Benghazi Links and Articles

DiGenova: Whistleblowers 'Are Trying To Rescue The Country From The Sleepwalking It's In'

by Debra HeineMay 6, 2013 10:17 AM PT

In response to Benghazi Witness: 'You Should Have Seen What (Clinton) Tried to Do to Us That Night':
In an interview on WMAL, this morning, Mark Thompson's lawyer, Joe diGenova charged that due to media malpractice, the country has been sleeping through the Benghazi story..
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Benghazi Witness: Special Forces Told to Not to Provide Backup in Benghazi

by Elizabeth SheldMay 6, 2013 9:51 AM PT

CBS News is reporting that Benghazi witness Greg Hicks told congressional investigators that "a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa."
Hicks also reported that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were prepared to board a C130 from Tripoli before the attack on the Benghazi annex. Gibson received a call saying "you can't go now, you don't have the authority to go now.' And so they missed the flight ... They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it."
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Suddenly Benghazi No Longer 'Fox-Induced Hysteria'?

by Ace Of SpadesMay 6, 2013 9:50 AM PT

Where do we go to get our reputations back?A review of the hyperpoliticized reactions of the left to criticism of and well-founded questions about Benghazi on the right demonstrates, once again, that They accuse us of Their Own sins.
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Benghazi Witness: 'You Should Have Seen What (Clinton) Tried to Do to Us That Night'

by Elizabeth SheldMay 6, 2013 5:05 AM PT

Mark I. Thompson will make the allegation that Hillary Clinton "tried to cut the department's own counter-terrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making" as they responded to the Benghazi attacks.
Thompson is a former Marine and the current deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's counter terrorism bureau. He will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to testify about the Benghazi attacks.
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Benghazi Eye Witness: Requests for Help Refused

by Elizabeth SheldMay 5, 2013 4:07 PM PT

Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News reports that an eyewitness on the ground at Benghazi was refused repeated requests for help.

"We relied on Washington for dispassionate assessment," one eyewitness told CBS News. "Instead, they [Washington officials] were asking us what help we needed. We answered: 'Send reinforcements!' "
But they were told immediate help wasn't available.
Embassy personnel say they repeatedly asked the Defense Attache on site in Tripoli for military assistance.
"Isn't there anything available?" one Embassy official says he asked. "But the answer was 'no.'"
"What about Aviano?" the official pressed, referencing the NATO air base with US assets in northeastern Italy. "No," was the answer.

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Whistleblower Lawyer: ARB's Gen Pickering 'Became Physically Ill' at Thought of Dealing with Hillary

by Debra HeineMay 4, 2013 9:00 PM PT

When the Accountability Review Board’s report on Benghazi came out, last December, John Bolton noted that the State Dept. was basically investigating itself, and suggested that their assertions might not hold up to scrutiny.
It looks like the ARB's findings are indeed not holding up to scrutiny. The report is being savaged by the attorneys who are representing material witnesses who they say were ignored by the ARB.
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Bambi's ATF

Obama agency busts plan to sell rifles to Americans
Feds call popular gun a 'threat,' proposed shipments canceled

The Obama-run Washington bureaucracy has classified a common and reliable rifle, the M1 Garand, as a "threat to public safety in the U.S.," and the State Department has canceled plans by the Republic of Korea to return tens of thousands of surplus rifles to the U.S. for sale in the consumer market.

The stunning classification of an ordinary gun that was used in the U.S. military for two decades and issued to thousands of soldiers and Marines during World War II and Korea as a threat came in a document by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

It is being publicized by Examiner gun rights writer David Codrea, who said the federal agency appeared alarmed that there would be "no more controls [over imported Garands] than any other firearm."

"If I read this right, what they're saying is, every gun poses a threat to public safety in the U.S.," he wrote. "This is the same rationale used in model-specific 'assault weapons' bans – the type of gun is somehow deemed relevant, even though untold numbers of such firearms are already peaceably owned in this country, and even though no supporting evidence for this conclusion exists beyond agenda-promoting speculation."

A source who sought confidentiality because of his current status in the industry told WND that the document posted by Codrea is at least an accurate draft, if not the final version, of the document assembled by the ATF.

According to the document itself, it came about because of this scenario: The State Department in May 2009 approved a "request by the Government of the Republic of Korea (ROK) to transfer 87,310 M1 Garand rifles and 770,160 M1 carbine rifles to U.S. private entities for subsequent commercial resale in the United States."

But the ATF contacted the State Department and argued the stock of rifles "poses a threat to public safety in the U.S." As a result, the State Department reversed its decision.

The transfer of such weapons would raise the number of guns available and, therefore, lower the price, making them more generally available, the agency found.

