Nothing to see here, move along: #IRS official to plead the 5th over targeting scandal

But, really, this is all just some wingnut fantasy aiming to destroy the fourth-greatest president ever.

Which is why Lois Lerner is invoking her right not to incriminate herself:

A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm of Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.

You see? Just a bunch of nothing. In fact, all these questions about all these cooked-up “scandals” are nothing more than the new birtherism.

Between this and Roger Simon teasing us with the prospect of new Benghazi whistleblowers, I may have to double my reserves of popcorn for all the hearings.

via a gazillion people on Twitter

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

New administration defense on #Benghazi: “We’re not evil, just idiots.”

“Oops! Our bad.”

You know it’s bad when pleading stupidity is the best you can come up with.

Via Sharyl Attkisson at CBS:

Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. 11, 2012 acknowledge that a range of mistakes were made the night of the attacks on the U.S. missions in Benghazi, and in messaging to Congress and the public in the aftermath.

The officials spoke to CBS News in a series of interviews and communications under the condition of anonymity so that they could be more frank in their assessments. They do not all agree on the list of mistakes and it’s important to note that they universally claim that any errors or missteps did not cost lives and reflect “incompetence rather than malice or cover up.” Nonetheless, in the eight months since the attacks, this is the most sweeping and detailed discussion by key players of what might have been done differently.

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.”

My first observation is that “lying” and “idiots” are not mutually exclusive terms. In fact I suspect the former came about trying to cover for the latter.

The article addresses several questions, among them: Why wasn’t the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) activated? Why was the Counterterrorism Security Group, described as…

an interagency task force (…) to be convened when emergency terrorist events are suspected. According to a public military document, it’s part of a plan to “synchronize the efforts of all the government agencies that have a role to play in the Global War on Terrorism.” 

…not convened? Where was the “in extremis” (emergency rescue) force?

The answers are, well, “special.” Things along the lines of (paraphrasing) “we didn’t think that was their mission” (FEST); they had been made “lower level” (CSG) and senior people were dealing with it; and “they were off on a training mission (because we didn’t notice the significance of the 9/11 anniversary) and they couldn’t be recalled in time.” Like I said, pleading incompetence.

Read the whole thing, it’s worth your time. You’ll notice that not really touched on is the issue of security for Benghazi prior to the attack on the consulate. I suppose they got tired of saying “We’re idiots” over and over.

Like I said above, one can be both a liar and incompetent at the same time, when the lying is used to cover the incompetence, particularly Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s; she had screwed up our Libya policy big-time, and the commander in chief needed his beauty sleep to be ready for his big fundraiser in Vegas the next day. These underlings weren’t just furiously trading emails and holding meetings to fight a blame war between State and the CIA, they were figuring out how best to cover their bosses’ arses and not damage his reelection campaign and her 2016 run.

And, in the process, lying to the American people, Congress, and the families of the victims.

There is “malicious”, and there is “idiot.”

And then there are “malicious idiots.”

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi headdesk moment: Why the review board stopped questioning Clinton

“Don’t ask questions”

Via PJM. This is one of those statements that makes you think “No, you didn’t just say that, did you?”

He did:

“Now, with hindsight, don’t you [Amb. Thomas Pickering, co-chair of the Accountability Review Board] think it would have been important to ask her about that conversation and other decisions she made that night? Because she [Secretary Clinton] was intimately involved,” [Wolf] Blitzer asked.

“We did. We did. We interviewed the senior staff members…”

“But why not her?” Blitzer pressed.

Pickering replied that they “felt that everything that we saw was fully and competently taken care of.”

“We didn’t have a reason in any way at all to suggest there was anything that she might have known that was not already relayed to us. It was straightforward. We thought they did an excellent job the night of. There were many different pieces of testimony we put together with respect to that,” he continued.

When asked if the ARB was trying to protect Clinton, Pickering said, “Well, the criticism may be the criticism. We will have to live with that, but the truth is that we didn’t feel there was a need to do that on the basis of all the evidence we had accumulated to date.”

“And knowing what you know now, was that the right decision?” Blitzer continued.

“Yes, of course it was the right decision.”

“To avoid any serious questioning with the secretary of state?”

“Well, if we had started down that line, where would it have ended?” Pickering asked.

Oh, gee, Ambassador, I don’t know. How about with “the Truth?” Clinton was on a 2 AM (Libyan time) phone call with DCM Hicks, by that time the highest American official in Libya because the Ambassador was missing in a besieged consulate and later found dead. He made no mention of a “demonstration” or a video. Every bit of evidence from our people on the ground –relayed to Clinton directly– and from intelligence that night indicated this was a terrorist attack. Maybe you could have asked her just where in the process of revising the talking points a dozen times the idea of a video being the cause of it all entered the picture?

And if that wasn’t in your purview, how about why repeated requests for additional security (or even just to keep the security they had) were denied? Why was the inter-departmental FEST counter-terrorism team never activated that night, despite repeated requests from the Deputy Assistant Secretary in charge to be included?

That’s why you ask the questions: You may not know where they’ll end, but, when you get there, you’ll have the accountability your board was supposed to establish.

Unless, in your dictionary, “accountability” means “whitewash.”

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

That moment when irony slaps Hillary Clinton in the face

Given her fatal incompetence regarding Libya and Benghazi, this flashback to 2004 takes on a whole new meaning:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she is not sorry she voted for a resolution authorizing President Bush to take military action in Iraq despite the recent problems there but she does regret “the way the president used the authority.”

“How could they have been so poorly prepared for the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein?” the New York Democrat asked Tuesday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“I don’t understand how they had such an unrealistic view of what was going to happen.”

