Libya

It Was All About the Video!

Featured image That is what the Obama administration told us for a couple of weeks; we can speculate about why they thought this falsehood would help Barack’s re-election campaign. Michael Ramirez reviews the history, and Candy Crowley plays an unwitting part at the end: »

Mother of Murdered Diplomat Slams Obama’s “Not Optimal”

Featured image This is brutal: in an interview with the Daily Mail, Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, the diplomat who was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi along with Chris Stevens and two former SEALS, blasted President Obama for his “not optimal” response on a cable TV comedy show: Pat Smith, whose son Sean died in the raid, said: “It was a disrespectful thing to say and I don’t think it’s »

The ordeal of Pat Smith

Featured image Sean Smith was a foreign service information management officer who was killed along with Ambassador Stevens and two other Americans during the 9/11 assault on our consulate in Benghazi. John’s post with the State Department account of the assault contains an excruciating account that appears to detail how he died during the attack. Last week Sean Smith’s mother, Pat Smith, appeared on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show to complain that she »

What Happened In Benghazi

Featured image The State Department has released a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters via conference call on October 9 (Tuesday). I am not certain about this, but I believe the transcript was only made public today. You should read it in its entirety; it is the most detailed description I have seen of the events in Benghazi on September 11. While this »

Whose failure?

Featured image Over at NRO, Patrick Brennan has posted yesterday’s statement by former CIA director Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff on Vice President Biden’s whopper throwing the intelligence community under the bus during Thursday night’s debate: During the Vice Presidential debate, we were disappointed to see Vice President Biden blame the intelligence community for the inconsistent and shifting response of the Obama Administration to the terrorist attacks in »

What’s the difference between Watergate and Benghazigate?

Featured image The lying of the Obama administration concerning events at Benghazi is comparable to the lying associated with Watergate. As Bill Otis says: The Administration said they had no actionable intelligence. They had plenty. The Administration said they provided adequate protection. They didn’t, and were told it was inadequate by their own people on the ground. The Administration, as ever in a rush to apologize to Islam, said the attack was »

“Taliban inside the building”

Featured image NRO’s Katrina Trinko amd Jennifer Rubin round up the leading revelations from yesterday’s congressional oversight committee hearing on Libya. It is more than enough to make your blood boil, but that has been true roughly since September 12 and the Commander in Chief’s fundraising jaunt to Las Vegas in the immediate aftermath of the assault in Benghazi. Perhaps the most damning moment came in the testimony of State Department security »

Did the White House give classified briefings on Libya to a friendly columnist?

Featured image The Daily Caller reports that Peter King, the House Homeland Security Committee Chairman, is asking CIA director Gen. David Petraeus and White House national security adviser James Clapper to investigate whether a columnist for The Daily Beast received the same classified foreign policy briefings as President Obama. The Daily Beast columnist in question is Leslie Gelb, a crony of Joe Biden (back in 2006-07, they jointly pushed a plan for »

Fools and knaves, part 7

Featured image For previous posts in this series, click here. Now comes the Heritage Foundation to perform a timely public service in putting together the video below documenting the shameless White House disinformation campaign on the terrorist attack on Libya. The folks at Heritage add: “New evidence shows there were security threats in Libya in the months prior to the deadly September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three »

Libya for dummies

Featured image It’s difficult to keep up with the crush of news related to the 9/11 assault on the American consulate in Benghazi that took the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Reader Martin Karo offers the following brief summary: After the latest Libya shoe dropped — the letter of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darryl Issa to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — I felt a need to summarize »

Fools and knaves, part 6

Featured image The Obama administration is peddling a new line regarding its inability to hold the old line on the Benghazi murders: the bad dope came from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who got everything wrong in the days following the attack. DNI spokesman Shawn Turner issued a statement reported by Reuters in the traditional Friday news dump in which scandals go to die. According to the statement: “[W]e revised »

Ishmael Jones: After Benghazi

Featured image Ishmael Jones is the pseudonymous former Central Intelligence Agency case officer who focused on human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. His assignments included more than 15 years of continuous overseas service under deep cover. Mr. Jones is also the author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published by Encounter Books. When it was issued in paperback he contributed the »

Fools and knaves, part 2

Featured image A reader has forwarded links to a number of sources strongly suggesting, Susan Rice to the contrary notwithstanding, that the Benghanzi murders constituted a premeditated and organized attack: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/09/13/4257683/guard-at-consulate-in-libya-says.html A Libyan security guard who said he was outside the U.S. Consulate when it was attacked Tuesday night has provided new evidence that the assault that left four Americans dead, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was a planned attack by »

The Libyan Scandal Deepens

Featured image The Independent is reporting that the State Department had intelligence that American diplomatic facilities in the Middle East were being targeted, but did nothing to enhance security: According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high »

The Marine Corps involvement in Egypt and Libya

Featured image The Marine Corps has issued a statement regarding its involvement in the recent actions in Egypt and Libya. In Egypt, the Corps says that, contrary to the report I wrote about earlier today, the U.S. Ambassador did not impose restrictions on weapons or weapons status on the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group detachment. The Marines in Cairo were allowed to have live ammunition in their weapons. The specific Rules of »

What is “Chicago way” Obama prepared to do?

Featured image Bill Otis offers another suggestion for how Mitt Romney should address the atrocity in Libya and his opponents’ claims that Romney erred in criticizing the Obama administration’s initial statement about that atrocity. I post Bill’s suggested statement because it is a near-perfect expression of how I view the matter. Whether it would be politicially wise for Romney to make this statement is a separate question. My inclination would be to »

Please explain

Featured image A reader wonders how it is that the U.S. had only a few security guards protecting an ambassador in a place as dangerous as Libya, while Valerie Jarrett gets a full Secret Service detail even while on vacation. It beats me. STEVE adds: There’s something else that needs to be explained.  There has to be a serious intelligence failure here if in fact the Libya attack was well-planned and ordered »