[Editor’s Note – Cindy Sheehan lost a son in Iraq and the elite media put her on every day for many months. Obama ordered our forces to stand down and let Charles Woods’ son die in Libya fighting the enemy; and Woods can only get an interview on Fox News. Sean Smith’s mother got one interview on CNN and has had several on Fox. No one else want’s to interview her.]
Imagine that you are Charles Woods and you learned that the administration left your son to die when they had an AC130 gunship overhead ready to fire and help. The story from the Obama Administration keeps changing.
First it was “we didn’t know” and “we had no idea” and “fog of war”. After word got out that the White House was watching what was unfolding in real time as they had drones overhead and they were in contact with people on the ground the story changed to “Obama told people to do everything that they could to help”. Now we know that forces in the area were told to stand down three times during the attack. We also have a credible but unconfirmed report that AfriCom Commander General Ham was going to violate the stand down order and help. He was placed under arrest by General Rodriquez about 90 seconds after he made the decision.
Now the story has changed again to we did not want to send our reinforcements into an ambush…. umm you don’t ambush an AC130 gunship… it ambushes you.
AC-130 Gunship
The AC130 has advanced computer aimed fire controls. Our men on the ground were in contact with that AC130 and had laser designators on the enemy targets. All the AC130 gunship had to do was pull the trigger, but something prevented them from doing so.
CIA Operators Were Denied Request for Help During the Benghazi Attack
Judge Pirro goes nuclear – Interviews Father of slain Navy Seal
Megyn Kelly plays Charles Woods’ interview with Lars Larson
Charles Woods with Megyn Kelly –
A generation of liars who have no morals – Charles Woods on the White House staff.
SEAL’s father Charles Woods on Hannity: WH officials “murdered” my son
A much better interview of Charles Woods with Glenn Beck
Woods to Obama: Better to die the death of a hero than to live the life of a coward
Democrat Pollster Pat Caddell with Judge Pirro on how the media is helping Obama cover up Benghazigate and our four dead heroes. Pat Caddell is mad as hell.
Each consulate has a virtual panic button called the “Imminent Danger Notification System” that is hit whenever an ambassador is put in peril. This has been in place since after the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
This works as a virtual instant message that goes to the Intelligence agencies such as the CIA Director and the DNI, the Sec of State, the Defense Secretary, local
military assets are notified and it also goes to the White House situation room and
protocol says that this flash traffic MUST be acknowledged and someone in the situation room MUST go and physically contact the President. Again, this happens instantly.
In the absence of orders the standing order is for local assets to preserve American life. So someone had to STOP that AC130 gunship from firing and someone had to STOP local assets from responding as they were responding as they would have responded as a matter of protocol. Now we know that they were told to stand down three times.
We also know that two retired SEALS who were working under contract violated the stand down order and decided to uphold the standing order of “preserve American life”. They died doing so.
All of this “fog of war” nonsense and there was too much communication to sift through are lies.
A retired high level intelligence official with State Department experience tells Political Arena:
The IC and NMIC/NMCC were on this within minutes of the first alert.
The CDR US Fleet would have dispatched aircraft and choppers full of Marines immediately; the AC130 would have been airborne immediately and been on site fairly quickly.
The only — and I repeat ONLY way all these activities would have been stopped is if the order came from the White House; the precedent for this scenario is the USS Liberty attack when LBJ ordered the Fleet CinC to stand down, over the vehement objections of the CJCS and the CNO.
Also, Gen Petreaus said that the order to stand down was NOT given by the CIA …..therefore he IS confirming that there was a stand down order.
Government has made it so it is just too hard to do business here.
[Note: Chrysler/Jeep says that it is building new production facilities overseas such as China, not moving production here to over there….as if that makes a lot of difference…we will see – Editor]
Steve Jobs from Apple lectured Obama on this same subject. Steve Jobs said the same thing that Ronald Reagan said, government is the problem. Jeep got bailed out along with GM, who is also moving production to China.
In another potential blow for the president’s Ohio reelection campaign, Jeep, the rugged brand President Obama once said symbolized American freedom, is considering giving up on the United States and shifting production to China.
Such a move would crash the economy in towns like Toledo, Ohio, where Jeeps are made and supplied, and rob the community of the economic security they thought Obama’s auto bailout assured them.
Obama is such a fan of Jeep that he included a picture of himself speaking at the Toledo plant in his newly released second term agenda binder. In his address to the plant in 2011, Obama said, “I just took a short tour of the plant and watched some of you putting the finishing touches on the Wrangler. Now, as somebody reminded, I need to call it the ‘iconic’ Wrangler. And that’s appropriate because when you think about what Wrangler has always symbolized. It symbolized freedom, adventure, hitting the open road, never looking back.”
Well it appears that the taxpayer bailed-out Chrysler is looking back and now considering cutting costs by shifting production of all Jeeps to China, which has a strong desire for Jeeps.
In a Bloomberg interview, Jeep’s president said the automaker plans to restore Jeep production in China, suspended in 2009, and is considering making all Jeeps in China. “Fiat SpA, majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region,” reported the business wire service.
Mike Manley, chief operating officer of Fiat and Chrysler in Asia and president of the Jeep brand, told Bloomberg, “We’re reviewing the opportunities within existing capacity” as well as “should we be localizing the entire Jeep portfolio or some of the Jeep portfolio” to China.
Chrysler builds Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley said the firm is in talks with China’s Guangzhou Automobile Group Co.
CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson speaks with Lt. Col. Andrew Wood to discuss the situation in Libya. Lt. Col. Andrew Wood tells Attkisson that the State Department told them to stop asking for more security while they were taking security away. And then the White House watched in the situation room while our people were slaughtered.
