Libya

[G M]

Obama gave speeches and bowed to everyone!

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/11/rep-kelly-libya-got-security-cuts-vienna-got-chevy-volts/

Rep. Kelly: Libya got security cuts; Vienna got Chevy Volts

posted at 5:21 pm on October 11, 2012 by Erika Johnsen

Does anybody else find it kind of fazing that House Democrats really tried to blame Republican budget cuts for the inadequate security situation in Libya? Because, as Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) pointed out in the Washington Times yesterday, it doesn’t look like the State Department is exactly down to bare bones on their budget allocations — they just have particular priorities about where to spend their money.
In a May 3, 2012, email, the State Department denied a request by a group of Special Forces assigned to protect the U.S. embassy in Libya to continue their use of a DC- 3 airplane for security operations throughout the country. …
Four days later, on May 7, the State Department authorized the U.S. embassy in Vienna to purchase a $108,000 electric vehicle charging station for the embassy motor pool’s new Chevrolet Volts. The purchase was a part of the State Department’s “Energy Efficiency Sweep of Europe” initiative, which included hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on green program expenditures at various U.S. Embassies.
In fact, at a May 10 gala held at the U.S. embassy in Vienna, the ambassador showcased his new Volts and other green investments as part of the U.S. government’s commitment to “climate change solutions.”
While the embassy in Vienna was going green, the consulate in Benghazi was getting bombed, and little was done to stop it.
Ahhh, yes — it is of the utmost importance that every department stay eco-hip and have their own special “green-ifying” trophy initiatives. Climate change, you know.
As Rep. Kelly argues, this raises some serious questions about the State Department’s spending priorities. Maybe it seems like a small expenditure, but should the “Energy Efficiency Sweep of Europe” program really be receiving funding when other security threats aren’t receiving full attention?
Also, we learned last month that the federal government is beefing up the Chevy Volt’s sales numbers, as the Department of Defense plans to purchase them in an effort to “green up” their military; a.k.a., yet another way the taxpayer is directly aiding GM and their electric poster child. Apparently, the Pentagon isn’t the only one — it looks like the State Department has been helping the Chevy Volt’s sales, too.

[G M]

Question: How much do burning consulates contribute to global warming? Is that offset by dead Americans who can no longer use fossil fuels?

[bigdog]

Question: How much do burning consulates contribute to global warming? Is that offset by dead Americans who can no longer use fossil fuels?

I missed you while you were gone, GM. No one else makes points quite like you. You have a true gift.

[Crafty_Dog]

Indeed he does 

[Crafty_Dog]

U.S. Explores Retaliatory Options in Libya
 

October 10, 2012 | 1554 GMT



 
A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules parked at Tripoli International Airport on Sept. 12
 
Stratfor previously noted some interesting U.S. military deployments to the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East. One deployment discussed was the dispatch of a dozen or so special operations aircraft to the Mediterranean region. These aircraft included four versions of the C-130 Hercules, namely the MC-130H, HC-130N, HC-130P and AC-130U.
 
It now appears that these aircraft have been staging out of Souda Air Base on the Akrotiri Peninsula of Crete, conducting day and night missions in Libyan airspace. The various types of modified Hercules aircraft operating in the area are likely transporting and supporting special operations troops on the ground who could be running reconnaissance and intelligence gathering operations in Libya. In fact, an unnamed U.S. military official reportedly told CNN that U.S. special operations forces are in Libya meeting with informants and using signals and imagery intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites to collect information on militant networks in the country.
 








VIDEO: The Libya Attack and After-Action Investigations (Tearline)
.In light of the Sept. 11 U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi, the United States has been working to enhance its retaliatory options in Libya. So far, Washington has been focusing its efforts on the collection of intelligence, but the deployment of a number of assets in the region means that the United States is positioned to conduct a wide range of kinetic operations in Libya if necessary. The inclusion of AC-130U gunships is particularly noteworthy. The AC-130U is not a dedicated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance asset, and thus its presence over Libya indicates that special operations forces or other U.S. assets are indeed on the ground and that the aircraft are there to provide fire support if necessary. If Washington chose, the gunships, alongside armed UAVs and fixed-wing assets that can deploy from U.S. Air Force bases in Europe, could also be used to strike at compounds or high-value targets.
 






.
 But there are considerable challenges for U.S. military action in Libya. In order to mitigate the risk of collateral damage, the United States has to be very careful to ensure that accurate intelligence is collected before any strikes are carried out. Civilian casualties would only exacerbate an already delicate and unstable political situation in Libya, where the people have not yet fully accepted the government. Stratfor sources have said U.S. intelligence on Libya has been very limited -- a fact made clear by the Sept. 11 attack. The deployment of a sizable contingent of special operations forces in Libya suggests that the United States is very likely coordinating with the Libyan government and also has deployed a number of CIA personnel in the country.
 
The current stage of the U.S. deployment in the region involves collecting intelligence, identifying main personalities and establishing patterns of life of suspected targets. More generally, the forces are establishing a portfolio of options -- from airstrikes to snatch-and-grab missions -- for the U.S. administration to explore as it considers its response to the Benghazi attack.
.

Read more: U.S. Explores Retaliatory Options in Libya | Stratfor

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.therightscoop.com/former-cia-and-former-marine-guarding-us-embassies-both-say-benghazi-attack-not-an-intelligence-failure/

[Crafty_Dog]

Sent to me by an imperfectly reliable internet friend.  Haven't had a chance to check it myself yet.
================


"Speaking of Libya ... http://tinyurl.com/8hb484y ... radio interview of Col. David Hunt ... gets real interesting about 4 minutes in ... describes who all was on the real time data feed from bengazi while attack was going on ... Pentagon NMCC ... White House Situation Room ... State Dept. Situation Room ... the list goes on ... the whole chain of command ... WHILE THE ATTACK WAS UNDER WAY ...
"
Digital and written logs will exist of all aspects of the communication feeds, phone calls notifying higher authority ... the Pentagon NMCC -- National Military Command Center -- logs will show exactly who they notified and exactly when ... including Clinton, Obama, and Biden ... ... ...

"This was not two weeks after the attack.......this was REAL TIME!"

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-heavy-weapons-jihadists-2012-10

[Crafty_Dog]

*US ‘too slow’ to act as drone’s cam captured Libya horror* (http://m.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_watched_as_terror_raged_AypAEEA9OK23rPf7Z5BHWO)
By TIM PERONE


The United States had an unmanned Predator drone over its consulate in Benghazi during the attack that slaughtered four Americans — which should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed yesterday.

“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.

The network reported that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft observed the final hours of the hours-long siege on Sept. 11 — obtaining information that should have spurred swift action.

But as Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were killed by terrorists armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Defense Department officials were too slow to send in the troops, Berntsen said.

“They made zero adjustments in this. You find a way to make this happen,” he fumed.

“There isn’t a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments.”

The Pentagon said it moved a team of special operators from Central Europe to Sigonella, Italy — about an hour flight from Libya — but gave no other details.

Fighter jets and Specter AC-130 gunships — which could have been used to help disperse the bloodthirsty mob — were also stationed at three nearby bases, sources told the network.

When the attack began, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies,” a White House official told the network.

Even as the administration continues to vow that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, the man identified by witnesses as a ringleader in the attack continues to walk the streets of Libya without fear of arrest.

Ahmad Abu Khattala has admitted being at the consulate during the horrific attack but has yet to be questioned by any Libyan authorities.

Abu Khattala spoke to a New York Times reporter Thursday from a hotel patio as he sipped a strawberry frappe and mocked the US and Libyan governments.

“These reports say that no one knows where I am and that I am hiding,” he boasted. “But here I am in the open, sitting in a hotel with you. I’m even going to pick up my sister’s kids from school soon.”

Lax security at the consulate was an open secret.

Stevens wrote a cable in June that there wasn’t enough security at the consulate, and he noted there had been a recent spike in attacks against “international organizations and foreign interests,” ABC News said.

The ambassador wrote another cable in August that read, “A series of violent incidents has dominated the political landscape during the Ramadan holiday.”

Stevens said that the incidents were “organized” and that the Libyan security force had “not coalesced into a stabilizing force and [provided] little deterrence.”

Several requests for additional security in Benghazi were made to the State Department prior to the attack. They were all rejected.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to deflect blame from President Obama last week, saying the decision not to beef up guards was her responsibility.

“I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world [at] 275 posts,” she told CNN.

“The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision.”

The attack has become a major issue in the presidential campaign, with Mitt Romney saying Obama’s failure to safeguard the consulate highlights his failure in foreign policy.

Romney has also hammered Obama for failing to immediately label it a terror attack and the administration for changing its story about whether the attack was a protest over an anti-Islamic movie or a coordinated strike.

The tragedy — and alleged security lapses leading up to the attack — will likely be brought up at tomorrow’s final presidential debate.

The 90-minute debate will be moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News. Schieffer has listed five subject areas, with more time devoted to the Middle East and terrorism than any other topic.
---End Quote---

[G M]

Gutsy call I I.

[objectivist1]

Nonie Darwish is an American who was born and raised in Egypt.  She is a former Muslim (convert to Christianity.)  Her story is a moving one, set forth in her 2007 book "Now They Call Me Infidel."  She offers her thoughts on the Benghazi catastrophe today in an article at www.frontpagemag.com:

Why Obama Blamed the Video

Posted By Nonie Darwish On October 22, 2012

Most Americans reacted with horror and pain when the decent American ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was dragged and sodomized [not yet confirmed] by Libyan terrorists. To date, the autopsy report of the ambassador and three other American heroes has not been made public and is perhaps being held till after the elections.

Americans deserved the proper outrage and comfort by the US president after such a horrendous terror attack, but President Obama failed to do that. Instead, he found an excuse: a video that came out months earlier before Sept. 11, 2012. For weeks the Obama administration hammered the American people with a guilt trip over Islamic outrage; the killing and burning was because of a video insulting Islam.

But when the truth came out that this was a calculated terror attack, the American people were outraged. That was when the White House decided to quickly change the game, and without hesitation Obama boldly suggested in the second debate that he did call the attack an act of terror. How can Obama expect to get away with this? Holding Islamic outrage as a justification for violence and then changing to a wishy-washy condemnation of terror has failed to fix the damage already done. I was used to this kind of dishonest maneuvering by Arab leaders, but could never have imagined that an American president could stoop to that level. Have we been infected by Islamic illogic?

There is no doubt that it must be very difficult for any American administration to deal with a culture like that of the Muslim world; a culture that must be treated as immature spoiled children who must get their way. What America fails to understand is that Islamic scriptures forbid Muslims to take non-Muslims as friends or partners worthy of compromise and equal rights. One would think that America after Sept. 11, 2001 would have learned the lesson of the deviance of Islamic jihad and the psyche of the Muslim world, which is constantly brewing and looking for an excuse and a crack of weakness to confirm Muslims’ need to feel wronged in order to justify attacks on American interests.

By now, the US should understand that Muslims who engage in anger and terror constantly search for excuses, but we must never fall for such excuses. Islamic chatter is constantly itching for confrontation and looking for justification of terror, which prompted the U.S. embassy in Cairo to release the following statement condemning the video before any attacks on the Cairo embassy:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

Four hours after the release of this statement crowds stormed the embassy, destroyed the U.S. flag and replaced it with an Islamic flag. By issuing such a statement, the US embassy in Cairo took the bait and provided the excuse Islamists needed. The anger in Egypt about the 2-month-old video, which had to come out exactly on the eve of 9/11, should have been proof enough that it was only an excuse.

