The failure of the Obama Administration to respond effectively and decisively to the attack on US diplomats and intelligence officers last September in Benghazi continues to dog the President, and rightly so. Why did the White House decide to not seek the guidance of the Counterterrorism Security Group aka the CSG?

That is a fundamental question. The CSG first emerged in 1986 in the wake of several failures of the United States to respond in a coordinated manner to the terrorist attack on the Achille Lauro cruise ship in the fall of 1985. The CSG became established more formally during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush. It is an Assistant Secretary level inter agency committee that includes the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (now the Bureau of Counter Terrorism), the DDSO at the Department of Defense (this used to be known as J3-SOD, which handles all Special Operations orders), the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD/SOLIC) the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA. All of the personnel involved in this committee are substantive experts in dealing with terrorism and know what capabilities their particular department can bring to the table to deal with an incident.

Under President Bill Clinton, the CSG was chaired at the National Security Council by Richard Clarke. The purpose of the CSG was to evaluate a terrorist incident and recommend courses of action to the Deputies Committee. The Deputies Committee (aka DC) consists of the Deputy Secretaries of State Department, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Under George W. Bush the Deputies Committee expanded to include Homeland Security and, when circumstances require, Department of Treasury and the Department of Energy. Read the rest

When you lose Jon Stewart, it is a sign that the Obama ship is sinking:

What a worthless, ignorant moron we have for a President.

Obama does not have time to read briefing papers. He has no time to be briefed by his staff. Nope. He has to wait for MSNBC to broadcast what his Administration is doing to find out anything.

Are you buying this bullshit? Read the rest

Part of the explanation for the “confusion” and delay by the Obama Administration in responding to the attack on the US special mission and “the Annex” in Benghazi last September is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanted to limit/contain the exposure of the clandestine intelligence activities being carried out by personnel at the Annex.

But this was not a simple matter of protecting the identity of intelligence officers working there. There was something more sinister going on there that both the White House and the State Department were keen on keeping quiet. It is the answer to that question that the media has failed to grasp or pursue with any determination.

PJ Media is out with one explanation, which I believe is misleading and wrong on key points. According to Roger Simon:

Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft. Read the rest

Republicans must shoulder some of the blame for the Obama Administration’s concerted effort to muzzle the press. Ignoring their party’s tradition of espousing limited Government during the reign of George W. Bush, Republicans established a reputation for extending the reach of Government in the name of fighting terrorism and protecting national security. They sowed the seeds and Obama is now reaping the harvest. And it smacks of authoritarian government.

The picture emerging of what the Obama Administration is willing to do in the name of security is quite disturbing. The Constitution strictly limits the power of the Federal Government to conduct searches and seizures. Obama’s Justice Department is ignoring those proscriptions and conducting a wide ranging, unfettered investigation of the press. It is all about intimidation and control of the media.

In the case of the Associated Press, we now know that the Obama Administration really did not care about finding out who leaked. Instead, they wanted to control the timing of the release of the leaked information. Read the rest

The Obama White House sent out another dupe today, a kid named Pfeffer, to spin and lie about the various scandals swirling around the President. As long as you have Alzheimer’s disease or are a moron incapable of reading, you will find nothing troubling about the White House desperate attempts to recast what the President and his lackey’s have said about Benghazi. Fortunately, there is this thing called the internet. You can go on the internet and look at what was actually said by key players.

Let’s take Ambassador Susan Rice. She was sent out on the Sunday talk shows on 16 September to push the lie–a total goddamn lie–that the protests were inspired by a “hateful video” and that Al Qaeda was not involved. Here is the CBS transcript from that day:

SUSAN RICE: They are not on the ground yet, but they have already begun looking at all sorts of evidence of– of various sorts already available to them and to us. And they will get on the ground and continue the investigation. So we’ll want to see the results of that investigation to draw any definitive conclusions. But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy–

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

SUSAN RICE: –sparked by this hateful video. Read the rest

My reports on the failure of State Department and the White House to treat the attack in Benghazi last September as a terrorist incident was confirmed today courtesy of White House officials. More importantly, they confirmed that State Department whistle blower, Mark Thompson, was telling the truth last week. Attkisson confirms Thompson’s account that Under Secretary Pat Kennedy shut out the Counter Terrorism Bureau from contingency and response planning. I am surprised they were this forthcoming. Sharyl Attkisson has the story, and what a story!