Watch this video:
ATTKISSON: Do you feel like there was a disconnect between what you saw on the ground and what the State Dept. folks thought was going on in Libya?
WOOD: There was certainly no disconnect in our transfer of information to them. They were getting the information on the situation on the ground. We sent it up through State Dept. cables and I sent it up to the military side on the D.O.D. side. So, there was awareness of what the situation in Libya was about.
ATTKISSON: How did you get the word that your team would not be allowed to stay?
WOOD: We knew that was coming through the cables and the draft cables that were going back and forth. The requests were being modified to say ‘don’t even request for D.O.D. support’.
ATTKISSON: So State Dept. was telling the folks on the ground in Libya ‘don’t continue to ask for this help’?
Kids at Islamic Jihad kindergarten celebrate end of year by demonstrating how Palestinian prisoners are ‘tortured’ in Israel. Teacher: We educate them to love resistance, Palestine
Children attending a kindergarten in Gaza that is run by Islamic Jihad celebrated their graduation by dressing up in army attire, waving toy rifles and chanting anti-Israel slogans.
“It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is,” the kindergarten’s director said.
‘Palestinian prisoner tortured.’
The children were dressed up in uniforms of Jihad’s armed-wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and each of them received a toy rifle. Some of them held up photos of Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shaqaqi.
‘Palestinian prisoner and Israeli guard’
The event was attended by the children’s relatives, some of whom belong to Islamic Jihad and other armed Palestinian factions.
‘Until I die as a shahid.’ Gaza kids during party
During the ceremony the children were asked to stand next to mock coffins draped with flags of the various armed factions. The flags bore the images of “shahids (martyrs).”
Kindergartners defend ‘al-Aqsa mosque’
One child, Hamza, said “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid and join my father in heaven.
“I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing,” he said.
White House visitor records show that administration officials have hosted numerous White House meetings with a series of U.S.-based Muslim political groups that have close ties to jihadi groups and push to reduce anti-terrorism investigations.
The visits were discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which compared the Obama White House’s visitor records with its database of Islamist advocacy groups.
For example, the records show that officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations have visited the White House 20 times, according to the organization’s report.
Members of CAIR were invited to the White House, even though an April 2009 FBI statement said the bureau “does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner” because of its ties to the Hamas jihadi group.
Administration officials also invited Syrian-born Louay Safi to the White House twice in 2011, even though he had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two terrorism cases, and had been barred from Fort Hood following the 2009 jihadi attack by a Muslim U.S. Army major.
In contrast, White House officials have not invited Zuhdi Jasser, an Arizona-based, American-born moderate Muslim and former Navy officer.
“We’ve never been invited and nether have any of [the 24 leaders in] our American Islamic Leadership Coalition,” Jasser told The Daily Caller.
The absence of invitations to real Muslim moderates allows White House officials to pretend that members of the well-funded, U.S.-based radical group are moderates, even when they’re linked to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, he said.
Jasser’s nonpartisan coalition includes left-wing and feminist Muslims who are frequently criticized by the groups invited to the White House, he said.
“The White House has selectively omitted genuine [Muslim] moderates and instead has picked radical Muslims to meet,” said a statement from Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The closed-door White House meetings legitimize the radicals, but do not bring them into the mainstream, Emerson told TheDC.
“The American public has a right to know why the White House is meeting with Hamas front groups,” he added.
The visitor logs show that many of the Muslim advocates met with coalition-building officials in the White House, rather than with national security officials. The officials they met with include Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and Amanda Brown, assistant to the then-White House director of political affairs Patrick Gaspard.
Gaspard is now the executive director of the Democratic National Committee.
Law enforcement officials have charged 12 people with using absentee ballots to skew an election in Georgia.
“As a result of their grand jury findings, 12 individuals were indicted in that particular matter and we will be trying that case in a court of judicial law instead of a court of public opinion,” District Attorney Joe Mulholland told the local TV station, WALB.
The charges followed a bitter November 2010 school board election in Brooks County in which the final tally was changed by an unusually large wave of absentee ballots.
During the election, 1,060 absentee votes were cast out of the 1,403 ballots mailed out to people who requested them, according to a July 2010 report by WCTV.
That’s far higher than nearby Thomas County, which had 119 absentee votes cast out of 202 requests, and Lowndes County, which had 169 absentee votes cast out of 439 requests, said WCTV’s report.
The 12 people charged are aligned with the Democratic Party.
News of the arrests followed The Daily Caller’s interview with former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, in which he said voter identification laws are needed to counter ballot fraud in local elections.
Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. Consulate and subsequent attack several hours later was denied by U.S. officials — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”
Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the Consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The quick reaction force from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the Consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.
At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.
A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they too were told to stand down. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Specter gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.
According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.
“There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here,” Panetta said Thursday. “But the basic principle here … is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.”
[Political Arena Editor’s Note – They knew what was going on in real time because we had a drone right there and we were in contact vie emails as it all started.]
Hillary tells father of Navy Slain Seal “We will have that film maker arrested”.
We know from hundreds of emails leaked by the intelligence community and we now know that we had at least one drone flying overhead during the attack that the movie had nothing to do with any of this. It was not a protest. It was a coordinated attack.
Wow the lies are just stunning. The callousness is amazing. First Amendment, what’s that?
That’s not all. The Hill is reporting that when House Oversight Committee Chair Darryl Issa released some of the diplomatic cables from Libya proving that they were asking for help with their security concerns the Obama Administration accused Issa of releasing the names of secret operatives in an attempt to smear him. The Obama Administration had publicly published the names of the same people in a press release in December of 2011.
