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Benghazi: Hillary Clinton Adviser Sidney Blumenthal Had Financial Stake In US Libya Policy, Says GOP Lawmaker [ full title ] . Sidney Blumenthal was a principal character in Hillary Clinton's Libyan policy discussions, even though he was neither an official adviser nor an impartial party, according to the Republican chairman of the House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. In a letter, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina claims there was a financial stake for Blumenthal in Libya as he pressed for Clinton to intervene. "Blumenthal was not merely acting as a steward of information to Secretary Clinton but...

Libyan officials were deeply concerned in 2011, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to remove Moammar Gadhafi from power, that weapons were being funneled to NATO-backed rebels with ties to al Qaeda, fearing that well-armed insurgents could create a safe haven for terrorists .. The reports included a 16-page list of weapons . ... the Qataris, they are doing this with every country, with every country,” Mr. Gadhafi said. “This is their plan, I mean in public. This is their own agenda. I mean, it’s not something hidden, ... A lot of jihadists that had been locked...

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi marked the 40th anniversary of the bloodless coup that brought him to power, with celebrations attended by African, Arab and Latin American leaders but largely ignored by the West. At the end of a two-hour show late Tuesday retracing the 40 years since Kadhafi ousted King Idriss in 1969, a brief video clip showed the return to Libya last month of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, but the western delegations present did not react. Kadhafi's party kicked off around midnight on Monday at the former US military base of Matega near Tripoli with a two-hour...

Libya staged a lavish spectacle Tuesday, parading white-robed horsemen and gold-turbaned dancers as jets streaked overhead to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the coup that brought Moammar Gadhafi to power in the oil-rich nation. The four-day festivities were designed to highlight the volatile leader's acceptance on the world stage, but were overshadowed by new controversies about the recent return of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. While African leaders held a summit to coincide with the celebrations, most Western leaders stayed away. Libya's decision to include a...

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student. The three backers of the foundation that,...

Gaddafi: 'The whole world expected a positive response, not just words'. (Reuters) Gaddafi feels betrayed after WMD deal Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi has complained that he has not been sufficiently rewarded by the United States and Britain for agreeing to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction program. "They promised, but we haven't seen anything yet," Mr Gaddafi said in an interview with Time magazine. "Libya and the whole world expected a positive response, not just words, although they were nice words, from America and Europe," he said. "[British Prime Minister Tony] Blair and [US President George W] Bush expressed...

Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations was on MSNBC assuring the public that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has a good record of supporting the U.S. Feinstein, a former Clinton administration official, said the only exceptions have been a few comments critical of U.S. policy in Iraq. But he indicated that now that the White House has endorsed Annan and he has announced that he wants to send U.N. personnel back into Iraq to help with the elections, the U.S.-U.N. relationship is back on track. In fact, however, Annan’s anti-American record is a long one. .... Made a deal...

More inside the Beltway spinning at work: Libya's coming clean on WMD is solely the product of Bush's war in Iraq. That's what the Bush Administration wants us to believe. And the Beltway paper of record seems awfully accepting of the Administration's spin. In Sunday's Post, Dana Milbank writes, "It has been a week of sweet vindication for those who promulgated what they call the Bush Doctrine." Richard Perle scurried to tell Milbank, "It's always been at the heart of the Bush doctrine that a more robust policy would permit us to elicit greater cooperation from adversaries than we'd had...