Special Report: Alexander on Benghazi
May 10, 2013
Editor's Note: In today's edition, Mark Alexander provides concise analysis on what you need to know about Benghazi. Don't miss the rest of the Digest after this special report.
Amid all the media saturation regarding the 2012 assault in Benghazi, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attack on our own soil in 2001, there are some important developments you need to know.
Those developments fall into two categories:
First: Who within the Obama administration knew what, and when, and who told our Special Forces operators to stand down and not respond? The answer to this question is crucial, because it allows us to determine what motivated that stand-down order. In addition, the answer might shed some light on where the president was after 5 p.m. on September 11, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey informed him that our embassy was under attack and that our people were fighting for their lives. That we still don't have any idea what the commander in chief was doing during this crisis tells us all we need to know about our shamefully incurious mainstream media.
Second: Who within the administration changed the narrative talking points about the Benghazi attack, why, and under whose direction? The CIA immediately (and correctly) asserted that it was a terrorist attack, so why did the Obama administration tell the American people that it was a protest in response to an utterly obscure YouTube video that was deemed offensive to Muslims? The answer to this question is crucial for determining who in the administration advanced the fraudulent narrative in order to provide Obama political cover ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
As to the first question regarding the stand down order, here is what we do know:
Regarding the stand down order, questions raised about what could have been done to save Americans in Benghazi are legitimate, but hindsight is 20/20, and second guessing military commanders on the ground, or at the Pentagon, should be done with all due respect. If the response team was ordered to stand down because they would have arrived too late, or because the response could have escalated into a much larger conflict resulting in the deaths of the responders, or both, that is one thing.
On the other hand, if the response team was ordered to stand down because of political concerns in advance of the upcoming election that a larger confrontation would undermine the appearance that Obama was conqueror of the al-Qa'ida threat, that is quite another thing. Were these Americans sacrificed as part of a political campaign calculation? We won't know the answer to this question until it's clear how far up into the Obama administration that stand down order was issued.
The second-highest-ranking American official in Libya at the time of the attack, Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S., testified this week that he received a call from Ambassador Stevens, who told him, "Greg! We're under attack!"
Hicks said that after U.S. Special Operations Command Africa was alerted, then ordered to stand down (or "not to go" as the DoD is parsing it), the operations commander "was furious." Hicks said, "I had told him to go bring our people home. That's what he wanted to do," adding "everyone in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning."
When asked about his reaction to the repeated assertion on Sunday morning talk shows by UN Ambassador Susan Rice that the attack was a "protest" related to a YouTube video, Hicks responded, "I was stunned. My jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed. ... The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya."
When Hicks raised objections to the administration's utterly inaccurate narrative, he says he was "effectively demoted."
In the final analysis of the attack in Benghazi, the Accountability Review Board assessment may be correct, even though the Board was chosen by Hillary Clinton and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper -- both of whom have career stakes in the outcome of that review.
(Marc: I find this too mild and too defential. IMO this is the more important issue than the talking points lies. Abandoning people to their deaths for political reasons is more important-- and a more effective political point-- than a politician lying to get re-elected. Here is a retired admiral getting it right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Gx3tJ53zlPU )
However, the question of who changed the talking points narrative after the incident was not addressed by the ARB.
As to the second question regarding who changed the narrative about the Benghazi attack for political reasons, here is what we do know:
Days before the Obama administration began pushing the "YouTube video protest" narrative, it was clear that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist assault. Department of State counterterrorism officials, the CIA and military intelligence sources immediately reported that the attack was a terrorist assault.
Within 24 hours of attack, the acting assistant secretary for Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department, Beth Jones, confirmed that Ansar al-Sharia, a radical Islamic terror group with known ties to al-Qa'ida, was the perpetrator.
Although the official Benghazi account generated by the CIA immediately after the attack makes no mention of a protest regarding a YouTube video, the Obama administration intentionally altered that accurate account into a fraudulent one that blamed the video. This was done to create political cover for Obama so the incident would not derail his re-election campaign momentum.