A Nation That Stands Against Israel

Stands Against God

Cantor Rips White House: "Irresponsible" on Israel

BY John McCormack

Politico reports:

The second-ranking House Republican blasted the Obama administration as “irresponsible” in its dealings with Israel, accusing the White House of trying to curry favor with the Arab world by deriding America’s closest ally in the Middle East. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia also declined to condemn Israel for announcing the construction of more settlements while Vice President Joe Biden was on a visit to the country. Many diplomacy experts saw that move as a snub to the Obama administration, hurting relations between the longtime allies. “While it condemns Israel, the administration continues to ignore a host of Palestinian provocations that undermine prospects for peace in the region,” Cantor said in a statement. “Where is the outrage when top Fatah officials call for riots on the Temple Mount? Why does the Palestinian Authority get a pass when it holds a ceremony glorifying the woman responsible for one of the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history? Surely, the Administration’s double standard has set back the peace process.”

Zero Screwed the Pooch and the Spies

EDITORIAL: Obama's havoc to the intel system
The president establishes intelligence death panels

President Obama blamed "the system" for failing to stop al Qaeda's Christmas Day bombing plot. The weakness with that excuse is that Mr. Obama fails to connect the dots between the systemic failure and his administration's year-long record of destroying the morale of the intelligence community.

The intelligence process works in large part because of trust. A reliable sense of
confidence must exist between superiors and subordinates, agents and sources, and the intelligence community and policy makers. Without trust, people will not take the risks needed to do their jobs successfully.

Mr. Obama has destroyed this sense of trust. On his watch, the intelligence community has suffered a year of body blows. He made great theater of signing an executive order closing the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In April, the president authorized the release of the so-called "torture memos" on enhanced interrogation techniques used against detainees, and suggested that Congress establish a bipartisan review panel to look into the authorization of
extraordinary interrogation methods.

Mr. Obama should be seeking ways to repair the breach, restore trust and make good on the promises he made to intelligence operatives to support them in their dangerous professions. Instead, he brandished a new stick.

On Thursday, the president announced he has directed the heads of intelligence agencies to institutionalize "internal accountability reviews" to be monitored by the White House. These ominous-sounding punitive processes may become death panels for intelligence careers.

There is an old saying in intelligence circles: Big operation, big risk; small operation, small risk; no operation, no risk. The president's proposed "solution" to the failures of the intelligence system will reinforce a climate of mistrust in which it will be difficult to take the risks necessary to make the system work. And next time we may not be so lucky.

Normally, This Would Initiate a Resignation

However, because the next one in line is Joe "Plugs" Biden, we'd prefer that you stay until 2012, then we'll decide who gets to lead the most powerful nation on the planet.

More after the jump.

PRUDEN: There's no penalty for sleeping on the job

If it's true, as Dr. Johnson famously told us it was, that the prospect of hanging focuses the mind in a wonderful way, maybe the prospect of facing angry voters sharpens a politician's instincts (if not necessarily his mind).

After first treating the Detroit panty bomber as if it were merely an amusing story ("an isolated incident") that an airline passenger could dine out on for a few days, President Obama is giving a good imitation now of a man getting a late education. Maybe the education will take. It's too soon to say. He said late Thursday that he won't fire anybody. "Ultimately, the buck stops with me. When the system fails, it's my responsibility."

Smooth talk is easy for Mr. Obama, and he often confuses words with deeds. He's taking responsibility for what happened aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on final approach over Detroit, but it's not clear what that means. He's not likely to fire himself (perhaps to spare us Joe Biden). So nobody pays a price for some serious sleeping on the job. Sleeping on the job is serious, but not that serious.

The president and his Democrats are closing ranks behind top national security officials who are begging to be thrown into the street with their briefcases and keys to the executive washroom.

The solution they prescribe is to build the intelligence bureaucracies a little bigger and thicker, layering incompetence with impotence, giving a little relief to the intelligence minions "who have worked so hard." Some no doubt have, but where were the intelligence analysts who saw nothing suspicious when the panty bomber bought his one-way ticket to the U.S.A. with cash, leaving a subtropical city bound for icy Detroit with no luggage?

The State Department, warned by the terrorist's father that he had fallen in with evil companions and was up to no good, finally did its best work Thursday, revoking the visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. If he is released for more jihad, he won't be able to return to the United States without a new visa. This sounds like a bad joke, but it isn't. That's how the Foggy Bottom fudge factory works.

The One Is Gonna Have To Give The Prize Back

If he can't actually bring peace to a region.

Politicians can't win wars. Only generals can win wars.

