Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Blah, Blah, Blah Benghazi

Barack Obama, Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq

“On the atrocity scale,” I wrote on 11.19.12 “Bush’s badness dwarfed Benghazi-gate.” Any one with a moral compass and a cerebral cortex recognizes that, as scandalous as it is, Benghazi is small scale compared to the immoral, fraudulent invasion of Iraq, and the cost in blood and treasure George W. Bush wrought with that one.

It would be an entirely different matter if Republicans had the intellectual moxie to examine the human toll, for decades to come, of Obama’s “murder by multilateralism” in Libya. For that was what the invasion of Libya amounted to.

But they don’t. To the Republicans, Benghazi-gate amounts to no more that a “procedural mishap.” Namely, finding out “what happened? How did it happen? Who covered it up? And, above all, how do we return to doing what we did before IT happened. ‘IT’ being the Sept. 11 attack on the embassy in Libya that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and ‘three other,’ mostly faceless Americans dead.”

In any event, ABC homes in on the meat of the scandal, tracing it directly to the Obama administration:

…ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack. …

The bare-bones of Benghazi is laid out by STEPHEN F. HAYES of the neoconservative Weekly Standard:

….Within 24 hours of the attack, the U.S. government had intercepted communications between two al Qaeda-linked terrorists discussing the attacks in Benghazi. One of the jihadists, a member of Ansar al Sharia, reported to the other that he had participated in the assault on the U.S. diplomatic post. Solid evidence. And there was more. Later that same day, the CIA station chief in Libya had sent a memo back to Washington, reporting that eyewitnesses to the attack said the participants were known jihadists, with ties to al Qaeda.
Before circulating the talking points to administration policymakers in the early evening of Friday, September 14, CIA officials changed “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” to simply “Islamic extremists.” But elsewhere, they added new contextual references to radical Islamists. They noted that initial press reports pointed to Ansar al Sharia involvement and added a bullet point highlighting the fact that the agency had warned about another potential attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” All told, the draft of the CIA talking points that was sent to top Obama administration officials that Friday evening included more than a half-dozen references to the enemy?—?al Qaeda, Ansar al Sharia, jihadists, Islamic extremists, and so on.
The version Petraeus received in his inbox Saturday, however, had none. The only remaining allusion to the bad guys noted that “extremists” might have participated in “violent demonstrations.”
In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA. …

MORE.

As the always outspoken and interesting Michael Scheuer put it, not so long ago, “Barack Obama is a despicable man.”

Indeed. On par with George Bush.

Hands-Off Syria

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Neoconservatism

It’s not often that I agree with Barack Obama, but his hands-off Syria policy, if it is to be believed, is, I’m sorry to say, the right one. It is unlikely, unfortunately, that the US is uninvolved in some covert operation in Syria. One “international affairs and defense analyst” told RT that “since 2012, if not earlier, weapons have been supplied to the rebels … a covert supply of weapons, of course – through Turkey and with the assistance of Saudi, Qatari and Turkish intelligence services.”

As for Israel’s strafing of Syria, what triggered this Israeli strike? The “crisis in 2006 was triggered by cross-border raids on Israel by Hamas in Gaza and by Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Journalist and Middle East expert Ali Rizk is searching for provocation (as we libertarians ought to):

Has there been any military action, has Israel been attacked by any side, whether it be Hezbollah or Syria? Has Israel been attacked by any side whatsoever? Israel has not been attacked.
So we hear this talk about game-changing weapons. But that doesn’t give the right or justification for such escalation…I have to emphasize, the clear message if anyone had any doubts I think now it has become clear: Israel wants Bashar Assad to fall. That is Israel’s choice. Netanyahu himself has said time and again: “Syria is the linchpin between Iran and Hezbollah.”

BBC News’ Jonathan Marcus thinks he’s found justification. Neoconservatives will concur. “According to US intelligence sources,” he reports, “the target of the first of these latest Israeli attacks [inside Syria] which took place overnight on Thursday was a shipment of ground-to-ground missiles at a warehouse at Damascus airport.”

…these latest air strikes underscore Israel’s equal worry about sophisticated conventional weapons being passed to Hezbollah. This includes sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, anti-shipping missiles, or accurate long-range ground-to-ground missiles. Such concerns are longstanding. … The missiles, which had been shipped from Iran, according to the sources, were Fateh-110s – a mobile, highly accurate solid-fuelled missiles with the capability of hitting Israel’s main population centres, like Tel Aviv, from southern Lebanon.
…What’s not clear, American officials admit, is exactly who the missiles were intended for – the Syrian army or Hezbollah. But the airport warehouse is said to have been under the control of personnel from Hezbollah and Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force.

Moron Strong

Bush, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iraq

“We are Boston strong” was coined, or just parroted perhaps, by Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts’ Indian American, senior United States Senator. Warren was speaking at the memorial service for Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, another victim of the brothers Tsarnaev.

We are also Moron Strong.

The Shrub, former President George W. Bush, delivered an address at Thursday morning’s library dedication ceremony on the campus of SMU in Dallas, Texas. There he said:

“… my deepest conviction, the guiding principle of the administration, is that the United States of America must strive to expand the reach of freedom. [APPLAUSE]”

The Iraqis are still reeling from Genghis Bush’s faith and freedom-based initiative to their country.

No self-examination or reflection have happened in that head … or in Bush-revering ditto-heads like Dana Perino’s.

UPDATE II: It Takes A Village Idiot: The Latest On Hillary Clinton’s Culpability In Benghazi

Democracy, Feminism, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Intelligence, The State

Today came confirmation, in the form of a promised comprehensive progress report on Benghazi, of what I had prognosticated back in November, 2012.

“In the fullness of time … it will transpire that the woman who crack[ed] the whip at Foggy Bottom had decided to leave the U.S. embassy in Libya undefended.
The open community center [Hillary Clinton] was running there was meant to signal that the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, was a success. (Recall, Libya was a war of the womb, a product of the romantic minds of three women who fantasized about an Arab awakening. This estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids began, as in Greek mythology, with the Gorgon sisters. Medusa’s posse included Samantha Power, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. They helped Hillary devise the casus belli for the war.)”

It takes a village idiot, and state immunity, to run an “open community center” in a country you’ve turned into Jihad Central.

Released today and reported by Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, the Benghazi report, which will likely be ignored by most media, is so fresh and damning—that it is still unavailable online.

I will post a link as soon as one becomes available. Send one if you have one.

UPDATE I: Via Fox News: “Report: WH Altered Benghazi Talking Points to Protect State Department”:

Researchers for five Republican-controlled House committees have come out with a scathing indictment of the Obama administration’s response to the September 11, 2012 terror attack in Benghazi.
Jennifer Griffin reports that the 46-page progress report concludes that the administration’s response was a concerted attempt to insulate the Department of State from blame following the attack.

“Findings in the report include”:

“Prior to the Benghazi attacks, State Department officials in Libya made repeated requests for additional security that were denied in Washington despite ample documentation of the threat posed by violent extremist militias.”
“Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton.”
“In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.”

UPDATE II: Text of the “Interim Progress Report,” with thanks to Mr. Love on Facebook.