Posts Tagged ‘Libya’

60 Minutes on Benghazi

Monday, October 28th, 2013

Well, this should break the story wide open. If you haven’t already, see the whole thing.

And here’s the transcript.

CIA Covering Up Benghazi?

Thursday, August 1st, 2013

This appears to be the case.

CNN reports that there were allegedly “dozens” of CIA operatives on the ground during the Benghazi attack and the agency is doing its utmost to conceal its involvement.

CNN’s sources say that, since January, some operatives that were involved in the agency’s mission in Libya are being polygraphed monthly to determine who, if anyone, is talking to Congress or the media. Sources describe the efforts as pure intimidation, and say there are threats to end the careers of unauthorized leakers.

This makes Benghazi an ever bigger scandal than we thought, with a government agency actively undermining legitimate congressional oversight in order to cover up either real crimes or its own incompetence.

It also suggests that the CIA was carrying out one (or possibly both) of the secret (and possibly illegal) operations that been widely rumored to be the real reason behind the Benghazi coverup:

  • They were already running arms (including surface-to-air missiles) to Syrian rebel, well in advance of Obama’s public declaration, or
  • Benghazi was an extrajudicial center for “harsh interrogation methods” of the sort Obama theoretically banned, as suggested by former CIA Director David Petraeus’ former mistress Paula Broadwell.
  • Either way, Obama lied, and Americans died to cover up Obama’s lies, and now even more people are being forced to lie, or at least refrain from talking to investigators seeking the truth, in order to cover up the coverup.

    LinkSwarm for June 28, 2013

    Friday, June 28th, 2013

    It’s supposed to hit a 106° in Austin today. Sadly, not all of these links will help you keep your cool…

  • 12 different IRS offices targeted conservatives.
  • Over 1,100 patients were starved to death at NHS hospitals in the UK. Funny, I don’t remember that being mentioned in the Olympic tribute to how awesome NHS is…
  • Marco Rubio aide: We need illegal alien amnesty because American workers suck.
  • Blue collar Americans having trouble finding jobs. I’m sure that has nothing to do with our ruling political elite’s decision to allow unlimited illegal immigration of unskilled workers…
  • Every Republican voting for amnesty better get ready for a primary challenge.
  • Obama camapign workers convicted of voter fraud in Indiana. This was for the 2008 Democratic primary, so it will likely be many years before see starting seeing convictions for the Obama campaign’s various 2012 voting fraud efforts…
  • Noam Chomsky attending the opening of Hezbollah’s “Death to Israel” theme park.
  • People told me that if I voted for Romney, the U.S. military would start blocking access to liberal news sources. And they were right!
  • The Atlantic says that Obama “succeeded” in Libya but is failing in Syria. If Benghazi was success, I’d hate to see what failure looks like.
  • And speaking of Benghazi, Libya just let one of the suspected attackers walk. Thank God we have Obama’s smart, sophisticated diplomacy in the Middle East…
  • Beer now unaffordable in Greece. And you thought they had riots before…
  • Second Colorado Democrat faces a recall election over gun control.
  • Magpul to give away 1,500 30-round magazines just two days before Colorado outlaws them.
  • By the way, there’s a Facebook page to show support for bringing Magpul to Texas. But most of the rumors I hear have them moving to Wyoming.
  • The Amarillo Globe-News has a message for gun manufacturers thinking of relocating to Texas: Come on down!
  • Texas executes its 500th murderer. Don’t mess with Texas. Or we will end you.
  • Speaking of ending you: Don’t try to commit armed robbery in a concealed carry state.
  • Nurse Bloomberg continues to underwrite anti-gun ads, shoot himself in the foot. (Hat tip: Alphecca.
  • In order to prove vegans aren’t a creepy cult, website seeks to out and harass lapsed vegans.
  • The Onion channels Jay Carney: “Well, Time To Go Out In Front Of A Bunch Of People And Lie To Them.”
  • The mystery of Lori Ruff, AKA Becky Sue Turner. No one know who she actually is…
  • Your Top Stories, All Mashed Together

    Friday, November 16th, 2012

    To much going on. Here’s a sampler:

    First up, Unions kill Hostess. By calling a strike against a company that was already in bankruptcy, against the advice of the Teamsters, who had already taken a look at the Hostess books, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union ensured that instead of a 6% pay cut, unionized workers would take a 100% pay cut. Way to go, unions!