Having been born and raised in the Muslim world, I know that Islamic anger and terror against the West lurks and lies in wait for any excuse to explode at the culture that is the object of their jihad. Jihad, once the pride of the Islamic world, is now an international crime that Muslims have learned to camouflage as self-defense. Not one mosque Friday sermon in the Middle East is devoid of cursing the non-Muslim (kafir) enemies of Islam. Since jihad is a violation of the rights of others, nations and individuals, Muslim culture has become all too eager to assert its victimization by others, for an opportunity to exploit the weakness of its prey — a flinch or apology — which it considers a signal to engage in holy violence.

When anyone dares to say jihad means violence, the so-called moderate Muslims are outraged, but manage to look the other way when violence is committed in the name of Islam. The more some Muslims terrorize, while others stand by in denial, the more they confuse, soften and weaken their victim. While one face of Islam is doing the terror, the other face tells the world: “We love peace and don’t you dare judge us by our terrorists because if you do we will riot, burn and kill.” One fact remains: both faces of Islam work hand in glove and one cannot survive without the other.

Muslims have learned from their history that terror works. They have also learned that for terror to achieve its goal of surrender of the prey, the Islamic tender touch must accompany the terror — the Islamic father holds the stick and the Islamic mother hugs while the father inflicts the beating.

The American people have been traumatized by 9/11 but many have not found comfort and legitimization to their pain. And now we have an American president who refuses to make the American people the number one recipients of his empathy, preferring to cater to the outside world and to indulge the cat and mouse game jihadists are playing with American sensibilities. Many in the American mainstream media and government have taken the Islamic bait and turned against the victims of Islam, whether they are the American people, Coptic Egyptians or apostates of Islam. To those who think they know better, all those mentioned above are simply Islamophobes. They have denied the American people the right to identify their enemy and eradicate it. They have turned a blind eye to American victims of terror and their families and neglected that America is in need of a healing process based on justice. They have even added insult to injury by telling the American people that they are to blame and by refusing to treat Americans as adults worthy of justice, accountability and calling a spade a spade.

America, with its superpower knowledge and status, has fallen for the old tricks of Islamic culture; many Americans believe they must have done something wrong to deserve terror.

Many Americans have reacted to 9/11 as the infamous Stockholm Syndrome victims, blaming each other but never the perpetrator of the terror; America is now a polarized country unable to stand up and call the terror attack by name. That old Arab trick has always worked on many cultures. Just ask the Coptic Christians when Egypt used to be a Christian nation and a superpower.

Consciously or unconsciously, the American people elected their first president after 9/11/01, Barack Hussein Obama, a man proud of his Islamic heritage and who believes that because of his unique heritage and understanding of Islam, he is best fit for bringing about reconciliation with Islam, at least during his administration.

But when that did not happen and the 9/11 terror was repeated under Obama’s watch, both Obama’s credibility and Islamic excuses were threatened. Obama’s legacy of being the only president in recent history who managed to have no major terror attack during his presidency was destroyed. He now has nothing to show for changing the American-Muslim world relationship. He now cannot say that everything he did was worth it for the sake of peace, and that those who criticized his appeasement, for bowing to the Saudi kind and for his Cairo speech, were right.

Obama was aiming for a legacy of peace with Islam, but that legacy came crashing down with the terror attacks on 9/11/12. The Muslim world was obviously disappointed with Obama who was not appeasing them enough. The Muslim world always wants more; more than what Obama or any other president can give them. They don’t want co-existence, they want surrender.

Obama’s theory failed. He overestimated himself and his belief that he understands the Muslim world. His belief that he would show future presidents how to do it failed.

In desperation, Obama pursued a policy of denial in an attempt to save face. He went as far as telling the American people, just like many Muslims do, that terrorism is really not terrorism and that it must be because of a logical reason and that Muslims are reasonable people without an agenda of jihad.

The video became the handy excuse not only for the Egyptian people to save face, but also for the Obama administration to save face. If that came at the expense of the truth, or the lives of American diplomats, then so be it. Many Americans are proud they finally have their first black president, but to me, an American born and raised in Egypt, I see many similarities between Obama and Arab leaders I grew up with. Obama would be best described as the first Arab president.

[Crafty_Dog]

Hat tip to our Big Dog for this:

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p19129.xml

This is a remarkable story and worthy of some serious speculation.

Amongst the thoughts that occur to me:

Bret Baier of FOX (who has my genuine respect) did a one hour special on the Benghazi brouhaha on Friday night and I remember him mentioning that the attackers had foreign accents.   Agents of the Asad?!?

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/first-aid-the-living.htm

First, Aid the Living
Written by Bing West
NATIONAL REVIEW October 22, 2012
 
A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why?
 
On September 11, at about 10 p.m. Libyan time (4 p.m. in Washington), Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small staff were inside our consulate in Benghazi when terrorists attacked. The consulate staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and numerous military headquarters monitored the entire battle in real time via the phone calls from Benghazi and video from a drone overhead.
 
Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack, while the CIA falsely attributed the assault to an imaginary mob enraged by a YouTube video. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.
 
By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing. In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying six American and 16 Afghan security guards. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

At 5 p.m., President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the Oval Office. The U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily, was 480 miles away from Benghazi. Stationed at Sigonella were Special Operations Forces, transport aircraft, and attack aircraft — a much more formidable force than 22 men from the embassy.
 
In the past, presidents have taken immediate actions to protect Americans. In 1984, President Reagan ordered U.S. pilots to force an airliner carrying terrorists to land at Sigonella. Reagan acted inside a 90-minute window while the aircraft with the terrorists was in the air. The Obama national-security team had seven hours in which to move forces from Sigonella to Benghazi.
 
Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as the CIA wrongly speculated, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.
 
In the meantime, the terrorists - untrained and poorly led by American standards - were proving to be lethal. They forced the Americans to abandon the Benghazi consulate, with the ambassador still missing, and fall back to an annex a mile away. When the terrorist gang followed the Americans, looters took the opportunity to ransack the empty consulate. But when they found Ambassador Stevens unconscious on the floor, they stopped looting and rushed him to a hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors could not save his life. Not knowing who he was, they took the cell phone from his pocket and called numbers. By about two in the morning, the American embassy received word that the ambassador was dead.
 
About the same time, the 22 reinforcements from the embassy in Tripoli arrived at the Benghazi airport. They drove to the annex to assist in its defense against persistent terrorist attacks. Around 4 a.m. Libyan time — six hours into the fight — enemy mortar rounds killed two of the defenders on the roof of the annex. If even one F18 had been on station, it would have detected the location of the enemy fire and attacked. The fight - that began at 10 p.m. - persisted until dawn, when the Libyan militia came to the aid of the Americans.
 
For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve. Secretary of State Clinton has said the responsibility was hers. But there has been no assertion that the State Department overruled the Pentagon out of concern about the sovereignty of Libyan air space. Instead, it appears passive groupthink prevailed, with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam.
 
Firefights, however, wax and wane from dusk to dawn. You cannot predict ahead of time when they will stop. Therefore a combat commander will take immediate action, presuming reinforcements will be needed.
 
The administration wrongly blamed a mob for the attack. Yet ironically, Mr. Obama’s chances of reelection would have plummeted were it not for the human decency of a mob that took the ambassador to the hospital before the terrorists returned. If the terrorists had taken his body and, with no Special Operations Forces hot on their trail, taunted America the next day — claiming the ambassador was still alive — the Benghazi tragedy would have escalated into an international disaster.
 
Why did the National Security Council watch passively for seven hours while our ambassador and three other Americans died?
 
— A former assistant secretary of defense, Bing West is co-author of Into the Fire: a Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle of the Afghanistan War

[Crafty_Dog]

*White House knew al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for deadly Libya attack just TWO HOURS later, emails reveal* (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222247/White-House-knew-al-Qaeda-linked-group-claimed-responsibility-deadly-Libya-attack-just-TWO-HOURS-later-emails-reveal.html?ito=feeds-newsxml)


Officials at the White House and State Department were alerted two hours after attackers stormed the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the assault, emails show.

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief missives also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

The three emails in questions were sent on the afternoon of September 11 by the State Department's Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI.

The first email, timed at 4.05pm Washington time - or 10.05pm Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line ‘U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack’ and the notation ‘SBU,’ meaning ‘Sensitive But Unclassified.’

The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was ‘under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.’

The message continued: ‘Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.’

At 4.54pm Washington time, a second email was fired off, headed ‘Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi’ said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that ‘the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.’ It said a ‘response team’ was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6.07pm, carried the subject line: ‘Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.’

The message reported: ‘Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.’

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a ‘terrorist’ attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of ‘extremists,’ they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.

Fourteen hours after the attack, President Obama sat down with Steve Kroft of ‘60 Minutes’ for an interview and said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence, CBS reported.

‘You're right that this is not a situation that was -- exactly the same as what happened in Egypt and my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start,’ Obama said.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials 'carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.'

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

‘Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,’ the official said.
---End Quote---

[objectivist1]

Obama’s Benghazi Investigator: An Iran Sympathizer

Posted By Matthew Vadum On October 24, 2012 - www.frontpagemag.com

The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.”

The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found that “scores” of known radical Islamists met with senior Obama administration officials during hundreds of visits to the White House.

Pickering’s appointment as probe chairman was announced in the Federal Register on October 4. The State Department “Accountability Review Board” headed by Pickering is tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012 deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The problem is that Pickering has ties to the pro-Iran Islamist front group known as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC lost an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Pickering is a member of the advisory board of NIAC. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from May 1997 through the end of 2000, according to a 2009 report titled “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by Clare M. Lopez of the Center for Security Policy. He’s also vice chairman of international consultancy, Hills & Co., and co-chairman of the board of directors of the International Crisis Group (whose executive committee includes George Soros).

“Ambassador Pickering’s positions on Iran include calls for bilateral talks without preconditions and a plan for a multinational uranium enrichment consortium in Iran,” Lopez writes. “Iran has proposed a similar plan to the UN Security Council. Ambassador Pickering advocates a process leading to mutual diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States.”

“U.S. national security policy is being successfully targeted by Jihadist entities hostile to American interests,” she writes. One of these groups, NIAC, is involved in “a de facto partnership” with its better known but more notorious jihadist ally “the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations serving as mouthpieces for the mullahs’ party line.”

This network “includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world.” NIAC and its predecessor group, the American-Iranian Council, have long “functioned openly as apologists for the Iranian regime.”

CAIR is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and was named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation trials.

The panel discussion featured Pickering, Arab American Institute president James J. Zogby, American Association for Muslim Advancement executive director Daisy Khan, and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative.

Khan and Rauf are prime movers behind the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

Khan is known for her over-the-top attacks on those who question the wisdom of building a Muslim holy site so close to the place where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in an Islamist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Asked in 2010 if America was “Islamophobic,” Khan replied that “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims,” she said.

Of course use of the word “Islamophobia” is a tool of intimidation, calculated to silence the so-called Islamophobe.

If one fears Islamist ideology as an irredentist, imperialist, totalitarian force, one is rational. “Phobia” implies that one who fears or is skeptical of the intentions of Muslims is mentally unbalanced. The term is used the same way American leftists use the word “racist” to shut down debate.

While two George Soros-funded nonprofits, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, are working overtime to try to convince Americans that this make-believe mental illness of Islamophobia is a threat to American democracy and pluralism, the embattled Obama administration has been in damage control mode for weeks as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses. The administration has been sucking up to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a 57-state (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority) group that considers itself the Caliphate reborn.

Americans’ civil rights and political correctness are weapons of infiltration used by our Islamofascist enemies. Just like our Soviet Communist enemies during the Cold War, Islamists are using Americans’ goodness and their sense of fair play, including an aversion to being accused of racial stereotyping, against America.