Related:
Political Arena October 9th: Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video)
Political Arena October 10th: Rep Gowdy Goes Ballistic on Ambassador Rice and Obama Administration over Lies About Benghazi Murders (Congressional hearing videos)
Political Arena October 11th: Mother of slain State Department official: I am sick of being lied to…. (video)
Political Arena October 14th: Brigitte Gabriel, General McInerney, Commander Lippold & Gary Bersten on Benghazi-Gate /w Judge Jeanine Pirro (video)
Political Arena October 14th: Bob Beckel and The Five Blast Obama Admin for Lying About Embassy Attacks (video)
Political Arena October 14th: Will Obama Throw Hillary Under the Bus?
Political Arena October 17th: Romney Campaign Gloves Come Off: Obama Lies
Political Arena October 17th: White House Timeline Video of Lies About Embassy Attacks
Political Arena October 20th: Obama Administration prevents military from talking to Congress about embassy killings.
Political Arena October 23th: Obama Lied. White House knew Benghazi was a coordinated terror attack as it happened (video)
In a nutshell. President Obama has been working with the new Islamist leader in Turkey to supply light and heavy weapons to Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood for the purpose of overthrowing the secularist leaning rulers in the Middle-East.
Notice only the rulers that want to maintain peace with Israel are targeted for overthrow by Obama/Turkey/MB.
Some of those weapons were used in the embassy attacks on Sept. 11, 2012 where our people were killed.
Welcome to what is likely the biggest scandal in the history of the United States.
We are sorry to say that we are not surprised by this. Rumors among global security web sites have been suggesting this is what might be going on for some time now and the evidence is coming in.
This post is long, but the evidence is clear. We will start in February 2011 and take you through the story piece by piece and when we are done, there is only one conclusion left to make. See for yourself.
UPDATE V – Center for Security Policy releases video verifying what Political Arena has said for months:
UPDATE VI – Catherine Herridge from Fox News verifies what we have said for months. Obama is shipping arms to Jihadists (the Muslim Brotherhood) in Syria …with the cooperation of Turkey.
UPDATE VII – Ambassador John Bolton: If Benghazi was an operation to send weapons to Jihadists I’m outraged.
Let us start from February 2011 as the story begins there.
It is important to remember that the Muslim Brotherhood has made serious inroads into both political parties and the State Department. In February 2011 a few conservative stalwarts such as Bill Kristol were touting the spin from the Muslim Brotherhood. He and several others actively resisted the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood was radical at all and went so far as to deny that they wanted a global caliphate. Of course anyone who looked at the history of the Muslim Brotherhood knew that Kristol was engaging in wishful thinking.
There are/were many in the State Department, elite media and some in the Republican Party who have totally bought into the propaganda from the Muslim Brotherhood–that they want peace, free elections, and so forth–when anyone who studies their history going back to WWII knows very well what their agenda is. Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard, as well as some on the famed internet Republican Security Council, fell for the “Arab Spring” false narrative. How quickly we forget history. The Mullah’s in Iran spoke to the Carter Administration about freedom, democracy and social justice; look at what they did as soon as they got into power. The same goes for what happened in Lebanon, and then Gaza when they had elections. Now look at the disaster that is Egypt and Libya, and yet some Republicans continue to say we should help Syrian rebels with arms, which would essentially be handing Syria as well to the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda.
Republicans would love to see a genuine democratic, pro-western revolution in the Muslim world as we had in Eastern Europe, but today many forget that it took years of cooperation between Reagan, Thatcher, and the Vatican to cultivate pro-western forces and influences in secret right under the communist’s nose. We were ready to come in with monetary, logistical and other support when those forces made a major push. We knew very well who it was we were supporting, and we had an overall strategic concept in mind. Many Republicans jumped on the Arab Spring bandwagon because they bought the pie in the sky narrative from the State Department and they really wanted to believe it. Why? Because the false narrative targeted the freedom loving sensitivities of most Republicans perfectly. In short, they selected tidbits of truth, omitted others, and made a false reality that fit ever so perfectly into an ideological box.
More serious scholars at the time called out what was obvious just as we did again and again. Here is Prof. Niall Ferguson from February 2011:
As we reported earlier the Obama Administration even went so far as to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is a secular democratic movement:
Remember when the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said that the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular organization? – LINK. The DNI was mocked by many including Niall Ferguson (and Mark Stein below) for this preposterous testimony. It is like he swallowed the propaganda on the Brotherhood’s English web site and regurgitated it as gospel [just as the State Department has].
Then Obama came out and said that the Muslim Brotherhood should be a part of the new Egyptian Government.
The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.
The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said. But by even setting conditions for the involvement of such nonsecular groups, the administration took a surprise step in the midst of the crisis that has enveloped Egypt for the last week.
So Thursday, after the train has left the station, here comes the New York Times to play catch up:
CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.
It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.
As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.
“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”
There is a battle consuming Egypt about the direction of its revolution, and the military council that is now running the country is sending contradictory signals. On Wednesday, the council endorsed a plan to outlaw demonstrations and sit-ins.[Yup real democratic – Iran & Lebanon here we come – Editor] Then, a few hours later, the public prosecutor announced that the former interior minister and other security officials would be charged in the killings of hundreds during the protests.
Egyptians are searching for signs of clarity in such declarations, hoping to discern the direction of a state led by a secretive military council brought to power by a revolution based on demands for democracy, rule of law and an end to corruption.
“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”
And while those who believed the spin from the State Department were saying that those who had concerns that the Muslim Brotherhood would take over the country “have been proven wrong” (see video below), we were reporting that this was a disaster and that the Muslim Brotherhood was in the process of taking over Egypt and this was a huge threat to middle-east peace.
