Posted on 05/10/2013 5:57:15 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
The truth about Benghazi emerges.
‘There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy,” the President of the United States told the United Nations last September 25, one of six “video” references in his speech. A fortnight after the deadly attack on America’s mission in Benghazi, Obama was still insisting that Innocence of Muslims, an obscure, anti-Islamic YouTube video, had fueled the mayhem. Presumably, a spontaneous protest spun out of control and unleashed lethal violence.
But, as he addressed the General Assembly, Obama surely knew that it was an al-Qaeda–propelled assault, not a YouTube video, that had killed U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
As Wednesday’s sworn testimony by three State Department whistleblowers demonstrated, this was just one of many lies deployed by Obama and others high atop the U.S. government. These lies nurtured the myth that “al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat,” as Obama claimed at a Las Vegas campaign rally the evening after the Benghazi onslaught. With the truth kept conveniently obscured up to November 6 and beyond, Obama won reelection as the man who supposedly killed both Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In fact, only the former is dead.
The truth behind this monstrous cover-up finally is emerging, too late to defeat Obama at the polls, but perhaps in time to speed his early return to Chicago.
In gripping testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, these top diplomats broke their silence and shattered Team Obama’s carefully crafted post-Benghazi narrative.
From the very start of this episode, U.S. officials called it an attack, rather than a video-driven protest.
“Greg, we are under attack,” Ambassador Stevens said in his last words to Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks, just before Stevens’s cell phone clicked off on the night of September 11.
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes reports that two hours into the onslaught, at 6:08 p.m. Eastern Time, a State Department Operations Center alert, in Hayes’s words, “indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda–linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack.”
In a newly revealed September 12 e-mail to State Department staffers, Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Jones recalls consulting Libya’s ambassador in Washington. Jones wrote: “I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar Al Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”
“The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya,” Hicks testified under oath Wednesday. “The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack on our consulate. . . . No protest.”
The father of the late Tyrone Woods says that, as his son’s remains were officially welcomed home on September 14, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton approached him. She promised that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — the Los Angeles–based, Egyptian-born Coptic Christian behind the anti-Islamic video – would be “prosecuted and arrested.” Never mind that producing anti-Islamic videos is not illegal, for now. (Nakoula remains in jail, nonetheless, for probation violations tied to unrelated crimes.)
In the May 13 Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes carefully documents how Team Obama sanitized the CIA’s initial talking points to erase al-Qaeda’s fingerprints on this attack and, instead, make it look like a demonstration gone crazy. A September 14 version of this document stated, “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qa’ida participated in the attack. . . . Ansar al Sharia’s Facebook page aims to spread Sharia in Libya and emphasizes the need for jihad to counter what it views as false interpretations of Islam.”
By the time the State Department and the White House had whitewashed these talking points, a third version, on September 15, explained: “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” Were these extremist Muslims? Extremist vegetarians? Extremist Rotarians? The scrubbed document does not say.
If the records he cites are accurate, Hayes writes, “It is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public.”
The next day, United Nations ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday-morning talk shows. Relying on the doctored talking points, she told Fox News’s Chris Wallace: “What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet.” Rice added, “It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.”
“I was stunned,” Hicks testified, concerning Rice’s TV appearances. “My jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed.” He added that Rice never spoke with him before doing her interviews, even though — after Ambassador Stevens’s assassination — Hicks had become America’s top diplomat in Libya.
The State Department’s Administrative Review Board was supposed to discover the truth about Benghazi. However, it now is being investigated by State’s inspector general to determine whether it adopted a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach. The ARB never interviewed Hillary Clinton about her role in this disaster. Whistleblower Mark Thompson, a top State Department counterterrorism official, testified Wednesday that he had volunteered to speak with the ARB but was ignored.
