Category: Libya

The ‘How Dare You’ Defense on Benghazi

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“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with. It’s hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.”
— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sept. 14, 2012, while standing over the caskets of the four Americans killed at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya

Jeff Goldstein cites the important testimony that “a State Department official emailed the Libyan government on September 12 that the consulate attack was in fact a terrorist operation — specifically identifying Ansar al-Sharia in the email.” But why bother with facts? What difference, at this point, does it make?

Quite obviously, it makes a very important difference to Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) in their tireless efforts to convince Americans that Obama’s foreign policy is working, and especially to persuade us that the fine public servants at the top levels of the State Department did nothing wrong in the Benghazi affair.

When you point out the obvious facts — that the “Arab Spring” was a bad idea, that everybody in the administration lied through their teeth about Benghazi, and that the major media are enthusiastic volunteers in a partisan P.R. effort to assist in the cover-up — liberals go into fake indignation mode: How dare you?

If you’ve watched Democrats do this for years, you know how the tactic works: They’re trying to do the Jedi mind trick — “This is not the scandal you were looking for. Move along.” — and if you refuse to cooperate, they act as if your non-cooperation is proof of your bad motives. They have decided that none of the evidence or testimony means what you think it means, and that your interpretation of facts is therefore illegitimate, so you must be shunned as a bad person.

Our Moral Superiors™ get away with this trick often enough that they’re genuinely shocked when they don’t get away with it.

There are multiple layers to the Benghazi scandal, from the policy failures that left the consulate vulnerable to the mysterious “stand-down” order to the Special Ops rescue team — and with my son training as an 18X recruit, I can easily imagine how “furious” the troops were about that — and on to the “Internet video rage” talking points. As has been said, the administration failed before, during and after the Benghazi attack, and are now attempting to avoid accountability.

Damn, I need me some Chick-Fil-A.

 


Unsurprising Media Consensus: ‘Shut Up About Benghazi, You Stupid Republicans’

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Even before the six hours of congressional hearings began, CNN telegraphed its disinterest in the Benghazi “whistleblower” testimony by cutting away to Cleveland, Ohio, for what Wolf Blitzer falsely promised would be the first public statement by kidnapping victim Amanda Berry. What actually happened in Cleveland was a ginormous media scrum for a statement by the victim’s sister Beth Serrano (who has been interviewed by every news organization on the planet already) asking that reporters “please respect our privacy.”

That particular goose-chase blunder — pre-empting the start of the House Oversight Committee hearing to hype coverage of what proved to be a non-story —  was a clumsy signal: Nobody important at CNN thinks the Obama administration did anything wrong in the Benghazi affair, and therefore the congressional investigation is a trivial exercise of no genuine public interest.

The fix was in, and the Piers Morgan Network might as well change its slogan to, “CNN: What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make?” 

No matter what the witnesses said, under no circumstance were the major news organizations that have spent the past five years as de facto members of the Obama campaign committee going to treat this hearing as actual news. In fact, the only TV reporter not employed by Fox News who has treated the Benghazi cover-up as a legitimate story — Sharyl Attkisson of CBS — is being treated like an unprofessional pariah by her own network, while Chuck Todd of NBC News quite literally laughs off criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks.

Really, they out-did themselves on this one. Check out the “Don’t Bother to Read This Dull Story” headline from the New York Times:

Official Offers Account From Libya of Benghazi Attack

Here’s another way you might headline the story, if you actually wanted to get readers to, y’know, read the story:

VIDEO: Benghazi Whistleblower Gregory Hicks Describes
‘Saddest Phone Call’ That Ambassador Stevens Died

Unless you saw that testimony — which was just one highlight of a six-hour hearing that the major networks did their best to ignore or dismiss as mere politics —  you would have no reason to suspect how riveting it was, if all you saw was that bland New York Times headline.

Ace describes the methodology of suppression:

[T]he media can never be embarrassed by its liberal bias and deliberate suppression of the news for political purposes if no one in the media ever breaches the wall of silence and clues the public in to what it’s hiding.

This is journalism as a partisan team sport, and the guys who call the shots at NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN don’t care how dishonest their bias is, they only care about winning — i.e., electing Democrats, and helping Democrats enact their policy agenda — so that as long as a Democrat is in the White House and opposition to the Democrat agenda can be effectively marginalized, the truth doesn’t matter.

You can read the Benghazi hearing liveblog we did at ViralRead, but what difference, at this point, does it make?