What happened to all of these freedom loving democrats that the government kept telling us about?
Political Arena Oct 11, 2011: Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law.
Political Arena October 22, 2011: Former head of CIA “bin Laden Unit”: Libyan rebels are like the Taliban. We also said once again that this entire strategic concept looks like a play to isolate Israel.
Political Arena Feb 13th: Obama proposes $800 million in aid for the Muslim Brotherhood. The appropriation was killed in Congress.
As predicted from minute one by this site and clear thinking professionals the Muslim Brotherhood took control of Egypt and announced that Jerusalem would soon be Egypt’s capital. We went on record saying that this looks like Israel is in the process of being surrounded. Political Arena from June 24:
Remember that President Obama helped oust the pro-American Egyptian government and called it “The Arab Spring”. Well now it is done and as predicted by myself, Dr. Niall Ferguson and so many others as far back as February of last year.
Watch this video from February of 2011 and look and see how this disastrous chain of events has come about just as conservatives feared. Notice what Ferguson said about a Muslim Brotherhood regime that would be aggressive towards Israel in order to unite radicalized masses under the banner of external aggression.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the grandfather of Al-Qaeda and they are involved in raising money for jihadists here in the United States. The motto for the Muslim Brotherhood is:
‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
For a host of reasons this writer believes that this a part of a deliberate plan by the Obama Administration to undermine Israel’s security and ability to defend itself. Why?
1 – Polls of the Egyptian Street showed that almost 70% wanted Sharia Law and war with Israel. The administration denied these polls. The election results showed that these polls were accurate.
2 – The administration has radicalized antisemites such as Samantha Power and Robert Malley in prominent positions in the State Department.
4 – Any student of global security full well knows that the previous pro-American government in Egypt that Obama helped to remove from power was the lynch pin for Middle-East peace. Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel that was signed by the previous government. The Muslim Brotherhood has made it clear that the treaty is shredded.
5 – President Obama’s attitude and other acts of disrespect have shown that there is a hostility towards Israel. So much so that even as far back in 2009 only 6% if Israelis saw President Obama and “pro-Israel”. See details HERE.
Political Arena July 24th: Obama Administration reverses on Jerusalem being the capital of Israel (video)
Even while this was going on, others finally started to call out the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in the State Department. Political Arena July 26th:
Andrew C. McCarthy has two very informative articles on this issue that should be read before anyone can have a truly informed opinion on this issue:
Questions about Huma Abedin: A State Department adviser has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – LINK
Huma Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood Ties: Michele Bachmann has every right to ask questions – LINK
Note: Frank Gaffney and John Bolton also agree – LINK and the Center for Security Policy has a piece on this issue HERE.
Democrat stalwarts including Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) appear on a short documentary film claiming that the Obama Administration is orchestrating a dramatic change in our relationship with Israel.
UPDATE IV – Islamist radicals welcomed in Obama White House; moderates shunned – LINK
September 11th 2012: Ambassador Chris Stevens and our people at the consulate in Benghazi are killed by a mob of heavily armed Al-Qaeda terrorists an hour after the Turkish Ambassador leaves. We now know from leaked government emails that the administration knew in real time that this was a coordinated attack. We also had a drone flying overhead.
The administration invents a lie that this was a mob protest upset about an internet video that virtually nobody watched. One report said that the video had all of 17 views at the time of the attack:
Political Arena October 9th: Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video)
Political Arena October 10th: Rep Gowdy Goes Ballistic on Ambassador Rice and Obama Administration over Lies About Benghazi Murders (Congressional hearing videos)
Political Arena October 11th: Mother of slain State Department official: I am sick of being lied to…. (video)
Political Arena October 14th: Brigitte Gabriel, General McInerney, Commander Lippold & Gary Bersten on Benghazi-Gate /w Judge Jeanine Pirro (video)
Political Arena October 14th: Bob Beckel and The Five Blast Obama Admin for Lying About Embassy Attacks (video)
Political Arena October 14th: Will Obama Throw Hillary Under the Bus?
Political Arena October 17th: Romney Campaign Gloves Come Off: Obama Lies
Political Arena October 17th: White House Timeline Video of Lies About Embassy Attacks
Political Arena October 20th: Obama Administration prevents military from talking to Congress about embassy killings.
Political Arena October 23th: Obama Lied. White House knew Benghazi was a coordinated terror attack as it happened (video)
John McCain on the now discovered emails that proved that the administration knew in real time that this was a coordinated attack. Notice that McCain mentions how Ambassador Stevens was meeting with the Turkish Ambassador just hours before. This video is worth watching – VIDEO.
The Obama Administration armed Libyan rebels against Qaddafi and we knew who they were because many of these fighters were fighting us in Iraq:
BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.
The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Michael Rubin – Time to Kill Libya’s Iraq-Era Foreign Fighters?
Huffington Post: Anti-American Extremists Among Libyan Rebels U.S. Has Vowed To Protect.
CNN– US Intel believes some Benghazi attackers tied to al Qaeda in Iraq:
U.S. intelligence believes that assailants connected to al Qaeda in Iraq were among the core group that attacked the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, a U.S. government official told CNN.
That would represent the second al Qaeda affiliate associated with the deadly September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Previously, intelligence officials said there were signs of connections to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African wing of the terror group.
The revelation that members of al Qaeda in Iraq are suspected of involvement in the Libya attack comes at a time when there is a growing number of fighters from that group also taking part in the Syrian civil war.