General's D.C. Trip Put Off as Strategy Talks Drag On

Writers Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe report on what Peggy Noonan calls “the missing debate on Afghanistan” as the White House delays the return of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for a final meeting with President Obama – scheduled for this week – before the White House announces its new strategy for Afghanistan.

Much of the story is given over to praise from top Obama advisors for the president’s respect for the military chain of command. But however respectful, the president also seems keen to keep McChrystal off the Hill and out of the public dialogue.

This adds to the sense that the lengthy, private deliberations of the administration are part of an effort to look busy and buy time before Washington erupts over whatever has been decided.

“The State Department, the intelligence community and other major actors have presented their views during the ongoing White House meetings, and the appearance of Karl W. Eikenberry, the ambassador to Afghanistan, and Anne Patterson, his counterpart in Pakistan, are to be given significant weight. Some at the table have suggested a status quo strategy in which the current troop level of 68,000 would be maintained and more attention would be given to building the Afghan military, seeking reconciliation with some insurgent elements and solidifying ties with Pakistan.”

Solar Powered Chain Saws

Solar-powered chain saws??? Preventing fire roads from being used??? Have people lost their minds? Oh wait, YES!!!


David Freddoso: Big green machine feeds off you
By: David Freddoso Commentary Staff Writer
October 1, 2009

Lawmakers have made it abundantly clear to bailed-out banks and automakers that federal money comes with strings attached. New rules on executive compensation are only the tip of the iceberg for TARP-funded banks. For bailed out automakers, Congress has inserted itself into decisions about plant closings and dealerships. The President of the United States even fired GM's CEO.

But environmental groups face few such restrictions, which is how they can victimize
the taxpayer two- or even three-fold. They freely sue dozens of federal government agencies even as they take federal money. Sometimes they take the money and spend equivalent amounts lobbying Congress to restrict consumers' freedom. Some of them even pay their executives large six-figure salaries.

The taxpayer finds himself in triple jeopardy. He funds these groups with grants and contracts, he can be on the hook for both sides' legal costs, and he risks the loss of freedoms to new laws and lawsuits -- his property rights, and his ability to buy affordable appliances, or even his livelihood.

Defenders of Wildlife, whose president makes more than $300,000 a year, has taken about $190,000 in federal grants since 2004. They are now suing the government to
protect aggressive wolves that were recently introduced into the Mountain West and have since ravaged game and impoverished shepherds and ranchers. The group also spent nearly $150,000 in the first half of 2009 lobbying Congress -- among other things, to fight against a law allowing for wolf control. They have also received more than $80,000 in web development work since 2006 from the Agriculture and Interior Departments.

Not all of the groups cause so much damage with your money, but they take it anyway. The Nature Conservancy (CEO compensation: $349,000), best known for purchasing land to prevent its development, is a billion-dollar organization. That hasn't stopped it from taking $14.4 million in grants from the Department of the Interior and received $50 million in federal contracts.

The more radical Forest Guardians are true green believers who certainly do not overpay themselves - their top employee makes only $46,000 per year. During the western forest fires of 2002, they steadfastly opposed the reopening of fire roads and the thinning of at-risk forests unless "solar powered chainsaws" were used. Even a small group like this can find itself a piece of the pie. Government grants accounted for 10 percent of their revenues in 2006, according to the IRS.

And just this year, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has put a leg aboard the federal gravy train. The famous public interest group, whose president made a modest $433,000 in 2007, has received a $750,000 government grant from the State Department to encourage the Chinese to use less energy. In addition to suing at least seven government agencies, including recently the Navy, the group also spent more than $400,000 in the first six months of 2009 lobbying Congress to require higher efficiency standards - and thus higher prices - for all appliances.

There's nothing wrong with a gadfly - someone has to hold government accountable. But should you be forced to pay for it, especially when it comes from an ideology
that could hurt your livelihood or even your life?

Gadflies might be parasites in nature, but the human ones don't usually double as leeches.

David Freddoso is a Commentary staff writer who can be reached at dfreddoso@washingtonexaminer.com

The British Press respond to President Obama's gaffes

The Wonder Kid is overwhelmed. I thought that he was chosen over the Old One because of his youth and vigor, his ability to multi-task. His recent disastrous meeting with Gordon Brown has been critiqued by the Telegraph in the UK. They are SO polite over there. The knife slips in soooo quietly.......

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

President Bush is 15 years his senior and has been running a war. Heck, FDR was old, crippled, and had the Great Depression along with WWI. THIS is overwheming Obama?

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.
"I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." Nuff' said on that.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

Where's the outcry about Bush's, I mean, Obama's lack of interest in foreign policy? Wasn't this the President that was going to engage the world?

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.

Oh. My. God. And this is from the "smart diplomacy" crowd.....

We're doomed.