Free Republic

The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.” The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found...

The State Department’s top security officer is coming under scrutiny for playing a role in creating a special board that is investigating last month’s fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. One of the State Department’s accountability review board’s key tasks will be to probe why the office of Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, rejected requests for more diplomatic security in Libya in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Mr. Kennedy, a career diplomat whose portfolio includes being the top security officer, signed the memo Oct. 1 that set up the review...

Yessir, Mr. Issa. We'll get right on that investigation lickety-split. Too bad we won't have our report for you until after the November election. Josh Rogin: "I appreciate that you and your committee are deeply interested in finding out what happened leading up to and during the attacks in Benghazi, and are looking for ways to prevent it from happening again. I share that commitment," Clinton wrote in the letter, obtained by The Cable. "Nobody will hold this department more accountable than we hold ourselves -- we served with Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods." Clinton said...

CAIRO/VIENNA (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei said on Friday he could run in Egypt's presidential elections if the Egyptian people asked him to, denying a report in an Austrian newspaper that he would not run. "This is not true," ElBaradei said in a phone interview with Al Jazeera. "If the Egyptian people want me to continue the change process, I will not disappoint the Egyptian people." ElBaradei has tended to answer the question of whether he wants to run for president, often asked of him, by saying he was ready for a role in helping Egypt achieve political...

Shortly before Barack Obama took office, leaders of a prominent Iranian-American group in Washington began to fret. If the new president were to tap former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross to oversee the nation's Iran policy, they feared their long-running effort to persuade American officials to lift sanctions could wind up in tatters. Patrick Disney, acting policy director of National Iranian American Council (NIAC), summed up the strategy: "Create a media controversy" concerning Mr. Ross, whose support for a tough line on Iran was well known. "Those groups that feel comfortable being more aggressive in opposing Ross publicly (possibly Voters...

Excerpts: An ultimate State Department Arabist 25 December 2005 BITTERLEMONS-INTERNATIONAL Middle East Roundtable:22 Dec,'05: "The main concern is terrorism" by Thomas R.Pickering* QUOTES FROM TEXT: "To some extent, those bent on understanding and reconciliation in the United States face not only their own limitations in influence ... but those of their colleagues and friends within the circle of Islam. Leadership there seems to have been hijacked by the extremists "mesmerized by the words 'Judeo-Christian heritage', they seek to find common cause with the Jewish presence in the Holy Land." "denial that the Allah of Islam is the shared common God...