And, in her own case, I bet she still doesn’t understand. Nor will she ever.

via Vermontaigne and Instapundit

Shocker: Lying weasel Jay Carney caught lying like a weasel about #Benghazi

US Consulate, Benghazi

And I think the shocking thing is that it’s the MSM exposing him (emphases added):

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict* what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

*(MSM-speak for “Jay Carney is a lying weasel.”)

We already know from The Weekly Standard that State and a failed fiction writer now working as an Obama national-security aide were heavily involved in “editing” the initial CIA talking points. This ABC report shows how many iterations they went through before the bowdlerized version was handed to Ambassador Rice for her role as designated mouthpiece the following Sunday. Then, when the talking points were shown to be a fiction, Carney went before the public to lie about their origins. The only question is was he knowingly lying, or was he played for a sap?

But, annoying as it is to have yet another example of the administration’s dishonesty over Benghazi (1) come out, the real story in my opinion here isn’t that a press secretary lied to cover his boss and his top aides. No, the real story here is that the MSM is finally getting interested in Benghazi, finally “uncovering” all these shocking revelations only after Obama has been safely reelected.

They’ve done their job, you see. They pushed Obama over the finish line twice, so now they can go back to pretending they’re objective journalists. There’s no need to “play Pravda” anymore, at least in this case. Now they can break news of things they could easily have discovered back in September, October, and November, except that it might have hurt Obama’s reelection chances.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad they’re finally doing their jobs. Benghazi is a huge scandal and the story has to be told. But don’t expect me to praise them for “holding the powerful accountable,” when their self-serving cynicism (2) is so dazzling.

RELATED: The Right Sphere reaches back in time to remind us that Carney’s boss was telling the same lies on a national stage just before the election.

Footnote:
(1) Remember, the administration knew what happened that night from their people on the ground. The jihadis themselves knew what happened; it was their operation. The only people being deceived here were us.
(2) There are a few exceptions, of course, but the corruption of the MSM as an institution is spread far and wide.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The mystery of Obama and #Benghazi

US Consulate, Benghazi

In my last post, I focused on Hillary Clinton’s craven behavior, driven by her lust for the Oval Office. But, as I point out, that doesn’t let Obama off the hook. He is the President, he is the Commander in Chief, and yet when American diplomats were attacked that night, he apparently went to bed.

Andrew Malcolm has a great column at IBD blasting Obama. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

Obama has had himself photographed firmly atop other national security events like the whacking of Osama bin Laden. The Democrat held a brief Rose Garden photo op on Benghazi the next morning before rushing off to fundraisers in Las Vegas. We know he and Clinton both blamed the offensive video for weeks after they knew that line was phony.

What we don’t know is where the hell was the commander-in-chief all-night while two former SEALs, a communications specialist and the first U.S. ambassador in three decades were being murdered on-duty six time zones away.

We do know that then Secy. of Defense Leon Panetta claims Obama instructed him in the early evening of 9/11 to do everything necessary to protect Americans and embassies abroad.

We also know now that “everything” wasn’t really anything at all.

But I’m sure he got a good night’s sleep.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi: Hearings show Hillary Clinton really is “Lady Macbeth.”

“Banquo’s blood”

I’ve joked since the Clintons first came on the national scene that Hillary was a modern-day “Lady Macbeth,” willing to do anything and put up with anything to get power and keep it. Think about it: why else would someone suffer repeated public humiliations from a serial-philanderer husband, one widely reputed to be a rapist? Because she wants power, and needed Bill to have a shot at her ultimate goal — becoming president, herself.

That was the reason for her Senate “career.” Not to serve and represent the people of New York (where, in fact, she was a carpetbagger), but to give her a national stage from which she could launch a presidential bid in 2004 or 2008, widely expected to be an anointing… until a certain young, male, charismatic senator came along and snatched the crown –her crown!– from her. And there she was again, left making a deal with a powerful man to keep open the road to her dreams. I have no proof, of course, just a gut feeling based on watching Hillary over the course of 20 years, but I think the deal went something like this: In return for ending her primary battle against Obama and delivering her supporters’ votes, she received a plum cabinet post with global exposure and the unofficial title of “heir apparent.” (Really, no one other than Joe takes Joe’s own ambitions seriously.) The deal struck, all was set. Just a few more years and her heart’s desire would be hers.

Then came Benghazi, the truth of which had to be covered up, lest it expose her incompetence and ruin her last chance to be president.

But the ghosts of the men who died that night would not stay quiet, and questions of “why” ate at the consciences of three good Americans who would no longer suffer the truth be kept silent, and so came forward yesterday to tell the nation what they knew and saw and did.

And their testimony condemns Hillary Clinton.

Most damning was the testimony of Gregory Hicks, the Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya at the time of the attack, who became our top diplomat there when Ambassador Stephens was killed. Among other things, he attested under oath to the following:

• That there was no demonstration in Benghazi. In two conversations with the Ambassador, demonstrations were never mentioned. In fact, Stephens’ last words to Hicks were “We’re under attack!” The embassy knew that night from Ansar al-Sharia’s Twitter feed that they were taking responsibility for the attack.
• That the YouTube video Clinton and the Obama administration desperately tried to blame for the disaster meant nothing in Libya.
• That he himself briefed Clinton herself over the phone at 2 AM Libyan time (8 PM EST), giving her a full update on the situation. Again, no mention of a video, no mention of a demonstration.

And yet, two hours later, Clinton was blaming the video. Days later, standing over the coffins of the four killed in Benghazi, she told the father of one that they would “get the guy” who made that video.  CIA analysis was scrubbed at State Department behest to remove references to terrorism. Our UN ambassador went on five different talk shows the following Sunday, five days later, and blamed the video. The President of the United States, himself, stood before the United Nations General Assembly and proclaimed the video to be the culprit.

Yet Hillary knew the truth the night it all happened. And she lied. She lied not only to the nation, not only to Congress, but to the father of Ty Woods, one of the retired Navy SEALs who died that night while trying to save American lives.