 

 


Obama Administration’s Benghazi Lies Exposed as State Department Cover-Up

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Flaming skull alert at Ace of Spades for the release of e-mails confirming that (a) officials knew from the outset that the attack on the consulate in Libya was the work of terrorists, but (b) this information was suppressed for political purposes:

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to [CIA] warnings.”

So, it was CIA vs. C.Y.A. at the State Department which, quite frankly, has been infiltrated by Edward Said-influenced Arab specialists to such an extent that it was practically a Muslim Brotherhood outpost even before the Obama administration took over.

Seriously, you can ask Bush administration people about this: Middle Eastern scholarship within academia is so dominated by anti-Western views that, insofar as anyone has the credentials to qualify as a specialist in the field — i.e., to get hired into and promoted within the bureaucracy — they’re certain to have been saturated in ideas about “Western imperialism” and the legitimacy of Arab/Islamic grievances. And while this has also been a problem at the CIA and the Pentagon, the State Department is absolutely chock-full of such people in staff positions, so that even with hawkish neocons in the political appointee roles during the Bush years, the pro-Arab/pro-Muslim culture at Foggy Bottom never really changed.

I feel the need to point this out now because some of my well-meaning conservative friends, who (quite correctly) complain about the dubious influences within the Obama administration, often neglect to discuss the larger problem, which pre-dates Obama. However, there is good reason to think it is more of a problem now:

In 1998 Obama attended a speech by [Edward] Said, in which the scholar called for a nonviolent campaign “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.” In a well-publicized photo, Obama and Said can be seen talking over dinner at this pro-Arab event.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in the early 1980s Obama had been one of Said’s students in an undergraduate English class at Columbia University.

None of this is necessarily related to the Benghazi cover-up — I don’t mean to feed anyone’s conspiratorial paranoia — but it does highlight the nature of the larger problem, what Jeanne Kirkpatrick rightly called the “Blame America First” mentality.

There is a sort of  perverse narcissism involved in this worldview: Encountering people who hate us, liberals think, “It’s about us.”

This error was what crippled liberalism during the Cold War. If the Soviet Union wanted to destroy America, liberals imagined, this must be because of something wrong with America, rather than something wrong with the Soviet Union. So liberals wanted to change American foreign policy — détente! — in a more pro-Soviet direction, accepting the Leninist critique of “Western imperialism” as essentially accurate, so that you had Jimmy Carter claiming (and evidently believing) that a U.S. commitment to “human rights” would somehow repair the damage to American international prestige.

Except it wasn’t about us. It was about them. Continue reading Obama Administration’s Benghazi Lies Exposed as State Department Cover-Up →

‘Arab Spring’ Update: Foreign News the Media Doesn’t Want to Ask Obama About

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Kirsten Powers points out what was so obviously missing from Sunday’s 60 Minutes softball interview:

Now, I’m sorry, is anyone paying attention to what’s going on in North Africa? Why is the president not asked about Algeria, Mali, Libya? These are front and center in the news right now.

Indeed. Lots of news out there:

Algeria has bolstered its military presence along the southern border.
Security sources said the Algerian Army was ordered to send thousands of troops along the southern border with Mali. . . .
The sources said [Al Qaeda in the Maghreb] units were believed to have fled Mali amid French air strikes. They said the Algerian Army was ordered to open fire on suspected insurgents and attack strongholds.

Yeah, what’s going on in Mali?

A rebellion in Mali that might have otherwise excited little interest commanded international attention when word came of its hardline Islamist nature and, more importantly, its ties to Al Qaida in the Maghreb (AQIM). . . .
The alliance between AQIM and the Tuareg people of Northern Mali and adjacent lands is a curious one. The Tuareg have a long history of opposing encroaching peoples . . .
The Tuareg see AQIM as an ally in their cause, but the latter is more of a burden because it brings regional and international opposition to the Tuareg movement for autonomy. Instead of bringing needed help to the Tuareg, AQIM is bringing a formidable invasion. Realization of the overwhelming opposition before them may be behind the recent split in the Tuareg forces . . .

So there’s a Tuareg rebellion that al-Qaeda has exploited in northern Mali — has anybody asked Obama about this? I think not. What about security problems at our embassies and consulates?

