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Showing posts with label Christopher Stevens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christopher Stevens. Show all posts
CNN video: Benghazi timeline: "We are under attack" John King: Why Benghazi matters By John King, CNN Chief National Correspondent updated 1:23 PM EDT, Wed August 7, 2013 Additional information and videos at: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/politics/king-benghazi/index.html
CNN video: Why didn't the U.S. military respond in time in Benghazi
CNN video: Paying the political price for Benghazi Recent Benghazi-related news
I'll take 'phony scandal' for a thousand, Alex: Jeopardy clue features Benghazi [photo] http://t.co/Jz0mXTP4Lk — TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) August 5, 2013
For the record, @BarackObama - when you're forced to close a record amount of embassies, your enemy isn't "on the run," you are. — Brad Thor (@BradThor) August 5, 2013
@JaeCreitch@USATODAY I try to be respectful of others' opinions, but the sheer Liberal disregard of #Benghazi sickens me in a visceral way. — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 4, 2013
NEW COLUMN just went up. CNN Finds Benghazi Terrorist Suspect; FBI Doesn't Lv a comment. RT pls. http://t.co/nqHWOLfv9N — Bernard Goldberg (@BernardGoldberg) August 5, 2013
The key to #BENGAZHI atrocity being solved may now lie with the press. Even running dogs like our Lib press may turn on Obama for Pulitzers.
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 3, 2013
Now includes video story: Exclusive: Dozens of CIA operatives on the ground during Benghazi attack
http://t.co/EFU5TDVYtA
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) August 1, 2013
CIA is polygraphing operatives regularly, in an "unprecedented" attempt to keep Benghazi secrets, sources tell CNN, @DrewGriffinCNN reports
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) August 1, 2013
View Larger Map I've been wanting to post this excellent analysis by The Washington Post's veteran foreign policy hand Jackson Diehl since reading it online early, early Sunday morning, while listening to some hard news online via the BBC. Soon thereafter, I sent it out to a couple dozen well-informed friends and acquaintances across the country and around the world, who follow U.S. foreign policy as closely as I do, and who also like me, shake their head at what President Obama is doing. Though we all disagreed on lots of matters whenever we were together, we're all in agreement about this Diehl column -it's spot-on analysis from the get-go about Barack Obama's unwillingness to stop digging the foreign policy hole he has put the United States in. He just keeps digging, utterly convinced that he's right and that everyone else is wrong. I suspect that in about a dozen years or so, people who voted for Obama in 2008 will actually shake their head in wonder that they ever allowed themselves to willfully ignore his inexperience and weaknesses and elect someone as president who was foolish enough to convince himself -and them- that his carefully-constructed personal/media narrative would somehow allow him to solve longstanding problems. It hasn't and it doesn't and it won't. Despite all the accumulated evidence on U.S. foreign policy that shows he has made already bad situations worse, sometimes, much worse, Obama still remains utterly convinced that the sheer star power of his personality will lead to positive results. It's the ultimate act of -and sign of- his amazing hubris.
The Washington Post
How Obama bungled the Syrian revolution
By Jackson Diehl
October 14, 2012
Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans are doing their best to portray the assault on the U.S. mission in Libya and its aftermath as a signal foreign policy disaster for Barack Obama. But my bet is that when historians look back on Obama’s mistakes in the last four years, they will focus on something entirely different: his catastrophic mishandling of the revolution in Syria.
The deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi were a calamity — but those losses were mainly the result of poor security decisions by mid-level State Department officials, not policy choices by Obama. The president’s handling of Syria, on the other hand, exemplifies every weakness in his foreign policy — from his excessive faith in “engaging” troublesome foreign leaders to his insistence on multilateralism as an end in itself to his self-defeating caution in asserting American power.
U.S. and Western diplomats are concerned that the longer Bashar al-Assad hangs on to his failing regime in Damascus, the more likely it is that the aftermath of the Syrian rebellion will be dominated by Islamist elements, completing an arc of newly empowered radical groups along the southern half of the Mediterranean from Libya to Syria.