Clinton tells London conference that UN security council resolution 1973 over-rode absolute prohibition of arms to Libya
Hillary Clinton has paved the way for the United States to arm the Libyan rebels by declaring that the recent UN security council resolution relaxed an arms embargo on the country.
As Libya’s opposition leaders called for the international community to arm them, the secretary of state indicated that the US was considering whether to meet their demands when she talked of a “work in progress”.
The US indicated on Monday night that it had not ruled out arming the rebels, though it was assumed this would take some time because of a UN arms embargo which applies to all sides in Libya.
But Clinton made clear that UN security council resolution 1973, which allowed military strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, relaxed the embargo. Speaking after the conference on Libya in London, Clinton said: “It is our interpretation that [resolution] 1973 amended or overrode the absolute prohibition of arms to anyone in Libya so that there could be legitimate transfer of arms if a country were to choose to do that. We have not made that decision at this time.”
UK Telegraph: Libya: US sends armed drones to shield rebels
Dismissing concerns over possible links between Libyan rebels and al Qaeda, the Obama administration has notified Congress it is providing $25 million in nonlethal aid to the rebels’ effort to drive Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s regime from power.
“The president’s proposed actions would provide urgently needed nonlethal assistance to support efforts to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack in Libya,” said Joseph E. Macmanus, acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, in an April 15 letter. A copy of the letter, sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was obtained by The Washington Times.
The new authorization for assistance would cover “vehicles, fuel trucks and fuel bladders, ambulances, medical equipment, protective vests, binoculars, and non-secure radios,” according to a memorandum attached to the letter.
Lethal aid would be classified and not in a public notification to Congress. You can be certain they received armed aid as France and Senator John McCain have confirmed it.
France’s admission Wednesday that it provided weapons to Libyan rebels renews debate on the legality and wisdom of arming rebels in conflicts whose outcome is unpredictable.
France revealed Wednesday that its forces parachuted weapons to Libya’s rebels earlier this month, making it the first NATO country to disclose that it provided arms to rebel forces and renewing debate on the merits of such action.
The ambiguous wording of UN Resolution 1973, which authorized foreign intervention in Libya, has led to clashing interpretations of what is allowed under the guise of protecting civilians. There is no consensus on whether arming the rebels is permissible under the resolution’s guidelines. According to NATO, France is the only country to provide weapons, the Associated Press reported.
Remember that it was NATO that allegedly took the lead in planning the Libyan operation. If anyone would like to argue that France “went rogue” and did this without the support of the rest of NATO we would like to see them make such a case.
McCain Claims U.S. Armed Libya Rebels To Make Case For Arming Syrians:
And then Joe Biden let it slip that we were giving military and other aid, including training, to Syrian rebels. Gotta love Vice President Biden as he has a habit of saying just a little too much:
But Biden’s admission was not the first and his claim that these forces are not radicalized extremists is more cover.
CNN August 1st – Obama authorized covert support for Syrian rebels:
President Barack Obama has signed a covert directive authorizing U.S. support for Syrian rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, U.S. officials told CNN on Wednesday.
The secret order, referred to as an intelligence “finding,” allows for clandestine support by the CIA and other agencies.
It was unclear when the president signed the authorization for Syria, but the sources said it was within the past several months.
Political Arena August 8th: Muslim Brotherhood has Three Battalions Fighting in Syria (via Times of Israel).
Political Arena October 21st – Obama Administration Sending Guns to Al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood in Syria:
Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria
By DAVID E. SANGER / The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.
“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.
Rianovosti (Russia) – Syrian Rebels Have US Stinger Missiles – Russian General:
Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime are now armed with man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) including US-made Stingers, Russia’s top military commander said on Wednesday.
Russia has “reliable evidence” that the rebels have the weapons, “including US-made Stingers,” but “who delivered them, we need to look into,” Army Headquarters General Nikolai Makarov said.
NBC news reported in August the rebels had been supplied with unspecified MANPADS, possibly initiated by Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Qatar which have repeatedly called for lending military support to the Syrian opposition.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said she could not confirm whether the rebels had been supplied with such missiles, and maintained the United States was against the uncontrolled spread of MANPADS.
The Hill – Syrian rebels have US-made stinger missiles:
Russia’s top general said Wednesday that the Syrian opposition has received shoulder-launched missiles, including stinger missiles made in the United States.
Russian chief of staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov said the missiles were a “serious matter,” although he added that he did not know where the weapons had come from.
Russia, an arms supplier to Syria, has backed Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the conflict, and Moscow has stymied U.S. efforts in the U.N. Security Council to take stronger measures against Assad.
All of the dots are here and much of the evidence has been leaked to the press by the intelligence community which seems to have rebelled against the Obama Administration. We weren’t the only ones connecting the dots for this stomach turning conclusion.
Frank Gaffney (Bio) in the Washington Times – The real reason behind Benghazigate:
Was Obama gun-walking arms to jihadists?
President Obama’s once seemingly unstoppable march toward re-election hit what he might call “bumps in the road” in Benghazi, Libya, late on Sept. 11, 2012. It might be more accurate to describe the effect of the well-planned and -executed, military-style attack on a diplomatic facility there as the political equivalent of a devastating improvised explosive device on the myth of the unassailability of the Obama record as commander in chief.
Thanks to intrepid investigative reporting — notably by Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge at Fox News, Aaron Klein at WND.com and Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org — and information developed by congressional investigators, the mystery is beginning to unravel with regard to what happened that night and the reason for the subsequent, clumsy official cover-up now known as Benghazigate.
The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, Stevens was appointed ambassador to the new Libya run by Mr. Belhadj and his friends. Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amount of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.
One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there — on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates — for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria. As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.
