revealed, post-election of course, that:
The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats. No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September. But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government. The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from Qatar and other countries.
Obviously this brings into question the issue of the attacks that took place in Benghazi back in September. For that, the Weekly Standard reports:
On November 27, as Carney was insisting from the White House podium that all questions had been answered, acting CIA director Morell offered yet another account of the talking points story in a meeting with three senators. Morell was on Capitol Hill with Susan Rice as she met with three Republican senators?—?John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte?—?in order to answer questions about the administration’s handling of Benghazi. Several minutes into the meeting, following some sharp criticism of the administration from McCain, Graham asked about the edits to the unclassified talking points provided to Rice. Morell told the senators that the FBI had made the edits?—?an explanation that surprised his audience. When Graham asked him why the FBI would have made the changes, Morell had an answer ready: They did not want to jeopardize the ongoing criminal investigation into the attacks. Graham was furious. He pointed out that this was yet another explanation of the changes to the talking points and asked Morell how referring to al Qaeda participation in the attacks would affect any investigation. Within hours, the story changed again. The CIA notified the GOP senators that Morell had been wrong and that the changes to the language about al Qaeda had been made by the CIA and not the FBI. All of which raises the question: How is it that Morell, who accompanied Rice precisely so that he could provide an authoritative account of what had happened, didn’t know? Another problem: The latest version contradicts Petraeus, who had testified that the reference to al Qaeda that was in the version he approved was only taken out after the CIA passed them along. That’s five changes to the story about the talking points in two weeks?—?and we still have a glaring contradiction between the testimony of the former CIA director and the latest claims from his replacement.
The reasons Obama officials have given for the edits have changed, too. At first we were told that al Qaeda references were excised because the links were thought to be “tenuous”?—?despite the fact that one of the pieces of intelligence supporting the al Qaeda ties was an intercepted phone call. Perhaps mindful of that evidence, we were later told that mentioning al Qaeda in the unclassified talking points could jeopardize sources and methods. Then came Morell’s contention that the FBI didn’t want to compromise an investigation and, following that, the current claim that we didn’t want to tip off the attackers that we were on to them by publicly assigning them responsibility. When I asked a former senior intelligence official about that possibility, he said: “Nobody who can spell the word ‘intelligence’ believes that for a second.” A U.S. official investigating Benghazi was more blunt: “Complete bullshit.”
Jason Howerton writes, “The secret transactions began in the early months of the Libyan rebellion that ended in Qaddafi’s death. Various officials sought to assist the rebel forces trying to oust the Libyan dictator.”
“It was a short time later that Mahmoud Jibril, then prime minister of the Libyan transitional government, voiced his concerns to administration officials that the U.S. government was allowing Qatar to arm Islamist militant groups that were against the new Libyan leadership, anonymous U.S. officials said,” writes Howerton.
“Qatar is accused of shipping machine guns, automatic rifles and ammunition by air and sea. Some of the weapons have since ended up in the hands of militants with ties to al-Qaeda in Mali, where radical Islamists have implemented Shariah law in the northern part of the country, according to a former Defense Department official,” he continues. “Other small arms have gone to Syria several American and foreign officials and arms traders told the Times.”
Think about it, we have already seen Border Agent Brian Terry and Immigrations and Customs Agent Jaime Zapata murdered by weapons that their murderers were armed with courtesy of the U.S. federal government. Now, it’s appearing that four Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador may have been murdered by members of Al-Qaeda who were armed to the teeth by the same government.
So now the pieces are coming together. While there is no particular evidence up to this point that suggests the U.S. approved weapons were involved in the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, there is no doubt that there is plenty of speculation.
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