Foreign security contractors for U.S. diplomatic facilities have been deemed inadequate, a report said.
The State Department said the majority of foreign security contractors hired to protect U.S. embassies and consulates were deemed insufficient and inadequate. The department’s inspector-general surveyed foreign guards deployed around 86 diplomatic posts.
“OIG [Office of the Inspector-General] also found at some overseas posts that local guard contracts let under the current lowest-price award method had performance problems and an increased need for oversight from department officials — a condition that may be alleviated by the use of the best-value method where price is not the overriding factor in awarding the contract,” the inspector-general said in a report.
The report, released in February 2012, said foreign security guards deployed at two-thirds of the 86 posts were deemed inadequate. The inspector-general said the biggest problems included the U.S. embassy in Iraq.

Hmmm. A report in February 2012 — seven months before the attack on the consulate in Benghazi — warned of “performance problems” with hired guards at facilities. Kinda curious that they couldn’t ask Obama about that during his 60 Minutes interview. More headlines:

Timbuktu liberated but priceless manuscripts destroyed
— ABC News

Iran denies reports of explosion at Fordo nuclear site
— BBC

U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa
— New York Times

Lots of news out there, but the hard-hitting investigative journalists at CBS News couldn’t be bothered to ask Obama about any of it.

 

Hillary Gets Bitchy on Benghazi: ‘What Difference, at This Point, Does It Make?’

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Kinda half-watched this morning’s Senate Benghazi hearings, mainly wondering what was up with those big ugly glasses Hillary was wearing. My favorite part was when she got irritated with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who was trying to pin her down on why the administration spent so long pushing the bogus “protest” talking points:

SEN. JOHNSON: Yeah. The point I’m making is a very simple phone call to these individuals I think would have ascertained immediately that there was no protest prior to this. I mean, this attack started at 9:40 p.m., Benghazi time, and it was an assault . . . Why wasn’t that known? And again, I appreciate the fact of the transparency of this — of this hearing, but why weren’t we transparent at that point in time?
SEC. CLINTON: Well, first of all, Senator, I would say that once the assault happened and once we got our people rescued and out, our most immediate concern was, number one, taking care of their injuries . .. getting them into Frankfurt, Ramstein . . . to get taken care of, the FBI going over immediately to start talking to them — we did not think it was appropriate for us to talk to them before the FBI conducted their interviews, so — and we did not — I think this is accurate, sir — 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.
And, you know, I just want to say that, you know, people have accused Ambassador Rice and the administration of, you know, misleading Americans. I can say, trying to be in the middle of this and understanding what was going on, nothing could be further from the truth. Was information developing? Was the situation fluid? Would we reach conclusions later that weren’t reached initially? And I appreciate the –
SEN. JOHNSON: But Madam Secretary, do you disagree with me that a simple phone call to those evacuees to determine what happened wouldn’t have — wouldn’t have ascertained immediately that there was no protest?
I mean, that was — that was a piece of information that could have been easily, easily obtained –
SEC. CLINTON: Well, but Senator, again –
SEN. JOHNSON: — within hours, if not days.
SEC. CLINTON: Senator, I — you know, when you’re in these positions, the last thing you want to do is interfere with any other process going on. . . . Now, we have no doubt they were terrorists, they were militants, they attacked us, they killed our people, but what was going on and why they were doing what they were doing is still — is still unknown.
SEN. JOHNSON: No, no, no, no, I’m — I — again, we were misled that there were supposedly protests and then something sprang out of that, an assault sprang out of that. And that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact –
SEC. CLINTON: But could — but, you know –
SEN. JOHNSON: — and the American people could have known that within days, and they didn’t know that.
SEC. CLINTON: And — with all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.
SEN. JOHNSON: I understand.
SEC. CLINTON: Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

Ed Morrissey retorts:

Well, gosh, I can think of a few reasons why it matters. First, it mattered enough for the Obama administration to send Susan Rice to five different Sunday talk shows to insist that the sacking was a spontaneous demonstration of anger over a months-old YouTube video, while saying that there was “no evidence” that it was a terrorist attack. On one of those appearances, the president of Libya told US audiences the exact opposite — that it was the work of terrorists and that they had a pretty good idea of who they were. If it didn’t matter, what was Susan Rice doing when she tried pushing that meme, which the White House had to abandon within days as leaks within State and CIA made plain that there was no demonstration?
It also matters because Barack Obama at the time had been bragging about crippling al-Qaeda while on the campaign trail. That false narrative made it seem as though State and our intel community couldn’t have possibly known that the sacking would have occurred, and got blindsided by a grassroots reaction to the video. Instead, it turned out to be a planned terrorist action about which the US embassy in Libya had warned State for months, repeatedly requesting more security.

Ed, remember (a) it’s only a “scandal” if Republicans do it, and (b) only “humorless, angry opponents of the President” care about Benghazi.