Hard data do not support claims that Islamophobia exists in the United States.

As Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary last year: “the notion of a rising wave of hatred against Muslims is unsupported by any statistical research.”

“When you consider that Muslims claim to have about the same number of adherents in this country as Jews and that anti-Jewish crimes have always far outnumbered those committed against Muslims, the media hysteria about Islamophobia is exposed as a big lie. But even if there are fewer Muslims here than their groups claim, the conclusion is unchanged.”

And there is credible evidence that Obama, who told the UN last month that “the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” is sympathetic to Islamists’ increasingly vocal demands for Saudi-style anti-blasphemy laws.

So, apparently, is Ambassador Pickering, which makes him unfit to head any probe of what happened last month in Benghazi, Libya.

[Crafty_Dog]

Very interesting Obj.  A friend whose background in these things I greatly respect writes me as follows:

Syria’s puppet master would be Iran.  It takes a twelver (Ahmedinejad) to know a twelver (Assad the Alawi).

Obama tried to score election points by conflating the alleged motivation for the Cairo protests with the attack on the Benghazi consulate.  Recall that the Obama administration and campaign went after Romney’s quick criticism of the Egyptian embassy’s posted statement that condemned the video even after the “protesters” in Cairo had forcibly entered the embassy grounds and raised the al Qaida flag on the embassy flagpole.  In order to deflect the creepy similarity between the Cairo act and the 1979 seizure of our embassy in Teheran, Obama argued a valid provocation – just as he argued in Cairo in 2009 that the 1953 coup in Iran ousting Mossadegh and reinstating the Shah gave some sort of justification for the 33 years of state sponsored terrorism by the Mullahs-Revolutionary Guard combination that has ruled Iran since Carter permitted the Shah’s overthrow in 1979.

In reality, none of the 9/11/12 events happened by coincidence.  Was it a mere coincidence that Zawahiri’s brother was in the mob that overran the Cairo embassy grounds and raised the al Qaida flag?  These guys do not operate that way.  They did not operate that way in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania.  They did not operate that way in 2001 when they assassinated Massound in Afghanistan on 9/9/01 and two days later attacked the US.  Massoud was a Tajik Sunni who was fighting against the Pashtu and their client militia led by Hekmatyar, the Iranian sponsored head of the Hezb–e-Islami “political party.”  If that name sounds like something else, it should.  Hezbollah.

Instead of saying nothing, the Obama administration launched a political assault on Romney by claiming that our Libyan ambassador was killed by a mob that was out of control due to a You Tube video that had a total of 505 hits when I viewed it on the morning of 9/12/12.  Isn’t it interesting that 505 hits on a video could spark tens of thousands of Muslims to riot against it and assault our embassies in Egypt and Tunisia as well as our Benghazi consulate?

Stevens very well could have been involved in efforts to retrieve arms from the Libyan rebels and ship them to the Syrian rebels.  

More importantly, it showed extremely poor judgment by the administration to speculate publicly about any hypothesis for the Benghazi assault before all of the facts were known.  They put out a false story about the mob.  Obama’s political motive was to deflect attention away from his 9/11 memorial speech at the Pentagon 7 hours before the Benghazi attack.  In that speech, he said, “Al Qaeda's leadership has been devastated and Osama bin Laden will never threaten us again.”  He also stated, "No act of terrorism can ever change what we stand for."  Seven hours later, the successors to Osama bin Laden replied.

===================

and here's another source for this one:  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/state-dept-email-white-house-607-pm-91112-ansar-al-sharia-claims-responsibility

[G M]

Where is the autopsy?

[objectivist1]

G M:  THAT is the burning question - I agree.  WHERE are the autopsy results???  I don't trust ANYTHING being reported about how these guys died until/unless we see the autopsy reports.  It is very significant that nothing has been released regarding this.  If I were a family member, I would demand that the body exhumed for autopsy - assuming it has already been buried in Arlington - which I believe is the case.  My guess is that this administration is blocking this at every turn with whatever excuse they can come up with to get past the election.

[G M]

I have no doubt the bodies were autopsied within 48-72 hours of being recovered, if not sooner. The report is being sat on, clearly.

[G M]

According to the State Department rep, there is currently no time frame as to when the results of Steven's autopsy will be released. 

Read more: PICKET: UPDATE - AFP not behind report of purported rape of murdered U.S. ambassador to Libya - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/sep/13/picket-report-murdered-us-ambassador-libya-reporte/

[G M]

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/24/senate-intel-vice-chair-weve-been-demanding-these-e-mails-since-the-benghazi-attack/

Senate Intel vice chair: We’ve been demanding these e-mails since the Benghazi attack
posted at 12:01 pm on October 24, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

If the scoop from Reuters last night surprised Americans with the knowledge that the intel community knew that the Benghazi attack was not a spontaneous demonstration that spun out of control, no one was more surprised than Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Saxby Chambliss.  His committee has been requesting those e-mails for weeks, and Chambliss to Fox and Friends that the information in them shows why they demanded them in the first place.

“At the very least,” Brian Kilmeade asks, “this shows a massive disconnect [between the intel community and the administration], doesn’t it?”  “No question,” Chambliss answers, but he’s more concerned about how the White House handled the issue.  “We got pushback, both  from the White House and the intelligence community, early on.  We couldn’t figure it out.  I mean, that was really strange — because they never do that.”  Chambliss now wants hearings in the Senate to pursue why these e-mails, and perhaps other intel, have been held back from Congress:

This points to a few possible conclusions.  Either the White House and the intel community kept Congress out of the loop because they didn’t want to admit that terrorists had successfully attacked an American diplomatic mission for the first time in fourteen years, or because they didn’t know themselves what the data meant.  Neither is particularly commendatory, although the latter looks a lot less dishonest.  Nevertheless, despite having this detailed description of the attack and the fairly credible claim of credit for the attack from a leading terrorist network in the immediate area within two hours of the start of the attack, the White House chose to repeatedly claim that they had “no evidence” that the sacking was a planned terrorist attack for most of the next two weeks.  That looks a lot more dishonest with every revelation that comes out in this issue.
That leaves the questions of the provenance of the revelations themselves.  If the intel community was reticent about discussing what it knew and when it knew it, at least someone in that group wants the real story to come out.  Those e-mails didn’t get leaked by anyone who was in the Situation Room that night and received them, certainly.
Update: Dave Weigel pushes back against the assumption that the Obama administration argued that they had “no evidence of terrorist attack”:
In the same story that breaks the news and gives readers the e-mails, CBS News prints an unaired answer that Obama gave Steve Kroft on September 12. It was his first interview after the attacks.
You’re right that this is not a situation that was — exactly the same as what happened in Egypt and my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start.
The next day, Obama was in Colorado, where he addressed the killings in Libya.
A couple of days ago, for four Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Libya… So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice. I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished.Obama didn’t pretend that this was merely “a protest that got out of hand.” The trouble, when we look back at the timeline, is that reporters didn’t really glom onto the Libya story for a few days. When they did, by the Sunday shows and September 19, you had administration spokespeople soft-peddling the “target Americans from the start” story.
However, by the time we get to Sunday, September 16th, we have Susan Rice saying this, which has been proven categorically false:

… But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy–
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
SUSAN RICE: –sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that– in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.
And this:
But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo.
And Jay Carney saying this two days later at a White House press briefing, emphasis mine:

MR. CARNEY: No, I’m saying that based on information that we — our initial information, and that includes all information — we saw no evidence to back up claims by others that this was a preplanned or premeditated attack; that we saw evidence that it was sparked by the reaction to this video. And that is what we know thus far based on the evidence, concrete evidence — not supposition — concrete evidence that we have thus far. But there is a lot that is under investigation here, and as more facts come to light, if they change that assessment, we’ll make that clear. But there’s an active investigation for a reason — so that we actually get the facts and don’t base our policy prescriptions on suppositions about what we think we know happened as opposed to what actually happened.
Q Would the administration still say that it was spontaneous?
MR. CARNEY: Based on the information that we have now, it was — there was a reaction to the video — there was protests in Cairo, then followed by protests elsewhere, including Benghazi, and that that was what led to the original unrest. The other factors here — all factors — but the other factors here, including participants in the unrest, participants in the violence, are under investigation. And the goal of that investigation is both to find out what happened and why, but also to track down and bring to justice those who killed four Americans. And we’re working with our Libyan counterparts to ensure that that happens, as the President committed it would.
Bear in mind that since this time, we have discovered that the State Department watched this unfold in real time and has video of the attack which is still hasn’t shared with Congress. The CIA station chief told them in a cable 24 hours later that this was a terrorist attack, and that they even knew who had commanded it. Finally, we have last night’s revelation that the Situation Room got e-mails from the intel community while the attack was underway that clearly gave evidence that this was no spontaneous demonstration gone amok. They had plenty of evidence — “concrete evidence,” to use Jay Carney’s terminology — that the sacking of the consulate and assassination of our Ambassador was a planned terrorist attack.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://entertainment.verizon.com/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CDA24Q0NG1%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1018

[G M]

http://entertainment.verizon.com/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CDA24Q0NG1%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1018

LIES. They had real time drone footage and an AC130U gunship ready to provide air support while they fought for their lives. Permission for air support denied.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/10/26/ac-130u-gunship-was-on-scene-in-benghazi-obama-admin-refused-to-let-it-fire/?singlepage=true

AC-130U Gunship was On-Scene in Benghazi, Obama Admin Refused to Let It Fire (Updated) by
Bob Owens

Bio
October 26, 2012 - 9:50 amTweet     If you don’t get torches-and-pitchforks irate about this, you are not an American:

The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

There were two AC-130Us deployed to Libya in March as part of Operation Unified Protector.

The AC-130U is a very effective third-generation fire-support aircraft, capable of continuous and extremely accurate fire onto multiple targets. It has been used numerous times in Iraq and Afghanistan to save pinned-down allied forces, and has even been credited with the surrender of the Taliban city of Kunduz

It was purpose-built for a select number of specific mission types, including point-defense against enemy attack. It was literally built for the kind of mission it could have engaged in over Benghazi, if the administration had let it fire. As the excerpt above clearly shows, we had assets on the ground “painting” the targets with the laser.

An AC-130U flies in a counter-clockwise “pivot turn” around the target, with the weapons all aimed out the left side of the aircraft.

There are two state-of-the-art fire-control systems (FCSs) in a AC-130U, using television sensors,infrared sensors, and synthetic aperture strike radar. These fire control systems can see through the dark of night, clouds, and smoke.

The two FCSs on the AC-130U control a 25mm Gatling gun for area suppression, a precision 40mm cannon, and a 105mm cannon which can engage hard targets.

What this means is that we have the forces in the air and on the ground to have stopped the attack at any point, eliminating the terrorists and saving American lives.

See video of AC-130 engaging in a live fire exercise on next page.

Update (Bryan): Here is an AC-130 engaging in a live fire exercise. The crackling sound you hear is its extreme rate of fire.

 
Update: BlackFive confirmed with a retired Delta operator: The fact that ground personnel were painting the target says there was a Spectre on station.

Having spent a good bit of time nursing a GLD (ground Laser Designator) in several garden spots around the world, something from the report jumped out at me.
One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target.  That means that Specter WAS ON STATION!  Probably an AC130U.  A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser.  You do not “paint” a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.
Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.
If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta [sic] says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.
If that SEAL was actively “painting” a target; something was on station to engage!  And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!