    Israel still seems to be gearing up for a ground offensive in Gaza. And by firing rockets at Tel Aviv, Hamas pretty much guarantees that the only faction in Israeli politics urging restraint will retink their position. “I get a lot less liberal when you want to kill me.”

    Lefties are trying to boycott Papa Johns for daring to lay people off because of ObamaCare. “If this is anything like the Chick-fil-A buycott, and you want Papa John’s for dinner, you’d better get your order in now.” It’s amazing that any business in America ever has to declare bankruptcy, given there are so many liberals around who can tell them exactly how much profit they “need”…

    Former general and former CIA head David Petraeus testifies on Benghazi. He says his report said the attack was launched by al Qaeda, but higher-ups in the Obama Administration deleted the reference. The more we hear about Benghazi, the more it appears that Fox News was right.

    Missing Link Between the Benghazi Scandal and the Petraeus Sex Scandal

    Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

    If, as resigned CIA Director David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell mentions in the clip below, the attack on the Benghazi consulate was an attempt to free prisoners being held for interrogation, then it adds a new dimension to the scandal, as explained by Charles Krauthammer.

    If the interrogation story is true, there are at least four interlocking scandals here:

    1. The Obama Administration standing by watching while an American consulate was under attack for seven hours without lifting a finger to help as four Americans died.
    2. That same Administration lying about the cause of the attack to both congress and the American public.
    3. The same Administration has known about the CIA director being compromised by an extramarital affair since at least summer and did nothing about it for fear of jeopardizing Obama’s reelection campaign. The only other explanation is that everyone in the intelligence community is manifestly incompetent. (“Hey, should I tell Obama his CIA director is having an affair? Nah. He’s got that golf swing to worry about.”)
    4. Either the intelligence community, or else the Obama Administration itself, has been ignoring Executive Order 13491, issued January 22, 2009, which states (in part) “The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.”
    5. I think the Administration standing by for seven hours while four Americans died without lifting a finger to help them is still the biggest scandal. Guess I’m just old-fashioned that way. Sadly, I get the impression that the last point is the one the Obama Administration was trying hardest to cover up.

      But all deserve investigation.

    LinkSwarm for October 30, 2012

    Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

    I was going to have an insightful, data-filed post on the Texas 23rd Congressional district race, but then I realized that the Los Angeles Times data I was relying on flipped at least one bit of information (NRA-ILA is doing independent expenditures against Pete Gallego, not against Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco), which means I can’t trust the rest. Super executive summary: Canseco has a huge cash on-hand advantage, $785,623 to $23,250, but assuming the other LA Times numbers are right, the independent expenditure race is a lot closer to even.

    Now on to a LinkSwarm a week before the election:

  • Obama is clearly winning the race for military endorsements, having 6 endorsements to Romney’s paltry 359.
  • Politico worried that Romney may let lobbyists “back” into the White House, conveniently ignoring the dozens of lobbyists Obama has on staff.
  • There’s a huge amount of outrage over the MSM trying to bury the Benghazi scandal to help Obama over the finish line.
  • Even Democratic pollster Pat Caddell is outraged:

  • Syrian rebels get antiaircraft missiles. What could possibly go wrong?
  • A Daily Beast piece on the decline of the left-wing Netroots.
  • Paul Sadler managed to raise more money for his 2004 Texas Senate race than his 2012 U.S. Senate race.
  • Remember Joseph Livoti, formerly the finance director for Ricardo Sanchez’s aborted Senate campaign? Probably not. Well, his current position is “Finance Director at Joe Miklosi for Congress”. And the Sanchez campaign doesn’t appear in his job summary. Funny that.
  • Given that Miklosi has raised about half of what his Republican opponent incumbent Mike Coffman has for the Colorado Sixth Congressional District race, but only has about one-fifth the cash on hand, Livoti seems to have retained his magic touch.
  • Michael Totten: The Islamist threat isn’t going away.
  • Some pictures of Sandy-related flooding.
  • Shrinkage

    Saturday, October 27th, 2012

    Mark Steyn’s latest column looks at the Incredible Shrinking Obama presidency, contrasting two videos (“the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one”) that “bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.”