Fox News has chronicled how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on Sept. 6 in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms — including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles — apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.
What cries out for further investigation — and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election — is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison.
Investigative journalist Aaron Klein has reported that the “consulate in Benghazi” actually was no such thing. He observes that although administration officials have done nothing to correct that oft-repeated characterization of the facility where the murderous attack on Stevens and his colleagues was launched, they call it a “mission.” What Mr. Klein describes as a “shabby, nondescript building” that lacked any “major public security presence” was, according to an unnamed Middle Eastern security official, “routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.”
We know that Stevens‘ last official act was to hold such a meeting with an unidentified “Turkish diplomat.” Presumably, the conversation involved additional arms shipments to al Qaeda and its allies in Syria. It also may have involved getting more jihadi fighters there. After all, Mr. Klein reported last month that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”
It gets worse. Last week, Center for Security Policy senior fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with the so-called “consulate” whose purpose has yet to be disclosed. As their contents were raided in the course of the attack, we may never know for sure whether they housed — and were known by the local jihadis to house — arms, perhaps administered by the two former Navy SEALs killed along with Stevens.
What we do know is that the New York Times — one of the most slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country — reported in an Oct. 14 article, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”
In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale. The effect has been to equip America’s enemies to wage jihad not only against regimes it once claimed were our friends, but inevitably against us and our allies as well. That would explain his administration’s desperate and now failing bid to mislead the voters through the serial deflections of Benghazigate.
Fox News – Obama Admin. Was Likely Running Arms To Islamic Jihadists Through Benghazi: Watch the video report HERE.
Clair Lopez (Bio) – Arms Flow to Syria May Be Behind Benghazi Cover-Up
And now even Glenn Beck, who put this very good video together explaining it in very clear terms:
Conclusion: Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood will now control several countries and will have it’s own oil revenue. Jordan is next.
Commenting on “arms to Syria” on a panel on BBCF TV Arabic, Professor Walid Phares, a Terrorism advisor to the US Congress and the author of ‘The Coming Revolution’ said “weapons are flowing to Syria under the watch of the international community. Libya’s Islamists and Jihadists are shipping arms and ammunitions to Syria’s Jihadi networks via Turkey. Lately a ship names ‘Intisar’ unloaded aid but also weapons to Syria’s Islamist networks. We don’t know if these weapons ended in the haands of the Free Syria Army or in the hands of Jihadi militias. At the same time, Hezbollah is sending fighters to assist the Syrian intelligence and special forces in their suppressive actions against Syria’s uprising. Add to it that Iran’s regime is also supporting Assad’s regime via Iraq. The current US Administration knows about the shipments into Syria and is allowing it to happen. That is different from a US strategic move to arm and train the democratic elements of the Syrian opposition. This could happen under the next Administration, if Mitt Romney wins the election.”
UPDATE II – Newly appointed “Libya Investigators” are known Islamic sympathizers with ties to CAIR. The Blaze:
Is the man the Obama administration appointed on October 4 as key investigator for the terror attacks in Benghazi an Islamist-sympathizer? According to recently published reports, the new chairman of a State Department’s “Accountability Review Board,” which is heading the federal investigation into the Benghazi terror attacks, has been accused of being an “apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran.”
What’s more, the man in question — former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering — has documented ties with the controversial group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR, of course, is a documented Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and was named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terror-funding trial in U.S. history.
To make matters worse, Pickering is also co-chairman of the board of George Soros’ International Crisis Group who has ties to other Islamic organizations as well, including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been described as pro-Iran “front group.”
NIAC lost what Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag describes as ”an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Pickering, who is a member of NIAC’s advisory board, formerly served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1997 to 2000). He was featured in a report “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by former CIA officer Clare M. Lopez, who was recently featured on the Glenn Beck Program to discuss the motivations behind the terror-attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.
Pickering’s Islamic-connections came to light after a report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism was published, exposing what it called the “scores” of established, radical Islamists who met with senior administration officials over the course of hundreds of White House visits.
UPDATE III – Hillary tells father of Navy Slain Seal “We will have that film maker arrested”. Wow the lies are just stunning. The callousness is amazing.
That’s not all. The Hill is reporting that when House Oversight Committee Chair Darryl Issa released some of the diplomatic cables from Libya proving that they were asking for help with their security concerns the Obama Administration accused Issa of releasing the names of secret operatives in an attempt to smear him. The Obama Administration had publicly published the names of the same people in a press release in December of 2011.
UPDATE IV – Islamist radicals welcomed in Obama White House; moderates shunned – LINK
UPDATE V – Center for Security Policy releases video verifying:
UPDATE VI – Catherine Herridge from Fox News verifies what we have said for months. Obama is shipping arms to Jihadists (the Muslim Brotherhood) in Syria …with the cooperation of Turkey.
UPDATE VII – Ambassador John Bolton: If Benghazi was an operation to send weapons to Jihadists I’m outraged.
This is another in a long string of just bold faced whoppers coming from the Democrat leadership.
This is no longer the party of JFK. The Democratic Party leadership has been taken over by Saul Alinsky radicals that use lies as a means of calculated aggression. If you doubt it watch the following video.
Now that some forecasters believe that GM will go bankrupt again (largely because of government meddling) we have this devastating political ad.
So far the government has lost 50 billion on GM. Not to mention all of the jobs lost when the government targeted for closure car dealerships owned by Republicans.
What in the world happened to the stale same old same old commercials I have been seeing for the last 30 years? When did the GOP get this infusion of new artistic creative energy? I don’t know but I must say I am impressed.
I was just notified that if I want to keep my current health insurance with Blue Cross/Blue Shield my premiums will go up by a factor of 12.27. So much for being able to keep my current insurance.