The list of mea culpas by Obama administration officials involved in the Benghazi response and aftermath include: standing down the counterterrorism Foreign Emergency Support Team, failing to convene the Counterterrorism Security Group, failing to release the disputed Benghazi “talking points” when Congress asked for them, and using the word “spontaneous” while avoiding the word “terrorism.”

The emergency response: “I wish we’d sent FEST”

The Foreign Emergency Support Team known as “FEST” is described as “the US Government’s only interagency, on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide.” It even boasts hostage-negotiating expertise. With U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens reported missing shortly after the Benghazi attacks began, Washington officials were operating under a possible hostage scenario at the outset. Yet deployment of the counterterrorism experts on the FEST was ruled out from the start. That decision became a source of great internal dissent and the cause of puzzlement to some outsiders. Read the rest

The judgment of the intelligence community with respect to the attacks in Benghazi is very clear on two points–the video was not relevant and Al Qaeda was directly involved.

Of particular note is this from the early draft of the CIA:

The crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.

There is no ambiguity in that statement–the Intel community “KNEW” that extremists tied to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.

It also is worth noting that the judgment of the intelligence community was only disputed by the White House and then the Department of State. In fact, the emails released yesterday make clear that the first recipient of the CIA “white paper” was the National Security Staff (formerly known as the National Security Council) at the White House.

The impetus for substantive changes came from the White House and then, only after some back and forth between the White House and the CIA, the Department of State.

There are other telling facts in these talking points. Read the rest

Lost amidst the furor over the Obama Administration’s use of the IRS as a political weapon, bullying the Associated Press and failing to protect American diplomats in Libya is a new story of incompetence at the CIA. It appears, based on news reports from Russia and the US State Department’s muted response, that a CIA officer working at our embassy in Moscow was nabbed in the act of trying to recruit a Russian to spy for America.

This story is troubling on several levels. First, it is a damning indictment of the incompetence of the CIA in its training of new case officers–the guy arrested, Ryan Fogel, was a total ass clown. Second, who in the CIA chain of command authorize this madness? Needless to say, the Russians are having a field day with this:

Stick a fork in Fogel. He’s done. Read the rest

The convergence of the Benghazi coverup with the news that the IRS was targeting conservative groups and that Obama’s Department of Justice moved secretly to get the records of A.P. reporters and editors is shaping up to be the political equivalent of the Perfect Storm (you know, the movie that drowned George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg in a humongous hurricane). Will this drown Obama?

First there is the IRS story, courtesy of the Washington Post:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.

This has Republicans and many Democrats up in arms. Read the rest

How dumb is Jay Carney? Seriously, to go before the White House Press Corp and insist that the White House and State Department only changed one phrase in the CIA drafted talking points–removing the word, “consulate” and inserting the phrase, “diplomatic facility.”
Now, thanks to reporting from Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard and Jonathan Karl of ABC, we know without a doubt that Jay Carney is a liar.

To appreciate the depths of his deceit, go back and watch his responses to questions from Jake Tapper last October:

Now watch Carney’s getting skewered last week by the Press Corp: Read the rest

I am working odd shifts and cannot routinely write. I will be addressing Juan Cole’s piece regarding the 10 so-called Benghazi myths. In the meantime, here’s my appearance on Geraldo last Saturday.

So, with that little warm up let me address Juan Cole’s recent piece citing ten “myths” surrounding Benghazi. Read the rest

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has now marked the start of what is likely to become a press feeding frenzy as the media herd concedes that there is fire beneath the smoldering embers of the Benghazi scandal. I say scandal because of the deliberate cover up by the Obama White House and the Clinton Department of State. As those details become clearer in the coming days and weeks, the demand for accountability and punishment will grow exponentially.

Karl exposes Jay Carney as a liar or a dupe. There is no middle ground or grey area. According to the ABC scoop:

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.”

This confirms what I wrote previously. Read the rest

State Department whistleblowers appeared on Wednesday before the House Government Operations and Reform Committee and proceeded to blow major holes in the deceitful narrative pushed by both Obama’s White House and Hillary’s State Department. Hillary in particular was damaged significantly today and exposed as the liar and bully many on the right have long claimed she is. As a former supporter of Hillary–I worked closely with her campaign in 2008 to promote her candidacy and contributed financially to her campaign–I am sickened by what I heard today.