As I've noted here several times over the past two years with videos of him speaking forthrightly about Syria, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been much more realistic than Hillary Clinton's dog-chasing-its-tail State Dept. on the reality of what has been going on the Middle East and what is likely to happen if President Obama's dithering foreign policy is given four more years to make things worse. And seriously, how does U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice still even have a job? Is there no penalty for her abject failure, serial lying to the American public and Congress and her calculated and willful ignorance? Rice's performance the past month has validated all the criticism of her as nothing more than a political hack with foreign policy pretensions, not a serious foreign policy professional, no matter what her actual experience is. Susan Rice is the female version of Rahm Emanuel -a fixer. And a Grade B fixer at that. How can we reasonably expect representatives of other countries to trust her and take her seriously if average Americans have learned from watching her for themselves, after paying attention to her own words and actions, NOT to trust her?
SenatorMarcoRubio video: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on Foreign Aid to Libya, Egypt and Pakistan and what America and American taxpayers have a right to expect from these countries in exchange for U.S. dollars. Uploaded September 20, 2012. http://youtu.be/SFOBW7xkz7g Reminder, this video is a month old. Articles and columns on Syria in The Washington Post, in chron order: http://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/search.html
By the way, if anyone reading this post knows anyone at Foreign Policy magazine, tell them that their YouTube Channel is the very picture of irrelevant. One original video in the past nine months during a presidential election year? That's embarrassing! http://www.youtube.com/user/ForeignPolicyTV
senatorcorker video: Appearing on Fox News Channel, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sounded-off on the lack of information and cooperation the Comm. is receiving re the Benghazi attacks on September 11th. Corker believes the Obama administration's response to Libya consulate attack is "Nothing Short... of Benghazigate." "Both Democrats and Republicans want answers to what happened." Uploaded September 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/wLk6o3N8cB8
More useful clarity on President Obama's Libyan Lies, Misrepresentations & Misadventures: Obscure film was NOT responsible for riot there, security was lax in Benghazi, U.S. Marines were NOT there during consulate attack, and FBI agents are still NOT there two weeks later, a fact that ABC News' Friday evening newscast continued to neglect to mention
And on Friday, sixteen days after the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christoprher Stevens, ABC News national newscast devoted ZERO time to Obama's serial lies about what happened in Libya, not mentioning Libya even once. No, instead, the lead story was on TSA agents pilfering airline passenger goods. Really? Yes, nothing at all about no FBI agents being in the country more than two weeks later to investigate. The Washington Post
In Libya, security was lax before attack that killed U.S. ambassador, officials say
By Ernesto Londoño and Abigail Hauslohner
September 29, 2012 at 2:12 PM
On the eve of his death, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was ebullient as he returned for the first time in his new role to Benghazi, the eastern Libyan city that embraced him as a savior during last year’s civil war. He moved around the coastal town in an armored vehicle and held a marathon of meetings, his handful of bodyguards trailing discreetly behind.
But as Stevens met with Benghazi civic leaders, U.S. officials appear to have underestimated the threat facing both the ambassador and other Americans. They had not reinforced the U.S. diplomatic outpost there to meet strict safety standards for government buildings overseas. Nor had they posted a U.S. Marine detachment, as at other diplomatic sites in high-threat regions.
After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the important new details:
By David D. Kirkpatrick, Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt
Posted online September 27, 2012
BENGHAZI, Libya — Sixteen days after the death of four Americans in an attack on a United States diplomatic mission here, fears about the near-total lack of security have kept F.B.I. agents from visiting the scene of the killings and forced them to try to piece together the complicated crime from Tripoli, more than 400 miles away.
Investigators are so worried about the tenuous security, people involved in the investigation say, that they have been unwilling to risk taking some potential Libyan witnesses into the American Embassy in Tripoli. Instead, the investigators have resorted to the awkward solution of questioning some witnesses in cars outside the embassy, which is operating under emergency staffing and was evacuated of even more diplomats on Thursday because of a heightened security alert.