I have a special needs child. If any readers have wondered why this web site has been so outspoken about Obamacare it is because everything that we have warned about it has the virtue of being true.
A little-known section in the Obamacare health reform law defines “full-time” work as averaging only 30 hours per week, a definition that will affect some employers who utilize part-time workers to trim the cost of complying with the Obamacare rule that says businesses with 50 or more workers must provide health insurance or pay a fine.
“The term ‘full-time employee’ means, with respect to any month, an employee who is employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week,” section 1513 of the law reads. (Scroll down to section 4, paragraph A.)
That section, known as the employer mandate, requires any business with 50 or more full-time employees to provide at least the minimum level of government-defined health coverage to those employees.
In other words, a business must provide insurance if it has 50 or more employees working an average of just 30 hours per week, which is 10 hours per week fewer than the traditional 40-hour work week.
If an employer has 50 or more “full-time employees” and does not offer health insurance, it must pay a penalty per employee for each month it does not offer coverage.
The obscure provision recently reemerged in regulations issued by the IRS for how employers must account for which workers are full-time and which ones are not.
Under these standards, published in September, employers can choose a “look-back” period of between 3 and 12 months to measure if an employee has worked an average of 30 hours per week.
If an employee has worked 30 hours per week during this time, the person would count as a full-time employee for at least the next six months, regardless of how much they work, thus preventing employers from cutting hours to avoid the mandate.
In other words, an employer calculates the hours an employee works during at least a three-month period, determining if they employee has worked 30 hours or more per week on average.
If the employee meets the 30-hour threshold, they are counted as full-time for at least six months. If the employer has at least 50 such employees, he must provide them with health insurance or pay a fine.
The IRS regulations do not apply to seasonal or temporary workers, only to regular employees.
The “it was the video” concocted story was a manufactured lie for political reasons that we explained previously HERE.
Emails from the administration are being leaked and it is now clear that members of the Obama Administration and likely members of the intelligence community have turned against Obama and his concocted story. Obama scolded Governor Romney in the debate how he resented having his truthfulness questioned when it comes to national security.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.
There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.
U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.
Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.
MISSIVES FROM LIBYA
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”
The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”
A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”
The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.
One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials “carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.”
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
“Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,” the official said.
Related:
Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video) – LINK
White House Timeline Video of Lies About Embassy Attacks – LINK
Complete transcript fact-check of the debate – LINK
Frank Luntz Reaction From Undecided Voters Immediately After Final Presidential Debate – LINK
Hi all. I live blogged it while I was listening to it on the radio. I will outline my thoughts and clean it up later as I am dead tired.
I had three initial observations.
1- Obama is trying to posture Romney by talking down to him.
2- On some issues such as Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood neither of them is willing to say what needs to be said about the leadership and our strategy there. It is the elephant in the room that they are both dancing around.
3 – Obama’s strategy is smart as a matter of rhetoric: Find every slight inconsistency in every statement Romney has ever made on these issues over the last few years and make a mountain out of it…. thus distracting people from the “its because of the video” lie and other lies coming from this administration (like fast and furious and other issues). Of course as time goes on the situation on the ground changes and thus what Obama’s critics say will change in light of that…. so 100% statement consistency over the course of several years would show foolishness and Romney should have said so.
Romney was smart to ding Obama on skipping Israel on his apology tour. Obama, responds by talking about about what he did much later, not even addressing the apology tour. Of course what he did much later doesn’t help the bad message that Obama sent when he did that as it set an attitude that shaped what has happened in the middle east since. I think that to the uninformed Obama won. Obama’s narrative on the middle east was such utter nonsense and so easily demonstrated so and Romney really failed to capitalize on that. I think that Romney went in with a strategy of being agreeable and safe, but is THAT the kind of leadership we are looking for?
And Obama takes credit for the Iron Dome missile defense shield in Israel when he and his party opposed this technology from minute one?
On Mubarak and Egypt:
Leave him there or side with him? First of all let’s be clear, the people especially women and Christians were better under Mubarak. Muslim Brotherhood is seeking out political enemies and crucifying them, using armored vehicles against Christians etc.
When we worked with Britain and The Vatican to undermine the communists in Eastern Europe we cultivated that resistance over the course of years. We knew who they are and we were ready for the big push when the time came.
But in the so called “Arab Spring” we didn’t know who we are helping and the Muslim Brotherhood played the State Department and the White House like a Stradivarius.
And after it became obvious that we were helping the bad guys who were talking peace and democracy and never meant it this White House was committed and wouldn’t change course…probably for political reasons…or worse.
Obama worked to set up a narrative or vision of his policy in the middle east, of course it was wishful thinking and a total coverup of the evils that are going on there as perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood whom Obama helped bring to power. Romney was weaker on the battle of the narratives. I sorta wish we had Newt tonight because this would have been such a one sided blowout if he was there.
Also, foreign policy debates like this require boldness and the ability to construct/deconstruct a narrative expertly. What if you face a situation like the old Iran/Iraq war when it served global interests to make sure that neither side won that war? Or what if you have the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda vs Assad in Syria and a “bait & bleed” strategy serves interests best? Sometimes there are no good answers and the options are “terrible and “more terrible”.
Mitt had a few good moments, but not enough to warrant a sweeping win:
Obama’s crack “The Cold War is Over” may sound cute, but someone forgot to tell Putin
On a side note – I am watching a video of Sarah Palin’s post debate analysis and she has this thing nailed pretty well. I want to know who is advising her because she has been hitting home-runs for about the last 20 months on this stuff.