If you have read some of the desperate comments and spin form Hillary and Obama surrogates on previous posts, you are quite familiar with their desperation and delusion. So let’s be very clear and precise about what we know.

First, in stark contrast to the initial claim from both Hillary and the White House that the attack on our diplomats and intelligence personnel in Benghazi last September was inspired by an obscure anti-muslim video, the number two man in the US Embassy in Tripoli declared with no caveat or hesitation that it was a terrorist event from the get go. Greg Hicks, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the time, stipulated there was no protest. Just an attack.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Counterterrorism Bureau, Mark Thompson, made the same point. When the attack started that night the immediate assumption pointed to terrarium. The testimony of Greg and Mark is buttressed by the following facts: Read the rest

You knew this was coming. Facing accusations from State Department insiders of negligence and deceit, Hillary and some of her lackeys are trying to impugn the testimony of Mark Thompson even before Mark has had the chance to testify. The Hillary supporter, Dan Benjamin, who was appointed as the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, put out this statement:

It has been alleged that the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau was cut out of the discussion and decision-making in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks. I ran the bureau then, and I can say now with certainty, as the former Coordinator for Counterterrorism, that this charge is simply untrue. Though I was out of the country on official travel at the time of the attack, I was in frequent contact with the Department. At no time did I feel that the Bureau was in any way being left out of deliberations that it should have been part of.

After the attack, the first question to arise that involved the CT Bureau was whether or not the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) should be deployed. This interagency team is designed to assist and advise the U.S. Chief of Mission in assessing crises and coordinating U.S. government crisis response activities. The question of deployment was posed early, and the Department decided against such a deployment. In my view, it was appropriate to pose the question, and the decision was also the correct one. There is nothing automatic about a FEST deployment, and in some circumstances, a deployment could well be counterproductive.

Yep, Dan was out of the country. He was in Germany. And who was keeping him in the loop about what was going on in Benghazi? If you guessed “Mark Thompson,” you are a winner. Read the rest

I suppose your personal views about Israel determines what you think about its most recent bombing of Syria. Me? I think the leaders who authorized this action in Tel Aviv/Jerusalem are crazy and are putting Israel at unnecessary risk. Why? Up to this point the Sunni Arab world appeared to be united against Syria’s Bashir Assad and were providing steady support to the rebels.

Israel’s attack on Syria runs a serious risk of uniting the heretofore fractured polity in Syria against the Jewish invaders. For example, Egypt had been playing the quintessential Egyptian game of duplicity–making nice to Israel while trying to back some of the most ardent foes of Israel inside Syria. Not anymore. Yesterday’s bomb run in Syria led Egypt to denounce Israel. Whether that translates into firm action remains to be seen.

Please do not belabor the point that Israel believes it is justified to do what it did. I get it. I don’t agree, but I get it. There is no evidence that the sites hit in Syria were being prepped for launching against Israel. But that was then. Going forward, I suspect Syria will not give Israel a second pass at an unchallenged strike and I doubt that many of the Salafist Sunni groups will accept the notion of fighting alongside Israel to depose Assad Read the rest

Lots going on with significant implications for the investigation into what really happened in Benghazi, Libya. First up? Excellent article at the Weekly Standard by Stephen Hayes detailing how State Department–Hillary Clinton in particular–changed what the intelligence community said about the role of Al Qaeda related group in the attack on our personnel at Benghazi:

As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events unfolding in Libya, they concluded even before the assaults had ended that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.

The exchange of emails is laid out in a 43-page report from the chairmen of five committees in the House of Representatives. Although the investigation was conducted by Republicans, leading some reporters and commentators to dismiss it, the report quotes directly from emails between top administration and intelligence officials, and it includes footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. In some cases, the report did not provide the names of the senders, but The Weekly Standard has confirmed the identities of the authors of two critical emails—one indicating the main reason for the changes and the other announcing that the talking points would receive their final substantive rewrite at a meeting of top administration officials on Saturday, September 15. . . . Read the rest

Yes sir. Leave it to the blind, deaf and dumb supporters of Barack Obama to lead with their chin. It is an easy punch in the puss for me. Our resident troll, writing under the nom de stupidity of Owen Von Richter III provided the following ignorant rebuttal to my earlier piece regarding the failure of Obama to pull the trigger on the terrorists responsible for killing Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans last September:

“Fox News (and NoQuarter) has been hyping the statements of an anonymous source who has contradicted the account of both the Obama administration and independent findings about the attack on a U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Now two separate statements by experts in Foreign Policy are casting more doubt about the claims of Fox’s source.