Though it's the newscast that I always watch and prefer, Thursday night's "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer" was one of the worst in quite some time, more noteworthy for what they neglected to say than anything they actually reported -never a good sign.
This case of collective hysterical amnesia at the alphabet network seemed especially curious in light of interesting news reports that emerged over the course of the day that only gathered steam as the day went on, as they made even more preposterous many of the Mainstream Media's claims of the day before and that morning's daily newspapers. The facts simply wouldn't cooperate and fit their assumptions.
These were all "facts" that that you reasonably expected to see mentioned at some point in a national newscast when the subject of the riots and murder in Benghazi and Cairo came up and yet... Yes, sometimes even when Diane Sawyer is standing right there in the middle of it, the absence of evidence is evidence itself, and so is the refusal of her news program to mention these inconvenient facts when it goes against the Mainstream Media narrative of that morning.
Here's just a small list of what WASN'T mentioned on Thursday night's "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer" http://abcnews.go.com/WN/
1.) Libyan government announced that organized and heavily-armed groups used the so-called film protests as a cover to stage coordinated attacks. Yes, the rocket-propelled grenades are always a tip-off that civic discourse is not at the top of someone's agenda. [And why so much reluctance by ABC News and the rest of the Mainstream Media in the U.S. to mention how often variations of "Osama, we are with you" was heard a week at the protests one week after the DNC mentioned Osama Bin Laden 21 times with respect to their famous hunter Obama practically killing Bin Laden himself. TV and print reporters in other countries who speak Arabic and who are there on the ground are mentioning it, so why aren't U.S. reporters mentioning how often the words "Osama" and "Obama" are mentioned in the same sentence, and not in a positive light? Speaking of speaking the language of the place you are reporting from, how's Barbara Raddatz's Arabic? Perhaps Paul Ryan will ask her at the October 11th Vice-Presidential debate she is moderating.
No need to do that, I can answer that question for you. ABC News reporter Barbara Raddatz, like so many other American A-list reporters routinely go to countries where they don't speak the language -like Arabic- and have to be totally dependent on others to explain what in the hell is going on. So, why do we need to hear from her then? Good question. But ABC News doesn't care that she doesn't actually understand what is being said all around here while she is supposed to be reporting. To them, the most important thing is that she's there -is showing the ABC flag. That's NOT the most-important thing to me -facts are. (She was in washington on Thursday night)]
2.) Why nothing at all about this f-ed up situation with Larry Schwartz at the U.S. embassy in Cairo? Guess they were too busy trying to find another Republican in DC to criticize Romney. Anonymously, of course. Foreign Policy magazine The Cable blog Inside the public relations disaster at the Cairo embassy Posted By Josh Rogin September 12, 2012 - 8:48 p.m.
One staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was responsible for the statement and tweets Tuesday that have become grist for the presidential campaign, and that staffer ignored explicit State Department instructions not to issue the statement, one U.S. official close to the issue told The Cable.
Two additional administration officials confirmed the details of this account when contacted late Wednesday by The Cable.
Read the rest of the post at: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/09/12/inside_the_public_relations_disaster_at_the_cairo_embassy 3.) All Thursday morning and afternoon, credible reports emerged that despite what President Obama said about the Libyan security forces helping transport Ambassador Christopher Stevens to another building per their protocol, credible stories that members of the Libyan security forces had in fact signaled to the armed organized groups that were there to storm the consulate that the move was taking place. The groups already knew that Stevens would be moved, they just weren't sure where. Once they knew, it was easy to fire their rockets right at him. It was literally like he was herded into the scene of his death. This was not mentioned at all on ABC's newscast Uh-oh! Mira! Here's something finally penetrating the MSM's invisible force field Notice that this is being given a 6:45 am time stamp, even though I heard this yesterday before 1 p.m. CBS News
September 14, 2012 5:23 AM Official: Libyan insiders may have aided assault Updated 6:45 a.m. ET
(CBA/AP) BENGHAZI, Libya — Heavily armed militants used a protest of an anti-Islam film as a cover and may have had help from inside Libyan security in their deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate, a senior Libyan official said Thursday.