Blame-shifting from terrorism to the video narrative achieved two political goals. It framed the attack in one of the Left's favorite themes, "intolerance," and removed it from the specter of the Obama administration appearing incompetent and having overstated the demise of al-Qa'ida.
But the blame-shifting charade is rapidly falling apart.
Within days of the attack, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood in front of the flag draped caskets of four dead Americans and asserted, "We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless and totally unacceptable."
That was a lie worthy of her husband.
Obama spokesman Jay Carney asserted, "The unrest around the region has been in response to this video. We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent."
That, too, was a lie.
Ambassador Susan Rice hit the network talk shows hard with the YouTube claim. "What happened this week in Benghazi was a result, a direct result, of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated..."
And another lie.
A full two weeks after the Benghazi attack, Obama told the UN General Assembly, "That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world."
That was a lie, and the lies are compounding.
In January, Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?"
Her phony indignation is evident, and it's downright despicable. This was neither a video nor was it because "guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans." Clinton is not calling it what everyone knew it to be within hours of the incident.
"What difference at this point does it make?"
The difference now is that we know she, and Obama, were lying.
The Weekly Standard published a timeline from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the substantive revisions the Obama administration made to the CIA's talking points six weeks prior to the 2012 presidential election.
Asked about those revisions, Jay Carney explained, "The only edits made here at the White House were stylistic and non-substantive. They corrected the description of the building, or the facility in Benghazi, from consulate to diplomatic facility and the like."
Fact trumps fiction, however. Removing references to al-Qa'ida and substituting them with references to a YouTube video are something other than "stylistic" changes.
Carney is lying.
Carney then delivered the centerpiece of the administration's talking points to cover the political trail of the original (adulterated) talking points: "Ultimately, this all has been discussed in an enormous level of detail by the administration to congressional investigators, and the attempt to politicize the talking points again is part of an effort to chase after what isn't the substance."
Clearly, it is the Obama administration that politicized the talking points last September.
On October 15, 2012, ahead of the second presidential debate, The Patriot Post submitted to key Romney campaign officials a thoughtful compilation of talking points that would resonate with grassroots Americans. Among those talking points was the recommendation for Romney to make the case that Obama was concealing the truth about Benghazi in order "to shield his administration from the appearance of incompetence and to maintain the errant perception that the al-Qa'ida threat died when he (actually Navy SEALs) killed Osama bin Laden. Thus, Obama and his key administrators insisted that protests over a web video led to attack in Libya, knowing full well that it was actually a well-executed terrorist assault. This obfuscation clearly was, and remains, a political calculation in advance of his re-election, to ensure this incident does not detract from the perception that Obama is adequate as commander in chief."
Romney never made that case, nor did he reference any of the other grassroots talking points we submitted -- and by the narrowest of margins, he lost the election. Unfortunately, the Republican National Committee also pulled its pre-election ad on Benghazi.
In short: Obama, Clinton and Rice lied, and Americans died. It is time for Congress to ramp up the investigation into the politicization of the attack narrative. A special prosecutor should now be on the horizon.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the congressional testimony on Benghazi this week, Susan Rice was honored by The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies for "her work in advancing U.S. interests, strengthening the world's common security and prosperity, and promoting respect for human rights."
And Ms. Clinton was in Hollywood the day of the testimony for a Beverly Hills gala to receive the Warren Christopher Public Service Award from the Pacific Council on International Policy. It is no small irony that the late Christopher, who was deputy secretary of state under Jimmy Carter and secretary of state under Bill Clinton, was awarded by Carter the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, for his failure to successfully negotiate the release of the 52 American Embassy hostages held in Iran for the final 444 days of the Carter presidency.
That was another Middle Eastern debacle, which contributed to Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan.
No doubt Obama heeded the lesson from Carter's re-election defeat, and was determined to do whatever needed to be done so that the Benghazi embassy attack would not threaten his re-election bid.
For the record, Carter awarded that medal to Christopher just days before Reagan took office. Also for the record, on January 20, 1981, at the moment President Reagan completed his inaugural address, Iran released all of the American Embassy hostages. Iran understood that Reagan would not be a pushover like Carter -- as the leadership of the Soviet Union would soon learn.
If only Obama could learn that lesson...