Team Obama has hindered Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) as he has tried to solve the Benghazi puzzle. “The first week of October, I did go to Libya,” Chaffetz told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity Wednesday night. “I did meet with Mr. Hicks. And we heard testimony that Mr. Hicks was coached ahead of time not to allow me to speak to three individuals there, including Mr. Hicks. The State Department had sent along a babysitter, a minder, to listen and take notes of everything I did.” Chaffetz continued: “The idea that a member of Congress trying to seek out the truth, and they are being told not to allow that member of Congress to have an individual conversation — I mean, that’s pretty stunning.”
Hicks testified that State Department officials ordered that “we were not to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz.” He added that Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Miller, called after he met with Chaffetz. “She was very upset with me,” Hicks said. “She delivered a blistering critique of my management style.”
Hicks also ran afoul of State’s aforementioned Elizabeth Jones. “I asked her why the ambassador [Rice] said there was a demonstration when the embassy reported there was an attack,” Hicks explained. “The sense I got is that I needed to stop my line of questioning.”
Hicks also testified that “I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer” — perhaps because he has failed to toe the Obama line.
In addition to the three whistleblowers who came forward this week, 30 more Benghazi witnesses remain hidden and reportedly afraid to speak up. As American citizens, they should not have fear in their vocabulary.
So, why this abundance of lies and obstruction?
An al-Qaeda–affiliated terror group targeted an American diplomatic facility and killed four American public servants, including Washington’s first ambassador to be murdered on duty since 1979. These facts completely undermined the myth that al-Qaeda had been in retreat since SEAL Team Six liquidated Osama bin Laden in May 2011. So, Team Obama buried these inconvenient truths beneath a sand dune of lies.
Since Obama’s Justice Department cannot be trusted to investigate itself, House Speaker John Boehner should assign a select committee to probe Benghazi, subpoena and immunize the 30 remaining survivors of the attack, and invite the sworn public statements of those who can detail what may be the biggest federal cover-up since Watergate.
The American people — not least the families of Messrs. Stevens, Smith, Doherty, and Woods — deserve to know who perpetrated this fraud, no matter how far the mighty may fall.
From the day of the attack until this week, the White House spin was too clever by half. In the weeks and months after the attack White House spokesmen said they were investigating the story, an internal review was under way. When the story blew open again, last week, they said it was too far in the past: "Benghazi happened a long time ago." Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, really said that.
Think of that. They can't give answers when the story's fresh because it just happened, they're looking into it. Eight months later they don't have anything to say because it all happened so long ago.
Think of how low your opinion of the American people has to be to think you can get away, forever, with that.
Think of how low your opinion of the American people has to be to think you can get away, forever, with that.
............................................................
Maybe not forever, but for the next 3 years.
Bama boy aint going nowhere. He is a cancer we cannot cure.
Yeah I don’t know.
I’m hoping for a steady drip...drip...drip of truth. And eventually, the 30+ survivors coming forward.
The Republican leadership (a joke with rare exceptions like Rand Paul etc.) needs to boil the issue down to a few talking points that are just a few paragraphs. That should consist of the following points presented in a time line.
1. Obama and Hillary knew it was an Islamic extremist attack the night it happened. This is proven by State Department internal emails referencing the extremists with Al Qaeda connections if not Al Qaeda. This was known days before Susan Rice went on TV and lied.
2. Obama went to bed and had no further input on the attack while it was on going. This is per White House statements.
Actually I suspect this is a lie, but that is what they put out for public consumption.
3. We did have military assets that could have been used but they were ordered to STAND DOWN! Who gave the order.
4. When Susan Rice went on TV what she said was a total lie, and the White House knew it was a lie, and Hillary Clinton knew it was a lie and who wrote her statements that she presented on TV and who approved these statements in the State Department.
5. Who denied the extra protection requested by the ambassador many times in the months preceding the attack.
6. The lack of action prior to the attack and during the attack lead to the deaths of our consulate staff and our ambassador.