Needed: HR 824–House Select Committee On Benghazi

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by Smitty

Tonight at the Northern Virginia Tea Party meeting, there was discussion of a group scheduling a meeting in the near future with Rep. Frank Wolf, to make sure that minor event a few months back doesn’t slip the gentleman’s mind, and find out how to help advance the cause for HR 824, to get a select committee appointed that can hopefully figure out Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Helping keep the butchered Ambassador, employee, and two immortal heroes on the front burner couldn’t be easier. Patriot Journalist Network has a handy page to tap HR 824’s 32 sponsors directly on Twitter. You should light up their lives with encouragement. If the people demand justice, even that sad excuse for a smut shop mannequin, Harry Reid, can’t deny justice.

Obama’s Benghazi Fall Guys

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It took long enough, but President Gutsy Call finally located three State Department employees who don’t have enough political juice to protect them from getting blamed for the predictable failure of the administration’s Libya policy:

The A.P., quoting an unidentified administration official, said Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, had resigned. The third person, who was not identified, was an official with the department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs, The A.P. said.

You have to picture in your mind Obama’s advisors huddled with Hillary’s advisors, going over a list of State Department personnel, trying to figure out who doesn’t have a key Democratic Senator or an influential DNC contributor to defend them against this “under-the-bus” move.

So now we know who the three least-connected State Department employees were, thus providing Obama with the chance to say that he has now solved the problem that his policies caused. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Disinformation’s effort to deceive voters has succeeded remarkably, with 56% of the gullible sheep telling CNN they fell for that farcical Susan Rice dog-and-pony show.

The resignations of the “Benghazi Three” followed the publication of a report from the Libya Cover-Up Scapegoat Search Committee:

The report, posted Tuesday night on the State Department’s website, also identified “leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus.” It suggested 29 ways the department can improve its operations, but recommended no disciplinary action.
The Accountability Review Board’s report . . .

(“Accountability”! Like the kids says, “LOL.”)

. . . comes after more than three months of intense debate in Washington over who was behind the attack, what motivated the attackers and why U.S. authorities weren’t able to stop the violence, which took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

It’s the standard Obama-era Jedi mind trick: Four Americans dead, don’t blame the President, nothing more to see here, move along.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! The professor obviously appreciates the way the passive voice magically relieves the important people from the burden of responsibility. Somebody got screwed over, but who did the screwing?

 


Obama Has Consequences

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“God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs . . .”
— Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Lots of bloggers are science-fiction buffs, but I prefer reality, regarding fiction generally as a puerile waste of time. If you wish to improve your mind, it is much more productive to read history than any work of fiction. (I’ve recently been re-reading Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli, which I borrowed from Joe Fein in 2010 and feel guilty for not having returned.)

However, it must be admitted that great science fiction makes us think, and Jurassic Park is a fine lesson in unintended consequences, a sort of Hayekian insight into the failure of planning and “expertise.” Genetically engineering the re-creation of extinct monsters might seem like a great idea for a theme park, but to quote another witty line by Jeff Goldblum’s intellectual character from the movie, “if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.”

Yes, and I’m sure it must have seemed like a great idea during the “Arab Spring” to arm Islamic extremists in Libya:

In spite of the threat of American weapons ending up in the hands of terrorist groups, President Barack Obama secretly approved an arms transfer to Libyan rebels through Qatar at the height of the rebellion against Moamar Khadhafi, a knowledgeable source noted on Friday.
However, American counterterrorists are discovering that some of those U.S. weapons ended up in the hands of radical Islamists including associates of al-Qaeda, according to a law enforcement source who trained police in the Middle East.
Some Americans who are retired from the military, as well as intelligence and law enforcement agencies, believe there should be an investigation into possible connections between the weapons provided by the Qataris back then and the attack that killed an American ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

More at Gateway Pundit: “Benghazi Terrorists Were Armed By Obama”

One of the lessons of Gallipoli is how seemingly minor mistakes can have enormous consequences. The Allied effort to force a passage through the Dardenelles, capture Constantinople and thus knock Turkey out of the war was meant to relieve pressure on Russia and open a second front against the Central Powers.

Before the campaign began, it was suggested that the Greeks be brought in to aid the effort against the Turks, but the Czar objected to the idea that the Greeks might gain a colonial foothold in Turkey. It is speculation to wonder what might have happened in the historical alternative, but as it was, the campaign against Constantinople failed, the war lasted until 1918, and the Czar was executed by the Bolsheviks.

Exit question: Is comparing Obama’s policies to dinosaurs racist?