While she was trying to save her political career.

I’m not excusing anyone in the upper reaches of the administration. Not Susan Rice, not Leon Panetta, not Jay Carney, and certainly not Barack Obama. They all had to have known; they all had their own arses to cover, or those of their patrons. (See for example Bryan Preston’s theory.)

But it was Hillary Clinton who knew from the start, and hers were the policies that lead to inadequate security in Benghazi. Those were her personnel in Libya, and hers was the responsibility.

But “The Deal” had been made in 2008, and it had to be preserved. Thus a desperate lie about a video was born and a pathetic little videographer was made the scapegoat, and the First Amendment was crushed.

All to keep clear Hillary Clinton’s path to the throne she knew should be hers:

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry ‘Hold, hold!’
–Lady Macbeth, “Macbeth,” Act I, scene v

What a pathetic, disgusting creature she is.

Afterthought: This isn’t over. Unanswered are questions about what other actors that night did then and in the days after, especially the President. Also, while Mr. Hicks testified that a stand-down order did come to the second relief team, he does not know who was on the phone with the Lieutenant Colonel in charge. The “chain” of that order needs to be made clear. Clinton herself should be hauled before the committee again, as should Susan Rice, Leon Panetta, and Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s chief of staff and “fixer” at the time. And anyone else in that circle who was in a position to know. Somewhere in that rats’ nest is a new John Dean, waiting to talk.

RELATED:

Roger L. Simon compares Hillary to the Medicis.

“Seven Things We Learned From The Benghazi Whistle-Blower Hearings.” Must reading.

A good ABC News article on the Benghazi hearing.

Eli Lake on “They knew it was terrorism.”

One of the Benghazi whistle-blowers was demoted for asking too many questions.

Why was State’s FEST team not deployed?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Confirmed: #Benghazi consulate denied military help, administration cover up collapsing

“No authority”

Via Sharyl Attkisson/CBS News, this is just disgusting:

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has 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.

The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘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.”

No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.

The fact that a relief team was available in Libya and was ready to go is important, if one bears in mind the question of cross-border authority. That means presidential authorization wasn’t necessary: the Special Ops guys were ready to board the plane and, as Hicks states later in the article in a transcript of his testimony to congressional investigators, the Libyan government wanted us to intervene:

Q: So what would have been the risk of — do you think it would have been risky for us to send someone, do you think it would have been counterproductive for us to send a fighter pilot plane over Benghazi without that permission?

A: We would have certainly wanted to obtain that permission. I believe we would have gotten it if we had asked. I believe that the Libyans were hoping that we were going to come bail them out of this mess. And, you know, they were as surprised as we were that American — the military forces that did arrive only arrived on the evening of September 12. Yeah.

Remember, Hicks was the Deputy Chief of Mission, our “Number Two” at the embassy after the Ambassador. With Ambassador Stevens dead, he was in charge. He was in a position to know the Libyan government very well and, by his words, it looks like the Libyans would have been happy to green-light almost anything we wanted to do.

But someone in no uncertain terms told that relief team to stand down. Just who gave that order and why the administration lied about it are questions the House Oversight Committee should focus on this upcoming Wednesday.

There are other questions regarding available military aid that night: Hick asserts that, had we flown a couple of fighter jets over Benghazi, we would have scared the jihadis off:

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack.

Attkisson points out that the Souda Bay Naval Air Station in Crete is only an hour away, while an earlier CBS article reported on available aid at Sigonella, Sicily, also an hour or so away. Yet, in an article at The Daily Beast, Eli Lake reports that Hicks says he was told the nearest fighter cover was at Aviano, Italy, too far away to help. That latter backs up then-Defense Secretary Panetta’s assertion to a Senate committee that no air assets would have been available quickly enough. But… no fighter assets at two nearby airbases, when we have a consulate that’s sitting in the middle of a jihadi recruiting ground? Forgive me if I’m skeptical, but, when I read in the same article…

[Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin] Dempsey said he could not have gotten troops on the ground within 13 to 15 hours.

Panetta was firm throughout his testimony that there were no “undue delays” in decision making and there was no denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders when the attack happened.

…and compare it to the testimony of the Deputy Chief of Mission who was there on the ground screaming for help with a team of Special Forces ready and anxious to go, well, forgive me if I think we’re being shoveled a load of horse manure.

In fact it’s plain to everyone, even Bob Schieffer (h/t The Jawa Report), that this administration has been lying through its teeth since the day this attack took place. They deliberately altered talking points (1) based on orders from “on high,” blaming a video no one had ever seen and vilifying the poor schmuck videographer, denying the attack had anything to do with al Qaeda, and then, when it couldn’t be denied any longer, hiding behind a whitewash of an “accountability report” that is itself now being investigated.

All this coverup and all these lies, and, near as anyone can figure out, it was all meant to protect Obama’s reelection and Hillary Clinton’s chances to succeed him.

Somewhere Richard Nixon nods in understanding.

Wednesday should be fascinating.

RELATED: The Weekly Standard with more on the stand-down order. Background on Gregory Hicks. The complete Benghazi timeline in spreadsheet format. Another whistle-blower reveals Secretary Clinton’s efforts to go around her department’s own counterterrorism bureau the night of Benghazi. Who the heck is Ben Rhodes, and why is a failed fiction writer making US national security decisions? (h/t Rick Moran)

Footnote:
(1) If you read nothing else, read that article. It’s devastating.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi whistle-blower names revealed

They called for help.

And these are people in position to know what happened:

Appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be three career State Department officials: Gregory N. Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks and, upon the killing of Ambassador Stevens in those attacks, the highest-ranking American diplomat in the country; Mark I. Thompson, a former U.S. Marine and presently the Deputy Coordinator for Operations in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, a Diplomatic Security officer who was formerly the regional security officer (RSO) in Libya, the top security officer in the country, in the months leading up to the Benghazi attacks.