[G M]

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/26/father-of-former-navy-seal-tyrone-woods-i-do-not-appreciate-cowardice-lies/

Father of fallen Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods: I do not appreciate cowardice, lies
posted at 3:21 pm on October 26, 2012 by Mary Katharine Ham

From Megyn Kelly’s “America Live” today, Charlie Woods, who lost his son in the attack on the Benghazi consulate, reacts to the latest news that CIA command refused to send help. Speaking very calmly, Woods said his son deserves the same moral courage from the country’s leaders that he displayed in giving his life to save his fellow Americans:

“This is not about politics … if it were about politics, it would dishonor my son’s death. It’s about honor, integrity and justice,” he said.

“This news that he disobeyed his orders does not surprise me. My son was an American hero, and he had the moral strength to do what was right … even if it would have professionally cost him his job, even if it would have cost him his life.”

Woods went on to say that while he forgives those who gave the orders that indirectly led to his son’s death, he wishes they would take a lesson from the young former SEAL’s courage.
The interview speaks for itself, so I’ll let it. I honor Tyrone Woods’ sacrifice, and after hearing his father speak, I’m not surprised he raised a hero.

[Crafty_Dog]

*EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/)*

By Jennifer Griffin

Published October 26, 2012

FoxNews.com

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

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

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

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

A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they were never told to deploy. In fact, a Pentagon official says there were never any requests to deploy assets from outside the country. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Spectre gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.

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

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

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

U.S. officials argue that there was a period of several hours when the fighting stopped before the mortars were fired at the annex, leading officials to believe the attack was over.

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

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

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

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

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

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9tXekIVTsc&feature=player_embedded

[Crafty_Dog]

AC-130U Gunship was On-Scene in Benghazi, Obama Admin Refused to Let It Fire (Updated)


If you don’t get torches-and-pitchforks irate about this, you are not an American:


Quote:
The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators. 

There were two AC-130Us deployed to Libya in March as part of Operation Unified Protector.

The AC-130U is a very effective third-generation fire-support aircraft, capable of continuous and extremely accurate fire onto multiple targets. It has been used numerous times in Iraq and Afghanistan to save pinned-down allied forces, and has even been credited with the surrender of the Taliban city of Kunduz

It was purpose-built for a select number of specific mission types, including point-defense against enemy attack. It was literally built for the kind of mission it could have engaged in over Benghazi, if the administration had let it fire. As the excerpt above clearly shows, we had assets on the ground “painting” the targets with the laser.

An AC-130U flies in a counter-clockwise “pivot turn” around the target, with the weapons all aimed out the left side of the aircraft.

There are two state-of-the-art fire-control systems (FCSs) in a AC-130U, using television sensors,infrared sensors, and synthetic aperture strike radar. These fire control systems can see through the dark of night, clouds, and smoke.

The two FCSs on the AC-130U control a 25mm Gatling gun for area suppression, a precision 40mm cannon, and a 105mm cannon which can engage hard targets.

What this means is that we have the forces in the air and on the ground to have stopped the attack at any point, eliminating the terrorists and saving American lives.

Update: BlackFive confirmed with a retired Delta operator: The fact that ground personnel were painting the target says there was a Spectre on station.


Quote:
Having spent a good bit of time nursing a GLD (ground Laser Designator) in several garden spots around the world, something from the report jumped out at me.
One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target. That means that Specter WAS ON STATION! Probably an AC130U. A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser. You do not “paint” a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.
Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.
If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta [sic] says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.
If that SEAL was actively “painting” a target; something was on station to engage! And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS! 

[objectivist1]

WANTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER AND TREACHERY

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 26, 2012 - www.frontpagemag.com

Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, said in an interview, “And apparently even the State Department had a live stream and was aware of their calls for help.  This was my son, he wasn’t even there.  He was at a safe house about a mile away.  He got the distress call.  He heard them crying for help.  That’s why he and Glenn risked their lives to go that extra mile just to take care of the situation.  And I’m sure that she wasn’t the only one that received that distress call: “Come save our lives.”

When I heard that there’s a very good chance that the White House as well as other members of the military knew what was going on, and obviously someone had to say, “Don’t go rescue them.” Because every person in the military, their first response is, “We’re going to go rescue them.” We need to find out who it was that gave that command.”

So who gave that command?

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that three urgent requests from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. Consulate and subsequent attack nearly seven hours later were denied by officials in the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

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

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

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

Now we know who is taking responsibility for denying support to the consulate and the safe house.

The photo, which is the official one put out by DOD, from the press conference held by Panetta and General Dempsey is horribly eloquent in terms of body language.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended the failure to go in by claiming that the issue was a lack of reliable intel, despite the fact that they had multiple distress calls and a drone overhead.

Blaming a lack of reliable intel is fine if you want to pull away from intervening in Syria, but not when a US diplomatic facility and its personnel are under sustained attack. And how much intel was really needed to send two jets to buzz the area and possibly scare off some of the attackers, who would not have posed any threat to the aircraft?

Although forces were on alert and ready to launch an operation if needed, the US military commander for Africa, General Carter Ham, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, and Panetta all decided against any intervention as they had no clear picture of events unfolding in Benghazi, he said.

So the buck has been passed to Panetta and Dempsey and Ham. Dempsey is a soulless administration toady and Ham is deeply invested in Libya. Panetta is a Clintonite who is completely expendable, especially if the charges get pinned to Hillary. But Panetta still seems filled with self-loathing and Dempsey looks disgusted with him.

Not doing something because there is no intel is a common excuse in these circles when they don’t want to do something. Just as with Iran, there would never have been enough intel.

And how much intel was needed really? Benghazi had an extended profile and was the cause of the entire Libyan war. The consulate had an extensive intelligence apparatus and the declassified cables we’ve seen are a fraction of the actual classified cables that would have been at Panetta, Dempsey and Ham’s disposal.

They knew about the Islamist militias and had descriptions of their armament from the RSO’s reports. They didn’t know the exact number of attackers or every single possible detail, but you can never really know everything before going in.

“There’s a basic principle here, and the basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told a news conference.

But there were already forces in harm’s way, who were trying to provide some real time intel from their point of view. What Panetta means is that the decision was made not to send aid to them, and it wasn’t about risking more lives, but about the politics of intervening in Libya and offending the Libyans. It was done for the same reason that US soldiers have at times been abandoned without air support in Afghanistan.

“I feel confident that our forces were alert and responsive to what was a very fluid situation,” General Dempsey said, which is one of those strange statements that leaders issue after a complete screw up.

The full transcript of the conference was fairly well hidden on the site, but turned up here, it shows the full exchanges.

  Q:  Can I follow up on that?  One of the reasons we’ve heard that there wasn’t a more robust response right away is that there wasn’t a clear intelligence picture over Benghazi, to give you the idea of where to put what forces.

But when there was, in fact, a drone over the CIA annex and there were intelligence officials fighting inside the annex, I guess the big question is, with those two combined assets, why there wasn’t a clear intelligence picture that would have given you what you needed to make some moves, for instance, flying, you know, F-16s over the area to disperse fighters or — or dropping more special forces in.

SEC. PANETTA:  You know, let me — let me speak to that, because I’m sure there’s going to be — there’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here.

We — we quickly responded, as General Dempsey said, in terms of deploying forces to the region. We had FAST platoons in the region. We had ships that we had deployed off of Libya. And we were prepared to respond to any contingency and certainly had forces in place to do that.

But — but the basic principle here — basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place. And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, General Ham, General Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.

Q:  So the drone, then, and the forces inside the annex weren’t giving enough of a clear picture is what you’re saying.

SEC. PANETTA:  This — this happened within a few hours and it was really over before, you know, we had the opportunity to really know what was happening.

[Crafty_Dog]

The word "treason" is a powerful word, and one which should be used with great care.  Perhaps I am too emotional in this moment, but frankly I genuinely seethe at what genuinely appears to be the lies of Orwellian magnitude of Obama et al in all of this; therefore I paste the following even as I sincerely admit to the possibility that it goes to far.
=====================================

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
 -Marcus Tullius Cicero

====================
The following URL has some relevant video clips on it, but I paste the text here in case somehow the page is disappeared down a memory hole.
http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/2012/10/27/weekend-edition-it-was-treason-arrest-obama/



Weekend Edition: IT WAS TREASON – Arrest Obama
 By Craig Andresen on October 27, 2012 at 5:13 am


Last Thursday, I wrote an article titled, “Obama & Libya – A Case Study in Treason” and in that article I stated, “When a president fails to lift a finger to protect Americans, at home or abroad, in the face of overwhelming intelligence and evidence, by ignoring obvious warning signs and the advice of those entrusted to offer such protection…”
 
“It is treason.”
 
I meant every word and yes, I am well aware of the weight of the word, “treason.”
 
I do not nor have I ever used it lightly. I see that word bandied about on social media and while I understand full well the passion of those who use it, I rarely, if ever, believe that the issues to which it is applied, truly rise to that level.
 
This situation, in Libya, I am convinced…Does.
 
To explain, let’s first look at the legal definition and it’s context within our Constitution.
 
Definition of Treason in the Constitution:
 
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
 
Legal Definition of Treason:
 
The betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.
 
Under Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution:
 
Any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them Aid and Comfort has committed treason within the meaning of the Constitution. The term aid and comfort refers to any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information. If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.
 
Day by day…Nearly hour by hour, we learn more about what transpired in Benghazi on 9-11-12.
 
Yesterday, we learned a truly horrific truth.
 


As the first shots rang out at our Consulate, the calls for help, coming from the “safe” annex were sent to Washington.
 
Not once.
 
Not twice.
 
Three times, Tyrone Woods and a CIA operative, at the annex, called for help and asked permission to go TO the Consulate to offer assistance…To fight.
 
Washington denied them.
 
Not once.
 
Not twice.
 
Three times, Washington denied them help or permission to join the fight.
 
After the third denial, Ex Navy Seal, Tyrone Woods, went against the direct order to stand down and, he stood up.
 
Tyrone Woods went to the Consulate defying a direct order and he got as many of our personnel out of there as he could…Including the body of State Department officer Sean Smith.
 
Tyrone Woods could not find Ambassador Stevens.
 
Tyrone Woods took those he rescued and the body of Mr. Smith back to the annex where he was joined shortly after by Glen Doherty, another Ex Navy Seal who had just arrived from Tripoli.
 
A few hours later, that annex came under fire from terrorists now believed to be Ansar al-Sharia, a well known affiliate of al Qaeda.
 
We also learned yesterday that Woods and Doherty were on the roof of the annex and from their vantage point, could see the position of the mortars being fired at them. They “painted” that position with a laser used to guide weapons from military aircraft.
 
Military aircraft that were not coming to help.
 
Those aircraft, from Italy, which could have included Blackhawk helicopters and a C-130 gun ship, had also been ordered, from Washington, to stand down.
 
For those unfamiliar with a C-130 gunship, it is one of the most feared weapons in our military. The C-130 is specifically designed for close air support roles include supporting ground troops, escorting convoys, and flying urban operations. Air interdiction missions are conducted against planned targets and targets of opportunity. Force protection missions include defending bases and other facilities.
 
As far as the enemy is concerned…When a C-130 gunship comes into the picture…Hell comes with it.
 
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke on Thursday and, as a reason for NOT sending help, stated: “The basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place. And as a result of not having that kind of information…[we] felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
 
The problem is this.
 
We DID have real-time information. Those in the State Department were literally watching the terrorist attack happen live via video link AND we had what we now know were 2 unmanned drones over the attack site in Benghazi. If that’s not enough, at the annex, less than a mile away, we had a Navy Seal, Tyrone Woods AND a CIA operative.
 