    Given yesterday’s revelations about Benghazi, that the besieged Americans were denied aid thrice by higher-ups in Washington, I think it’s safe to say Obama looks smaller than at any point during his presidency.

    I thought I would drive that point home in graphic format:

    Once More Into the Breach!

    Monday, October 22nd, 2012

    Once again I will be Livetweeting tonight’s Presidential debate. Drinking words to sip on are “Libya,” “China,””Iran,” “Russia” and “Nuclear.” Chug for “Jihad” or if Obama calls Benjamin Netanyahu “Bibi.”

    The Obama Administration’s Response to Benghazi, In Easy-to-Understand Graphic Form

    Monday, October 22nd, 2012

    Some devastating critiques of the Obama Administration’s non-response on American officials in Benghazi.

    Bing West:

    A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why?

    Snip

    Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

    Snip

    For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve.

    Mary Steyn:

    Obama, Biden, and Panetta met in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. We know Charlene Lamb at the State Department was watching events in real time. It seems likely Panetta was, too — and perhaps even Obama.

    When something bad happens at a consulate on the other side of the world, very few nations have the technological capability to watch it in real time.

    Even fewer have fighter jets and special forces within less than 500 miles — or about the distance from Boston to Washington.

    Yet the commander-in-chief chose to do nothing. He chose to let the enemy determine the course of events, how long the battle would last, how many Americans would die. The only choice he made was to hold a photo-op at their coffins.

    Many Obama partisans continue to downplay the attacks in Benghazi as though they were indeed a mere bump in the road of no particular importance. Therefore, I’ve decided to put the incident in a graphic form that perhaps even they can grasp:

    Mark Steyn Lays Waste to the Obama Adminstration’s Libyan Lies

    Saturday, October 13th, 2012

    Mark Steyn’s comprehensive takedown of all the Obama Administration lies and incompetence in the Benghazi terrorist assault and the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens is so righteous it deserves a link of its own.

    “The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.”

    Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to “politicize” it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about. For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday: “There’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”

    She’s right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets.

    Snip.

    Obviously, Miss Cutter is right: A healthy mature democracy should spend its quadrennial election on critical issues like the Republican party’s war on puppets rather than attempting to “politicize” the debate by dragging in stuff like foreign policy, national security, the economy, and other obscure peripheral subjects.

    Snip.

    For most of those four weeks, the president of the United States, the secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and others have persistently attributed the Benghazi debacle to an obscure YouTube video — even though they knew that the two events had nothing to do with each other by no later than the crack of dawn Eastern time on September 12.

    Snip.

    Secretary Clinton linked the YouTube video to the murder of her colleagues even as the four caskets lay alongside her at Andrews Air Force Base — even though she had known for days that it had nothing to do with it. It’s weird enough that politicians now give campaign speeches to returning coffins. But to conscript your “friend”’s corpse as a straight man for some third-rate electoral opportunism is surely as shriveled and worthless as “politicization” gets.

    Snip.

    Liberals are always going on about the evils of “outsourcing” and “offshoring” — selfish vulture capitalists like Mitt shipping jobs to cheap labor overseas just to save a few bucks. How unpatriotic can you get! So now the United States government is outsourcing embassy security to cheap Welshmen who in turn outsource it to cheaper Libyans. Diplomatic facilities are U.S. sovereign territory — no different de jure from Fifth Avenue or Mount Rushmore. So defending them is one of the core responsibilities of the state. But that’s the funny thing about Big Government: The bigger it gets, the more of life it swallows up, the worse it gets at those very few things it’s supposed to be doing. So, on the first anniversary of 9/11 in a post-revolutionary city in which Western diplomats had been steadily targeted over the previous six months, the government of the supposedly most powerful nation on earth entrusted its security to Abdulaziz Majbari, 29, and his pal, who report to some bloke back in Carmarthen, Wales.

    Read the whole thing.