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Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland admitted that she provided false information Friday about the State Department's hiring of private security firms for the American mission in Benghazi attacked on September 11th: QUESTION: You also said there was no contract with a private security firm in Libya, and yet apparently some British security guards were hired. Is that your way of saying you didn’t contract with a firm but you did hire individual security guards? MS. NULAND: Thank you for that, because there was an error in what I said. The external security, external armed security, as we have been saying, outside...

EDITORS' NOTE: According to a source close to Breitbart News and high up in the intelligence community, the Obama administration's policy following Muammar Gaddafi's death has been to keep a "low profile" during a chaotic time. For this reason, according to the source, American Marines were not stationed at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli or the American mission in Benghazi, as would typically have been the case. In the spirit of a "low profile," the administration didn't even want an American company in charge of private security. Blue Mountain, the British firm the State Department hired, was willing to abide...

"Rep. Gohmert stated that the press conference was scheduled weeks ago, but emphasized how timely this discussion was in light of the attacks on the US embassy in Libya and Cairo. Billy Vaughn spoke about his son Aaron, who was killed along with 29 others when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter in which he was riding was shot down. The mission was so risky it had to be approved outside of theater. When the chopper went down, the air support did not fire to take out the enemy because there might be friendlies in the building and the ROE made no...

Marine Lance Cpl. Hunter Hogan was laid to rest in York, Nebraska on Friday, July 6th, 2012. He was 21 years old when he was killed in Afghanistan during operations in Helmand province with the Patriot Guard Riders on June 23, 2012. His hometown was Norman, Indiana. Hunter's father, Steve Hogan, says his son was "fearless," "brave," and "he sure could Cowboy." He loved to rodeo, had opportunities to do so in college but wanted to serve his country for four years and then get back to the rodeo arena. Mr. Hogan has sharp words for the media, accusing them...

| On the Afghan border with Pakistan in Paktika province, there is a tiny, isolated and primitive American outpost called Combat Outpost Margah. What happened there last fall never penetrated mainstream consciousness, but on Oct. 30, American forces were surprised in a wee-hours attack by hundreds of unusually sophisticated fighters who were "armed to the teeth and shouting "Allah Akbar." Or so David Axe reported, quite vividly, in Wired magazine, a lone outlet to cover the battle. It took 12 apocalyptic hours, but the insurgents were successfully repelled. Of course, this wasn't the first time this outpost in eastern Afghanistan...

Awaiting Presidential remarks on the date of withdraw and number of troops abroad. ....live 7 PM CST on Fox News. Pundits talking now

The average monthly casualty rate for U.S. military forces serving in Afghanistan has increased 5-fold since President Barack Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009. 1,540 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan since Oct. 7,2001, when U.S. forces began action in that country to oust the Taliban regime that had been harboring al Qaeda and to track down and capture or kill al Qaeda terrorists. During the Bush presidency, which ended on Jan. 20, 2009 with the inauguration of President Obama, U.S. troops were present in Afghanistan for 87.4 months and suffered 570 casualties—a rate of 6.5 deaths per...

An Afghan policeman has shot dead an American soldier and wounded three others in the southern province of Helmand. A member of the Afghan national police opened fire on the Americans on Thursday during a full scale scuffle in the provincial capital city of Lashkar Gah, located about 555 kilometers (344 miles) south of Kabul, a Press TV correspondent reported. The shooting marks the second incident of its kind in less than a month. On April 27, a veteran Afghan army pilot opened fire on foreign troops at Kabul airport, killing eight US-led soldiers and a contractor. Several US-led foreign...

I first learned of John Bernard through Diana West (“ROE Are Merely Symptom of ‘Hearts and Minds’”) and the Stars and Stripes blog entry, “Photo of dying Marine forces a difficult decision.” Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan murdered Mr. Bernard’s son, Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard. Media outlets ignored his wishes and the wishes of the Department of Defense by running a photograph of his son as he lay dying from his wounds. This initially outraged me but because our nation bombards us with insult after insult, my outrage has subsided and now I simply keep this action in mind as the...

My nephew, Lance Corporal Lee Morgan, will be deploying to Afghanistan next Friday. This will be his second tour of duty there. Lee will be putting his life on the line, once again, fighting a war which is described by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) as "an epic failure, a national embarrassment and a moral blight." While my nephew is risking his life to fight the war on terror, Ms. Woolsey is exercising her right to polish her moral vitaes (on the backs of others) by blithely passing judgment on what the Obama administration has re-defined as merely an "overseas contingency...

Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul is declining to offer his assessment of Sarah Palin’s libertarian appeal, or her chances of winning his endorsement in 2012. Paul, a politician not known to mince words, is withholding judgment on a potential Palin presidential campaign, according to Jeff Deist, Paul’s chief of staff. “[Congressman Paul] doesn’t comment on Palin, especially as she is not a candidate at this point,” Deist said. Palin has been subject to significant criticism from establishment Republican figures, as well as potential rivals for the Republican nomination in 2012. Barbara Bush said in November that she hopes Palin “stays...