More on Mr. Hicks:

Hicks is a veteran Foreign Service officer whose overseas postings have also included Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. According to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), another member of the committee, Hicks was in Tripoli at 9:40 p.m. local time on September 11 when he received one of Stevens’s earliest phone calls amid the crisis. “We’re under attack! We’re under attack!” the ambassador reportedly shouted into his cell phone at Hicks. According to Chaffetz, who subsequently debriefed Hicks, the deputy “immediately called into Washington to trigger all the mechanisms” for an inter-agency response. “The real-life trauma that [Hicks] went through,” Chaffetz recalled to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, “I mean, I really felt it in his voice. It was hard to listen to. He’s gone through a lot, but he did a great job.”

Read the rest. These hearings on Wednesday are going to be very interesting.

via JCinQC

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

State Dept. Inspector General investigating State Dept. Board that investigated #Benghazi

They’d like answers, too.

But, don’t worry. According to a State Department spokesman, this is just part of a standard review of “the process.”

Yeah, sure it is.

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General is investigating the special internal panel that probed the Benghazi terror attack for the State Department, Fox News has confirmed.

The IG’s office is said by well-placed sources to be seeking to determine whether the Accountability Review Board, or ARB — led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen — failed to interview key witnesses who had asked to provide their accounts of the Benghazi attacks to the panel.

The IG’s office notified the department of the “special review” on March 28, according to Doug Welty, the congressional and public affairs officer of the IG’s office.

This disclosure marks a significant turn in the ongoing Benghazi case, as it calls into question the reliability of the blue-ribbon panel that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton convened to review the entire matter. Until the report was concluded, she and all other senior Obama administration officials regularly refused to answer questions about what happened in Benghazi.

But State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell disputed the characterization of the review, saying it is “simply false” to assert the panel is being investigated.

And that smoke you see is not indicative of a fire.

That’s why whistle-blowers who wanted to testify before the ARB are lawyering up in advance of next Wednesday’s House hearings — just “normal process:”

In an interview for the Fox News program “Geraldo” taped Thursday afternoon and set to air this weekend, Joe diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, told host Geraldo Rivera that he is legally representing a career State Department officer whom the board failed to interview. DiGenova called the ARB a “cover-up.”

DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official who represents another State Department whistle-blower in the Benghazi case, said their respective clients will testify next Wednesday at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee being chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

The review board’s report was rightly regarded at the time as a whitewash, making scapegoats of senior officials well-below Hillary Clinton’s level and attempting to appease the public with severe punishments laughable wrist-slaps.

Jim Geraghty is right that this could be deadly to Hillary’s 2016 prospects, but there’s something else to bear in mind: if the question of “cross-border authority” discussed yesterday is is true, then what the whistle-blowers have to say –and perhaps wanted to say to the ARB– may well implicate the President’s actions or non-actions that night. It’s not hard at all to imagine pressure from both the White House and Clinton’s office on the ARB to “find some responsible flunkies, fast” because there were two arses that needed covering — Clinton’s and Obama’s.

Question: IF all this turns out to be true and IF it looks like “Hillary 2016″ is about to go down like the Hindenburg, will she rat-out her former boss? It’s not as if there is any love lost between the Clintonistas and the Obama camp.

RELATED: Wait, al Qaeda operatives were at the Benghazi attack? You mean they were working for the video maker, too?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi: Obama denied aid to attacked consulate – confirmed?

“No help”

Last November, in a post about the Benghazi consulate massacre and the question of military relief, I wrote about the question of “cross-border authority” — that is, who has the power to order our military to enter another country without their permission, per force an act of war. Quoting an article at PJM by Matt Bracken, we learned that only the President -Barack Obama- has that authority. Here’s the relevant information, again:

Once the alarm is sent – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.

That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.

No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.

On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.

Emphases added.

Today in an article at Fox News, Adam Housely reports that, because of a “communication breakdown” between the White House, State, and the Department of Defense, the military never received permission to enter Libya:

On the night of the Benghazi terror attack, special operations put out multiple calls for all available military and other assets to be moved into position to help — but the State Department and White House never gave the military permission to cross into Libya, sources told Fox News.

The disconnect was one example of what sources described as a communication breakdown that left those on the ground without outside help.

“When you are on the ground, you depend on each other — we’re gonna get through this situation. But when you look up and then nothing outside of the stratosphere is coming to help you or rescue you, that’s a bad feeling,” one source said.

Multiple sources spoke to Fox News about what they described as a lack of action in Benghazi on Sept. 11 last year, when four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.

Read the whole thing. It describes a lack of contingency planning, largely centered on Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and surely they (and she) bear a lot of blame for the lack of proper security at Benghazi and the failure to recognize the dangers in that part of Libya. Four Americans died because of it. The Diplomad, a former Foreign Service Officer with direct experience of Clinton, has often described how she seemed utterly uninterested in the job, thus this failure seems all too plausible.

But, if Bracken is right, at the moment of crisis itself, responsibility for a rescue operation that night was not Clinton’s. Nor was it Defense Secretary Panetta’s, nor that of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nor of anyone else… except President Barack Obama, who, like the dog in “Silver Blaze,” did nothing. The Fox article itself, relying on unnamed albeit multiple sources, looks almost like an effort to either shift the blame to someone no longer there, Clinton, or disperse blame by showing how everyone screwed up, so no one person is responsible.

And yet, when we read:

Sources said that shortly after the attack began around 9:40 p.m., special forces put out the calls for assets to be moved into position.

“What that does is that enacts … every asset, every element to respond and it becomes a global priority,” one source said. “I would tell you that was given and the only reason it was given is because of special operations pack.”

However, the source said, “Assets did not move.”

The key question regarding a rescue effort remains: Who had “cross-border authority” and, if it wasn’t given, why?