By the time the second wave of the attack began, at the annex, we had the CIA operative and 2 Navy Seals, Woods and Doherty and THEY were “painting” the position of the mortar launches with a laser used to guide the very weapons that a Blackhawk or C-130 could have brought to bear.
 
If that’s not enough, our military is the most highly trained military on earth. Those who fly those ships of war train each and every day for exactly the sort of eventually that was transpiring that night in Benghazi. Their very job is to go into harm’s way.
 
Combined…all of this lays waist to Panetta’s explanation and reduces it to nothing but a bald faced, unadulterated lie.
 
Back to treason.
 
For an act of treason to occur, a state of war must exist.
 
We are indeed at war. In Afghanistan, we are currently engaged in war against al Qaeda.  Ansar al-Sharia IS a well-known al Qaeda affiliate and Ansar al-Sharia was attacking our consulate and annex, both considered American soil.
 
For an act of treason to be committed, one must manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information.
 
There are some 20,000 shoulder fired rockets, RPG’s and other heavy weapons MISSING that were provided to Libyan rebels in the attempt to oust Gaddafi from power. We didn’t know WHO those rebels were at the time we armed them and, in fact, within hours of Gaddafi’s death, the flags of al Qaeda were flying in Benghazi.
 
Furthermore, in cables from security personnel in the months leading up TO the fatal attack, it was clearly stated that those al Qaeda flags were still flying over several government buildings in Benghazi.
 
Also, regarding an act of treason, If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.
 
The order for Navy Seal Tyrone Wood to stand down, the orders to our military in Italy to stand down and the repeated…not once…Not twice but…Three denials of help from Washington does, by any definition, equate to a “weakening of the power to resist its enemies.”
 
During the 2nd debate, when a question regarding Libya was posed, Obama responded:
 
“Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job  but, she works for Me. I’m the president. I’m always responsible.”
 
The State Department was watching the attack live, in real-time.
 
Emails were sent to some 400 people in Washington DURING the attack, in real-time.
 
Among the recipients of those emails was the White House Situation room.  At the time those emails arrived at the White House Situation Room, Obama was meeting with his Security Team.  Obama says that HE is the president and HE is responsible.
 
I am sensing a very, very…VERY short chain of command here.
 
The calls for help from the CIA operative and Tyrone Woods were NOT ignored and did NOT go unanswered. The requests to enter the fight from bases in Italy were NOT ignored and did NOT go unanswered.
 
All were DENIED.
 
That shows a purposeful action.
 
All of those calls for help and requests for deployment were DENIED purposefully.
 
The result was that our enemy, those conducting the operation against our Consulate, our annex, our assets and our personnel in Benghazi, was aided…AIDED…by a purposeful lack of response…DIRECTED FROM THE HIGHEST LEVELS IN WASHINGTON.
 
Our Consulate in Benghazi was destroyed while Washington officials watched, received emails and denied calls for help in real-time.
 
4 Americans were killed while Washington officials watched, received emails and denied calls for help in real-time.
 
Whatever confidential papers or records contained in that Consulate were either destroyed or went missing while Washington officials watched, received emails and denied calls for help in real-time.
 
“…such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or CLASSIFIED INFORMATION…”
 
Who?
 
Who gave the willful and purposeful order to deny help when Navy Seal Tyrone Woods called?
 
Who?
 
Who gave the willful and purposeful order for Tyrone Woods and the CIA Operative to Stand Down?
 
Who?
 
Who gave the willful and purposeful order for our highly trained, apt and heavily armed military in Italy to stand down?
 
Who?
 
“Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job but, she works for ME. I’m the president. I’m always responsible.”
 
For the very life of me, I cannot conjure a single conclusion other than treason, brought about by political cowardice, for denying help not once, not twice but, three times in the midst of a terrorist attack and not one reason but treason, brought about by political cowardice, for the willful and purposeful order to those in a position to offer needed help in the midst of a terrorist attack, to stand down.
 
2 quotes come to mind. The first, from Marcus Tullius Cicero, describes the sort of man who would issue orders not to send help and for Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty to stand down in the face of the attack.
 
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
 
And the second, from John15:13, is the precise description of the last hours and minutes of the lives of Woods and Doherty.
 
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
 
Ultimately, only one person could have issued the orders not to help and for the military not to deploy.
 
Only one. Barack Obama.
 
Will ANY Member of Congress show the moral clarity and courage of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty? Will ANY Member of Congress stand AGAINST political cowardice and call this what it was?
 
An Act of Treason.
 
Craig Andresen
 
The National Patriot
 
Weekend Edition 10/27/12

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/retired-lt-col-my-sources-say-obama-was-in-the-room-watching-benghazi-attack-happen/

[Crafty_Dog]

IMHO, Hannity is an ass, but here's an interview with the dad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3NRiy19tYQY

[Crafty_Dog]

Third post:

Quite a bit of this is quite far out there, but there is so much about all of this that does not make sense and we have beeen lied to so much that we are left to try out different notions for size:

======================================================


*The hidden real truth about Benghazi (http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/50586)*

- Doug Hagmann (Bio and Archives)  Friday, October 26, 2012


Most people know that we’ve been lied to about the attacks in Benghazi, but few realize the extent of those lies or the hidden secrets they cover. After all, the lie is different at every level. Thanks to a well placed source with extensive knowledge about the attack, the disturbing truth is slowly beginning to emerge and is lining up with information contained in my previous articles published here weeks ago (Here, Here and Here). The truth reveals the most serious situation in the world today as it involves the interests and destinies of us all.

*A mosaic of lies*

According to the U.S. government, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed during a spontaneous protest at the consulate office in Benghazi by a frenzied crowd of Muslims outraged over an obscure internet video. Recently released “sensitive but not classified e-mails” from Stevens to the U.S. Department of State painted a picture of poor security for U.S. personnel and the embassy, which was obviously true but had little to do with the events of September 11, 2012. The failure to dispatch an extraction team or otherwise rescue the men during a firefight that lasted upwards of nine grueling and tortuous hours was not the result of any intelligence failure, but caused by our unwillingness to widen the conflict and expose the nature and scale of our true mission in Benghazi.

Based on information provided by my source and corroborated elsewhere, the official account by administration officials is a mosaic of lies that were necessary to cover the unpalatable truth of covert actions taking place in Libya, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The primary objective of our covert actions was to secretly arm anti-Assad “rebels” in Syria by funneling arms from Libya to Syria via Turkey, with other destinations that included Jordan and Lebanon.  Regarding the threat to Stevens and the other murdered Americans, the truth will reformat the persistent question posed to government officials, from UN Ambassador Susan Rice to White House Spokesman Jay Carney and others from “how could you not have known” to “how could you have done these things?”

First, it is important to understand that Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Dougherty and Tyrone Woods were not killed at a consulate office in Benghazi—as there is not such office there. They died at one of the largest CIA operations centers in the Middle East, which was located in Benghazi and served as the logistics headquarters for arms and weapons being shipped out of the post-Qaddafi Libya.

Although the U.S. government insisted that Stevens was involved in securing and destroying the numerous caches of arms and weapons once under the control of Qaddafi, the operation was more complex than that. The visual accounts of weapons being destroyed were indeed real, but those weapons were not operational. The working weapons were actually separated and transported to holding facilities for their eventual use in Syria. Russia was fully aware of this operation and warned the U.S. not to engage in the destabilization of Syria, as doing so would endanger their national security interests. Deposing Assad, as despotic as he might be, and replacing him with a Muslim Brotherhood-led regime would likely lead to unrestrained Islamic chaos across the region.

*The Turkish warning*

According to my source, Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 to meet with his Turkish counterpart, who reportedly warned Stevens that the operation was compromised. They met in person so that Stevens could be shown overhead satellite images, taken by the Russians, of nefarious activities taking place in Turkey. But just what were these nefarious activities?

It is reasonable to suspect that these activities were more dire than just your average “gun running” operation. Since the overthrow of Qaddafi, it is estimated that upwards of 40 million tons of weapons and arms were shipped out of Libya to Syria. But it was also known inside intelligence circles that Qaddafi possessed chemical weapons in addition to numerous surface-to-air missiles. Could it be that Russia obtained unmistakable surveillance footage of the anti-Assad “rebels” being shown how to load chemical payloads onto missiles inside Turkey near the border of Syria? Weapons, of course, that were shipped from Libya by the CIA in conjunction with various Muslim Brotherhood rebel groups.  If so, such weapons could be used as a “false flag” type of operation—one that would be implemented to “set-up” Assad by making it appear that he was using these weapons on forces dedicated to his overthrow.

The blowback by the international community would be swift and punishing, and the entirety of the civilized world would be demanding his overthrow. NATO would then be used to expedite his ouster, and Russia’s moral position within the international community would be weakened. Was the meeting held to show Stevens that the operation was compromised and that they had to stop?

*A Nation/State sponsored attack?*

While the administration asserts that the attack in Benghazi was conducted by a group of rebels acting alone, the facts seem to indicate otherwise. The level of coordination was such that we did not deploy military assets, located just an hour or two away by air, to rescue Stevens and the others at the CIA operations center in their time of need. If, as the administration contends, that the attack was perpetuated by a group of frenzied rebels, our military could have easily handled them in short order. So why was there no rescue operation?

Perhaps the statements made yesterday by Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense provides some insight if one analyzes the essence of those statements. Among other things, Panetta said that “...the basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on…” Well, it has been confirmed we did know what was taking place on the ground in Benghazi, so exactly what did Panetta mean by this statement?

Against the backdrop of the official story, it makes little sense. If, however, one considers the alternative, that the attack was coordinated and was a nation/state sponsored attack, then it becomes clearer. Panetta and the highest levels of this administration likely knew exactly what we were doing, and knew that the operation was compromised. They knew, or had reason to believe, that the attack was being conducted at a nation/state level in response to our covert operation in Libya and arming the anti-Assad Syrian opposition.

Although Russia figures prominently here, Iran now comes into focus as Russia is not likely to directly engage U.S. forces. They must, however, protect their interests. Much like we were using anti-Assad forces to advance our objectives in Syria, Russia was using Iranian-backed forces to protect theirs. It appears that the attacks were conducted or facilitated by Iranian assets—perhaps as many as three teams of assets in Benghazi.

As the White House and other agencies monitored intelligence in real-time, they faced a dilemma. They knew that the nation/state sponsored attack teams were lying in wait for U.S. rescue forces to arrive, which is the reason the fight did not conclusively end sooner. They did not know exactly where all of the attack teams were, but knew they were present based on signal communication intercepts. Could they risk such exposure by deploying a rescue team to Benghazi, only to end up with another Black Hawk down type scenario? In addition to that scenario, the entire operation now becomes exposed for what it is. Take another look at Panetta’s statement in that context. Does it now make more sense? Bad PR in an election year, no?

As daylight approached with no response from the U.S. and no aid to the Americans under fire, the attack teams had to disperse into the cover of the remaining darkness, but not before their mission was accomplished. And sadly, it was.

*Fallout*

From the day of attack in Benghazi, Iran has been engaged in a full spectrum attack on the U.S. and NATO across the board involving embassies, bombing and even cyber attacks. All of this is the fallout from the arms and weapons smuggling operation, which was far greater than understood by the Western media.

Russia has now moved their contingent of S-400 missiles into much of Syria in anticipation of NATO establishing an “air cap” over Syria. A ten-mile “buffer zone” along Syria’s border has been created for Syrian refugees, but it also acts as a catalyst for the encroachment into Syrian territory. It sets the stage for further advancement and erosion of Syrian land, incrementally, of course.

It is also of critical importance to note that last weekend, Russia completed large-scale exercises of their Strategic Nuclear Forces under the watchful command of President Vladimir Putin. These were the first such nuclear exercises conducted since the fall of the Soviet Union.