My worst fear with Mitt Romney is that he may have failed into the Bill Kristol/State Department false narrative which I wrote about HERE:
There are/were many in the State Department, elite media and some in the Republican Party who have totally bought into the propaganda from the Muslim Brotherhood–that they want peace, free elections, and so forth–when anyone who studies their history going back to WWII knows very well what their agenda is. Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard, as well as some on the famed internet Republican Security Council, fell for the “Arab Spring” false narrative. How quickly we forget history. The Mullah’s in Iran spoke to the Carter Administration about freedom, democracy and social justice; look at what they did as soon as they got into power. The same goes for what happened in Lebanon, and then Gaza when they had elections. Now look at the disaster that is Egypt and Libya, and yet some Republicans continue to say we should help Syrian rebels with arms, which would essentially be handing Syria as well to the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda.
Republicans would love to see a genuine democratic, pro-western revolution in the Muslim world as we had in Eastern Europe, but today many forget that it took years of cooperation between Reagan, Thatcher, and the Vatican to cultivate pro-western forces and influences in secret right under the communist’s nose. We were ready to come in with monetary, logistical and other support when those forces made a major push. We knew very well who it was we were supporting, and we had an overall strategic concept in mind. Many Republicans jumped on the Arab Spring bandwagon because they bought the pie in the sky narrative from the State Department and they really wanted to believe it. Why? Because the false narrative targeted the freedom loving sensitivities of most Republicans perfectly. In short, they selected tidbits of truth, omitted others, and made a false reality that fit ever so perfectly into an ideological box.
I am concerned because Dan Senor is Mitt Romney’s chief foreign policy adviser and Kristol is one of Senor’s mentors, but that is as far as I can go with my concern’s with Senor because the sins of the mentor do not necessarily fall on the student and I have no idea what Senor is telling Romney. In my opinion, based on what I saw tonight, it is clear that Niall Ferguson has a much more objective and more intelligent view on middle east policy.
Here is a fact check of the debate from Chris Wallace:
This is infuriating but not a surprise. Here is the story of LG Chem, they bosses take the government money, pay themselves, make a donation to the Democrats. And when the money runs out they close the doors.
U.S. unemployment fell to 7.8% in September. But that doesn’t mean the other 92.2% of adults are working.
The unemployment rate only measures people who have searched for jobs in the last four weeks, while millions of other out-of-work Americans aren’t included.
Perhaps in an effort to promote North Carolina as one of the healthiest States in the Nation, this latest voter twist comes to us from Susan Myrick of the Civitas Institute in North Carolina–not to be confused with Rep. Sue Myrick of NC who is unrelated. In a radio interview with local WBT Anchor Tara Servatious, Susan reports that she has been keeping track of the number of votes in North Carolina of individuals over the age of 110 years and apparently we have quite a few, over 410 of the 110 year olds–to be exact– actually voted via absentee ballot on October the 28th. Yes indeed, now it would appear that good ole NC has the market cornered on the Centenarian vote.
At latest count, Susan has garnered a total Absentee Ballot vote of over 2,660 people over the age of 110. Someone contact the Guiness Book and warm up the Ford, the Fountain of Youth exists and its right here in lovely NC. It’s no wonder people are moving here in droves–maybe the use of tobacco isn’t such a bad thing after all? But, on a more serious note, with all of the irregularities going on all over the place, we can now begin to wonder about a few things.
Apparently those ultra-healthy seniors over 110 have aged and are now astoundingly over 112 years old, and are still able to make it to the polls ahead of time.
According to a post originally from the Silence Dogood political blog report, there were at least 758 individuals over the age of 112 who had either risen from their respective graves, or otherwise, to vote once again for the Democrats in charge, who might apparently have also guaranteed them an ever-lasting vote for life and beyond.
In visiting the political tracking site, we later found the same story in evidence, except the number of centenarian voters had increased measurably to 832 voters over the age of 112. Of these voters, over 70% were slated as Democrats, with a diminutive 25% counted as Republicans. The rest were unaffiliated.
When peering a little more deeply at the numbers we find that an astounding 2,374 people between the ages of 94 and 100 have already voted in the NC election to date. While an even more astounding 832 votes came from those individuals aged 112. However, according to the Guinness book of world records, the oldest living person in the world, at present, lives in Japan and is 114 years old. It would seem obvious that, according to the NC vote registry, this old fellow might be nudged aside in the near future, especially considering the crop of spry 112 year-olds seemingly alive and well in the old North State.
In fact, two of the 112 year aged voters were mail-in ballots from overseas; ostensibly vacationing to escape the now bitterly polarized political contest, and who can blame them?
In the Spring of this year, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam.
The course he taught, Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism, was an elective course that Lt. Col. Dooley’s superiors judged as presenting Islam in a negative way. His superiors were persuaded to come to this conclusion after receiving an October 2011 letter in which 57 Muslim organizations claimed to be offended by the course.
The fact that Lt. Col. Dooley is a highly decorated combat veteran with nearly 20 years of service under his belt apparently held little or no sway with the JCS. As a matter of fact, JCS Chairman General Martin Dempsey “personally attacked” Lt. Col. Dooley on C-Span on May 10, 2012, during a Pentagon News Conference.
Yet the craziest part of all this is that “the course content, the guest speakers, and the method of instruction” for the course was all approved by the the Joint Forces Staff College “years ago.”
Former CIA agent Claire M. Lopez commented on the state of things: “All US military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau, and Joint Chiefs are under Dempsey’s Muslim Brotherhood-dictated order to ensure that henceforth, no US military course will ever again teach truth about Islam that the jihadist enemy finds offensive (or just too informative).”
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 