Unlike Bob Owens, I’m not ready to say that Obama himself denied a rescue operation is “confirmed,” particularly when sources are unnamed, but it’s awfully plausible if Bracken is right about the president’s sole authority to grant CBA, and if we imagine a diffident Obama, who loves to campaign but hates to govern, voting present by simply not making a decision.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) will be holding hearings next week at which whistle-blowers with direct information about what happened at Benghazi and with our reaction are expected to testify. Maybe then we’ll finally get an answer about why the most powerful military in human history couldn’t couldn’t come to the rescue.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi: the President couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone

One of your embassies is under attack, your ambassador and other Americans  are in grave danger, and forces you’ve sent to their aid are held up at the local airport in a turf dispute. So, what do you do? Do you pick up the phone and call the leader of the host country and ask him to expedite things so your soldiers can go save American lives? Do you remind him of the aid we rendered to his people in throwing off the late dictator, without which they likely would have lost? And, if he demurs, do you remind him of your predecessor’s famous words, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us?”

Oh, hell no:

President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday.

“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released.

Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi might still be alive because he might have been able to push U.S. aid to get to the scene faster.

The White House has said Mr. Obama was kept up to date on the attack by his staff, though after being alerted to the attack in a pre-scheduled afternoon meeting he never spoke again with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin E. Dempsey or then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Panetta told Congress last week that he knew immediately the attacks were a terrorist assault, though the White House downplayed that notion in the first five days after the attack.

Emphasis added. Let’s make this clear: Obama knew early enough that he could have made a phone call to Tripoli. (Somehow, I think Libyan President El-Megrahi would have picked up the line.) We had a rapid reaction squad at the Benghazi airport, where it was delayed due to an argument between rival forces. Had Obama put the weight of his office behind a personal demand that those men be allowed to continue their mission, at least the people at the CIA annex, including the two SEALs who died defending it, might have been rescued. But evidently, no one in this chowderheaded national security team thought to suggest it to Obama, nor did the Commander in Chief think of it himself. Or he did, but didn’t think it was such a big deal.

Well, it was a big deal to the Americans whose blood stained the walls of our consulate:

“On hold.”

To say I’m disgusted would be an understatement. “Contempt” is the nicest way I can express my opinion for the man occupying the Oval Office.

Meanwhile, take a look again at the last quoted sentence. Panetta knew immediately it was a terrorist attack. That means Hillary Clinton knew. That means Susan Rice, our UN Ambassador knew. And that means Obama himself knew. And yet for days and weeks after the attack they continued to blame the maker of an obscure YouTube video hardly anyone had seen. Rice went on five Sunday talk shows to push that point. Clinton promised the father of the murdered Ambassador Stevens that they would get the maker of the video. And Obama himself repeatedly denounced the video in his address to the UN General Assembly.

And now –after the election– Panetta admits they knew the truth all along.

Senator Lindsey Graham has often frustrated me, but on Benghazi he’s been a bulldog. He has warned he will put a hold on the nominations of Senator Hagel for Defense Secretary and John Brennan for CIA Director until the administration answers the many questions left over from the Benghazi massacre, including who decided to alter the CIA talking points on the incident to make it look like a spontaneous demonstration over a video. Good, and I hope he can sustain it. The administration thinks they’ve skated on this, and the only way the truth will ever come out is to hold up major appointments.

As I’ve said before, the only people who did not know what really happened on September 11th, 2012, in Benghazi were the American people. Our government knew. The jihadis knew. The Libyan government knew. Everybody knew except us, because someone made the decision to hide it from us.

And if you recall that September comes before November, you’ll know the likely reason why this colossal screw up was covered up.

via Hot Air

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) #Benghazi: Sen. Rand Paul to Hillary – “I would have relieved you.”

Yes! Exactly!

It’s the eternal way in Washington: “We are all responsible” means “No one is responsible” means “Don’t hold me responsible.”

Especially when the person saying it really is one of those responsible.

I’m liking Rand Paul a lot right now.

via the Washington Free Beacon

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi — There are still a few genuine reporters left

The dead would like answers, too.

Some of you may recall that I’ve in the past praised Sharyl Attkisson of CBS for her work on the Fast and Furious scandal. For a long time, she was almost the only MSM reporter asking serious questions about what happened in that “felony stupid” fiasco

Sharyl’s also been digging into the massacre at our consulate in Benghazi last September 11th, in which our ambassador and three other Americans died at the hands of Al Qaeda-aligned terrorists. While she’s had plenty of questions for the White House, the most transparent administration ever has given no answers. Frustrated with the stonewalling, Attkisson yesterday took to Twitter to ask her questions before the public. Here are is a series of particular interest to me:

A Benghazi victim’s family member stated that Mrs. Clinton told him she would find and arrest whoever made the anti-Islam video. ..

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

Remember that guy who was rousted out of his home by the LA Sheriffs in the dark of the night because he had the temerity to exercise his right to free speech? (Please, the parole violation was just a fig leaf of an excuse, if that.) That’s who Attkisson is talking about.

To continue:

. Is this accurate? If so, what was Mrs. Clinton’s understanding at the time of what would be the grounds for arrest?..

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

…and…

The Administration is reported to have asked that the anti-Islamist YouTube video initially blamed in Benghazi be removed from YouTube…

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

Love this next one:

.. If true, what is the Administration’s view regarding other videos or future material that it may wish were not published, but are legal?

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

And finally…

What is the Administration’s criteria in general for requesting removal of a YouTube or other Internet video?

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

Naturally, the mooks of Chicago-on-the-Potomac have refused to answer any of these or Attkisson’s other questions.