To those with discernment, it is obvious that we are at the precipice of World War III. Putin himself stated as much, noting that WW III will not start in Iran but Syria, his own “red line in the sand.”

[Crafty_Dog]

Fourth post
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbins-report/2012/oct/28/general-losing-his-job-over-benghazi/#ixzz2AbMGRENT

TRR: Is a General losing his job over Benghazi?
By James S. Robbins - The Washington Times
October 28, 2012, 12:32AM
 
 
Is an American General losing his job for trying to save the Americans besieged in Benghazi? This is the latest potential wrinkle in the growing scandal surrounding the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four men dead and President Obama scrambling for a coherent explanation.
 
On October 18, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared unexpectedly at an otherwise unrelated briefing on “Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force." News organizations and CSPAN were told beforehand there was no news value to the event and gave it scant coverage. In his brief remarks Mr. Panetta said, "Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.” This came as a surprise to many, since General Ham had only been in the position for a year and a half. The General is a very well regarded officer who made AFRICOM into a true Combatant Command after the ineffective leadership of his predecessor, General William E. "Kip" Ward. Later, word circulated informally that General Ham was scheduled to rotate out in March 2013 anyway, but according to Joint doctrine, "the tour length for combatant commanders and Defense agency directors is three years." Some assumed that he was leaving for unspecified personal reasons.
 
However on October 26, "Ambassador" posted the following RUMINT on TigerDroppings (h/t Jim Hoft):
 
I heard a story today from someone inside the military that I trust entirely. The story was in reference to General Ham that Panetta referenced in the quote below.
 
quote:
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"(The) basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," Panetta told Pentagon reporters. "And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation."
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham's place as the head of Africom.
 
This version of events contradicts Mr. Panetta’s October 25 statement that General Ham advised against intervention. But so far there is nothing solid to back it up. Maybe Ham attempted to send a reaction force against orders, or maybe he simply said the wrong thing to the wrong people. Perhaps he gave whomever he was talking to up the chain a piece of his mind about leaving Americans to die when there was a chance of saving them. At the very least U.S. forces might have made those who killed our people pay while they were still on the scene. The Obama White House is famously vindictive against perceived disloyalty – the administration would not let Ham get away with scolding them for failing to show the leadership necessary to save American lives. The Army's ethos is to leave no man behind, but that is not shared by a president accustomed to leading from that location.
 
The question remains why the repeated requests – which is to say desperate pleas – to send a relief force were refused. Perhaps Mr. Obama and his national security brain trust thought the terrorist assault would be a minor skirmish and quickly blow over. When it became clear that the attack was something more serious, they may have had visions of the rescue team getting involved in a Mogadishu-like firefight, a “Blackhawk Down 2.” This would have been too much for the risk-averse Mr. Obama, particularly in a Muslim country, and less than two months before the election. Instead they simply watched the live video hoped for the best. If there were American fatalities, they felt they could shift blame for the circumstance to the supposed Youtube video which they had already blamed for the riot at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo hours earlier. In fact the Embassy had sent out its “apology” tweets even before the Cairo riot commenced.
 
Hillary Clinton’s freakishly bizarre statement on September 14 is also worth noting. At a memorial service to the fallen she told Charles Woods, father of slain former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, that “we will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted." In that situation one would expect her to vow to take down the terrorists who killed Tyrone, not the supposed instigator of the spontaneous mob action that never happened.
 
But since when does the Secretary of State feel it is her duty to promise to have an American filmmaker who has committed no crime arrested? For all the bowing and scraping to Islam that has gone on in the last four years, blasphemy against that or any other faith is still not illegal in this country. The First Amendment still exists. It is strange that Mrs. Clinton believed that the parents of the slain Americans would empathize with her outrage at the filmmaker, rather than reserve their anger for the extremists who actually did the killing. But as Mr. Woods said, he "could tell that she was not telling me the truth." Indeed the truth has been the fifth casualty in this entire tragic affair.

[bigdog]

http://www.justice.gov/nsd/foia/foia_library/PanAm103-documents.pdf

[G M]

Crafty, can any of your Tier 1 contacts corroborate what is posted below?

http://scottoncapecod.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/navy-seals-always/



Earn your Trident every day…
About the two Navy SEAL’s killed in Libya:

Quite an astounding tribute to the courage and bravery of the two former Navy SEAL’s that went to the aid of Ambassador Stevens and Embassy staff. Courageous!

Recently I was teaching a class in my church on the biblical character, Joshua. You remember him – he’s the one who took over for Moses to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. God made several promises to Joshua in the opening verses of this book of the Bible named after him. Three times God instructs Joshua to “be strong and courageous.” In fact, one of those times God instructed him to be “very courageous.” The road ahead was a tough one and Joshua would need to be up to the task.


The news has been full of the attacks on our embassies throughout the Muslim world, and in particular, the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi , Libya . However, apart from the shameful amount of disinformation willingly distributed by the Main Stream Media and the current administration, there’s a little known story of incredible bravery, heroics, and courage that should be the top story of every news agency across the fruited plain.

So what actually happened at the U.S. embassy in Libya ? We are learning more about this every day. Ambassador Stevens and Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, along with administrative staff, were working out of temporary quarters due to the fact that in the spring of 2011 during the so-called Arab Spring, the United States cut ties with then president Moammar Gadhafi. Our embassy was looted and ransacked, causing it to be unusable. It is still in a state of disrepair. Security for embassies and their personnel is to be provided by the host nation. Since Libya has gone through a civil war of sorts in the past 18 months, the current government is very unstable, and therefore, unreliable

A well-organized attack by radical Muslims was planned specifically targeting the temporary U.S. embassy building. The Libyan security force that was in place to protect our people deserted their post, or joined the attacking force. Either way, our people were in a real fix. And it should be noted that Ambassador Stevens had mentioned on more than one occasion to Secretary of State, “Hillary Clinton”, that he was quite concerned for his personal safety and the welfare of his people. It is thought that Ambassador Stevens was on a “hit list.”

A short distance from the American compound, two Americans were sleeping. They were in Libya as independent contractors working an assignment totally unrelated to our embassy. They also happened to be former Navy SEALs. When they heard the noise coming from the attack on our embassy, as you would expect from highly trained warriors, they ran to the fight. Apparently, they had no weapons, but seeing the Libyan guards dropping their guns in their haste in fleeing the scene, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty snatched up several of these discarded weapons and prepared to defend the American compound.

Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter. Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves. But the stunning part of the story is that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the attacking force. Once the compound was overrun, the attackers were incensed to discover that just two men had inflicted so much death and destruction.

As it became apparent to these selfless heroes, they were definitely going to lose their lives unless some reinforcements showed up in a hurry. As we know now, that was not to be. I’m fairly certain they knew they were going to die in this gun fight, but not before they took a whole lot of bad guys with them!

Consider these tenets of the Navy SEAL Code: 1) Loyalty to Country, Team and Teammate, 2) Serve with Honor and Integrity On and Off the Battlefield, 3) Ready to Lead, Ready to Follow, Never Quit, 4) Take responsibility for your actions and the actions of your teammates, 5) Excel as Warriors through Discipline and Innovation, 6) Train for War, Fight to Win, Defeat our Nation’s Enemies, and 7) Earn your Trident every day ( http://www.navyseals.com/seal-code-warrior-creed).

Thank you, Tyrone and Glen. To the very last breath, you both lived up to the SEAL Code. You served all of us well. You were courageous in the face of certain death.

And Tyrone, even though you never got to hold your newborn son, he will grow up knowing the character and quality of his father, a man among men who sacrificed himself defending others. God bless America !

Dr. Charles R. Roots Senior Pastor Former Staff Sergeant, USMC Captain, U. S. Navy Chaplain Corps (Ret)

This should be passed on and on and on.

[Crafty_Dog]

No sources are given (and it was a consulate, not an embassy as he misstates) so I know not how he knows what he states.  My understanding is that the SEALs were working for the CIA and I find it quite implausible that they arrived unarmed.

[objectivist1]

Why Our Forces Were Told to ‘Stand Down’ in Benghazi

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 29, 2012 @ www.frontpagemag.com


To understand what went wrong in the Benghazi mission, it’s important to begin by looking at what was so unique about it.

When the Islamist mobs began their September 11 rampage, they found embassies with high walls, heavy security and police protection. Even in Tunis and Cairo, where the Arab Spring Islamist regimes have been accused of collaborating with their fellow Salafists, there were credible military and police forces capable of preventing the kind of full scale assault that took place in Benghazi.

The mission in Benghazi, however, was an American diplomatic facility with few defenses in a city where the police were virtually helpless against the Islamist militias and where the national government had announced that it would allow the Salafists to destroy Sufi tombs rather than intervene.

On September 1, I wrote that the real implication of these remarks was that the Libyan government had given the Islamists a free hand and would take no action no matter what they did. And bloodshed was sure to follow. Ten days later it did.

After the fall of Saddam, American diplomatic facilities in Iraq did not remain unguarded or protected only by local militias. It was always understood that American diplomatic facilities in a country whose government had recently fallen were sitting ducks and needed heavy protection. The State Department cables show that this was something that quite a few of the Americans on the ground also understood. The Benghazi consulate had been attacked, and its next attack would only be a matter of time.

When Al Qaeda decided to commemorate September 11 with a wave of attacks on American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world, from Tunis all the way to Indonesia, in a recreation of its own 1998 embassy attacks, its planners paid special attention to the one facility that was a soft target and surrounded by jihadist fighters. A facility that was a perfect target because it was completely exposed.

Benghazi should have either had the same protection that a similar facility in Iraq would have or it should have been closed down. Instead the State Department chose to rely on its friendly relations with the jihadists, having forgotten the story of the scorpion and the frog, trusting in an Islamist militia linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and to its future Al Qaeda-affiliated Ansar Al Sharia attackers to protect it.

The State Department was not being cheap. Its budget had climbed steadily under Obama and it could have set up another Green Zone in Benghazi if it chose to. But that would have been a flashback to the Bush era that represented everything the appeasement lobby had hated about those eight years.

Libya was meant to be a new kind of war. Not a display of American arrogance and unilateralism, but a show of submissiveness to the goals and ambitions of the Muslim world. In post-American diplomacy, the Americans did not arrive with a show of force, surrounded by Marines and heavy fortifications, but bent humbly under the defensive shield of the Islamist Ummah. Rather than exporting the Dar Al Harb, the Americans would ask for the protection of the Dar Al Islam.

The reason that the Navy SEALS were denied the support of a Spectre C-130U gunship was the same reason that the consulate had been left nearly unguarded. And it was the same reason that so many soldiers had died in Afghanistan because they had been denied air and artillery support or even the permission to open fire.

What happened in Benghazi was only extraordinary because it caught the attention of the public, but American soldiers in Afghanistan had been suffering under the same conditions ever since it was decided that winning the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians was more important than the lives of American soldiers.

The four Americans killed in Benghazi lived and died by the same code as thousands of Americans in Afghanistan. And that code overrode loyalty to one’s own people in favor of appeasing Muslims. The two former SEALS broke that code, violating orders by going to protect the consulate and were abandoned in the field by an administration that prioritized Muslim opinions over American lives.

From the post-American diplomatic perspective, the lives of a few Americans, who knew what they were getting into, was a small sacrifice to make when weighed against the potential of turning the entire Muslim world around. A Spectre gunship blasting away at an Islamist militia in the streets of Benghazi would have ended the fiction of a successful war in Libya and infuriated most of the Islamist militias. Worst of all, it would have made Americans seem like imperialists, instead of helpful aides to the Islamist transition of the Arab Spring. It would have ruined everything and so it was shut down.

Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were not the first Americans to be abandoned by their country for diplomatic reasons. They will not be the last. And while we investigate and expose the decisions that their government made, it is important for us to remember that such decisions come out of a mindset that says there are diplomatic goals that are more important than American lives. This mindset did not begin with the War on Terror and it will not end until it is exposed for what it is.

During Israel’s descent into peace madness, its left-wing government coined a phrase for those Israelis killed in terrorist attacks, calling them, “Sacrifices of Peace.”

Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods are our government’s sacrifices of peace. They died so that we might go on in our futile effort to win over the Muslim world. And they are not the only ones. There is no way of knowing how many of the 1,500 Americans who were killed in Obama’s surge died because they were prevented from firing first or denied air support. But the number is likely to be in the hundreds.

Similarly 3,000 died in the attacks of September 11 because our diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia were too important to close the revolving door that allowed the terrorists such easy access to our country. They too were sacrifices of peace, burned on the altar of appeasement by a diplomatic establishment that puts the opinions of our enemies first and American lives last.

What went wrong in Benghazi is the same thing that went wrong in Afghanistan. It is the same thing that went wrong on the original September 11. It is the same thing that has gone wrong throughout the War on Terror. If we are to learn any lesson from what happened in Benghazi, it should be that American lives come before Muslim diplomacy and that any government which does not put American lives first, which does not take whatever measures are necessary to save their lives, regardless of what Muslims may think, is not an American government, but a post-American government.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p19137.xml
Obama's perfect storms
 
Center for Security Policy | Oct 29, 2012
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Barack Obama faces not one but two perfect storms. He may actually be grateful for the meteorological one if it predictably helps obscure the political one at least for the next week.

Hurricane Sandy is, of course, a disaster no one would welcome. Untold numbers of Americans are having their lives endangered, or at least severely disrupted, and the potential economic harm is unimaginable at this point.

The president could nonetheless see a silver lining in this horrific "weather event." For one thing, he gets to posture as the leader of the nation in a terrible time of testing, the doler-out of federal emergency assistance and the great consoler around whom we instinctively rally in such circumstances.

Perhaps more importantly for Team Obama, many voters are going to have many other things on their minds for the next few, critical days instead of thinking about the evidence that their Commander-in-Chief was seriously derelict regarding the murderous attack in Benghazi. The President's reelection bid cannot afford in the closing days of a putatively very close election to have his fraudulent claim to successful stewardship of the national security portfolio be as exposed as his dismal economic record.
 
It remains to be seen, however, if Frankenstorm Sandy will do more than simply defer the day of reckoning for Mr. Obama. Whether it occurs on November 6th or afterwards, the rising popular revulsion at what happened in Libya on September 11, 2012 and the Obama administration's dissembling, deflections and outright lies in the weeks that followed should blow this presidency away. Consider a sample of the damning information that has come to light so far:

•   As the attack was underway, the President knew what was going on. Thanks to two unmanned drones, real-time intelligence was being fed to as many as eight different critical civilian and military nodes - including the White House. Published reports indicate that Mr. Obama himself, as well as his senior subordinates, were exposed to those video feeds.

•   Consequently, it was apparent in the actual course of the event that jihadists were engaging in a murderous military-style assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission, not simply demonstrators running amok. There had been no demonstration in Benghazi. Period. Yet, administration spokesmen, up to and including Mr. Obama himself, said otherwise repeatedly.

•   There had been requests for improved security at the Benghazi facilities and other sites in Libya. There had also been requests simply to retain the security forces that had been in place in-country up until summer's end. The Obama administration denied those requests and then prevaricated about having done so. Think Vice President Joe Biden in his debate with Rep. Paul Ryan.

•   Within an hour of the start of the attack, Mr. Obama met with his national security team's senior civilian and military national security leaders. The President has claimed he issued an order to "make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to." It is not clear at this writing to whom that order was given. What is clear, though, is that serial requests for supporting fire and reinforcements from some of those personnel were denied.

•   Reportedly, Ambassador Christopher Smith chose on September 11th to be in Benghazi, even though he had expressed growing concern that it and the rest of Libya were becoming increasingly dangerous. He had a first-hand appreciation of just how dangerous since he had, for over a year, helped arm, finance and otherwise support Libya's most aggressive Islamist elements in the interest of achieving the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi.

What was so important as to prompt our top diplomat in Libya to make such a dangerous foray? It seems the ambassador felt compelled to meet with the Turkish consul general that evening for the purpose of damage-limitation following the compromise of the secret weapons pipeline Chris Stevens was then running to Syria. By some accounts, the Russians, Iranians and others had discovered that he was covertly providing automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and even shoulder-fired, man-portable anti-aircraft missiles to "the opposition" there, including known jihadists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda.

The revelation that Barack Obama was presiding over an operation involving gun-running to our enemies - including weapons virtually certain to be turned against us, later if not sooner - could have been fatal to his reelection bid. Add to that the evidence that a serious U.S. military response to the violence in Benghazi would provide of the fatuousness and mendacity of the administration's "Arab Spring" and "lead-from-behind" in Libya narratives. Toss in, too, Mr. Obama's refusal to act to save American lives and you have a perfect storm for a president.

In the crisis, President Obama was evidently paralyzed, not decisive let alone courageous. Regrettably, the loss of four of our countrymen that fateful night and the cover-up that followed will come to be seen by history as simply the leitmotif of a Commander-in-Chief whose record is a virtually unmitigated disaster for the United States.
It behooves all of us, and most especially the mainstream media, to stay focused - despite the devastating impact of hurricane-force winds, widespread blackouts and massive flooding - on the insights and lessons of the still-unfolding Benghazigate firestorm.

[DougMacG]

Right when I thought it was just me I keep seeing more coverage - in places only right wingers will look.  This one is PJ Media.  Goes from great coverage of what is thought to be known right now to conjecture about how and why it happened.  page through as you please and stop if you want before he gets to the "T" word, treason.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/questions-for-white-house-over-benghazi-just-beginning/

Questions for White House Over Benghazi Just Beginning
We have two likely possibilities for what occurred, plus a subplot involving arms to al-Qaeda, which could be treason.

(4 internet pages, read at the link or I can come back later to post it all here.)

[Crafty_Dog]

FWIW just in case something were to happen to the site in question it might not be a bad idea for the contents to be recorded elsewhere.

[Body-by-Guinness]

The Wages of Libya
By Victor Davis Hanson
October 30, 2012 4:00 A.M.
We have had ambassadors murdered abroad before, but we have never seen anything quite like the tragic fate of Chris Stevens. Amid all the controversy over Libya, we have lost sight of the human — and often horrific — story of Benghazi: a U.S. ambassador attacked, cut off and killed alone, after being abused by frenzied terrorists, and a second member of the embassy staff murdered, as two American private citizens rushed to the rescue, heroically warding off Islamist hit teams, until they were overwhelmed and also killed.

Seven weeks after the tragedy in Benghazi, new government narratives just keep appearing, as various branches of government point the finger at one another. Now the president insists that “the minute” he “found out what was going on” he gave “very clear directives” to “make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.” The secretary of defense argues that he knew too little to send in military forces to save the post. Meanwhile, we are hearing from other sources that the beleaguered compound in extremis was denied help on three separate occasions, and there are still more contradictory accounts.

When the government systematically misleads and cannot establish a believable narrative, almost everyone involved is eventually tarred. The final chart of those officials in the Nixon White House who were devoured by Watergate was vast — and so it is becoming with the disaster in Libya. If we have learned anything from Watergate and Iran-Contra, it is that the longer officials deceive and obfuscate, the greater the number of wrecked careers and reputations.

Most likely, the political wing of the White House almost immediately made a decision that the attack on our Benghazi consulate should not endanger the conventional narrative of a successful commander-in-chief — ahead in the polls in part because he had highlighted a supposedly successful foreign policy. Key to that story was the notion that the hit on bin Laden and the drone attacks on other Islamists had rendered al-Qaeda all but impotent. In addition, the administration’s supposed lead-from-behind strategy in Libya had served as a model for energizing a democratic Arab Spring. Commander-in-Chief Obama was intent on reminding the country of his competence and toughness as an international leader, and especially of his wise reluctance to rush into areas of instability.

In such a landscape, Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were brutally murdered. And almost immediately it was clear that the ambassador had earlier warned that Libya was descending into chaos and that Americans were not safe there — only to have his requests for further protection rejected.

During the actual assault on the consulate, a real-time video, streams of e-mail exchanges, and surveys of Islamist websites confirmed that al-Qaedists were carrying out a preplanned assassination — and over the next seven or eight hours it became clear that our staff was in dire need of military assistance that was somehow never sent. Then for nearly two weeks, the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Press Secretary Jay Carney, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice advanced a counter-narrative that simply could not have been true: A spontaneous demonstration over a two-month-old video — just happening to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11 — got out of hand as some disruptive protesters showed up with machines gun, mortars, and RPGs and began killing Americans. Since it was an American religious bigot who had prompted such terrible but “natural” riots with his video that ridiculed and injured Islam, we should apologize for the uncouth among us in the strongest terms.

Obama, Clinton, Clapper, Rice, and Carney strove to outdo each other in damning the obscure video maker — to such an extent that he was summarily arrested on a supposedly outstanding probation charge. The message? Ambassadors die and careful U.S. foreign policy is undermined when right-wing bigots abuse their free-speech rights.

Yet almost all of that story is untrue, and it will come back to haunt all those who either by intent or through ignorance engaged in the cover-up. Review the following spinners.

President Obama still does not grasp the significance of Libya. When he calls the attacks there and in Egypt “bumps in the road” or “not optimal,” and asserts that they will not play much of a role in the final weeks of the campaign, he sounds either callous or naïve or both. Collate the administration’s statements over the two weeks following the attacks, and they simply cannot be true. The months-old video proved just too much of a temptation for the president to resonate the themes of his Cairo speech in damning uncouth Americans for offending Muslims. When the president claims that he ordered everything to be done to save the compound, he must be aware that subordinates who did not in turn give orders that relief be sent will eventually come forward to either affirm or deny his statement. His further problem is that lax security, administration misdirection, and hesitancy to aid the beleaguered all feed into the earlier attitudes framed by “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters,” “workplace violence,” promises to try KSM in a civilian court, the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, and other efforts to contextualize and airbrush radical Islam’s terrorist assault on the West. In other words, fairly or not, we can discern a logic to why the president would not be candid and accurate about Benghazi.

Secretary Clinton will have to explain why the State Department did not heed requests for greater security, both before and during the attack. And she is beginning to grasp — and so especially is her husband — that the administration is hanging the disaster around her neck. She crudely blamed the attacks on our embassies in the Middle East on the video (with caskets of our dead as backdrop), reminding us that a few months earlier she had crudely giggled about the murder of Qaddafi (“We came, we saw, Qaddafi died”). All in all, her performance during this disaster has been disappointing, and more so with each new disclosure.

Then we come to Ambassador Rice, who apparently was being groomed to succeed Secretary of State Clinton. As part of that trajectory, she was to be point woman for the administration’s spontaneous-mob narrative. That meant that on at least five different occasions Rice hit the Sunday talk shows, apparently to showcase her rhetorical skills, insisting that the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi were ad hoc assaults that had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy, anti-American animosity, or mistakes in American security preparation. Whether through ignorance or by design, Ambassador Rice repeatedly told an untruth, and did so with energy and dogmatic insistence. Her problem, then, is not just that what she insisted was true was clearly not, but also the unambiguous and forceful manner in which she wove her story. That she suddenly appeared from obscurity to play the sophist, and then retreated back into anonymity, suggests that her diplomatic career will be soon coming to an end.