Repeat this day after day until the public understands that our White House and President and State Department lied, lied, lied, and lied again and are still lying. We could even quote Ted Kennedy when he was attacking George W Bush,
“lie after lie after lie after lie.”
He might be in trouble if it was sinister,
But it wasn’t- it was just a simple combination of inexperience and cowardice.
He will be given a pass by the American people because we are to blame, we knew who he was and we put him in that office. It was our fault.
Sad.
cpdiii,
You’re spot on with the questions you’ve posed. As for #2:
“Obama went to bed and had no further input on the attack while it was on going. This is per White House statements.
Actually I suspect this is a lie, but that is what they put out for public consumption.”
This is the smoking gun. I also don’t believe Obama went to bed and slept through the attack. He was huddled with his inner circle, trying to figure out how to keep this hush-hush, so as not to hurt his re-election chances. It was during this time they came up with “the video did it” meme.
If anyone in that inner circle cracks, it’s over for our Dear Leader.
Being a stupid, arrogant, bast*rd president, and a serial liar, it is hard to tell where the truth lies. That is the game all con-artists play. Organized crime is well in control of us.
It was our fault.””
Our fault that a corrupt media, voter fraud, and foreign funds put this bast’rd president in office. Only armed revolution would have stopped them. This is organized crime with power; so tell us, how is it “our fault?”
Obama fired 3 generals, admiral to cover up Benghazi
Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, was fired March 28, according to a Washington Defense official.
The command is headquartered in Djibouti and runs U.S. military operations in East Africa, including some counter-terrorism operations.
Baker, a two-star general, is appealing the firing, which was ordered by his boss, Gen. Carter Ham, the commanding general of all U.S. military operations across Africa.
He was relieved of his duty for loss of confidence, three Defense officials told CNN.
It was second embarrassing dismissal of a high ranking officer involved in the U.S. military hierarchy in Africa in five months.
Gen. William “Kip” Ward, the first four-star general to command U.S. military operations in Africa, was demoted for excessive spending from duty at U.S. Africa Command (Africom).
He lost one star and retired a lieutenant general.
Ward used his rank to shuttle his wife on shopping sprees, enjoyed a lavish beachfront trip and once accepted a Defense contractor’s gift of going backstage to meet actor Denzel Washington.
There are reports that two high-ranking military officers, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette and General Carter Ham, were fired by Obama for wanting to come to the assistance of the beleaguered U.S. missions in Benghazi.
http://www.michaelsavage.wnd.com/2013/05/obama-fired-4-generals-to-cover-up-benghazi/
Carny's opinion was dead-on for the majority of the American public. The voters jumped the shark when they elected the Obamanation in 2008. They confirmed it beyond all doubt when they re-elected him in 2012.
That is the crux of the matter. The people who supported 0bumble in 2012 and who support him now don't care. And it is the fault of the American people, at least the majority. But is it fair to also blame the dissenting minority?
These are impeachable offenses. There can be no other way to describe them. This administration has finally run out the string. “Kenyan...go home!”
The choice of cover stories (video inciting protest spun out of control) also reinforces what we know about the racist attitudes of Democrats and liberals in general. It implies that these people are so irrational and under control of their passions that a simple video would cause them to explode.
A planned terrorist action in efforts to secure weapons or to implement some intrigue is at least rational. To fall for the administrations line we have to believe that the attackers couldn’t control their emotions and were, in a sense, less than human.
Seems our response teams, with that much time, could have easily gotten support to those who were under attack.
It's time for some heads to roll and stop all the “BS”. We know who told them to stand down and like Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here”. Hang his a## and Hitlary along with him. They are a disgrace to our country!
I believe you excuse him too easily.
First it was Hillary’s fault for not beefing up security, then it was Obama’s fault for avoiding the real issue because there was an election coming up.
In any case it was inexcusable.As inexcusable as running guns to Al Quaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama is responsible for the instability of the entire Middle East as it is now. He sold the Egyptians a bill of goods.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.