Fox’s flagship show Special Report ran a series of reports that highlighted an anonymous source who claims to have knowledge about the Benghazi attacks. In one segment, the source claimed that the Obama administration had forces available to aid the victims of the attack, but chose not to utilize them, a claim contradicted not only by the State Department, but by the Accountability Review Board, an independent panel convened to investigate whether there was a breach of duty during and after the attack.

But in a post on Foreign Policy magazine’s website, national security journalist Tom Ricks, who previously accused Fox News of “operating as a wing of the Republican Party” on the Benghazi issue, published two accounts from experts who strongly questioned Fox’s Benghazi source. Ricks reported that he’s hearing Fox doesn’t have a scoop with its Benghazi source, and quoted Retired Special Forces Col. David Maxwell stating:

“Whistle blower my a**. If this guy is a real special operator (and I have my doubts) I wonder if he realizes what an embarrassment he is to the community. What he offers is pure speculation and not based on any real facts as I have heard and appears to be coming from his fourth point of contact. He comes across as just another conspiracy theorist who is taking Fox News for a ride.”

Well, for starters, Maxwell may have served in Special Forces, but that is not the same as Special Operations. Maxwell is not and was not part of this community. Just because you wore a green beanie does not mean you are a Special Ops guy. Read the rest

Why did the Special Ops guy agree to an interview with Adam Housely? Last night’s report on Fox makes it clear–Barack Obama is not doing his job as President and is turning a blind eye to the terrorist responsible for the death of Ambassador Stevens and the other three Americans last September:

What is this man saying? The US military has identified and located the man in Libya who led the attacks last September. But just as Obama drug his feet in making the decision to go after Bin Laden (he had to be pushed into the decision), he is doing it again. Only this time we have full knowledge where the bad guy is. The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon are sitting on their hands. Read the rest

The news on Benghazi keeps coming and it is not good for Obama. After months of trying to cover up the truth of what happened, courageous men and women are coming forward. Fox News reported last night (accurately, I will add), that three career State Department personnel have obtained legal counsel in order to ensure they are protected as they try to blow the whistle on the lies perpetrated by Hillary Clinton and Patrick Kennedy.

These people pose a real threat to President Obama and the legacy of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State because they know the truth about the conscious decision of the White House and the State Department to ignore warnings from the field of increase threats to our mission in Libya prior to the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2012. They also know the specifics of what Obama and Hillary did and did not do to respond to the attack. Hillary engaged in a deliberate effort to portray the attack as the response to an anti-Mohammed video and to downplay the attack has a terrorist incident. She went so far as to not inform the Bureau of Counter Terrorism and restricted their assistance in responding to the attack.

In addition to the CIA and State Department personnel coming forward, a member of the Special Operations forces has surfaced. His face is blacked out and his voice is altered, but he tells a compelling story that more could and should have been done to come to the aid of the US personnel under attack. Read the rest

I was the first to write about the high likelihood that Tamerlane Tsarnaev was radicalized by his mother and trained to make bombs somewhere in the Chechnya/Dagestan region. While the FBI continues to keep its investigation under wraps, emerging details point to the following sequence of events:

1) Tamerlane, distraught over the denial of his application for US citizenship (which means his boxing career could not continue), turns to his mother for solace and comfort. Mama Tsarnaev, a “born again” Muslim, turns her son to the glories of Islam. This is 2010, which marks the start of Tamerlane’s journey to radicalization.

2. Tamerlane’s descent into Muslim insanity continues in 2011. His mom decides to return to the homeland for a visit. While there, she communicates with her son and discusses the glories of jihad. We do not know the particulars of this yet, but Tamerlane also probably was in contact with someone in Chechen Islamic insurgent movement. That contact was made possible by his mom. No doubt.

3. Tamerlane decides to go to Russia and departs the United States in January 2012. Read the rest