Next is the matter of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. His insistence that a mob had caused the mayhem is one untruth or mischaracterization too many — and a wrong assessment that trumps even his earlier absurdities, such as that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely a secular organization or that Qaddafi would not fall from power. Politicians and bureaucrats err all the time; but when intelligence officers do not appear to have intelligence, then they too usually quietly disappear into comfortable retirement.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey at some point supposedly received information about the attack in real time. Why — given the supposed directive of the president to do “whatever we need to” to save our people — he did not order military assistance will have to be explained. Uncertain conditions will not do, because that is what militaries do: go into uncertain conditions to save lives and defeat the enemy. Armchair tacticians will argue that planes and teams could have been sent and then called off near arrival time if that was what circumstances seemed to warrant; that option would have been wiser than sending no one and thereby ensuring that the compound and annex would be overrun. And because General Dempsey has not been shy in weighing in on matters political by warning retired servicemen not to comment on contemporary politics (General Wesley Clark apparently excepted), and because he has phoned a Florida pastor to tell him to tone down his anti-Islamic rhetoric, the public will all the more expect an explanation. If the chairman can lecture both civilians and retired officers on proper behavior, then he should be able as well to explain why he did not heed the president’s order to do “whatever we need to do.”

CIA Director David Petraeus is now by implication being faulted. A brief communiqué that the CIA did not refuse pleas for assistance was prompted by anonymous administration officials’ allegations that it was our intelligence agencies, not the State Department or White House officials, that prevented assistance to our diplomatic mission. At some point Petraeus will probably have to use all his influence and power to correct the administration’s narrative, which is apparently intended to shift culpability to him and his agency. General Petraeus, by his singular record, probably should have been made either chairman of the Joint Chiefs or NATO supreme commander; he apparently received neither offer. After pulling off the surge in Iraq, he was redeployed into Afghanistan under far different — and more difficult — circumstances that limited his range of options, and he had to give up his nominally superior billet as CENTCOM commander. When he took on the CIA job, he apparently was asked to retire from the military. There is a pattern here: selfless service to the United States, but recently in the context of a politicized administration that has used the enormous prestige of Petraeus in ways that have reduced his influence. Directing responsibility away from the administration to the CIA is more of the same, and it puts a historic figure like Petraeus in an unfair predicament.

Benghazi was a disaster, whose graphic details most Americans do not fully know and, in some sense understandably, do not wish to relive. Still, we await two simple clarifications: an administration timeline of exactly who was notified, in what manner, and when on the night of the attack, and a full release of all information detailing the administration reaction to the murders, from the hours in which the attack occurred to the present day.

Without that honesty, those responsible will only continue to weave their tangled Libyan web.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/332001/wages-libya-victor-davis-hanson?pg=2

[Crafty_Dog]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/10/29/email-benghazi-at-pjmedia-com/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1913235018001/mysterious-libyan-ship-linked-to-deadly-terror-attack/

Sometimes paranoids can be right , , ,  How much merit to this?

http://godfatherpolitics.com/7782/was-benghazi-a-warning-from-putin/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/332097/fox-news-drones-above-benghazi-were-unarmed-eliana-johnson

[DougMacG]

"Drones above Benghazi were unarmed"  because ... _____________________________?

Because there was no threat in Libya, Benghazi?  No, that wasn't the reason. 

Disarmament is one of our strategies:  "Please tell Vladimir I will have more flexibility [to disarm] after my reelection."

Disarmament and appeasement turns enemies into peace seekers, so the naivete goes.

Why cover it up?  This is our strategy in Libya at least. With no American arms, no one will get hurt, right?

The administration does not explain the dichotomy.  The drones in Yemen and Pakistan do not been fly unarmed.  Recalling this map of "Obama’s 284 Drone Strikes in Pakistan":  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/10/drone_strikes_map_shows_pakistan_drone_strikes.html

They fly ready to kill with the purpose of killing.  Even the furthest left regime in American history knows you don't stop terrorists with unarmed aircraft.  Yet they chose unarmed for defending American resources in Libya.  Very odd.  And unexplained.

UAV, FYI, refers to unmanned, not unarmed, aerial vehicle.

[Crafty_Dog]

I find myself reflecting on the implications of LOFF:  Libyan Operation Fast & Furious.

If I have this right, and I readily accept that for where we are on the totem pole there may be more to come, Stevens was an arms conduit with the rebels of eastern Libya against Kaddaffy.  As was readily noted during the days of the rebellion against Kaddaffy, eastern Libya was THE largest source of AQ fighters against the US in Iraq.  In other words, there ain't no fg surprise that AQ flags were flying in Benghazi after Kaddaffy was killed, on the night that our four were killed, and since our four were killed.

Stevens was there in an unprotected consulate anyway despite attacks that caused the British to leave town, and two attacks on the US consulate an attempted hit on Stevens (please correct my memory if I have any of this -- or anything else for that matter-- wrong).  There was a substantial SF-type team in town (Bret Baier interview the Light Col. in charge of it in depth) asking for increased strength, but instead of being increased, the team was sent home in its entirety (!) in August.

Why was Stevens in Benghazi at all?

It seems reasonable to think that he was there as the US's point man for running guns on the ship that ran arms to the Syrian rebels via a port in far eastern Turkey (hence the meeting with the Turkish consul).  One might argue that AQ-types were a lesser part of the rebellion in the beginning, but that seems unlikely at this point.     

I am now seeing reports that MANPADs are part of what is being sent to the Syrian rebels.   Remember, Kaddaffy had 20,000 of the things and concerns were expressed by serious people of very serious consequences should such weaponry fall into the hands of the AQ types who dominate in eastern Libya.  These serious people said that MANPADs could effectively wipe out much of US air superiority (e.g. vs. a C-130), shoot down airliners so it seems quite logical that should Baraq want the AQ type rebels in Syria to get them that he would not want it known at all.  It would have to be very, very secret.

It seems plausible to me to wonder if the true reason for letting our four die (and according to RumInt reassigning two generals who did not want to go along with this cowardly betrayal)

Seen thus, all the clumsy lies about disgruntled video viewers make sense as desperate spontaneous improvisations.

What does the fact of LOFF tell us? 

What does it tell us about our President that he would send MANPADs to the AQ-type dominated rebels? 

In light of other things he has and has not done, what does this tell us about his overarching vision for the US viz Islamic Fascism in the mid-east and in the world?

[objectivist1]

Libyan Leaks: Secret Document reveals Al-Qaeda ‘brother’ put in control of U.S. Embassy in Tripoli

by Shoebat Foundation on OCTOBER 31, 2012

Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack

A treasure trove of secret documents has been obtained by a Libyan source who says that secularists in his country are increasingly wanting to see Mitt Romney defeat Barack Obama on November 6th. This charge is being made despite Muslim Brotherhood losses in Libyan elections last July which resulted in victory for the secularists. One of those documents may help explain this sentiment.

It shows that in supporting the removal of Gadhafi, the Obama administration seemed to sign on to an arrangement that left forces loyal to Al-Qaeda in charge of security at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli from 2011 through at least the spring of 2012.

The National Transitional Council, which represented the political apparatus that opposed Gadhafi in 2011 and served as the interim government after his removal, made an extremely curious appointment in August of 2011. That appointment was none other than Abdel Hakim Belhaj, an Al-Qaeda ally and ‘brother’. Here is a copy of that letter (translation beneath it):



Translated, the document reads:

National Transitional Council – Libya
8/30/11

Code: YGM-270-2011

Mr. Abdel Hakim Al-Khowailidi Belhaj

Greetings,

We would like to inform you that you have been commissioned to the duties and responsibilities of the military committee of the city of Tripoli. These include taking all necessary procedures to secure the safety of the Capital and its citizens, its public and private property, and institutions, to include all international embassies. To coordinate with the local community of the city of Tripoli and the security assembly and defense on a national level.

Mustafa Muhammad Abdul Jalil

President, National Transitional Council – Libya

Official Seal of National Transitional Council

Copy for file.

As for Belhaj’s bonafides as an Al-Qaeda ally, consider the words of the notorious Ayman al-Zawahiri. In a report published one day prior to the date on the memo above, ABC News quoted the Al-Qaeda leader as saying the following – in 2007 – about the man the NTC put in control of Tripoli in 2011:

“Dear brothers… the amir of the mujahideen, the patient and steadfast Abu-Abdallah al-Sadiq (Belhaj); and the rest of the captives of the fighting Islamic group in Libya, here is good news for you,” Zawahiri said in a video, using Belhaj’s nom de guerre. “Your brothers are continuing your march after you… escalating their confrontation with the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the crusaders of Washington.”

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was founded by Belhaj.

In a BBC report from one month earlier – on July 4, 2011 – a man named Al-Amin Belhaj was identified as an NTC spokesman and said the following:

“Everyone knows who Abdel Hakim Belhadj is. He is a Libyan rebel and a moderate person who commands wide respect.”

Abdel Hakim Belhaj had been identified in a video report embedded in the the BBC article as…

“…about the most powerful man in Tripoli.”

Abdel Hakim Belhaj is many things but moderate is not one of them.

Interestingly, according to a report by the Jamestown Foundation in 2005, the man who attributed the ‘moderate’ label to Abdel Hakim Belhaj was actually a leader with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood:

This last week Al-Amin Belhadj, head of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, issued a press release on the Arabic language section of Libya-Watch, (Mu’assasat al-Raqib li-Huqquq al-Insan) calling for urgent action on behalf of 86 Brotherhood members imprisoned since 1998 at Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison and on hunger strike since October 7.

The nexus between Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood comes into clearer focus when one looks at the Libyan Ambassador to the United States. His name is Ali Sulaiman Aujali. He had the following to say about Belhaj according to an ABC News report:

“(Belhaj) should be accept(ed) for the person that he is today and we should deal with him on that basis… people evolve and change.”

Really? How many times do westerners have to fall for this line before they trip over it?

In fact, about one month prior to Aujali’s vouching for Belhaj, he appeared at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention. ISNA is a Muslim Brotherhood front group in America.

Aujali represents one individual who is willing to bridge the gap between Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, fast forward to 9/13/12, two days after the attack in Benghazi. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton celebrated the Muslim Eid holiday in the Ben Franklin room in Washington, D.C. and shared a podium with none other than Ali Sulaiman Aujali and a woman named Farah Pandith, who is a prominent name inside the Muslim Brotherhood in America.

In 2009, Pandith was sworn in as a U.S. Representative to Muslim Communities by Hillary Clinton. Pandith followed the path of the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress and was sworn in on the Qur’an.

Another interesting alliance revealed itself in various cities across America in the days after the death of Ambassador Stevens. In at least both Los Angeles, CA and Columbus, OH the Libyan American Association aligned with CAIR to hold a vigil for Ambassador Stevens.

While in Jamaica in June of 2011, Hillary Clinton rhetorically asked:

…whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people…

At that very moment – and in light of the release of this secret document – the appropriate question would have been:

…whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of Al-Qaeda…

When put that way, Hillary’s position isn’t nearly as unassailable.

Walid Shoebat is a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood and author of For God or For Tyranny

[Crafty_Dog]

http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2012/10/obama-fires-top-admiral-as-coup-plot-fears-grows-2466106.html

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/benghazi-set-and-cover/#fm and http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/riorg-exclusive-did-turkey-play-role-benghazi-attack/#fm

[Crafty_Dog]

Third post of the morning:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/gingrich-senator-told-me-networks-have-emails-from-white-house-ordering-team-to-stand-down-on-benghazi-rescue/