Secretary Clinton is scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today on the Benghazi massacre… assuming she doesn’t have another concussion. I would right a fat check to any congressman on the committee who asked Clinton these questions, refused to let her dodge answering, and demanded to know how, in her opinion, the video maker’s arrest and imprisonment comports with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and his natural right of free speech. (1)

Meanwhile, I’ll continue hoping for more real reporters like Sharyl Attkisson, instead of the progressive cheering section that comprises most of the MSM. (Not that I’ll hold my breath; none of these questions are difficult to think of. The media’s shame is that there are so few willing to ask them.)

via Ace, who has a great post on “old school journalism.”

Footnote:
(1) Again, don’t try to tell me this was all over a parole violation. If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

UPDATE: Clinton has begun her opening statement — no mention of the video maker’s arrest.  As Bryan Preston concludes, it’s either “stunningly incomplete, if not blatantly dishonest.“

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Benghazi Consulate Massacre: the deaths are real, the punishments were fake.

They didn’t escape so  lightly.

This is just outrageous. Four Americans died in Benghazi and the people held accountable for it in the official review whitewash, who supposedly were forced to resign, were instead just given a timeout:

The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.

The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not “resigned” from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.

The four were made out to be sacrificial lambs in the wake of a scathing report issued last week that found that the US compound in Benghazi, Libya, was left vulnerable to attack because of “grossly inadequate” security.

State Department leaders “didn’t come clean about Benghazi and now they’re not coming clean about these staff changes,” a source close to the situation told The Post., adding, the “public would be outraged over this.”

What a miserable farce. The entire Libya misadventure, from the initial, off-the-cuff decision of the president to loan out our Armed Forces in the service of a European agenda like some 18th-century monarch contracting out mercenaries to a royal cousin, down to the post-war security arrangement and rules of engagement — signed off on by Secretary Clinton herself! — was a pathetic, deadly joke.

And now, heaping insult upon injury, the people we were told were punished for the massacre at Benghazi turn out to not to have even received a slap on the wrist. No dismissals, no resignations, no demotions, no loss of pay — nothing but a “Wait a bit until the smoke clears, and then it’s back to normal.”

DiploPundit was right back on the 19th: this was a smokescreen to cover for political appointees. And you can bet it included Madame Secretary, herself.

The Diplomad, a now-retired Foreign Service Officer, thinks he has a pretty good idea what happened:

I will go out further on the limb. Once even the little dust created by the scandal has dissipated, the four bureaucrats asked to take the mini-spear for Chicago will–mark my words–get monetary awards. They will be written up for showing courage and fortitude under difficult circumstances. The senior people will evade all responsibility; ol’ whats-her-name will slip out of the building and leave her desk to John “Xmas in Cambodia” Kerry, the dead will be forgotten, the Islamist Morlocks will lick their fingers and get ready for another helping of Eloi.

Move along, there’s nothing to see here.

Nothing except a nauseatingly cynical game in which the real losers are the truth and the dead at Benghazi.

via Michelle Malkin

Postscript: In a related editorial, the Post closes with a truly brutal line:

“…the only State Department official who lost his job due to Benghazi was Ambassador Stevens.”

Indeed.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Benghazi Consulate Massacre: they were unarmed

Unarmed.

Imagine you’ve just helped overthrow a “repressive, but no threat to you” government in a far-off country, but it turns out that many of the residents –your erstwhile allies– are themselves sympathetic your deadly enemies, who’ve proven themselves to be very much a threat.  And now imagine you’re going to establish a diplomatic mission in the heart of the area most aligned with said deadly enemies and from which they’ve drawn many recruits. Could be a bit dangerous, no? But, naturally, you’re smart enough to make sure your people at this new Ft. Apache are well-armed at all times, especially when a VIP like the Ambassador comes calling. Right?

RIGHT??

As the great Strother Martin once said, “Morons! I’ve got morons on my team!“

A source with personal knowledge of the security situation in Benghazi told Breitbart News that Senators who listened to closed door testimony about the Benghazi attack were shocked to learn State Department security personnel agents were not immediately armed.

Additionally, agents separated from Ambassador Chris Stevens left to retrieve their M4 weapons in a separate building. Only one returned to protect the Ambassador, while the other two hunkered down in the barracks, the source relayed.

“From the accounts I read, those guys were not ready. When the attack came that night, they had to go back to the other room and grab their weapons. Then the worse part about it was they never even returned to be with the Ambassador. One returned to be with the Ambassador with his rifle. The other two went back to where there were [sic] barracks. And two stayed in that same building where there were radios and other weapons and the safe and other stuff was there.

There were no shots fired in return. On the embassy property, just the embassy property, none of those security agents blasted a single bullet from a single pistol or rifle at all in defense of the Ambassador—nothing.”

(Emphasis added)

And there there’s this:

According to the Breitbart News source, the State Department security agents are “six week temporary duty assignments.”

The source explained, “When they’re there, they are not working together. They don’t know one another. They probably all got there and one guy had been there for two weeks another guy had been there for four and then another three came in from Tripoli. None of them ever worked with each other before. So when a shooting incident occurs, they hunker down and hope and pray that it goes away instead of reacting like a military trained force.”

In other words, they were no better than mall cops sent by a temp agency. To guard an ambassador, the protocol equivalent of a four-star general. In an area rife with our enemies, and after the embassy had been begging the State Department for added security for months in the face of increasingly violent attacks. Meanwhile two former SEALs not even attached to the mission rushed to the sounds of battle and gave their lives trying to make up for State’s incompetence.

Secretary Clinton is scheduled to testify on Benghazi before Rep. Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-Fl) House Foreign Affairs Committee. I can’t wait to see her try to explain this one away.

Morons.