As Libya announced the first four arrests, the clearest picture yet emerged of a two-pronged assault, with militants screaming "God is great!" as they scaled the consulate's outer walls and descended on the compound's main building.
4.) Surprise! Reports throughout the day emerged that U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Pattersonwouldn't allow U.S. Marines guarding the embassy compound to carry live ammunition. http://nation.time.com/2012/09/13/whats-worse-no-marines-or-possibly-unarmed-marines/
With all their resources and personnel, how is ABC News unable to either confirm or deny this story by 6:30 p.m. Eastern? Or mention that she was in Washington at the time? Really, how can that be?
If it turns out to be true, like you, I can hardly wait to hear the future interviews with the Marines and their leaders back in Washington on the fact that the very people most-responsible for the safety of U.S. personnel were reduced to playing the role of Barney Fife, who, lovable as he was, famously, wasn't allowed to have a loaded gun while he was on-duty in Mayberry. And as if I even have to mention it, Ambassador Ann Patterson's name was never spoken on-air Thursday. Again. Hmm-m...
Honestly, what is it about female U.S. Ambassadors posted to the creepy patriarchal Middle East, and their own feelings of protocol and or inadequacy, that actually cause them to threaten U.S.lives thru their queer policy pronouncements?
If true, unfortunately, Anne Patterson's bad decision-makingwill remind many of usthat after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the last year of the Clinton Administration, the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, imposed all sorts of rules on the U.S. officials sent to investigate the bombing that took place on her watch. She seemed to be the very stereotype of a spiteful feminist who wanted to keep men at a distance even though they were the ones who had any power on the block she lived on. Instead of letting common sense prevail, she said that allowing so many FBI and CIA agents -read assertive men- would send the 'wrong signals' about who really ran U.S. foreign policy.
She forgot that it wasn't her. She was the worker bee who works for us, not the other way around.
In case you forgot or never knew the exact details, Bodine was the stick-up-her-ass PC U.S. Ambassador to Yemen who tried to thwart the Cole investigation and famously took steps to revoke the visa of FBI Special Agent John O'Neill, the FBI's leading expert on al Qaeda and on-scene commander in Yemen after he arrived from New York with his team of counter-terrorism agents.
Yes, really.
Among so many other things that seem contrary to U.S. interests, Bodine famously intervened and prevented his re-entry into Yemen after he'd flown back to New York for Thanksgiving 2000.
O'Neill, of course, died ten months later in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers
Here is what PBS says on their Frontline website about that situation in October of 2000.
I usually would not put so much of that here, but it's important that you see what part of her decision-making rings familiar today, considering Patterson's orders.
Arriving in Yemen, O'Neill finds challenging field conditions. His agents confront 102-degree heat and a cramped, unsecured hotel for their quarters. O'Neill soon finds himself clashing with Barbara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, who is concerned about the number of FBI agents and military personnel flooding into the country after the bombing. O'Neill argues that the FBI needs resources to thoroughly investigate the attack. Bodine has different priorities, including maintaining good relations with Yemen. "I had to act as a cultural interpreter. They have endured first British colonialism, and then the Soviets. These people have only had foreigners telling them what to do. Now O'Neill and his men were coming in, doing essentially the same thing," Bodine later told Britain's The Sunday Times.
As relations between the two sour, the number of topics they disagree on multiplies. O'Neill wants a heavily-armed security presence; Bodine wants the agents to be unarmed. O'Neill wants to have direct access to Yemeni officials; Bodine feels she should supervise encounters. As O'Neill starts to seek support from Barry Mawn and other FBI officials back in the U.S., the cables sent by Bodine to the State Department become increasingly critical of O'Neill. It reaches the point where Louis Freeh and Janet Reno become personally involved in the dispute.
Meanwhile... CNN IGNORES REAL GOAL OF CAIRO RIOTS: FREEDOM OF BLIND SHEIK