Cruel. Despicable. Mean. Demonic. Deplorable. Duplicitous. Deceitful. Hypocritical. Dishonorable. No words in the dictionary are adequate to describe what is being done to 10 brave U.S. soldiers and Marines who are languishing in the Fort Leavenworth brigade. They are there for volunteering to protect us and after being placed into the fog of war to fight our enemies, “violating” our military’s feckless politically correct Rules of Engagement (RoE). Because of the “Catch and Release” policy that is sacrificing our young men’s lives for a touchy feely new war model, enemy combatants who attack our young men and women can be...

The US Report was one in a minority of voices in the political blogosphere months ago when we raised the issue of the Rules of Engagement for US forces, partly in response to reading milblogs as well as following dispatches filed by war correspondent Michael Yon. And Congress, at least, appears to be mindful. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) issued a statement on Friday after sending a letter to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (MO-4) and Ranking Member Howard “Buck” McKeon (CA-25). Jones’ statement said he is “requesting a Full Committee classified hearing on Rules of Engagement and Tactical...

Fox News, outgoing Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s least favorite news channel (he banned it from the televisions in his HQ), reports that one of the first moves of incoming Afghan commander Gen. David Petraeus will be to loosen the controversial rules of engagement in Afghanistan to allow more artillery and air strikes. Troops in Afghanistan complain they’re fighting with one hand tied behind their back because of the various “directives” issued by McChrystal restricting the use of indirect fires in an effort to curtail civilian casualties. Not so fast, reports Leo Shane with Stars and Stripes, who asked Petraeus’...

Torrents of uninteresting mail inundate members of Congress, but occasionally there are riveting communications, such as a recent e-mail from a noncommissioned officer serving in Afghanistan. He explains why the rules of engagement for US troops are "too prohibitive for coalition forces to achieve sustained tactical successes." Receiving mortar fire during an overnight mission, his unit called for a 155mm howitzer illumination round to be fired to reveal the enemy's location. The request was rejected "on the grounds that it may cause collateral damage." The NCO says the only thing that comes down from an illumination round is a canister,...

IDF soldier Sgt. Gavriel Chepitch, 21, from Zichron Ya’acov, was killed Monday night in a friendly-fire incident along the border with the Gaza Strip. Chepitch, from the 77th Armored Battalion, was part of a military force near the Kissufim Crossing that apprehended three Palestinians who had allegedly succeeded in crossing the border into Israel. A force from the Golani Brigade was also alerted to the border and spotted a suspicious figure, whom the soldiers assumed was one of the infiltrators. The soldiers opened fire, killing Chepitch.

Under the Obama Administration, the rules of engagement in the Afghan War are extreme political correctness, and this has brought well-earned criticism of the military's prosecution of the Afghan War from a very decorated source, Major General Robert Scales. Imagine if you're a Marine in Afghanistan, charged with fighting terrorists, yet you can't shoot at Taliban terrorists unless you see them actually holding weapons in their hands! If the Taliban terrorists only temporarily put their arms down, Marines are forbidden from shooting at them! Imagine that you also can't treat the captured terrorists "roughly"—as in using "harsh" language against them...

The United States Marines now fighting the battle of Marja, Afghanistan are facing a most difficult mission. They are tasked with clearing the town of Taliban fighters – and they are restricted by rules of engagement not seen heretofore in the history of U.S. warfare. Commanding General Stanley McChrystal has made limiting civilian casualties a higher priority than loss of American lives. And it is impossible to tell who is the enemy in a Muslim State that still resembles the Stone Age. The Los Angeles Times coverage by Tony Perry and Laura King is here:

COMBAT OUTPOST FIDDLER’S GREEN, Afghanistan Sgt. Jefferson Haney is a rarity, and his fellow Marines look at him with just a little bit of envy. The artilleryman with the 3rd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment is one of few who have done what they spent countless hours training for: firing his howitzer at the enemy. “Two rounds on an enemy bunker,” recalled Haney as he stood near the firing line at Fiddler’s Green, a combat outpost in Helmand province. “The bunker was destroyed.” With new and more stringent rules of engagement imposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in an effort to reduce...

Someday, civilian and military leaders responsible for these rules of engagement, this policy of sacrificing American troops to make the barbarians of Afghanistan "like us" should come before at the very least a Congressional hearing, but at this point an out-for-blood people's tribunal seems more appropriate. What they are doing to our military, our treasury, our power and our prestige is an unconscionable national betrayal. The following news story describes the toll these rules, this policy is taking on our bravest young men -- amoebas in a petri dish to the mad, see-no-Islam social engineers masquerading as American statesmen and...