RELATED: Earlier posts on Benghazi.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Benghazi Consulate Massacre: questions about the CIA’s mission there

One of the interesting revelations in all the tawdry news surrounding former CIA Director Petraeus’ affair with Paula Broadwell (1) concerns the mission of the CIA annex in Benghazi, the location to which diplomats were whisked after the consulate was overrun and where two former SEALs lost their lives defending them. According to Petraeus’s former mistress, the CIA was running a secret prison at the site, and the attack may have been a raid to rescue the prisoners. Speaking at an alumni symposium at the university of Denver, she:

…confirmed the reports on Fox News that the CIA annex asked for a special unit, the Commander in Chief’s In Extremis Force, to come and assist it. She also said that the force could indeed have reinforced the consulate, and that Petraeus knew all of this, but was not allowed to talk to the press because of his position in the CIA.

“The challenge has been the fog of war, and the greater challenge is that it’s political hunting season, and so this whole thing has been turned into a very political sort of arena, if you will,” she said. “The fact that came out today is that the ground forces there at the CIA annex, which is different from the consulate, were requesting reinforcements.

“They were requesting the – it’s called the C-in-C’s In Extremis Force – a group of Delta Force operators, our very, most talented guys we have in the military. They could have come and reinforced the consulate and the CIA annex. Now, I don’t know if a lot of you have heard this but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back. It’s still being vetted.

“The challenging thing for Gen. Petraeus is that in his new position, he’s not allowed to communicate with the press. So he’s known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in Libya, within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.”

“Commander in Chief’s In Extremis Force” refers, I believe, to a force controlled by the regional commander, in this case the head of Africom, not forces directly controlled by the President. It should also be noted that, later in her talk, Broadwell gave some support to the infamous YouTube video as one source for the disaster: the Libyan jihadis, seeing the disturbances in Cairo and elsewhere, decided this would give them good cover for their real motive.

The CIA denied had earlier denied refusing to render aid to its Benghazi station, and now denies maintaining a secret prison, but Jennifer Griffin, a reporter who’s been doing real journalism on Benghazi, maintains that there was a CIA prison there and that it contained more than just a couple of Libyans:

According to multiple intelligence sources who have served in Benghazi, there were more than just Libyan militia members who were held and interrogated by CIA contractors at the CIA annex in the days prior to the attack. Other prisoners from additional countries in Africa and the Middle East were brought to this location.

The Libya annex was the largest CIA station in North Africa, and two weeks prior to the attack, the CIA was preparing to shut it down. Most prisoners, according to British and American intelligence sources, had been moved two weeks earlier.

The CIA, though, categorically denied these allegations, saying: “The CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless.”

So no we have a massive case of “he said, she said,” only involving much more than marital infidelity. James Taranto quotes Griffin to ask some pertinent questions:

Griffin concludes with the question: “What was the CIA really doing in Benghazi . . ., and who in the White House knew exactly what the CIA was up to?” Did the CIA act in contravention of the executive order, and if so, did the president approve? Did the order create a need to keep up appearances that led to the deaths of Americans in the field?

So now, on top of the Benghazi massacre, we need to know if our CIA Director was sharing highly classified information pertaining to our war with Islamism with his mistress. And, implied in Griffin and Taranto’s questions, did the President even know? Apparently Attorney General Holder, to whom the FBI reports, knew about the investigation for months… but didn’t tell Obama that his CIA chief was potentially severely compromised? Really?

But, then again, people apparently don’t tell Holder about important things, either.

This administration’s talent for being left in the dark is impressive, no?

Maybe it’s time for the relevant committees of Congress to shine some light on that darkness.

Footnote:
(1) I honestly don’t give a rat’s rear-end about Petraeus’ infidelity, other than it disgraces an otherwise stellar career and shows a profound lack of judgment and sense on the part of someone entrusted with a critical role in our nation’s security. We are owed answers here, and I don’t care who Congress has to subpoena to get it.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Benghazi Consulate Massacre: the responsibility for not launching a rescue mission

Obama said “no.”

One of the enduring mysteries of the Benghazi massacre is the lack of any serious attempt to render assistance to those trapped in the consulate and the CIA annex building. We know the resources were available at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, one to two hours away by air. We know that Special Forces units were moved from Central Europe to Italy in anticipation of a “go” order. So why didn’t they go?

At PJ Media, former Navy SEAL Matt Bracken explains that the authority to cross a national border on a hostile mission, such as a rescue in Benghazi, can only come from the President. Not the Vice President, not the Secretary of Defense, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not even from regional commanders in the area. They can preposition all they want, but, in the end, the only person with “cross-border authority” is, for now, Barack Obama:

The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor — the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.

Once the alarm is sent – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.

That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.

No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.

On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.

Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya — such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.

How might this process have played out in the White House?

Read the rest to see Mr. Bracken’s speculations regarding what happened that night in the White House. It’s an enlightening piece from someone who knows how these situations operate.

It also sheds light on another mystery. It’s been reported that one of the former SEALs defending the Annex had put a targeting laser on a jihadi mortar crew, something he would do only if he expected help and was trying to direct incoming fire. This lead to speculation that there was an AC-130 gunship over Benghazi at time time, but that it was denied permission to fire. If Mr. Bracken’s analysis is correct, it’s quite possible a craft was launched from Sicily with the expectation that CBA would be coming soon. Did the SEAL trapped in Benghazi know that the gunship was close, and was painting the target to be ready for it?

We may never know.

But what we do know, thanks to Mr. Bracken, is that sole responsibility for the American response that night lies with President Barack Obama. Whether by actively denying permission or passively not making a decision (by going to bed?), President Obama left those men to die.

Remember that next Tuesday.

RELATED: Some other articles of interest.

What kind of lasers did they have in Benghazi?

The consulate knew it was being watched.

During the attack, Obama failed to convene a key group created for just this situation.

The consulate in Benghazi warned State of a possible attack three hours before it happened.

