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Former CIA Director Michael Morell denied there was any cover-up or political influence in messaging of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. “We did not deliberately down play the role of terrorists in the Benghazi attack in our analysis or in the talking points,” Morell said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday. “And neither I, nor anyone else at the agency deliberately misled anyone in Congress about any aspect of the tragedy in Benghazi,” Morell added.

Over 150,000 people have lost their lives since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria, according to new figures. The London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which closely monitors the conflict using a network of activists and medical staff in Syria, has documented the deaths of 150,344 people. More than a third of those killed in Syria – by shellfire, air strikes and bullets – are civilians, the rights group said. Now in its third year, the war, which continues, unabated, has ravaged entire cities, leaving whole civilian neighbourhoods flattened by shell fire and...

A CIA Libya Station Chief has admitted that the government agency has lied about Libya, as the Benghazi protest never took place. Before the Benghazi news buzzed around the world, the station chief for the CIA reported to his superiors located in Washington that no type of spontaneous protest ever happened. In a deliberate attempt to not just lie to the American people, but others across the globe Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice told the bluff of the century. These political leaders announced to the public that a terrorist attack happening on a Benghazi diplomatic assignment...

<p>Former CIA head Mike Morrell is scheduled to testify at 10AM in a PUBLIC hearing before the House Intelligence Committee. C-span doesn't have it scheduled live, and FOXnews.com isn't showing that they'll carry it. If anyone finds a link, please post it.</p>

A student who went to visit family in Iran has been locked up for five months over comments she made to friends on Facebook, her family say. Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, from Stockport, was arrested as she stepped off a plane in the provincial city of Shiraz and accused of being a spy, husband Daryoush Taghipoor told the M.E.N. Daryoush said his 47-year-old wife has been detained at Evin, an infamous prison in Iranian capital Tehran, on suspicion of plotting to commit crimes against security and insulting Islam. He claimed her arrest was over comments she made on an internet...

MOSCOW, April 1(RIA Novosti) - Russian lawmakers have endorsed draft legislation to allow the country to set up a satellite navigation monitoring system in Nicaragua, a Cabinet committee said Tuesday. "The agreement is aimed at creating an organizational and legal framework for mutually beneficial partnership between Russia and Nicaragua in terms of exploring and using space for peaceful purposes," the official statement explained. Under the agreement, Russia would set up a network of land-based control stations in the Latin American country to monitor and augment the accuracy of navigation satellites in Earth orbit. It is hoped the system will boost...

Islamofascism: With an eye toward the 2016 election, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc. 'Muslim voters have the potential to be swing voters in 2016," said Nihad Awad in launching the benign-sounding U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, whose membership reads like a Who's Who of Brotherhood front groups. "We are aiming to bring more participation from the Muslim community." USCMO also aims to elect Islamists in Washington, with the ultimate objective of "institutionalizing policies" favorable to Islamists — that is, Shariah law....

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas did not announce his walkout from the negotiations with Israel or directly turn down the package of far-reaching Israeli concessions which US Secretary of State John Kerry assembled with Binyamin Netanyahu early Wednesday, April 1. He simply turned his back on the commitment he made ahead of the talks to refrain from unilateral applications to UN bodies while they were in progress. As soon as the US Secretary flew off to Brussels, he sent out applications for “the independent Palestinian state” to join 12 UN agencies as members. This was after the Palestinian leader upped his...

Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of the conflict say...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of...

I've never liked the word diss—not as a verb, much less as a noun. But watching the Obama administration get the diss treatment the world over, week-in, week-out, I'm beginning to see its uses. Diss: On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Hasan Rouhani named Hamid Aboutalebi to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Rouhani is the Iranian president the West keeps insisting is a "moderate," mounting evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Mr. Aboutalebi was one of the students who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Here's the kicker: The State Department—the very institution whose diplomats were...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Battling food shortages, the government is rolling out a new ID system that is either a grocery loyalty card with extra muscle or the most dramatic step yet toward rationing in Venezuela, depending on who is describing it. President Nicolas Maduro's administration says the cards to track families' purchases will foil people who stock up on groceries at subsidized prices and then illegally resell them for several times the amount. Critics say it's another sign the oil-rich Venezuelan economy is headed toward Cuba-style dysfunction.

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid? For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion -- 8th richest man on the planet -- and who dumped $92 million into the election of 2012. Adelson kept Newt Gingrich alive with a $15 million infusion of ad money, gutting Romney, and then sank $30 million into Mitt's campaign. This time Sheldon wants to buy himself a winner. Ari Fleischer,...

Yosef Hamadani Cohen led Iran’s Jewish community since 1994Rabbi Yosef Hamadani Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of Iran, passed away this weekend at the age of 98, JTA reports. His death was announced by Siamak Moreh Sedgh, the representative of the Iranian Jews in parliament, and marked informally by Iranian Jews via their Facebook statuses. Hamadani, who had led Iran’s Jewish community since 1994, had been ill for many years. He reportedly had close ties with Iranian political leadership, and met Iranian President Mohammah Khatami in 2000, lating hosted him at his Yusef Abad Synagogue in 2003—the first-ever synagogue visit by...

Hostages captured after the 1979 siege on the US Embassy in Tehran are seen in this undated file photo.Former American hostage Barry Rosen, held by student extremists at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for more than a year, said Monday it would be an “outrage” and “disgrace” if Washington gave a visa to one of the militants recently named by Iran as its new U.N. ambassador. “It may be a precedent but if the president and the Congress don't condemn this act by the Islamic Republic, then our captivity and suffering for 444 days at the hands of Iran was...

On Sunday, two remarkable Christian women, Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, spoke at our church, describing their harrowing tale of imprisonment by the Iranian regime because of their Christian faith. Both were raised in Muslim homes in Iran but never embraced Islam. As young adults, they became Christians and met each other while studying theology in Turkey in 2005. When they returned to Iran, they began evangelizing together for several years, covertly distributing Bibles to some 20,000 people and starting two secret house churches. In March 2009, they were arrested in Tehran for promoting Christianity, which is punishable by death....

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin this weekend highlighted a video of Rand Paul speaking in 2012 about sanctions on Iran. In it, Paul disparages the notion of use of force, and for some reason claims the United States was partly to blame for World War II! “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some of...

Iran has named a member of the militant group that held 52 Americans hostage in Tehran for 444 days to be its next ambassador to the United Nations. The Iranian government has applied for a U.S. visa for Hamid Aboutalebi, Iran’s former ambassador to Belgium and Italy, who was a member of the Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line, a group of radical students that seized the U.S. embassy on Nov. 4, 1979. Imam was an honorific used for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution. Relations between the Islamic Republic and the U.S. and its allies are...

In the Netherlands this week, President Obama confessed a fear: “I continue to be much more concerned, when it comes to our security, with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.” It would be reassuring to think that the president worries about this (when he’s not busy filling out his NCAA brackets), except that he is failing to do the most important thing to prevent such a catastrophe.

Let's review the following four scenarios: on December, El Nuevo Herald reports that on the occasion of a big group of rebels that came down from the mountains "In the Colombian's war black market there is an acute need for ammunitions 7.62 x 39 mm, appropriate for AK-47 rifles; In a Florida court there is a file from August 2004 related to 204.000 rounds of 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition that were seized before being illegally exported; and the press mentioned that these difficult to get ammo were going to be negotiated on western Venezuela, near the Colombian border". In...