Egypt arrests pro-al Qaeda jihadist tied to Benghazi suspect

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Benghazi Consulate Massacre: embassy warned DC that consulate could not withstand attack

US Consulate, Benghazi

Well, there goes Obama and Biden’s insistence that they never knew our diplomatic mission in Libya was worried about security in Benghazi before the terrorist attack of September 11th:

The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

“RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound,” the cable said.

According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to ‘Takfirist thugs.’” Each U.S. mission has a so-called Emergency Action Committee that is responsible for security measures and emergency planning.

(Emphasis added)

In other words, weeks before Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were murdered by Muslims waging jihad, the embassy told State that their position in Benghazi was untenable, it could not be defended. This wasn’t an empty intellectual exercise, either. The warning was sent in the wake of months of increasing assaults against the consulate, including a bombing last June. The head of security for the mission, the Ambassador,  and others repeatedly asked for more help. Not only were they denied, but their security was reduced. And this was after being told there were al Qaeda training camps in the area.

But wait! There’s more.

As for specific threats against the U.S., the cable warned the intelligence was not clear on the issue, cautioning that the militias in Benghazi were not concerned with any significant retaliation from the Libyan government, which had apparently lost control in Benghazi. A briefer explained that they “did not have information suggesting that these entities were targeting Americans but did caveat that (there was not) a complete picture of their intentions yet. RSO (Regional Security Officer) noted that the Benghazi militias have become more brazen in their actions and have little fear of reprisal from the (government of Libya.)”

(…)

In a three-page cable on Sept 11, the day Stevens and the three other Americans were killed, Stevens wrote about “growing problems with security” in Benghazi and “growing frustration” with the security forces and Libyan police. The ambassador saw both as “too weak to keep the country secure.”

It is State Department policy to rely on local forces for their missions’ primary protection, in order to avoid antagonizing local sensibilities. In many places, this makes sense. But in Libya and, especially, in Benghazi? Where we knew our enemies had camps in the area and, as the quote above shows, the militias had no fear of the central government?

Didn’t anyone in Washington see the problem here?

There is no way this warning stopped at Secretary Clinton’s desk, either. She has meetings weekly with the President, and that she didn’t bring up Libya at some point is unthinkable. There were many requests for help before September 11th, too many to think it wasn’t brought up by Clinton or others in meetings with Obama. He had to have known there was a problem and, by either actively denying help or passively agreeing with the recommendations of others, did nothing about it.

There are three scandals here: first, the incompetence of judgement that lead to our mission and our ambassador having inadequate protection in a highly dangerous region. Second is the truth about what happened –and what didn’t happen– on the night of the battle, itself. Third and last are the serial lies and evasions of the Obama administration in the wake of the Benghazi disaster, including blaming an obscure video and throwing its maker in jail as a scapegoat, his First Amendment rights be damned.

The latter two scandals are fruits of the first: if the Obama administration had acted with reasonable caution in the face of evident danger in Benghazi, then there might not have been any attack, or it would have been fended off. We almost certainly would not have lost four Americans, and the President wouldn’t have felt the need to rip up the Bill of Rights in order to cover for his fecklessness.

Some have written lately that this scandal is worse than Watergate. I agree. Watergate was just a coverup of a petty burglary; Benghazi (and Fast and Furious) has cost lives — the Obama administration’s scandals get people killed.

On November 6th, we have the chance to throw these “felony stupid” bums out of office. I’m confident we’ll do just that. But, in the next year, Congress or the Romney administration must press for the truth of what happened in both scandals, regardless of where it leads.

The dead and their survivors are owed no less.

RELATED: From Walter Russell Mead, more on how Mali and other countries continue to pay the price for Obama’s Libyan adventure. We’ll pay, too, warns The Diplomad, a recently retired Foreign Service Officer.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Benghazi Consulate Massacre: pushback for Petraeus, and what’s important

What really matters

In an earlier post, I quoted news reports that called into question the role General David Petraeus, the CIA director, regarding his analysis of the attack on our consulate in Benghazi. Since then, PJM’s Bryan Preston published information that speaks in Petraeus’ defense:

A U.S. intelligence official disputed the characterization of Petraeus’ briefing to lawmakers on Sept. 14, saying: “The first briefing (to the Hill) carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, with briefers noting that extremists — including those with possible links to AQIM and Ansar al-Sharia — were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous. The talking points (from that weekend) clearly reflect the early indications of extremist involvement in a direct assault.”

As for the current assessment of the Benghazi attack, a U.S. intelligence official said no one is ruling out the idea militants may have aspired to attack the U.S., though the bulk of available information supports the early assessment that extremists — with ties to al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia — did not plan the attacks for day or weeks in advance.

One source who heard Petraeus brief also told Fox News, “I can confirm that he explicitly stated both to the House and the Senate oversight committees that members of AQIM and AAS participated in the attack in Benghazi. That assessment still stands.”

So, who’s right? Right now it’s the word of one side’s source against another, with, it seems, the White House and its political appointees on one side, and the Defense and Intelligence bureaucracies on the other, both with daggers drawn.  Meanwhile those of us outraged over the multiple scandals apparently wrapped in the Benghazi affair are left to throw our hands in the air and demand someone –anyone– tell us the truth.

Amidst all the details of who said what when, let’s not forget what’s important here: After months of Washington failing to give adequate security to our diplomatic mission in Libya, the consulate in Benghazi was attacked by an al Qaeda-aligned force, resulting in the death of our ambassador and three other Americans, two of  whom were former SEALs who fought like lions to defend their fellow Americans until help could come.

But that help never came, denied by someone for some reason never adequately explained. And the Ambassador, the mission staff member, and the two SEALs died.

And the ultimate responsibility for that lies with President Barack Obama, who has been blowing smoke in our eyes over this since the day it happened, hoping to get past the election.

Like the deaths in Operation Fast and Furious, the dead of Benghazi and respect for their survivors demands answers, accountability, and, if need be, punishment.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)